Seize the Sky sotp-2

by Terry C. Johnston

  “What makes you think Custer’s going to be killed?”

  Wallace waited while a group of soldiers strolled past on their way up from the river.

  Already the nighthawks were out, swinging in low overhead, striking a moth or mayfly in the growing darkness. Death leaving no time for a cry for help or a yelp of pain. Swift and efficient. No warning. No sound until too late. Only the swift wings of death asail on the wind above the faint swish of cavalry boots plodding off through the tall grass growing here beside the gurgling Rosebud. Young soldiers returning to bedrolls and their dreams of home.

  Finally Wallace answered in a harsh whisper, “Because I’ve never heard Custer talk that way before.”

  That was all it took for the hairs to prickle at the back of Godfrey’s neck. He was deaf in one ear, but he had caught precisely every single one of Wallace’s words. He walked apart from his friends.

  As he groped along beneath starry patches among the clouds overhead, Godfrey brooded, as a blind man in need of answers sensing his way upstream, where he hoped he’d find the scouts’ camp.

  Good God, he told himself. You’ve fought Indians with Custer before, Ed. Along the Platte River Road and the Washita and the Yellowstone itself. It’s not like you’re some ignorant shavetail quaking in your boots before your first fight.

  No, he admitted. This is something different. Something downright spooky.

  He found a few of the Crow scouts and a dozen or more of the Rees, all gathered round their little fire. They talked quietly through Bouyer and Fred Gerard, the Arikara interpreter, or conversed silently among themselves, their hands gesturing in quick, darting flight like those night-hawks swooping overhead.

  Not desiring to interrupt, Godfrey hunkered down on the grass near Mitch Bouyer, behind Bloody Knife, chief of the Ree scouts and a longtime tracker for Custer. He found himself seated beside Half-Yellow-Face, one of the older Crows assigned from Gibbon.

  After Godfrey had attentively listened to the various conversations, studying what he could of the facial expressions and the signs used, he was surprised when he saw Half-Yellow-Face nudge the half-breed Sioux interpreter and point out the soldier among them.

  Bouyer turned and grunted. Godfrey nodded and rose on his haunches a bit to show his interest in what the scouts were deliberating. Bouyer studied the two shiny bars on Godfrey’s collar for the first time, perhaps remembering that the Indian scouts were officially assigned to Godfrey’s K Company.

  “You, pony soldier,” Bouyer began, his voice low, causing Godfrey to lean forward with his one good ear. “You fight Indians before, eh? Ever fight these Sioux?”

  Godfrey swallowed at the coarse directness of the question. Damn, he thought, these scouts have a way of cutting right through the underbrush and getting right down to the root of something, don’t they?

  “Yes …” Ed admitted. “Several times down near Nebraska, but our hottest engagements were along the Yellowstone three summers ago now.”

  “Hmmm,” Bouyer considered as he turned back round to the fire, dallying at the coals with a twig for a few minutes. Only then did he turn back to stare directly at the lieutenant. “Well, then, pony soldier—just how many of them Sioux do you expect to find up there?”

  Godfrey watched Bouyer nod upstream and point with his twig toward the hulking Wolf Mountains—the direction Custer was leading them.

  “The general briefed us on the reports the army’s received.”

  “How many warriors the army tell you Custer’s going to find?”

  “They figure we may find between a thousand to fifteen hundred warriors … if we find them.”

  “Oh,” Bouyer laughed mirthlessly, “you’ll find them all right.” His teeth flashed beneath the pale thumbnail moon. “You’ll find them if you go riding with Custer.”

  The half-breed seemed ready to let that settle a moment like a muddy puddle stirred. Then Bouyer continued. “So you tell me your own mind, pony soldier—you think we can whip that many Sioux?”

  It was not lost on Godfrey that the half-breed Sioux interpreter had suddenly gone from saying you when referring to Custer’s command, to now saying we.

  “Oh, yes,” Godfrey said quietly. “I guess so.”

  At that moment Half-Yellow-Face and White-Man-Runs-Him interrupted, asking Bouyer what had been said between the interpreter and the soldier. Then Bloody Knife sounded his interest, asking Fred Gerard to translate the gist of the conversation for the Rees in the circle. A few minutes passed before the Indians fell silent once more, their somber eyes refusing to talk any longer.

  Bouyer tossed the twig into the little fire at his feet, watching it flare, then die out. “Well, pony soldier. I do not know this Custer—but Bloody Knife tells me much of him. I do not know him myself, but it’s for sure I know the Sioux. Only thing I can tell you—we are going to have one damned big fight. One—damned—big—fight.”

  With nothing more than a whisper on the grass, Mitch Bouyer rose, turned on his heel, and disappeared into the purple twilight.

  One damned big fight.

  Bouyer’s words clung to Godfrey like stale fire smoke, stinging eyes and lungs. Foul on the tongue. Eventually he got to his feet and trudged off, growing nervous and cold and out of place among Gerard and the Indians. An outsider who did not understand their mysticism. An outsider who did not even understand why he shuddered uncontrollably as if he were freezing.

  On the way to his bedroll, Godfrey stopped at Lieutenant Winfield Edgerly’s D Company bivouac. A few officers had gathered beneath Edgerly’s company flag, quietly singing some of their favorites down by the lapping waters of the Rosebud. Not only “Bonny Jean” and “Over the Sea,” but also “Mollie Darling” and “Drill, Ye Tarriers” were all raised to the quiet evening stars amid complaints from Benteen of disturbing his sleep.

  After “Dianah’s Wedding” and “Grandfather’s Clock” were sung, Godfrey himself led them in the “Doxology,” or the “Olde Hundredth” as it was popularly known.

  Praise God from whom all blessings flow;

  Praise Him all creatures here below.

  Praise Him above ye heavenly host.

  Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

  With the nervous stammering of amens, most of the men bid good night to their fellow officers and slipped off into the darkness to locate their companies and bedrolls while the chorus of coyotes and wolves took up the nightly serenade where the soldiers left off. Beautiful in its own feral way, though eerie to the uninitiated ear—that blending of high-pitched yips from the younger coyote pups, echoed by the deeper howl of a prairie wolf, was a chorus that thrilled a man accustomed to the high plains.

  All round the regiment that summer night sang a lullaby meant only for the innocent.

  Past those few lonely sentries on picket duty, a man here … then another there slipped out to find himself some privacy for nature’s call. One by one the solitary soldiers crept in among the horses and led an animal over the first hills to the east. Across the Rosebud. Climbed into the saddle—nosing for the Black Hills. Or off to the northwest and the Bozeman Road. Wherever—some men just wanted across those first low hills and away from this place.

  It would be easy for their fellow soldiers to accuse them of cowardice. Too damned easy to figure these green recruits and a few fire-hardened old files to boot were all struck with a bad case of the “yellow flu.”

  Better yet, a clear-thinking man had to figure those soldiers had their eyes trained on the diggings located up in Alder Gulch or meant to head down to Deadwood with gold in mind. Sure enough easy for any man with half his wits who kept his eyes and ears open to understand he was finally within striking distance of the Dakota gold fields or the rich veins near Virginia City, Montana. Easy enough for any man who could keep his mouth shut to get lost among those miners and drummers and traders and gamblers who peopled those places men always went when they wanted to stake it all on one turn of the spade, or a single play of the cards. Suc
h soldiers could always trade in a sturdy army mount branded US for a new set of duds, shucking himself of that yellow stripe down the outside of his britches … maybe even earn himself a grubstake up in the hills somewhere on some nameless stream.

  Damned sure better than dying on some nameless little creek with Custer and his crazy band of zealots, one deserter thought as he slipped off into the noiseless night.

  Damned sure better than dying with Custer.

  Praise Him above ye heavenly host.

  Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

  Just as Custer had ordered, no reveille sounded for the Seventh on the morning of the twenty-third.

  Entrusted to awaken the camp, the horse guard checked their watches beneath the pale, lonesome starlight before groping their way through the sleeping camp, nudging their relief. Each was charged to see that his bunkies were rousted into the predawn darkness to relieve their bladders and start their tiny coffee fires.

  By the time the columns moved out as scheduled at five A.M., with the newborn sun peeking red as blood over the eastern rim of the prairie, Lieutenant Charles Varnum and his scouts had been gone the better part of an hour, their own cold breakfast and boiled coffee laying as heavy as wet sand in their bellies.

  As the Montana sun streaked like a stalking coyote out of the draws and coulees to the east, Custer leapt aboard Vic, waved farewell to striker Burkman, and set off for the day’s scout. Directly behind him rode Sergeant Major William H. Sharrow, charged with carrying the maroon-and-white regimental standard in the company of Sergeant Henry Voss, the regiment’s chief trumpeter, who carried the general’s crimson-and-blue personal standard, the very same flag Custer had ridden with while commanding his Union cavalry during the Civil War.

  The sight of the general heading upriver was the signal for the command to move out.

  By the time that sore-eyed red sun climbed a hand high above the horizon, the regiment had crawled better than eight miles. Already the troopers had unbuttoned their shell jackets, leaving them open to catch the breezes from down the valley. Waist length, topped with a short, stiff collar, these shell jackets were the first item of apparel a man shed and tied behind the saddle as the morning warmed.

  Custer joined his scouts at the first deserted Indian campsite the trackers ran across.

  Tepee rings and fire pits pocked a large area of bottomland along the Rosebud. As the troops rode up, many of the veterans looked over the trampled ground in awe-struck wonder. More Indians had camped here than those hard-files could ever hope to boast of seeing before in one place. In addition, there was a sobering number of wickiups still present, those willow limbs stuck in the ground, their tips tied together to form a dome over which the warriors had thrown a canvas fly, buffalo robe, or wool blanket for shelter at night.

  “I can’t believe the Sioux’d treat their dogs this damned good,” Lieutenant Varnum chuckled as he trundled along behind Bloody Knife and a handful of Rees who scoured the deserted camp for sign.

  Fred Gerard dragged to a halt, turning on Varnum with a death-cold look smeared across his old, weathered face. “Charlie, my boy—the Sioux didn’t put these wickiups here for their goddamned dogs,” he growled, raking his tongue around a dry mouth as he yanked a tin flask from a back pocket.

  Varnum froze under Gerard’s glare, growing nervous as some of the Rees studied how their interpreter had confronted the pony soldier. The lieutenant scuffed his jackboots across the ground like an embarrassed schoolboy, kicking up tufts of dry grass with the square toe.

  “Not for dogs, Fred? Then what the hell they put in them wickiups?” He tried to chuckle again. No one laughed along with him.

  “Charlie, my boy,” the prairie-hardened Gerard replied, wagging his head sadly. A damn shame, he thought, this here’s the man Custer’s put in charge of the regiment’s scouts. “Those wickiups sheltered the older boys and young warriors—the males of the tribes who’re too old to live with their families now but too young to marry and have a wife and lodge of their own just yet.”

  Gerard licked his sore, dry lips, anticipating the taste of the whiskey as he worried the cork from the hip flask. He drank hard at the burning liquid that years ago had ceased to scour his throat with fire. After he raked the back of a hand across his wind-chapped lips, the interpreter went on.

  “I’m afraid a lot of them wickiups was used by warriors scampering off the reservations, Charlie. You tell Custer, won’t you? Tell him to think hard on all those warriors scampering off the reservations, come to join Sitting Bull.”

  For a moment Gerard had himself worried, hearing the ring of something foreign in his own voice.

  The lieutenant stood gaping as Gerard turned and walked off, following Bloody Knife, Red Star, and the others.

  At one of the wickiups Bull-in-the-Water and Gerard tested the leaves on those limbs that had formed the frame. They were dry. Easy enough to tell that as he rolled those leaves about in his dirty palms. But they weren’t crispy dry yet. Just wilted a shade.

  “How long?” Mitch Bouyer stepped up beside Gerard with Half-Yellow-Face and Curley.

  “Week maybe. From what Red Star figures.” Gerard, a former post trader and now the official Ree interpreter at Fort Abraham Lincoln, tore the corner off a tobacco plug with yellowed teeth. Looking over this abandoned campsite, his mouth went dry, and he spit the chaw out.

  He and Bouyer watched Custer remount, signaling his soldiers to resume the march. Angrily Custer hollered for Varnum and Bouyer to get their scouts out and moving ahead of his blue columns once more.

  “Custer’s got his hands plenty full right here, I think,” Bouyer whispered gravely from the side of his mouth as he crawled aboard his Crow pony.

  Gerard nodded, flashing a yellowed smile. “He’s had his hands full ever since he decided to take these Sioux on. It’s like he’s got a bone stuck down in his throat and can’t get shet of it. Shame of it is, I’m afraid the general’s gonna choke on that goddamned bone.”

  Throughout the rest of the morning and into the growing heat of the afternoon, the scouts and a few of the old-timers began to notice a scarcity of game in the area of their march. A rare thing in virgin country such as this. A cavalry column marching across the high plains of Montana Territory would surely kick up some antelope, deer, and elk, or scatter off some of the birds normally roosting in the trees or chattering in complaint from the bushes.

  Yes, sir, Gerard thought, shifting himself up on the cantle of his damp saddle. Downright spooky to follow the Rosebud and not find a mess of wrens or a flock of sparrows swooping overhead out of the summer blue.

  Damned little life we’ve found dotting the thick marshes among the eddies near shore either.

  Gerard knew his scouts and the Crows understood. They and Bouyer alike understood what had driven the game out of the country for miles around. Only an immense village on the march could have scoured the countryside clean of almost every sign of life.

  Almost—except the magpies and robber jays that squawked their irritating demands over the abandoned campsites in search of a free morsel here, a bit of fat there. Something left behind by the gathering bands. And always the turkey buzzards overhead, circling, circling Custer’s Seventh.

  Gerard gazed up into the climbing sun. It could give a right-thinking man the willies to watch those goddamned buzzards hanging up there over us. High-flying wing slashes circling lazy on the warm updrafts in that pale, summer-burned sky. Any right-thinking man damned well knew he ain’t dead yet.

  By the time Custer ordered his command into camp near four-thirty P.M., the regiment had put nearly thirty-three miles behind them. At each of the three deserted camping places they had run across through the day, the general had ordered a short halt while the scouts inspected the sites.

  Somber and silent, both Crow and Ree had walked the packed lodge circles. Put hands in the ashes of old fires. Broke open bones to inspect both condition and age of the marrow. And they did it all without a singl
e word, shrouded in discomforting silence. Gerard watched them, silent as well, noticing that only Rees’ dark eyes talked bravely to one another. Only their eyes talking.

  While stable sergeants cussed and fretted over the lack of graze, because every blade of grass for some distance on both sides of the trail and been chewed to the ground, other soldiers speculated on the number of Indians they were following now … where the bands were headed … and how long ago the hostiles had left the area. In the last camp they had run across, over three hundred fifty lodge rings had been counted.

  It didn’t take an interpreter like Gerard to compute the simple plainsman arithmetic that added up to better than a thousand men of fighting age right on that one spot.

  He could tell from the look on Bouyer’s face that the half-breed understood well enough that the bands were coming together. Gerard himself paid more and more attention to the dark eyes and gloomy faces of his Rees than he did the wild ramblings of loose-lipped army speculators like Varnum.

  With a healthy heave Gerard rared back and tossed the empty tin flask toward the west bank of the Rosebud.

  “Almost made it!” Lieutenant Varnum cheered his effort. “’Nother few feet …”

  “Nawww,” Gerard shrugged it off. “Not with a empty one, I wouldn’t. That’s a piece to throw a empty one.”

  Varnum studied him closely. “You wouldn’t have any more of that, would you?”

  Varnum’s question brought Gerard up short. The man’s army, through and through. It just ain’t right for one of Custer’s solemn teetotaling churchboys to get his hands on any whiskey.

  He bent over his saddlebags anyway. “What the hell.” He pulled out another flask. “Yeah, I got some more. Just want you remember, Varnum—I’m a civilian, and I can carry this along with me if I choose. Just in case you’re figuring on showing the general the evidence—”