Seize the Sky sotp-2

by Terry C. Johnston

  “I’m not,” Varnum interrupted, licking his own dry lips anxiously. “Please. I just want some for myself.”

  “Yourself, Charlie?” he exclaimed in disbelief. “Why, I’ll be damned.”

  “Just—with all the …” Varnum’s eyes flicked around nervously. “I was with the Rees, the Crows all day.” He wagged his head like someone watching the gallows go up a board and a nail at a time outside his own iron-barred window. “I may be green at this, Gerard. Handling Indians, that is. No old sawbuck like you. But even I could read their eyes. I ain’t the smartest man Custer’s got working for him—but I can sense we’re running right on up the backside of something here that even the general don’t know what he’s doing.”

  “Here.” Gerard shoved the flask into Varnum’s fist. “You pay me when we get back to Lincoln.”

  The lieutenant clutched it against his chest like an icon, reverently. “Thank you, Fred.”

  As Varnum wheeled away, Gerard called, “Charlie. Just do me a favor, will you?”

  “What’s that, Fred?”

  “Don’t pour all that stuff down at one sitting. Save some for the ’morrow.”

  Fred watched the chief of scouts lead his weary army mount off through the milling command as the regiment spread out to establish its camp for the night. Gerard dropped beside his horse at his saddlebags to pull out a flask for himself this time. With his mount picketed he settled his shoulders against the saddle and sighed.

  Hell, he thought. You got plenty whiskey to spare.

  Why, between his spacious saddlebags and that generous army haversack, Gerard had brought along enough whiskey to see him through for a good month.

  CHAPTER 10

  NEARLY an hour later the Crow scouts came plodding in, their little ponies nearly bottomed out from what had been required of them. Rule of thumb on the plains stated that a scout traveled twice the distance a cavalry column would march in a day, what with all the back-and-forth and the up-and-down. That meant those little grass-fed cayuses had done something over sixty miles beneath a cruel summer sun.

  Yet right now it wasn’t only fatigue that Mitch Bouyer could read on his Crows’ faces. Something more, in fact altogether primal, that strained and pinched the normally happy faces he knew as well as he knew any friend.

  Bouyer understood as few others would, for he had stood at the center of those deserted camps with his scouts. He had walked across the worn earth of the central council lodge, visually ticking off that distance to the farthest of the brush arbors and wickiups used by the youthful warriors. Mitch knew his Crow had read such sign as easily as any white man back east picks up and reads his daily newspaper.

  The half-breed knew there wasn’t a bit of good news to be found on the front page today.

  Custer sought out the Crows while striker Burkman busied himself brushing down both Vic and Dandy with tufts of grass. Bouyer nodded to the general without a word while Custer squatted in his characteristic manner, one knee on the ground as he leaned an elbow on the other.

  “This is the main point I want you to tell them, Bouyer,” Custer began after Mitch had fed him the intelligence from the scouts’ travels. “These Sioux have been killing lots of white people. You explain to your boys here—I’ve been sent here by the Great Father in Washington City. I’m told either to bring the Sioux back to their reservation or to defeat them in battle. Keep in mind, I’m called Charge-the-Camp. I’m a great war chief, greater than this Sitting Bull or his general, this Crazy Horse they speak of. But—I’ll tell you a secret that no soldier who rides with me knows.”

  Custer slowly eased himself to the ground with Bouyer and his Crows. The significance of that posture wasn’t lost on the scouts.

  “My friends, I do not know whether I’ll get through this summer alive. There’ll be nothing more of any good in store for the Sioux from this time on, however. If the Sioux kill me, they will still suffer, for many more soldiers will come in my place and fill my empty boots. Ask your boys if they understand that.”

  He waited for Bouyer to translate. Some of the Crow nodded in agreement before Custer continued. “And if the Sioux don’t kill me, why—I’m going to whip them soundly, right back to their reservations, where they belong. They’ve disobeyed the orders of the Great Father back east … and they will pay. Besides, you’ll take home many fine Sioux horses, won’t you, boys?”

  Custer smiled widely, his sunburned face wrinkling as he waited while Bouyer translated. Young Curley spoke up, and when he was done, Mitch talked in a morose tone.

  “These boys don’t like you talking this way, not one bit, Custer,” Bouyer whispered with a powder-crack voice. “They figure there’s strong medicine on a man who talks about his own death. You’ve spooked ’em now.”

  “Now, Mitch. I know some about Indians, mostly Cheyenne. But you tell these Crow not to worry. I’m not going to run, nor will I let my spirit fly away easily in battle.”

  “This is good,” Bouyer answered in English before he translated.

  “You tell these boys they’re my favorite scouts,” Custer continued. “I want them beside me when I go in for the kill. You tell them the strength of my words, Bouyer.”

  Custer stood and smiled down at the Crow trackers.

  “You tell them, Bouyer—tell them I’ll recommend them to their people, and they will all be leaders among the Crow.”

  Custer turned on his heel, strode off at a lively pace. Mitch thought the way the general moved wasn’t the plodding of a man seriously contemplating his own mortality.

  Swinging his cream hat against one powdery leg to knock dust off the brim, Custer waved to some troopers and officers bathing in the cool waters of the Rosebud beneath a purple orange glow of sunset. On the opposite bank upstream a ways, Captain Benteen grumbled sourly under his breath. He had set a seine hoping to snare some trout for supper. But with all the naked swimmers splashing and setting up a playful howl in the rippling waters, the captain’s cutthroat had been scared off.

  Custer chuckled over Benteen’s predicament, at the same time hoping the Sioux would not be scared away from his own trap the way the trout in the Rosebud were fleeing Benteen’s seine.

  But then, with “Custer’s Luck” you always caught the Cheyenne. Old Black Kettle and Medicine Arrow both.

  The more Custer thought on it, the more certain he became that his only problem would be one of surprise. The Sioux would run like jackrabbits once they got wind of him on their trail. And that simply wouldn’t do.

  You need Sitting Bull and the rest to play too important a role in what you’ve got planned for the rest of your life, Armstrong. Whether it’s a big village like those we ran across today or nothing more than five or six lodges. You must have that victory … and you must have it now.

  Adjutant W. W. Cooke was already at the Rees’ camp with the headquarter’s guidon fluttering in the warm, dry breath of early evening. Gerard sat to the side, not partaking in the pipe the Arikaras shared in their circle. Custer went down on one knee as he told Gerard to inform the scouts of the news just brought in by the Crows.

  “They figure there are a great number of lodges,” Custer started. “A great number of Sioux in many camps coming together. What I want the Rees to tell me: If we catch up to the Sioux, and I can keep them from running, what will happen?”

  Bloody Knife, veteran of Custer’s 1874 expedition into the Black Hills, nodded, wanting his old friend Stabbed to reply for them all. Creaking up on his tired knees, then to his feet, the old medicine man began to hop around and around, circling, dodging this way, then that. Jumping here, then there, with a sudden youthful vitality marking a warrior.

  After a moment of pantomime, Custer nudged Gerard. “What’s he trying to say?”

  “He’s showing you how the Sioux warriors will jump this way and that, so they don’t get hit with any soldier bullets.”

  Custer chuckled at the old man’s primitive charade. “All right. Now have him tell me what the Rees th
ink will happen to my soldiers.”

  Gerard translated, watching the circle of scouts fall silent. Stabbed stiffened his arms at his sides as if marching along in formation, then reacted to the impact of a bullet, falling to the ground. Next he rose to one knee, aiming his imaginary carbine at a moving object; he was again shot and rolled to the grass in death throes. Finally he stretched upon the ground, again shooting his rifle, when struck by a silent arrow falling from the sky. Trying to pull the shaft from his back, the old Ree died.

  “What’s all that?”

  Gerard muttered under his whiskey-soaked breath, “He’s telling you the soldiers aren’t going to fare all that well when they come up against Crazy Horse’s Sioux.”

  Custer nervously wiped a hand across his straw mustache, irritating his chapped, wind-burned lips. “Don’t you think I can see that?”

  “General,” Gerard whispered hoarsely, glancing around. Seeing some officers and a few young troopers ambling up out of curiosity, Gerard decided he didn’t want to cause a scene in front of so many of the general’s men.

  “It’s all right, Fred,” Custer sighed. “You tell your boys—word for word—that I never expected them to fight beside me. Alongside my soldiers. All I want your Rees to do is capture as many of the Sioux ponies as they can run off. Every pony will be theirs. The Sioux won’t need all those fine ponies on the reservations, that’s for sure.”

  Gerard finished his translation, which caused the Rees to bob their heads in appreciation.

  Growing pensive, Custer sensed a sentimental cord tighten within him. Perhaps the time had arrived for him to let these scouts and others know what the coming fight would mean to him.

  “Long have I planned on this campaign to take me far from here—far from Fort Abraham Lincoln. Far from the land of my old friends, the Arikara. With only one small victory over the Sioux, I will become their Great Father in Washington City.”

  He stopped right there, his words slapping a stunned and dumbstruck Gerard. Behind him Custer overheard the whispered murmurs from his soldiers, as an electric response to his announcement shot through the assembly.

  “When I get to Washington City, I won’t forget my friends, the Arikara. Believe in that with your hearts. This is my last fight. I must have a victory and I must have it now, even if we defeat only a handful of Sioux warriors and a handful of lodges. With that victory in hand, I must quickly turn around and head back east. The people of my country will want to see me, hear me, take me to Washington City, where I will become your Great Father.”

  Custer kneeled beside Bloody Knife. “This is my friend. Bloody Knife has ridden down many trails with Custer before. Sad that this is the last war trail we will travel together, old friend.”

  He slung his buckskinned arm around Bloody Knife’s shoulders. “But I tell you all, there will be a big house in Washington City for Bloody Knife to sleep in when he comes to visit me. Then I will send him back home to Dakota and a fine house of his own that I will have built for him. His two arms will be weighed down with the many presents he will bring back for his people to share. As Great Father of the Indians, I will reward those who have helped me win my final, lasting victory against these Sioux.”

  Custer said to the others in the circle, “The rest of you will have plenty to eat for all time, into the winters of your grandchildren, even unto their grandchildren.”

  “Hou! Hou!” the Rees answered in a great, spontaneous cheer.

  It was not a strange sensation for him, this choking on a hot, sentimental knot in his throat. Nor were these tears hot and stinging new to his eyes.

  He often found himself moved to tears when he thought about his men—the gallant Seventh and what they had done to bring him this far down the road to his historic destiny. Here he was, in fact a simple man, who knew to his core that his moment had come. Greatness was at hand.

  “To St. Louis, General!”

  Mark Kellogg bolted to Custer’s side, raising the general’s right arm aloft. Soldiers pressed in about them both. Better than a hundred by now, more trotting up, curious at the noisy excitement.

  The short bespectacled newsman had wandered through camp, looking for Custer, eventually finding him in council with the Arikara scouts. It took but a few moments for a man like Kellogg to read the portents in Custer’s private oaths to his Indian trackers.

  Mark felt as swept up in the frenzy as any, leaping to the general’s side on heady impulse, one of the few in that camp along the Rosebud this evening who truly understood the importance of Custer’s promise. At this moment Kellogg watched that winning smile creep across the freckled face before him, the blue eyes lighting up with a distant glow.

  “Y-yes … Mr. Kellogg!” Custer shouted over the din of whistling, stomping soldiers.

  “You’re announcing your candidacy, I take it?” Mark hollered above the bedlam.

  “Candidacy? I hadn’t … no, the Indian Commissioner … No—but yes, suppose I could as well as Grant himself, Mark! Suppose I am announcing …” He gazed over the swelling, raucous assembly of shouting soldiers and scalp-dancing Rees.

  Kellogg allowed Custer’s arm to drop, gripping his right hand in both of his, pumping exuberantly. “Congratulations, General—I mean, Mr. President! Let me be the first to congratulate you!”

  “I haven’t had my name placed in nomination, much less been elected—”

  “A formality, General! Wait till Bennett himself gets word of you defeating the Sioux! He’ll have St. Louis stampeding for you so fast, your head will spin.” Kellogg wore a smile that lit up the dark eyes beneath his thick spectacles. “You’re a natural for it—crowds will love you. I can see it, a grand sweep you’ll make across the States. After all, General—this country’s always given her highest office to the men who win her wars, don’t you know!”

  “I suppose she does at that,” he stammered.

  “Of course, she does,” he replied with a genial slap to Custer’s shoulder. “First we had Washington, who freed us from that bloody tyrant George the Third! Then Andy Jackson, who shoved the British back into the sea again. And ol’ Zach Taylor helped consolidate America’s destiny in the southwest, wrenching American soil from the hands of Mexican despots. And finally Ulysses S. Grant himself, the man who saved our great Union for Mr. Lincoln—God rest his soul. With the help of fine officers such as yourself and Phil Sheridan … you understand. Those soldiers have been rewarded by our grand republic with a term at her helm.”

  Kellogg suddenly winced as Custer gripped the reporter on the arm, his powerful hand like an iron vise. Mark watched a strange look cloud Custer’s face.

  “Mark,” he gasped, “I had never before considered the presidency. What had been my dream, my furthest hope—the commissioner of Indian affairs—perhaps secretary of war.”

  “Dammit, General!” Mark shouted. “Don’t you see? You want power? Power?” He laughed hysterically. “You have all the damn power any one man could ever want as president!”

  A roar followed Kellogg’s declaration. Custer slapped Kellogg on the shoulder, then pushed through the crowd to return to headquarters bivouac.

  “There’s really no better year than this, General!” Kellogg hollered after him, his notepad waved high. “No better time for a political party’s nominating convention to be ignited by such raw emotion of the moment—once you defeat this Sitting Bull and his cronies.”

  “I’ve never been more ready!” Custer shouted back. “Let’s pray Sitting Bull is as well!”

  Custer strode off into the deepening twilight.

  You have so little time now to find the Sioux, to secure your victory—no matter how small. Then you must get word back to Bennett in St. Louis by telegraph … yes! In time to sweep across the floor of the Democratic convention. Who, he thought, would turn down the nomination of a national hero? The youngest general of our recent victory over the rebellious southern states? Why, there’s no doubt I could be swept into office following a grand campaign at the
nation’s centennial celebration in Philadelphia!

  But first, he ruminated, he had to get word of his victory to the waiting ears of James Gordon Bennett, Jr., owner of the New York Herald and his political adviser and confidante. Surely he could dispatch someone dependable like Charley Reynolds to reach a telegraph key up in Bozeman. The same quiet, dependable scout who had carried news from the Black Hills for Custer back in seventy-four.…

  But—what if Charley doesn’t make it?

  It was not a question of defeating the Sioux. No, in Custer’s mind it never would be. Instead, it became merely a question of getting word of his victory to the waiting world … and on time.

  Herendeen and Bouyer! Yes! They could do it. Both take different routes south to the great Platte River Road where they could find telegraph offices … anywhere from Fort Laramie to Fort Fetterman. Just pray the wires are up and the operators are at their keys.

  Most of all, Custer knew he would assure that his beloved army did not shrivel into a ghost of its former self. With an end of problems in the post-war south along with a temporary calming of the Indian situation out west, there had arisen in Congress a strident hue and cry to cut back the Senatorial appropriations for the nation’s army. Many a good man would be thrown out of the only work he had ever known.

  If elected, Custer would change that antimilitary mood sweeping Capitol Hill … by the force of his personality if nothing else. To assure that his beloved army did not become a eunuch. With what he would do to keep his country’s army strong in the future, with all that he had done to lay those victories of the past at his nation’s feet … he was every bit a natural leader. Certainly after all his successes, this nation could trust the helm to President George Armstrong Custer.

  And beside him on every train platform, at his arm on every dais and speaker’s rostrum of the campaign, would stand Elizabeth Bacon Custer. He had married her, pledging his life to her. Libbie knew he had pledged his life to the army as well.