We’re back in the saddle before sunup.”
“Marching north to Sedgwick, ain’t we?” Comstock asked. “It can’t be more’n fifty mile up there.”
Hickok shook his head. “Fort Wallace, Will.”
“Fort goddamned Wallace? Why in hell?”
“Custer figures its the only place where there’ll be enough supplies to ration this outfit,” Sweete told them. “’Sides, I think Custer can’t get Kidder’s outfit off his mind.”
Jonah turned toward the southwest, at his back the twinkling firelights of the cavalry camp, staring into the slap-dark of the rolling prairie grassland that had swallowed Custer’s regiment and spit them back out again. He wondered if Kidder’s men would be so lucky.
The next morning the entire command was moving at first-light, moving away from the South Platte, reluctantly.
Twenty … twenty-five … thirty and more miles per day Custer put behind them. Pushing relentlessly toward Fort Wallace. That night a half dozen men slipped off unheard into the prairie darkness.
And the following dawn found the rest whispering at report before they saddled up and pushed off again behind their hard-driving commander. Better than forty miles he prodded them to march.
Through that night of 6 July more than two dozen slipped away, every last man of them taking his horse with him.
Pawnee Killer’s blood was up. His thirty warriors were warming to the kill. For this was truly fun—to have a wild chase such as this, running down each victim and killing him before continuing on the trail of the rest.
The Sioux had cut a fresh trail miles back—a dozen, perhaps as many as fifteen men. Iron-shod horses. White men.
Within minutes, his war party had been rewarded with finding the quarry in the distance. One man out in front by a few hundred yards. A leader riding in the van. And ten soldiers in a short double column.
The white man always rode like that, Pawnee Killer knew. While the Indian rode in single file.
His warriors now had four of the soldiers dead behind them in the running battle. The white men riding their worn-out horses would turn and attempt to shoot behind them at the warriors on their furious ponies.
The air crackled with sporadic gunshots. The white men cursed and cried out as the warriors drew near. But not a one gave up easily.
It was good, the Killer thought. Good that each one should fight to the last breath.
The last eight finally reined up in a frantic spray of dirt and summer-cured grass, dismounting on the run, dragging their lathered horses into a crude ring. They began shooting the animals as Pawnee Killer’s screeching warriors topped the rise.
Down behind the still-quivering, thrashing horses the last soldiers crouched, laying their pistols and long banded-barrel rifles over the still-heaving ribs of the foam-flecked army mounts. And began returning a hot fire like nothing Pawnee Killer had ever seen in his fighting life.
The white men had decided to sell their lives dearly.
He ordered his warriors to stay at a distance, crawling on their bellies along the slopes of the gentle hill to the west of the white men, through the grass on the south and east. The north was open, flat land. Unusable for attack.
From three directions the Brule warriors began walking in their deadly iron-tipped hail, arrow after arrow raining down from a cruel, cloudless sky on the last survivors of that wild chase across the summer-honed prairie.
First one, then another, and a third soldier cried out in pain—a yelp shut off in fear or death. And still more arrows rained down on them while the last of their big brown horses thrashed its way into death. Behind the still carcasses the men hid, only a few firing, and only then when they had a target.
The warriors gave them no targets.
Instead, the arrows arced out of the tall prairie grass far off, sailing into the cruel summer blue and down again in an ugly flight of whispering death that caused another soldier to cry out. And another. And still another.
Until all was quiet.
“Stop!” Pawnee Killer called out, waving both his arms as he came to his knees, signaling the warriors to the east and those on the long slope to the west.
Eventually he stood and took a half dozen steps toward the far ring of silent horses. Another ten steps, his heart pounding, afraid one of them would be alive … alive enough to—
He fired his leveled rifle as the figure stirred.
Then went to his knees to reload. Around him the warriors cried out, swirling madly out of the grass like demons who would no longer listen to his orders.
It was time to have someone pay for what they had lost to the soldiers in the recent moons.
They were over the barricade of still-warm carcasses in a matter of heartbeats—clubbing, slashing, hammering with their rifle butts. Counting coup and stripping weapons. Claiming the white man’s objects.
In a fury of bloodlust for what had been done by the soldiers to their families, stripping their women and children and old ones of their lodges and dried meat and blankets and robes, Pawnee Killer’s warriors hacked arms and legs and hands and feet from the bodies.
Heads were smashed to jelly beside the stinking carcasses of their tired horses.
The manhood parts were slashed from their bodies.
Thighs were opened up like a fresh buffalo kill, from hip to knee.
Bellies riven so that slick purple gut spilled forth.
“This one, you will want to see,” said one of the older warriors. “Come, Pawnee Killer.”
“Yes, I know him,” the chief said. “We will not take his scalp.”
“A Lakota?”
The chief nodded. “Guiding for the pony soldiers.”
“He should have known better, Pawnee Killer.”
“Perhaps he did not know better,” he replied. “These were brave men. They fought well while they could. It is the last thing we can do for him—leaving his body untouched. Scalp him only, but leave the scalp here.”
“You know his name?”
“Yes. It is Red Bead,” Pawnee Killer replied quietly, the wind rustling the summer-dried grass. “As children we played together in our camp along the Buffalo Wallow River.”
31
THE MORNING OF the seventh dawned as had so many before it.
By the time the gray was gone from the sky and the bloody corona of the sun made its appearance at the far eastern rim of the earth, the command was called to horse.
Apparently on cue, thirteen soldiers from two troops rose from their fires and, without a word, turned west, never looking back. Six strode off on foot. Seven quickly, self-consciously mounted army horses and rode away. All thirteen aimed for the nearby stream—clearly away from Custer’s line of march for the day.
“You boys better get back here—you get skinned alive!” yelled a sergeant, trying his best to cajole the deserters.
Lieutenant Edward Godfrey stood watching the seven mounted soldiers reach the far streambank, then the six stragglers slogged across the shallow creek on foot and clambered up the far side without so much as a glance back in the direction of the camp. Practically every soldier in camp was on his feet now, most whispering among themselves, watching the lack of action among their officers. An electrifying tension had come over the entire bivouac readying itself for the march.
