“Well, General—I like to deal the cards face up. We’re holding aces high over them Injuns down there.”
“I’ve got the feeling that something still troubles you.”
“I’ve played enough cards to know that both Lady Fate and Lady Luck often sit ’cross the table from a man— and it’s them two whores what might have something to say about what a man draws from his deck.”
“You think those Cheyenne still have a draw at one of our aces?”
Milner ran the tip of his tongue thoughtfully across winter-chapped lips. “I’ve fought me plenty Injuns, and damn if they don’t always find a draw at the cards. Hang me but they’ve got a play even at the bottom of some goddamned played-out deck.”
Without another word, Milner plodded pulled Maude away into the roiling mist, quiet as cotton through the calf-deep snow until the mist had swallowed him completely.
Custer shuddered. Some parts of this Indian fighting sat in his craw. Cursed with scouts so of times somber and ghostly. Turning into the brush, he decided to find himself a quiet spot and stretch out on the snow for a nap.
Until time came for the bugles.
Here and there small knots of men congregated, waiting for that opening note of the coming fight. Enlisted men complained of the bitter cold or talked of the warmth of their hard haytick bunks back at Fort Hays. Some dreamed of the pleasure brought a man by those fleshy sporting ladies in Hays City, friendly kind of gals who followed soldiers to every post and fort and fleshpot dotting the western frontier.
Talk of anything now … but no talk about the coming battle.
Instead of talking at all, most only leaned against their mounts, using the horses’ warmth to ward off some of the foggy cold that stung a man to the bone, chewing away at the core of him. Many of the battle-hardened were long used to eluding prefight jitters. They snored back in the snowy rabbit brush.
Custer himself awoke refreshed from a long nap about the time a ghostly light climbed out of the dense river mist. Nearby the scouts murmured among themselves. A few Osages began chanting their own eerie melodies as the bright light emerged from the thick fog bank, ascending into the lamp-black sky.
“It’s the Morning Star, sir,” Moylan whispered at Custer’s side.
It loomed close. Huge, and shimmering with life.
“A good omen for our victory, Lieutenant.”
Nothing short of powerful medicine to the Osages, this appearance of the celestial light above the river, here on the precipice of battle. As the brilliant globe climbed above the southwestern horizon, it seemed to ascend more slowly, its light radiating prismatically from color to color. An imperial stillness settled over this wilderness in these last moments before dawn, causing something deep within Custer’s being to assure him this star was destined to shine on this valley, his command—on he alone.
Custer smiled, certain to the core of the outcome of the impending fight. The heavens had ordained the star to shine upon him.
He vowed to do nothing to disappoint the gods of Olympus with the coming light of a new day.
Stiff with cold, the Cheyenne sentry who stationed himself atop the knoll south of camp had no appreciation for the celestial light glowing above him in the river mist. Half Bear settled in the snow.
Not much longer before he could return to a warm lodge where his woman would build up the fire, put some breakfast meat on to boil. His stomach churned, angry with him, a hunger enough to keep a sentry awake.
Yet he decided he could nap a bit before the sky paled in morning-coming.
Half Bear slumped over. By the time he had curled his legs up beneath the heavy robe, his breath had begun to warm his frozen face. His breathing grew more regular. Before he realized it he was no longer merely napping. Half Bear slept.
Down he plunged, deep and sound, unable to yank himself back out of that warm, liquid pit. In the midst of its welcome darkness he was sure the ear he laid against the ground caught the warning of iron-shod hooves scraping across the frozen breast of the Mother of Them All.
Half Bear’s eyes refused to open. He heard horses circling to the backside of the knoll where he slept on. Horses clattering up from the river. Creeping south of the village behind him. That unmistakable jangle of pony soldier saddle gear! Still he tried to convince himself it was only a dream.
Hah! That pony soldiers would come in the cold of a winter dawn made bright beneath the Morning Star—this could only be a dream!
Curled deep within his robe, Half Bear dozed … warm enough to dream on.
With the growing light, Custer sent Lieutenant Cooke’s detail far to the left, deploying his men among the tall oaks along the steep northern bank of the Washita. A quarter-hour later, Custer led his four companies down the gradual slope that sank away to the river. There he halted the troopers in a dense copse of trees shading the north lip of the Washita as it circled the sleeping village in a lazy loop of icy water.
To his left, astride a broad-backed gray, sat the regimental color guard, his guidon dancing stiffly in the fog. Staying near Custer and refusing to wander far from that colorful cavalry standard sat the twelve Osage trackers. In a mad charge against Indians, they had decided, there could be no safer place for them.
Like warm milk from a cracked bowl, the gray light of a new day eventually began to leak out of the east.
The twenty-seventh of November. One day after Thanksgiving. That thin band of growing light caused Custer to send Moylan to carry word among the four companies shivering behind him.
Troopers shed their warm buffalo coats. They dropped their haversacks holding rations of hardtack and coffee. One soldier from each company was assigned to stay behind to guard the coats and haversacks. All eyes focused on the coming light of dawn.
“Moylan, bring the band up. I want them to play at the moment of attack.”
Officers pulled pistols from mule-eared holsters, reins gripped anxiously in the other hand. Hundreds of troopers sat shivering in the brutal cold, not knowing what awaited them in that sleeping village on the other side of the frozen Washita.
Across the river a dog began to bark, its call soon taken up by another.
Murky light spread behind the hills like alkaline water strained through a dirty pair of trooper’s stockings.
A few more minutes. A few more anxious heartbeats, and he would lead them splashing across the Washita, victory assured before that new sun ever rose above these ancient hills. Wrapped securely in winter’s cloak of deep hibernation, the Washita valley slept on.
Little Rock stirred and listened again. Now he was certain. The dog he heard wasn’t snarling at another in camp.
He sat up, straining at the thick blanket of silence laid over the sleeping camp. In his dark lodge he quickly pulled on his clothing and wrenched up his old muzzle loader, checking the priming in the pan.
For a heartbeat the old Indian gazed down at his young daughter, peacefully cocooned in childlike slumber. Wisps of last night’s fire hung like skinny ghosts refusing to depart, suspended beneath the dark smoke hole. Up in the narrow opening he could make out a growing light in the sky, knowing dawn would come to the valley in little more time than it took a man to eat his morning meal.
Slipping quietly through the doorway, he stood. Listening to all the air told him. Again the two dogs barked from the far side of camp where the sun rose each morning. Something told him they didn’t bark at each other. Perhaps at something across the river—some predator roaming through the horse herd.
He moved east, through the cadaverous lodges and around those hard, frozen droppings left behind by more than ten times ten ponies three young Kiowas had driven through the Cheyenne camp late yesterday afternoon.
It did not matter. He had not truly been asleep anyway. Little Rock never was able to fall back to sleep each night after his daughter awakened him with her nightmare screaming.
In minutes he found himself down at the sharp slope of the bank. The river lapped quietly beneath a thin scum of ice within the webby red willow nodding in the breeze above the slow-moving water.
Again the dogs barked … moving to his left now. He crept back along the bank toward camp. Perhaps the
