fight their way to the river crossing.
Clown was the first to spot his old friend at the water’s edge. Black Kettle’s body lapped against the frozen shoreline, a captive now only of the river. Medicine Woman Later lay at arm’s length from him.
Scabby and Roll Down crabbed along the muddy bank, firing behind them, holding some of Thompson’s troopers at bay. Afraid of Beaver slipped over the edge of the frozen bank to join them. Only then did they notice Clown kneeling over the bodies sprawled in the water.
“You will see to them,” Scabby ordered Clown. “We will protect you.”
The three wheeled as one to provide cover for Clown while he tore the blue blanket from his back. Over the bank clambered more warriors retreating to the river crossing. Time to bid farewell to this battle. They would fight another.
Most knelt beside their dead chief for a heartbeat as they crawled by, touching Black Kettle before they plunged into the water, dodging a lead hail from the north bank.
Clown called out. Afraid of Beaver crabbed over to help pull the two old people from the river onto the frozen bank. Bullets slapped the water around them, smacked the trees overhead.
Tears of anger coursed down Clown’s cheeks. Wrapping the bodies in his blue blanket was the least he could do for the dead ones.
“No more will Black Kettle mourn the passing of the golden days of the
The fighting had taken less than twenty minutes.
In less time than it takes a Cheyenne to eat his breakfast, the Seventh Cavalry controlled the village, despite several pockets of heated resistance. Custer had his long-needed victory. He wasn’t about to let it slip through his fingers. He ordered all resistance crushed, no matter the price.
While Clown and his companions fought their way yard by bloody yard from the river crossing, upstream another small group of warriors, women, and children was nowhere near as lucky. When they sought to escape north across the Washita, they found themselves instead trapped in a deep gully. Behind a lip of that narrow coulee eaten away by erosion each spring, the little band of Cheyenne took their final refuge, there to fight like cornered animals.
Cooke’s platoon directed a brief but murderous fire into the gully.
Within minutes every warrior, woman, and child lay dead … save one Cheyenne mother and her tiny, light- skinned infant. Her nostrils stung with the stench of the offal of dead friends. She watched the warm steam puff from wounds riddling her family’s bodies on the muddy embankment all about her.
A terrible fate waited her and the child should they be captured alive by the soldiers.
Walks Last struggled to her feet when the trooper fire died. By the back of the infant’s doeskin gown she held the last of her children aloft.
“We go the way of our ancestors!” she screamed in defiance.
“Sarge! She’s got a white baby!”
“That ain’t no white child. It’s a Injun nit!”
“A
“She’s gonna kill it! A knife! Watch that knife!”
With one swift motion, the Cheyenne mother yanked a knife from her belt and raked it across her child’s belly. The infant jerked spastically as its entrails spilled onto the reddened snow.
Before her next breath, Walks Last vaulted backward, driven into the ravine by a hail of cavalry bullets.
“That was a
“She ain’t shoutin’ no more.” The sergeant felt last night’s hardtack in the back of his throat. When he had gulped a few cold swallows of air, he ran in a crouch to the snowy ravine and cautiously stuck his rifle barrel over the edge. He placed the muzzle against the woman’s head and fired one last, needless bullet into her brain.
Accompanied by Ben Clark and Little Beaver, young Jack Corbin wandered through camp.
He watched as the old Osage tracker grew more angry. With a private rage Little Beaver inspected every slashed, bullet-torn enemy body. Able to control his fury no longer,Little Beaver fell upon one dead warrior, yanking the body over so that it lay face down in order to take the scalp. His skinning knife ready, Little Beaver found the scalp gone. Not taken by an Osage. Not taken by one of the white scouts. Jack could tell this kind of crude butchery could be done only by some young soldier hankering for a trophy of his first battle.
Little Beaver cursed, hacking the warrior’s head from the body. Splattered in blood and gore, Little Beaver smashed the head into a pile of lodge poles until all he held at the end of his arm was a lumpy, bloody mass unrecognizable as anything human.
Unable to tear his eyes away, Corbin fought down the gall threatening to gag him. Little Beaver dropped the bloody head in the mud. Corbin tried but couldn’t talk, stuttering, the question in his eyes.
The old Osage tracker understood. “My uncle’s wife … killed by Cheyenne many winters ago. Far too long he waits to wear Cheyenne blood on his hands. I do this for him.”
Corbin dared not speak. Unable to control his gagging any longer, his cold, empty stomach lurched.
In another part of the village Ben Clark, adjutant Myles Moylan, and Captain Frederick Benteen, after counting the dead, reported to their commander. Custer learned that a total of 103 men had been killed by his troopers.
“I don’t know what you’re thinking … but most of the dead aren’t fighting men,” Benteen whispered to Clark as Moylan reported to Custer.
“Fighting age for Indians means anything between eighteen and forty,” Clark said. “You’re right. I count only eleven warriors. And two of them were the old chiefs of this camp: Black Kettle and Little Rock.”
“You recognize any others?”
“A few.”
“This one?” Benteen asked.
“Blue Horse. Black Kettle’s nephew. Why?”
“I had to shoot him.”
Clark pointed out Cranky Man, White Bear, Little Heart, Red Bird and Tall Bear, Red Teeth and Bear Tongue as more of the warriors he had known. As for the ninety-two other bodies scattered through the village or in the snowy ravine west of camp …
“Squaws and kids. Goddamn,” Clark whispered.
“General Custer!”
Clark and Benteen both turned at the sound of riders led by Lieutenant Edward Godfrey galloping up, showering snow as they slid to a halt.
“What is it, Lieutenant?” Custer asked. “You can plainly see I’m busy with a count of the plunder—”
Godfrey flushed as he leapt to the ground next to Custer. “We were driven across the river, close to where Major Elliott’s men rode east out of camp while we were chasing—”
“What’s the point of this?” Custer snapped.
“My unit was pressed hard, General. But, of a sudden, the hostiles pulled back. At the same time, we heard a shitload of rifle fire from the direction the major led his men.”
“Meaning what?”
“It’s my belief Major Elliott’s trapped and needs our assistance.”
“To the east, you” say?”
Custer listened to the distant rifle fire.
He smiled. “Can’t you see, Mr. Godfrey? All that racket down below is Elliott giving your savages a hot time of it.”
“Beg pardon, General.” Clark stepped up. “If you listen close you’ll know that isn’t Elliott’s men.”
“How the devil are you so certain?”
“Hear all those high-pitched cracks?”
“Yes, I do. That means Elliott’s—”
“Got his ass in a jamb,” Benteen interrupted. “The sharp cracks are Indian guns. Our Spencers have a deep
