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.
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
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. Such soldiers could always trade in a sturdy army mount branded
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.
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
