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.
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.
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 think 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.”
“
It was not a strange sensation for him, this choking on a hot, sentimental knot in his throat. Nor were these
