Custer hammered his heels against Vic’s ribs and burst off to continue spreading the word.
“How far away, General?” Myles Moylan asked, sensing the familiar fever of impending battle already pumping in his veins.
“Twelve, maybe fifteen miles on the other side of the divide!”
“We’ll whip ’em for sure, General!” Moylan cheered, throwing his huge fist into the air.
“Pray they don’t run, Myles,” Custer reminded him anxiously, his sunburned face suddenly serious. “Just pray they don’t run on me now. I so desperately need to catch them right where they are.”
Back at his fire a few officers had already gathered with Tom.
“Where’s Gerard, Tom?” Custer demanded gruffly, eyes scanning the group for his interpreter.
“Couldn’t find him,” Tom shrugged, staring back into his coffee cup.
“You just didn’t look under the right bush!” Custer flared.
He wanted Gerard, and he wanted him now. The general was certain Red Star had more to tell than Varnum’s terse note could ever say. And Custer wanted that too. All of it.
He wheeled and tore off, never dismounting.
“Whaaaa!” Gerard growled moments later, blinking as he peered up into bright morning light and that tall man standing over him, thumping the heel of his boot with the toe of his own. “What in glory hell’s wrong with you, Custer?”
“Get your flea-bitten, hung-over ass moving, Gerard!” he barked. “You’re holding up my victory.”
Gerard allowed his aching head to plop back to the saddle blanket he had pulled into the bushes with him. “Ohhh …”he moaned. “That’s all, is it? Well, General, when you find the Sioux, you come tell me then.”
“How’d you like to ride back to Lincoln in irons, Gerard? If you make it back alive at all.”
Frederic F. Gerard opened one raw, bloody eye again and stared up into the new light of day shimmering round the tall man towering over his bed in the bullberry thicket. He had known Custer for most of three years now. Long enough to know the general was damned well dead serious.
“I’m coming, General.” He struggled to sit up, feeling of a sudden he might lose last night’s supper … then remembered he didn’t have any supper last night. While others had eaten, Fred had only nursed his deep, abiding thirst.
Running a thick tongue over sandpaper teeth, it felt like a guard had tramped back and forth all night long inside his mouth … and with a pair of muddy boots on as well.
“I’ll tell you what. I’ll wait five minutes at my headquarters fire,” Custer advised sternly, climbing to the saddle. “Then, I’ll send a guard detail to fetch you, Gerard.”
Custer was gone as quickly as he had come, through the trees and milling troopers preparing horses and mules for the march that would be ordered at eight.
By the time Gerard staggered up, bleary-eyed and heavy-headed, Bloody Knife, Stabbed, One Feather, Soldier, Curly Hair, and others were gathered at Custer’s fire. Each one talked low and solemn with young Red Star.
No longer wearing a light, easy expression on his face, Custer was intent on the business at hand. He handed his reins over to Burkman and dropped to one knee in the circle of solemn Arikara scouts. Their somber expressions and grave speech generally went unnoticed as Godfrey, Moylan, Keogh, Calhoun, and others eased up to listen in on Custer’s discussion with the Rees.
“What’s that he said?” Custer interrupted Gerard. He recognized something in Bloody Knife’s tone from their years together. After all, the bold Ree scout had ridden this trail with Custer many times in the past. Custer could sense something serious in the color of the aging Ree’s words.
Gerard turned back to Bloody Knife. When the scout had finished, the dry-mouthed interpreter blinked at Custer.
“Bloody Knife says there’re too many Sioux over in that valley.”
“Yes?” Custer replied, feeling a surge of anger. “We know there are many—”
“He says, General,” Gerard interrupted uncharacteristically, “we’ll find enough Sioux over there to keep us fighting for two, maybe three days.”
“Oh, now …” Custer wagged his head as the peg-toothed smile widened, azure eyes twinkling distantly at the officers round him. “I guess we’ll just have to get through them in one day.”
Rising to his feet, Custer dusted his hands off on his buckskin britches. He simply didn’t have more than one day to get the job done.
Even if the Sioux village was a little strong, the warriors would probably wage only a staying action, merely holding the troops off while their women and children and old people escaped into the hills. Like the Washita the men would fight only until the weak ones had escaped.
“Let’s go to the valley!” Custer commanded. “Saddle up your men, fellas. We’re moving out to catch us some Sioux!”
CHAPTER 15
CHARLEY Reynolds watched Custer coming that last mile up the rocky slope. For better than forty-five minutes the general had been in the saddle. He slid from Dandy’s back and jogged stiffly up the last seventy-five yards of slope with that renowned restless energy of his.
Reynolds smiled beneath his sun-bleached mustache. While lesser men might feel the effects of a night march and the rigors of three long days on the trail, Custer was a special breed. His kind never tired. The closer he drew to his quarry, the more energy he always seemed to exude. Custer drew life from the hunt, the close, and the kill.
Two years back when Custer wanted to spread the news of gold found in the Black Hills of Dakota Territory, he had asked his Indian scouts to carry the news south to Fort Laramie. Trouble was, between the Black Hills and the fort lay Sioux country, swarming with hostiles. Bloody Knife and the rest refused to ride Custer’s suicidal mission, even with the general’s offer of gold.
But Charley Reynolds had stepped up and said quietly, in that way of his, “General, I’ll carry your mail for you.”
What had astounded those present was that Charley said it as if he were volunteering to do nothing more than take a ride into Bismarck.
Reynolds made his hair-raising ride through Lakota land and carved himself a niche forever in Custer’s heart. Last day or so he had heard rumors that the general was about to single him out again to carry some crucial news back to the States.
While the Indian scouts made way for Custer at the top, Reynolds, Bouyer, and Varnum clung at the rocks. When the general was ready, Charley pointed where he should look through the field glasses loaned him by Lieutenant Charles DeRudio.
After several minutes adjusting the focus and straining his tired, wind-burned eyes, Custer was still unable to make out that dark carpet of worms they wanted him to see, nor could he claim that he recognized the smoke curling up from all the fires to be found along the banks of the Greasy Grass.
Eventually Custer pulled DeRudio’s glasses from his eyes, disappointed. “I’m sorry, boys. Seems like a blind trail, because I can’t see a thing that tells me there’s Sioux camped in that valley yonder.”
“You don’t see the herd?” Bouyer inquired, astounded. “The biggest herd there’s ever—”
“General,” Reynolds interrupted, seeing that Bouyer grew testier by the minute, “you can plainly see the dust of the herd slowly moving north—most likely.”
“Listen, fellas,” Custer replied, jamming the field glasses back into their case, “I’ve been on the prairie for a good number of years already. I’ll have you know my eyes are as clear and just as good as the next man’s, but—I can’t see what you claim to be a Sioux herd.”
“But, General … it’s right—”
