The stocky Missourian’s H Company had been marching right behind Custer since the climb over the divide began.
Eventually Custer answered Benteen’s salute. “By all means, Colonel Benteen,” he stammered, flustered and referring to the captain’s brevet rank awarded during an illustrious Civil War career. “You have the advance for our attack, sir.”
“Thank you, General.” For the first time in many, many years since he had joined the Seventh in its early days, there rang the genuine sound of appreciation in Benteen’s voice.
That sound struck Cooke as odd, if not a bit off-key.
“Lead off, Colonel.” Custer waved Benteen forward, sitting atop Dandy beside Cooke while H Company trooped past.
“The man hates you,” Cooke whispered from the corner of his mouth as the dusty, ragged soldiers clambered by.
Custer never took his eyes off Benteen’s men to reply. “He doesn’t have to like me, Cookey. He’s a bloody good soldier. Perhaps the most experienced and levelheaded company commander I’ve got.
“Keep in mind we will all rely on each other today. Besides, it suits me that Benteen’s up front. If we’re confronted with the hostiles—Benteen hits them first. And if I have time to split my command for the attack as we did at Washita, then I can always count on the captain to come to my aid if I need him. No matter what you might call him—Captain Frederick Benteen is a soldier first.”
The insides of George Herendeen’s thighs were sweating. Tiny rivulets of cold water poured down the back of his knees and into his stockings already soaked and chafing. He was sure he’d never pull his feet from his boots come evening. Perhaps he could soak his feet in the cool waters of the Little Horn tonight.
But that meant this regiment under Custer would have to wade on into these Sioux and get finished with them before evening. George Herendeen didn’t want to think anymore about his sweaty feet.
It didn’t take long before the regiment descending the divide in column-of-fours started marching a little too fast for Custer’s liking. Herendeen figured whoever was setting the pace up there was just as anxious as he was to reach the beckoning green pastures down in the valley along that bright, silvery ribbon of the river.
But Custer wasn’t as patient as George Herendeen. He nudged Dandy into a gallop, racing to the head of command, where he could reassume the front of the march itself.
Through the pastel sego lilies and bright sunset orange of the paintbrush, down past the buttermilk-pale hanging globes of the yellow lady slipper and the twilight purple cockleshells of spiderwort, around the sage and through the tall grasses, Custer led his troops, on and on into the widening jaws of the Little Bighorn valley. Including the Arikaras and Crows, his civilian scouts and mule packers, along with those fire-hardened veterans and bowel-puckered greenhorns, Custer was leading approximately six hundred seventy-five men into the shimmering haze as forenoon settled over the sleepy summer valley.
Herendeen twisted in the saddle at the grunt-bellied sounds of the young mule clambering up behind him.
Mark Kellogg reined alongside the scout, bouncing like a buggy spring on a washboard road.
He pulled in so he could ride with the scouts whose place it was to form the front of the march. “George, could I ask you for the use of your spurs? I noticed you’re not using them.”
Herendeen glanced down at the reporter’s boots, then at the wide-eyed young mule Kellogg battled for control. “Not having much good with that salt-pork mule, eh, Mr. Kellogg?”
Mark chortled in that nervous way of his, jabbing his wire-framed spectacles back on the bridge of his large nose. “I want to stay up with the lead. That’s what I want.”
“Here.” George pulled the unused spurs from his saddlebag. “But I can only advise you not to put them on or use them, Mr. Kellogg.”
“Why not?” Kellogg wiped sweat off his upper lip.
“It’s best from here on out you pull back to the rear of the column and stay put there. Not the healthiest place up here in the front with the scouts.”
Kellogg chirped, “Oh, George—you had me scared for a moment there! I’m expecting some interesting developments soon, and I want to keep up with you scouts so I can report on everything I’m able to see far ahead. You must understand—I’ve promised my readers back east that I’ll report the full and explosive details of this encounter with Sioux warriors. In those dispatches and stories I’ve shipped east already, you understand. I can’t let my readers down.”
“Mr. Kellogg,” Herendeen said, “take my spurs, if not my advice. Use one if not the other. If my guess is right, we’ll soon be seeing more action than you’ll be able to describe in a month of Sundays. Whoa, now! See there—the Crow boys are stopping ahead. They’ll wait for Custer himself to come up. You should be able to hear what they say to him for yourself.”
Mark Kellogg’s eyes widened as General Custer loped past, standing in the stirrups, his knees flexing easily.
The Crow scouts had ground to a halt on the bank of the Ash Creek and even dismounted, waiting for Custer and the troops to come up. There in the dust of the wide, beaten trail they had been following, the scouts scratched the soldier-chief a map.
“They say this creek flows down to the Little Horn,” Mitch Bouyer interpreted, watching the reporter move closer to the group. “The Greasy Grass of the Sioux, where Sitting Bull’s waiting for you and your boys, General.”
To Kellogg it sounded as if the half-breed still smarted from some old injury done him by Custer.
“They’re waiting for me, you say—eh, Bouyer?”
Kellogg had become a practiced observer. Without really thinking about it, he studied faces, the way people held and carried themselves. More important than learning what a person had to tell about a story, Kellogg had found out some time ago, was learning what a person didn’t want you to know.
From the look he read on Custer’s face at this moment, as the general knelt staring at the Crow interpreter, Kellogg learned something about the cracks widening in Custer’s command.
Mark Kellogg could tell that Custer didn’t much like Mitch Bouyer, perhaps more so than he had ever disliked any man in his life. Even the nagging Benteen.
But then the reporter remembered that a man like Custer would revel in being hated by them both—Benteen and Bouyer: brave men and worthy adversaries.
Custer dusted his hands on his buckskin britches. “The Sioux, Mr. Bouyer—they can wait until ice water is served in hell itself for all I care. I’m going to slip ’em a Custer surprise!”
BOOK III
THE BATTLE
CHAPTER 18
