officers and their commands to follow him downstream.
“Billy, you’ll see the troops are put to the march, then rejoin me?” Set deep within that sun-rawed, wind- scalded face were a pair of eyes burned red with alkali dust, hollowed and black-rimmed with characteristic lack of sleep.
“Will do, General,” Cooke answered. “We’ll follow your lead!”
And as Custer turned from his officers’ conference, he pointed Vic’s nose to the right—to every man’s surprise. For now he no longer led his men down that wide, well-marked Indian road scoured by thousands upon thousands of hooves across the dusty, dry breast of the Ash Creek trail.
Custer ducked behind some low hills, hills that for a time put him out of Major Reno’s sight.
With every bend and twist of the trail down into the valley, Marcus Reno grew a bit more apprehensive.
Several miles down the creek, both commands passed through a swampy morass. Here lay a steamy bog that over the centuries filled with stagnant seepage trapped as the spring rain and winter runoff trickled down from the Wolf Mountains. At this stage of the year, the morass by and large had already gone dry, its surface cracking beneath summer’s retribution upon the land.
Over the damp belly of the bog hung a stifling stench. Unmistakable—some poor animal had blundered into the marsh, seeking relief from the heat, instead found no way out. Even the wary predators of these high plains had left the old buffalo bull to rot beneath the hot sun. The stench of its decaying flesh clung to the place as the soldiers hurried past, choking down their stomach’s revolt at not only the smell, but the sight of maggots and blowflies busy at the blackened meat.
Shortly before two o’clock, Reno decided he would move his companies back to the north bank to ride in concert with Custer. Both the terrain itself and the major’s own nervousness dictated his change of heart. Even the veterans tensed up on their reins, wary and alert when a few minutes later arose the frightened cries of the scouts.
They were pointing ahead. Shouting.
Reno’s eyes shot up and down his columns. Every soldier had ears alert. Sour tongues raked dry lips. Sweaty hands yanked carbines into readiness.
Yet for all the tension and excitement, what the scouts had discovered was not a buffalo or antelope—much less a Sioux warrior.
All that stood astride the wide, well-plowed Indian trail pointing itself down the dry, cracked bottomland of Ash Creek was a solitary painted Indian lodge.
At first the Arikara scouts milled about nervously, bumping their mounts against one another, unsure of what to make of this startling discovery, more so afraid of what the existence of this lone tepee foretold. They shouted to scare off any evil spirits from the place. Then one of their number finally realized there were no Sioux here.
Only then did that solitary young warrior rattle heels against his pony’s flanks.
With a whoop and a high-throated cry, Strikes Two charged down on the solitary lodge, swinging by it at a full gallop, slapping his quirt across the dry buffalo hides. He whirled about in a dust spray, bringing his snorting pony up sharply. He smiled, quite proud of himself as the first man of this campaign, white or red, brave enough to count coup on an enemy’s lodge.
His strutting turn ended in time for him to watch his childhood friend, Young Hawk, leap from his pony at a full run and race on foot to the lodge, yanking his huge scalping knife from his belt. With one swift slash he had the lodge skins opened from the smoke flaps down to the stakes that were pounded into the dry, crumbly earth. Suddenly freed through that new wound in the old lodge, the stench of death and rotting flesh escaped, surrounding the tepee as Young Hawk stumbled back, his hand covering his nose.
More brown-skinned riders dashed up, striking the lodge with quirts as Young Hawk and Red Bear tore aside the lodge entrance. Inside on a low scaffold lay the body of a dead warrior, his heat-bloated carcass wrapped in a beaded ceremonial buffalo robe.
With both hips shattered by a soldier bullet, Old-She-Bear, a renowned Sans Arc Sioux, had been dragged from the Rosebud battlefield as Crook’s troops struggled to hold their ground against the maddening horsemen under Crazy Horse barely eight suns ago. Because he had clung tenaciously to life at the time, Old-She-Bear had been loaded on a travois and pulled from the scene of the fight to the Rosebud camps. From there over the divide when the bands moved toward the Greasy Grass. The dying warrior slung behind a pony beneath the sun for each day’s journey, until his family and friends decided the old warrior was in fact looking out at them from eyes filled with shadows.
Here along this boggy creek the Sans Arc warrior had clung to life for several days, nursed by family who patiently waited out the old man’s slow death walk to the Other Side.
After his final breath had escaped the old man’s lungs, the relatives painted Old-She-Bear’s face with red clay and dressed him in his finest ceremonial elk-skin war shirt and leggings. Alongside the scaffold on which they laid his body, the family placed his feather-draped shield, bow, and quiver. Before leaving this death lodge for the last time, his relatives had placed some cooked meat and blood soup for Old-She-Bear’s trip to see his grandfathers.
As a final tribute the warrior’s favorite pipe, tobacco, and tender bag were laid beside him. When at last his journey to the Other Side was complete, the old man would enjoy having a smoke and talking with friends gone before.
To further desecrate this enemy’s lodge, Red Feather chewed the dried meat and swilled down the cold, scummy blood soup before he pulled his breechclout aside. He urinated on the body of Old-She-Bear and those sacred articles left behind by family and friends in celebration of a brave warrior.
Custer reined up as Red Feather stooped from the torn lodge, gripping his penis and spraying the side of the buffalo hides.
From all the way back with Reno and Reynolds, the Arikara interpreter heard his name screamed as if it were some black curse. By the time Fred rode up to the lone tepee, Custer trembled with an uncontrollable rage.
“You tell these poor excuses for men, these Rees, that I’ve ordered them to ride on! By God, they were told not to stop for anything! They’ve disobeyed me once too often! Long Hair has been shamed by a bunch of ragged Arikarees, and I won’t have it!”
Custer was nearly shrieking, the color of his cheeks redder than a high-plains sunburn. Flecks of spittle dotted his rosy chapped lips. When Gerard started to speak, Custer plunged ahead, his fury still unspent.
“Gerard, you inform them they belong to you now.” Custer spit so the Rees would make no mistake understanding that he symbolically rid himself of them. “I do not want them. Tell these red bastards to step aside and let my soldiers through. My troops will take the lead if the Rees won’t. Tell your Arikaras I think they are women if they won’t fight the Sioux. And if they are a bunch of cowardly squaws, I’ll take their guns from them and send them back to their lodges, where their children can make fun of them for all the rest of their days. To laugh at them because they didn’t fight beside Long Hair when he destroyed the mighty Sioux!”
Instead of answering the general’s challenge, translated on Gerard lips, Bloody Knife and Stabbed both pulled their ponies out of the column and plodded off some distance from the soldiers. But Bear-in-Timber had long had a powder-keg temper. As the interpreter finished, the young warrior stood and shouted back at Custer, his own copper face flushed with anger.
“Long Hair, hear me! You take our weapons and send us home as cowards because we fear too many Sioux. You yourself told us we did not have to fight these Sioux, but that we owned their horses. Did you speak to us with two tongues, Long Hair? Do you now change your heart again and call us squaws? If you would tell your own young soldiers of the Sioux beyond count waiting for them in the valley below … they would surely act the same as we. You keep that from your men. If the soldier-chief spoke the truth to your own soldiers, you would be many days taking their rifles from them and beating them back to your fort.”
Many of the Rees laughed behind their hands as Gerard translated that portion of the harangue.
Custer squinted his hollow, sleepless eyes, fuming. Gerard had seen the general angry before, but never this furious.
Gerard was afraid Custer might make an example of Bear-in-Timber for the others, to maintain discipline
