wonder where they all cauld be.…”
“Let me have a look at it, General?” Cooke inquired, taking the glasses.
Little did Custer and the others realize that the only village they could see was the Northern Cheyennes’, the others hidden by the tall cottonwoods along the Little Bighorn.
“What do you make of it, Myles?” Tom handed the glasses to Keogh after he had scanned the lodges, wickiups, and camp smoke of the distant village.
“Appears to be nothing more than a camp of women and children.” Cooke scratched a long sideburn.
“Where’d all them goddamned bloody warriors come from?” Keogh growled. “The friggin’ bastards what are giving Reno hell down there?”
“I suppose they’re only the camp guard,” Tom replied. “The warriors left behind while all the others gone out to hunt buffalo—”
“Buffalo?” Keogh spouted.
“That’s right, you stupid, thick-headed Mick!” Tom barked with a slap to Keogh’s shoulder. “Remember? That skinned carcass we ran across yesterday.”
The dark Irishman nodded. “Ahhh, yes. The buggers’re out hunting, aren’t they, Tommy me boy? Leaving the home fires under the care of the camp guard.”
“A most reasonable assumption, fellas,” Custer added, putting the field glasses to his eyes once more.
The Cheyenne village popped into focus for him again. Only now the camp was in motion, women and children scurrying to and fro, hurrying west from the village, scampering into the meadowlands and rolling hills stretching toward the Bighorns. Other figures wrangled ponies into camp or were loading travois.
“Damn! They’re tearing down and fixing to escape as we speak!” Custer jammed the Austrian binoculars into his saddlebags. “Best we get down there now and make a crossing so we can get a noose around that village before it slips off on us.”
“Damn right,” Tom agreed. “That weak-kneed bastard Reno has botched his attack. The frigging Sioux got him penned down while the village escapes.”
“The second-oldest trick in the Indian book,” Cooke said.
“And the first?” Tom asked.
Cooke swung a fist at young Custer’s shoulder. “Sucking the army into an ambush with a decoy, you stupid, whiskey-fogged poltroon!”
Tom swung back playfully as Custer pulled Vic off the bluff.
“C’mon, boys,” the general shouted. “I must get down there and now! My worst fear is that the Sioux have already slipped through my grasp!”
“Don’t worry about a goddamned thing, Autie!” Tom cried. “We’ll go capture the village, and when the warriors return, they’ll have to surrender to us without a shot! We’ll have their women and children as hostages!”
“Capital idea, Tommy!” Cooke cried.
“And this time, Autie,” Tom said as he galloped up beside his older brother, “
Keogh and Cooke laughed along with young Custer, but the general was too far into his battle plans to care that he had been made the butt of his brother’s joke. Everything as clear as rinsed crystal now: north to capture the village … as all the pieces fell into place.
What Custer and his officers simply didn’t realize at that moment was that most of the warriors in the camps below, who were only then receiving the news of Reno’s attack, had been sleeping off a long night of dancing and celebrating over their recent victory against Red Beard Crook.
“By God’s own back teeth, boys!” Custer shouted. “We’ve caught them napping!”
As he galloped back to his five companies waiting impatiently for action, the three officers close on Vic’s heels, Custer stood in the stirrups, shouting, “Hurraw, boys! We’ll get these Sioux in a blink of an eye! And soon as we’ve thumped ’em soundly, we’ll go back to our station!”
“Lincoln! Lincoln! Lincoln!” yelled those ready for a victorious homecoming.
CHAPTER 20
AS the cheering died, the dusty soldiers in Custer’s five companies listened. The low booms of the trapdoor carbines were swallowed up by the higher crack of Henry and Winchester repeaters down in the valley.
A matter of heartbeats more, and that carbine fire started moving south—no longer driving north in the direction of Reno’s attack.
“Cooke!” Custer wheeled Vic. “Dammit, man—follow me! The rest of you—prepare to move out at a charge on my return!” He raked his spurs into the sorrel’s flanks viciously.
Something cold in Billy Cooke’s guts told him he had better start worrying. Not just the sounds rising from the fight in the valley. But that cloud crossing Custer’s face.
The general skidded to a halt on the bluff once again, straining his eyes directly below, to his left South. And for the very first time he saw the rest of the village.
“How’d we miss them before?” he muttered to Cooke, wagging his head. “In haste.”
“Or hope, General,” Billy replied.
“But there they are … hidden for the most part.”
Even with his naked eyes, as red and tired and strained as Custer’s, the adjutant could pick out some of the blanket-covered wickiups along the river.
More frightening still was the sight of the riders racing out of that thick timber after Reno’s retreating cavalry—hundreds of warriors in a yellow cloud of dust, waving their blankets and robes. Naked for the most part. Brandishing rifles or lances, bows and pistols. From every throat rose a horrendous war cry as they spilled across the open ground toward the retreating draggle of Reno’s demoralized soldiers.
Like hornets spilling out of an overturned nest, massing for the kill.
“My God!” Custer sputtered under his breath, hand at his silky mustache in frustration.
“What now, General?” Cooke swallowed, stoically straightening himself in the saddle.
Custer gazed at him with those cold blue eyes. “This village is bigger than anything … why, it’s as big as our bloody scouts tried to tell me!”
Cooke watched him blink repeatedly, trying to clear his eyes of the stinging tears of anger clouding his vision.
“What now, you ask?” Custer repeated Cooke’s question. He grit his teeth together, as if chewing some tough piece of jerky, something even harder to swallow.
Then Custer answered himself and Cooke both. “We proceed with our attack, Mr. Cooke. Just as planned.”
The general yanked off his big hat, hoping someone below, some officer would see him high atop this ridge, would realize that though Custer’s five companies were not charging in direct support of Reno’s men, that Custer’s troops were preparing to leap into the fray nonetheless—to pull the major’s butt out of the fire.
Maybe some man below would see him waving … and know Custer wanted them to pull back to a single defensive position until he came up with support.
“Bring up the pack train. Yes.” he said. “The pack train and Benteen. By god, bring Benteen up!”
Back and forth in the dry, hot air he waved that huge, cream-colored hat for them all to see. Not waving goodbye as many below would think. But, waving as if to say:
“Stop, you damned fools! Hold up and defend yourselves! By god—we’ll come! Ride right through hell if we have to … but—we’re coming!
As Custer yanked Vic back toward the columns, his guts felt about as heavy and cold as a stone. He needed that pack train to come up.
Custer realized as he raced back that his five companies would need that ammunition to make a stand of it
