so the pressure could be cut loose from Reno.
His eyes scoured the country ahead, measuring, considering, and deciding to take the five companies right behind him until he could find where to make a crossing and divert some of the warriors in his direction, taking pressure off the demoralized Reno forces.
And then he found it. A wide, shallow coulee, running to his left.
Yes, in the direction of the river.
Sawing the big mare’s head hard to the left, Custer led his column-of-twos down into the wide coulee to that rhythmic clatter of iron-shod hoofs on hard-baked ground, to that familiar jingle and clink of harness, to that hard squeak of dry McClellans.
Reassuring sounds to an old soldier.
Two by two by two …
The five companies turned quarter flank and left oblique, following their general down Medicine Tail Coulee until at last they could see the first glimmer of the river below. That’s when the first shots whistled overhead; that’s when the first arrows hissed past, smacking a horse here and there.
To their right, above the columns on the sage-covered hillside, pranced half-a-hundred naked warriors, stripped for action in the tall grass. All round Custer the yelling broke out, confused and frightened men shouting, swamping the hard-boiled, calming orders of the veterans. He had to get a grip on the men before the raw ones broke.
“Captain Keogh!” Custer bellowed, racing back along the columns until he reached the Irishman. “Dismount your battalion! Fall behind the horses! Skirmish by fours!”
“Aye, General! ’Bout gawdamned time I give these bleeming bastards a what-for!” Keogh raged.
Custer turned away as Keogh’s and Calhoun’s companies dropped from their horses at the rear of the march, every fourth man holding four mounts while the other three soldiers jogged a distance up the northern slope of Medicine Trail Coulee. There under Keogh’s command on the left and Calhoun’s command farther up the slope on the right, the order to fire in volleys rose above the clamor of confusion and pain.
“First platoon!
“Second platoon!
“Cut the bastards apart!” Keogh screamed, flecks of spittle dotting his red lips he wiped now, wishing for a drink.
“We’ll butcher the sonsabitches, Myles!” Calhoun shouted back to his partner.
“Teach ’em what-for, we will, Jimbo!”
Volley after volley fired into the Indian position as the warriors spread out a bit more, dropping back uphill, a bit more concealed. Then some more heads appeared over the rise. More arrived from beyond the top of the ridge. Halfway again to a hundred of them now.
Custer’s mind worked quickly as he galloped back to the head of the columns where Tom, Yates, and Smith waited.
“By God, Autie—we’re going to cut them up today!” Tom tore up, skidding a dusty cascade over his older brother.
His blue eyes darted round. “Cooke, get me Martini!”
“Trumpeter!” The Canadian wheeled about, shouting.
The Italian bugler nudged his horse forward from Yates’s command, halted before the general, saluting. He had stayed close to Custer, as ordered, assigned to duty under the general’s banner for the day.
“Trumpeter, you’re charged with carrying a vital message!” Custer blurted it out, not remembering John Martini had enough trouble with English as it was, much less stuttered, angry English. The words continued like a Gatling gun of speech. “Get back to Benteen as fast as you can ride. Tell him to come on quick and bring the packs of ammunition from the train. We’ve got a big village, and we’ll need his support.”
Adjutant Cooke chewed his thirst-swollen tongue as he listened to Custer’s sour prediction of their odds at coming out of the fight. As quickly Cooke realized bugler Martini would never remember the whole message, much less understand it to the point of spitting it back for Benteen or McDougall.
Meanwhile a numbed and very frightened Martini nodded dumbly at the general, saluted, and turned to dash off blindly on his mission.
Cooke caught the bugler up short. “Martini! Hold there! Just a minute, boy!” he barked, ripping open his shirt pocket and tearing out a small tablet on which he scribbled his message with the short nub of a pencil.
Pressing the notebook down on a knee, Cooke rammed the pencil across the page, finishing his desperate plea, then tore the page from his tablet.
“Now get this to Captain Benteen. You go quick. Benteen. Ride fast!”
With a sharp nudge Cooke pushed Martini on his way.
The bugler’s horse leapt round in a tight circle. He was gone up the far side of the coulee, away from the firing and confusion and noise and fear, riding as fast as his played-out horse could carry him.
“What’s that all about, General?” Cooke asked, his attention snagged up the side of the coulee where Tom Custer berated Private Peter Thompson.
“Appears the horse has marched its last,” Custer replied calmly as he studied the hilltop warriors harassing Keogh and Calhoun.
After Tom had ordered Private Thompson to abandon his played-out horse and make his way on foot back to the pack train, he reminded the young soldier to be sure he took along his extra ammunition. Best not to leave it on the horse still struggling in vain to rise on its front legs. Plain for any horseman to see the animal was done in from the intense heat and long march over the divide.
Terrified, the young private lumbered off to the south on foot, following in the dust of trumpeter Martini and obsessed with the vivid details of the dream that had troubled his sleep last night: Sioux surrounding troopers on their worn-out horses; screeching warriors lifting scalping knives and tomahawks above the bloody bodies of his butchered friends; the feel of an Indian’s hot breath close at his neck as the Sioux raised his club above him.
Thompson shuddered, deciding to stay to the coulees. He was alone now. Alone except for the sun and sage … and the sounds of Reno’s men being butchered on the slopes below.
Most of the young, raw soldiers who had watched Thompson’s ordeal now turned their attention back to the fight raging in the upper end of the Medicine Tail. They studied the older veterans, men such as Keogh and Calhoun, Fresh Smith and Sergeant Major Sharrow. Then those young recruits too dropped to tighten saddle cinches for a hard ride ahead. Perhaps even a hard fight of it should any more warriors pop over that rise to the north.
Up and down the line the green, uninitiated soldiers completed that same mechanical process in the midst of the rifle fire and cursing, sure that this horse-work had to be part of some mystical ritual in preparation for battle.
“Bugler!” Custer called to Sergeant Voss. “’Boots and Saddles’! To horse, men!”
