“Seventh Cavalry! Prepare to mount!” Cooke shouted after Voss blew his command.
Up and down the columns came the rattle of carbine and bit chain.
“Cooke! Get back to Keogh and Jimmy—have them hold the hillside for a bit more; then have them to break it off and follow, guarding the rear of our march. We’re going into the village!”
“The village, General?” Cooke gasped.
“There,” Custer pointed down the coulee at the tiny sliver of river they could see between the sides of the mouth.
“To the river, General.”
“And, Billy,” he barely whispered. “Tell them both to keep an eye on our backsides. What with all the new boys—see that we aren’t cut up from behind until I have our position in the village assured.”
“Rear guard, sir. Right. Until Benteen and McDougall come up.”
He slapped a hand on Cooke’s broad shoulder, staring up into the Canadian’s handsome face. “You got it, soldier. Let’s ride!”
Cooke twisted round in the saddle to fling his voice back at the columns of dusty blue. “Mount!”
Stretching up the neck of the Upper Medicine Tail Coulee, sergeants bawled their commands. “MOUNT!”
“We’re riding down on ’em, boys!”
“MOUNT!”
“By God—it’s what we’ve waited for!”
“MOUNT!”
“—right into hell if we have to!”
Behind those hundred twenty odd voices rustled and squeaked saddle leather as the troops pushed into their McClellans and steadied their snorting, wide-eyed horses. It wasn’t only the smell of water nearby that made the animals skittish. They must have sensed the growing tension in the air, felt that unfamiliar rigidity of the riders atop their backs. In some way those big, muscular horses knew the moment was at hand.
What they had been trained to do would now be put to the test.
Custer smiled grimly as he heard that reassuring sound of men and animals merging into one four-legged, double-fisted fighting machine.
His dust-reddened eyes hidden beneath the shadow of his big hat, he peered down the coulee at that narrow sliver of river.
Down below was the ford where he could cross into the village, thereby drawing pressure from Reno in hopes that his five companies could push the warriors back. He had practiced the maneuver enough during the war, just the way his instructors at the academy had drilled it into his head. Just as the great Clausewitz had written. Indeed, all those great European masters of tactical warfare had preached the same thing.
You pinch an army at its waist, or better yet—nail an enemy’s feet to the ground while you battered its head.
All that was left for him to do to save this campaign—and his destiny—was to hope that Reno occupied the Sioux downstream while his own five companies flailed at the head of the enemy camps. He sensed that head was right down this coulee at the ford of the Little Bighorn.
To do what he hoped would require fast action from both McDougall and Benteen. If there was the slightest delay by either one, his five companies would be swallowed—
“Mr. Cooke: troops—front into line!” he bellowed back at Cooke and the rest, Vic prancing round and round in a tight circle, her master tall in the stirrups, hat waving. “Seventh Cavalry … ahead by column-of-twos …
Mitch Bouyer heard Custer bellow the command, but he sat a moment watching as the soldiers burst away at a hand gallop. It had to be one thing or another, the half-breed scout decided.
Seeing the general’s brother riding past, the half-breed heeled his Crow pony into motion, galloping alongside Tom.
“Bouyer!” young Custer hollered out, a wolf-slash smile cutting his face above the pointed blond beard.
“I tell you what I think of your brother.”
Tom’s smile disappeared. “What!”
“Either Custer’s insane, or he’s bent on committing suicide.”
“You bastard!”
“And he’s just mad enough to take a couple hundred men with him straight into hell.”
“I swear you’ll get—”
“Tom!” Custer shouted from the head of the columns, waving to bring his brother up beside him as they ground out of the upper Medicine Tail and down onto a flat leading toward the lower coulee that would take them directly to the river ford.
“For Reno … it can only be a footrace now!” he yelled at his younger brother when Tom reached his side.
“There’s no fight left in the man!”
“We’re going to attack with everything we have. Remember. Should anything happen—I’m counting on you. Always have, Tom.”
“I know—”
“Hush!” Custer commanded. “Get back to Keogh and Calhoun. Remind them I’m counting on them too—to support the rear of the command. Whatever they do—guard our rear!”
As they raced into the neck of the lower Medicine Tail, the ford came into view. Beyond the river, over on the west bank, stood hundreds upon hundreds of lodges.
“May God have mercy on our souls, Autie!” Tom whispered under his breath as he yanked his horse around in a haunch-sliding circle that took him up the sharp side of the coulee. He kicked savagely at the animal so he could spur back to give Keogh and Calhoun Autie’s message. They must know they were in charge of protecting the rear flank of Autie’s wild, hopeful charge into the village.
“May God have mercy on our souls!” he repeated to himself, remembering those were the same words he whispered to himself before every battle of the Civil War, before every wild charge into the face of enemy grapeshot and minie balls.
With the Gatling-gun pounding of iron-shod hoofs, the three companies hammered down the last few yards of the Medicine Tail, accompanied only by the whine of dry leather and the harsh jangle of bit and crupper. Carbines cried out like tired wagon springs as they were yanked from their scabbards.
And above the leader whipped that proud banner: the blood crimson and summer-sky blue crossed by a pair of silver white sabers. Custer wanted the Sioux to know Peoushi—the Long Hair—had arrived.
CHAPTER 21
FEW of the
Custer himself knew of the venal Indian agents falsifying their counts on official reports sent to Washington City to assure an uninterrupted westward flow of goods and annuities. Yet in that summer of 1876, the army could only begin to guess how far the agents would go to cover their tracks.
Instead of nine thousand six hundred ten Indians residing that summer at the Spotted Tail Agency, there were in reality only two thousand three hundred fifteen.
The rest were gone visiting friends and relatives in that great summer encampment along the Greasy Grass.
Instead of twelve thousand eight hundred seventy-three at Red Cloud, there were only four thousand seven hundred sixty.
Down at Cheyenne River only two thousand two hundred eighty instead of seven thousand five hundred
