Custer collapsed. It was more than he could bear, holding himself up that long. Issuing orders to the end.
“I’ll do it, Autie,” Tom replied, the iron back in his voice.
“No, you won’t, Captain,” Lieutenant Smith slid in beside the general, his own words full of granite. “My men’ll do it. We’ll go down to secure that ravine for water carriers. If we intend to hold out as the general wants us to— we’ll need water. Begging pardon, Tom, but you needs stay here. In command. With the general.”
Tom sensed his heart swell with the courage of the young lieutenant’s offer. “Very well, Fresh. I’m proud of you.”
“Thank you, sir.” He turned to go.
“Smith?” Sounding like a rusty iron wagon tire dragged down a gravel road, Tom’s words caught the lieutenant up short.
Smith glanced over his shoulder, studying that red spot on Tom’s cheek, remembering the bullet wound and a young cavalry officer single-handedly charging a Confederate artillery position at Saylor’s Creek eleven long summers before.
“Good luck, Smith.”
“Thank you, Cap’n. We really don’t need luck though. Just the kind of sand you showed at Saylor’s Creek, Tom. That, and some time.”
“You’ll buy the time for us, Fresh.”
“Promise you—we’ll give our best!”
Smith slapped a smart salute and headed downhill toward his chewed-up E. Company.
With sergeants John Ogden and James Riley, Smith selected thirty-six more men, three squads with a corporal to lead each. Without much ado the squads stood ready at horse. Sending a hearty wave back up the hillside to the commander, Smith’s men mounted what was left of the big horses.
“Front into line … guide front …
Into the maddening yellow dust that fuzzed the slope like dirty cotton gauze, the men dashed toward the river below.
Smith knew well enough that his brave action could serve to inspire those left behind on the hill, men whose spirits were flagging. If his detail could only show some aggressiveness against the circling red noose, the command might be able to hold the warriors off for another—who was to say?
Tom stood, saluting that mad dash.
Monaseetah watched the group of four-times-ten mount their big horses and gallop downhill from the hilltop, believing that Custer himself must surely be in that brave group on horseback.
Always leading his men.
“He comes for me!” she sang out with the certainty of it, clambering to her feet that he might see her.
“Hiestzi! I am here! Husband—I wait for you!”
A young Cheyenne warrior leapt to his feet nearby, dragging her down among the tall grasses as random carbine shots from the knoll lobbed her way, kicking up spouts of yellow dirt.
“He is my husband!” she protested at the warrior, who pinned her down in the grass.
He was sweaty and smelled of rancid bear grease in his braids, in the paint smeared across his cheeks and under his mouth. All of it furred now with the dust everywhere. He stank.
“Hiestzi returns for me at last,” she pleaded with the young warrior to understand, smelling his foul breath in her face, suffocating her. “He promised to come back for me. I must go to him!”
“Hiestzi is not here. The Red-Beard sent his soldiers against us again. Yellow Hair is far, far away.” He tried to calm her, clamping a dirty, sweaty hand over her screaming mouth. But try as he might, Monaseetah remained hysterical, biting and kicking now. Shrieking at the top of her lungs when he yanked his hand back in pain.
“Hiestzi! I wait for you!”
She suddenly lay still, panting beneath the warrior’s weight. “Don’t you see? He has returned for me exactly as promised! He has come for me now in the Moon of Fat Horses!”
Right after propping himself up to watch Smith’s charge down the hill, Custer thought he heard something out of place among the chants and curses, something not belonging with the wing-bone whistles and drums, or the cries and grunts of dying men. Something high-pitched, like an arrow in flight, yet sweet to his long-ago memory. A voice he recalled from the past … a long winter gone.
“Yellow Hair!” There it came again.
The voice climbed again above the din of battle and the cries of the dying—scratching at his ears without stop. He strained his dust-reddened eyes and licked at the blood-crusted, alkali-cracked lips, hungering suddenly for the taste of her mouth as if it had been yesterday’s hot summer sun rising when last he saw her … waving from that wagon as he waved back—promising he would return for her.
Knowing now that he had never really stopped wanting her.
He struggled to prop himself up higher, ears pricking to locate the voice.
The pain caused him to double up as he pushed himself to rise. He spit out a little stomach bile. All that was left in his stomach now.
He wanted her to touch him one last time—now that everything was slowly fading out behind his eyelids, looking more and more like a gray pool of sleet on the northern plains that struggled to capture winter’s light.
He could not have the presidency now … he could not reach out and touch Libbie. For so long Libbie had kept herself from him.
This Montana hillside held him prisoner as surely as his restless soul would wander no more. This is where he would die.
Yet … before he closed his eyes, Custer wanted her to hold him one last time.
Hold him just long enough to last into forever.
After charging downhill only five hundred yards, the first of Smith’s men yanked on their reins, drawing to a halt after effectively scattering the Sioux and Cheyenne before them.
They had driven the warriors out of the ravine itself, flushing them down the slope before their wild charge— but the soldiers suddenly did something most unexpected by white or red alike. They stopped dead in their tracks for no apparent reason. At least no reason any man on that hill could figure out.
No reason at all—for they hadn’t counted on Lame-White-Man and his Cheyenne Crazy Dog soldiers.
A Southern Cheyenne war chief, visiting relatives up north for that summer gathering of the great camp circles, Lame-White-Man had led a strong contingent of warriors from the upper camps across the river at the mouth of the deep ravine, throwing his force against the pony soldiers entrenched on the hill under Tom Custer. He was himself a many-scarred veteran and not likely to frighten easily, buckling as did the youngsters under the charge of Smith’s forty.
