“Brothers!” the Lame One shouted, rising to his feet. “We must stand our ground. Do not quail before these pony soldiers. They are but dust in the wind. We are many. We are mighty. Hold your ground! This is your day!”
Many of the warriors retreating in panic before the troopers halted, looking back over their shoulders. Now they saw for themselves. Exactly as Lame-White-Man declared—the soldiers were not many. And they were not following.
With renewed courage the Cheyennes wheeled about, starting back up the slope to where the lone war chief stood his ground, exhorting his young men to join him in this battle against the forty.
The Lame One hobbled a bit, but despite his limp he marched steadily upward, closing on the place where the soldiers reined back, drawing their snorting horses together in a confused mob.
By the time the soldiers had dismounted near the side of the long ravine, Lame’s warriors had edged closer under continued fire. The smell of Indians on the wind drove the big horses mad with fear. They reared and bucked and pulled at their holders.
Suddenly a few older Cheyenne boys leapt from the sage, waving blankets and shouting at the frightened horses, scaring the encircled soldiers into full-scale panic.
First the horses bolted away, careening downhill toward the river, their stirrups and saddlebags of ammunition clattering through the tall grass and past screeching warriors. Thirsty far too long. It was easy work for the young boys and old men at the river to round these last horses up, head them downstream. The white man’s animals wanted nothing more than to be near the water.
With dry throats of their own, Smith’s soldiers gazed longingly downhill. Their mounts gone … any means of escape gone as well. Hope disappeared like a puff of yellow dust in the dry breeze.
Everywhere the air filled with sound, crushing at their ears. Burnt powder stung nostrils, clinging to the hillside like dirty coal-cotton gauze. Dust burnt eyes into dark, reddened sockets. And still more warriors splashed across the shining ribbon of the river, swarming over the hillside like red ants from a nest Custer had stirred with a big stick.
“Here!” Sergeant John Ogden’s voice rose above the shrieks of the enemy and cries of panic among the young soldiers. “Follow me to the ravine!”
No one needed to suggest the ravine more than once to those men. Up here on the slope, they were helpless and exposed, naked to the painted enemy. Nearly all of them dashed off on Ogden’s heels, scrambling downhill and sliding into the ravine they had intended to secure and hold until Gibbon’s boys arrived.
As soon as the soldiers scrambled over the edge, Lame-White-Man exhorted his warriors into the mouth of the coulee itself, charging up toward the milling, frightened, trapped soldiers.
Panic began to spread its evil curse like wildfire among the thirty-eight at the bottom. With the charge of the Cheyennes up the ravine, the young soldiers began a furious scramble to escape their self-made trap. The sides of that gully were irregular, dotted with stunted cactus, bunchgrass, and gray-leafed sage. Not much for a man to hold onto in clawing his way out.
They found themselves caught like fish in a drying puddle, ready for the killing. Better to try to clamber back uphill.
Time and again they pocked at the south wall with attempts to dig their way up the sides of the ravine. Kicking holes out for their boot-toes and digging furrows for their fingertips, some fought the side of that ravine as hard as they would fight their panic. Until they slid exhausted to the floor of the coulee, able to fight their fear no more. Confused and terrified, some fired aimlessly into the air. Then panic won the day.
As Smith himself crawled through sagebrush, he listened to the loud reports of carbine and pistol fire erupting from the ravine. He glanced back on that slash of a coulee as he pulled himself uphill at an agonizing pace, watching blue powder smoke belch from the ravine, thinking his troops were giving a hard time of it to the Cheyenne.
Just as he had promised he would.
Yet as the young lieutenant crawled away, an entirely different scene from the one he imagined occurred in the bottom of that ravine. Instead of shooting at the warriors crawling up the ravine, the desperate soldiers turned their weapons on themselves.
With a powerful and contagious despair, a single trooper put his pistol muzzle to his head and pulled the trigger. Mesmerized, his comrades watched, helpless to stop him. That lonely soldier’s private panic now spread like cholera.
Another man jammed his pistol against his heart. Two soldiers up near the far mouth of the ravine shot each other in the head as the Cheyenne raced over their still-trembling bodies.
To the approaching warriors the troopers were touched by the Everywhere Spirit to kill themselves. In utter awe the young warriors watched, disbelieving—some rubbing their eyes, others holding hands over their mouths in awe so their souls would not fly away. Suicide was something far from the Indian experience.
Of a sudden Cheyenne chief Two Moons was among the warriors on his pale horse, rallying the fighters to charge up the coulee behind Lame-White-Man. To throw themselves right into the milling, confused, suicidal soldiers. “This will be the last day you see your war chief, Two Moons! Come watch me! I die with honor!”
“Hey! Hey!” Two Moons replied, his voice high and shrill and buoying above the commotion in the ravine. “These are only children. They are ready for us to kill them! Do not be afraid of children!”
With his words of encouragement ringing in their ears, the warriors rushed up the coulee, carrying hawks and lances and knives. Each one ready for hand-to-hand of it. Coup counting in close combat.
But not a single soldier remained standing to resist that Cheyenne charge. Every one lay dead.
The white men had killed themselves and each other.
CHAPTER 26
FARTHER up that bloody, carcass-littered hillside, the hold-outs watched it happen.
Angrily, bitterly now, they poured their fire down into the Cheyennes busy over the dead troopers, warriors pounding in the head of any white man still breathing. Stone clubs mashing heads with a soppy, wet thud. The carbine fire of those at the crest ultimately took its toll, forcing the Cheyenne back to the mouth of the ravine to seek cover.
There the warriors found the three casualties of their brief skirmish. Two young Cheyennes picked off by soldier marskmen up the hill. And Lame-White-Man himself.
A dark sense of despair descended upon the hill. Their plan to open up a route to the water supply had failed. What was worse, Custer’s officers had to watch as friends committed suicide, giving in to panic and defeat exactly as they had done at Keogh’s position.
Now all that was left for the hold-outs was to make a stand here on this last hill for as long as possible.
“Autie.” Tom knelt beside his brother, whispering loud enough to be heard over the gunfire banging away on all sides. “There ain’t many of us left now.”
Custer struggled bravely against the pain in his chest and the waves of nausea that threatened to engulf him. By holding his brother’s arm, Custer sat up a bit straighter, swallowing hard against the dry knot of blood coagulating at the back of his throat.
“Boston?” Custer asked.
Tom shooked his head, scratching his cheek stubble. He gazed downhill a few yards, silent.
“Autie?” Custer asked. “Young Autie?”
Tom only wagged his head of greasy hair, having lost his hat at the ford before their mad rush. He dared not try to speak just yet, afraid of what might spill out. Somewhere on that ride up from the river he had seen Autie’s body, among the trampled grass and sagebrush and stunted cactus. Trampled in retreat.
