“I never should’ve brought them,” Autie whispered angrily. It was the longest sentence he had spoken in over an hour. Ever since he ordered them to follow him down the Medicine Tail and into the village.
“Never made the village,” he coughed, then smiled weakly at Tom. “Never gonna make it to Washington. Not now, Tom—I’m sorry.”
“Hush,” Tom said gruffly. “Just be quiet now.”
“How many …” He coughed the words free, clutching his bubbling chest. “How many left?”
“I’d say forty, maybe.” Tom answered, slewing his eyes over the hillside. “Maybe as many as fifty. We’re fairly chewed up, but—”
“Dr. Lord? God, can’t he help me? Give me some laudanum, something so I can get on my feet? Must take command before it’s too late for the rest! Find Lord for me!”
Tom pushed a struggling, emaciated brother back down, against the horse carcass. “It’s too late for that now, Autie.”
“Lord … too?”
“Yes. He did what he could for you. Told us that. Said it’s a little too late for the rest of us too.”
“Damn you, Tom! Goddamn you! We don’t give up!” Custer sputtered, glazed eyes narrowing darkly.
Tom shook his head sadly. “No, Autie. We Custers don’t ever give up, do we? It’s just—the only thing left is to do as much damage as we can while men and ammunition hold out.”
“I ordered every man to bring a hundred—”
“Not anymore,” Tom interrupted, patting Custer’s shoulder. “Most of the horses are gone too. Some carbines jamming badly. Men having to hunt through the bodies for a usable weapon … cartridges in the pockets, on belts.”
“I see.” Custer gritted his teeth as another wave of nausea hit him; he doubled over, supported by Tom as he puked up more yellow bile and pink froth.
When the grip of it had released him, Custer sagged against the stinking, bloated horse carcass, staring down the slope to the south and west. “My God! Where’d they all come from?”
“The village you were hunting, Autie.”
At their feet lay the thousands upon thousands of lodges, erected in orderly camp circles along the twists and bends of the Little Bighorn. All the villages spread out before Custer like the mighty nations of the Sioux and Northern Cheyenne paying homage, bowing in reverence at his feet.
“Dammit, Tom! Where’s Benteen with the …” And he sputtered up some more chunks of pink lung along with frothy blood, spitting them into the yellow dust at his side. “Benteen and the ammunition I ordered hours ago —”
“Less than two hours, Autie.”
He gazed up at Tom, wonder mixed with fear in his eyes.
“We’ve been whipped in less than two hours?”
Tom nodded. “Yes. And Benteen hasn’t come yet. Maybe we can hold out till that white-headed bastard does get his ass up here with ammo and more men. If …”
“If what, Tom?”
“If Benteen can break through the goddamned Sioux to get to us.” His eyes held Autie’s for a long, long moment.
“I understand,” Custer replied gravely, lips spreading in a chin red line of determination. “Help me sit up a bit more, will you, brother?”
Everywhere around their dusty command post, men were methodically butchered by arrow and bullet alike. Custer’s own private desperation and long-hidden fear of failure finally overwhelmed him as he watched his men, beloved troopers of his Seventh dying all round him like dry leaves tumbling from a mighty oak at autumn’s first slashing wind.
“Get the field glasses.”
Through them Custer peered hopefully to the south and west, where he had left Reno and Benteen to their fates.
“By God, I need his ammunition,” he finally exclaimed with a wet, gushing sound. “Benteen’s gotta make it through to us.”
“Gotta be soon, Autie.”
“General?”
“George?” Custer was genuinely happy to see Yates, buoyed by a hometown face here beside him in the final minutes, when a lot of the pain subsided. He swallowed hard, releasing silent, salty tears as he peered into the grim, blackened face swimming before his.
“General, there’s thirty-four of us left on the hill,” Yates reported. “No telling how many Reno’s got left now after he got cut up in the valley.”
“I was planning to batter the head,” Custer rambled, staring into the bone yellow sky. “If Reno had only held their feet down while I—”
“General? General Custer?” Yates grabbed Custer’s chin, pulling his sunburned face so he could look Custer in the eye. “It’s not Reno, it’s not Benteen I’m worried about.”
“Benteen?” Custer snapped alive with a spark ignited from some place deep within him. “Benteen’s coming, you say?”
“No, sir,” Yates answered. “I can’t believe he’s coming, not now.”
With no small agony Custer pulled himself upright against the carcass, lifting DeRudio’s Austrian field glasses to his eyes. For long, anxious moments he trained the glasses on the hills to the south and east. Suddenly the commander noticed shapes and color shimmering through the thick dust and haze rising off the landscape. Through the waves of heat he saw a mass of shimmery blue … then the mirage separated into column-of-twos.
“By the love of God!” he gasped, blood oozing from his lips. “It’s Benteen! He’s coming, boys! By all that’s— Benteen’s coming!”
Tom yanked the binoculars from his brother, disbelieving, knowing Autie was close to a rambling fool by now.
But he wanted to believe so badly himself. With everything he had in him, Tom wanted to believe. He strained his eyes on those hills far away and squinted through the haze. Sure enough, he found blue columns loping north, a motley mixture of companies on different colored mounts. The rescue columns galloped past a high point some few miles south of Custer’s hill, marching north.
“Damn, if you aren’t right, Autie!” he shouted.
Then Yates took up the cheer, scurrying here, then hunkering in a crab walk to carry the word elsewhere. With the captain’s good news, each knot of hold-outs immediately raised tired voices and carbines in the air at the prospect of rescue. Even Keogh and his crew of old-files hollered along the spine with gritty joy.
“How long, sir?” Lieutenant Cooke asked, his dark, handsome eyes boring into Tom’s.
Young Custer studied Cooke’s face, remembering the times they had courted the Wadsworth sisters together—summer picnics and winter sleigh rides. Wondering now if Cookey had been as lucky as he to get his hand inside so many perfumed blouses, feel the soft coolness of so many naked alabaster thighs in the shadows of a shaded bower—
Tom brought the field glasses to his eyes, staring into the shimmering southlands. He could not believe what he was forced to watch now, refusing to accept what he saw happening on that faraway high-point. For the longest time he stared, numbed, his mouth hung half open, like a voyeur caught peeking at something obscene.
When he finally brought the glasses from his face, Tom swallowed down his own despair, gathering strength for what needed saying. Laying the glasses on Autie’s chest, he told them. “Looks like Benteen won’t be coming after all.”
“Not coming?” Cooke growled.
“He’s been overwhelmed,” Tom explained, gazing now at his brother’s gaping chest wound, wet and bright beneath the high light. “Turned around … a goddamned rout.”
“Tom?”
He looked into Autie’s questioning eyes, glazing and sunken ever more now. “Yes, brother. They’re retreating. Trapped and surrounded. Just like us.”
