Seize the Sky

the air got meaner with it. Filled with the buzz that is summer on the high plains. Blowflies and mosquitoes, beetles and ants, scurrying through the little desperate ring of soldiers. All matter of creature called to the sugar-sour blood spilled across the thirsty soil.

And everywhere the mean, scorching air roared with sound if a man stopped for a moment to listen.

All about them rang those thousand and one distinct sounds that added to the nightmare. The shrieking of the women, urging their warriors on. Those shrill cries of the warriors themselves. That high-pitched, constant keening of the eagle wing-bone whistles. The drum, drum, drumming of thousands of hooves racing back and forth along the slope. That mournful creak of dry saddle leather as a horse thrashed, working against its bloody cinch. The whimper of a soldier dying, forgotten by his bunkies and fellow troopers because they had their own problems at the moment … maybe because those bunkies were all dead anyway and beyond worry now.

Above it all rose that wild cry of the wind rushing down from the Wolf Mountains: stalking, hunting like a feral predator. Knowing there would soon be bones bleaching and burning beneath a hot sun—before the day was out. Bones for that feral wind to whistle and sing over for all time to come.

Most of the warriors could wait these last long moments. There was medicine made up on soldier hill. Already they had watched some of the troopers throw themselves away. Silently the warriors glanced at one another and nodded, spitting on their fingers, then blowing on their palms. The troopers had killed themselves and each other, so many lying in the grass and flopping around like white-bellied trout tossed on the stream bank to die beneath a hot sun.

“The Great Powers made these soldiers kill themselves,” the Sioux explained to one another.

“Yes,” replied the Cheyenne. “The Everywhere Spirit made these soldiers go mad because they attacked a village of women and children.”

And even a few of those Cheyenne massing on that hillside remembered the legend of long ago begun far to the south in the Territories when old chief Medicine Arrow had told the soldier-chief Yellow Hair that he would be cursed with death should he ever break his word to the Cheyenne by bringing his soldiers to attack a Cheyenne camp of women and children. Perhaps only a handful could remember that curse and the dumping of ashes on Yellow Hair’s boots to seal his fate.

“If only that soldier-chief Yellow Hair were here now,” some whispered mystically, “he would finally see how it is for all these last brave soldiers to die around him, exactly as the old chiefs curse predicted in that winter long ago.”

Having watched Tom Custer dragging the general up the slope, stopping to pant in the smothering heat, Mitch Bouyer decided he had had enough.

He wasn’t about to wait for death to come slinking of its own pace. He wanted to die now.

Down inside he knew this hillside had his name on it anyway, so why wait?

Attack death as you would attack any enemy itself, Mitch Bouyer, he thought to himself. Grapple with it and go down singing your death song. The Sioux taught you that much in all your years growing up in their camps. Your Hunkpapa mother had done enough to pass that much on to you anyway.

“General,” Mitch whispered as he knelt over Custer, their blood mingling in the yellow dust at Custer’s side.

Tom glared flatly at the dark half-breed.

“I’m leaving now. General.” Bouyer sighed, ignoring Tom’s shadow over him.

“He can’t hear you now.” Tom’s voice came out tasteless and bland, even though his eyes flashed their contempt.

“S’pose it doesn’t matter much now, anyway, does it?” Mitch replied without looking up.

Tom was not sure if the question deserved answer.

“I tried to tell you, Custer.” Bouyer bit his lip against pain. “But you were ready to throw away all these good men for the sake of taking your soul on a long, long journey. Some said to Washington City to hold power over all the whites. I say you were prepared to go all the way to hell if you had to. But now—you’ll never make it out of this valley.”

Tom grabbed the calfskin vest Bouyer wore.

Mitch turned and snarled. “Leave me be. I’m dead a’ready. And I ain’t gonna take nothing from the time your brother’s got left anyway.”

Young Custer let the half-breed go. “Hurry. He wants me to drag him to the top.”

Bouyer looked back to the sallow face, eyelids half-closed as death hovered near.

“I’m moving on now, Custer. Down toward the river. Sioux look thickest down there. I’ll take two, maybe three of ’em with me as I go down. Got no idea how long this belly of mine will let me stay up on my wobbly pins. But I figure if I get started downhill with a bum gut spilling into my hands like it is, ain’t much but a lot of lead gonna finally bring me down.”

Mitch struggled to his feet and bent to shade Custer’s face. He wobbled, then sighed as he struggled to keep his balance. “Guess it’s time. I’ll be seeing you in hell, General Custer.”

Tom watched the half-breed careen about, pulling two pistols from his sash.

As Mitch darted past stunned troopers and around the dark barricades of bloated horses, his calfskin vest flapping wild in the breeze, he began yelling at the top of his lungs. Yet it was more than a yell—more like a chant, a high, wild song.

Telling the devil he was coming in, like it or not. And the old boy damned well better open those bloody gates of hell for him.

Amazing both troopers and Sioux alike—Bouyer made it better than four hundred dusty yards down the hill, firing those pistols at every Indian who popped up from the sage and grass to halt his wild charge. He was angry, damned angry—and wasn’t about to go down easy. Old Jim Bridger, mountain man and later guide for the army in the early days of the far west, had taught Bouyer well.

Mitch died with some grit.

He went down the way he had lived, both hands packed for bear, singing his own medicine song to the Devil himself.

Ordering the gates of hell itself opened to welcome him home.

Custer came to as moccasined feet padded off.

He had his lucid moments, when his mind ran as clear as a mountain stream.

This time he was lulled by the constant drone of noise filling the air with a golden hum.

As his eyes sought to focus, he initially saw nearby a young bugler, not a day over eighteen really, his ear blown away, the pulpy wound already crusted under the hot, juice-drying sun. Flies were at work on the flesh, crawling and buzzing in and out of the boy’s open eyes as they stared off across that Montana landscape. A few flies worked in and out of the bugler’s gaping mouth.

Nearby, somewhere to his left, out along the ridge, a trooper cried out and died noisy. Yelling about the arrows falling from the yellow sky. Yelling something wild and crazy and demented about death falling out of the sun.

All round Custer closed a narrowing fog. Not in much pain any longer. His chest had grown lighter for the first time in—ah, hell. He didn’t know how long he’d been here anymore. Strange, but his mind seemed suddenly clear again, like a piece of crystal he had seen once at a museum back east in New York City—a piece of crystal displayed on a swatch of sapphire blue velvet. His mind just that clear—as he allowed his soul to slip on down, sensing those emotions these last few soldiers huddled tightly about him must surely be feeling.

A good man—that Bouyer, Custer thought.

Some men, he brooded darkly, wallow through the muck of suffering if their wounds are painful like this chest of mine. Doesn’t make the whole thing of dying any easier … having to hurt through it all. And when the pain gets to be a little more than you can bear … a man begins to wonder just when it will all end and the pain will go away. Can’t death just come and take me now? Can’t I just have it done?

Down at the last when you’re holding on by the last thread comes the peace … the welcoming. Death will come welcome and none too soon for most men left on this hillside.

Off somewhere in the corner of his mind, Custer heard Yates and Tom and Keogh nearby. Heard them