Seize the Sky

bellowing “Garry Owen” together. Off-key as always. It was their medicine song, their fraternal death song.

Thought he could hear one of them guzzling noisily, drinking as if he’d never again get a drink in his life.

Hell, he probably won’t now.…

Maybe if he could turn his head a little, look behind him, they would see he wanted to share a drink with them.

Just one last drink.

Damned shame … never had a drink with these good men … even my own brother. Never had the chance to toast to health … to toss one off to a friend’s happiness. Not at any wedding … not even my own. Never made a chance to drink with these …

Through the narrowing gray mist, he finally recognized Tom staring down at him.

Dear brother Tom. That rambunctious, bighearted oaf of a hellious brother who loved the women and his whiskey both about as much as the other. Too much of a contest all Tom’s life to see just who or what he would dedicate himself to—the whiskey or some woman.

“Whisk …”

“What’d he say?” Keogh suddenly knelt over the general opposite Tom.

“I think he’s asking for whiskey,” Tom answered, snatching the canteen from Keogh. Gingerly he placed it to his brother’s cracked, bloody lips, trickling a little of the cheap amber fluid into the slack mouth.

Custer sputtered. His mind reeled, instantly recalling the strong taste that had made him act like an ass there in front of the Bacon place so many, many years ago—right in front of the judge and young Elizabeth Bacon herself. But he fought down the sickening bile of remembered pain, making his stomach not care any longer.

“More,” he ordered. And swallowed it with lessening difficulty.

“Easy, brother,” Tom replied, Custer’s head draped across his left arm like a wet bag of oats.

“Toasting you boys,” Custer stammered slowly. “You … good friends.”

“Yes, General.” Yates began to cry, openly at last.

“For you, George, and the Seventh.” He watched those big, leaden Yankee tears pour down George’s dirty face. Knowing sweet Annie back at Lincoln was going to have a tough time of it without this man. Knowing all those women back at …

“I’ll drink to you, General.” Keogh’s thick brogue fell soft about his ringing ears. “Then I’ve got to return to me post, sir. I’m still kicking some red ass, ain’t I, General? Them savages ain’t got Myles yet.”

“Ah … Myles. Bless you, you Catholic sonuvabitch.” Custer seemed to smile somewhere behind those glassy blue eyes.

“Why, General—I’ve never had you swear at me before!” Keogh brought up a chuckle, thick and hearty and genuine. “It feels mighty good to have you cussing me out. I’m sure I’ve been deserving a good tongue-lashing before now, but you’ve not brought yourself to do it. Now”—and he suddenly grabbed the general’s face within his own meaty paws and bent down to plant a kiss on both of Custer’s cheeks—“I’ve still got some bullets, and I’ve still got hot Irish blood pumping through me body, so I won’t let you down.”

Keogh belched, reeling to the side, caught himself before he fell. “I’ve loved you, General—every one of you as well. Like the brawthers I never had. All and a one of you. This regiment’s been the home I niver had.” He choked, seeing that he had made the others self-conscious with the admissions of this big, mighty man. “Well, I couldn’t be more proud to die with you, boys.”

Unashamed, his big lips and bristling mustache raked the cheek of Tom Custer and George Yates and the general one last time before he was gone to a little plot of land some soldier had scooped out with the butt of a useless, jammed carbine. A little piece of ground where Myles Keogh could die.

“Myles?”

“He’s gone, General—”

“Shit!” Tom shouted in a growl as Yates’s voice broke off.

Custer felt something hot and wet slap his face, spraying across the side of his neck. Then slowly he felt the weight of a body slumping against him. He gazed up through the fog and saw that the side of Tom’s face and shirt were splattered with blood and gray matter.

“George?” Custer croaked weakly, like he didn’t want to know.

“Yes,” Tom whispered close to his ear now. “Head shot. He never knew what hit him.”

“Cookcy?”

“He isn’t here, Autie,” Tom whispered again. “Not anymore.”

“Are we at the top of the hill? I can’t see. Are we on the top, close to the sky?”

“About as close as I can get you, Autie.” Tom rose to one knee. “I don’t dare get any closer … it’s so damned bare and naked up there at the top and looks—goddammit—those horsemen below, massing on the north flank. They’re finally coming, Autie!”

“That’ll do it, won’t it?” Custer asked.

“Yes … I expect it will.” Tom smiled bravely behind those first tears. He had fought them so long—just as bravely as he’d fought these Sioux and Cheyenne. “There’s a handful of us left at most. Some down each side, still working. It’ll be over in a minute. Here comes the charge, Autie. Bastards’re coming now!”

“Like Saylor’s Creek—one last charge for Thomas Ward Custer?”

Tom choked at the heady memory dredged up from the depths of that madness that was their own family war against the Confederacy. “Yes. Saylor’s Creek, Autie. I should’ve died there. Should’ve finished it there.”

CHAPTER 28

“I made a mistake,” Custer said it out loud.

Tom jerked around. He didn’t believe it. But of a sudden Autie’s voice had become strong and clear. Young Custer stared down into the dust-reddened eyes.

“Made a mistake, Tom. Leaving her behind,” he sighed. “And about dividing the regiment. Never sent Benteen off … Reno, the worst mistake of all. If I’d had Benteen down in the valley, been a whole different story. And if I’d never left her behind, I’d be—”

“Made a lot of damned mistakes myself, Autie.” Tom glanced down the slope at the horsemen coming, feeling an urgency now as never before. “If I’d kept Jim and Myles with me instead of leaving them off to cover the rear, the Seventh might’ve made a better show of it this afternoon.”

“Not your fault. I spread ’em too thin—”

“No time to criticize yourself.” Tom struggled up on both knees out of the dust. “Far as I’m concerned, sir … it’s been a pleasure and an honor serving you, General.”

Custer blinked as he stared up at that narrowing tunnel of bone white glare overhead, hearing the thunder drumming up the slope. “Tom? You called me General only once before.”

“I’ve loved you, Autie, as I’ve loved no one else.” Tom’s voice tripped on the anguish. “Want you to remember that. Loved you more than anything on the face of this earth.”

“I’ll remember. For all time, Tom.”

Custer realized now it would come by Tom’s hand. The way he was talking. He was even more sure of it as Tom scrambled to his feet, two pistols in his hand. Custer’s mind was clear here at the last, clear as polished isinglass. There was even a little reflection of some light bouncing off into a dark corner, reflected right into his soul like light splintering off a mirror.

Custer really didn’t mind anymore, mind making this blood atonement for all the others. It had been coming for too long as it was. For all those years of broken promises and busted two-tongue treaties of the bureaucrats. Some payment was long overdue. Bound to happen sooner or later … bound to happen on this Montana hillside.

Damn, but the gods in Valhalla will finally mark their ledger closed at last … paid in full. Written in Custer’s blood, by God! Written in Custer’s blood—

“Hiestzi!”

Custer listened to her high, thin voice carried seductively over the chants and wing-bone whistles, over the growing thunder of hooves pounding up the long north slope.