Seize the Sky

It could be no one else. Custer was sure.

He turned this way, then struggling to twist in another. None of the others seemed to hear it—that solitary voice calling out to him.

Battling against his own arms that didn’t want to work anymore, he finally fought his way onto an elbow and peered downhill over to the right, on that little outcrop, there in the tall grass—

“Hiestzi!”

It had to be … no one else would be calling to him. The red bandanna … like a flag—

Glory! Monaseetah’s come at last! She knew, Lord, she knew how I wanted to keep my promise to return to her.

“Husband!”

He wanted to yell out so badly. Nothing came up but blood and chunks of lung and a little taste of that sour whiskey.

Come, Monaseetah! I want you. Oh, do I need you. God … how I loved you.

“Autie.”

Tom’s voice. Real close. Then he felt Tom’s arm resting on his chest, right over the soggy wound. Gripping him tight. Hugging him.

No! Not hugging me … holding me down!

Custer tried to focus through the narrowing tunnel of gray, gazing up into the bright light at the end. Tom’s face filled his vision. He wasn’t feeling much pain in the gaping hole, no heaviness now. More and more light drawing closer round him all the time. He tried to struggle, sensing the muzzle against his temple.

Turn away from it!

But Tom held him tight, forcing the back of his head down into the grass and dirt and blood and—

No! he wanted to shout. Not yet … not yet, Tom! Monaseetah’s coming, can’t you see? Everything will be all right now. She can help me … help us like before … together at last! She’s coming for me—

Tom pulled the trigger, refusing to look down at what he did—this last act of love for his brother. Hoping Autie would forgive him. Despairing now that he had forgotten to ask Autie for forgiveness before he pulled the trigger. But there wasn’t time. The horsemen were practically on them.

He rose, staring down at the peaceful, resting body a moment.

“I love you, General. Love you like a brother.”

With a resolute buoyancy, he leapt the last few yards to the top of the crest, firing off to the north as he ran. Already the Oglalla cavalry under Crazy Horse had overrun the spot where Cooke’s body lay—slashing, cutting, pounding heads in with their stone clubs.

“Stand, goddammit!” Tom shouted to the handful limping to the top with him.

Some struggled on hands and knees to draw close to that final ring. Some weaving, clutching bloody hands over oozing holes, braving the last few yards to the top. Five, maybe six of them was all.

The Sioux came on, up that north slope in a red wave that had no end.

“Stand, you damned wolverines! Stare it in the face!”

Tom actually heard the soapy, thick smack of it hit him. Not like the one that had smashed through his jaw at Saylor’s Creek. He hadn’t heard that one.

This was different. He heard it. The bullet that had his name on it. Thomas Ward Custer.

For all these years he had been waiting for that one, solitary bullet. And when it came, he actually heard it tearing, slashing through his body, driving bone through his lungs as it opened up a hole as big as a man’s fist in his back, taking a good chunk of his lung with it. He watched the others struggle to stand with him, forcing themselves up on their feet.

“Goddammit! Stand with me, wolverines! Stare ’em in the eye! Let the bastards know we’re the Seventh—by God—Cavalry!”

Another huge chunk of army lead smacked into his body, then a third as he was finally driven down on his side.

Still, he came up on his knees, listening to that wolf-pack howl as the Oglalla achieved the top of the hill and poured over his handful of hold-outs. A great howling that deafened Tom’s shouts of defiance beneath hooves and stone clubs. A charge that spun him around as he fired wildly into the air with both pistols singing.

It seemed that wave of ponies would never end as they thundered over the brow of the hill, trampling the survivors, the ones brave enough, the ones strong enough to have made it to the top of Custer’s hill.

With a sudden ringing in his ears, Tom realized the Sioux had passed. And with its deafening chant eventually came a quiet that told him that last bullet had come from close range … it echoed inside his head. A fading, dying echo.

That last one so close it made his ears ring.

After waiting a few moments more while the ringing clatter of that last bullet gradually died away, Tom opened his eyes and gazed up into the clear, cloudless Montana sky.

He was surprised to find a cool breeze washing itself along his right cheek, over the rosy mark from that long-ago bullet at Saylor’s Creek.

Eventually, after a long time, he heard them calling. Familiar voices—he knew the sound of each one as he knew his own moods.

Tom propped himself up on one elbow and grinned as big as he had ever grinned before. Never a sight like this in all his life …

There they stood. A few yards off and heading down to that silver ribbon of the Little Bighorn, where it would be cool and shady and they could get a drink of water at last. Myles with his big Irish hand held high and urging him to come on. Jimmy Calhoun, Maggie’s grinning Adonis, right beside Myles, where he always wanted to be found. Billy Cooke and George Yates. Fresh Smith turning now, waving him on. Friends for all time.

All of them hallooing him on down the hill with them.

And Autie.

He stood right in the middle. Autie yanked off that big cream hat and waved it back and forth at his younger brother. It was as if … as if he had forgiven Tom already for that last bullet.

“C’mon, Tom!”

Autie’s voice rose strong and clear above the green grass and gray sage and tiny flesh pink. buffalo-bean flowers nodding their heads in the cool breeze awash across the grassy slope.

“C’mon, now—not going anywhere without my little brother!”

Two women mourned that hot summer afternoon as a blood red sun settled with an ache over the Bighorns. Two strong, delicate, and beautiful women mourned.

One sobbing as her quaking voice raised itself in the words of the old Christian hymns that gave her strength and solace in her darkest hours. Now that she was truly alone at last. And forever more.

The other, wailing and shrieking her grief to the heavens in an ancient, primitive dirge, a song of prayer and longing that went back beyond summers to the womb of time. A song that went back to a long winter gone.

Both women prayed to the same God; both mourned the same man. Suffering the same loss. That loss of love and a man who always smiled when times were darkest.

His passing, their greatest loss.

Now Yellow Hair belonged to the ages.