Seize the Sky: Son of the Plains-Volume 2 (26 page)

“Gerard, you tell your Rees if they don’t want to fight
with my men, then they can chase after the enemy herd and fight the young boys who watch over those Sioux ponies.”

As he translated, Fred watched how Custer’s words slapped many of the older scouts. Still, the young ones remained too fearful to care about shame. Reluctantly, as if cutting a long-standing bond, The Knife pulled his horse from Custer to rejoin Stabbed and the rest.

“Gerard, tell them there are others coming, other soldiers,” Custer said. “I want the Rees to understand these other soldiers are coming to attack the village, and I want to be the first because I want the honors of fighting the Sioux alone. I need to defeat them myself.”

No expressions on those stony copper faces changed as Custer’s words became Ree words. Dark, black-cherry eyes burned between Custer’s shoulder blades as the soldierchief finally yanked on the reins and led Dandy back to the head of the columns.

Gerard watched Custer prance away. He sucked again at the hot whiskey, not minding what dribbled onto his chin, into his beard. The whiskey no longer helped Fred Gerard.

Now he was as afraid as the next man.

The army surgeon’s belly ached and his rectum burned. Raw, red, on fire.

You’ve got dysentery, Dr. Lord
, he told himself.
Pure and simple dysentery
.

Dr. George Edward Lord, a strikingly handsome young physician who had accepted a short-term army surgeon’s commission so he could revel in the glory of army blue on the frontier, diagnosed his own infirmity exactly. Every jolting step his mule took sent a wave of nausea through him. With insistent taps of his heels, Lord urged the reluctant animal toward the front of the columns, where he would find Custer.

“Cooke!” Custer hollered as Lord drew close. “I want every troop to call out six men and a noncom. They’re to join B Company under Captain McDougall in guarding the pack-train mules carrying our ammunition at the rear of the march.”

“Understood, General!”

“Get them cracking, Billy!”

“General Custer?” Lord’s voice broke as he reined up.

Custer wheeled. “Doctor! Good day! How can I be of service to you?”

“I—I’m merely reporting—”

“Great God, man!” Custer interrupted, studying the doctor’s peaked appearance. “You look about as green as high meat.”

“Yes … quite. I—”

Custer laid his bare palm against the physician’s forehead. “You’re burning up, Doctor! I want you back with the supply mules. B Company. Immediately.”

“Please, General,” Lord protested lamely. “Had I any idea you’d send me back, I wouldn’t have come to you. Today is what I accepted commission for, after all. To ride into battle with
this
regiment. All the excitement from here on out will surely take my mind off my infirmities.”

“Hmmm,” Custer thought on it, tapping a finger against his lips. “Perhaps it will at that. Very well, you’ll stay with my command throughout this day, Doctor.”

“I was hoping I could, sir!” Lord cheered slightly with a brave attempt at his own smile. “I believe it’s only a touch of this prairie dysentery catching up with me. Bad water the past few days. Can’t keep anything down, or in me.”

Custer slapped the physician fraternally on the shoulder. “You stay close, Doctor. I’ll divide DeWolf and Porter to the other commands when the time comes. But you—you’ll go with me this day, and I’ll show you enough bloody action to pucker up any bunghole!”

“Thank you, General.” Lord offered a weak smile. “I’d be forever in your debt … if you could only pucker this problem hole I’ve been sitting on!”

During the short break that Custer called, the troops had laughed, joked, and kidded one another. Some even laid odds, betting future pay on who among them would come out of the fight with the most scalps hanging from his belt.

They were a rugged, Falstaffian group by now—some five weeks out of Lincoln, marching that trail west through
spring snows, rain, and hail, not to mention the scorching heat of the past few days.

Round sunburned, cracked lips new beards sprouted on every face. Those floppy straw hats on their heads provided the only shade for the red dust-raw eyes that ofttimes now looked vacantly toward the wide valley yawning far below them.

Uniforms were worn and dusty if not ragged now, along with boots scuffed and cracked and far from black. Back at the mouth of the Rosebud, most soldiers had shed their blue tunics in favor of a civilian shirt. To watch them cross that fateful divide, an observer would think this regiment looked more like a band of vagabond gypsies than the legendary Seventh. Had it not been for the majority still wearing their yellow-striped cavalry britches and the company horses matched by color, not to mention those crimson-striped guidons snapping in the warm breeze, this might have been any group of ragtag riders.

Custer took a moment to reach inside his saddlebags, pulling out his pair of gold spurs. He straightened after strapping them over his dusty knee-high boots. He smoothed his jacket and admired the spurs privately before he met John Burkman’s pinched expression.

Custer grinned. “What’s the problem, dog-robber? Don’t you agree these are a splendid and fitting addition to my battle outfit?”

“The spurs, General?” Burkman squeaked.

“Certainly,” Custer replied cheerfully, still admiring how they added a martial note to his buckskin outfit. “They are my good luck charm, you see, Nutriment,” he explained, calling his orderly by the nickname given Burkman for his love of eating. “You see, I wore them on the Washita. And you’ll remember I wore them next with Stanley on the Yellowstone and down with Calamity Jane herself in the Black Hills. They’re quite the item—don’t you agree?”

“You said ‘good luck,’ General?” Burkman stammered with a serious case of the willies. “But you don’t seriously wanna … you told me General Santa Anna lost them to a U.S. officer as spoils of war at the end of the fight down
in Mexico … then that same officer sided with the Rebs, and you whipped him in the war.”

“Correct in every respect, John.”

“Then them spurs ain’t really all that lucky, seems to me, General. Every respect intended. Looks like every man that’s worn them spurs lost a battle they fought with ’em on.”

“Silly superstition—just more willy-nilly claptrap!” he scoffed, peering down at his spurs beneath the high overcast of this late-June morning. “And to think of it, John—I’ll proudly wear them as I parade down the streets of Philadelphia on my triumphant journey to the nation’s centennial birthday party … even gallop once more down the streets of Washington City amid the cheers of millions of adoring citizens!”

Burkman glanced at the officers gathered near, as mute as he.

“Then, Striker—I suppose I’ve got no other choice but to break Medicine Arrow’s silly Indian curse with Custer’s Luck!”

Without another word Custer tore the reins from Burkman’s hand and leapt aboard Dandy.

Poor, simple Burkman realized he was close to crying. He hid his face, welcoming the hot stinging release of tears.

As Custer loped off, Lieutenant James Calhoun turned to Ed Godfrey, a gnawing knot tightening in his gut. He whispered, “What the devil’s Custer talking about? What have his gold spurs got to do with some Injun curse?”

Godfrey wagged his head. His own eyes clouded with the remembrance of that winter campaign down in Cheyenne country. “Goes back to the winter of sixty-nine, down in the Territories, Jim.”

“What the hell is it, Ed?” Calhoun gazed anxiously at Godfrey. “Tell me, dammit!”

“A goddamned chief put a curse on the General—”

“Curse?” Calhoun shrieked in a hoarse whisper.

“Chief claimed Custer and all his men would get wiped out.”

Calhoun gulped and tried a grin. “A curse. Shit! Silly pagan superstition, what it is. Right, Ed?”

Godfrey didn’t return Calhoun’s tin-plated smile. “Right, Jim. Nothing but silly superstition.”

Jim was a big man, the kind any plainsman or hard case might think twice about taking on.

Calhoun watched Ed Godfrey turn and ride off. “Say, Ed … so how come you don’t think it’s just superstition, eh? So how come?”

Moments later Custer whirled back up to Burkman. “Remember, dog-robber, we’ll be back by dinner for a good feed. These men’ll be hungry, and I more than they! A good scrap does wonders for my appetite!”

Burkman watched the general wink as Autie Reed and Boston Custer loped up at that moment, followed into the intimate gathering by Custer’s brother.

“Uncle Tom suggested I come ask you if I can ride at the front of the columns with you!” exclaimed ruddy-cheeked Harry Reed.

“Oh, he did—did he? Well, your uncle Tom is nothing more than a lady-humping rascal and a trouble-making rounder!” Custer smiled widely, teeth gleaming. “Of course, I can’t grant you permission to ride at the front of the columns.”

“Can’t?” Autie stammered as if slapped.

“That’s right,” he answered, his face going as grave as a church warden’s. “You’ll ride right behind me with my personal staff!”

“Thank you, Uncle! Damn—did you hear that, Boston?”

“Don’t you think it’d be a lot safer if you stay back in the pack train with me, Autie?” Burkman interrupted, stepping up to the young Reed boy, who looked quite the out-of-place innocent in his dirty and prairie-worn eastern clothing.

Pulling a foot out of a stirrup so he could swing his boot at the striker, Autie Reed chided, “You’re just mad ’cause you can’t go along with the general yourself!”

Burkman turned to Custer, finding sense in the youngster’s words. “General, surely I oughtta be going along, you know.”

For a long moment Custer did not answer. Instead, he straightened himself and gazed down at his striker. At last
he leaned over, placing a gloved hand on Burkman’s shoulder. When he spoke, the words came out quiet, as if what he had to say was something shared only between the two of them.

“Your place really is with Captain McDougall and his pack train, John. Safer there by a long shot. I need someone to stay behind to watch over Dandy and the dogs, after all. What you do best—looking after my animals for me. But”—he flashed that peg-toothed grin again—“if we should have to send back for some more ammunition during the fight, you can come in with the pack train for the home stretch. What say to that?”

“If that’s what your orders are, sir.” Burkman bowed his head, crushed.

The man John adored, the man he had centered the last six years of his life on, was abandoning him as he rode into battle. And Burkman knew, somewhere deep inside the tar black melancholy pit of him, that he would never see the general alive again.

“That’s a good solider.” Custer snapped a salute, waiting for Burkman’s response. “A good soldier always follows orders.”

“Yes, … sir,” John croaked, then turned to trudge off, heading back to the pack train. The tears were coming again. God! how he wanted to turn around and beg the general not to ride into that valley.

But if the general’s of one mind to ride down into that place of evil—then at least he should take me
. Burkman brooded darkly.
Then at least I can die beside him
.…

“Private?”

Burkman turned to find Custer coming up on horseback.

“You’ll take proper care to see that Vic is ready when it comes time to ride down upon the village, won’t you?”

“Yes, sir.” Burkman found his voice strained, dry as the dust beneath his feet. His eyes moistened in gazing upon Custer’s haggard face.
Damn!
The tears stung his eyes as he stared up into the sunlight at the general.

“Those dogs of mine, you’ll always see they’re cared for, won’t you. Private?”

Something in the way the general said it, something on Custer’s face told Burkman that Custer knew.

He wants Missus Custer’s favorite horse out of it come the fight. Come the finish, he wants Dandy safe
.

And perhaps most of all, Custer wanted his staghounds protected.
General always had a special thing for those dogs, nothing ever closer than he had with them two, Bluech and Tuck. He said farewell to both of ’em back at Lincoln before marching out … and they surprised him by loping up to the column hours later, tongues lolling and tails wagging like schoolchildren playing hooky. Custer just didn’t have the heart to refuse ’em their romp west at his side. They were so much like … like his own dear children
.

So now Burkman was assigned the task of holding the dogs’ thick latigo collars while they whined and whimpered piteously, watching their glorious master gallop out of sight, down into the valley of the everlasting sun.

“Front into line, gentlemen! Center at a walk—
let’s ride!
” Custer shouted, turning from Burkman to gallop back to the front of the columns.

He stood in the stirrups, waving an arm and signaling the start down off the divide, as if it were no more than a march across Lincoln’s parade.

Most of the officers who waited nearby found themselves staring after their flamboyant commander with his fringe flying and gold spurs flashing. Time to move now.

Quickly they gulped at canteens of stale alkali water or pulled long at some trail-warm whiskey before swiping dirty fingers round the sticky sweatbands of their hats.

The Seventh Cavalry was moving into the valley.

A
GAIN
and again across the short-grass time The Bull had taunted the agency Indians at Red Cloud or Spotted Tail, daring them to jump their reservations and join him in their old way of life.

“See, I am rich while you are poor … having to beg for the white man’s coffee and sugar. I need none of that. I need none of the
wasichu
’s flour. I need only the buffalo and the old ways. Come join us!”

Like the mighty gathering of the shaggy buffalo itself into herds with numbers beyond count, all the more Sioux came to the Rosebud those first cool days of early June. The tribes gathered on the prairie uplands, marching but a few miles each day toward that ages-blessed crescent of the Mountains of the Wolves.