Seize the Sky: Son of the Plains-Volume 2 (28 page)

“Not far now, General,” Cooke commented, reining in beside his commander.

“Billy, I want to see the officers. Promptly.”

“Right away,” replied the Canadian-born adventurer, who had come south to America when the Civil War offered excitement. He quickly gathered Custer’s officers at the head of the march.

“We’re close now, fellas,” Custer began. “I’m going to form the columns for the attack should we be presented any surprises. Therefore, the first troop commander to report back to me that his pack detail is complete and that each of his troopers does indeed carry a hundred rounds of carbine ammo and twenty-four rounds for his pistol will ride the advance of the column. It seems the honor of this position should go to the command who have done their best to obey my order against grumbling and is best prepared. I’ll wait here for a company commander to report—”

“I take the lead, General!”

Custer jerked sideways in his saddle to stare at Benteen.

The stocky Missourian’s H Company had been marching right behind Custer since the climb over the divide began.

Eventually Custer answered Benteen’s salute. “By all means, Colonel Benteen,” he stammered, flustered and referring to the captain’s brevet rank awarded during an illustrious Civil War career. “You have the advance for our attack, sir.”

“Thank you, General.” For the first time in many, many years since he had joined the Seventh in its early days, there rang the genuine sound of appreciation in Benteen’s voice.

That sound struck Cooke as odd, if not a bit off-key.

“Lead off, Colonel.” Custer waved Benteen forward, sitting atop Dandy beside Cooke while H Company trooped past.

“The man hates you,” Cooke whispered from the corner of his mouth as the dusty, ragged soldiers clambered by.

Custer never took his eyes off Benteen’s men to reply.
“He doesn’t have to like me, Cookey. He’s a bloody good soldier. Perhaps the most experienced and levelheaded company commander I’ve got.

“Keep in mind we will all rely on each other today. Besides, it suits me that Benteen’s up front. If we’re confronted with the hostiles—Benteen hits them first. And if I have time to split my command for the attack as we did at Washita, then I can always count on the captain to come to my aid if I need him. No matter what you might call him—Captain Frederick Benteen is a soldier first.”

The insides of George Herendeen’s thighs were sweating. Tiny rivulets of cold water poured down the back of his knees and into his stockings already soaked and chafing. He was sure he’d never pull his feet from his boots come evening. Perhaps he could soak his feet in the cool waters of the Little Horn tonight.

But that meant this regiment under Custer would have to wade on into these Sioux and get finished with them before evening. George Herendeen didn’t want to think anymore about his sweaty feet.

It didn’t take long before the regiment descending the divide in column-of-fours started marching a little too fast for Custer’s liking. Herendeen figured whoever was setting the pace up there was just as anxious as he was to reach the beckoning green pastures down in the valley along that bright, silvery ribbon of the river.

But Custer wasn’t as patient as George Herendeen. He nudged Dandy into a gallop, racing to the head of command, where he could reassume the front of the march itself.

Through the pastel sego lilies and bright sunset orange of the paintbrush, down past the buttermilk-pale hanging globes of the yellow lady slipper and the twilight purple cockleshells of spiderwort, around the sage and through the tall grasses, Custer led his troops, on and on into the widening jaws of the Little Bighorn valley. Including the Arikaras and Crows, his civilian scouts and mule packers, along with those fire-hardened veterans and bowel-puckered greenhorns, Custer was leading approximately six
hundred seventy-five men into the shimmering haze as forenoon settled over the sleepy summer valley.

Herendeen twisted in the saddle at the grunt-bellied sounds of the young mule clambering up behind him.

Mark Kellogg reined alongside the scout, bouncing like a buggy spring on a washboard road.

He pulled in so he could ride with the scouts whose place it was to form the front of the march. “George, could I ask you for the use of your spurs? I noticed you’re not using them.”

Herendeen glanced down at the reporter’s boots, then at the wide-eyed young mule Kellogg battled for control. “Not having much good with that salt-pork mule, eh, Mr. Kellogg?”

Mark chortled in that nervous way of his, jabbing his wire-framed spectacles back on the bridge of his large nose. “I want to stay up with the lead. That’s what I want.”

“Here.” George pulled the unused spurs from his saddlebag. “But I can only advise you not to put them on or use them, Mr. Kellogg.”

“Why not?” Kellogg wiped sweat off his upper lip.

“It’s best from here on out you pull back to the rear of the column and stay put there. Not the healthiest place up here in the front with the scouts.”

Kellogg chirped, “Oh, George—you had me scared for a moment there! I’m expecting some interesting developments soon, and I want to keep up with you scouts so I can report on everything I’m able to see far ahead. You must understand—I’ve promised my readers back east that I’ll report the full and explosive details of this encounter with Sioux warriors. In those dispatches and stories I’ve shipped east already, you understand. I can’t let my readers down.”

“Mr. Kellogg,” Herendeen said, “take my spurs, if not my advice. Use one if not the other. If my guess is right, we’ll soon be seeing more action than you’ll be able to describe in a month of Sundays. Whoa, now! See there—the Crow boys are stopping ahead. They’ll wait for Custer himself to come up. You should be able to hear what they say to him for yourself.”

Mark Kellogg’s eyes widened as General Custer loped
past, standing in the stirrups, his knees flexing easily.
The man’s meant to be on horseback
, Kellogg thought to himself as he buckled the second spur over his round-toed boot. He decided to take Herendeen’s suggestion.
Just stay close to Custer. That’s where the action will be. That’s where the best story of your life will be found
.

The Crow scouts had ground to a halt on the bank of the Ash Creek and even dismounted, waiting for Custer and the troops to come up. There in the dust of the wide, beaten trail they had been following, the scouts scratched the soldier-chief a map.

“They say this creek flows down to the Little Horn,” Mitch Bouyer interpreted, watching the reporter move closer to the group. “The Greasy Grass of the Sioux, where Sitting Bull’s waiting for you and your boys, General.”

To Kellogg it sounded as if the half-breed still smarted from some old injury done him by Custer.

“They’re waiting for me, you say—eh, Bouyer?”

Kellogg had become a practiced observer. Without really thinking about it, he studied faces, the way people held and carried themselves. More important than learning what a person had to tell about a story, Kellogg had found out some time ago, was learning what a person didn’t want you to know.

From the look he read on Custer’s face at this moment, as the general knelt staring at the Crow interpreter, Kellogg learned something about the cracks widening in Custer’s command.

Mark Kellogg could tell that Custer didn’t much like Mitch Bouyer, perhaps more so than he had ever disliked any man in his life. Even the nagging Benteen.

But then the reporter remembered that a man like Custer would revel in being hated by them both—Benteen and Bouyer: brave men and worthy adversaries.

Custer dusted his hands on his buckskin britches. “The Sioux, Mr. Bouyer—they can wait until ice water is served in hell itself for all I care. I’m going to slip ’em a Custer surprise!”

A
DJUTANT
Cooke watched Custer rise from the dust where Bouyer and his Crows had drawn their map. The general snatched up his reins and leapt atop Dandy.

“Cookey, c’mon over here. I want a private word with you.”

Off to the side out of earshot, Custer and Cooke discussed their plan for deployment of the command. After pulling some maps from his saddlebags and handing them over to Custer for his inspection, Cooke scrawled notes in the small notebook he carried.

“I’m glad you’re in agreement,” Custer sighed. “You remember the Washita, don’t you, Billy?”

Cooke smiled with those straight, pearly teeth of his. Years ago at the Washita, his special crack unit of forty handpicked sharpshooters had bottled up Black Kettle’s fleeing Cheyenne just as Custer had planned it. They had laid down a murderous fire across the river, so very few Cheyenne had made it downstream to the Kiowa and Arapaho camps on foot. Most who tried had ended up
floating down the icy waters of the Washita, their bodies riddled by Spencer-rifle fire at the command of marksman W. W. Cooke.

“A glorious rout, General! And we’re about to pull another one out of your hat, aren’t we, sir?”

“That’s why I like you, Billy. Always thinking like a soldier.”

“I’ve learned from the best, General.”

Custer nodded. “We’ll use three wings to execute this attack again. And I’ll divide off the first wing at this time. It is—?”

Cooke yanked his watch out. “Twelve-oh-seven.”

“Very good. Let’s get this show on the road. Bring Benteen up.”

When Cooke had gathered the captain, along with Captain Thomas Weir and Lieutenant Edward Godfrey, he announced that Custer wanted to see them at the head of the march immediately. “The general’s compliments, Captain Benteen. We’re ready to deploy for the attack.”

Surrounded by the three officers and his adjutant a few yards from the column, Custer issued his orders. “For the purpose of our attack, Captain Weir’s D Company and Lieutenant Godfrey’s K Company are placed under your command, Captain Benteen.”

“Begging pardon, General.” Benteen cleared his dry throat, straightening himself in the saddle. “Don’t you think we’d better keep the regiment together? If it’s truly as big a camp as the scouts claim it is, you’re going to need the whole regiment standing together.”

Cooke watched a cloud pass over Custer’s face before he answered.

“Thank you for your consideration of my orders, Captain,” he replied acidly, eyes filled with icy fire. “Right now I can’t think of a reason why my battle plan would fail. Suppose you just remember that I give the commands, and you follow them.”

“Very good, General,” Benteen replied stiffly. “Where am I headed?”

Custer pointed to the southwest, toward the rolling hills,
deep valleys, and endless bare ridges that rose to meet the pale, sun-bleached prairie sky.

“Take your battalion in that direction. Watch for an Indian village, and pitch into anything you run across.”

Benteen gulped, staring off into that nothingness of rugged draws and coulees. “Begging consideration, General—why there?”

Custer bit his lip. Cooke figured the general forced himself to keep from swearing at this white-headed pain in the ass.

“I want you to continuously feel to our left, if for no other reason than to assure myself that the hostiles—which we know have been warned already—won’t flee upriver to the south. That’s all I’m going to say, Captain Benteen. You, better than any man I command, ought to know I’m not in the habit of explaining myself.”

The captain must have understood that plain enough, Cooke figured, for Benteen saluted, spoke, “Very well, sir. Understood. As you ordered.”

Benteen nodded at Weir and Godfrey. They followed.

Ed Godfrey slipped his watch from his unbuttoned tunic pocket. Twelve-fifteen
P.M.

How long will we have to ride through these bare, rocky hills before Benteen will figure out this is a fool’s errand Custer’s got him on? Is Custer paying Benteen back for his public criticism following the Elliott affair at the Washita? Or does Custer want to get Benteen’s hundred twenty men massacred?

Godfrey felt the cold trickle of water dripping all the way down to the base of his spine and hoped it was only sweat—not his first taste of outright fear. Hell, he hadn’t been afraid even when his small platoon had been practically surrounded at the Battle of the Washita. Not even then.

But this is something different
, he had to admit. The only reason he could figure that Custer had sent them on this fool’s errand chasing down the wind itself, was that Custer wanted Benteen out of the way.

Or killed …

As Benteen’s three companies splashed across the summer trickle of Ash Creek, then plodded away beneath a
cloud of choking dust, Custer turned back upstream with Cooke at his side to find a suitable place for Dandy to drink. Soon enough they were joined by more of the thirsty command and their dry-mouthed animals.

Custer struggled to pull a reluctant Dandy back from the creek.

“Don’t let them get too much, men!” he called to soldiers nearby. “They’ll get loggy on you, if you’re not careful.”

In turn, each of the remaining companies were given a few minutes at the scummy pools along the mossy banks of Ash Creek. As Dandy rested, Custer stared into the luminous, bone yellow sky at that relentless, one-eyed demon spewing fire across a breathless, choking landscape. Giving in, he removed his buckskin coat, tying it behind the cantle of his saddle.

Once more he carefully tucked his pants into the tall, dusty boots. His light gray army fatigue shirt already bore the dark blotches beneath each arm, between his shoulder blades, and in a necklace beneath his strawberry chin in stubble. He wiped his blood red kerchief around the sweatband of the cream-colored hat, then rerolled the brim up on the right side in the event he would have to sight his Remington sporting rifle from horseback. When the kerchief was properly knotted round his neck once more, Custer ordered the columns to move out.

Behind him plodded those other hot, dusty, dry troops, their mouths caked and puckering with the alkali of Ash Creek. Most men had already lashed their blue tunics behind their saddles. A motley gypsy gang of good and ugly heading down, down, down into that valley of cool, sparkling waters and inviting green grass extending clear to the Bighorns. A valley beckoning Custer’s army onward. Down to the green and cool.