Seize the Sky: Son of the Plains-Volume 2 (37 page)

From the Medicine Tail Coulee the pony soldiers had struck out north by east, riding hell-bent for leather to the highest ground. Always take the high ground, they had been taught. Secure that high ground, General Custer’s damp lips had reminded them before he slipped into blessed unconsciousness.

Once the soldiers reached that hilltop, the thousands upon thousands of spectators watched them spread out in a thin skirmish line along the ragged, grassy spine three-quarters of a mile long.

“Ride, you wolverines!” Tom Custer hollered to spur on the Michigan boys gathered tightly round him in their charge, like a blue fist sheltering the general slung over the saddle in front of Tom, his spirit oozing out of him with every drop that soaked his saddle red.

“Ride, goddammit!” Tom bellowed again, goading his men to the top of the ridge, where he could finally turn and look back into the valley.

There at the southern end of the spine, Tom gazed at the throbbing lines of black ants scurrying out of their anthills, streaming in a solid phalanx across the river, splashing up the slope toward the retreating cavalry.

“Troops, dismount!” he hollered, then his eyes darted over to Yates.

The big Michigander nodded and flashed him a huge, grim smile. It had been the proper order to give.

“Form skirmish lines—out—left flank! Out—right flank!” George Yates bellowed, already on the ground, pistol out and waving at the stragglers.

Not all the soldiers heard Tom Custer or George Yates. Not all could. There was simply too much sporadic shooting and yelling, besides all the horses neighing, bucking, and fighting their handlers. The animals had smelled the rippling water when they loped down into the Medicine Tail, then were refused a drink, lashed all the way to the top of this dry, dusty ridge without a chance to lap their muzzles in the cool river. Sadly the greenhorns didn’t stand
much of a chance controlling their wild mounts, rearing, fighting the bit—crazed with thirst.

Some soldiers clung to their saddles, while others stayed on the ground. A few riders spurred in and out of the skirmish formations, shouting orders, waving commands down the line—officers mostly, or veteran sergeants. Anyone who would take charge. Time and again a few cooler heads turned and glanced down the grassy slope into the river valley at those great camp circles spread like clusters of buffalo-hide jewels strewn across the green velvet of the meadows.

They knew in their guts that no man had ever seen such a gathering before and lived to tell of it.

“Form up that left flank! They’ll sweep us off the top if you men don’t hold!” Tom shouted at his end of the spine of high grass and cactus after the general had been placed in the care of his own C Troop.

Keogh, Yates, Smith, and Calhoun spread the word, working feverishly among their men, attempting to wrench some order out of the panic in their flight up the slope.

Frightened out of their wits, most of the raw recruits simply let the reins go. Horses reared away in the melee, dust, and noise, nostrils flaring and eyes wide as nose bags with fear—then galloped off downhill toward the river and water, big oxbow stirrups flapping. Ammunition jingled in every saddle pocket. The mounts of some were gone for good.

“Tommy boy!”

It was Keogh’s voice young Custer recognized above the din of the first carbine shots as some of the veterans turned, dropped to their knees, and began to return the Sioux fire. He wheeled Vic on the mare’s haunches, darting back to slide from the bloody saddle near the Irishman.

“Lookee there, man!” Myles pointed downhill. “We got them bastards stopped for a wee bitten moment or two!”

Sure enough the warriors were piling up behind the brow of the hill, most releasing their ponies, driving the animals back downhill to the river and the villages beyond. From a clump of grass or shadowy sage, the warriors tried to fire a potshot every now and then.

For the time being, the tall grass would hide a soldier lying prone, but only until that soldier fired his carbine. Then a burst of blue powder-smoke betrayed him. And the Indians returned his fire. Perhaps the noisy rattle of Henrys and Winchester.

For close to an hour the soldiers held Gall off while the warriors fired volley after volley from their repeaters or old muzzle loaders into the scattered lines of white troopers. Here and there a young soldier might hear for the first time that soapy smack of lead pounding into a human body. They were still breathing, and still alive—holding the Sioux at bay.

There wasn’t any widespread nervousness or anxiety or fright … not just yet.

They had the Indians held down for the time being. Dr. Lord was working on Custer right up there in that ring of dead horses. The general would be on his feet again soon, and then they’d fight their way out of this red nightmare.

With Custer to lead them, they could fight their way right through the bleeding heart of hell.…

Beyond the throbbing movement just down the slope, Myles Keogh peered at warriors massing at the river, crossing the silvery ribbon of water before they streamed north, racing toward the far end of the sway backed ridge.

If those red buggers sweep the end of this ridge
…

He didn’t want to think any longer on it.

“Myles!”

Keogh turned. Tom Custer was hollering, waving his pistol in the air. “George! Jimmy!”

When Tom called, the inner circle hunkered on the run to Tom’s central position beside the general. Young Custer knelt in the grass and sage, his brother leaning against him. Dr. Lord sweated over a wet, blackened belly dressing that was drying about as fast as it was sopping up the flow that didn’t seem to want to stop. A soldier’s bloody tunic lay in Custer’s lap.

“General!” Keogh growled in surprise as he knelt at Custer’s side. Myles found himself marveling at the strength in the man.

He’s never truly been wounded before … not a bullet hole in
all this time … taking it now like it’s something happens every day. Not many would take a close-range shot like that and still be breathing, much less rousing, eyes open, like he is
—

“Myles …” Custer coughed up some blood, a pink froth bubbling over his lower lip.

“General,” Dr. Lord whispered, pressing down on the compress all the harder, “don’t try to talk now.”

“End of the ridge …” Custer sputtered.

“You want us to go to the end of the ridge?” Tom asked anxiously, eyes darting nervously along the spine of grass and sage.

Custer nodded, weakly, eyes half-mast and watery.

“He’s right,” Keogh replied in a whisper. He pointed down the slope at the warriors streaming off to the north. “We don’t get to the end of this ridge … north—the bastards can have full run at us when they ride up the north slope. Down there at least we keep them at bay.”

Tom looked at each one in turn. “That means we’ll have to protect both ends of the ridge.”

Calhoun nodded.

Yates wiped a hand across his dry mouth. “Keogh’s right. We don’t keep ’em off both slopes … we’re done.”

“We’re done as it is,” Lord whined, his greenish face gone white with fear as his wet hands worked in the general’s warm, sticky blood.

“We’re not done, goddammit!” Tom snapped. He peered again at each of his old drinking partners, longtime friends who had lived so much life with him and the gallant Seventh.

“Up to you now, Tom,” Calhoun said it for all of them.

“The gauntlet’s passed, Tommy!” Keogh cheered as best he could.

Here we kneel, commanders of five of the best horse companies in the whole gawdamned world
, Myles thought to himself.
We’ll make it—by the saints—we’ll make it!”

“Don’t you think we ought to be moving!” Lieutenant Algernon Smith suggested, shouldering in on the tight huddle around Custer. “Like the general ordered, Cap’n Custer?”

“Fresh is right, Tom,” Yates replied.

“Yes.” Tom gazed round at the others. His brother’s most trusted officers.

Myles placed a big paw on Tom’s chest, stopping him. “Who’s to ride to the ridge?”

“Why … all—”

“No,” Keogh growled low, like a wolf with a den to guard. “Cainnot be that way, Tommy. Who the hell’s to support the retreat? Who’ll stand behind to guard the rear?”

Tom remembered Autie’s words. “Calhoun,” he squeaked with a dust-dry throat ever tightening. “Autie asked you to stay and support our rear. Cover the retreat.”

There wasn’t a flinch of an eye nor a betraying muscle twitch along his jaw that said Jimmy Calhoun wasn’t ready to do exactly as ordered. Stay behind and cover their backsides as the rest retreated along the dusty ridge.

“Yes, sir!” Calhoun shouted as he snapped a salute. Then he bit his lip a moment. “I told the general, Tom … told him personal I’d not be found wanting when it come time to prove how deeply I appreciated my commission he put me in for.” He dragged a hand beneath one eye, smearing dust in a hot streak. “Suppose that time’s come, ain’t it?”

Before Tom could respond, Keogh rose to his feet beside Calhoun. Two big oaks hovered over them all like huge Doric columns.

“With your permission, Cap’n Custer,” Keogh began, a smile on his thick lips above that black Vandyke beard, “I Company will assist Lieutenant Calhoun in the rearguard action,
sir!
”

Staring up into the cruel sunlight that sucked at his juices, sensing those two long shadows stretching out of the bone yellow sky, hulking shadows of his two friends, George Armstrong Custer fought back the tears. The warm syrup of his own blood choked him as he tried to spit some words out.

Still he knew he could show his men just what he thought, exactly how he felt, by doing something he had never done before in front of any of them. His tears told them all how deeply he had been touched by their time together. And how he felt about what they were ready to sacrifice for one another.

Tom looked up from his brother’s silent, smeared face. “I think the general approves of your request, Myles.” His quiet, choking voice sounded strange, distant, after Keogh’s loud, lusty proclamation.

Tom saluted Keogh there in that bright light. “Permission granted to lay back in support of our march along with Lieutenant Calhoun.”

“George …” the general whispered in a red bubble, vainly reaching for Yates’s hand.

The captain bent so he could hear Custer’s liquid whisper at his ear. When Yates leaned back and returned his hat to his head, Lieutenant Smith spoke that question every one of them shared.

“What’d he say?”

“Al, he told me to assume command … if Tom should fall.”

Tom Custer nodded, saluting Yates. “Autie would want it that way: the Michigan boys around him. If I drop, you take care of the general, George. No matter what! You hear me? AH of you? You damn well take care of the general. He must not fall into their hands—”

“He won’t be left behind!” Smith shouted, fussing bravely with the bright crimson tie fluttering below Custer’s neck.

Funny that I should notice it now
, Keogh thought.
That tie’s the same damned color as Custer’s blood, bright and wet against the general’s gray jersey pullover.

“We’ll see he goes with us,” Yates replied softly. “Come the end, the general won’t be taken alive.”

Tom gulped. “I suppose we all know what’s expected of us?” He straightened his Custer chin proudly. They all nodded without reply. “We make it to the end of the ridge, we can hole up till Benteen gets here with the pack train. Reinforcements. We’ll last.”

Suddenly Tom whirled, grabbing Keogh’s shirt with one hand, clutching Calhoun with his left. “After Yates, Smith, and I have the end of the ridge secured, I want a protected retreat back to us from you two. Fall back—orderly.”

Tommy’s finding command a bit harder than he thought it be
,
Keogh thought.
That whipped-dog look in his eye—save as many men as we can comes time we fall back.

Keogh glanced at Calhoun, finding the blond lieutenant staring at him, smiling grimly. All three knew what the chances would be of the two ever rejoining the rest at the end of the ridge. Any man with but one good eye could peer down the slopes and see that where there once was a halting, a starting, and a stopping among the warriors, now a shrieking red wave rumbled up the hill.

It was time for Custer’s command to move out—those who were lucky enough to be moving at all. Those who would have a little time bought dearly for them by Calhoun and Keogh and their two little companies of gallant soldiers.

Whittled down like dry grass before the winter wind.

Gall had led his warriors across the river. Flying pony hooves sent cascades of spraying, jewellike water and muddy sand high into the air over them. Sioux faces grim and hideously painted.

Death to them all!

Straight up the hillside they charged into the face of that terrible wall of soldier fire. Two warriors tumbled off their little mustangs in the first volley, the bodies rolling to a stop among the tall grass and cactus. Others rushed in to drag away the bodies of those fallen, out of range of the soldier’s guns. Ahead of them along the spine, many of the soldiers were shouting, running for what horses were left them now.

Gall stood uneasily, watching. Some of the white men stayed behind—kneeling or stretched out on their bellies in the tall grass, firing their carbines as calmly as they could at any copper-skinned target that presented itself.

But those soldiers leaving to dash north along the spine—they were the frightened ones. Gall realized they were scared only because they had been given a chance to live now. Hope can be a terrible burden for a man with nothing else to cling to.

Those left behind—those men gathering about Calhoun and Keogh like cottonwood saplings round two tall, powerful oaks—they knew what their odds were. Perhaps best
to take your bullet or arrow here and now rather than drag the damned thing out.

That’s why such an eerie calm descended among those hardened veterans and green recruits that long afternoon on Calhoun Hill. Few men had ever experienced that singular feeling and lived to tell another soul of it. A peaceful, purposeful calm that passes over a man when he is finally reconciled to his own passing. Especially a soldier, young or old, when called upon by duty and friendship to cover the retreat of his brothers-in-arms. To give up his life so that others might have a better chance of holding onto theirs.