Stone Song (46 page)

Yes, he had been in trouble. Had been court-martialed and set down. Had gotten into trouble even this spring. But his difficulties came from passion, from burning desire. If this waywardness sometimes brought disapproval from his superiors, it was not a quality the army truly condemned. They tut-tutted but secretly admired it. Politicians admired it. The American public loved it.

In fact, General Custer thought it might be about to vault him over the heads of those stuffy superiors and into highest office. The Democratic party would be holding its quadrennial convention next week, its main purpose to nominate new candidates for President and Vice President of the United States. Certain influential men had dropped a word to the wise: A young, chivalrous, dashing general of the army would make a good nominee for Vice President, certainly. In fact, many generals had become President in the last half-century.

What could be more perfect!
thought the lieutenant colonel in his heart of hearts.
A really extraordinary man rewarded in the right way!

What was needed, hinted these influential men, was a smashing victory against the Sioux. The American people were impatient with a government that could not keep savages in line. They would not tolerate letting the Sioux chase buffalo through the Black Hills, where millions of dollars’ worth of gold waited to be mined. Ridiculous. They would respond to a man who put a resounding end to such nonsense.

So Custer listened to General Terry’s plan. Custer was to lead the Seventh
Cavalry up the Rosebud and follow the lodge trail to wherever the big Sioux village was, probably on the Little Bighorn. Meanwhile Terry and Gibbon would get their soldiers, slowed by the infantry, into place. It wouldn’t do to hit the village and let the Indians run, as they always did. Custer was to strike from the east. If the Sioux fled downstream, Terry and Gibbon would be waiting. If upstream, they would be running into the arms of Crook.

Custer was willing. He was eager. He was an experienced Indian fighter—the victor of the Washita—and knew what to expect.

Custer believed he knew Indians. He even admired them, as a hunter admires the buffalo, the mountain lion, the grizzly bear. He didn’t think of them as men and women with children, people who got hungry and cold and loved the feeling of being alive. He thought of them as a slightly magnificent but utterly doomed species, more animal than human.

Had someone told him that men of spiritual power were in the village he meant to destroy—Crazy Horse, Horn Chips, Sitting Bull, who saw soldiers falling into camp, the young Black Elk, beneficiary of a great vision—Custer would have smiled in amusement or rolled his eyes. He thought his job was finishing off a benighted people, a job Nature herself was doing, but too slowly.

Yes, the only danger was indecision. The only issue was sufficient will. The only strategic concern was to force the Indians for once to choose fight, not flight.

So when Terry spoke of caution, of coordination with the other forces, of prudence, Custer wasn’t listening. These were the worries of the official army. The truth was that neither the army nor the public loved such old-maidish stuff. They rewarded the men who were not afraid, men who saw opportunity and seized it, men with the courage to ignore such mutterings and win the day.

He knew that he was such a man.

The Seventh Cavalry found the lodge trail on the Rosebud and marched along it toward the Little Bighorn. All was going according to plan. Custer would rest his regiment on June 25 and attack the next day. On the morning of June 25 Custer’s scouts spotted the village to the northwest. They pointed out the campfire smoke to the general, and the pony herd on the hillsides beyond. A big village, they warned him. They also told Custer they thought the regiment had been spotted or would be spotted any moment.

So the Indians might escape after all. Custer reacted with élan. Instead of reconnoitering, he decided to gather information about the lay of the land and the nature of the enemy on the attack. He sent a battalion under Captain Benteen south to make sure no lodges sat down there. He sent
another battalion under Major Reno down a creek with orders to attack the upstream end of the village. He kept a third battalion under his own command to ride north and hit the village right in what appeared to be its center.

His only worry was that the bastards might get away.

The plan: Reno would hit the upstream end of the village. The warriors would rush to that point. Then Custer would hit the downstream end, scatter them, and mop up.

For the valiant, life was delicious.

On the afternoon of June 25, 1876, guidons flying, his command cantered down Medicine Tail Coulee.

Major Reno followed his orders, at least for a while. His battalion crossed the Little Bighorn and attacked the lodges at the south end of the big village.

The warriors were scurrying—getting their horses, most of which had been turned out on the hillside. Getting their weapons. Painting themselves. Making medicine. Readying their spirits. So the soldiers came hard. When they got within rifle shot of the village, the warriors laid down such a fire that the soldiers got off and fought on foot.

Still, gunfire damaged the village. These were Hunkpapa lodges, people led by Sitting Bull and Gall. As it happened, Reno’s soldiers killed some women and children in that initial fire. Among them were Gall’s two wives and three children. Up Gall’s gullet surged a murderous rage.

Crazy Horse came riding with a strong bunch of Oglala warriors from their village downstream. He was dressed and painted as the man anointed Rider should be—his light hair hanging below his waist, shirtless, hailstones painted on his body, a streak of lightning on his face. Most important, the red-tailed hawk was on his head and Hawk flew above him. He could feel her like a throb in his blood, and without sound could hear her barbaric war cry, KEE-ur, KEE-ur.

She was huge in his heart.

He saw the warriors getting ready to charge and wondered if they had enough bullets to win. Then he thought of the fight on the Rosebud a quarter-moon ago, when the soldiers’ rifles got so hot they wouldn’t eject the spent shells.

So he kicked his horse into the no-man’s-land between white and Lakota warriors. He rode in curves, circles, slants, every which way, drawing the soldier fire. As he rode, he felt himself in a swirl of time and place between one world and another, a place of spirit, a place utterly protected against not only the bullets ripping through the air at him but the physical world itself. He was Rider, and invulnerable.

He rode hard back to his own side, where the warriors were shouting his praises. “Hold your fire!” he shouted.

Back into no-man’s-land he rode, exhilarated, serene in the confidence that he couldn’t be touched. He made a show of riding tricks. He called mockery at the soldiers who couldn’t hit him.

He felt like Rider today.

Back to his warriors at a gallop. “Wait!” he shouted. “Soon!”

And once more toward the whites.

The fire was heavier now. He could feel the anger and frustration of the soldiers in it. But it was impotent.

So he circled back toward his warriors, blew the whistle meaning “Charge!” and rushed the whites’ left flank headlong. He felt the surge of Lakota fighting men behind him.

The soldiers broke and ran.

The Lakota killed some from behind. Before long, though, the soldiers reached some trees on a little rise by the river.

The fight slowed. It was hard to attack them in their good cover.

Soon the whites broke and again and ran for the river. Straight off the high bank they jumped their horses into deep water where there was no crossing.

The Lakota caught them from behind. They clubbed the soldiers off their horses into the swift and flooding stream. They used arrows. They killed mercilessly.

The whites who got across the river climbed a hill where they were hard to reach.

Some of the warriors stayed up on the hill and kept the soldiers pinned down there.

Most of them came back and started picking up abandoned rifles and shells, grinning at each other, exulting. They jabbered and joked with the queer nervous energy that follows a wrestle with death.

Until a big shout came. “Soldiers!”

A messenger, riding hard from downstream.

“More soldiers!” he yelled. “Down that ridge where the dust is!”

Another fight. No one was alarmed. Yes, that was the middle of the camp, where the women and children had fled from this first attack. So it was simple—they would kill the soldiers.

Energy coiled and gathered in them. Another fight. Another look at death. Yes, they were ready. This was their day, supremely their day.

These soldiers were coming directly from the east. The warriors looked at each other speculatively. Maybe these were the ones Sitting Bull saw falling upside down into camp.

“
Hokahe!
” some of them yelled. Others looked at each other appraisingly.
Yes, let them come. Yes, let’s go get them
.

Gall and Crazy Horse drew the warriors together with their whistles. They asked for a charge. The women and children were down there, and the lodges were half-down. They must strike hard.

The martial spirit was huge in Gall—his wives and children murdered. The warriors saw it and felt it.

“This is a good day to die!”

“This is a good day to die!”

They roared downstream.

Crazy Horse circled through the Oglala village. His pinto was played out. Black Shawl, anticipating, was holding a second mount for him. He saw Sitting Bull briefly. The Big Bellies were staying in the village, ready to fight or flee if the soldiers got too close.

A pretty young woman, unmarried, was singing encouragement:

“
Brothers-in-law
,

now your friends have come
.

Take courage
.

Would you see me taken captive?
”

Crazy Horse gathered up some warriors and galloped for the river.

Gall and his forces were just getting there. Four Sahiyela flanked each other on the far side of the river, facing the soldiers, four alone against two or three hundred. They laid down a fire that slowed the whites down.
Brave men
, thought Crazy Horse.

Galloping toward the river, he saw that Gall was crossing now. He appeared to outnumber the soldiers easily. As his men charged the white line, the soldiers started falling back. The village was going to be safe.

And now Crazy Horse saw what was going to happen. Gall was pushing up the hill hard. Other warriors from the lower circles were crossing the river behind him. The front of the double column of soldiers was getting hit bluntly and hard, the whites would have to …

Custer was determined to get his five companies back together and make a defensive circle, damn it. The ones who descended to the ford were being driven up the coulee and onto the hill to the north. The general and his companies above were fighting their way north to join them. They would kill the horses if they had to, use them for breastworks, and lay down a fire these savages would never forget.

Custer looked merrily across his horse’s neck at his brother Tom. “It is a good day to kill!” he said mockingly.

They had to get together first. He yelled, he fired, he used his spurs. The enemy was pouring up the hill. Where had all these Injuns come
from? Where had they gotten all this ammunition? Why had they suddenly decided to fight instead of run?

When General Custer saw that fellow, the correspondent of that Bismarck newspaper, he would have some choice words for the high command. The newspapers always liked it when field officers said what asses the generals back in their headquarters were.

The enemy fire was heavy. Some men of these companies weren’t going to get to that high ridge where the stand would be made. He grinned sardonically to himself. Not everyone was chosen by fate.

Crazy Horse saw it. The coulee running upward, the hill behind. Beyond that he remembered the long ridge stretching to the northwest. The battle laid itself out in his mind. He watched the white soldiers going for the high ground where they would make their stand. He saw himself and his warriors coming at them from behind. He thought so. He was almost sure.

He got off his fresh pony. He threw gopher dust on it to confound the enemy. He put spears of grass into his long hair to suggest snow that drives creatures before it. He called upon the power of the wind to confuse the enemy. When enough warriors were gathered, he blew the eagle-bone whistle. For once he raised his voice: “Let every Oglala,” he cried, “every man of any circle who wants to, follow me!”

They whipped their ponies after the war leader Crazy Horse, and he felt the power of all these men propel him forward.

He rode for the river and turned downstream, away from Gall’s fight, toward the hillside that would lead him up to the far end of the ridge. He saw it. As the soldiers came up the hill, firing back down at Gall, he would hit them from the other side. He would turn the place of their stand into a trap. But nothing was certain yet.

He rode hard, rode furiously, rode eternally.

When Crazy Horse came up the last rim below the highest ridge, he saw them, yes, the backs of the first soldiers to the top. Not forted up yet, just arriving. It was perfect.

He looked. He felt the sun on his face. He felt Hawk in his heart, jubilant. This day was radiant as the one in his boyhood vision more than twenty winters ago.

Now was the time. Yes, he would charge straight into the whites, trusting Rider’s power. When they saw the strength of his medicine, his men would follow him. The surprised soldiers would scatter like prairie hens. Then there would be nothing left but the killing.

He put his quirt to his pony and screamed. “KEE-ur! KEE-ur!”

PART FIVE

GOING HOME

In the twilight

the spirit of His Crazy Horse stands

on the sundance ground
.

He raises the sacred
canupa

to the sky and intones a prayer:

“In a sacred manner I send a voice to you
.

In a sacred manner I send a voice to you
.

To half of the sky

I send my voice in a sacred manner
.

In a sacred manner I send a voice to you.”

As the light grows
,

he continues to pray
.

Hundreds of Lakota people

rise up around him
,

dancing in celebration
.

Over the thumps of feet and drum

we cannot hear his words
.