The Crossed Sabres (36 page)

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The first day’s march brought the Seventh to the Heart River, but the next day brought sharp showers. As they made their way forward it grew colder and snow fell three inches deep. They followed the Beaver into rising broken country and on June 8 camped on the Powder River. Now it became a game of hide-and-seek, and the awesome responsibility of making contact with the hostiles rested squarely on General Terry’s shoulders.

On the tenth of June he dispatched Reno with six companies of cavalry and one Gatling gun to explore the upper part of the Powder. Reno left early in the afternoon with his force, A Company included. Winslow and his Ree scouts, led by Bloody Knife, scouted the area and brought back reports of large forces of Sioux. Reno had orders not to go beyond the Tongue, but the sign was so evident that he moved to the Rosebud and scouted that valley before rejoining Custer on the Yellowstone.

On June 21, Terry called Gibbon, Custer, and Brisbin to the cabin of the
Far West
anchored on the south bank of the Yellowstone at the mouth of the Rosebud. Around a map spread out on a table, they discussed the details of a strategy that
Terry had worked out during the morning. Terry said, “The Sioux are somewhere between the Rosebud and the Bighorn. General Gibbon, you will go up the Bighorn. Custer, you will go up the Rosebud. We must catch the Sioux with a strong, swift-moving strike force—and that’s you, Custer—and drive them against a less mobile blocking force, which you will be, General Gibbon. An anvil and a sledge, the two of you will be. General Gibbon, at what time can you be at the mouth of the Little Bighorn?”

Gibbon studied the map and made his calculations. “I will be at the Little Bighorn on the morning of the twenty-sixth.”

“Very well. General Custer, that will be your time to strike. Take your force up the Rosebud. Explore right and left.
But do not permit yourself to engage the enemy before Gibbon comes up!
” Terry was a mild man, but his voice was emphatic as he stressed this order.

Custer nodded casually, and Terry asked, “Do you need more men? Gibbon could give you Brisbin’s battalion of cavalry.”

“No,” Custer said shortly. “The Seventh can take care of anything we meet.”

The other three officers eyed Custer carefully. He was not himself, they thought. There was a sullen glumness in him that was unusual.

Terry admired Custer, thinking him the best Indian fighter in the army, while the other two were less enthusiastic. Terry said, “Gibbon, give Custer part of your Crow scouts. They can assist Winslow and Reynolds. Custer, you will leave in the morning. I will go with Gibbon, and if all goes well, we will meet on the twenty-sixth.”

When the meeting adjourned, Custer went immediately to his own headquarter tent and sent for his officers. They soon assembled, twenty-eight of them, dirty and tired from the hard march.

“We shall leave in the morning,” Custer said. He was a lank figure in buckskin with a scarlet flowing kerchief and
a head of hair grown ragged. The sun had scorched his face and there was none of his usual electric energy visible as he outlined the plan. “Gibbon marches up the Bighorn while we march up the Rosebud. We will not take the wagon train. Each troop will have twelve mules. Are there any questions?”

“That’s not enough mules to carry everything, General. We need wagons, too,” Algernon Smith said.

“Wagons will slow us down too much.”

Custer answered a few questions curtly, then dismissed the officers. When they were moving back to their companies, Lieutenant Weir asked Edgerly, “What’s wrong with the general? I’ve never seen him like this.”

“He’s still sore over the treatment he got in Washington,” Edgerly answered. “He’s out to prove them wrong, but he’s very depressed.”

The regiment settled down to sleep on the eve of the march—all except Winslow and Nate Zeiss. “Looks like we’ll be into this thing soon, Nate,” Tom said. “How do you feel about it?”

Zeiss shook his head, doubt in his black eyes. “Going to be bad, Tom. I feel it in my bones.”

Winslow knew Nate was thinking of his family, and said, “Well, we’ll meet them with a strong force. Custer has about a thousand effectives. That’s more than the Sioux will have. Gibbon will be coming with even more, and General Crook will throw his entire force against the hostiles.”

But what none of them knew—what neither Custer nor Terry knew—was that Crook’s command lay with double guards around it, licking their wounds after a sharp defeat inflicted by Crazy Horse four days earlier. Nor did they know that Crook would not move to help them. Worse still, Crazy Horse had joined Sitting Bull and now, swelled with triumph, was waiting for the army to arrive.

The next morning the Seventh Cavalry passed in review before Terry, Gibbon, and Custer. In the absence of the band, massed trumpets supplied the music. Officers saluted smartly,
and the lean, bronzed troopers followed in every variety of costume. Slouch hats, gray or blue shirts, and the regulation sky-blue trousers predominated. To ease saddle wear, many had lined their trouser seats with canvas. Each man carried a Springfield single-shot carbine and a Colt revolver with one hundred rounds for the carbine and twenty-four for the pistol. The packtrain followed, the unruly mules bearing rations for fifteen days and more carbine ammunition. In all, the regiment counted 31 officers, 566 enlisted men, 35 Indian scouts, and about a dozen packers.

Terry watched with a thoughtful eye as they passed. “You have a good regiment, Custer. The best in the service, I do believe.”

Custer showed a flash of his old spirit. “The Seventh has been the best in the army for ten years.”

Brisbin, a member of the Third Cavalry and a truculent man, gave Custer a sharply irritated glance. From the first he had thought that Custer’s regiment was not strong enough, had urged that four companies of his own be added to the Seventh and had asked Terry to go in command. When Terry had rejected the idea, saying that he had not had much experience fighting Indians, Brisbin had said, “General, you have more sense in your little finger than Custer has in his whole body. You underrate your ability and overrate Custer’s.”

Terry had only laughed, but Brisbin had said seriously, “I do not want my battalion placed under Custer’s command.”

“You do not seem to have confidence in Custer.”

“None in the world,” Brisbin had responded.

The last file passed, and Terry handed Custer a folded paper. “This is the written statement of the instructions I gave you yesterday. I have left them purposely indefinite in certain things. I have too much faith in your judgment as a commander to impose fixed orders upon you.”

Custer took the paper, gave it a cursory glance, and thrust it into his pocket. Terry went on. “I shall be with Gibbon on the Little Bighorn on the morning of the twenty-sixth. Be
sure to send Herendeen back as soon as you reach Tullock’s Creek. We must work together. The victory depends on both columns striking at the same time. I wish you luck.”

Custer grasped Terry’s hand, then whirled around. As he broke his horse into a gallop, Brisbin called after him, “Now, Custer, don’t be greedy. Wait for us.”

Custer looked back, flung up his arm, making a figure of dash and gallantry in the day’s growing sunlight. “I won’t,” he answered, and with that enigmatic answer, he let his horse go and rushed away toward the column’s head.

As the Seventh moved up the Rosebud, Winslow watched the broken country unroll before him. The Rosebud lay at the bottom of a shallow canyon, and the column followed the edge of the water, but sometimes rose to the top of the bluff. The entire area was a powder-gray, fine-grained land with grass and sage tufting it, scorched by summer’s heat and scarred by harsh winters.

The column camped short of twilight, still on the Rosebud, and fires began to gleam along the earth. Winslow sent the Crow and Ree scouts away, and when Custer summoned the officers, Lieutenant Smith said to Winslow, “Sergeant, I want you to go with me.”

Custer stood beside a large fire, his giant adjutant standing close.

“Gentlemen,” Custer said, speaking in a suppressed manner, “I have complete faith in this regiment. I call on you now to give me the best you have in you.”

He looked tired, a rare thing for this man. His bony face tipped down, his thin long lips half hidden behind his mustache, his face in a shadowed repose. All of the officers, Winslow saw, were studying the general carefully, not understanding his mood.

“We can expect to meet a thousand warriors or more. We came here to find Indians, and we shall find them—if I have to march this regiment down to Nebraska or back to the Agencies. I have too much pride in the Seventh to go back
empty-handed, and I know you feel the same way. General Terry offered me Brisbin’s battalion of cavalry, but I refused it. I want nothing to break the present knit spirit of our command.” Then his face took on a flash of his old spirit as he said, “I am confident that the Seventh can handle whatever it faces. That is all I have to say tonight. Thank you, gentlemen.”

As the group dissolved, Winslow overheard Lieutenant Wallace say to Lieutenant Godfrey, “You know, I think Custer is going to be killed.”

“Why do you think that?”

“I’ve never seen him so depressed. There’s a shadow over him.”

When Winslow got back to where A Company was bedded down, he gave an account of what Custer had said. Hines looked at him, puzzled. “Did the general say he’d march us to Nebraska? I thought Terry had restricted us to a fifteenday march.”

Leo Dempsey grunted, “You know Custer. He’ll do what he pleases now that we’re cut off from Terry.”

They ate their bacon and lay around the fire speaking of the action to come. The talk finally turned to religion, and Dempsey said truculently, “I ain’t worried about gettin’ killed. There ain’t nothin’ out there after a man dies.”

“No heaven, no hell?” Hines demanded. “That’s what you’re hoping for, Dempsey? Not me!”

Dempsey glared at Hines, his chin stuck out pugnaciously. He was a man who had given rein to his appetites, and even now with death just over the way was not ready to give up. “You believe all that stuff about the streets of gold, Hines? I thought you was a smarter man than that!” He grinned at Winslow. “Tell Hines about it, Sarge. You ain’t one of them Bible-thumpers, are you?”

Winslow was poking a stick into the fire, watching it burn slowly, and he looked toward Dempsey with a sober expression. “I went through all four years of the Civil War, Leo,”
he said, his voice soft. “And in every battle, I was afraid. Not of getting killed, but of what comes after that.”

“Aw, Sarge, that’s just preacher talk! They get paid for talking like that!”

Tom Winslow leaned back, his eyes thoughtful. “My grandfather didn’t get paid. He was a tough fellow, a mountain man. Could have been just about anything, I guess, but he spent his life in a little Indian mission, not too far from here. He married an Indian girl, my grandmother.”

“I didn’t know that, Tom!” Hines said with surprise. “These may be some of your kinfolks we’ll be shootin’ at pretty soon.”

“Maybe so,” Winslow said. He was silent for a time, and finally said, “I guess I’ve seen too many real Christians to be a skeptic. Lots of phony ones, but that’s true of any group. Plenty of phonies and cowards in the Confederate Army, but I stuck with it.”

“You really worried about getting killed when we go against the Sioux?” Dempsey said. He admired Winslow, and his confidence seemed to ebb away. “Well, I done some bad things, I guess. Maybe I done enough good ones so I’ll balance out.”

“My grandfather always said a man would lose if he tried to make heaven like that,” Winslow said. He was thinking of the giant old man who so filled his memory.

“Well, how else is a man to get in?” Dempsey complained.

“He said we were all in such bad shape that nothing we could do would get us in. And that’s why Jesus Christ was his only hope. When he died, his last words were, ‘The blood of Jesus—it’s good enough for me!’ ”

Zeiss nodded. “That is good, Tom. I’m a Christian myself. I want to live for my wife and child, but if I die, I know I will be with God.”

Dempsey ducked his head, saying no more, and the talk died down. The fire settled with a sibilant hissing sound, and Winslow rolled into his blanket. The conversation had sobered him, and he realized how vulnerable he was. Sleep
would not come, and as he listened to sounds of the camp, he thought of his grandfather and of his parents—and of Faith and her steadfast spirit.

Just about everybody I admire is a Christian.
The thought touched his mind, and he grew restless. He had prayed when he pursued the Indians who had abducted Laurie and Faith, and now the urge to pray came again. But always he thought of Spence Grayson, and he knew enough of the Bible to understand that as long as he harbored bitterness and hatred, he could not call on God. Finally sleep came, but it was a tattered sleep that brought no relief.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Valley of Death

At dusk on the twenty-fourth Custer led the regiment into a freshly deserted Indian camp. The tracks of lodgepole travois scratched the ground everywhere, skeleton frames of wickiups and a sun-dance lodge indicated where a camp had been. One of the officers entered the lodge and discovered a white man’s scalp hanging from a pole. “It must have been one of Gibbon’s troopers killed on the Yellowstone last month,” Lieutenant Cooke said.

The location of Gibbon’s regiment was welcome news to Custer, but disturbing to Herendeen, who wanted more specific orders. “This is where I’m supposed to go find Gibbon, General.”

He waited for Custer’s order to take a message back to Gibbon, but Custer only glanced at him without giving him a direct command. That made Herendeen angry and he wheeled away. It was a dangerous ride, one which he would be paid for, but he’d just as soon not risk his life unless Custer ordered it.

That night they made camp as a dry hard wind rolled the desert’s smoke-fine dust over them. Benteen, his face stiff with dislike, sought out Custer to discuss their plan of attack. He stared at Custer’s flag, which bore the two stars of a major general stitched on the pennant’s field. Custer had been that once, but now he had no right to use the title, in Benteen’s opinion.