“The men what bring me Crazy Horse’s scalp along with Sitting Bull’s … I’ll let those men finish a keg all on their own!” Coleman promised down at the end of the crude plank bar Tom leaned against.
The tent rang with exuberant voices of hundreds of shoving, sweaty soldiers, each one cursed of an undying thirst yet to be quenched. Coleman’s was a promise that made every dry recruit think hard on searching out those two infamous chieftains all on one’s own.
“Shit!” a soldier near Tom joked among his friends in a fevered, drunken knot, “how the hell is this trader gonna know if a scalp I raise come from the head of Crazy Horse himself anyway?”
“Hell!” another soldier shouted to the trader pouring his cup full of amber liquid. “Maybe this whiskey of yours’ll even stop my damned knees from rattling like nails in a hollow keg!”
Very few Seventh Calvary officers ended up playing poker or monte that night aboard the Far West. Most of the gamblers turned out to be members of Gibbon’s or Terry’s staffs. Custer’s officers chose better things to do with their time.
This inky night that had slithered over the mouth of the Rosebud found most of the young men, and old alike penning a last letter home. Their officers had informed them some Rees were heading east in the morning with some of the last mail to be dispatched for a week or more, suggesting the men use the time wisely. Those who couldn’t write had those who could pen still more letters. And for a few hours, most minds and hearts were on home. Even those old files who didn’t have any other home but the army now still possessed some dim, foggy memory of that warm, secure place where a man’s mind will go before he’s pushed to think of nothing more basic than staying alive.
Letters to family back in the States. Long, rambling, promising letters to sweethearts … pretty faces that stared out at a young, frightened man in blue from a little tintype he guarded in his hand as he scribbled some last words to that special someone back in Ohio or Michigan, New York or South Carolina. A tintype he would eventually slip inside his blouse and wear against his skin over the next few days as they stalked the mighty Lakota bands.
It would never change, no matter what war a man found himself marching off to. There was always someone he could write and tell of the secret fears he didn’t dare share with his fellow soldiers. Private words of longing and loneliness scratched across endless pages of foolscap that last night at the Yellowstone beneath a flickering of oil lamps and torches and firelight.
Small clusters of officers huddled in those late hours to pen their wills, then have those solemn testaments witnessed by friends. Grim instructions given, agreed to, and sworn over for the dispersal of personal effects to family members back east should the unthinkable happen in the coming days as they followed Custer up the Rosebud in search of Sioux. What to be done with the few trinkets each man had accumulated during his time in the army—whether he carried his possessions on his back or in his pockets, or they simply lay waiting back at Fort Abraham Lincoln at the bottom of a near-empty trunk.
On the eve of battle every man wanted to know he would have something that could go back to his family to show that he had indeed been of some worth during his short time on this earth … each man wanting to pass something on to show for his brief service in the army of the west.
Like some cold fingers slipping around a tin cup at Coleman’s tent on that north bank of the Yellowstone, the mood in camp slowly changed as more and more of those men of the Seventh left the whiskey and returned to a somber camp to scratch at their letters, write their wills, swear death pacts with bunkies to see that an old watch made it back to Cape Girardeau, Missouri … or a special wedding band made it back to a little cabin near Cold Springs, Arkansas … or that neck chain he wore was delivered to a widowed mother somewhere down a holler outside Cross Plains, Tennessee.
As the clock crept into the wee hours, fewer men stood drinking at the trader’s kegs. This late only the old, fire-hardened veterans still drank, staring up the Rosebud, wondering what awaited them as they rode in Custer’s wake come morning.
Custer scratched a metal nib across sheets of foolscap at his field desk, while striker Burkman polished bridle and crupper, saddle, holsters, and belt, with a nervous energy. With a peculiar flair for understatement, the general was penning his last, long letter to Libbie, though he promised her he would dash off a few lines in the morning before departure.
Terry appears to retain the highest of confidence in me, holding up to others to emulate my zeal, energy, and ability. Yes, Dear Heart—Alfred knows all too well he is an administrator and that I am the Indian Fighter. He used his abilities as an administrator to assure that I will do what I do best … nay, better than any man in the army.
For the longest time after he had laid his pen aside and stepped to the tent flaps, Custer stared out at the cloudy, starless night, soaking in that somber mood cloaking the camp. It was no stranger to him, this blackness. Veteran of all but one of those battles of the Army of the Potomac. Veteran of campaigns along the Platte River Road and successful strikes into the heart of Indian Territory itself. Campaigns along the Yellowstone and an exploration of the Black Hills—that most sacred place of the northern plains tribes.
He sighed deeply and turned back to his desk, where he took pen in hand.
If I were an Indian, he wrote, I often think I would greatly prefer to cast my lot among those of my people adhered to the free, open plains rather than submit to the confined limits of a reservation—there to be the recipient of the blessed benefits of civilization, with its vices thrown in without stint or measure.
“There!” he whispered to himself. He had admitted it to himself and to Libbie at last.
If by a twist of fate he found himself cast as one of the hostile chiefs he would be hunting down come morning, Custer admitted he would have to elect to go on living the free, unfettered nomadic life of old rather than suffer the stifling stagnation of the squalid reservations. To live as wild and free warriors always had, or to die a warrior.
There were times, Rosebud, when I so desperately hoped to find you aboard one of the steamboats plying the waters of the Yellowstone. To hold not only one of your sweet letters, but to once again hold you close. When the Josephine brought us the mail at the Tongue, I prayed you had stolen aboard to surprise me. You might just as well be here as not.…
I hope to begin another Galaxy article soon, if the spirit moves me. They seem thirsty for my words back east. Perhaps they’d enjoy my speeches? Look on my map and you will find our present location on the Yellowstone, about midway between Tongue River and the Big Horn.…
Reno’s scouting party has returned. They saw the trail and deserted camps of a village of three hundred and eighty lodges. The trail was about one week old. The scouts reported that they could have overtaken the village in one day and a half. I am now going to take up the trail where the scouting party turned back. I fear their failure to follow up the Indians has imperiled our plans by giving the village an intimation of our presence. Think of the valuable time lost!
But I feel hopeful of accomplishing great results. I will move directly up the valley of the Rosebud. General Gibbon’s command and General Terry, with steamer, will proceed up the Big Horn as far as the boat can go.
I will like campaigning with pack mules much better than with wagons, leaving out the question of luxuries. We take no tents and desire none.