“What makes you think Custer’s going to be killed?”
Wallace waited while a group of soldiers strolled past on their way up from the river.
Already the nighthawks were out, swinging in low overhead, striking a moth or mayfly in the growing darkness. Death leaving no time for a cry for help or a yelp of pain. Swift and efficient. No warning. No sound until too late. Only the swift wings of death asail on the wind above the faint swish of cavalry boots plodding off through the tall grass growing here beside the gurgling Rosebud. Young soldiers returning to bedrolls and their dreams of home.
Finally Wallace answered in a harsh whisper, “Because I’ve never heard Custer talk that way before.”
That was all it took for the hairs to prickle at the back of Godfrey’s neck. He was deaf in one ear, but he had caught precisely every single one of Wallace’s words. He walked apart from his friends.
As he groped along beneath starry patches among the clouds overhead, Godfrey brooded, as a blind man in need of answers sensing his way upstream, where he hoped he’d find the scouts’ camp.
Good God, he told himself. You’ve fought Indians with Custer before, Ed. Along the Platte River Road and the Washita and the Yellowstone itself. It’s not like you’re some ignorant shavetail quaking in your boots before your first fight.
No, he admitted. This is something different. Something downright spooky.
He found a few of the Crow scouts and a dozen or more of the Rees, all gathered round their little fire. They talked quietly through Bouyer and Fred Gerard, the Arikara interpreter, or conversed silently among themselves, their hands gesturing in quick, darting flight like those night-hawks swooping overhead.
Not desiring to interrupt, Godfrey hunkered down on the grass near Mitch Bouyer, behind Bloody Knife, chief of the Ree scouts and a longtime tracker for Custer. He found himself seated beside Half-Yellow-Face, one of the older Crows assigned from Gibbon.
After Godfrey had attentively listened to the various conversations, studying what he could of the facial expressions and the signs used, he was surprised when he saw Half-Yellow-Face nudge the half-breed Sioux interpreter and point out the soldier among them.
Bouyer turned and grunted. Godfrey nodded and rose on his haunches a bit to show his interest in what the scouts were deliberating. Bouyer studied the two shiny bars on Godfrey’s collar for the first time, perhaps remembering that the Indian scouts were officially assigned to Godfrey’s K Company.
“You, pony soldier,” Bouyer began, his voice low, causing Godfrey to lean forward with his one good ear. “You fight Indians before, eh? Ever fight these Sioux?”
Godfrey swallowed at the coarse directness of the question. Damn, he thought, these scouts have a way of cutting right through the underbrush and getting right down to the root of something, don’t they?
“Yes …” Ed admitted. “Several times down near Nebraska, but our hottest engagements were along the Yellowstone three summers ago now.”
“Hmmm,” Bouyer considered as he turned back round to the fire, dallying at the coals with a twig for a few minutes. Only then did he turn back to stare directly at the lieutenant. “Well, then, pony soldier—just how many of them Sioux do you expect to find up there?”
Godfrey watched Bouyer nod upstream and point with his twig toward the hulking Wolf Mountains—the direction Custer was leading them.
“The general briefed us on the reports the army’s received.”
“How many warriors the army tell you Custer’s going to find?”
“They figure we may find between a thousand to fifteen hundred warriors … if we find them.”
“Oh,” Bouyer laughed mirthlessly, “you’ll find them all right.” His teeth flashed beneath the pale thumbnail moon. “You’ll find them if you go riding with Custer.”
The half-breed seemed ready to let that settle a moment like a muddy puddle stirred. Then Bouyer continued. “So you tell me your own mind, pony soldier—you think we can whip that many Sioux?”
It was not lost on Godfrey that the half-breed Sioux interpreter had suddenly gone from saying you when referring to Custer’s command, to now saying we.
“Oh, yes,” Godfrey said quietly. “I guess so.”
At that moment Half-Yellow-Face and White-Man-Runs-Him interrupted, asking Bouyer what had been said between the interpreter and the soldier. Then Bloody Knife sounded his interest, asking Fred Gerard to translate the gist of the conversation for the Rees in the circle. A few minutes passed before the Indians fell silent once more, their somber eyes refusing to talk any longer.
Bouyer tossed the twig into the little fire at his feet, watching it flare, then die out. “Well, pony soldier. I do not know this Custer—but Bloody Knife tells me much of him. I do not know him myself, but it’s for sure I know the Sioux. Only thing I can tell you—we are going to have one damned big fight. One—damned—big—fight.”
With nothing more than a whisper on the grass, Mitch Bouyer rose, turned on his heel, and disappeared into the purple twilight.
One damned big fight.
Bouyer’s words clung to Godfrey like stale fire smoke, stinging eyes and lungs. Foul on the tongue. Eventually he got to his feet and trudged off, growing nervous and cold and out of place among Gerard and the Indians. An outsider who did not understand their mysticism. An outsider who did not even understand why he shuddered uncontrollably as if he were freezing.
On the way to his bedroll, Godfrey stopped at Lieutenant Winfield Edgerly’s D Company bivouac. A few officers had gathered beneath Edgerly’s company flag, quietly singing some of their favorites down by the lapping waters of the Rosebud. Not only “Bonny Jean” and “Over the Sea,” but also “Mollie Darling” and “Drill, Ye Tarriers” were all raised to the quiet evening stars amid complaints from Benteen of disturbing his sleep.
After “Dianah’s Wedding” and “Grandfather’s Clock” were sung, Godfrey himself led them in the “Doxology,” or the “Olde Hundredth” as it was popularly known.
Praise God from whom all blessings flow;
Praise Him all creatures here below.
Praise Him above ye heavenly host.
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
With the nervous stammering of amens, most of the men bid good night to their fellow officers and slipped off into the darkness to locate their companies and bedrolls while the chorus of coyotes and wolves took up the nightly serenade where the soldiers left off. Beautiful in its own feral way, though eerie to the uninitiated ear—that blending of high-pitched yips from the younger coyote pups, echoed by the deeper howl of a prairie wolf, was a chorus that thrilled a man accustomed to the high plains.
All round the regiment that summer night sang a lullaby meant only for the innocent.
Past those few lonely sentries on picket duty, a man here … then another there slipped out to find himself some privacy for nature’s call. One by one the solitary soldiers crept in among the horses and led an animal over the first hills to the east. Across the Rosebud. Climbed into the saddle—nosing for the Black Hills. Or off to the northwest and the Bozeman Road. Wherever—some men just wanted across those first low hills and away from this place.
It would be easy for their fellow soldiers to accuse them of cowardice. Too damned easy to figure these green recruits and a few fire-hardened old files to boot were all struck with a bad case of the “yellow flu.”