Better yet, a clear-thinking man had to figure those soldiers had their eyes trained on the diggings located up in Alder Gulch or meant to head down to Deadwood with gold in mind. Sure enough easy for any man with half his wits who kept his eyes and ears open to understand he was finally within striking distance of the Dakota gold fields or the rich veins near Virginia City, Montana. Easy enough for any man who could keep his mouth shut to get lost among those miners and drummers and traders and gamblers who peopled those places men always went when they wanted to stake it all on one turn of the spade, or a single play of the cards. Such soldiers could always trade in a sturdy army mount branded US for a new set of duds, shucking himself of that yellow stripe down the outside of his britches … maybe even earn himself a grubstake up in the hills somewhere on some nameless stream.
Damned sure better than dying on some nameless little creek with Custer and his crazy band of zealots, one deserter thought as he slipped off into the noiseless night.
Damned sure better than dying with Custer.
Praise Him above ye heavenly host.
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
Just as Custer had ordered, no reveille sounded for the Seventh on the morning of the twenty-third.
Entrusted to awaken the camp, the horse guard checked their watches beneath the pale, lonesome starlight before groping their way through the sleeping camp, nudging their relief. Each was charged to see that his bunkies were rousted into the predawn darkness to relieve their bladders and start their tiny coffee fires.
By the time the columns moved out as scheduled at five A.M., with the newborn sun peeking red as blood over the eastern rim of the prairie, Lieutenant Charles Varnum and his scouts had been gone the better part of an hour, their own cold breakfast and boiled coffee laying as heavy as wet sand in their bellies.
As the Montana sun streaked like a stalking coyote out of the draws and coulees to the east, Custer leapt aboard Vic, waved farewell to striker Burkman, and set off for the day’s scout. Directly behind him rode Sergeant Major William H. Sharrow, charged with carrying the maroon-and-white regimental standard in the company of Sergeant Henry Voss, the regiment’s chief trumpeter, who carried the general’s crimson-and-blue personal standard, the very same flag Custer had ridden with while commanding his Union cavalry during the Civil War.
The sight of the general heading upriver was the signal for the command to move out.
By the time that sore-eyed red sun climbed a hand high above the horizon, the regiment had crawled better than eight miles. Already the troopers had unbuttoned their shell jackets, leaving them open to catch the breezes from down the valley. Waist length, topped with a short, stiff collar, these shell jackets were the first item of apparel a man shed and tied behind the saddle as the morning warmed.
Custer joined his scouts at the first deserted Indian campsite the trackers ran across.
Tepee rings and fire pits pocked a large area of bottomland along the Rosebud. As the troops rode up, many of the veterans looked over the trampled ground in awe-struck wonder. More Indians had camped here than those hard-files could ever hope to boast of seeing before in one place. In addition, there was a sobering number of wickiups still present, those willow limbs stuck in the ground, their tips tied together to form a dome over which the warriors had thrown a canvas fly, buffalo robe, or wool blanket for shelter at night.
“I can’t believe the Sioux’d treat their dogs this damned good,” Lieutenant Varnum chuckled as he trundled along behind Bloody Knife and a handful of Rees who scoured the deserted camp for sign.
Fred Gerard dragged to a halt, turning on Varnum with a death-cold look smeared across his old, weathered face. “Charlie, my boy—the Sioux didn’t put these wickiups here for their goddamned dogs,” he growled, raking his tongue around a dry mouth as he yanked a tin flask from a back pocket.
Varnum froze under Gerard’s glare, growing nervous as some of the Rees studied how their interpreter had confronted the pony soldier. The lieutenant scuffed his jackboots across the ground like an embarrassed schoolboy, kicking up tufts of dry grass with the square toe.
“Not for dogs, Fred? Then what the hell they put in them wickiups?” He tried to chuckle again. No one laughed along with him.
“Charlie, my boy,” the prairie-hardened Gerard replied, wagging his head sadly. A damn shame, he thought, this here’s the man Custer’s put in charge of the regiment’s scouts. “Those wickiups sheltered the older boys and young warriors—the males of the tribes who’re too old to live with their families now but too young to marry and have a wife and lodge of their own just yet.”
Gerard licked his sore, dry lips, anticipating the taste of the whiskey as he worried the cork from the hip flask. He drank hard at the burning liquid that years ago had ceased to scour his throat with fire. After he raked the back of a hand across his wind-chapped lips, the interpreter went on.
“I’m afraid a lot of them wickiups was used by warriors scampering off the reservations, Charlie. You tell Custer, won’t you? Tell him to think hard on all those warriors scampering off the reservations, come to join Sitting Bull.”
For a moment Gerard had himself worried, hearing the ring of something foreign in his own voice.
The lieutenant stood gaping as Gerard turned and walked off, following Bloody Knife, Red Star, and the others.
At one of the wickiups Bull-in-the-Water and Gerard tested the leaves on those limbs that had formed the frame. They were dry. Easy enough to tell that as he rolled those leaves about in his dirty palms. But they weren’t crispy dry yet. Just wilted a shade.
“How long?” Mitch Bouyer stepped up beside Gerard with Half-Yellow-Face and Curley.
“Week maybe. From what Red Star figures.” Gerard, a former post trader and now the official Ree interpreter at Fort Abraham Lincoln, tore the corner off a tobacco plug with yellowed teeth. Looking over this abandoned campsite, his mouth went dry, and he spit the chaw out.
He and Bouyer watched Custer remount, signaling his soldiers to resume the march. Angrily Custer hollered for Varnum and Bouyer to get their scouts out and moving ahead of his blue columns once more.
“Custer’s got his hands plenty full right here, I think,” Bouyer whispered gravely from the side of his mouth as he crawled aboard his Crow pony.
Gerard nodded, flashing a yellowed smile. “He’s had his hands full ever since he decided to take these Sioux on. It’s like he’s got a bone stuck down in his throat and can’t get shet of it. Shame of it is, I’m afraid the general’s gonna choke on that goddamned bone.”
Throughout the rest of the morning and into the growing heat of the afternoon, the scouts and a few of the old-timers began to notice a scarcity of game in the area of their march. A rare thing in virgin country such as this. A cavalry column marching across the high plains of Montana Territory would surely kick up some antelope, deer, and elk, or scatter off some of the birds normally roosting in the trees or chattering in complaint from the bushes.
Yes, sir, Gerard thought, shifting himself up on the cantle of his damp saddle. Downright spooky to follow the Rosebud and not find a mess of wrens or a flock of sparrows swooping overhead out of the summer blue.
Damned little life we’ve found dotting the thick marshes among the eddies near shore either.
Gerard knew his scouts and the Crows understood. They and Bouyer alike understood what had driven the game out of the country for miles around. Only an immense village on the march could have scoured the countryside clean of almost every sign of life.