Through the pastel sego lilies and bright sunset orange of the paintbrush, down past the buttermilk-pale hanging globes of the yellow lady slipper and the twilight purple cockleshells of spiderwort, around the sage and through the tall grasses, Custer led his troops, on and on into the widening jaws of the Little Bighorn valley. Including the Arikaras and Crows, his civilian scouts and mule packers, along with those fire-hardened veterans and bowel-puckered greenhorns, Custer was leading approximately six hundred seventy-five men into the shimmering haze as forenoon settled over the sleepy summer valley.
Herendeen twisted in the saddle at the grunt-bellied sounds of the young mule clambering up behind him.
Mark Kellogg reined alongside the scout, bouncing like a buggy spring on a washboard road.
He pulled in so he could ride with the scouts whose place it was to form the front of the march. “George, could I ask you for the use of your spurs? I noticed you’re not using them.”
Herendeen glanced down at the reporter’s boots, then at the wide-eyed young mule Kellogg battled for control. “Not having much good with that salt-pork mule, eh, Mr. Kellogg?”
Mark chortled in that nervous way of his, jabbing his wire-framed spectacles back on the bridge of his large nose. “I want to stay up with the lead. That’s what I want.”
“Here.” George pulled the unused spurs from his saddlebag. “But I can only advise you not to put them on or use them, Mr. Kellogg.”
“Why not?” Kellogg wiped sweat off his upper lip.
“It’s best from here on out you pull back to the rear of the column and stay put there. Not the healthiest place up here in the front with the scouts.”
Kellogg chirped, “Oh, George—you had me scared for a moment there! I’m expecting some interesting developments soon, and I want to keep up with you scouts so I can report on everything I’m able to see far ahead. You must understand—I’ve promised my readers back east that I’ll report the full and explosive details of this encounter with Sioux warriors. In those dispatches and stories I’ve shipped east already, you understand. I can’t let my readers down.”
“Mr. Kellogg,” Herendeen said, “take my spurs, if not my advice. Use one if not the other. If my guess is right, we’ll soon be seeing more action than you’ll be able to describe in a month of Sundays. Whoa, now! See there—the Crow boys are stopping ahead. They’ll wait for Custer himself to come up. You should be able to hear what they say to him for yourself.”
Mark Kellogg’s eyes widened as General Custer loped past, standing in the stirrups, his knees flexing easily. The man’s meant to be on horseback, Kellogg thought to himself as he buckled the second spur over his round-toed boot. He decided to take Herendeen’s suggestion. Just stay close to Custer. That’s where the action will be. That’s where the best story of your life will be found.
The Crow scouts had ground to a halt on the bank of the Ash Creek and even dismounted, waiting for Custer and the troops to come up. There in the dust of the wide, beaten trail they had been following, the scouts scratched the soldier-chief a map.
“They say this creek flows down to the Little Horn,” Mitch Bouyer interpreted, watching the reporter move closer to the group. “The Greasy Grass of the Sioux, where Sitting Bull’s waiting for you and your boys, General.”
To Kellogg it sounded as if the half-breed still smarted from some old injury done him by Custer.
“They’re waiting for me, you say—eh, Bouyer?”
Kellogg had become a practiced observer. Without really thinking about it, he studied faces, the way people held and carried themselves. More important than learning what a person had to tell about a story, Kellogg had found out some time ago, was learning what a person didn’t want you to know.
From the look he read on Custer’s face at this moment, as the general knelt staring at the Crow interpreter, Kellogg learned something about the cracks widening in Custer’s command.
Mark Kellogg could tell that Custer didn’t much like Mitch Bouyer, perhaps more so than he had ever disliked any man in his life. Even the nagging Benteen.
But then the reporter remembered that a man like Custer would revel in being hated by them both—Benteen and Bouyer: brave men and worthy adversaries.
Custer dusted his hands on his buckskin britches. “The Sioux, Mr. Bouyer—they can wait until ice water is served in hell itself for all I care. I’m going to slip ’em a Custer surprise!”
BOOK III
THE BATTLE
CHAPTER 18
ADJUTANT Cooke watched Custer rise from the dust where Bouyer and his Crows had drawn their map. The general snatched up his reins and leapt atop Dandy.
“Cookey, c’mon over here. I want a private word with you.”
Off to the side out of earshot, Custer and Cooke discussed their plan for deployment of the command. After pulling some maps from his saddlebags and handing them over to Custer for his inspection, Cooke scrawled notes in the small notebook he carried.
“I’m glad you’re in agreement,” Custer sighed. “You remember the Washita, don’t you, Billy?”
Cooke smiled with those straight, pearly teeth of his. Years ago at the Washita, his special crack unit of forty handpicked sharpshooters had bottled up Black Kettle’s fleeing Cheyenne just as Custer had planned it. They had laid down a murderous fire across the river, so very few Cheyenne had made it downstream to the Kiowa and Arapaho camps on foot. Most who tried had ended up floating down the icy waters of the Washita, their bodies riddled by Spencer-rifle fire at the command of marksman W. W. Cooke.
“A glorious rout, General! And we’re about to pull another one out of your hat, aren’t we, sir?”
“That’s why I like you, Billy. Always thinking like a soldier.”
“I’ve learned from the best, General.”
Custer nodded. “We’ll use three wings to execute this attack again. And I’ll divide off the first wing at this time. It is—?”
Cooke yanked his watch out. “Twelve-oh-seven.”
“Very good. Let’s get this show on the road. Bring Benteen up.”
When Cooke had gathered the captain, along with Captain Thomas Weir and Lieutenant Edward Godfrey, he announced that Custer wanted to see them at the head of the march immediately. “The general’s compliments, Captain Benteen. We’re ready to deploy for the attack.”
Surrounded by the three officers and his adjutant a few yards from the column, Custer issued his orders. “For the purpose of our attack, Captain Weir’s D Company and Lieutenant Godfrey’s K Company are placed under your command, Captain Benteen.”
“Begging pardon, General.” Benteen cleared his dry throat, straightening himself in the saddle. “Don’t you think we’d better keep the regiment together? If it’s truly as big a camp as the scouts claim it is, you’re going to need the whole regiment standing together.”
Cooke watched a cloud pass over Custer’s face before he answered.
“Thank you for your consideration of my orders, Captain,” he replied acidly, eyes filled with icy fire. “Right now I can’t think of a reason why my battle plan would fail. Suppose you just remember that I give the commands, and you follow them.”
“Very good, General,” Benteen replied stiffly. “Where am I headed?”
Custer pointed to the southwest, toward the rolling hills, deep valleys, and endless bare ridges that rose to meet the pale, sun-bleached prairie sky.