He’s never truly been wounded before … not a bullet hole in all this time … taking it now like it’s something happens every day. Not many would take a close-range shot like that and still be breathing, much less rousing, eyes open, like he is—
“Myles …” Custer coughed up some blood, a pink froth bubbling over his lower lip.
“General,” Dr. Lord whispered, pressing down on the compress all the harder, “don’t try to talk now.”
“End of the ridge …” Custer sputtered.
“You want us to go to the end of the ridge?” Tom asked anxiously, eyes darting nervously along the spine of grass and sage.
Custer nodded, weakly, eyes half-mast and watery.
“He’s right,” Keogh replied in a whisper. He pointed down the slope at the warriors streaming off to the north. “We don’t get to the end of this ridge … north—the bastards can have full run at us when they ride up the north slope. Down there at least we keep them at bay.”
Tom looked at each one in turn. “That means we’ll have to protect both ends of the ridge.”
Calhoun nodded.
Yates wiped a hand across his dry mouth. “Keogh’s right. We don’t keep ’em off both slopes … we’re done.”
“We’re done as it is,” Lord whined, his greenish face gone white with fear as his wet hands worked in the general’s warm, sticky blood.
“We’re not done, goddammit!” Tom snapped. He peered again at each of his old drinking partners, longtime friends who had lived so much life with him and the gallant Seventh.
“Up to you now, Tom,” Calhoun said it for all of them.
“The gauntlet’s passed, Tommy!” Keogh cheered as best he could.
Here we kneel, commanders of five of the best horse companies in the whole gawdamned world, Myles thought to himself. We’ll make it—by the saints—we’ll make it!”
“Don’t you think we ought to be moving!” Lieutenant Algernon Smith suggested, shouldering in on the tight huddle around Custer. “Like the general ordered, Cap’n Custer?”
“Fresh is right, Tom,” Yates replied.
“Yes.” Tom gazed round at the others. His brother’s most trusted officers.
Myles placed a big paw on Tom’s chest, stopping him. “Who’s to ride to the ridge?”
“Why … all—”
“No,” Keogh growled low, like a wolf with a den to guard. “Cainnot be that way, Tommy. Who the hell’s to support the retreat? Who’ll stand behind to guard the rear?”
Tom remembered Autie’s words. “Calhoun,” he squeaked with a dust-dry throat ever tightening. “Autie asked you to stay and support our rear. Cover the retreat.”
There wasn’t a flinch of an eye nor a betraying muscle twitch along his jaw that said Jimmy Calhoun wasn’t ready to do exactly as ordered. Stay behind and cover their backsides as the rest retreated along the dusty ridge.
“Yes, sir!” Calhoun shouted as he snapped a salute. Then he bit his lip a moment. “I told the general, Tom … told him personal I’d not be found wanting when it come time to prove how deeply I appreciated my commission he put me in for.” He dragged a hand beneath one eye, smearing dust in a hot streak. “Suppose that time’s come, ain’t it?”
Before Tom could respond, Keogh rose to his feet beside Calhoun. Two big oaks hovered over them all like huge Doric columns.
“With your permission, Cap’n Custer,” Keogh began, a smile on his thick lips above that black Vandyke beard, “I Company will assist Lieutenant Calhoun in the rearguard action, sir!”
Staring up into the cruel sunlight that sucked at his juices, sensing those two long shadows stretching out of the bone yellow sky, hulking shadows of his two friends, George Armstrong Custer fought back the tears. The warm syrup of his own blood choked him as he tried to spit some words out.
Still he knew he could show his men just what he thought, exactly how he felt, by doing something he had never done before in front of any of them. His tears told them all how deeply he had been touched by their time together. And how he felt about what they were ready to sacrifice for one another.
Tom looked up from his brother’s silent, smeared face. “I think the general approves of your request, Myles.” His quiet, choking voice sounded strange, distant, after Keogh’s loud, lusty proclamation.
Tom saluted Keogh there in that bright light. “Permission granted to lay back in support of our march along with Lieutenant Calhoun.”
“George …” the general whispered in a red bubble, vainly reaching for Yates’s hand.
The captain bent so he could hear Custer’s liquid whisper at his ear. When Yates leaned back and returned his hat to his head, Lieutenant Smith spoke that question every one of them shared.
“What’d he say?”
“Al, he told me to assume command … if Tom should fall.”
Tom Custer nodded, saluting Yates. “Autie would want it that way: the Michigan boys around him. If I drop, you take care of the general, George. No matter what! You hear me? AH of you? You damn well take care of the general. He must not fall into their hands—”
“He won’t be left behind!” Smith shouted, fussing bravely with the bright crimson tie fluttering below Custer’s neck.
Funny that I should notice it now, Keogh thought. That tie’s the same damned color as Custer’s blood, bright and wet against the general’s gray jersey pullover.
“We’ll see he goes with us,” Yates replied softly. “Come the end, the general won’t be taken alive.”
Tom gulped. “I suppose we all know what’s expected of us?” He straightened his Custer chin proudly. They all nodded without reply. “We make it to the end of the ridge, we can hole up till Benteen gets here with the pack train. Reinforcements. We’ll last.”
Suddenly Tom whirled, grabbing Keogh’s shirt with one hand, clutching Calhoun with his left. “After Yates, Smith, and I have the end of the ridge secured, I want a protected retreat back to us from you two. Fall back—orderly.”
Tommy’s finding command a bit harder than he thought it be, Keogh thought. That whipped-dog look in his eye—save as many men as we can comes time we fall back.
Keogh glanced at Calhoun, finding the blond lieutenant staring at him, smiling grimly. All three knew what the chances would be of the two ever rejoining the rest at the end of the ridge. Any man with but one good eye could peer down the slopes and see that where there once was a halting, a starting, and a stopping among the warriors, now a shrieking red wave rumbled up the hill.
It was time for Custer’s command to move out—those who were lucky enough to be moving at all. Those who would have a little time bought dearly for them by Calhoun and Keogh and their two little companies of gallant soldiers.
Whittled down like dry grass before the winter wind.
Gall had led his warriors across the river. Flying pony hooves sent cascades of spraying, jewellike water and muddy sand high into the air over them. Sioux faces grim and hideously painted.
Death to them all!
Straight up the hillside they charged into the face of that terrible wall of soldier fire. Two warriors tumbled off their little mustangs in the first volley, the bodies rolling to a stop among the tall grass and cactus. Others rushed in to drag away the bodies of those fallen, out of range of the soldier’s guns. Ahead of them along the spine, many of the soldiers were shouting, running for what horses were left them now.
Gall stood uneasily, watching. Some of the white men stayed behind—kneeling or stretched out on their bellies in the tall grass, firing their carbines as calmly as they could at any copper-skinned target that presented itself.