Home. Maggie. God, I love you!
The tall, thick-shouldered lieutenant cursed his useless left arm and flung some more of the bright, sticky blood across the toes of his boots.
Damn, but I’m going to miss them all! Every goddamned one of you! We had a time, didn’t we, boys!
“Ride, Butler!” he cried out with everything left in him at the disappearing back of the sergeant so far away, past the first warriors.
He might make it yet, Jim Calhoun prayed. Too far away to hear me now.
“Ride, Butler—goddammit, ride!”
If any man could make it through the Sioux, it would be Sergeant James Butler. There wasn’t a better horseman in the Seventh.
Sorry, Butler. It’s just too late for L Company now. We’ve held ’em off long enough.
Calhoun turned and saw I Company in position north along the spine, Keogh’s men hunkering along the east slope while the Indians worked their way up from the river side.
L Company just didn’t have many men left now … men who could fire a weapon at the damned Sioux creeping closer and closer …
How many do I have left now?
He wondered that as the bullet smacked into the side of his gut with a wet thud. Slamming him with the power of a mule kick.
That was a funny sound. Something I’ve never heard before. Look, you’re bleeding, goddammit, Jimmy. Don’t hurt much though. Not like this gaddamned arm!
Calhoun struggled to his feet.
“Uhhhnnnn!”
That one burns, dammit!
He fired at the warrior he figured had shot him in the lung.…
Right in the lights! Man don’t live if he’s shot in the limits.…
The warrior couldn’t believe that the big soldier just stood there, rocking on the balls of his feet, refusing to go down.
But Calhoun’s gun was empty long, hot minutes ago. He clicked the hammer over and over and …
“Ride, Butler, ride!”
Then two more rounds tore through his body, blowing huge, fist-sized holes out through the front of his chest. Jim Calhoun stared down at what was left of him. More numb than ever now.
Suddenly he felt the hot flourlike yellow dust beneath his wet cheek and wondered if he had been shot in the head. It was wet beneath his cheek.
Then Calhoun realized he was crying. Good-bye, Maggie! Good-bye, Mother!
Jimmy Calhoun heard the pounding of moccasined feet. Damned close now.
“We did our best, General!”
With the high, thin call of his eagle wing-bone whistle stuffed between his thick lips, Gall brought his warriors to their feet behind him.
As one they rose on command and surged toward the top of the hill where Calhoun had desperately held on as long as his men and his own strength could stem the tide. Some warriors knelt like sharpshooters with their rifles, covering the advance of the light cavalry that thundered past them toward the crest of the hill, whipping their ponies over Calhoun’s handful of hold-outs.
The last few troopers alive were bowled over by the overwhelming onslaught, their screams of pain smothered beneath the hundreds of throats crying out with a vengeance for fifty years of broken promises and shattered treaties. Stone clubs swung against skull bone and shoulder blade. Old pistols fired point-blank into fear-taut, white faces. Hawk and stone alike smacked with a wet thud again and again and again as the wounded were toppled.
Soldiers scattered like so much chaff in the wind along the southern tip of their last ridge.
Hump killed the flag-bearer himself. At first he fired his Henry into the young man’s chest. The private slumped to his knees near Calhoun. He was no more than a boy, really—barely eighteen and struggling to keep from falling any farther.
He gripped the shaky guidon pole as if it were life itself. Stars-and-stripes guidon—Company L. Calhoun’s gallant men who stayed behind to cover the general’s retreat.
Rally round the flag, boys!
Lieutenant Calhoun kept hollering at his standard-bearer there in the last moments, spitting up blood with every order.
Just keep that flag up, son—so the rest know we’re still here. So Custer knows we’re still fighting!
But Hump rode right over the boy, yanking the pole from the youth’s hands as the pony trampled the boy’s body into the yellow dust already slick with other men’s blood.
A wild Miniconjou war cry leapt from his throat as Hump heard the wet thrump of his pony’s hoofs slash downward, crushing that young soldier’s body.
All round the flag-bearer the last of the troopers went down as well. The smack of lead into flesh like a war song gone mad of its own.
At long last—they would teach the soldiers not to attack villages of women and children.
Near the north end of Calhoun’s Hill there were still a few, just a handful who rose on cue and dashed off to the north, heading for Keogh and his I Company.
Kill Eagle, a Blackfoot Sioux, freed a primeval cry from his throat, pointing at the escaping few.
After them screamed the feathered hawks like predators swooping after fleeing field mice. Soldiers hoping to make it those few hundred yards … each one blinded by tears stinging his eyes from the hot wind, the dust—perhaps the pain of seeing your deepest, most fervent prayers go unanswered.
Then the warriors swooped down on these too from the back of their swift ponies—clubbing, slashing, gouging with their gore-soaked lances. When there were no more, the Sioux turned back to the hill where Calhoun’s men had made their stand. Turned back to that bloody ground looking for more of the hated enemy to kill.
But here on Calhoun’s Hill, there were no more. Only the hot breeze remained to whisper through the tall, wet grass. No one left to cry out now.
There were no more.
CHAPTER 24
DOWN in the Cheyenne village, Monaseetah came back from the prairie. She had fled to safety in the hills with the others when news of the attack raced like wildfire through the villages. Now she joined those who warily returned to their camps.
Twice before in her life soldiers had ridden down on her tribe’s camp circle. Once she had escaped. The last time she’d been taken prisoner.
With the first shouts of warning that soldiers had attacked the Hunkpapa camp circle, Monaseetah remembered the terrifying image of the Little Dried River and how death had come charging into Black Kettle’s winter village. She remembered how women and children had died beneath the slashing sabers and smoking guns, trampled beneath the bloody hooves that knew no difference between warrior and woman, young or old, in that dim light of a gray-winter dawn.
Thirteen summers old, she had been.
And four robe seasons later, Black Kettle’s village on the Washita again awoke to the same horror of blood-numbing cold and death. Women and children and the old ones were trampled beneath the big horses of the soldiers once more. Another winter dawn long ago.
Suspiciously now the Cheyenne women and old ones came back to their villages in guarded joy. The warriors said they had whipped the soldiers in the valley and sent them fleeing in disorderly retreat up the bluffs far to the south. Now the big fight was pressed against the pony soldiers who had dared to cross into the Shahiyena village itself … to slash through the lodges, killing women and children once more.
But they too had been turned back!
Anxiously she reentered her village, dashing across the camp circle to those cottonwoods that lined the riverbank. A boy under each arm, she watched the pony soldiers spread out along the top of the grassy ridge, some on horseback, others kneeling or lying down to fire their rifles at the warriors who kept up their never-ending pressure.