Minutes later the bugles called out with notes familiar from that long-ago winter far to the south.
Stirred to her soul by the brass horns, Monaseetah remembered those trumpet calls.
She sang, mimicking the quick, staccato notes along with the trumpets, much to the wide-eyed wonder of her sons. Their chins dropped to hear the high, clear, crystalline notes lift from her throat. Sweeter compared to the brassy blare of the army bugles far up the noisy slope.
She remembered too the meaning of that war song. Officers coming together.
Another song—orders to mount. And another song calling the men to assemble so Yellow Hair could talk to all his pony soldiers. Mighty Yellow Hair.
She remembered.
Of a sudden her heart burned for him again … just to touch his pale face once more … to look into those eyes like a mountain pool of cold blue water. Water so cold it would set her teeth on edge to drink—
Then she saw the guidon.
It is his!
Yellow Hair’s personal flag—the flag he had allowed her to touch and hold so many, many times during their long winter together. She above all others should know that banner.
I slept with that flag pillowing my head through many stormy nights.
She lunged forward a step, stumbling as the boys clung to her.
“Hiestzi!” The word flew from her lips more strongly, more hopefully than she had sung the bugle notes.
At her side both boys grew tense with apprehension. Was this Yellow Hair? Is that not what their mother had shouted? Who was this Yellow Hair? The one she spoke of so often?
Suddenly Monaseetah whirled, her eyes searching the throng of spectators. They came to rest on an old woman, Northern Cheyenne, whose father’s relatives remained imprisoned on a reservation far to the south in the Territories.
“Talks-to-the-Moon!” Monaseetah shouted, dragging the two boys with her as she scuffed through the cotton-wood grove.
“Little mother!” the old woman gasped.
“Please—watch the children for me!” Her eyes pleaded. How could her old friend refuse?
“It is not safe yet,” the old one said. “The killing has only started. See? There are too many soldiers fighting still. It will not be long now. Wait here.”
“Watch the boys!” Monaseetah shouted, shaking her head sharply to shut the old woman off. “I must see these soldiers myself.”
As Monaseetah turned to study the hill, more of the army horses stampeded, frightened away from the soldiers by youths fluttering blankets and robes. More thirsty animals bolted and clattered off toward the river, carrying their precious loads of ammunition far from the jamming carbines.
“I go look for a soldier! To see his face!” she admitted to the old woman. “He comes for me at last. Like a prayer, he comes for me!”
Talks-to-the-Moon found her mouth hanging open in surprise as the young mother darted away, racing down the sharp bank into the river, where she splashed across the water, soaking her cloth dress above the waist. One plodding, slippery step after another, lumbering forward a foot at a time.
The ribbon of water separated her from him. This Goat River, slowing her desperate sprint toward the hill where Hiestzi waited for her.
She had seen his flag … that crimson, so like blood on winter’s snow … and sky blue, so like the winter in his eyes.
It was his flag. It fluttered in the hot breeze up there on the spine of the swaybacked pony ridge, as if it meant to signal to her and her alone. Hiestzi had wanted her to see it. Monaseetah knew that—as surely as the dust stung her eyes and the powder stank in her nostrils.
Hiestzi has come back for me as he promised seven summers ago! My husband comes for me a last! His promise fulfilled …
Myles Keogh had watched Calhoun take the first fatal shot, marveling from afar at the stamina of his friend—not seeing the last, for the young lieutenant was lost in a swirl of dust and burnt powder smoke as the crimson wave swept up and over the burnt-sienna brow of the hill.
For a moment Myles wondered absently if that lone rider would make it.
Some yellow-livered coward, Myles cursed. Running—rather than dying like a man …
But Keogh had his own problems now.
The warriors who had overrun Calhoun were inching their way in ever-increasing numbers toward I Company. The big Irishman watched but a moment more, mesmerized, while some of the Sioux began to beat and pummel the wounded clustered on the brow of Calhoun’s Hill. They shot the wounded and dying with their own weapons as the soldiers cried out for mercy. They fired arrow after arrow into the limp bodies, hacked at them with tomahawks and stone clubs. Close enough that Myles could see the enraged faces, painted and horrendous, every one distorted with blood-lust as they turned from the Calhoun dead to glare longingly up the spine toward Keogh’s Wild I Company.
It was a sight that would make many a lesser man worry about losing his lunch or wetting his pants.
Hundreds upon hundreds, and still hundreds more, warriors streamed out of the villages now that they had driven Reno back up the bluffs, now that they had taken time to put on their paint and say their war-medicine prayers. Smeared with grease and charcoal, painting their faces black for victory. Skin painted yellow with blue hailstones … red with green horns surrounding their eyes … blue with red stripes down the chins.
Devil paint fuzzed with yellow dust and sweat … and smeared with white men’s blood.
Some had charged up the hill totally naked, contraries mostly. They attacked the soldiers with little willow sticks hoping for a glorious death that would catapult their spirits into the other world of forever-happiness. Contraries ran naked through the tall grass, their cocks and scrotums bouncing as they leapt up the slope, offering their frail, naked copper bodies to Wakan Tanka after they had pledged their undying obedience in this personal vow of sacrifice.
Others rode up the hill with only a blanket or half robe lashed about their waists. Only a few wore feathers in their hair. Most simply did not have the time to ornament themselves at first for the valley fight. But by now many had stuffed hands into fire pits and dragged out charcoal to smear across their chests and shoulders. Perhaps mud at the riverbank. Anything to make themselves more hideous to those young, frightened soldiers laying eyes for the first time on battle-crazed warriors on this dusty Montana hillside.
There wasn’t a green recruit kneeling behind his overheated carbine on Keogh’s slope who didn’t imagine he had died already and been dragged kicking and screaming straight into the maw of hell.
While one warrior tied on his long headdress, its brim speckled with dragonflies and butterflies, another wore something much more primitive and provoking of fear in his enemy. Sun Bear strapped a single buffalo horn to the center of his forehead and dashed on foot up the hillside.
With the tall grasses waving beneath a gentle breeze across the entire slope, Keogh’s men were able to watch those warriors still working over Calhoun’s dead. Down below they saw the thousands of spectators—many young boys and old men riding back and forth just out of rifle range at the river. Women splashing across the Greasy Grass to join the swelling crowds of those who sang the young warriors on to greater feats of daring. Women who shook their skinning knives aloft, urging the warriors on so they could be about their own bloody work over the bodies of the slain soldiers.