On hot breezes came the death chants and songs of victory, drifting up the hill. The warriors had only to wait for the sun and time itself to do its evil on these last hold-outs near the top of the ridge. Songs the warriors sang to make themselves brave.
But those last few gathering round Custer near the crest didn’t seem to remember any songs of their own to make them courageous that afternoon. They just couldn’t remember the words anymore. Hard enough to keep breathing, or keep from soiling your army britches, much less try to remember some damned words to a song.
Tom Custer shot a soldier in the back of the head, stunning all those but the officers huddling nearby.
Try as he might, Fresh Smith trembled, watching the soldier’s brains and blood soak into the parched earth.
“I told him!” young Custer roared, wagging the pistol at the dead man twitching at his feet in the last throes of death.
The young soldier lurched convulsively, his bowels voiding, then lay still in the stench and heat of that yellow hill.
Lieutenant Algernon E. Smith gulped. For years now he had it drummed into his head that an officer could kill a coward who refused to fight. He had never before seen any officer do it.
“Gave him a direct order!” Custer shrieked. “There’ll be no cowardice on this hill, men! We’re—not—going—to—fall!”
“By glory, we’ll hang on!” George Yates shouted to show his support.
“Damned right!” Tom explained to the dumbfounded soldiers staring at him with different eyes now. “Just like the general says … we’ll make it. I’ll shoot the next one that talks of surrender to these savages!”
“Gimme a carbine and a belt, Tommy boy!”
Tom Custer scooped up a dead trooper’s carbine and ammunition belt, flinging them both at Keogh.
Keogh spoke softly. “Ain’t much better here, it ’pears. We’re weakest back ’long the ridge. But, gimme a dozen men or so, I’ll go shore up that south flank. They’re pressing us that way and in a hard ditch of it too.”
“Keogh?”
It was George Custer’s croak, emerging from the dry, wounded pit of him.
Myles knelt beside his commander in the dust. “Right here, General. Too evil a bastard to die just yet, I am.”
His Irish smile buoyed many a man struck silent on the side of that yellow hill as his big head shaded the general’s dirty red-bristled face. Custer opened his eyes and, swallowed against the pain in his chest. Beneath that cat’s-whisker brush of a mustache of his, Custer tried a grin, showing a little of his teeth before blood trickled across his cracked lips.
“Thank you, Myles,” he sputtered softly. “See what you can do for us, will you?”
“Aye, General!” Keogh smiled, rising, casting his full shadow across Custer. “Told you before what it meant to have your trust and your friendship, Armstrong.” He sighed as he called the general by name, something he had never done before.
Custer tried to salute but gave up. He couldn’t get his right arm up that far.
“Sorry, Myles,” he rasped. “Going a bit numb.”
“That’s all right, sir, you can salute me later. When we’re all done here. But for now—I’ve got to send some of these bleeming h’athen savages straight back to the pits of hell for you!”
The recruits and officers alike watched the big brawler leap over a dead horse as if it were but a clump of sage. Keogh hunkered down the skirmish line, tapping a man here, another there, handpicking his defense force. When he had his dozen, Keogh led his squad south along the knotted spine, spacing them out in pockets here and there.
The southern flank would not fall if Myles Keogh and his hard-files had anything to say about it. Grim-eyed, sunburned, saddle-galled veterans every one, they fired slow and sure and steady at the advancing Sioux just the way they had worked over Confederates at Bull Run, Shiloh, Gettysburg.
One target at a time. One shot at a time. These men with Myles Keogh knew how to fight.
Myles Keogh would show the lot of them how to die.
“The canteens are dry, Autie,” Tom whispered in a crackle near his brother’s ear. “Too many wounded, can’t keep ’em quiet. Hollering for water. It’s beginning to drive the men mad.” He knew Autie must be desperate for water himself.
“The river … just—get to the river,” Custer sputtered, coughing. “Open a route down to the river … now.…”
Custer struggled again to rise, pulling on Tom until he sat upright, gritting those pearly teeth against the excruciating pain of that seeping hole in his chest.
He pointed. “Down there,” indicating the deep scar of the ravine. “Send a detail down there to secure … the coulee … we get water … there—”
Custer collapsed. It was more than he could bear, holding himself up that long. Issuing orders to the end.
“I’ll do it, Autie,” Tom replied, the iron back in his voice.
“No, you won’t, Captain,” Lieutenant Smith slid in beside the general, his own words full of granite. “My men’ll do it. We’ll go down to secure that ravine for water carriers. If we intend to hold out as the general wants us to—we’ll need water. Begging pardon, Tom, but you needs stay here. In command. With the general.”
Tom sensed his heart swell with the courage of the young lieutenant’s offer. “Very well, Fresh. I’m proud of you.”
“Thank you, sir.” He turned to go.
“Smith?” Sounding like a rusty iron wagon tire dragged down a gravel road, Tom’s words caught the lieutenant up short.
Smith glanced over his shoulder, studying that red spot on Tom’s cheek, remembering the bullet wound and a young cavalry officer single-handedly charging a Confederate artillery position at Saylor’s Creek eleven long summers before.
“Good luck, Smith.”
“Thank you, Cap’n. We really don’t need luck though. Just the kind of sand you showed at Saylor’s Creek, Tom. That, and some time.”
“You’ll buy the time for us, Fresh.”
“Promise you—we’ll give our best!”
Smith slapped a smart salute and headed downhill toward his chewed-up E. Company.
With sergeants John Ogden and James Riley, Smith selected thirty-six more men, three squads with a corporal to lead each. Without much ado the squads stood ready at horse. Sending a hearty wave back up the hillside to the commander, Smith’s men mounted what was left of the big horses.
“Front into line … guide front … center! Forward at my command—charge!”
Into the maddening yellow dust that fuzzed the slope like dirty cotton gauze, the men dashed toward the river below.
Smith knew well enough that his brave action could serve to inspire those left behind on the hill, men whose spirits were flagging. If his detail could only show some aggressiveness against the circling red noose, the command might be able to hold the warriors off for another—who was to say?
Tom stood, saluting that mad dash. God only knows if we can hold out long enough for Gibbon and Terry to come up, he thought to himself, reloading both pistols now. But first we have to cut and hold a route to the river. And that’s just what Smiths about to do for me, and for Autie.
Monaseetah watched the group of four-times-ten mount their big horses and gallop downhill from the hilltop, believing that Custer himself must surely be in that brave group on horseback.
Always leading his men.
“He comes for me!” she sang out with the certainty of it, clambering to her feet that he might see her.