Chapter 21
17 July 1876
Right from the first jump Bill was ten lengths ahead of the rest. And the way his long-legged horse was eating up the ground as it charged around the foot of the hill, there was no way any of them were going to catch him.
Cody pulled the pistol from his belt and thumbed the hammer back.
By Jove! He was going to be the first there to surprise the enemy. The first to wade into them. How he prayed he would be the first to raise a scalp. Yes, by glory: to take a scalp … a scalp for Custer!
“This is for you, Armstrong,” he whispered into that summer wind whipping at his eyes as he laid low along the neck of the big buckskin surging forward with dilated nostrils. “May you rest in peace after this day—avenged at last!”
No theater had ever offered him a finer stage than this. Bill could never remember playing before such an enthusiastic audience as the soldiers he knew were now watching him at this moment. If the fates did indeed deem that a man’s life must—in the great totality of all things—be summed up in one supremely delicious moment … then this was his. To win or lose in the coming combat mattered not. Only the game of it all. To playact before the perfumed and starched set back east, that simply was not living.
Laying one’s last breath on the line, pitting his life against these foes—gambling it all in the adventure and lust of the chase … now this was living. This was his moment!
In the far distance the sharp-edged, grassy southern ridges boiled with movement as two hundred warriors bolted from hiding, hungry for taking Hall’s wagon train at last. They hadn’t yet seen Cody and his rescue party.
Those Cheyenne have no idea the Fifth lies in wait to ambush them!
But what was the prettiest of all was how that small war party suddenly turned atop their racing ponies as they burst out of the ravine onto the Black Hills Road, the wind whipping their hair, surprised to find Cody and that handful of soldiers hot on the braid-bound tails of those war ponies.
Cody aimed—fired his pistol at their wide, glistening backs.
Suddenly like a boulder parting a mountain stream, the warriors reined left and right in a savage maneuver, most of the them slipping to the sides of their animals as the hooves kicked up great, glimmering, golden cascades of dust into the new sunlight. Stunned with surprise, they nonetheless turned to confront their attackers.
Two of the war party fired off shots at the hilltop behind the onrushing Cody, one shooting from under the neck of his pony.
In an instant Bill looked them over, deciding on the one he wanted more than the rest: he rode a gorgeous gray horse, larger than the smaller ponies. Wearing that splendid feathered bonnet, he must surely be a chief—and if not a chief, then at least a mighty warrior. A worthy opponent.
With the gunfire the Cheyenne ponies pranced and reared, frightened as the white men closed on them. Under the necks of their animals the warriors fired a volley. Most had only a foot locked over a rear flank, only a hand visible clasped into a braided loop of mane. Bill heard a bullet whine past. Another so close he made out the snarling hiss. Surely close enough now—he pulled back on the hammer again, deciding to try a shot at that warrior in the magnificent headdress, the warrior who was shouting, the breeze whipping the long tail of his warbonnet.
At the very moment he leveled the pistol over his buckskin’s head and squeezed off the shot, the war chiefs pony reared in fright, its eyes grown as big and white as Lulu’s china saucers, its nostrils flaring. Cody was close enough that he saw the lathered moistness gathered at the crude, rawhide hackamore the warrior used for a rein.
When the big gray animal came down on its forelegs, it stumbled to the side, careening crazily away from Cody’s rush. The war chief doubled over at the waist, grasping his thigh and losing his hold on the pony as it keeled over, spilling its rider. Into the grass the warrior tumbled, rolling in a heap as the pony crashed to the dust, legs kicking wildly, head thrashing, fighting to rise. Closing the last few yards, Bill watched his fallen enemy shove his warbonnet back from his brow as he picked himself out of the dirt, struggling onto one knee, his other legging bloodied.
In that next breath the buckskin collided with the fallen pony, legs a’jumble, spilling in a blur.
Spinning tortuously, Cody felt himself hurled into the air. Flung to the ground with enough force that it knocked the breath from his lungs, he rolled and rolled through the grass, clutching the pistol that dug into his ribs with each tumble. Dazed for a moment as his body skidded to a stop, he spat dirt from his mouth, swiped it from his eyes. Blinking, he found his enemy rising with a struggle twenty paces away, no more … and bringing up his pistol.
Jerking his thumb down, he found the hammer still cocked as he wobbled to his feet, unsteady, light-headed. Turning to the left so that he presented as little a target as possible, he coolly extended the right arm to its full length and brought the front blade down on his enemy. There on the warrior’s chest, that amulet, that fetish—that gorget of yellow hair. That savage totem taken from one of the warrior’s victims.
Barking, the Cheyenne’s pistol spat fire.
With a jerk Cody knelt to make himself smaller at the Cheyenne’s shot. Then not really aiming—Cody snapped off his shot a heartbeat later—without thought, hesitation, or aiming.
Sensing it, by instinct. If a man had to think about making such a shot, he would most times think of nothing more as a dead man.
Pitching backward, the warrior crumpled into the grass as Cody heard the thunder of hooves. How his ears rang from the fall. He shook his head violently to clear it, but still the thunder drew ever closer. A few feet away the war chiefs legs kicked just as the dying pony’s had thrashed. Bill dashed toward him, his thumb drawing back the pistol’s hammer once more, arm held out from him, muzzle pointing at the magnificent, near-naked body he approached.
Standing over the warrior, Cody looked first at the hole opened in the middle of the Cheyenne’s chest. Then his gaze crawled across the Indian’s face, watching the open eyes glaze. It seemed all breath suddenly went out of the warrior as he stared up at his enemy; his body seized with one last, great convulsion, then went limp.
With shrill war cries three of the other six Cheyenne immediately kicked their ponies into motion, dashing up the shallow slope for Cody. Screaming, brandishing their lances and war clubs, light reflected from one rifle barrel. A hundred yards behind them came at least half a hundred more, intent on rescuing the body of their fallen chief. Breaking the ridge behind them, fully two hundred more horsemen raced for the spoils in those wagons of the white men.
Then as suddenly as they had put themselves in motion, the three naked riders reined up, wheeled hard about, and tore off in the opposite direction. Spurring down the slope and up the far side, they mingled among the rest starting to turn on their heels, beginning to retreat.
Whirling about at a crouch, Bill found Mason’s K Company thundering up, that guidon snapping in the breeze above them. It was for this moment he had returned home to the west, here to his plains. On impulse he yanked the butcher knife from his belt scabbard, then bent over the fallen warrior, slashing the narrow thong that tied the bonnet beneath the dark chin. Rolling the body over onto one shoulder, Cody dragged the feathered headdress free with his left hand, then turned just as Captain Mason and his men were almost upon him.
Holding the fluttering, feathered trophy high at the end of his extended arm, Cody stood in triumph over his vanquished enemy, bellowing at the top of his lungs as the captain and the first row of troopers shot past.
“First scalp for Custer!”