In a rumble they swept past, a blinding blue blur of dust and eager, frightened faces—hollering out their cheer at him as wave upon wave of fighting men chased the rest of the war party that had turned and fled as soon as their leader was spilled.
“First scalp for Custer!”
Over and over he yelled his valiant oath at the passing horde of cheering horsemen, Cody standing there above his enemy as the stinging yellow dust swirled about him, bellowing until his throat grew as raw as grated flesh. Shaking the bonnet in the air, in victory, in revenge.
“First scalp for Custer!”
King was bounding side to side in sheer exuberance by the time Merritt and Wilkinson raced the rest of the way up the slope as Cody bolted around the base of the hill.
For a moment the war party disappeared from view behind a low ridge in that broken country. They emerged, suddenly to wheel about just as Cody and the others were swallowed up by the landscape. Surprised and confused, the Cheyenne milled for a moment, some of their ponies rearing. The last of the seven horsemen to emerge from the ravine reined up in the confusion, fighting to bring his animal under control halfway between Cody and the knoll, where King stood watching in stunned, openmouthed silence.
Flinging his lance aside, that warrior yanked a rifle to his shoulder and fired a shot.
With a shrill whistle the bullet sailed past the hilltop.
Merritt growled, “By Jupiter—that red bastard’s firing at us!”
Immediately Corporal Wilkinson asked, “Permission to fire at that son of a bitch, General?” “Granted!”
The soldier slapped his Springfield carbine to his shoulder and snapped off a shot at the moment the warrior slipped behind his pony.
King thought he saw the Cheyenne’s shadowy form peek beneath the animal’s neck—then a second shot whined right past Merritt.
“Get that son of a bitch!” shouted the colonel.
As Wilkinson yanked up on the trapdoor and ejected the hot copper cartridge, King gazed into the middistance. “Look to the front, General. Look! Look! Here they come! By the dozens!”
The nearby ridge bristled with horsemen tearing on a collision course for Cody and his party, making for the hill where the lieutenant stood taking in the whole panorama.
Merritt whirled about and shouted down the slope, “Send up the first company!”
In the next moment the colonel sprinted off, joining Forbush below, where both leaped into the saddle. King watched them wheel left to the east around the base of the hill, spurring at an angle to catch up with the first company Lieutenant Colonel Carr had put in motion. Deciding it was time for him to leap into the action, King darted down the hill for the horse-holders. He was surprised to find Donnybrook frightened, the horse shying from him, jerking wild-eyed to break free as the lieutenant freed the throatlatch and snagged hold of the reins. The horse reared once, yanking cruelly against that crippled right arm wounded by the Apache in Arizona Territory. Rearing a second time, Donnybrook pulled King off the ground, making him wince with gut-felt pain in that arm as he gritted, short-reining the animal as he struggled to stuff his boot into the hooded stirrup while the fractious horse continued to prance around in a tight circle.
With Carr’s order to charge the enemy, Captain Mason had taken his K Company across that last two hundred yards of flat ground south of the creek, speeding on toward the base of the hill where King now spurred his mount to overtake his platoon as the entire company slowed. Ahead of them lay open ground, with mounted Cheyenne bristling from every hilltop across a mile-wide front.
“Drive them, Mason!” Carr shouted as he pulled his horse out of that formation moving forward at a walk. “But look out for that main ridge!”
Julius Mason wasn’t long in bawling, “Front into line!”
Left and right the blue-clad horsemen of K peeled off at a walk into a broad phalanx for the charge.
“Bugler!” Mason bellowed.
Those most stirring, brassy notes rose to the summer sky as the horses of K Company burst out of their walk, rolled into a lope, then surged into an uneven gallop. Beneath him, all around him, King heard the heaving chests of the mounts as the animals carried their wiry riders down the slope and across the Black Hills Road, on up the side of a ravine and into that open country scarred by coulees and the erosion of a million springtimes.
On they tore, on past Cody, who stood there in his dusty black theater outfit above a single fallen warrior, holding aloft a feathered warbonnet, shouting out to Mason’s troops as they galloped past.
“First scalp for Custer!”
K closed on half a mile before the enemy finally realized what they were facing. At a quarter of a mile some of the Cheyenne fired their rifles and pistols at the charging blue phalanx. It took a few moments for the painted, feathered horsemen to spread themselves as if to receive the charge, ponies racing both east and west to flank the oncoming pony soldiers.
“They get behind us—we’ll have our hands full!” Mason growled.
Looking over his shoulder, King saw that Carr had ordered another company into the pursuit. The stunning bandbox grays of Robert H. Montgomery’s B Troop were breaking to the rear and right around Mason’s K. Just sixty yards behind them Sanford C. Kellogg’s I Company came front into line and immediately spurred their mounts into the charge. Now 150 men rode straight for the enemy that, for the moment, still had those three companies easily outnumbered two to one.
Looking back at the Cheyenne who a moment before had been closing in around his company, King found the warriors reining up, shouting excitedly at one another, firing random and wild shots. Almost immediately the retreat began: first as a trickle, then a swelling tide as the surprised warriors clearly recognized they were about to be overwhelmed. In panic they whirled about and kicked their ponies into a furious rush toward the south.
Their wild and frantic scattering reminded King of chaff flung carelessly across a floor.
At the summit of the next ridge Mason halted his company after a chase of more than three miles. Their excited horses jostled and bumped one another as the soldiers swallowed down the surges of their own adrenaline, watching their foes disappear into the ebb and flow, rise and fall of that rolling, grassy landscape, escaping farther and farther with every breath the troopers and horses gulped hungrily. The ground all around them had been littered with reservation blankets and agency provisions, anything of any weight the warriors could discard in their flight.
Suddenly a loud, booming volley of gunfire rumbled off the western hills. Followed by a second rattling volley. Squinting, with his back to the early light, King found them. No more than a half mile off to the west Lieutenant William Hall had hurriedly halted and corralled his wagons. Those concealed infantrymen had scrambled from beneath the dirty oiled canvas and were already deployed in platoons by their sergeants, admirably accounting for themselves with their Long Tom Springfields, helping to send the Cheyenne on their way.
“That bunch gets back to the reservation,” Captain Mason groaned, “we can’t touch ’em.”
“Sure as sin,” King agreed. “Those Cheyenne get back across that line, they’ll belong to the Indian Bureau again.”
Clattering to a halt on K’s right and left flanks, the other companies came up noisily, men hollering, horses neighing.
“Permission to pursue the enemy?” Montgomery shouted above the angry murmurs and curses of his men as they watched the enemy disappearing through the hills and coulees like ants scurrying over a picnic blanket.
“Yes!” Kellogg bellowed his assent as he stood in the stirrups, joining the other officers in looking for their regimental commander. “I still want a piece of those red bastards my own self!”