CHAPTER 17

AGAIN and again across the short-grass time The Bull had taunted the agency Indians at Red Cloud or Spotted Tail, daring them to jump their reservations and join him in their old way of life.

“See, I am rich while you are poor … having to beg for the white man’s coffee and sugar. I need none of that. I need none of the wasichu’s flour. I need only the buffalo and the old ways. Come join us!”

Like the mighty gathering of the shaggy buffalo itself into herds with numbers beyond count, all the more Sioux came to the Rosebud those first cool days of early June. The tribes gathered on the prairie uplands, marching but a few miles each day toward that ages-blessed crescent of the Mountains of the Wolves.

There this year the cool waters of the Rosebud had trickled beside the great Sun Dance ceremony and given The Bull his electrifying vision.

Here the people celebrated anew at each camp among the hills and bluffs, mesas and bottomlands strewn with conifers and aspen, birch and alder, all lifting their heady perfumes to the summer blue above. Here the people joined in races and wrestling, the dancing and singing, the drumming and always the courting by the young ones.

As was custom the head men hosted great councils of war, welcoming in each new band as it arrived, opening their arms to the visiting cousins: more Northern Cheyenne and even some Arapaho who had wandered north to remain free of the white invasion of their ancient tribal lands.

This last great council of war, declaring the People’s adherence to the old ways.

They would follow the buffalo.

At the age of twenty-eight summers, Oglalla warrior White-Cow-Bull had yet to marry. But of late he had set his roving eye on a very pretty Cheyenne woman living this summer with her relatives among the Shahiyena, or Northern Cheyenne, camp circle. Ever since Old Bear’s people had escaped Red Beard Crook’s soldiers during the Black Night March of the Sore-Eye Moon, White-Cow-Bull had hungered to make young Monaseetah his wife.

Cheyenne chiefs Ice Bear and Two Moons had many times told the brave Oglalla warrior that the woman had once belonged to the white man all Sioux called the Long Hair. The story the chiefs told said this soldier-chief had wanted to keep the young Cheyenne maiden as his second wife, but that his first wife had grown angry, commanding him to throw the Indian girl away.

Monaseetah had two boys, each by a different husband. One Indian, a full-blood Cheyenne through and through, and Yellow Bird, the son of Hiestzi, the Yellow Hair.

None of that really mattered to White-Cow-Bull. Undaunted, he persisted in courting the young mother now in her twenty-fifth summer. Yet it was difficult for him to spend time alone with Monaseetah. Never far from her side was young Yellow Bird with his hypnotically pale eyes and his light-colored curly hair. Only at night after her sons had fallen asleep would Monaseetah speak at all with the Oglalla warrior, talking through the lodge skins, for she refused to come out, afraid to come to his blanket.

At long last in what his Sioux people called the Moon When Chokecherries Grow Ripe, she had at last worked up the strength to tell the young warrior that she had something important to say to him when the sun rested behind the mountains.

Giddily, flushed with the promise, White-Cow-Bull promised he would return that evening as the stars whirled in the foamy sky overhead.

Eagerly he dressed in his finest buckskins and brushed his hair until it gleamed like his well-oiled rifle. He was as certain as he had ever been about anything that tonight Monaseetah would finally profess her love for him. Across four moons the young warrior had courted her, ever since that camp of Old Bear’s over on the headwaters of the Powder. Ever since that cold Black Night March.

But instead of giving her heart to White-Cow-Bull as he had hoped, Monaseetah declared that, though it hurt her to tell him, the Oglalla warrior must court another for his wife.

“In my heart,” she explained, “it is not right for me to let you pursue me while I belong to another.”

“Who is this other?” the warrior snapped, ready to challenge that man.

“I am waiting for Hiestzi to return for me as he promised.” The memories were still fresh and raw, like a wound kept from healing.

The thick pain behind her words made the young Oglalla wonder if she truly believed the soldier-chief would actually come back for her.

“Only death will keep him from coming for me as he promised. Someday, he will come,” she told him.

Monaseetah straightened and muffled her sobbing bravely. “You are very kind to offer your life to me, White-Cow-Bull. It is an honor for any woman to hear your words of love. But still—I must wait for Hiestzi to fulfill his promise to me. I can take no other. I must wait for my husband to return.”

The great, shaggy horned uncle Pte had brought the tribes to this place. And it was the buffalo the great village now followed.

Tens of thousands carpeted the plains some ten miles south of the camps pitched along the Greasy Grass. The warriors could hunt at leisure each summer day following the massive herd north until it came time to hunt antelope up on the Yellowstone. Even a young child couldn’t mistake where the great herd grazed in its journey—the dust hung like a thick winter blanket above the curly dark humps of these animals that spelled life itself for the nomads of the prairie.

So much like the dust of this great migration of the tribes. From their first camp along the Greasy Grass, the tribes moved a few miles north. That dust from their journey rose into the bone yellow sky above a trail a half mile wide and many more times that long.

In the van of the march rode those courageous young warriors, each wearing his finest feathers and scalps, brandishing their shields and new rifles aflutter with eagle feathers and hair. Behind that watchful vanguard of warriors came the women and children riding or walking among pack-laden and travois-dragging horses. Then behind the old ones tramped the huge pony herd, watched over by the boys too young to go to war, but old enough to show their bravery in caring for the thousands beyond count of Sioux ponies.

They had crossed the divide from the Rosebud, not in fear, but to find the buffalo. Not in fear that Red Beard Crook would find their great village. No, not in fear had they come to the valley of the Greasy Grass. For they had already whipped the soldiers across the time it took the sun to walk over the sky.

Like a bolt of summer lightning sent into the huge encampment that sixteenth day of June, 1876, as white men would reckon time—Crazy Horse’s scouts had come tearing among the lodge circles on the Rosebud with their electrifying news.

“Soldiers! Soldiers! Sitting Bull told us of this—his vision! The soldiers come!”

So it was that Crazy Horse gathered his young warriors and sped out to greet the soldiers under Red Beard Crook, who had been marching north with thirteen hundred men to rendezvous with General Terry from Dakota and Colonel Gibbon of Montana. Some twenty-five miles south of their combined villages, the Sioux and Cheyenne scouts located the long blue columns along the Rosebud. They would wait till morning to throw themselves on these foolish white men.

Come daylight, Crazy Horse led the screaming, shrieking riders into battle.

It was battle as Red-Beard Crook had never seen it: naked brown horsemen whirling madly about his grim blue ranks, pressing the frustrated soldier-chief to a stalemate.

After nearly an entire day of fighting, during which Crazy Horse and his young field generals continually stymied Crook and his officers, both armies abandoned the field, taking their wounded and dead with them.

Crook had decided against either continuing the chase or plunging ahead to meet up with the other two columns. He preferred instead to pull back to the south where he could lick his wounds. At the same time Sitting Bull and his advisers had decided to push over the rugged divide between the Rosebud and that sparkling river just on the other side of those Mountains of the Wolves.

They would march, The Bull told them. They would march over the mountains to the Pa-zees-la-wak-pa.

The Greasy Grass.

“Let us celebrate our great victory over the soldiers!” thousands of Sitting Bull’s people shouted. “The victory you dreamed of and shared with us!”

“No! Hear me!” The Bull cried above their praises. “We go because we have not yet struggled with the battle of my vision. We must march to the Greasy Grass. This fight on the Rosebud was not the battle in my vision, brothers!”

Still the warriors, young and old alike, persisted in their celebration. They had driven Red Beard’s troops clear out of the country!

“We have won, Sitting Bull! Long it has been since there has been such singing in our camps—we have won a great, great victory!”

“Hear me! It was not the great victory still to be given us on the Greasy Grass,” The Bull answered once they had fallen silent around him, intent on every word. “The dream showed me the soldiers would fall into our camp. Not on the field of battle. The soldiers would fall into our camp. Not only that—my dream showed our camp on the Pa-zees-la-wak-pa. Bull leads his people to … the Greasy Grass!”

So it came to pass that on the next day the people tore their lodges down and began their trek west. Over the Mountains of the Wolves they would come to the Greasy Grass, where they could hunt more buffalo, slowly working their way north to the land of the Yellowstone, where they could hunt antelope for meat and hides.

From that first warm day of spring, through the long weeks of wandering, that growing camp hummed with a constant activity, a drone of comings and goings. Not only were there the constant arrivals of cousins from the reservations and agencies, but there were the incessant departures of the young men on scouts and hunts. Not to mention those bands of warriors who led away pack animals burdened under dressed hides and thick robes, returning weeks later with their ponies swaybacked beneath loads of meat and blankets, provisions and guns, from the agency traders.

From the first day of late winter, when The Bull’s warriors had been able to travel east across a trackless, frozen landscape, they had bartered for more guns and ammunition.

Too, with each trip to the reservations for provisions, the warriors returned with more men. More and more the young ones, tough like resilient sinew, came to pitch their wickiups beside the waters of the Rosebud and later the Greasy Grass. Came to enjoy that time of endless celebration: each lazy summer day filled with hunting and scouting—each long, warm night of courting and storytelling and coup counting, and planning for The Bull’s glorious fight when the soldiers would fall headfirst into their camp on the Greasy Grass.

The valley of the Pa-zees-la-wak-pa lay blanketed with buffalo. A massive herd slowly inched south and west toward the hazy bulk of the Bighorn Mountains. By now little over a decade had passed since the white man began his wholesale slaughter of the black, shaggy beasts. But here this summer these herds were another blessing of the all-powerful Wakan Tanka.

Here in this valley the people would stay … far to the west from the white man. Here they could follow the buffalo as they had for time beyond remembering.

Eating the flesh of Pte to make themselves strong as a people once more.

“At last we are out of the white man’s land,” they all agreed, and smoked together each night on the Greasy Grass. “Let the wasichu stay over on his side of the land. We will stay here on our ancient hunting grounds. This is our last ground. From here we will not be moved.”

With some three hundred lodges and better than three thousand people themselves, the Northern Cheyenne led the Sioux bands down the west slope of the Wolf Mountains to what the Cheyenne had always called Goat River. And in that valley of the Little Bighorn, they created a sight never before seen by Sioux and Shahiyena alike: eight huge, graceful camp circles rising along the Greasy Grass, the horns of each circle open to the east in prayerful greeting to the rising sun.

At the extreme north end of this greatest of all congregations, the direction the tribes were marching, stood those Cheyenne lodges. Next to them were raised the lodges of the Sans Arcs, the Miniconjou, then a small camp circle of the Brule Sioux. Beyond them spread the huge camp circle of Crazy Horse’s Oglallas, the Blackfeet Sioux, another small circle of Santee Sioux, who without fail always pitched their camp next to the last tribe, Sitting Bull’s Hunkpapas.

That name long ago given to The Bull’s tribe had significance as “the edge” or “the border,” for it identified the group that traditionally camped at the village entrance. In the parlance of the old days, the Hunkpapas were “The Ones Who Camp by Themselves.”

Like Sitting Bull’s huge black-and-red lodge, the Sioux tepees were tall and narrow with a big smoke-flap opening at the top, whereas the lodges of the Northern Cheyenne were larger in circumference, yet sat a bit squatter and were topped with smaller ventilating smoke flaps. Sioux lodge or Cheyenne—there were better than two thousand lodges scattered along that silver ribbon of river. And nestled back in the thick willow and alder and creepers were huddled those wickiups that served as small brush-and-blanket shelters for the young warriors fresh off the reservations without families of their own.

To the west beyond the eight lodge circles, the huge pony herds had been put out to pasture on the rich green belly-high grasses. More than thirty thousand animals in all. No man had an accurate means of counting just how many ponies roamed those fertile bench-land pastures.

A man would have to say they were as thick as the ticks on an old buffalo bull’s back.

Off the divide at last a beautiful panorama opened up before the command.

The regiment had crossed a series of ridges some fifteen to eighteen miles wide, which separated the drainages of the Rosebud from the Little Bighorn. Far below their feet now spread a green, grassy plain extending a little more than fifty miles to the Bighorn Mountains, resting stoic and silent in a snowcapped majesty, pale and hazy beneath a summer sun that relentlessly worked at the high overcast to make for a hot day. By now the clouds above the column were burning off. The air about the men droned lazily with that buzz of summer’s retribution upon the high plains.

Down the slopes of gray rock sprouting with stunted sage and sparse bunchgrass, they wound their way, weaving round the dark green of jack-brush and pine and cedar clustered in clumps like old squaws gossiping over the army columns coming their way.

Lieutenant W. W. Cooke felt the first drops of sweat rolling down his long, flowing Dundrearies that spilled off his jaws. All the rage back east at the time, the long sideburns had proven quite a hit with the young ladies come visiting Fort Abraham Lincoln. For a man handsome to begin with, the Dundrearies only accented his dark good looks. He swiped a hand across his handlebar mustache as Custer called a halt on the open tableland where the column could enjoy the beckoning green of the lush grass calling seductively from the valley below.

“Not far now, General,” Cooke commented, reining in beside his commander.

“Billy, I want to see the officers. Promptly.”

“Right away,” replied the Canadian-born adventurer, who had come south to America when the Civil War offered excitement. He quickly gathered Custer’s officers at the head of the march.

“We’re close now, fellas,” Custer began. “I’m going to form the columns for the attack should we be presented any surprises. Therefore, the first troop commander to report back to me that his pack detail is complete and that each of his troopers does indeed carry a hundred rounds of carbine ammo and twenty-four rounds for his pistol will ride the advance of the column. It seems the honor of this position should go to the command who have done their best to obey my order against grumbling and is best prepared. I’ll wait here for a company commander to report—”

“I take the lead, General!”

Custer jerked sideways in his saddle to stare at Benteen.

The stocky Missourian’s H Company had been marching right behind Custer since the climb over the divide began.

Eventually Custer answered Benteen’s salute. “By all means, Colonel Benteen,” he stammered, flustered and referring to the captain’s brevet rank awarded during an illustrious Civil War career. “You have the advance for our attack, sir.”

“Thank you, General.” For the first time in many, many years since he had joined the Seventh in its early days, there rang the genuine sound of appreciation in Benteen’s voice.

That sound struck Cooke as odd, if not a bit off-key.

“Lead off, Colonel.” Custer waved Benteen forward, sitting atop Dandy beside Cooke while H Company trooped past.

“The man hates you,” Cooke whispered from the corner of his mouth as the dusty, ragged soldiers clambered by.

Custer never took his eyes off Benteen’s men to reply. “He doesn’t have to like me, Cookey. He’s a bloody good soldier. Perhaps the most experienced and levelheaded company commander I’ve got.

“Keep in mind we will all rely on each other today. Besides, it suits me that Benteen’s up front. If we’re confronted with the hostiles—Benteen hits them first. And if I have time to split my command for the attack as we did at Washita, then I can always count on the captain to come to my aid if I need him. No matter what you might call him—Captain Frederick Benteen is a soldier first.”

The insides of George Herendeen’s thighs were sweating. Tiny rivulets of cold water poured down the back of his knees and into his stockings already soaked and chafing. He was sure he’d never pull his feet from his boots come evening. Perhaps he could soak his feet in the cool waters of the Little Horn tonight.

But that meant this regiment under Custer would have to wade on into these Sioux and get finished with them before evening. George Herendeen didn’t want to think anymore about his sweaty feet.

It didn’t take long before the regiment descending the divide in column-of-fours started marching a little too fast for Custer’s liking. Herendeen figured whoever was setting the pace up there was just as anxious as he was to reach the beckoning green pastures down in the valley along that bright, silvery ribbon of the river.

But Custer wasn’t as patient as George Herendeen. He nudged Dandy into a gallop, racing to the head of command, where he could reassume the front of the march itself.

Through the pastel sego lilies and bright sunset orange of the paintbrush, down past the buttermilk-pale hanging globes of the yellow lady slipper and the twilight purple cockleshells of spiderwort, around the sage and through the tall grasses, Custer led his troops, on and on into the widening jaws of the Little Bighorn valley. Including the Arikaras and Crows, his civilian scouts and mule packers, along with those fire-hardened veterans and bowel-puckered greenhorns, Custer was leading approximately six hundred seventy-five men into the shimmering haze as forenoon settled over the sleepy summer valley.

Herendeen twisted in the saddle at the grunt-bellied sounds of the young mule clambering up behind him.

Mark Kellogg reined alongside the scout, bouncing like a buggy spring on a washboard road.

He pulled in so he could ride with the scouts whose place it was to form the front of the march. “George, could I ask you for the use of your spurs? I noticed you’re not using them.”

Herendeen glanced down at the reporter’s boots, then at the wide-eyed young mule Kellogg battled for control. “Not having much good with that salt-pork mule, eh, Mr. Kellogg?”

Mark chortled in that nervous way of his, jabbing his wire-framed spectacles back on the bridge of his large nose. “I want to stay up with the lead. That’s what I want.”

“Here.” George pulled the unused spurs from his saddlebag. “But I can only advise you not to put them on or use them, Mr. Kellogg.”

“Why not?” Kellogg wiped sweat off his upper lip.

“It’s best from here on out you pull back to the rear of the column and stay put there. Not the healthiest place up here in the front with the scouts.”

Kellogg chirped, “Oh, George—you had me scared for a moment there! I’m expecting some interesting developments soon, and I want to keep up with you scouts so I can report on everything I’m able to see far ahead. You must understand—I’ve promised my readers back east that I’ll report the full and explosive details of this encounter with Sioux warriors. In those dispatches and stories I’ve shipped east already, you understand. I can’t let my readers down.”

“Mr. Kellogg,” Herendeen said, “take my spurs, if not my advice. Use one if not the other. If my guess is right, we’ll soon be seeing more action than you’ll be able to describe in a month of Sundays. Whoa, now! See there—the Crow boys are stopping ahead. They’ll wait for Custer himself to come up. You should be able to hear what they say to him for yourself.”

Mark Kellogg’s eyes widened as General Custer loped past, standing in the stirrups, his knees flexing easily. The man’s meant to be on horseback, Kellogg thought to himself as he buckled the second spur over his round-toed boot. He decided to take Herendeen’s suggestion. Just stay close to Custer. That’s where the action will be. That’s where the best story of your life will be found.

The Crow scouts had ground to a halt on the bank of the Ash Creek and even dismounted, waiting for Custer and the troops to come up. There in the dust of the wide, beaten trail they had been following, the scouts scratched the soldier-chief a map.

“They say this creek flows down to the Little Horn,” Mitch Bouyer interpreted, watching the reporter move closer to the group. “The Greasy Grass of the Sioux, where Sitting Bull’s waiting for you and your boys, General.”

To Kellogg it sounded as if the half-breed still smarted from some old injury done him by Custer.

“They’re waiting for me, you say—eh, Bouyer?”

Kellogg had become a practiced observer. Without really thinking about it, he studied faces, the way people held and carried themselves. More important than learning what a person had to tell about a story, Kellogg had found out some time ago, was learning what a person didn’t want you to know.

From the look he read on Custer’s face at this moment, as the general knelt staring at the Crow interpreter, Kellogg learned something about the cracks widening in Custer’s command.

Mark Kellogg could tell that Custer didn’t much like Mitch Bouyer, perhaps more so than he had ever disliked any man in his life. Even the nagging Benteen.

But then the reporter remembered that a man like Custer would revel in being hated by them both—Benteen and Bouyer: brave men and worthy adversaries.

Custer dusted his hands on his buckskin britches. “The Sioux, Mr. Bouyer—they can wait until ice water is served in hell itself for all I care. I’m going to slip ’em a Custer surprise!”