Cry of the Hawk (37 page)

“Fort goddamned Wallace? Why in hell?”

“Custer figures its the only place where there’ll be enough supplies to ration this outfit,” Sweete told them. “’Sides, I think Custer can’t get Kidder’s outfit off his mind.”

Jonah turned toward the southwest, at his back the twinkling firelights of the cavalry camp, staring into the slap-dark of the rolling prairie grassland that had swallowed Custer’s regiment and spit them back out again. He wondered if Kidder’s men would be so lucky.

The next morning the entire command was moving at first-light, moving away from the South Platte, reluctantly.

Twenty … twenty-five … thirty and more miles per day Custer put behind them. Pushing relentlessly toward Fort Wallace. That night a half dozen men slipped off unheard into the prairie darkness.

And the following dawn found the rest whispering at report before they saddled up and pushed off again behind their hard-driving commander. Better than forty miles he prodded them to march.

Through that night of 6 July more than two dozen slipped away, every last man of them taking his horse with him.

Already the mad
chase had covered as many miles as he had fingers on one hand.

Pawnee Killer’s blood was up. His thirty warriors were warming to the kill. For this was truly fun—to have a wild chase such as this, running down each victim and killing him before continuing on the trail of the rest.

The Sioux had cut a fresh trail miles back—a dozen, perhaps as many as fifteen men. Iron-shod horses. White men.

Within minutes, his war party had been rewarded with finding the quarry in the distance. One man out in front by a few hundred yards. A leader riding in the van. And ten soldiers in a short double column.

The white man always rode like that, Pawnee Killer knew. While the Indian rode in single file.

His warriors now had four of the soldiers dead behind them in the running battle. The white men riding their worn-out horses would turn and attempt to shoot behind them at the warriors on their furious ponies.

The air crackled with sporadic gunshots. The white men cursed and cried out as the warriors drew near. But not a one gave up easily.

It was good, the Killer thought. Good that each one should fight to the last breath.

The last eight finally reined up in a frantic spray of dirt and summer-cured grass, dismounting on the run, dragging their lathered horses into a crude ring. They began shooting the animals as Pawnee Killer’s screeching warriors topped the rise.

Down behind the still-quivering, thrashing horses the last soldiers crouched, laying their pistols and long banded-barrel rifles over the still-heaving ribs of the foam-flecked army mounts. And began returning a hot fire like nothing Pawnee Killer had ever seen in his fighting life.

The white men had decided to sell their lives dearly.

He ordered his warriors to stay at a distance, crawling on their bellies along the slopes of the gentle hill to the west of the white men, through the grass on the south and east. The north was open, flat land. Unusable for attack.

From three directions the Brule warriors began walking in their deadly iron-tipped hail, arrow after arrow raining down from a cruel, cloudless sky on the last survivors of that wild chase across the summer-honed prairie.

First one, then another, and a third soldier cried out in pain—a yelp shut off in fear or death. And still more arrows rained down on them while the last of their big brown horses thrashed its way into death. Behind the still carcasses the men hid, only a few firing, and only then when they had a target.

The warriors gave them no targets.

Instead, the arrows arced out of the tall prairie grass far off, sailing into the cruel summer blue and down again in an ugly flight of whispering death that caused another soldier to cry out. And another. And still another.

Until all was quiet.

“Stop!” Pawnee Killer called out, waving both his arms as he came to his knees, signaling the warriors to the east and those on the long slope to the west.

Eventually he stood and took a half dozen steps toward the far ring of silent horses. Another ten steps, his heart pounding, afraid one of them would be alive … alive enough to—

He fired his leveled rifle as the figure stirred.

Then went to his knees to reload. Around him the warriors cried out, swirling madly out of the grass like demons who would no longer listen to his orders.

It was time to have someone pay for what they had lost to the soldiers in the recent moons.

They were over the barricade of still-warm carcasses in a matter of heartbeats—clubbing, slashing, hammering with their rifle butts. Counting coup and stripping weapons. Claiming the white man’s objects.

In a fury of bloodlust for what had been done by the soldiers to their families, stripping their women and children and old ones of their lodges and dried meat and blankets and robes, Pawnee Killer’s warriors hacked arms and legs and hands and feet from the bodies.

Heads were smashed to jelly beside the stinking carcasses of their tired horses.

The manhood parts were slashed from their bodies.

Thighs were opened up like a fresh buffalo kill, from hip to knee.

Bellies riven so that slick purple gut spilled forth.

“This one, you will want to see,” said one of the older warriors. “Come, Pawnee Killer.”

“Yes, I know him,” the chief said. “We will not take his scalp.”

“A Lakota?”

The chief nodded. “Guiding for the pony soldiers.”

“He should have known better, Pawnee Killer.”

“Perhaps he did not know better,” he replied. “These were brave men. They fought well while they could. It is the last thing we can do for him—leaving his body untouched. Scalp him only, but leave the scalp here.”

“You know his name?”

“Yes. It is Red Bead,” Pawnee Killer replied quietly, the wind rustling the summer-dried grass. “As children we played together in our camp along the Buffalo Wallow River.”

31

July 7, 1867

T
HE MORNING OF
the seventh dawned as had so many before it.

By the time the gray was gone from the sky and the bloody corona of the sun made its appearance at the far eastern rim of the earth, the command was called to horse.

Apparently on cue, thirteen soldiers from two troops rose from their fires and, without a word, turned west, never looking back. Six strode off on foot. Seven quickly, self-consciously mounted army horses and rode away. All thirteen aimed for the nearby stream—clearly away from Custer’s line of march for the day.

“You boys better get back here—you get skinned alive!” yelled a sergeant, trying his best to cajole the deserters.

Lieutenant Edward Godfrey stood watching the seven mounted soldiers reach the far streambank, then the six stragglers slogged across the shallow creek on foot and clambered up the far side without so much as a glance back in the direction of the camp. Practically every soldier in camp was on his feet now, most whispering among themselves, watching the lack of action among their officers. An electrifying tension had come over the entire bivouac readying itself for the march.

Down near the streambank where the scouts had pitched their bedrolls, Shad Sweete stood watching the unfolding drama with the rest as the last straggler on foot among the thirteen slogged out of the creek, up the bank, and onto the rolling prairie.

“They taking off for the gold mines, ain’t they?” asked Jonah Hook as he came to a stop beside the old trapper.

Sweete kept looking back and forth between the deserters and the bustling soldier camp, knowing something was soon come to budge. “S’pose so, Jonah Some men can take only so much of this. Some just ain’t cut out to take such a hammering that Custer hisself can take.”

“Officer of the Day!”

“That was Custer hollering, weren’t it?” Comstock asked.

“Sounded to be,” Hickock replied.

“Major Elliott, get Tom—Lieutenant Custer—and Billy Cooke. Bring Jackson with you too. They’re our best marksmen.” Custer was sputtering as he reached the streambank, arms flaying the chill morning air. “I want those men!”

“Yessir,” Elliott replied, turning away into the disordered bivouac halfway to being put on the march.

Shad shook his head and spit a stream of tobacco juice into the sand at his feet. The coffee in his tin cup had quickly gone cold and tasteless.

“Why don’t he just let ’em go?” Hook asked. “He didn’t get so worked up over the rest took off before.”

Hickok glanced at Sweete a moment before he said, “This is something different, I imagine. The rest sneaked off under cover of darkness. This bunch—they just bolted off right in the bright of day.”

Sweete nodded. “Right under Custer’s nose. He can’t let ’em do that—he won’t have no soldiers left if he don’t get control and get it quick.”

A clatter of bit and saddle and hooves snagged their attention as four soldiers reined up beside an agitated, stammering George Armstrong Custer at the grassy bank.

“You’re in charge of this detail, Major Elliott,” Custer explained, his arm outstretched, pointing across the stream. “You are to perform as if these men were deserting in time of war, men! And how the army deals with deserters in time of war is to bring them back …” He pointed at his feet. “Bring them to me,
here.
Dead or alive.”

Elliott and the rest nodded gravely. Only Tom Custer, a dull-red Civil War bullet wound still glowing in his cheek, made a comment as the four hurriedly nudged their animals down the slope toward the water.

“By God, Autie—we’ll bring ’em all back—one way or other!”

Shad looked over at the rest, then stared at the quartet of officers splashing noisily out of the stream, up the far bank. He said quietly, “The general’s sent off a lynch mob.”

Across the next hour, it was hard for any man with good ears not to hear the distant rattle of sporadic gunfire roll back to camp on the pristine prairie air. The camp bustled with nervous energy, waiting. Waiting …

“Here they come!” a voice called out.

Every eye strained into the distance of those rolling, grassy hills on the far side of the South Fork of the Republican.

“They’re back!”

Elliott rode at the lead. Behind his saddle slumped a body.

“By God—they killed ’em all!” someone whispered loudly as the soldiers and civilians alike jostled for a place among the plum brush and willow along the stream.

As Elliott made it down to the far edge of the stream and his horse began splashing across, the water flung up by the prancing hooves appeared to revive his prisoner. The soldier, hands and feet bound together beneath the horse’s belly, raised his dripping head, cursing and thrashing wildly. The captain turned in his McClellan saddle and grabbed his prisoner by the back of the belt, readjusting the soldier and cursing back every bit as loudly.

Three of the deserters suddenly appeared on foot at the top of the bank behind Elliott. They paused there for a moment, then were nudged down the bank by Tom Custer, pistol in hand. The last two mounted officers carried restrained prisoners behind them, lashed behind their McClellan saddles. The whole sad procession plodded through the shallow creek, up the grassy bank, and halted before Custer.

“Cut ’em loose,” he ordered his sergeant of the guard.

The camp guards hurried forward and cut the three men loose. Two of them crumpled to the ground, loudly complaining. A third sank to the damp sand like a sack of wet oats, without a word and not moving.

“These three wounded, General,” explained Major Elliott.

“Get us a surgeon, goddammit, General!”

Custer stood above the soldier in that next heartbeat, sand flying, his pistol drawn. “By the saints—you’ll not have a surgeon’s care. And any man who takes a step to help these three will answer to me!” He waved the pistol, causing most to step back.

“You’re refusing the men my care?” inquired an officer who broke through the curious throng, carrying a small leather-bound satchel at the end of one arm.

“Yes, surgeon. That’s precisely what I’m doing. These men wanted to desert the army,” Custer spat. “By God—they won’t get the attention of an army surgeon for their wounds.”

“You’ve had them shot, General! In the name of humanity!”

“That’s the last I’ll hear from you, Captain!” Custer snapped at the surgeon. “I’ll put you on report myself if you continue.” He whirled on the rest of the group. “And let this be a lesson to the rest of you! I’ll shoot any man who deserts from here on!”

Custer turned on his heel. “Take these men to a wagon. Chain them up inside,” he ordered his camp guards.

“Tom—where are the others? I thought there was more.”

Tom stepped up, scratching his chin self-consciously. “Seven more. They were horseback. Got too much a head start on us. Spotted us when we crossed the stream—and took off at a hard gallop.”

“They left these six to fend for themselves,” added Lieutenant William W. Cooke, a Canadian who had come to the States to fight for the Union during the Civil War.

Below his bushy mustache, Custer pressed his wind-burned lips into a line of utter frustration. The man looked as if he wanted to cuss in the worst way, but swallowed down the temptation. He whirled on the noisy, protesting deserters who were being led off by the guard. Stomping over to one, he jammed his pistol against the man’s head.

“You shut up that caterwauling right now! Or I’ll be the one to blow your head off!”

“Yessir general,” the man replied meekly, his eyes wide and fearful.

“Get them out of my sight!” Custer ordered his guard. “These men aren’t soldiers. They’re criminals!” He wheeled on the breathless assembly. “And any criminal in this regiment will be dealt with just as harshly!”

“You want the march ordered for the day?” Elliott asked.

“No,” Custer answered, squinting into the new sunlight. “Not just yet. Tom—I want you to see that the three who are wounded are placed in the wagon. The other three—have them shaved completely, and then stripped to their birthday suits.”

Tom was smiling, a devilish light in his own blue eyes. “We’ll march ’em to the ‘Rogue,’ Autie?”