Heaven and Hell (76 page)

From the background of the dark woods, a man with a rifle broke and ran toward the river. Custer saw the Indian coming and raised one of his pistols. "Trumpeter, sound the charge," he yelled, firing from horseback. The Indian flew backward, his rifle spinning out of his hand.

The trumpeter sounded the call. To the far left and right of Charles, and behind him as well, men shouted and cheered. Before the trumpeter finished, the band burst into "Garry Owen," and the Seventh Cavalry poured over the Washita to strike the village.

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Satan carried Charles over the Washita with a great leap. He hugged the piebald with his knees, was dashed with icy spray when Satan landed in the shallows on the other side. They galloped up the bank. To one side, he saw Griffenstein, a revolver in each fist, a smile on his bearded face.

The daylight was coming. The bleached hide covers of the tipis showed clearly among the cotton woods. The pictographs were distinctive; there was no doubt that it was a Cheyenne village. To the left and right of the main force, the support columns were moving in, hallooing and cheering. Charles even heard a rebel yell.

The van of the attack swept toward the tipis across a level area broken by low knolls. The earth shook from the pounding of the horses.

Suddenly the sun cleared the horizon, and streaks of orange shimmered on the great curve of the Washita where it bent away north, just east of the village.

The Cheyennes poured from the tipis as the troopers rode down on them. The men struggled with their bows and rifles. Charles was dismayed by the sight of many women and young children. Some of the sleepy youngsters were crying. The women wailed in fright. Dogs barked and snapped. The sudden fire from the charging cavalry worsened the bedlam.

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Breath plumed from Charles's mouth. He was within fifty yards of the first tipis in the trees, but some troopers had already reached them.

One shot a dog snapping at the horses. Another put a bullet in the breast of a gray-haired grandmother. The women screamed louder as their men staggered forward to defend them. Against the mounted blue lines they had no chance at all.

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The charge carried Charles into a lane between tipis with smoke curling out of their tops. Griffenstein rode ahead of him, pistols cracking.

A spindly old man defending himself with the faded red shield of his youth stared at the troopers with stunned eyes. Dutch Henry put a bullet into his open mouth. A great flying fan of blood spread behind the man. It splattered his tipi like paint.

Charles had to rely on Satan not to fall among the panicked Indians, who were yelling and clubbing at the soldiers, and to avoid the cook fires smoldering in the lane. His mind seemed benumbed. He'd yet to fire the Spencer.

Satan took him on down the lane to the far side of the village.

There Charles wheeled back, nearly knocked from his saddle by a collision with two troopers executing the same maneuver. On their faces, in their glinting eyes, he saw an eagerness that didn't distinguish between warrior and woman, society soldier and stripling.

A platoon in double column led by First Lieutenant Godfrey, of K

Troop, dashed out of the cottonwoods and away from the village. Waving hats and swinging ropes, the men in the column split right and left, circling the pony herd, which was already beginning to trot away southeast to escape the noise. The troopers managed to turn and surround the ponies. Observing, Charles wondered why General Custer went to the trouble. The ponies were Indian bred and trained; they'd be useless as cavalry remounts.

Powder smoke began to drift in heavy layers. Charles headed Satan back up another lane. He guessed the village to be about the size of their first estimate, fifty tipis. On his left, three troopers pulled one down. Inside the collapsing hide cover, he heard the high-pitched voices of terrified children. The troopers jumped off their horses and riddled the fallen tipi.

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The pace of the charge in the lanes slowed now. Men from the detachment that had encircled the village came in, adding to the confusion.

Directly ahead of Charles, a woman ran from behind a tipi, a bedraggled woman with unbound hair, holding a small white boy against her shoulder. She clutched the back of his head protectively. Her hands and face were weathered pink; a white woman.

She screamed at the soldiers. "My name is Blinn. Mrs. Blinn."

The captive, Charles remembered. "Please don't hurt Willie or—" A volley of shots jerked her like a marionette. Half of the little boy's head sheared off as he and his mother crashed into a tipi, tearing the cover and falling through.

Vomit rose in Charles's throat. He booted Satan past the torn tipi.

The slain boy was no older than his own son.

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The lanes filled with troopers excitedly firing despite the bucking and balking of their horses. Charles saw one corporal with a bloody sleeve, but no other sign of Army casualties. He walked Satan forward, peering through the trees to the open ground they'd crossed in their charge from the river. There, seated on Dandy on the highest of the knolls, Custer observed the fighting through binoculars.

Down a short lane between tipis, Charles spied Dutch Henry kneeling on the bullet-pierced body of a Cheyenne, whose head he lifted with one hand while he cut quickly around the scalp with the other. The victim was still alive. He screamed. His face was seamed and old. Sixty winters, or more. Charles turned away.

Not all the Cheyennes were so frail and defenseless. Here and there he saw boys of twelve or thirteen using a knife or lance in suicidal duels with soldiers. One of these youngsters leaped from behind a tipi to confront Charles. He was barefoot, wearing only leggings. From the black braid over his right ear dangled a battle memento: someone's cross of tarnished brass, pierced and tied by a thong. The boy had a delicate face. Traces of red showed on his chest. He was either a young Red Shield initiate, or one who aspired to that and imitated his elders by painting himself. All of this registered in the seconds it took for the boy to fit an arrow to his bowstring.

Charles raised his right hand, using sign to tell the youngster to run. The boy's face convulsed with rage as he released the bowstring.

Charles flung himself down behind Satan's left side. The arrow sailed over instead of skewering him.

He kicked his left boot out of the stirrup and dropped to the ground with the Spencer. Satan trotted away between the tipis. In the smoky
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grove, there was now almost constant screaming and wailing from the women. Charles gestured with the rifle and yelled in Cheyenne. "Run away. Run before you're killed." He didn't know why he hazarded his own life this way, except that he'd" never bargained on revenging himself on graybeards and children.

The boy wanted no mercy. He fitted another arrow to the bow.

Charles dodged to the right, hoping to dive behind the boy's tipi. The boy pulled the arrow back. Charles was still in the open, running bent over. He saw the bowstring go taut. There was no choice. He fired.

The bullet struck the boy's belly with close-range force, ripping it open and lifting him off the ground. He spun and landed on his back in the coals of a banked fire. His hair began to smoke. Charles ran to him and dragged him out of the fire. The metal cross was already hot, scorching his fingers. Charles's mouth tasted bitter; sweat ran down the bridge of his nose into his eyes. A surge of imagination showed him F^

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things the dead boy would never see. Another prairie spring; another prairie winter. The great bison herd migrating and covering the land.

The adoring eyes of the first woman he took--

Shaken, he tore the brass cross from the boy's braid and jammed it in his pocket. Something demanded that he keep a reminder of what he'd done.

He went on foot to search for Satan. By now the scene inside the village was totally chaotic. The central part was held by the Seventh.

Small isolated groups of Cheyennes had taken cover behind trees and in a shallow ditch and a ravine. Detachments quickly formed to concentrate fire on them, and kill them or drive them out. Women attempted to flee in the midst of the shooting, some clutching babies in cradle boards, some literally kicking their youngsters to hurry them along.

Wherever the women ran into a line of troopers, they gave up. Most did, anyway. Charles watched an obese old squaw with a small knife fling herself at three troopers. Rifle fire cut her down.

He caught Satan, who was whinnying loudly, not liking the strange smells and sounds of the melee. Charles mounted and galloped toward the side of the village where they'd attacked first. He thought he recognized pictographs on a large tipi over that way. He knew he was right when he saw two Indians on a single pony racing away from the tipi in the direction of the sun-sparkling river. Even through the dense smoke and at a distance, he knew it was Black Kettle, with Medicine Woman
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Later riding in front of him.

Their pony reached the bank of the Washita. There, a quartet of troopers caught up with them. Black Kettle raised his hands to plead for mercy. A volley hit him and his wife and hurled them both off the pony and into the stream. The frightened pony trampled Medicine Woman Later before gaining the other bank.

"Christ!" Charles said. Intense revulsion was rising in him. All his past pledges to himself and his boasts of wanton vengeance shamed him. Wooden Foot Jackson wouldn't want this--a blood price taken in the lives of children, mothers, the peace chief who had befriended the Jackson Trading Company and shielded it for a season from the wrath of Scar.

He jammed the Spencer in the saddle scabbard, put his head down and raced for the river.

A flying wedge of eight or ten horsemen came up behind him, broke around him, streamed on eastward, churning up muddy snow. A grinning face looked back at him. "Here goes, Main--a brevet or a coffin." Whooping like boys, Major Elliott and his troopers galloped away. Soon, from the east, Charles heard intermittent gunfire.

He trotted Satan toward the river again. The open ground held 484 HEAVEN AND HELL

fallen Cheyennes, mostly men, nearly all dead. He spied one body in blue. The mouth was open, the eyes fixed on the trampled snow. Louis Hamilton--who'd begged not to be left with the wagons when there was glory waiting.

Satan jumped suddenly, sailing over some obstacle Charles hadn't seen. He wrenched around and looked down. Custer's Blucher lay there, an arrow through his throat.

When Charles reached the Washita, he guessed that about twenty minutes had passed since the attack began. Already the gunfire was diminishing. In the village, many of the tipis were down, and the dismounted troopers running to and fro no longer displayed caution; they had won and they knew it.

He dismounted and waded into the flowing cold water, up to his waist. About halfway across, where there was a sandbar, little threads of red spun off into the current. Black Kettle and Medicine Woman Later had fallen together, her body half resting on his. The back of her head protruded from the water. The peace chief's face was submerged
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and turned up to the light, every wrinkle visible because of the water's clarity.

Charles felt pain in his gut. For this he'd joined the Tenth, and then the Seventh? To perpetrate the murder of a man who'd done nothing but sue for peace, nothing but try to walk the white man's road? In the clear winter morning on the Washita, the scales were falling from his eyes. He was sick with guilt and shame.

He lifted the body of Medicine Woman Later, which was heavy because of her soaked clothing. He carried her to the bank and there lay her on her back. He sloshed into the water again to get Black Kettle.

He was now able to see the chief's five bullet wounds, which the woman's body had hidden before. Tears came to his eyes.

Somehow Black Kettle was lighter. Charles picked him up from the icy shallows and lay him across his forearms, heedless of the water cascading from the body and splashing his leggings and soaking his sleeves. He staggered toward the bank--straight into the shadow of a horse and rider.

Charles looked up. Captain Harry Venable extended his hand and aimed his side arm at Charles. The gun was an i860 Army Colt with some kind of ivory inlay in the butt.

"Leave those bodies where they fell or take their scalps."

"I won't do either one. These poor old people befriended me once."

"You know them?"

"You're damn right. This is Black Kettle, the peace chief. It's his village. He tried to take the village to sanctuary at Fort Cobb and that Washita 485

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damn fool Hazen turned him away. This is his reward." The old Indian now felt heavy and sodden in his arms. "Black Kettle was my friend. I mean to bury him right."

Venable smiled then. He had Charles cold for disobedience. He cocked the Colt. There was hardly another sound save the drip of water from Black Kettle's garments and gray hair.

Then, suddenly, the morning air resounded with the assembly call.

Venable turned and glanced toward the village. Mounted troopers and those on foot began to move qurckly to answer. Charles stared into the Colt's muzzle and figured he'd bought the farm this morning. He realized
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he could release Black Kettle, reach his pistol and rid the world of Venable. He didn't move.

The trumpeting delayed Venable's shot by about fifteen seconds.

In that interval a horseman galloped by. It was Griffenstein.

He wheeled and dashed between Charles and Harry Venable. "You drunk?" he yelled at Venable, knocking the officer's Colt from his hand.

"The ones we're killin' got red skins, not white."

Another officer spurring for the trees shouted at Venable, telling him to haul his ass. Not fully understanding the confrontation, Dutch Henry recognized its seriousness. He kept an eye on the little Kentuckian as he dismounted, retrieved the Colt, and warily handed it back.