Now the trumpeter, spooked by this performance, sounded the Dismount call upon his instrument, but even that was too thin to be heard beyond the leading troop, and I reckon them behind couldn’t see much for the dust, so what you had was Custer larruping down the coulee. then Cooke, Bouyer, and me strung out between, and then that first company climbing off their horses.
Meanwhile, down at the ford, five hundred more braves had swarmed across the Greasy Grass, and more was coming like bees out of a shaken hive.
CHAPTER 28
IT WAS BOUYER who reacted first. Riding a fleet Crow pony, he overtook the General and detained him, seizing Vic’s bridle. The Indians was firing at them, and Bouyer was wounded, I think: a dark stain showed on his buckskin shirt, but he never paid it no mind.
Cooke meantime got the troop remounted, after they delivered some answering fire as skirmishers, for it was obvious we would have to get out of that narrow place to where the cavalry could maneuver.
Now Custer suddenly recovered, the charge was sounded properly, and down Medicine Tail we dashed, almost to the water, and the Indians, most of them dismounted, fell back, though not so far we could have negotiated the ford against them, the Greasy Grass being clogged with warriors, hundreds on ponies and more wading chest-deep.
Another ravine opened at a forty-five-degree angle to the right, and we plunged into and up it, coming to a hogback ridge which we gained, galloping along the grass-covered bench under heavy Indian fire, though I don’t believe we had yet lost many men, maybe a few near the ford, but the command was still in good organization, riding in column of fours. A mile or so north the ridge reached its summit, and I reckoned Custer was a-heading there as the best place to make his stand.
But when you run from an Indian, be it orderly withdrawal or not, he gets amazingly encouraged, figuring he has the momentum on you. We had started to attack the village and been stopped by four Cheyenne, then drove off: that’s how them hostiles saw it, and events was proceeding to prove them right. I don’t know why
Custer had halted at that first puny demonstration, four savages against our two hundred. Maybe in his crazy view he thought that was the entire enemy force and was caught by the idea that Indians was so brave. I don’t think he could endure the thought of another person than he having the capability of courage in the grand degree.
Only they wasn’t just four and had not showed foolhardy gallantry, but was rather demonstrating to gain time while others crossed the river behind them and still more lay concealed in the ground towards which we would be deflected. They was using strategy.
A peculiar reverse of roles took place that day upon the Little Bighorn. Reno had been sent to charge the village and instead was himself charged. Custer, going to envelop the enemy, had got it done to his own self. In their last great battle the Indians fought like white men was supposed to, and we, well, we was soon to arrive at the condition in which we had planned to get them, for this wasn’t the terrain for cavalry and our order commenced to dissolve somewhere along that flight.
And now come a new host of Indians from the south. Led by the great war chief Gall, though we didn’t know it then, who had just repulsed Reno and besieged him upon that bluff where Custer had took his first look at the village. They was at least a thousand strong, and riding in dread certainty.
Meanwhile, on the slope towards the river, the Gray Horse Troop was getting all cut up by Indians hidden in the draws along there, and finally they was run into a deep ravine and piled up on one another and slaughtered by Sioux shooting down from above, with only a couple of riderless horses left to plunge wildly up the vertical cutbanks.
Custer was still acting well. He throwed Calhoun’s company against Gall as dismounted skirmishers, but them Sioux forthwith left their own ponies and advanced crawling through the sage, shooting arrows from concealment, hundreds at a time, which having reached the limit of their lofty arcs, descended in fearful volleys, piercing men who could not see an enemy to fire at.
Some Indians encircled the troopers detailed as horse-holders, every fourth man in the company, and leaping forth stampeded the mounts with screams and flapping blankets. So Calhoun was henceforth pinned in place. They then begun to diminish his line from both ends towards the center, knocking off the skirmishers one by one, and at last come out of the grass in a great naked brown wave, yelling
