Reap the Whirlwind (53 page)

Three hundred yards for Donegan, and the rest yet to go.

And the warriors began to wheel, spotting Henry’s relief detail coming.

Then two hundred yards remained of that open slope.

Wheeling about, screeching, those hundreds of copper-skinned horsemen were suddenly intent on the soldiers coming to the relief of that tiny, ragged circle of defenders gathered around Vroom, who stood at their center, bellowing his orders, slamming cartridges into the cylinder of his service pistol.

Only a hundred yards remained between Guy Henry’s company and Vroom’s butchered rear guard.

The maddened hordes came boiling down the slope, now intent on those who had come in hopes of rescuing their fellow soldiers. They tore down on Henry’s men, racing their mounts along both sides of D Company’s column. Into the ranks of blue, the warriors fired their guns and
hurled iron-tipped arrows, some of the horsemen reaching out as they whisked past to swing clubs and tomahawks through the dust and maddening noise with a deadly hiss.

“We gonna make it?” some man shrieked up ahead of the Irishman.

“It’s only a matter of cartridges,” Donegan bellowed into the clamor and deafening noise as he levered the Henry repeater. “A fight ain’t never done while you got cartridges.”

Swiping the beads of sweat from his eyes with a bare forearm, Seamus fought to see, the sweat stinging, blurring his vision as much as the clouds of dust.

Bullets were whining overhead from all directions now, all but out of the east, where the infantry hesitated to lay in some fire. Up there to the northeast, however, the Crow and some Shoshone were inching along the ridgetop, advancing west slowly, aiming and firing, then crawling forward a little more as they tried to take some of the heat from Royall’s retreat.

From what Donegan could see behind him, the colonel had evidently ordered the rest of his men to mount up rather than follow the led horses any longer. The men of Andrews’s I and Lieutenant Reynolds’s F Company were mixing among the horses, mounting on their own without order in all the confusion. A few were already galloping southeast down the narrowing Kollmar toward the creek-bottom. It was turning into a rout. If not a massacre.

All around Seamus the air filled with the snarl of angry, scared men, the whine of bullets careening off the rocks, smacking into the ground, or slapping horseflesh. How the cavalry’s animals did cry out, almost human, even infantlike, as they went down in a tumbling heap along the side of the Kollmar.

The eerie whistles, the keening of the war songs, grew louder and louder, like banshees tearing, tumbling, spilling out of the dark, bloody maw of hell itself into the land of the living.

Then before Seamus knew it, he was among those first gallant rescuers to reach the top of the crest with Guy V. Henry on that dun mare of his.

They had broken through to join what was left of Vroom’s L Troop.

And found themselves surrounded by the minions of hell.

With nowhere left to run.

Moon of Fat Horses

A
gain and again Wooden Leg sang his personal medicine
song as he raced round and round the small circle of soldiers shrinking ever smaller.

There were so many of the warriors now, their ponies snorting and heaving, lungs pounding against rib cages, all around him in the ever-tightening ring they rode on the fringe of that soldier circle. The noise was deafening: the incessant thunder of more than a thousand hooves; the crackle of gunfire from the Indian repeaters; the deep boom of the soldier carbines; the haunting, deadly, high-pitched wail of the eagle wing-bone whistles; the heart-thumping of the drums; the growl of voices both white and red; the cries of the wounded; and the deafening, noisy silence of the dead.

Beside him rode Limpy, a warrior six winters older than Wooden Leg. At birth the Shahiyena had suffered a
deformity that made one leg longer than the other. While he struggled to run, was clumsy even in walking, Limpy was without equal once he mounted a pony. To some he was even more than equal with other young warriors. He was one born to be a horseman.

As soon as the small group of soldiers marched toward the top of the hill, Wooden Leg had joined White Shield, Goose Feather, and Limpy to be among the first charging in pursuit. The first time they and the Lakota charged, the soldiers had been spread out. Their soldier chief shouted his orders and the white men turned, pointed their rifles, and fired at the approaching horsemen. Most of the Lakota turned aside, dropping behind their ponies. Some, however, joined the Shahiyena in continuing to ride daringly near. As little as one arrow flight.

This was as close to calling death to seek out his heart as Wooden Leg had ever been. One arrow flight to the muzzles of the soldier guns. But now the white men were gathering. Drawing ever nearer to their soldier chief.

Then, with a sudden yell of courage, the Lakota surged forward to make a second massed charge with the Shahiyena. Tighter and tighter the circle of soldiers shrank. Yet still they held, and the Lakota broke again for the rocks and hillocks, where they would find safety while they regrouped.

As they withdrew, Wooden Leg saw the lone soldier left in the open by the others. White Shield had already seen him.

With blood oozing from his head, the white man was crawling about in a confused circle of his own, groping on hands and knees, blinded by the crimson shining on his brow.

White Shield and Goose Feather kicked their ponies into a gallop, daring the other soldiers to fire as they rushed down on the one left behind by the rest. Swinging his stone club at the end of his arm in passing over the lone soldier, White Shield made the kill as bullets whined around them.

It was so brave an act that the Lakota and other Shahiyena raised a mighty voice and rushed forward once more, making their third charge. Immediately wheeling
about, White Shield brought his pony back to the white man sprawled on the ground, his legs still quivering slightly as the warrior dropped to the grass and pulled his knife.

With a swift stroke he slashed the enemy’s throat, then took the scalp, which he stuffed under his belt while the rest renewed their pressure on the shrinking circle of white men.

“White Shield!” Wooden Leg hollered out as he raced toward the scene. He had been watching the larger band of soldiers down the hill. “The others—they are coming now!”

Goose Feather joined in giving warning. “Hurry, White Shield!”

Instead of instantly fleeing, White Shield calmly unbuckled the soldier’s gunbelt and wrapped it around his own waist.

“Where is his gun?” White Shield asked angrily as Wooden Leg came sprinting up. He stuffed his hand down the empty holster.

“Mount your pony and ride—forget the white man’s gun, or it will cost you your life!” Wooden Leg pointed down the slope. “The others are coming like a bad wind!”

As he swung atop his pony, White Shield replied, “It’s all right: I have his gunbelt, and there are many bullets in it for my guns.”

“You will find another soon!” Goose Feather was with them, appearing out of the dust of the swirling wheel that encircled the white men.

“See the others!” a nearby voice yelled. “I want their blood too!”

Once more their attack on the small circle was diffused. Three times they had charged on the soldiers, and three times the white men had turned them back. And now the others were coming. It made Wooden Leg’s heart shrink to see them all turning to flee—

“Hoka hey! It is a good day to die!”

In astonishment Wooden Leg wheeled, recognizing the voice, yet amazed to hear the war chief speak in the Shahiyena tongue.

Crazy Horse called out again to the Lakota in their
language, to the Shahiyena in theirs. “Hold on, my friends! Do not forget your children! Be strong in our fight! Remember the helpless ones at home!”

“Hopo!” cried the one Wooden Leg knew as He Dog. He had remained at the side of Crazy Horse all morning long.

More and more of the Lakota turned about now as other war chiefs followed the greatest of them all, he who wore nothing more ornamental than the small buffalo calfskin cape about his shoulders. It billowed and snapped on the breeze as Crazy Horse led them toward the soldiers coming to rescue those trapped atop the crest of the hill.

“Remember the helpless ones in our village!”

“And kill the white men!”

“It is a good day to die!”

And another, angrier voice—“It is a good day for the white man to die!”

Back they swirled toward the rescuers coming in a massed column. Down both sides of the soldier lines the horsemen raced, swinging clubs and axes if they dared ride close enough. Others held back, arcing arrows into the summer blue of the sky so that they dropped down on the backs of the soldiers, as they had fired arrows down on the backs of the horses milling down in the head of the ravine.

It did not take an old warrior to see the fear in the eyes of those soldiers as they ran toward the top of the hill to save the lives of the others. They were all fighting for their lives now, these white men come to the Rosebud. And the red men who made this hunting ground their home.

And the fear from the bodies of those soldiers made a rank smell in Wooden Leg’s nostrils.

Feathered Sun’s pony went down in a tumble, but as Wooden Leg looked behind him, the young warrior rolled onto his feet and continued in the maddening race at the fringes of the soldier columns hurrying toward the top of the slope, this time on foot. More of the ponies went down in heaps, but on and on the warriors pursued their quarry.

As Wooden Leg circled the head of the ravine ahead of the soldiers, he saw Limpy go down in a tangle of legs and dust ahead of him, his pony dead. Dazed, the crippled
warrior scrambled unevenly to his feet, shaking his head, blinking and swiping his eyes clear of dust—looking for rescue as some of the soldiers began to concentrate their fire on the one they had unhorsed.

Out of the red-and-yellow haze stained with the murky gray of gunsmoke dashed Young Two Moon, son of the Shahiyena chief. Lying low along his pony’s neck, he pointed the animal’s nose for the crippled warrior standing helpless in the open as if he were a waiting-to-die, staked to the ground.

Reaching Limpy, Young Two Moon held out an arm. They clasped, but as Limpy tried to leap onto the rear flanks of the pony, he found he could not because of his deformity.

It was too great a leap.

Wooden Leg raced in, yelling and pointing. “The rocks, Limpy! Go to the rocks!”

As quickly as he could hobble toward one of the low sandstone formations, Limpy scrambled atop the boulders and awaited his rescuer. This time Young Two Moon ran back toward the soldiers who marched along on foot. And this time Limpy was able to throw himself onto the back of his friend’s horse.

Together with Goose Feather, White Shield, and Wooden Leg, Young Two Moon hurried back toward the crest with Limpy rescued.

From the corner of his eye, Wooden Leg spotted the lone soldier on his horse courageously at the center of the white men who were reaching the top of the hill. Something about him caught and held the young warrior’s attention, almost mystically—so that as he watched, Wooden Leg saw blood splatter from the soldier chief’s lower face, saw the white man swoon and sway from side to side with his terrible wound.

In the next instant Wooden Leg was gone into the dust. Swallowed in the tumult.

Thinking how great a prize it would be to take that soldier chief’s shirt with all its pretty yellow markings and braid.

*    *    *

A
cross the wide coulee Plenty Coups watched the soldier chief stiffen as he began to fall, catching himself atop his horse, and straighten, his back gone rigid, both hands fumbling at the front of his army saddle for something to cling to. Slowly, slowly weaving backward a bit, the soldier chief rocked forward as blood gushed from his mouth.

He was trying to speak, his jaw moving up and down. But in this noise, any sound the soldier chief might have made was lost, swallowed by the battle raging across the coulee.

This one, he is a brave man, Plenty Coups thought as he aimed at another of the hundreds swarming down on all sides of the soldiers surrounded on the far slope of the coulee. A strong spirit he has: to stay on his horse when he is losing so much blood. His life pouring away.

As soon as the soldier chief was hit and began to swoon, another soldier nearby rushed to his side, only to be shot as well. But as the second white man lay unmoving on the ground, there began a general panic. At the same moment, the Sioux renewed their pressure on three sides around the trapped soldiers. The white men began falling back, moving east in a blind herd toward what horses were still held in the bottom of the coulee where the holders fought to maintain control over the maddened, frightened beasts rearing and kicking, heads high and nostrils flaring, dragging their handlers through the grass and brush.