That night, alone in the lodge which Tall Calf had turned over to them completely, Sundance and Barbara Colfax—Two Roads Woman—lay on buffalo robes, and his hands caressed the smooth, soft curves of her body as, outside, the drumming and the singing went on interminably. They were in the midst of the greatest encampment of the plains tribes ever assembled, for here, in the valley of the Rosebud, Sioux and Cheyennes had come together. It was not an Indian village, it was a city, inhabited by twelve, fifteen thousand red people, able to muster a full three thousand trained warriors. They had come upon it just before nightfall, too late for the great Sun Dance that had been going on for the past few days—the final preparation for war, the ultimate sacrifice to the Great Spirit who must stand with them now, if all. were not to be lost. Sitting Bull, it was said, as an act of piety and sacrifice, had inflicted over a hundred cuts on his own body in an effort to become more holy than ever, and to invoke all the power of the Sun, The Old Man, Giver of Life. Crazy Horse was here, too, and Rain-in-the-Face and Pisi—Gall—and all the other great war chiefs. So, also, the leaders of the Cheyennes: Tall Calf and Two Moons and Lame White Man; and even now they made medicine out there in the dark.
Barbara stirred lazily, ivory white body in contrast to the darkness of the buffalo robe, firelight playing over the curves of breasts, belly, hips and thighs. “It was easy, really,” she murmured. “I pretended to be satisfied in New York, and I asked him for money, lots of money. And saved it all. Then I went to a dance one night with a very stupid young man, the son of one of father’s business partners. No trick at all to give him the slip. I had already stowed a suitcase at the railroad station. Before sunrise, I was on a westbound train. Once, his people almost got me—he guessed, of course, and telegraphed ahead—but I dodged them. Finally I got to Bismarck—”
“I heard how you raised hell at Lincoln.”
“But then found out that you were gone. I got riding clothes, good horses, struck out west. I was in luck; I hadn’t traveled a hundred miles past Lincoln when I came on a hunting party from Tall Calf’s band. They brought me to him, where he was camped in the Big Horn Mountains. After that, all I could do was wait for you.” She smiled. “I knew that sooner or later you would come.” Then her face went grave. “I suppose I should be sorry about father. But somehow I can’t be. I’m only glad. Now the last tie is cut. Now I can be easy with my real father—Tall Calf. There is no chance of my ever having to go back again.”
Sundance lay silent. “With Crook coming up the Rosebud, probably others coming from different directions, you may wish you were back before long.”
“No,” she said savagely. “Never! I’ll take my chances here.” Her fingers dug into his arms. “Sundance. Tomorrow they go to fight General Crook. Please don’t go with them! I’ve only just found you again. I couldn’t bear it if—”
“No,” he said. “No, I’m not going with them into battle. Not this time, not against Three-Stars. I’ve explained that to them. I made Crook a promise. This is one fight I’ll stay out of.”
“Thank God,” Barbara whispered, and she held him tightly, rubbed her body against his. “Then, let’s take what time we have.”
“Yes,” Sundance said, and his mouth found hers.
But he watched them ride out the next morning. A thousand of them, Sioux and Cheyennes, with Crazy Horse in overall command. It was a magnificent sight: warriors seemed to pass by endlessly. Despite his vow never to fight against George Crook—a promise which the Indians readily understood and did not hold against him—he itched to join them. Instead, he did his part by serving with those Dog Soldiers left to guard the camp. By now, save for his blond hair, he was indistinguishable from the rest of them. He wore the warbonnet he had earned long before, as a youth, a resplendent creation of eagle feathers, each counting for a victory over a Cheyenne enemy; his face and naked chest were painted with the marks of clan and society; except for breechclout and moccasins, the rest of his body was bare. He wore, however, his six-gun, knife, and hatchet, carried his carbine in his saddle scabbard. His bow was across his saddle, strung and ready, the quiver full of arrows slung over his shoulder.
It felt good to be wholly Indian again; nevertheless, a tension gripped him which was shared by the whole enormous camp. Soon the battle would have been fought and the first messengers would be drifting back. Then they would know whether it was over before it started, this war, whether Crook had whipped them or they had defeated him. They would know, too, how many empty lodges there would be, and how much mourning, grieving. And Sundance felt an additional fear which the Indians did not share. Crook was his friend; he loved the man. Suppose Crook died in this battle?
Time stretched endlessly. The sun went down behind the divide that separated the Rosebud from the nearby Greasy Grass—the Little Big Horn, the white men called it—toward the west. Sundance’s shift was taken over by another Cheyenne; he tethered Eagle outside the lodge, found Barbara waiting for him, supper ready. “Any news?” she asked tensely.
“None so far.” They ate. They went to bed, made love. Afterwards, she slept, but Sundance roused, took his weapons, went out and prowled the camp, unable to sleep.
Long before midnight, they heard the thunder. It came not from the sky, but from the distant prairie. He recognized it at once as the sound of many running horses—thousands of them. And then he heard the voices, whooping, singing, full of elation. He stood up, stared at the skyline, as Crazy Horse and his soldiers pounded down the valley, and suddenly he knew: the Indians were victorious; Crook had lost!
Sundance ran for Eagle, leaped on the stallion, and galloped to meet the returning warriors.
Later, at council. Crazy Horse was almost drunk with elation. “Ah, we whipped them good! There were as many of the Long Knives as of us, and they had also with them many Crows and Shoshones and some white buffalo hunters and miners! But not all of them together could stand against the Sioux and Cheyennes! We fought them hand-to-hand, knife-to-knife, gun-to-gun, until we saw they were beaten. Then, when they ran, we came home!” He drank long and deeply from a pot of water. There were fresh scalps at his belt. “Ah-yah, it was a great fight, a great victory!” Then he turned to Sitting Bull. “Now, what does your medicine say?”
The great medicine man was still weak from his self-inflicted torture at the Sun Dance. “It says the white-eyes won’t come again for a long time. We did not kill Three-Stars”— Sundance relaxed inwardly. Thank God, he thought— “but he will not fight us again soon. Still, he knows we are here and may tell other soldiers. I think we should move camp.”
“Where?” Tall Calf asked the question.
“To the Greasy Grass. It is not far, but it is a good strong place to be, and I think once we are there, the white men will not bother us again, after they have seen what we did to them on the Rosebud.” He turned to Sundance. “My son, you know the generals. What do you think?”
“I think they will come,” Sundance said. “I think Crook was only part of the movement. I have heard that another column under Gibbon is supposed to come from the west, and one under Terry from the east, from Fort Lincoln. They will come up and down the Yellowstone and search the tributaries. And they’ll keep on until they find us.”
Crazy Horse whipped a knife from his belt. He raised it high, lean, handsome face gleaming in the firelight. Then he slashed down with it and buried its blade in earth.
“Let them come!” he rasped. “When they do, we will kill them all!” He looked at Sundance. “And this time, you will fight?”
“Yes,” Sundance said. “This time, if they come after us, I will fight.”
From its headwaters in Wyoming, the Yellowstone loops northeast across Montana to drain into the Missouri in Dakota. Pouring into it from the south is a network of lesser streams—from east to west, the Powder, the Tongue, the Rosebud, and the Big Horn. The Little Big Horn—the Greasy Grass—forks into the Big Horn only a fair day’s ride from the encampment on the Rosebud. It did not take long for more than fifteen thousand Indians—their numbers reinforced by new arrivals from the agencies and outlying hunting grounds—to dismantle the equivalent of a town the size of Omaha and set it up again in a new location. Up and down the west bank of the stream they pitched their lodges: the Hunkpapa in the south, then the Minneconjou and Sans Arc, next the Oglala, and then, at the northern extremity, the Cheyennes. Directly across from the Oglala and Cheyenne encampments, the ground of the east bank rose in rolling hills and ridges; southward of that there were more high bluffs and broken country. Secure from attack from the south and likely from the west, the chieftains were fairly sure that the rough country on the east would slow or thwart any surprise attack. Besides, they were confident that, after the bloody nose they had dealt Crook, the Army would think twice before hitting them again.
“But they don’t know the Goddamn bluebellies,” Frank Huston said. He spat tobacco juice into the buffalo grass as he and Sundance sat their ponies on the high ground of the east bank. “Those sonsabitches never give up.”
Sundance looked at the man beside him. Once Huston had been white; had, as a youth, served with Robert E. Lee. When the Federal army had taken Richmond, his mother had been raped and beaten by Yankee soldiers; soon afterward, she had died. Lee surrendered; Huston kept on fighting. The place to fight Yankees was in the west, the people who were doing it were the Sioux. So he had joined them, and now he was as much Indian as any warrior among the Oglalas. His hair was dark, his body long since burnt to a copper color by the prairie sun. He was keenly intelligent and well educated, but by far the bitterest man Sundance had ever met.
“They’ll come,” Huston went on. “You know that good as I do. And when they do, next time they’ll bring artillery and Gatlin’ guns. And then it’ll be a different matter entirely.” He spat again. “But what I hope—oh, Jesus, I hope it—is that Custer will come with ’em. After what he did to Black Kettle on the Washita, after what I saw him do to Rain-in-the-Face one time when Rain had been arrested— He stood by while two troopers held Rain and Tom Custer kicked and slapped him and damned near beat him to a pulp, before we got him loose, helped him escape. If Custer comes, we’ll git him anyhow. Because he ain’t got sense enough to know what he’s riding into.” Huston smiled, not a pleasant sight, and fingered something attached to his antelope hide saddle. It was an Army bugle. “You see this?” he said. “I’m saving it. Nothing would give me more pleasure than to blow taps with it over Custer.”
Sundance stared out across the vast, endless country, looking eastward. He thought about the Black Hills and what Custer had done there; he remembered four months in that stinking hole at Fort Lincoln; and a bitterness to match Huston’s welled up in him. “If Custer comes,” he said, hand stroking the barrel of his rifle, “he’s mine. You blow your bugle over him all you want to. But if he comes, he’s my meat if I can get to him first. Let’s ride on. We got a scout to make.”
“Yeah.” Huston twisted in his saddle, looked back at the great camp spread out for two miles along the river. “Sittin’ Bull’s called for an all day dance and celebration. He feels safe, now. Me, you, we know too much about the bluebellies to let down our guard. Come on.” He lifted rein. Then he pulled up again. “By the way, you happen to know what day this is?”
“I picked up a calendar in Bismarck, marked it off. June twenty-fifth. Why?”
“No reason, only I was trying to remember when my birthday comes. And you know what?” Huston asked. “I’ve been Injun for so long I’ve even forgot what day I was born on.”
They worked their way northeast into the broken country. Sundance could not shake off a sense of foreboding. He tried to reconstruct everything he’d heard: from Colfax; from Crook. He knew Sheridan and Sherman, could imagine their tactics. The Indians were south of the Yellowstone; let that be the northern boundary of the campaign. Send out Terry—and Custer and his Seventh—from the east, send somebody else from the west, Crook from the south, and box the Indians in. Only Crook had been beaten and retreated; that still left the eastern and western columns. Sundance and Huston were keenly aware of that, if nobody else was. And he was taking no chances. With Barbara down there in the Cheyenne camp, he would ride all day and night if that was what it took to find soldiers before they got Gatling guns and cannons mounted on those heights east of the Little Big Horn.
The day drew on; by midmorning, the heat was brutal. He and Huston split up, taking ridges that offered various vantage points. Lying on his belly on a crest that offered a sweeping view of the rough country dividing the Little Big Horn from the Rosebud, he saw nothing. He took a moment to let his thoughts drift. Come winter, no matter what happened, he had to get Barbara away from the Cheyennes. Win, lose, draw, they were in for hell. Farther west, in Idaho, the Nez Percés still lived in fair security, for nobody wanted their lands yet. Maybe he and she would winter with Chief Joseph.
Then he heard hoofbeats drumming across the valley behind him. He whirled to see Huston lashing his mount. Sundance jumped to his feet, sprang on Eagle, and rode to meet the man.
Huston jaw-reined his horse into a rearing halt. “Sundance! Over yonder!” He pointed to another ridge. “Soldiers. Jesus God Almighty, a whole damn’ regiment of cavalry!”
Sundance stared at him a moment. Then he snapped: “Come on!”
They pounded across the valley, up the opposite ridge. Before they reached its crest, both swung down in flying dismounts, ran ahead, leaving their well-trained horses ground hitched. When they reached the top, Huston pointed: “Down there. Take this telescope.” He held it out to Sundance.
Sundance unfolded the pocket scope, shielded it with his hand so no glare or dazzle would give away their position. Then he sucked in a long breath.
A great column of troopers, seven hundred men or more, snaked through the valley of a little creek below, guidons flying. Like a long, blue snake, it reached into the farther distance; but through the scope, he could pick out details. There was no mistaking the man in the buckskin shirt and cavalry breeches who rode at its head. Custer had cut his yellow hair short; but the big beak of a nose, the auburn mustache, stood out plainly. So did the two six-guns on his hips.
Beside him rode a man in conventional uniform, wearing major’s insignia. That, Sundance guessed, would be Reno, second-in-command. His eye snaked back along the column, caught sight of a rider pounding up its length. He recognized that weathered face, the white-streaked hair and felt a kind of sadness: Benteen, the captain who had lent him the gun. Then Custer raised his hand; the column halted, coiling up on itself.
“Come on!” Huston’s hand dug into Sundance’s arm. “Let’s burn it back to camp!”
“Wait.” Sundance kept the scope to his eye. “They’re up to something.”
“Damn it,” Huston said impatiently, “there’s a whole blasted cavalry regiment down there. If they take the camp by surprise, all seven hundred of ’em—”
“Hold on.” Sundance passed him the scope. “They’re having some kind of powwow.”
“Well, they’re bound to know the camp’s there. They got scouts with ’em—Crow ‘wolves.’” Huston shook his head. “They’re not fool enough to split up.”
“The hell they aren’t,” Sundance rasped. “Look.”
Even as he spoke, Benteen gesticulated angrily. Custer replied with what seemed equal anger. Benteen saluted sharply, whirled his horse, galloped down the line. Huston gasped unbelievingly, as Benteen passed orders and a third of the column fell out.
“Well, of all the Goddamn stupidity—” Huston shook his head. “He is doing it! By God, he’s sending a third of his men off in the opposite direction! Scouting south—”
Sundance’s mouth twisted. “He and Benteen hate each other. He scents glory. He doesn’t want Benteen to get any part of it, so he’s putting him out of the way.” He tapped Huston on the shoulder. “All right. You hightail it back to camp, spread the word. I’m going to keep track of ’em, see what else they do. I’ll get to camp before they do, one way or the other.”
“Right! Keep this scope!” Huston sprang up, ran back down the hill, landed on his horse in a flying leap. Then he was gone.
Sundance lay where he was. He saw the column wait until Benteen’s group, several companies of them, was well away, working into the brakes on the southern flank. With it went a contingent of pack-horses. Custer raised his gauntleted hand and brought it forward. The column struck a trot and moved forward along the valley of the creek.
Sundance ran back to Eagle, mounted, put the big horse swiftly to the next ridge, a half mile away, keeping cover. Then he dismounted, reconnoitered again. And this time, his jaw dropped.
Once more, the column had halted. Sundance used the telescope, saw Custer and Reno in conference, Tom Custer hovering by. Custer pointed south in a swooping gesture, then north. Reno nodded, danced his horse aside. He spoke to a sergeant who galloped down the line, then sat uneasily in conversation with a couple of Indian scouts—Sundance tagged them as Arikaras. Then the column divided itself in half. With Reno at its head, one battalion traveled along the creek. With Custer in the lead, the other swung north into the rough country, paralleling the Little Big Horn.
And now Sundance understood. Surely, the Crows and Arikaras had seen the village, had told Custer how huge it was. But the general, with his customary arrogance, refused to believe it. Or else he was sure that four hundred cavalrymen could take on thousands of tribal warriors. At any rate, he had given Reno orders to hit the village from the south; obviously, he intended to hit it from the north simultaneously.
Sundance lay where he was until he was sure of both columns’ line of march. Then he ran back to Eagle.
He wanted Custer. But he was cut off from the man by Reno’s column, would have to pass through it to get to him. No. No, he would have to ride with Reno first. And when Reno struck the village, fight his way through to get to the other column, which would hit the Cheyenne camp northward.
He lashed Eagle, and the big horse stretched itself as it ran for the Little Big Horn. Sundance knew the ground, took advantage of every cleft and valley. Just before he reached the river, he put the appaloosa boldly to a ridge crest. What he saw made him catch his breath. Down there, Reno’s command had moved into a gallop, heading for the south crossing at the camp’s lower end. Sundance saw sun glinting on carbine barrels and drawn pistols; he saw the ranks of horses, grey, sorrel, bay, thundering along in good order, their blue-clad riders ready, pennons snapping in the breeze. In the distance, another blue column was thundering up the northern ridges.
Sundance whipped his rifle from its scabbard. And now, he thought, the last, the ultimate battle was beginning. He kicked Eagle hard, sent the big horse racing toward the river.
Scenting war, combat, Eagle ran swiftly. He reached the edge of a bluff, hesitated, then plunged down its steep flank, skittering in a crouch, sending a roil of dust from beneath hind legs. Simultaneously, Reno’s column, whooping, yelling, firing, galloped out of a notch between two more bluffs, plunged into the shallow water. They were so intent on the Indian camp that no one saw Sundance as he crossed and lashed Eagle toward the cover of a grove of cottonwoods. From there, he could take Reno on the flank with rifle fire.
Reno’s horse plunged out of the Little Big Horn, one of the Arikara scouts riding close beside him. A bugle blew the brassy terse notes of Charge! The other troopers of the Seventh, firing as they rode, splashed across the river behind their commander, spread out, pivoted north to strike the camp. At that instant, all hell broke loose.
As Sundance halted Eagle in the cottonwoods, dismounted, the camp of the Hunkpapa on the south came alive, exactly as if an anthill had been overturned, and Sundance knew that Huston had made it in time. On foot and mounted, Indians swarmed out of the Sioux circle of lodges, and all at once the valley of the Little Big Horn roared with gunfire and arrows filled the air like a flock of slim, shuddering, deadly birds.
The two forces smashed together in head-on collision: Reno’s cavalry and Gall’s. Swarming down the river came more Indians: Sundance heard the shriek of Sioux, the shrill ki-yi of Cheyennes. He saw Crazy Horse and Two Moons and Tall Calf riding in the lead.
Reno reined his horse up so hard it reared. He gestured with his pistol toward the timber in which Sundance crouched. His column broke, scattered, turned, making hell bent for the cottonwoods. Sundance snarled, levered a round into his Winchester, raised it. An Arikara riding stirrup-to-stirrup with Reno saw him, lined a pistol. Sundance aimed the rifle, squeezed the trigger.
The round blew the Ankara’s head apart. His blood and brains splattered squarely in Reno’s face. Sundance heard the major’s scream of horror, saw Reno yank his horse up again, then swing it around, back toward the river. Now there was firing from every quarter, and the cavalrymen were rushing toward the shelter of the cottonwoods—save Reno and a few dozen more who had seen his quick turn. He and a small contingent rode hell-for-leather in retreat back toward the Little Big Horn.
After that single shot, Sundance ran back to Eagle, swung into the saddle. An overwhelming force of Indians was descending on Reno. But it was not Reno he wanted. Somewhere down the river, Custer would be crossing.
The timber was a seething hell of red bodies and blue uniforms as he bent low in Eagle’s saddle. Lead whined around him, arrows whipped in a deadly pattern. He was caught in the middle, in a crossfire, and he knew he had damned well better get out of it in a hurry. He kicked Eagle hard and lashed him with the rein, and the big horse gave everything he had.
The edge of timber was in sight; beyond that, the camp with its two thousand lodges. Just as he reached the rim of cottonwoods, a blue-clad figure, on foot, leaped out from behind a tree. Sundance saw a rifle coming into line, aimed squarely at him. There was no time for himself to shoot; he headed Eagle for the cavalryman. There was an almost imperceptible shock as the stallion slammed into the man and knocked him spinning. Then Sundance was in the open.
As the appaloosa dodged among the lodges, frightened women peered out then jerked back inside, screaming orders to their children. This was their home, and it, with their families, was being attacked; if their men could not defend it, death and worse lay ahead for them, and for their sons and daughters. They had seen before what cavalrymen did to Indian women and children.
Sundance pounded through the Sioux end of the village. Behind him, he heard a bugle blow retreat. At almost the same instant, in front of him, downstream, he heard one blow Charge! Custer! Custer and his detachment were striking the Cheyennes!
But there were plenty of other Indians, more than had hit Reno. They swarmed northward through the village, shrieking like all the devils of hell. Sioux and Cheyenne alike, they rode toward the sound of that arrogant trumpet call, and Sundance not only joined them, he passed through them, as Eagle, faster than their horses, pulled ahead. He neared the edge of the Cheyenne part of the encampment, and looking across the river, he saw Custer’s column spilling down off the bluffs, headed for the stream, firing as they came.
Custer and his brother Tom were in the lead. “Sundance saw the buckskin-clad figure on its big, running mount, emerge into the open, then Custer’s horse was in the river; and Custer had his first full view of what he had ridden into.
Pulling out ahead of the other Indians, Sundance saw Custer rein up, saw his jaw drop. Then the Colonel pulled his mount around. His brother Tom followed suit and so did the men behind them. The column coiled back upon itself like a wounded snake, and then split up in confusion.
Sundance heard the shrill, ululating Cheyenne war cry break from his own throat. He wanted that man in buckskin; wanted him for more crimes than he could count. Wanted him for his part in ruining all Sundance’s hopes and dreams of white and Indian living in peace, wanted him to pay the score of four months spent in stinking solitary, wanted him because Custer had earned death twice over. He lashed Eagle again and, at the head of a thousand Indian warriors, splashed into the Little Big Horn.
But now, even as the Sioux and Cheyennes crossed the stream, the troopers of the Seventh Cavalry had recovered from their confusion. They spread out, firing as they fell back up the steep hills and bluffs. Lead whined like a swarm of angry bees all around Sundance; near him a Cheyenne warrior screamed and pitched from his pony, the lower half of his face shot away. Sundance’s mouth twisted; then he fell forward on Eagle’s neck, hooking a heel around the saddle horn. He crossed the river that way, made the bluffs, shielded by Eagle, firing beneath the horse’s jaw with his Winchester as he went.
All the same, it was not a light thing to face, that cruel, disciplined fire laid down by the retreating soldiers. At first, as they went in good order up the slopes, it was a solid wall of lead they threw out to shield their flight. But now, from the south, came the shrieking of more war cries, a savage wail from a thousand more throats. The Indians who had dealt with Reno had pushed him back across the river, then turned to strike the other column. On both sides of the stream, they pounded northward. And as they came, they sent a barrage of rifle fire and arrows ahead of them.
Horses went down and Indians fell as the troopers fought back. Above the mouth of Medicine Tail Creek, where Custer had attempted his crossing, Eagle splashed to dry ground, flanks working like bellows as he pumped his long legs up the hill. All around Sundance, Indians were shrieking and shooting. Ahead, a scattered line of blue thinned out rapidly. Sundance paid no attention to it; all his determination and his hatred were focused on one man and one man only—and that one was whipping his mount savagely, making for the highest peak of ground above the rider. A knot of troopers rode with him, twisting to fire.
Sundance worked the lever of his Winchester one-handed, kept the rifle hosing lead as Eagle climbed the ridge. Once he saw a bay horse fall from one of his slugs, shifted aim, and as its rider scrambled to his feet, was about to drop him when an ax hurtled through the air and split the soldier’s skull. Sundance shifted Eagle with the pressure of his heel, rode on, the appaloosa laboring up the steep slope.
Then Eagle seemed to run into a brick wall. He reared, screamed, pitched Sundance free. Sundance hit hard, rolled, came up in time to see the stallion fall, kicking convulsively, belly shot. Sundance swallowed hard. He had raised Eagle from a foal, for almost fifteen years they had been inseparable. He would rather have taken a bullet himself.
Eagle was in agony, kicking, screaming. Sundance whipped out his Colt, ran forward, thumbed back the hammer. There was an instant when, the muzzle of the gun touching the big horse’s skull just below and between the ears, he looked straight into Eagle’s eye. In that second, Eagle’s threshing stopped.
Sundance pulled the trigger, and that was the end of it.
Cursing, crying, he ran up the hill. He was insane with rage and grief, and even as he fired the pistol, he dug out more cartridges. A trooper reared from behind an outcrop of ground, lined his rifle. Sundance pulled the trigger of the Colt and the man fell back, and Sundance lined another shot at a second cavalryman who appeared like a jack-in-the-box from the same hiding place. The hammer fell on an empty round. Sundance cursed and threw himself aside as the soldier shot at him. He heard the rip of the bullet past his ear; then he rolled into a fold of ground, catching a glimpse of the man going down with three arrows in his breast before he could pull the trigger again.
Sundance’s hands shook as he crammed fresh rounds into the Colt. Then, with lead whining all around him, he was on his feet. A big bay cavalry horse, riderless, thundered past; he lunged, caught trailing reins, jerked the mount around. In the saddle without touching stirrup, he fought the horse into submission, put it up the hill.
Up there, at the very crest, he saw the guidon of the Seventh Cavalry flapping in the gentle breeze against a sky of scalding blue. Beside it, hatless, knelt a man with short yellow hair and a big mustache, his face almost obscured by several weeks’ auburn beard, buckskin jacket discarded, blue cavalry shirt and suspenders plastered to his muscular torso. Methodically, with iron courage, he fired first one round from his right hand gun, then another from his left hand gun, into the horde of Indians charging up the hill, across the blue-clad bodies that littered the field. Beside him, his brother Tom, a little younger, almost a duplicate of him, was also pumping lead down the ridge from two Colts, in the opposite direction, covering George Custer’s flank.
Sundance bared his teeth in a wolf’s snarl. He lashed the cavalry horse with the reins. It scrabbled up the hill, panting. Custer turned, saw it coming, saw what appeared to be an Indian on it, and very coolly he got to his feet and lined the right hand Colt and pulled the trigger.
The bullet chopped Sundance’s cheek, and he felt a warm gush of blood. Custer, seeing that he’d missed, brought down the left hand gun. He fired again. The horse fell. Sundance was already leaping free; he landed on his feet as the animal hit the ground. Custer thrust both guns, hammers cocked, out before him, as Sundance, not twenty yards away, ran toward him. Then he froze. Something flickered in his eyes; for the first time, he saw the yellow hair of the Indian who charged at him.
“Sundance!” he cried out in recognition. “You Goddamned renegade!” Then his mouth twisted. “I’ll take you with me, anyhow!”
He pulled both triggers. At that instant, his brother Tom screamed, lurched backwards, fell against him. Both of Custer’s shots went wild. Slammed by his brother’s weight, Custer lurched sideways, fell to one knee. Then he was coming up, teeth gleaming white beneath his mustache. Undaunted, he raised his right hand Colt.
But he was too late. Sundance halted. He took careful aim with his own revolver. As Custer’s gun lined down, Sundance pulled the trigger.
The slug caught Custer in the chest, knocked him backward. He landed sprawling, arms outflung, guns spilling from his hands. Sundance ran to him, stood poised above him, Colt pointing downward.
The front of Custer’s shirt was quickly turning red. He stared at Sundance with a strange ferocity. There was no fear in his eyes. His tongue came out and licked his lips. His voice, a strange, eerie croak, was audible even above the din of battle. “Sundance,” he whispered, “for God’s sake. If you’re half white, don’t let them take me alive.”
Sundance looked down at him. “No,” he said. “No, I won’t. I don’t wish even you that.” Then he lined the gun between Custer’s eyes and pulled the trigger.
After that, he turned away. From the south, rifle fire still came in a steady roar; Reno must be holed up on a butte down there, probably Benteen had come to his aid. But up here on the high ground above the Little Big Horn, an eerie silence had suddenly fallen.
Sundance looked down the ridge. It swarmed with Indians. Only a few blue-clad figures were left alive. Sundance watched with numb horror as, one after another, the troopers killed themselves rather than be captured. He did not blame them. Then the slopes were silent, a slaughterhouse, littered by two hundred blue-clad corpses, a third that many Indians, and countless dead horses.
Suddenly a horse clattered to a halt beside him. “Sundance!” He turned to see Huston spring down, face lit with glee, a bugle in his hand. Huston stared at the corpse of Custer. “You did it,” Huston chortled. “By the ole Harry, you did it! Only—why didn’t you leave the damned bluebelly alive for the women to play with?”
“Shut up,” Sundance said. He felt strangely weary, empty. “Whatever else he was, he was a damned good fighting man.” Then, with all hatred drained out of him, he walked unsteadily down the slope, toward the camp. Below him lay the sprawled body of Eagle. Laughing, chanting, knives in hand, the women were already coming up the hill to deal with the bodies of the enemy, or any of the wounded left alive.
For a moment, he felt a terrible fear. But, no . Barbara was not among them. A gusty sigh of relief escaped him. He walked faster, and the jubilant Sioux and Cheyennes milling around him paid him no attention. Meanwhile, up the river, the sporadic firing went on; the rest of the regiment was besieged on the bluffs. But they were well dug in; he did not think they would be pried out before more soldiers came with cannons and Gatling guns.
Behind him, on the very height of the ridge, the brazen, slow notes of a bugle split the afternoon air. Beside the fallen guidon of the Seventh Cavalry, over the body of George Armstrong Custer, Frank Huston was blowing taps. The clean, sweet sound of the bugle wound on and on, and Sundance walked faster, out of the killing zone now, nearing the river. When he struck the ford, he broke into, a run; behind him, there was only silence.