Assault on Atlantis

CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

“The general’s hit! The general’s hit!”

Lonesome Charlie Reynolds didn’t need the high-pitched screaming of Custer’s standard bearer to tell him what he had just witnessed with his own eyes. He rode forward along with several troopers to the general’s side. Custer’s eyes were open, and he seemed more surprised than anything.

“They shot me!” Custer exclaimed, lifting up a blood-soaked glove from his side. ‘’1 can’t feel my legs.”

“Easy, George, easy.” Boston Custer was at his brother’s side. The command was halted. Firing from the other side of the river was continuing, but it wasn’t particularly strong. Reynolds slid off his horse and knelt, one hand still holding his reins and at the same time steadying his rifle while he aimed across the river. He fired.

Reynolds, like Bouyer, was a half-breed, and he’d seen all the signs. The two had talked and Bouyer had given him a very strange thing, a clear skull wrapped in a leather satchel, with the admonition to keep it near Custer all the time. What Reynolds would have really preferred was to ride away with the Crow scouts, but he knew this was his place.

He’d recognized the sun dance circle when they’d passed through it the previous day, and he knew from that and what Bouyer bad given him that he was in the midst of great events. Reynolds had done the sun dance when he was fifteen while still living with his mother’s people. He knew there were things in the world beyond the knowledge of man and much more powerful. The Great Spirit chose a man’s fate when he was born, and all any man could do was live his fate as best as possible.

As he reloaded, Reynolds looked around. The front half of Captain Yates’s F Troop was in the grassy bowl now. E Troop was bottlenecked in Medicine Tail Coulee behind it, the column of twos halted by the sudden stop of F Troop. Another ravine just downstream looked like it went up to the northeast. The Indian fire was not heavy, other than Custer, only two other troopers had been hit, both wounded. A charge could take the crossing. Reynolds could see the lodges on the other side, the village was there for the taking with a determined charge.

But Yates was with the general and his brother. They were arguing about whether to take Custer off his horse. At that moment, one of the troopers in F Troop took an arrow through the throat.

Reynolds remounted. Several troopers were firing, but the rest were milling about, no orders being given, the entire command stopped with the strike of one bullet. Without the general, Reynolds knew there was no one who could lead the regiment, not even Benteen if he were here, and the fire from across the river was growing heavier by the minute.

The edge of his hatchet dripped red as he walked among the bodies. Gall could hear firing from the other side of the river. Warriors had chased the soldiers over there and into the bluffs. The camp was safe, and a victory had been won, testified to by the number of bodies in blue lying about the valley floor and the fact that the white men were running away in a panic.

He spun about as he heard a shout. A large man with black skin was running, rifle in hand. He had no horse and must have been cut off when the whites retreated. Gall had seen this man before and knew of him. He was named Isiah Dorman, and he scouted for Custer. He had a red wife, but he had betrayed the people and now served with the whites.

Dorman fired a quick shot over his shoulder at a group of Sioux who were chasing him. He missed. Gall began running to join the fight when one of the Sioux pulled up a shotgun and fired, hitting Dorman in the legs with pellets and tumbling him to the ground. As the black man fumbled to reload, one of the Sioux used a spear to knock the gun out of his hands.

A warrior fired an arrow at close range, and the steel blade sliced through the man’s chest and imbedded itself in a prairie dog mound behind him. Gall came to a halt and watched. Squaws came running up to the pinned man. They had stone mallets that they used to pound grain and com with. They used those to smash Dorman’s flesh, breaking his arms as he flailed about trying to keep them away.

Gall felt nothing as the man screamed. A warrior took a knife and gashed open a wound on Dorman’s side. The warrior grabbed a tin cup that was hooked to the black man’s cartridge belt and held it below the wound, filling it with blood.

One of the squaws had just lost her husband and she had a metal pin in her hand, a picket pin she must have taken from one of the dead horses farther back in the valley. With both hands, she drove it down between Dorman’s legs, slamming through his testicles and pinning him to the ground in that direction. An undulating scream ripped from his throat.

With that, the squaws moved on to other bodies. But Gall could see that Dorman was still alive, blood pouring from his wounds. A small group of boys came running by, bows in hand, and Gall stopped them with a yell. He pointed at the dying black man and gave an order. The boys notched arrows and fired, peppering his body. The black man was finally dead.

The firing in the bluffs to the east was much more sporadic now. The white men had lost many horses in the valley. They would not be going anywhere soon, and there would be time to deal with them later.

Gall looked back over the field of battle and frowned. Why had the soldiers begun to charge and then stopped so quickly? And again, this did not fulfill Sitting Bull’s vision. The soldiers had not fallen into camp; they had attacked on a level field. And where was Long Hair, Custer? Gall had seen the flag one of the soldiers was carrying. These were Custer’s men, but there had not been that many of them. Even the blue coats were not stupid enough to attack the entire Sioux nation with just this handful of soldiers. Were they? Where were the others?

Gall heard shots downstream, to the north. He looked in that direction but could see nothing through the trees that lined the banks. His warrior’s sense told him the fight was begun anew, though. He grabbed a pony and threw his powerful leg over it. Hatchet in hand, he rode north. Through the village, yelling for all the warriors around to follow him.

Bouyer scooped up a dismounted soldier, swinging him on the horse right behind him as he crossed the little Big Horn. He reached the far hank as arrows rained down around and bullets whizzed by. The horse struggled, fighting its way up the steep bluff carrying the two men. Halfway up, it collapsed, spilling Bouyer and the soldier to the ground. Bouyer began to tumble back down slope but arrested his fall by grabbing onto a bush. The soldier continued down and Bouyer saw three arrows sticking out of the man’s back, arrows that would have been in his own back if he hadn’t tried to help the soldier.

The Little Big Horn below him flowed red. A dozen blue coats lay still in the shallow water as more tried to escape. Bouyer saw Reno to his left, scrambling on all fours up the slope toward the top of the bluff. There was no coordinated withdrawal, just a mad desperate rush to escape. Cursing, Bouyer got to his feet and dashed up the bluff until he reached the top, about a hundred fifty steep feet above the Little Big horn. There were about two dozen soldiers already there, most dazed and just lying about. The bluff was covered with knee-high grass and had great views in all directions.

Bouyer looked to the north. He could hear gunfire although it was hard to determine exactly in what direction or how far it was, as there was still considerable firing from below. He couldn’t see anything, no sign of Custer or the other half of the Seventh Cavalry.

This was not coming together the way Bouyer had expected. He’d thought there would be one magnificent battle with the entire Seventh pitched against the united Indian tribes. He blinked sweat out of his eyes, sensing failure. The skulls were dispersed, he knew that. He needed to bring them together. He’d given them to the names listed on the paper he’d received, but he had little idea where all those people were now.

He saw Reno now on the top of the bluff, collapsing to the ground. Bouyer went over to the major. “Sir!”

Reno’s eyes had the distant stare of one who had seen things they wished they never had. Bouyer slapped him across the face hard. “Sir. You need to rally the men. The Sioux ain’t gonna stop. They’re gonna come right up that hill you came up unless you put some hot lead into them.”

Reno blinked, as if Bouyer were speaking a foreign language. Hell, Bouyer thought. Reno not only needed to organize a defense, he needed to gather a strike force to ride out and find Custer. There were at least fifty men here now, with more straggling in every minute. Bouyer grabbed Reno by the shirt and spoke slowly, but forcefully. ‘’Major, you need to take command. Now!”