LITTLE BIG MAN

I was near him on that halt, and his hat was askew from being put on and off in premature victory celebrations, sweat streaked the dust on his stubbled cheeks, and his eyes was glazed, their usual bright blue gone milky.

He called the orderly, and Martin came up and saluted in his Italian way. Custer then spoke rapid as the firing of a Gatling.

“Tell-Benteen-it’s-a-big-village-and-I-want-him-to-be-quick-and-bring-the-packs.”

I doubt Martin got it, but he gives another florid salute and is ready to start off, only Cooke cries: “Wait, I’ll write it out,” and scribbles in his order book.

This was the last message anybody received from Custer and the five troops that followed him north from the Lone Tepee. You can read in the histories that Martin made it, riding back along the trail we had come. Foreign as he was, he did not understand the situation and the Indians tried to bushwhack him along the way but it didn’t bother him none even though his horse was hit. Shows what ignorance will do for you. Reaching Benteen, he told him we had the Sioux on the run, giving that officer another reason for not coming to our aid. I mean, besides his hatred of Custer.

From here on you have only my word for what happened to Custer and his five troops that Sunday afternoon, for I am the only man what survived out of them 200-odd who rode down Medicine Tail Coulee towards the ford of the Little Bighorn River.

If you don’t believe it, go find another: one of them cranks who wrote letters to poor Mrs. Custer in later years, some of them still children in 1876; or the Crow scout Curly, who used to be exhibited around as the sole survivor of the battle. Except that Curly was not upon the field, but only watched a portion of the fight from a distant ridge, and the white claimants was either nuts or just plain liars. It has been amusing to me to hear of men who sought recognition for what they never done, while I have been at pains until now to conceal my true experience.

It wasn’t long after Martin went that the ravine intersected with the big coulee called Medicine Tail, into which we turned left and descended a couple mile towards the river, with about one more remaining when it opened into a flat. We halted there briefly, for Mitch Bouyer and the Crow, on the high ground above, was waving their arms and Custer stopped to get their sign message. They could see the ford from that position and signaled that the enemy was crossing over.

Custer interrupted the report with impatient gestures, and with his hands said: “All right, you can go home now.”

The Crow had not been hired to fight-and you remember that they had refused to earlier-but to lead the column through this country which they knowed. So you could see Bouyer dismiss them, and they sat their horses up there for a while as we started to move again, looking down at us in that redskin way that is always called stolid, and so it is, though that don’t mean they haven’t no feelings, but rather that there isn’t much to be done about white men by even a friendly Indian. Them Crow always liked Custer, you see, and I heard that the whole tribe cried like babies when his death was known.

Bouyer could have left too, but being a breed his pride was involved, I guess, at the sight of men to whom he was co

Ahead the flat narrowed again to form a steep gorge the sides of which was almost perpendicular cutbanks, for this coulee drained the high ground in the spring thaws and rains. You couldn’t have found a less congenial place for cavalry, which ain’t worth a damn without room to maneuver.

Bouyer pointed at it, and says: “If we go in there, we will never come out.” He was wearing buckskin and a broad-brimmed hat, but his black hair was long and he wore some Crow gewgaws, a bear-claw necklace and a medicine charm tied at his left ear.

Custer gives him a curious look. “I said you could go home,” he says.

Bouyer lifts his glittering black eyes towards the sun, his face brown as a hide, and while he did not speak I reckon he was bidding goodbye to that great fire in the sky, Indian-fashion, though ready to die as a white.

We entered the gorge at a fast trot, the five troops in formation, column of fours, and along come brother Boston to join us; he had been in the rear with the pack train, where I suspect his kin had wanted him to stay for his health, but come action, no Custer could be denied it even by another of the same clan.

Within each company of the Seventh, the men rode matched mounts: Tom Custer’s C Troop on sorrels; Troop E, gray horses; and the other three commands on fine bay animals. The guidons was swallow-tailed American flags with concentric circles of gilt stars within the blue field. They fluttered throughout the column, amid the rising dust as we descended that dry coulee, hearing nought but our own hoof-thunder.

I looked over my shoulder from time to time, for in a fight I like to know who’s behind, and I can still see in memory that gray-horse troop, always easiest to distinguish, a-trotting in orderly fours. But Tom Custer’s sorrels, in the leading company, was right handsome too, and almost red in the brilliant light.

God, it was hot along there. We had left the wind up on the ridges, and I yearned to go into the gallop to get some breeze upon me. My hatband was sopping. I had the brim pulled down low to shade my nose, which was considerably burned from previous bright days. I had not shaved for a spell, and with dust and sweat intermingled, my sandpaper cheeks was right scratchy. I chewed a plug of tobacco to keep my throat wet, circulating the plug from side to side on my tongue, but suddenly it wasn’t juicy no more but raspy as a cactus burr, and I could hardly hold the carbine, the metal parts of which was searing hot from the sun. Salt sweat stung my eyes, and Cooke’s white horse ahead was too fiery-light to bear looking at.

We had reached some five hundred yards of the ford when we seen the first enemy on our front all day: several Sioux was riding in slow circles just this side of the river, either to tease us into chasing them or as a signal to others in hiding. The camp was now concealed owing to the stand of cottonwood along the far shore. Then the Sioux vanished, and from behind a little rise above the ford appeared four warriors. They brandished their weapons overhead and shouted at us: “Hey-hey-hey-hey-hey.”

At which Custer forthwith halted the column.

I knowed that sound too well: it was the Cheye

“You swine,” he says, “who gave you that order to fire? I am in authority here. I’ll have you shot for this. I don’t care how highly placed your co

I think in his warped mind he had come to identify me with President Grant. Now he drew his pistol and I guessed was going to shoot me down, but like a madman will, he suddenly changed his whole mode of thought, and spurring his mare, cried: “Forward, the gallant Seventh! CHA-A-A-A-A-RGE!”

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.