Sioux Dawn, The Fetterman Massacre, 1866 (44 page)

As the foot-soldiers entered the maw of the valley itself, the decoys across the creek split into two groups. Each band dashed away like scattering quail, suddenly turning, doubling back, crossing the path of the other.

With that signal the valley instantly sprang alive. Two thousand shrieking Sioux, Cheyenne and Arapaho leaped from bushes and tall grass. From hiding places behind rock and tree. Shouting. Shooting guns. Firing arrows. Screaming. Hurtling lances. Wielding axes and clubs.

Garrett yanked back on the reins. His mount stumbled, pitching over. His mouth went as dry as if he'd swallowed trail-dust. He clambered to his feet, reins still in his hands, his ears pounding with demon shrieks. Back up the spur behind Fetterman's foot-soldiers the trap slammed shut. Across the creek ahead the hillside throbbed with warriors leaping from hiding. From both sides of the spur sprang hundreds. Eli realized they were outnumbered better than twenty to one.
Gotta make a stand of it.

“Holy shit!” he hollered, whirling as a bullet struck the soldier beside him, brain splattering hot blood across Eli's cheek.

Nearby, Brown's pony crumpled, pinning the captain's leg. Amid the crush of warriors and the panic-ridden raw recruits, Garrett pulled Brown free. By the time Eli turned round seconds later, his own horse had dashed across the creek, several arrows bobbing in its withers and flanks.

“Get back to Fetterman!”

Garrett looked up, finding Grummond in the saddle, pistol in hand, pointing, shouting orders. Urging soldiers back up the spur where Fetterman was having a hot time of it. From all sides the warriors swarmed like maddened red ants.

Grummond raced among the soldiers, kicking, shouting, shooting. Covering the retreat as best he could. Closing the file as the cavalry dragged their wounded with them. Most soldiers horrified at the terror of battle. Some going to pieces and screaming. A few throwing useless weapons away.

Into their midst plunged the two civilians. Firing their repeaters coolly, Wheatley and Fisher held fast, blunting the first wave of Black Shield's Miniconjou who were given the honor of making this first assault.

Eli whirled, sweeping an abandoned carbine from the frozen ground, running in a crouch back to the civilians and a handful of soldiers kneeling in a small fortress of boulders and horse carcasses.

“Glad you could join us, Sergeant!” James Wheatley hollered above the clamor.

“No place like home!” Garrett slid behind a horse still jerking in its death throes.

“Don't waste time,” Issac Fisher growled. “More'n enough for us all, soldier!”

Garrett swept his sights to the left and fired. Then swung right. Seeing Grummond drive the cavalry up the spur, joining Fetterman's infantry at the foot of the ridge. As he turned back, one of Eli's young cavalrymen buckled, crumpling into the snow, thrashing on the ground a moment. Until he lay still. White powdering his back.

Private Burke, Eli thought, and pulled his trigger again.
By god, the boy was a soldier after all!

Lead slammed into the horse carcasses about them, going home with the flat thud like a hand slapping wet putty. None of the carcasses moved anymore. Arrows hissed through the grass. Bullets hummed overhead. Behind it all rose the constant drone of eagle-wingbone whistles keening for white blood. Soldier blood.

Out of the swirl of Sioux flitted blurred forms. One moment atop their ponies, the next gone. Arrows whispering through the cold air:
whit. Whit. Whit-tukk! Swiss-thung!

Garrett watched the last soldier in the little horse-fort sink over a carcass, a shaft buried deep in his throat. A moment later he could no longer hear that wet gurgle in the trooper's throat. Fisher, Wheatley, and Eli Garrett remained. In the span of five minutes the Sioux had killed Burke and four seasoned veterans around him.

His gun jammed. Garrett ducked, dragging another Spencer from beneath a cavalryman's body. Once, twice, three times he aimed and fired. Watching a warrior fall for each bullet. Those last three marksmen exacted a terrible toll on the Sioux that day beneath a milk-pale sun hidden behind the thickening, snow-swollen clouds.

“My gun … God … dammit!”

Garrett whirled, watching Wheatley catch Fisher. A long shaft quivered from the base of Fisher's neck, the bloody iron point dripping from the other side.

“I'll pull it——”

“No!” Fisher shouted. “Give the soldier … my gun. Give 'im my…”

Wheatley looked up, imploring Garrett. “Take his rifle, goddammit!” he growled, tears clouding his eyes. “He don't need it no longer.”

Eli pulled the weapon into his shoulder and fired. Until it clicked empty. His hands dug through Fisher's pockets, finding the loose .44/40 shells. Four. Five. Six he jammed into the rifle. Then sprang upright to fire.

Looked down at his chest. Seeing the iron tip poking like a stickpin from a gentleman's tie. Dripping with his own fluid.

“You reloaded yet, soldier?” Wheatley hollered, his back turned, pumping and firing. Knocking a warrior from the saddle with every round. Deadly with his Henry. “C'mon, goddammit—you ain't got all day to reload the sonuvabitch!”

Eli turned slowly, jaws pumping, trying to speak. Say anything. He put his cold, bloody hand on Wheatley's shoulder. Then sank in silence. The eagle-wingbone whistles ringing in his ears.

As his eyes locked on the dirty sky overhead.

Chapter 35

Little Adolph Metzger, eleven-year veteran, filled one hand with his tin bugle, his revolver clamped in the other. Time and again he galloped back to fight at Grummond's side.

The young infantry lieutenant rawhided the cavalry like cattle, driving them back toward Fetterman up the ridge. Warriors swarmed over him. Falling away as quickly.

His saber slashed through the cold air with a whistling hiss. Grummond lopped off the head of an attacker. Fired his pistol into the breast of another, so close the warrior's blanket coat smoldered.

The Sioux rolled over him again. Grummond swung the saber. It bedded itself deep in the shoulder of a warrior who galloped away, already dead. Grummond ran out of luck. His saber gone. Pistol empty.

The lieutenant sank slowly from his saddle. A stain like dark gravy moist across his chest. Sinking slow and thick from his horse, as if he were tired. His legs buckled as he hit the ground. Sitting in the muddy snow beside his horse, reins still clutched in his glove.

Metzger raced up, easing Grummond back onto the trampled snow. He stared up at Adolph's face coming into focus over his.

“Tell Frances——”

Metzger had heard that gurgle too many times before. “You're a brave soldier, Lieutenant. Your wife will know you hung back to cover the retreat. I make that promise to you,” Adolph whispered. His fingers pulled the pasty eyelids down.

Metzger fired his pistol. One, then a second warrior tumbled out of the saddle before Adolph realized he was alone. Not a single horse left. He had a choice. Race down to the little rock fortress where Garrett and two civilians worked their devastation on the Sioux with every shot. In a scattered ring surrounding the fortress lay the bodies of better than fifty dead or dying Sioux. Some trying to crawl away. Most still as stone while other horsemen surged toward the fortress.

Or he could run the gauntlet to rejoin Fetterman. Chances better with the more soldiers, he thought, bursting off on a dead run, hunched over like a crab as he scrambled through grass and brush.

Metzger suddenly sensed his heart leaping in his chest like a slippery fish breaking water in the mountain streams of his boyhood.
Germany … my beautiful Germany. So much like these mountains.

“Gottamn dem!” Adolph cursed under his breath, watching the mounted troops clatter uphill, abandoning Fetterman's infantry.

Leaderless and confused, they plunged through the infantry, headed up the ridge, where they were stopped a hundred yards beyond a group of huge boulders. Milling about like some headless, crazed beast while the warriors swept around them, among them. Over them. Knocking the green recruits from their saddles with shrieks of bloody glee.

A blood-chilling scream rose down the slope. Adolph wheeled, fired. Dropping one warrior close enough to touch him with a lance. Metzger watched Wheatley stand. Alone now in his little fortress. Swinging his rifle like a club. Knocking warriors aside like sheaves of wheat until they swarmed over him. A second later Wheatley stood alone again. Bloody from a hundred wounds. A warrior swung a cruel, nail-studded war-club, taking the top of the civilian's head with it. Metzger's stomach pushed up against his tonsils. He turned away. Racing. Gulping cold air.

He neared the boulders as the cavalry farthest up the ridge dismounted like ragged tin soldiers. Leading their horses onto the crest of the ridge. He glanced to the south. Figuring the horsemen hoped to cross the top and retreat back to the fort. Adolph watched them draw up on the glazed, icy snow, short of the top.

The south slope of Lodge Trail Ridge erupted hundreds more mounted, screaming warriors.

Any hope of escape cut off like a last whimper of wind.

*   *   *

Pvt. Ephraim Rover whirled and fired again. Downhill from where he stood, a solitary cavalry soldier scrambled on foot. Rover aimed and dropped another warrior. He would cover the soldier, the way he had covered the retreat of his infantry bunkies. Swinging and firing the carbine he had picked up along the slope, Rover recognized the irony in his joining the army to escape a family and trouble in Chicago—hungering for excitement. At the moment he had more than a lifetime's staring him cold in the face.

As the little soldier neared Rover, a warrior on horseback swung alongside. Ephraim fired, dropping the Sioux on top of the trooper. The fallen man dragged himself from beneath the Indian's body and scrambled alongside Rover.

“Sank you,” he growled with a thick accent.

“Let's go!” Ephraim shouted, watching the old soldier scamper up the slope toward the boulders and the rest of the waiting infantry. He leaped to his feet, running backward, stumbling over brush and snowdrifts, firing as the Sioux surged up the hillside. His throat hurt.

Ephraim realized he was yelling at the top of his lungs.

*   *   *

Miniconjou warrior White Bull snugged the war-shield along his wrist, swinging the feathered lance through the air, urging his pony up the snowy slope. Bursting through puffs of gray gunpowder that stung his nostrils. The reek of death and voided bowels profaned the cold air. Three more joined him. While they carried bows, White Bull preferred his lance.

Though he was closest to the solitary soldier, an arrow from one of those who rode at his side struck the trooper first, bringing him to his knees. Slowly the soldier crumpled backward. White Bull charged in, the first to count coup. As he galloped over the soldier, the Miniconjou warrior slapped his lance point across the enemy's head, knocking off the blue hat.

Crazy Horse reined up beside White Bull, bullets hissing about them like mad hornets. The young Oglalla whirled as warriors nearby shouted. Word came that more soldiers were marching from the fort. Already they were crossing the first creek on the valley side of the ridge.

“We must finish these quickly—now!” Crazy Horse commanded. “Fight! Sweep these soldiers from the face of our mother!”

“Aiiyeee!”
White Bull shouted, following the young Oglalla's courageous charge up the hill toward the boulders.

Spurred by Crazy Horse's exhortation, his brothers in war charged from all directions. Down from the ridge. Up from both sides of the road along the narrow spur. And closing the circle rode those joining Crazy Horse in a wild assault charging up the hill. Throwing themselves against volley after volley of soldier fire, the Sioux pressed closer. Yard by bloody yard, closer still, caring not for the bullets singing overhead or hissing into the frozen ground at their feet.

On the outer fringe of the low boulders soldiers stood to meet the Sioux charge. Flailing away with their rifles while warriors swung clubs, jabbed with lances, slashed with scalping knives, hacked with axes.

Crazy Horse trampled over warriors riddled with arrows. On all sides of the boulders lay the scattered bodies of his brothers sacrificed in the cross-fire of a savage attack. Already this place stank of death. Blood turning black on the trampled snow. Hair clotting the nails of his war-club, he swung again and again. Screeching his wild cry of death.

His moccasins slipped and he nearly fell. Across the ground wriggled coils of greasy blue gut streaming from a soldier's belly. Steaming. Stinking. He stared down into the wide eyes full of fear and pain. Then slammed his war-club into the face.

Pict. Pict.
The bullets rang off the rocks around him. He swung again. The side of another soldier's face disappeared in a halo of red spattering Crazy Horse like hot grease. He wheeled, looking for another, his blood lust feverish. Watching brave soldier spirits rising to the heavens like breathsmoke from a dying man's mouth in winter.

Many of his brothers died around him, paying for this victory before the other soldiers could arrive. Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho died bravely. Their deathsongs in their mouths.

Many dead, for they fought not with guns. But close, staring their enemy in the eye.

*   *   *

Yard by yard Adolph Metzger fell back, reaching the center of the tiny ring of boulders. He realized it was only a matter of minutes, perhaps only seconds now.

“Fred!”

Behind him he recognized Fetterman's voice. Brown lumbered past the German bugler. Only a handful remained now, surrounded. Adolph wheeled, watching a warrior fly off the rocks overhead, landing on a soldier, swinging a club. Back against the rock he stumbled.

Just beyond, Fetterman and Brown pressed their pistols against each other's temple.

“One…” Fetterman rasped.