Chapter 22
Once or twice during the night, Sabrina dozed.
Late in the morning, Earth Woman arrived, telling her that the camp would be moving and that she would return later to show her how to move Sloan.
Earth Woman left, and Sabrina anxiously bathed Sloan’s forehead.
His eyes opened. They met hers. He stared at her for several long seconds.
“Sloan! Sloan, oh, God, Sloan, I’m here!” Anxiously, she bathed his head and face again, but his eyes had closed. She laid her head against his chest, trying not to sob. “Please, don’t die, Sloan. I love you. Oh, God, please, I love you…”
But his eyes didn’t flicker open again.
Sabrina was startled then by the heavy sound of gunfire. She leaped to her feet as Earth Woman came charging into the tipi.
“The soldiers have come. The warriors are grouping to fight them. We must get him on a travois and move quickly from this place.”
Sabrina’s first thought was that if soldiers had come, she was indeed safe. They would rescue her and Sloan.
But looking at Earth Woman, she realized that it was not so simple a matter.
Battle was often quick and merciless, and she had never fooled herself into thinking that soldiers weren’t capable of killing indiscriminately during a fight.
They might not kill her, but they might readily kill Sloan.
And if she cried out for help and the Whites didn’t kill her, the Indians might well do so.
Sloan remained in a deep sleep.
“Tell me what to do,” she told Earth Woman.
In a matter of minutes, they had made a travois of tipi poles and skins, and between them, they pulled Sloan’s body out of the tipi. Earth Woman directed her along the vast line of tipis and down along the water. “We go downstream, to the Cheyenne!” Earth Woman told her.
They came to a rise.
Looking back, Sabrina saw the soldiers as they came, riding hard into the village.
They shot at anything that moved.
“Come! Come!” Earth Woman urged her.
She watched an old man die; then she watched as Sioux warriors pulled a soldier from his horse and hacked him to pieces with their tomahawks. She was going to be sick or pass out. Women were killed; little children were shot.
Earth Woman tugged at her shoulder. “Come, come now!”
But as she stood watching, Sabrina saw the Indians recover from the initial attack.
The warriors were gathering and falling in fury on the Whites.
As she watched, the soldiers were being forced back, and in her heart, she was deeply afraid.
They had dismounted; they mounted again. They raced across the river.
She saw a soldier fall, and another go back for him. The fallen man reached up to take the stirrup of his friend’s horse, so that he might be dragged through the water to the other side.
Just as they reached the embankment, an arrow struck the man in the back.
So very close to escaping…
He was dead.
Sabrina turned away.
Custer, working his way to a good crossing on the river, paused, planning to send a message to Captain Benteen, so that the captain could bring supplies and reinforcements as quickly as possible.
He gave the message to John Martin.
John Martin had not been in the country long. He had arrived as Giovanni Martini.
Custer rode into battle with his companies, and as he did so, he began to realize the enormous size and force of the camp he had come up against.
When Benteen received Custer’s message, he had some difficulty understanding the words as repeated by John Martin. He wasn’t sure where to find Custer, and he didn’t know if Custer needed supplies from the pack train.
In his opinion, Custer was a glory hog.
Still, as he viewed the situation, he determined to press forward to Major Reno’s position. He just saw Reno’s column disappearing, and he followed them. If he reported his command to Major Reno, then Reno would become the commanding officer, responsible for the decisions.
But by now, the bulk of the warriors, Crazy Horse among them, had. moved on from their vicious and deadly counterattack against Reno’s troops.
They were moving against Custer and his men.
Aware that people were dying everywhere—Sioux, Cheyenne, and Whites—Sabrina felt as if she were growing numb. She allowed Earth Woman to usher her along, trying to steel herself against the death and mayhem around her.
Warriors rushed around them. She heard them shouting.
“Hoka hey, hoka hey!”
“What are they saying?” Sabrina cried.
Earth Woman gazed at her as they struggled up a gully with the travois.
“They say that it’s a good day to die,” she told Sabrina solemnly.
Reno’s troops were disorganized and shattered. Benteen’s numbers gave them greater strength, and at last the pack train arrived. Troopers with no ammunition left for their carbines could fight again. Captain Weir’s company was not among the troops, and Benteen asked about them.
Reno remained in a sad state of shock. In forming his lines, he had had his men dismount and mount, dismount and mount. Weir, he said, had moved down from the peak.
Weir and his company were suddenly coming back toward them. They reported that masses of Indians were following behind them. Desperately, the companies grouped together, firing to cover the retreat of Weir’s men. They fell back, far back.
The Seventh Cavalry consisted of twelve companies.
The remnants of seven were grouped on the hill, now under the command of Captain Benteen.
They didn’t know where Colonel Custer was with the remaining companies of the cavalry.
Reno was scarcely fit to command.
Benteen began to shout orders.
As best as Sabrina could reason, the fighting began sometime in the mid- to late afternoon.
Earth Woman led her far from the fighting, to a ravine where Sitting Bull had taken the women, children, old men, and the injured. The able-bodied among them erected small shelters made of bent willows as they listened to the sounds of shouting and gunfire in the distance.
The fighting seemed to last forever.
Sometime after darkness had fallen, Sloan’s eyes opened again.
Sabrina managed to get him to sip some water and a hot gruel Earth Woman had made from jerky and turnips. By then, she was numb, aware only of the sounds of battle—and Sloan’s precarious position.
Sloan began to burn with fever, and she ignored everything around them, trying to keep him cool. She heard whoops of victory and pleasure, and she was afraid.
At one point, a youth ran by Earth Woman where they waited in the wickiup. He held a blood-spattered scalp in his hands.
Sabrina was suddenly sick, sicker than she had been in her whole life.
Earth Woman steadied her.
“Men fight battles; women survive,” Earth Woman told her. “Surviving is the hardest battle.”
Sabrina wondered how many people would survive that day.
George Armstrong Custer had been many things: arrogant, outspoken, a braggart. He had also been a talented commander, brave and hard-working to a fault.
He could behave recklessly and foolishly.
But he had never been a fool.
His greatest mistake had been underestimating his enemies.
He fought to the last.
Separated from greater strength and numbers, he and his men made several courageous stands.
Some of his troops attempted to retreat and were cut down in small pockets.
At the end, his family and close friends were at his side. Tom Custer, Boston, his nephew, Autie Reed, Lieutenant Cooke. They fought valiantly. They came together, and they dug in as soldiers.
They fought together.
They sought glory together.
They died together.
On a distant knoll, Benteen, Reno, and their companies assumed that Custer had seen the great strength of their enemy and had attempted to join with Gibbon or Terry.
They thought themselves deserted. They’d ridden hard; they’d had no sleep in almost three days, and they were in a desperate situation. They were bitter.
And they were afraid.
Night had come.
But they had no water, and no help was in sight.
And now they knew that thousands of Sioux and Cheyenne warriors were out there, perhaps just waiting for morning.
To kill them.
Sabrina knew that the warriors had been victorious, and that they had won a great battle against the Whites.
The Sioux dead were raised on scaffolds. The Cheyenne were buried in crevices in the ravines.
The warriors took their toll upon the soldiers.
The women went out and did far worse.
Many women mourned their dead from the recent battle on the Rosebud. They took their vengeance out on the fallen White men. They hacked them with axes. They cut off their fingers, toes, heads, and feet. They slashed their arms.
Survivors feigning death did not last long, and yet, as quickly as they were dispatched, they died horribly.
Sabrina knew all of this because Earth Woman told her.
By then, however, she couldn’t even think, she was so numb.
Sioux and Cheyenne had been killed, and so the wailing in the camp was loud and terrible.
They were moving again, because the Sioux did not stay where their dead had died and been scaffolded.
They would move just downriver, though. There were still soldiers out there.
There would be another fight, perhaps, in the morning. And the chiefs would meet. Some of the warriors were convinced that they had defeated Crook’s troops. Others insisted that the soldiers were coming from many directions.
Sloan continued to suffer with fever. Earth Woman helped Sabrina to keep him cool through the night.
Sometime in the night, she fell asleep, exhausted from two full days without any rest. She awoke to discover that she was alone.
She rose quickly, looking out of the wickiup, but she didn’t see him. Earth Woman was coming toward the wickiup with coffee. She offered it to Sabrina, but Sabrina already felt tears welling in her eyes.
“Where is—”
“He has gone back to see the scene of the battle.”
“Oh, dear God, Earth Woman, how do I get to him?”
“You should not.”
“Please, I must.”