It seemed that Lieutenant Varnum had gone ahead to a ridge and seen a village several mile downstream, so Custer at last believed there was such, when a white man told him, and we was going to attack it.
When Reno’s rear troops had gone by, Custer’s command fell in behind and followed till we neared the river. In later arguments about the battle, some said Reno expected, on fording the river and advancing up the bottom, that the General would come behind in support. I don’t know about that; I never heard what orders Custer had give on that occasion, being inside the tepee with Lavender.
What I do think, though, is that he had an idea to use again the tactic with which he had had success at the Washita, where he also divided his force and struck the village from several points simultaneous, for we was still some distance from the ford which Reno was crossing when Custer turned right and led us off on a course roughly parallel to the river but behind some bluffs which cut off a view of it. It seemed to me that the plan was for us to get downstream a mile or two and ford over at that point and strike the lower end of the camp while Reno was attacking the upper.
I remember thinking then of how in a similar maneuver at the Washita, Major Elliot’s command had got cut off, and right while Custer was elsewhere winning, the Cheyenne slaughtered Elliot. That incident was supposed to have touched off Benteen’s hatred for Custer, and now Reno might be in similar jeopardy. Or maybe Benteen himself, for with only three troops he was away off to the left, and nobody really knowed how many hostiles there was nor exactly where they was situated.
For example, Custer didn’t seem to be in no hurry. He had slowed his pace after that turn to the right-which was O.K. by me on that pony of mine, but looked odd when you consider Reno’s fight was about to begin at any minute. Also I was uneasy at the sight of the terrain ahead. I did not claim any good memory of this stretch of the Little Bighorn from years ago, but what I did recall was that them northern rivers sometimes are bordered by real high bluffs that go on for miles without a break that will let you down to the water, and even when you arrive there you cannot rely on finding a ford.
Yet Custer was dawdling, and even stopped to water the horses at a little creek we come to. That was the place where I went up to him, and Tom was also there, and his brother-in-law Calhoun, and I thought again how he had sent off Benteen and Reno but was careful to keep his own family about him.
He looked quite drawn, I thought, and had his hat off to fan himself in the heat, and damn if I didn’t wish at that moment that he never had cut his hair.
But soon as he looked at me, he started to smile. “Yes, teamster,” he says, “do you wish to submit your plan of attack?”
“No sir,” says I, “I don’t mean to jest now. I know something of this country and it don’t look to me like we are going to find a ford for several mile.”
Tom pulls his blond mustache in annoyance and says: “Armstrong, why do you tolerate this idiot?”
“He amuses me,” the General says. “Don’t you, teamster? He is a frontier eccentric,” he goes on as if I wasn’t there. “You know I am partial to the type.”
Then I noticed that newspaper correspondent Mark Kellogg, dismounted and holding his bridle over an arm while scribbling in a notebook. Now he says: “Would you repeat that last phrase, General?” “Partial to the type,” Custer says very distinct and slow enough for it to be copied. I seen then that he was holding an interview right there.
“Thank you, General,” Kellogg says. “Now would you care to characterize your mode of operation as we pause on the brink of battle?”
Custer brushed some trail dust off his shirt. “Very well,” he says. “I have been called impetuous. I resent that. Everything that I have ever done has been the result of the study that I have made of imaginary military situations that might arise. When I become engaged in a campaign and a great emergency arises, everything that I have ever heard or studied focuses in my mind as if the situation were under a magnifying glass. My mind works instantaneously but always as the result of everything I have ever studied being brought to bear on the situation.”
He was going to say more, I think, but at that moment his adjutant, Lieutenant Cooke, who had rode down to the river with Reno and stayed awhile on the near shore as observer, come dashing back, his whiskers flying like birds at his cheeks.
He reined in and shouted from his foaming mount: “Girard reports the Indians are coming out to meet Reno, and in force.”
As if to exemplify his self-estimate, Custer leaped into the saddle of his mare and asked: “Where are the hostiles?”
“About three miles downstream when I received word,” Cooke says. “By now Reno must have engaged them.” And indeed a few seconds after that we commenced to hear the snapping gunfire.
“How big is the village?” Custer asked, but Cooke didn’t know on account of the river bent like a corkscrew downstream and there was cottonwood timber in every bend which cut off the view.
The trumpeters sounded the order to mount, and there was some confusion getting the horses away from the water, but Custer didn’t wait, he galloped furiously up the northward slope to a ridge beyond and everybody followed as best they could for two mile of rough travel which was brutal to the horses, and I believe several dropped from exhaustion and their riders stayed behind with them, thus being unwittingly saved from the slaughter soon to come.
Then we halted again, though the animals was so excited by now that a lot was out of control, especially in the hands of them recruits, and you had rearing, bucking, and a certain panic back along the column. But I must say for my own pony, who had looked to drop dead earlier at a smart walk, in an emergency he got himself together somehow and did right well: I guess his tough Indian breeding showed up, and then it was more his type of terrain than for them big cavalry beasts.
Now we had been traveling more or less parallel to the course of the Greasy Grass, but behind the bluffs, and Custer ordered the halt so he could go out to a high point and look down at the situation in the valley-his first such of the day, remember, excepting that morning long-range view from the Wolf Mountain Crow’s Nest, from which he could not make out a thing. And up to this moment, he had still not seen one live, hostile Indian with his own eyes. It was real strange, as if some sort of charm was at work.
If so, the spell commenced to break now, for as we rode out onto the bluff above the river and looked into the western bottom, we saw enough Indians to satisfy any appetite. I’d say five-six hundred was massing against Reno’s command, which had dismounted and gone into a skirmish line that appeared a thin blue necklace at our distance and elevation. He had only a few more than a hundred men. And we also seen where the enemy was coming from. There could be no further doubt as to the existence of a village: it started a mile or so downstream and God only knowed how far it went, for on account of them loops of the Greasy Grass, we saw only the lower end-though I still wasn’t sure that Custer understood that. But figuring on the warriors charging Reno, and the visible tepees, the redskin population could not be far below two thousand souls.
Once that was realized, however, the situation was still not desperate in any wise. All together the Seventh Cavalry numbered some six hundred men, trained to fight in an organized way: for example, the efficient manner in which Reno went into the skirmish line. A very small party of dismounted men, controlling their fire, could handle many times their number in unorganized savage riders.
If we could get down to the next ford, Custer could strike across into the village and thus relieve the pressure on Reno, and Benteen would no doubt be along in time to reinforce either command. Also, back the trail the pack train was coming on with reserve ammunition and its cavalry guard.