Playing Custer by Duff Gerald;

Author:Duff, Gerald; [Duff, Gerald]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: TCU Press
Published: 2015-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Captain Frederick Benteen

ON THE LITTLE BIGHORN

JUNE 25, 1876

When the trumpeter from the companies with Custer’s battalion came pounding up, his horse in a lather and favoring a rear leg as it was brought to a stop by John Martin near where I was standing by a little creek, I already knew what was going on. Not specifically, now, am I claiming that I could tell the full state of affairs back across the river. Custer didn’t want me in at the kill, and I’d known that before the Seventh left Fort Lincoln. He was hoping that by the time I’d reconnoitered all that empty area he’d have finished up the main business all by himself. So when I arrived on the scene, he’d be able to look at me with that little half smile he liked to display when he figured he’d put something over on somebody, especially a soldier experienced in leading men and getting a job done with the least casualties and the best result. I’ve done it again, that smirk would be saying. George Armstrong Custer has ridden successfully to the sound of the guns.

But something he hadn’t planned on, or something he’d misjudged badly, had taken place, and now he had to turn to me to see if I could pull his chestnuts out of the fire. Proof of that was standing bang in front of me, half-winded with his eyes popped wide open, his horse bleeding from what looked like a gunshot high up on its left hindquarter, and his mind racing as he tried to think of the right words in English to say to an officer.

“Trooper Martin,” I said, looking not directly at him as I spoke but at Captain Weir who gave me a nod that showed he was thinking what I was. “What have you got for me from the general?” My saying that let the Italian trumpeter off the hook of having to explain in spoken English what his message was, and he looked grateful as he leaned forward and handed me a small scrap of paper. “From General Custer,” he said. “Put on the paper by Lieutenant Cooke. He wrote for me that.”

So then I read for the first time that message that has become so famous since I first got handed it by John Martin, Italian trumpeter of the Seventh Cavalry. It’s been read by many a thousand since then, God knows. At that first view, it was so smudged from being carried by Martin and so ill written, showing in what haste Cooke had been when he scribbled the words on that page torn from a notebook, that soon after that whole business and disaster had occurred on the Little Bighorn I copied the message in a fair hand on the top portion of that same document. I knew as soon as I saw what Martin had brought me that I’d want to save the original for later perusal by all those having business in knowing what

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