BALLAD OF THE SABRE CROSS AND 7
A troop of sorrels led by Vic and then a troop of
bays,
In the backward ranks of the foaming flanks a
double troop of grays;
The horses are galloping muzzle to tail, and back
of the waving manes
The troopers sit, their brows all knit, a left hand
on the reins.
Their hats are gray, and their shirts of blue have
a sabre cross and 7,
And little they know, when the trumpeters blow,
they'll halt at the gates of heaven.
Their colors have dipped at the top of a ridge—
how the long line of cavalry waves!—
And over the hills, at a gallop that kills, they are
riding to get to their graves.
"I heard the scouts jabber all night," said one;
"they peppered my dreams with alarm.
"That old Ree scout had his medicine out an'
was tryin' to fix up a charm."
There are miles of tepees just ahead, and the
warriors in hollow and vale
Lie low in the grass till the troopers pass and then
they creep over the trail.
The trumpets have sounded—the General shouts!
He pulls up and turns to the rear;
"We can't go back—they've covered our track—
we've got t' fight 'em here."
He rushes a troop to the point of the ridge, where
the valley opens wide,
And Smith deploys a line of the boys to stop the
coming tide.
A fire flames up on the skirt of the hills; in every
deep ravine
The savages yell, like the fiends of hell, behind a
smoky screen.
"Where's Reno?" said Custer. "Why don't he
charge? It isn't a time to dally!"
And he waves his hat, this way and that, as he
looks across the valley.
There's a wild stampede of horses; every man in
the skirmish line
Stands at his post as a howling host rush up the
steep incline.
Their rifles answer a deadly fire and they fall with
a fighting frown,
Till two by two, in a row of blue, the skirmish line
is down.
A trooper stood over his wounded mate. "No use
o' yer tryin't' fight,
"Blow out yer brains—you'll suffer hell-pains
when ye go to the torture to-night.
"We tackled too much; 'twas a desperate game—
I knowed we never could win it.
"Custer is dead—they're all of 'em dead an' I
shall be dead in a minute."
They're all of them down at the top of the ridge;
the sabre cross and 7
On many a breast, as it lies at rest, is turned to the
smoky heaven.
Three wounded men are up and away; they're
running hard for their lives,
While bloody corses of riders and horses are
quivering under the knives.
Some troopers watch from a distant hill with hope
that never tires;
There's a reeling dance on the river's edge; its
echoes fill the night;
In the valley dim its shadows swim on a lengthening
pool of light.
The scattered troops of Reno look and listen with
bated breath,
While bugle strains on lonely plains are searching
the valley of death.
"What's that like tumbled grave-stones on the
hilltop there ahead?"
Said the trooper peering through his glass, "My
God! sir, it's the dead!
"How white they look! How white they look!
they've killed 'em—every one!
"An' they're stripped as bare as babies an' they're
rotting in the sun."
And Custer—back of the tumbled line on a slope
of the ridge we found him;
And three men deep in a bloody heap, they fell as
they rallied 'round him.
The plains lay brown, like a halted sea held firm
by the leash of God;
In the rolling waves we dug their graves and left
them under the sod.