“Don’t you see them over there? Right over there against the sky-line! Ah—now they’ve disappeared. But they’re coming—Terry or Crook or Custer! Hurrah!”
“Hurrah!” welled the cheers, from this hill and all along the bluff, where the Reno men also were stirred.
“Sound stables, Fletcher,” bade Captain Benteen, of Ned. “Loud as you can, to reach them and guide them.”
With parched and cracked lips Ned did his best, pealing from his battered trumpet the rollicking, familiar tune:
Come off to the stable all ye who are able,
And give your horses some oats and some corn;
For if you don’t do it your colonel will know it,
And then you will rue it as sure as you’re born.
“Now listen!”
It did seem as though answering bugle call floated in through the dusk. But after shots had been fired, and more calls had been sounded, officers and men must agree that their hopes deceived them. Nobody was coming. So where was Custer?
Barricades of boxes and horse carcasses were being piled up, and the order went forth to scoop out rifle pits, for the next day’s fight. The darkness gradually settled. There was no water for coffee, and every mouth was too dry to chew bread. The bluff was miserable, but the village below was gay. Great fires flared redly; and about them the Indians were prancing and yelping in a tremendous scalp dance. With flames and shrieks and hoots and firing of guns and beating of tom-toms the dances lasted all night. But the Indians were not unmindful of the watchers on the bluff; for when Major Reno sent out scouts to find an open way they speedily crept back, with word that they had encountered nothing but Sioux, Sioux, Sioux, everywhere.
No matter; Custer would come, in the morning; and soon would come Terry and Gibbon, and Crook the Gray Fox.
The digging of the little rifle-pits took most of the night. Ned had been helping one of the squads. They had finished their pit, and he had closed his eyes, for a moment (he was so tired!), when he wakened with a jump. Two rifle-shots echoed in his ears. To the signal up-swelled a hideous clamor again, of whoops and rapid reports; the bullets pelted in, ringing upon the rocks and cutting the dry earth and the brittle sage. There was no need for “Assembly”; into the pits dived the men.