The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little Big Horn

march north.
    Weir and the rest of D Troop had already left by the time Captain McDougall arrived with the pack train. Before him was a scene of astonishing placidity. “One would not have imagined,” he remembered, “that a battle had been fought.” Officers and men lounged casually on the bluff. Reno and Benteen had not even taken the precaution of throwing out a skirmish line. The whole battalion, McDougall later testified, might have been annihilated if the Indians had suddenly chosen to attack.
    According to Lieutenant Mathey, who was also with the pack train, Reno greeted him with a bottle of whiskey in his hand. “Look here,” he said, “I got half a bottle yet.” Mathey took particular note of the remark because Reno, who was obviously drunk, didn’t offer any of the whiskey to him. Reno pointed to the river and said distractedly to McDougall, “Benny is lying right over there.”
    A box of ammunition, containing five hundred rounds, had already been unloaded from the mules, and after the box was broken open with an ax, the cartridges were distributed among the men. The firing to the north was still audible to anyone who chose to listen. Standard military procedure dictated that the battalion march toward the sound of the guns. But Reno, McDougall euphemistically testified, “did not appear to regard the seriousness of the situation.” McDougall pointed to the north and said, “I think we ought to be down there.”
    McDougall was a good friend of Benteen’s, and his appearance may have made Benteen realize that he could no longer simply sit and watch as Reno wallowed in an alcohol-soaked stupor of terror and despair. Once again Benteen must follow Weir’s lead. McDougall later claimed that it was Benteen’s deference to Reno’s rank that caused him to wait for more than an hour on the bluffs. But as his subsequent actions made clear, Benteen had no qualms about ignoring Marcus Reno.
    Without consulting his superior officer, Benteen ordered his two remaining companies to mount and headed north. Reno, who’d just sent Lieutenant Varnum down to the river to oversee the burial of Hodgson, seems to have been caught by complete surprise. “Continuously and assiduously,” Benteen remembered, Reno’s trumpeter sounded the call to halt, but Benteen pretended not to hear. It was time to see, Benteen wrote, “what I had left my valley hunting mission for.”

    A s the warriors in the bottom streamed past the timber toward the firing to the north, George Herendeen periodically ventured to the edge of the trees to monitor the state of the valley floor. After close to an hour, he decided it was as safe as it ever was going to get. Time to cross the river and find Reno’s battalion.
    He turned to the dozen or so soldiers in the timber behind him and told them it was time to leave. “We must walk and not run,” he said. “Take it cool and we should get out.” Sergeant White, who was badly wounded, assured Herendeen that the men would do as he said. “I will shoot the first man who starts to run or disobeys orders.”
    They crossed the open flat without incident. As they approached the river they came upon a small group of Indians. Herendeen fired only a single shot and the warriors dispersed. When they started across the chest-high river, Herendeen and Sergeant White remained on the west bank covering the soldiers, who dutifully covered Herendeen and White when it was their turn to cross. Up on the bluff they could see the guidons of Reno’s battalion.

    W hen Weir arrived at the high sugarloaf-shaped peak that eventually bore his name, he wasn’t sure what he saw about four miles to the north. He could see the huge village on the flats to the west of the river, but the hills to the east were shrouded in a thick cloud of dust and smoke. There were plenty of people over there; he just wasn’t sure whether they were Indians or soldiers. Then he saw the guidons. “That is Custer,” he said as he prepared to mount his horse and continue heading north.
    —To WEIR PEAK AND BACK, June 25, 1876 —

    Sergeant James Flanagan stood beside him staring through his binoculars. “Here, Captain,” Flanagan cautioned, “you had better take a look through the glasses. I think they are Indians.” After taking a look, Weir decided that Flanagan was right. Not only were they Indians, they were beginning to head in their direction.
    By that time, Lieutenant Edgerly had led the rest of the troop beyond