Son of the Morning Star

25 June, 1876 - Valley of the Little Big Horn-

Nothing stirs this June night, not a summer’s breeze or a breath of life.
All is eerily quiet; where up on yonder hillside, shroud of darkness
and death descended, lay ten score men and more, naked, mutilated
and dead. Strewn grotesquely white among their horses slain, as bulwarks
of flesh against the Sioux in vain. Stench of death everywhere, the din
of battle no longer there. Said to have sounded like snapping threads in the
tearing of a blanket, albeit their frenzied volleys found mostly air.

Swept away like chaff by a vengeful Gall, from Finly ridge to Calhoun
hill, men of Companies C and L were first to die, then next to fall was
Company I. Further down the ridge on a death pocked hill, gathered
around their commander in a desperate band, remnants of E and F with a
fugitive few were the last of the soldiers to stand. Mortally wounded,
bullet through breast, a brevet or coffin had been his request. Down upon
knees begging no quarter, revolver still firing the latter he receives. As the
death blow falls, so also falls Son of the Morning Star.

From out of the smoke dust and din, only one of the Command emerges
to return home again. Look! up on the hill there is a stirring, amongst the
shadows and gun smoke yet lingering, a solitary figure to life still clinging,
is struggling to reach the river refreshing to bathe his wounds and ease the
pain inflicted by humans gone insane. But of the day on that hillside far, of
the carnage and death he did see, of the smoke and the hell and of a fallen
star he would no-one ever tell, for he was Keogh’s mount, the valiant horse
Comanche.

Earlier that day much like a cavalier Knight, Custer with his 7th arrived
spoiling for a fight. Into the valley of the Little Big Horn they road, battalions
deployed to sweep left and charge to the front, while his columns of four
detached to the right. Further ever further was pressed the advanced, into
the jaws of perdition where they hadn’t a chance, to keep the appointment
with destiny on that hillside far and eternal night for Son of the Morning
Star.

No, nothing stirs this June night, not a summer’s breeze or a breath of life,
and across the valley up on yonder hillside, all now is eerily quiet.