Fewer in number than before. As if word about our last Performance has gotten out.

But that is fine.

The fifteen or so gathered here are, we know, in for something special.

Mrs. U. is, as usual, in the back row, looking chagrined in advance. I would like to catch her eye. But am in work mode. In my mind, I dedicate my Performance to her, hoping that something in it will captivate and impress her enough to draw her to me tonight, post-Performance.

I feel my chances are good.

For I have been given a major Solo.

Mr. U. taps Control Podium with his baton.

We begin.

Reno advances toward the village. The Lakota youths race along the river, crying out in alarm. I am again Private Neubauer, Craig again Yellow Dog, Lauren again Reno. The charge falters, the skirmish line is formed, the horse-holders, responsible for four nervous mounts each, quake in the shade of the box elder trees. Bloody Knife is shot, Reno panics, precedes his terrified men to the top of the hill. Unhorsed, out of ammunition, riven with fear, they follow, our Singers conveying their terror in dissonant counterpoint. Many troopers are killed along the way, as they cross the river or try to climb the steep cliff on its opposite side, bludgeoned with war club or hatchet or rifle butt.

On Reno Hill, the corpses begin to bloat in the withering heat. Reno is drunk, cantankerous, useless. We, his men, are terrified and confused. Some are ranting. Carvelli falls. Dietzen shrieks. Some of us begin to dig in. Rudimentary breast-works are constructed of packs and food tins. The horses are moved into a slight declension in the center of the defensive perimeter, where an ad hoc field hospital has been established.

Surrounded on the hill, all of us, Singers and Speakers alike, cry out for Custer. Why has he not come to support us, as promised?

There is no answer.

We last saw him up on the ridge, but he is not there now.

Abandoned, we reflect on he who, we believe, has abandoned us. To do so, we become him. Craig, Lauren, and I, respectively, are him as: a child, a brash West Point cadet, a Civil War hero/young suitor of Libbie, with whom he exchanges torrid, pornographic letters. Six of the Singers voice Custer at his most arrogant, five at his most insecure. We convey his anxious American ambition, his love of dogs, his manic, staccato way of speaking when excited, his erratic communications skills, his wild confidence in battle.

Then, moving down into the valley, as the Singers provide a lush placeholding triad, we Rewind, go back in time, begin living out the morning from the collective mindstate of the village.