Across the valley and to the north, Custer pauses on a promontory.

Before him is the largest Indian village he has ever seen.

He pauses to think.

So much depends on what he does next.

In a sort of interregnum, the Singers describe the deer, bobcats, elk, mountain lions that abound in the vicinity. They Sing the fluttering leaves of the aspen; the lapping of the creek as, ignorant of battle or non-battle, it moves as always among the rocks; the sound the wind makes as it crosses the plain, smoothly accommodating hillsides, washes, crags, ravines.

But the silence cannot hold.

The killing must soon begin again in earnest.

We Speakers and Singers, all at once, begin voicing the syllable O, in grief, in awe, in amazement at what is about to happen here, in the middle of nowhere, in this patch of dry grass and rolling hills that, had this army not come, would have remained unremarked by history, like innumerable similar places across the west, lost to history because no mass death occurred there.

Gathered on this summer afternoon, up on the ridges, below in the valley, are a specific number of living, breathing human beings whose fate it is to die today, some three hundred or so who woke this morning not imagining it would be their last.

Why? Why must this be? Is there not abundance enough and beauty to support all in peace, were that the general intention?

There is.

But peace is not the general intention. It is not the intention of the army. It is not the intention of the nation the army represents. The intention of the nation is to have this land for itself, uncontested.

The intention of the tribes is to continue to exist, here on land that, in truth, has changed hands many times before, often by violence, i.e., on land seized by force from other people. Members of the tribes have also set upon peaceful homes, abducted women, killed children.

Peace is not, apparently, the general human intention, although in the spare hour (in the dear home, in the individual heart) it may sometimes seem to be.

In any event, the thing has gone too far, and must now be brought to completion.

We know from Rehearsal how it will end: Custer, attempting to attack the north end of the village, will be driven back by the heroic actions of White Cow Bull, Roan Bear, White Shield, Bobtail Horse, Dull Knife, Buffalo Calf, and Mad Wolf, among others, who will, through the rapid, accurate firing of their Winchester and Henry repeating rifles, hidden in a low place among willows, seem to represent a larger force. The charge will falter; the attacking soldiers will be driven back the way they came. Thousands of warriors, converging from every direction, will encircle and descend upon the soldiers, who, as they struggle to find a place from which to fight, will die in distinct groups, some forming themselves into skirmish lines, others frightened into paralysis, losing all sense of reality. Some, fearing torture, will kill themselves (singly or in prearranged pairs). Others will fight on bravely to the end. Some, out of ammunition, will drop their weapons and flee madly, only to be swiftly run down by pursuing warriors on horseback.