Also that afternoon, Davey Force, a pitcher for the Philadelphia Athletics, went six for six against Chicago, who scored four runs in the ninth to pull out a 14 to 13 victory. Custer was not so lucky. The report of the Secretary of War states that the five companies had 405 Springfield carbines caliber .45, along with their single action 396 Colt revolvers caliber .45. What the Seventh Cavalry contingency did not carry were any Sharps. When the fight began, only about half the Indians had guns, and they were a varied sort: muzzleloaders, Spencer carbines, old-fashioned Henry rifles, and an unspecified number of Sharps. The army didn’t stand much of a chance, trapped on that beautiful hillside, with no reinforcements coming. I thought about how those gentle slopes smelled and sounded on a glorious summer day, about how they might have smelled and sounded that June day in 1876. I also thought about the pumpkin that had exploded from a very long distance in Omar’s back pasture. When Little Wolf led a straggling band of thirty-three Northern Cheyenne warriors into surrender two and a half years later on March 25, 1879, they handed in twenty assorted rifles and carbines, of which the majority were Sharps, numbering nine.
