The whole operation reminds me of that great scene from Jeremiah Johnson, in which a huge grizzly chases Jeremiah into a trapper’s cabin. Slamming the door, the trapper outside hollers, “You skin that one, pilgrim, and I’ll go find another’n.” In the face of a hostile force far larger than what he’d expected, the colonel divided his own into three pieces and, assuming the enemy would try to flee, and urged Major Reno’s companies, the first of the trio to, “bring them to battle.”

In a serious uh-oh moment, Major Reno shortly discovered, to his discomfort, that the “hostiles” were “present in force and not running away.” A swift redeployment to a grove of trees by a bend in the Little Bighorn provided some cover, which the industrious and thoroughly irritated natives tried to ignite, was but the first in a series of strategic fiascos that ended shortly afterward with the famous Last Stand.

The monument to the fallen troopers still dominates Last Stand Hill, with small white slabs planted on the slope below indicating where each man’s body was found, a black stone marking the final location of Custer’s mortal remains. Another, circular, memorial nearby is dedicated to the warriors of the long-ago tribes who, pushed and harassed beyond endurance, decided to make their own stand here.

A little over an hour’s drive west of this somber hillside scene the Bighorn River spews noisily through the Yellowtail Dam, a graceful concrete arch that impounds seventy miles of the river, generates 250,000 kilowatts of power at peak capacity, and as an unintended consequence, feeds cold water from the bottom of the reservoir into the river below, creating what is often called “one of the finest wild trout fisheries in the United States.”

In just a couple of days, if I manage to make my somewhat sketchy connections to Billings, my dear friend Baird and I will be perched in opposite ends of a drift boat on that river, enjoying what many (me included) consider one of life’s greatest pleasures – catch-and-release fly fishing on a beautiful river.

The mystery of fishing is what sets it aside from every other field sport. Bird-hunting, you know your dog cannot possibly flush a partridge or pheasant the size of a condor; deer-hunting, you may encounter a bear, but no other creatures the size of a rhino. Fishing, though – aha! – you can never be sure what’s down there, or what’s going to happen next. I’ll never forget a Sunday afternoon in 1950 on the Connecticut River just above Turners Falls when, fishing with my prep school roommate, I got a bite from something unseen. Whatever it was swam slowly, diagonally upstream and pulled out all my 40-pount-test line to the very end, snapping it off at the reel and disappearing with it.

I know that’s not likely to happen in the Bighorn. No sturgeon or catfish, as far as I can tell. But there was a 16-pound rainbow caught here in the recent past. I’d never land one that big, but just to get a look at one like that would be an ineffable, and sufficient, treat.

That, however, is not what makes our few days on the river such a rich experience. The land is so different – pale yellow banks of silt and loess, lined with willows, cottonwoods, Russian olive; wide, open prairie with hills rising beyond the river’s meander belt; and the familiar voice of one of my oldest friends in the other end of the boat. I can fish if I like. I often just sit and watch; either is just as enjoyable. There are few thrills in life as electric as the heavy thud of a large, aggressive fish grabbing one of the tiny flies at the end of my leader, or watching the line zip this way and that through the water. The pleasure of it all is enhanced by the twists, turns, and odd chances it’s taken to get here. I suppose Colonel Custer felt something less than pleasure as it all went south for him; but for me, as the afternoon winds down toward my date with Jack Daniel, and I think of my own approaching end, the old Anglican evening prayer suffuses my consciousness: ...in thy mercy, grant us a safe lodging, and a holy rest, and peace at the last.