Long Winter Gone: Son of the Plains - Volume 1 (11 page)

“Got ’em!” Hamilton replied, his throat raw from barking orders, cheering his men across the river.

Custer knew Hamilton as a fearless, proven leader. In the young captain’s veins coursed the blood of colonial patriots. Grandson of no less than Alexander Hamilton himself.

“Go that way! I’ll flank them over there!” Custer drove his spurs into Dandy’s ribs with brutal urgency.

Custer swept around the side of the lodge, searching for three warriors. He saw only two. Hamilton had disappeared.

As the young captain galloped after the warriors, he twisted to the left to aim his pistol across his body. His frightened mount strained against the bit. Too late Hamilton realized he was vulnerable, presenting a broad and inviting target to the solitary warrior who wheeled on him, raising a rifle.

Funny
, he thought in that blink of an eye as he watched the ragged puff of blue smoke blossom from the Indian’s weapon,
looks just like one of those old rifles the peace commission gave the Cheyenne for putting their marks to the treaty at Medicine Lodge Creek. Damned old muzzle loaders never were any good—

Hamilton never heard the weapon’s blast. His chest burned with a sudden fire. His body snapped rigid, legs
clamping around the gaunt ribs of his wild-eyed mount. As Hamilton’s convulsive corpse rode the terrified horse another thirty yards through the village, the warrior Cranky Man ducked behind a lodge to reload his trusted weapon.

Hamilton tumbled from his horse. Cranky Man’s bullet had penetrated his twenty-four-year-old heart. He never got a good look at the wrinkled old man who had killed him.

After shooting the other two warriors, Custer spurred on toward the knoll just south of the village. To his right he watched a young trooper savagely yank his horse’s head to the side as he slashed at a stocky warrior. The mount reared in protest as the soldier clung to the bucking animal. A Cheyenne trained his old rifle on the young pony soldier.

Custer fired on instinct. Beneath a puff of blue smoke he watched the warrior crumple to the ground like a sack of wet oats, a bullet through his head. With his mount once more under control, the young soldier darted off to continue his fight, not realizing his life had just been saved by his regimental commander.

Eagerly Custer wheeled Dandy hard to the left, charging to the knoll, knocking down another warrior beneath the huge animal’s pounding hooves. Aiming his pistol at the same time, Custer fired point-blank at the trampled Cheyenne.

“That one won’t fight again,” he said aloud to himself.

Reining up atop the low rise, he brought Dandy sharply around as the first smudge of gray light splashed across the battle site. From the knoll he would watch the rest of the skirmish raging below. Glancing at his pocket watch, Custer saw it had taken barely four minutes for him to cross the Washita, charge through the village, and reach the knoll.

*    *    *

Down with Elliott’s command rode Captain Frederick W. Benteen at the head of Company H. Finding himself near the center of the village, he worried how many shots he had left in his pistol. He was about to find out.

A young, owl-eyed warrior jumped from behind a lodge, his bowstring taut. Benteen fired. The warrior dropped as another dashed in front of the same lodge, tearing off at a full sprint. The captain pulled the trigger. No bark, no familiar buck in his hand.

Benteen jammed his empty weapon in his holster and secured the mule-ear while the other hand yanked his carbine from its boot beneath his right leg. He wheeled to find another target.

Benteen caught sight of a stocky youth bursting from a lodge near the center of camp, grabbing for the single rawhide rein of a lone war pony tethered there. Judging the boy to be no more than fifteen years of age, Benteen decided against killing him. Following at a hand gallop, he signaled the boy to give himself up.

But instead of surrendering, young Blue Horse wheeled his pony smartly and fired at the pursuing soldier. As the nephew of Chief Black Kettle, he realized a warrior must either escape or die trying. Though short of youthful in appearance, this warrior had lived twenty-one summers, fighting Pawnee, Osage and Kaw many times. His choice was simple. He would kill this pesky soldier.

Like the whine of a persistent mosquito, Benteen felt a bullet slice the air by his face. He heard the familiar crack of a carbine as the youth raced off again, only to wheel a few yard away and fire a second shot. Then a third.

That one hit something with a loud, wet smack. Before
he could react, Benteen’s mount pitched headlong, spilling him across the snow.

“That’s about enough, you damned rascal!” he growled, scrambling to his feet.

Up ahead the young warrior bellowed his victory song. He had unhorsed a pony soldier!

By now Benteen couldn’t care less how young his enemy was. He shouldered his Springfield and fired as Blue Horse again raised both his rifle and defiant song to the dawn sky.

An army-issue bullet caught him square in his bare chest, tumbling him heels over head off the rear of his war pony into the dirty snow.

Unhorsed, Benteen crouched, slashing his ammunition pouch from the dead mount, then darted back into the village.

Second Lieutenant Algernon E. Smith, who had crossed the river with Custer’s four companies, galloped knee to knee with John Murphy, the bugler who had signaled the attack. Just ahead of them darted a Cheyenne cloaked in a dirty red blanket, scurrying toward a cluster of keening women. Smith slid to a halt beside Murphy as the young bugler threw his carbine to his shoulder.

“Murphy! Don’t fire!”

Flashing a quick Irish anger, Murphy glared at Smith.

“Can’t you see it’s a woman, son?” Smith hollered, waving his left arm, wounded so badly in the Civil War that he could barely raise it above his shoulder.

“Yessir! Now I do!”

“By damn—find yourself a buck to kill!” Smith blared, spinning his horse around and dashing into the fray once more.

Murphy whirled suddenly at the hackle-raising howl coming from one of the Cheyenne women who had by now been herded by the troops. His eyes must be deceiving him—for now that old squaw he had seen running had dropped her red blanket. The Cheyenne was not a woman.

The old warrior drew back on the bowstring of a weapon he no longer concealed beneath the dirty blanket. He raised his thin, reedy war cry as Murphy ducked off the far side of his mount—a move that saved his life.

Instead of taking the arrow in his chest where it had been aimed, Murphy sensed a blinding flash. The iron point grazed the young soldier’s brow, entering above one eye, tearing the flesh and scraping the bone before it ended its flight just above the ear. Yet with all its force, the point had not penetrated Murphy’s skull.

Stunned, he flopped from his horse like a hooked fish brought to the bank, certain he was a dead man. An arrow fluttering above his eye, Murphy rolled across the ground, feeling his empty stomach lurch. In his hand he recognized the comforting feel of the carbine. The old warrior shot a second arrow. Murphy squeezed the trigger, rolling out of the way.

Murphy’s bullet knocked the Indian backward into the knot of shrieking, screaming captives. The warrior was dead as he sank to the ground.

The bugler caught his breath, swallowing hard, choking down the pain of the arrow still hanging in his scalp. After he had broken the shaft and pulled the arrow out by himself, Murphy daubed at the oozing wounds with a dirty bandanna he yanked from his own greasy neck. The next task was to rip the graying scalp from the old warrior’s head. He stuffed the dripping trophy in the folds of his blue
tunic, smearing his wool shirt with the Indian’s warm, sticky blood.

Damn, but his feet were cold.

For seasons without count, Black Kettle had counseled peace with the white man. So many times he had been promised his people could live where they wanted and hunt where they must. Despite the repeated broken government promises to all tribes roaming the southern plains, the chief remained sure that a way would be found allowing red man and white to live side by side.

With those first early-morning blasts of rifle fire, shouts of soldiers joining the valiant death songs of angry warriors and screams of women and children, Black Kettle yanked his wife from the warm robes of their bedding. Stumbling from their lodge, the couple plunged into the terror.

Nearby stood some war ponies Cheyenne warriors always staked in camp. Black Kettle frantically tried to lift his woman onto a pony but found he didn’t have the strength left in his cold, tired bones. He crawled atop the nervous, mule-eyed animal, grasping its mane in one hand. The other he extended for his wife to grab, and held stiff his naked foot for her to use as a step. Together they struggled to get her seated in front of him on the prancing, skittish pony, frightened by the shrill noise and gunfire, made madder yet by the smell of gunpowder and fresh blood.

Ahead of them dashed a ragged line of troopers heading east toward the edge of camp and the horse herd—some of Major Elliott’s men charging toward the open plain.

There seemed little choice for the Cheyenne chief. Simply a matter of running the gauntlet to cross the river.
From there to race south for those Arapaho, Kiowa, and Cheyenne camps downstream.

“Be of strong heart, woman!”

Her only reply was the squeeze she gave his old hand.

“I am with you always, old woman!”
Hep-haaa!”
he sang out to the stouthearted little pony beneath them.

A simple matter for the old man to jab the little pony in its ribs, driving the overburdened mustang toward the icy river. Crashing straight through the shredded line of confused, blue-shirted troopers.

“Holy—”

“What the hell?”

“Look out!”

“There goes one … behind you, Kennedy!”

Black Kettle found himself near the crossing at the bank of the Washita. Several soldiers wheeled with a jangle of saddle gear, training their carbines on the old Cheyenne’s wide back. They did not notice the old woman nestled within the arms of the chief like a tick clinging for life itself.

They fired a ragged volley.

Black Kettle stiffened as the hot lead tore deep into his body, piercing both lungs and shredding his abdomen. Shuddering with the first throes of death, he clutched both arms around Medicine Woman Later.

If only I can make it to the river …

A second wild volley crashed into the old warrior’s body. For winters without count the heart of the grizzly had beat in his chest. Yet it was not enough against the soldiers’ carbines.

A third volley riddled the little pony. In a death spasm the animal stumbled, lunged valiantly, pitched the old
couple to the edge of the icy river. Black Kettle was dead before he hit the water.

Like angry hornets the soldiers’ bullets buzzed and stung. It was nothing short of miraculous that Medicine Woman Later found herself alive. Though bleeding from several wounds, she struggled to her hands and knees, crabbing across the rocky bottom of the stream. Her husband was dead. She must plunge into the river alone, without him for the first time in more years than she could remember. But before she could turn, red blossomed across her chest and belly, the side of her face. Numbing impact drove her backward several stumbling steps. Through the water grown red around her, Medicine Woman Later dragged herself a yard at a time, back to Black Kettle’s side. She collapsed, breathless, unable to crawl any farther. She reached out with the one good arm left her, and clutched his hand in hers.

She moved no more.

“C’mon, boys! Here goes for a brevet or a coffin!” Major Elliott hollered enthusiastically to the squad of soldiers close on his heels.

Elliott’s troopers leapt their horses over the bloodied old chief, galloping southeast from the village along the Washita’s course, chasing a band of Indians scattering on foot. None of those soldiers or their commanding officer realized they had just killed the peacemaking chief of the Southern Cheyenne. Few would have thought it mattered much at all.

In less than a hundred yards Elliott watched the fleeing Cheyenne break into two groups. To the left scampered older women and men, along with young children. To the
right darted the warriors and fleet-footed young women. They turned to taunt the soldiers, urging them in the chase, as a sage hen lures the coyote away from her young.

“Simmons! Take a squad with you—there! Follow that group!” Elliott pointed toward the old ones. “Kennedy! You and the rest, follow me!”

The major whirled his horse, kicking up the untrammeled snow as they tore after the Cheyenne disappearing around the brow of a hill.

“We’ll rout them, Major!” Kennedy shouted. “Like the cowardly Johnnies they are!”

Around the hill, through the trees and brush. One young woman stumbled and fell. Elliott saw her disappear in the snowy bramble, watching a trooper rein up to capture her. The major galloped on, accompanied by sixteen troopers who followed him across the deep gash of a dry wash. They were gaining on the warriors, who scurried this way and that through the trees like rabbits.

Another hundred yards now … and you’ll have them trapped in the middle of that open meadow ahead!

—Surrounded! In the open!

“Sunuvabitch! Where’d all them come from?”

“Major!”

Elliott reined up so savagely his mount went down in the snow. Kennedy and the others clattered up, crashing into one another, pitching two men from their horses. The men cursed. They were surrounded by more Indians than any of them had ever seen in his short life. And in this last heartbeat, the Indians had turned the winning card.

“Back, goddammit!” Elliott ordered. “Retreat!”

Bouncing against one another, the troopers started a ragged dash, reining up as soon as they had started. The
neck through which they had galloped into the meadow closed up. A hundred warriors or more plugged all hope for escape.

“Dismount!” Elliott was already on the ground. “Skirmish formation, dammit! Pull your ammunition off—let the horses go! They’ll do us no good now.”