Long Winter Gone: Son of the Plains - Volume 1 (16 page)

“Sorry to disappoint you, Joe—you think we’re a war party out to relieve you of your sizable scalp?”

“I counted on you being soldiers when I first got my eyes fixed on you until I saw two Injuns in your squad. Forgot about all them Osages come along. Damn—General! I’m powerful glad to see your face again!”

Custer turned to Guerrier. “I suppose you riding in with these filthy renegades bodes good news, eh?”

“Can’t keep a thing from you, can we, General Custer?”

“I take it you fellas got to Camp Supply and General Sheridan with my report?” Custer inquired.

“In the flesh!” Milner grinned.

“You were right again, Joe. I wanted to send a whole squad with you boys.” Custer smiled.

“A fancy notion that’d been, General. Always a heap better to have just two for the journey. More can be done by a lot of dodging and running than we can do by fighting.”

“Two sprightly men can do far better than twenty, Mr. Milner. I congratulate you both!”

Milner beamed proud as a boy given a shiny penny. “Why, I was some happy to see Little Phil my own self! He was monstrous glad to see me back so soon too. Say, did I ever tell you I used to know the general when he was a second—or was it a third?—lieutenant? Post quartermaster back to Yakima country in Oregon years ago?”

“Sheridan a lieutenant? That was before my time! Well, Jack—what’s word from the general?”

“He turned us near right around, riding south with a packet of orders, dispatches, and letters for the men. Sheridan was damned happy to hear your fight was a success. Spent near four hours stomping up and down, in and out of his tent. Reading your report over again. Asking us questions about the Indians.”

Milner jabbed a hand half-covered with a threadbare mitten inside the flap of his greasy mackinaw coat to bring forth a leather pouch. From it he pulled a piece of foolscap folded and sealed with a dollop of blue wax. Nudging his old mule forward two steps, Milner handed it over to Custer.

The soldier ripped open the notice, his eyes flying over the familiar Sheridan scrawl. The general’s words to his field commander were brief and to the point, the way Sheridan was in person.

“Splendid!” Custer cheered. “Lieutenant Moylan, have the officers form the troops for review in that meadow ahead.”

“Yes, sir!”

Custer watched his adjutant gallop away, heading back along the columns. Not until the companies began marching into the wide meadow did he turn once more to the three scouts.

“How far are we from Camp Supply?”

“You’ll be there by this time tomorrow,” Corbin answered.

Custer slapped his right thigh. “By glory, back home with our victory, gentlemen! What say we share this good news with the regiment?”

Custer nudged Dandy into a showy hand gallop as he tore into the meadow where the troops had gathered for review. With Milner, Corbin, and Guerrier at his side,
wagons behind him facing rows of weary soldiers, and the Osage trackers scattered around the captives, Custer began his speech.

“I have most welcome news for the gallant and courageous men of the Seventh Cavalry: the finest cavalry the world has ever known!”

He waited a moment as the cheers and shouts died among the ranks. A hard knot of sentiment clotted in his throat.

“Moments ago we received word from General Philip H. Sheridan, who most eagerly awaits our arrival at Camp Supply. Almost as much as you look forward to getting there yourselves!”

Another spontaneous cheer mingled with hearty laughter. The tension of a cold march and bloody campaign drained at last from weary shoulders.

“In this dispatch handed me moments ago”—he waved the sheet high in the breeze—”General Sheridan sends his highest compliments and praise to the officers and men who comprise the finest horse soldiers on the face of this—or any other—continent!

“The General says:

Upon hearing the congratulations of the highest-ranking officer in the whole of the department, lusty cheers rang through the winter-cloaked meadow.

“He goes on!” Custer shouted above the clamor.

“Scouts Milner and Corbin have rejoined our command. Besides some long-overdue letters from Fort Hays, they have some exciting news, gentlemen! They tell me this will be the last night you sleep on the trail. Tomorrow night … we’ll be quartered at Camp Supply!”

That singular bit of news caused cheering that drove masses of blackbirds flapping from off their roosts in the skeletal trees. At the height of the clamor, Custer signaled Moylan and his standard bearer to follow as he whirled his dark stallion about, leading his columns from the snowy meadow.

Mahwissa beamed maternally at Monaseetah. The young Cheyenne princess fluttered her eyes, embarrassed that she had been caught gazing hypnotically at the soldier chief.

“Hiestzi
is brave. A leader of strong men. One who can exhort and inspire.” All this Mahwissa said to the young woman beside her.

“And he will make a fine husband for you. Many fine warrior sons will spring from the fire in his loins, Monaseetah.”

Romero rode behind them, herding the captives like cattle, prodding and swearing at the prisoners in their own Cheyenne tongue, whipping the rumps of the Indian ponies that failed to move quickly enough to suit him.

“My first child comes soon,” Monaseetah whispered. “From that dog of a husband I was made to marry in the shortgrass time.” Monaseetah pouted, her head hung in shame.

“You are heavy with child?” Mahwissa asked, surprised.

“It comes soon.”

“I did not know this when I married you to the soldier chief.”

“I kept it a secret after my father ransomed me back from the bad husband.”

“But you do not show!” The old woman’s eyes narrowed on Monaseetah’s belly, well hidden beneath the folds of her red blanket.

“A curse of the young, Mahwissa.”

“Your young body won’t put on much fat in the way the cow buffalo readies for her calf.”

“For three months now the land sleeps beneath the cold mantle of winter. I hide myself beneath warm robes and blankets.”

“I see, young one.” Mahwissa gazed into the distance.

“He will not be ashamed of me?” Monaseetah pleaded in a little-girl voice ringing with fear and loss. “Will
Hiestzi
throw me away when he finds I carry another man’s child?”

Mahwissa studied the course of Wolf Creek. “I do not think he will throw you away, little one. However, the white man is a strange animal for me to sort out. It will take many winters perhaps for you to learn about him. But I have seen how this soldier chief studies you with his eyes of blue fire. The yellow-haired one cannot hide his heat for you.”

“I think I want him to want me. Never before have I needed a man.”

“Little one, for two summers now you live in the body of a woman—a body that drives the young men wild with burning for you. Yet until this very moment you were but a little girl. Perhaps you now become a woman in full.”

“Why then does my heart give me such pain in missing him, or when I want him to look at me with those egg-blue
eyes that tell me he wants me too? Why is there so much pain if being a woman is to bring me so much pleasure?”

“Ah, young one! Yes, there is real pain, much hurt and anguish to be suffered. I am afraid you will suffer that anguish all too soon in your young life.” She looked away, letting her moist eyes clear.

“There are men you might fall in love with,” Mahwissa continued, “men who will bring you so much more pleasure and happiness than sadness. I pray the soldier chief you give your heart to is not one who will leave a scar upon it.”

“A scar?”

“Yes, little one. On your heart a scar borne of sadness and despair, an empty ache that can never be filled. The more you feed that kind of love, little one … the more empty you become.”

By late that afternoon of the last day of November, breezes from the south blew a warm, welcoming breath at the column’s back. That night the troopers slept in their creekside camp, relishing an end to weeks of flesh-numbing cold.

Little snow remained to chill the wild land with the coming of the next morning’s sun, and what few drifts had escaped the chinooks warm breezes hid themselves in the shadows and shade of gullies and draws. Throughout the day Custer’s troops enjoyed welcome winter sun caressing their backs with warm promise. Spirits climbed; the men knew they drew close to Camp Supply. Yet amid the joy of a triumphant return was found a hardened, joyless handful who remained angry at the fate of Elliott’s men, abandoned in the valley of the Washita by their regimental commander. For now, the grumbling remained subdued. For now …

No man could be as exuberant with this triumph as the commander of the Seventh Cavalry himself. Again and again he considered the approach of his twenty-ninth birthday, barely four days away. What a glorious gift this campaign had proven to be—once and for all healing every last caustic wound done him at the hands of both detractors and superiors alike who had doubted his abilities, both as a commander of men and as an Indian fighter.

How he yearned for Libbie to be with him on his birthday.….

Inside—deep and unsettling—reeled something foreign. It caused him to twist in his saddle and gaze behind him at that long line of bundled troopers snaking around the brow of a hill. Back there, somewhere near the end of the procession, marched the prisoners. He squinted his eyes, unable to catch even a brief glimpse of the captives.

Why in God’s name am I doing this to myself? Something’s overwhelming me.

Once only had he lost control. “That awful, drunken scene played out in front of Judge Bacon’s house in Monroe many years ago,” he whispered to himself. “No, perhaps I allowed myself too many liberties with that Lyon woman down in Texas just after the war while Libbie visited Monroe—Mrs. Farnham Lyon. And the next year, that young wife of a fellow officer on Sheridan’s staff, during that stopover in St. Louis, while Libbie and I made our way to the regiment’s first home at Fort Riley. Twice already … would that there be no more.”

Over and over Custer reran through his mind those lines he had penned in his journal a short day and a half after the battle, scratching out words of passion, unable still to escape a haunting vision of those black-cherry eyes and
wind-rouged cheeks burnished rose beneath a winter sun as she flicked her quick, inviting smile up at him.

Custer reveled in the warm breeze at his neck. “I must keep that journal safe from prying eyes that might by accident or design seek to read between those lines. Surely any man reading my thoughts would discover I care all too much already. Pray, how could I ever claim innocence?” Custer was startled by a voice.

“General?”

The commander turned, finding Moylan at his side.

“For a moment there I figured you nodded off with your eyes open … as you often do. Seems you were gone somewhere in a dream perhaps.”

“What is it, Lieutenant?”

“Corbin’s riding in.”

Custer glanced at the bone-yellow sun nailed against a pale, winter-blue sky. Late morning.

“Maybe he’s spotted camp, Lieutenant.”

Custer kept his men at a march as the scout charged up at a full gallop. Wheeling his mount in a knee-sliding circle, Corbin brought the snorting, sidestepping animal alongside the Seventh’s commander.

“Quite a show, Jack.”

“I been on into camp. They’re waiting for you.”

“Much farther?”

“Ain’t but a stone’s throw now. Less than two miles. They got every man-jack called out—seems Sheridan fixes to welcome you home in real style.”

“He does, eh? Then I suppose there isn’t a better spot than here and no better time than the present to shape up our columns. Moylan, pass the word that we’ll halt on that bench up ahead. I want the men prepared for review before General Sheridan!”

“Hurry, goddammit, Perkins! You’re gonna miss the best show of your miserable life!”