Long Winter Gone: Son of the Plains - Volume 1 (25 page)

Less than a mile ahead Custer ran across some of his Osage and Kaw trackers who normally scouted the flanks. For the moment they sat staring across an open meadow stretching away to the east. Some eighty yards off waited a half-dozen mounted warriors, most with the butt of a rifle resting atop a thigh. In the middle sat an unarmed comrade who carried only a white scrap of cloth tied at the end of a long willow branch.

“By all that’s holy! We got ’em on the run now, boys!” Custer’s teeth flashed like high-country snow beneath a winter sun.

“Don’t trust them Kiowa,” Milner growled.

“Joe, you, Ben, and Jack come with me,” Custer ordered. “We’ll see what these red fellows have on their minds.”

Custer kicked his mount into an easy lope. Halfway across the meadow, he threw up his arm, halting his scouts. He circled his horse twice, a signal he wanted to parley. The Indian bearing the white flag broke from the rest, galloping toward the white men.

“Any of you know Kiowa?” Custer asked.

“I might know enough to get us by today,” Clark answered.

Custer appraised the messenger reining to a halt before them, his ribby pony nose to nose with Custer’s stallion. Dark, hooded eyes flicked over the three scouts, not missing a weapon carried by any of the white men. The black-cherry eyes came to a rest on the soldier chief. Custer’s buffalo coat hid much of his uniform. But from the
way the messenger studied him, Custer sensed the man knew who sat before him.

“Go ahead, Ben. Let’s find out what this fella wants.”

Clark tried out some of his rusty Kiowa. What he got for his trouble was an amused look in return.

“I’m no Kiowa,” the messenger spoke in English, smiling.

“Not a Kiowa?” Custer demanded.

“Goddamn! Why, we had it banked you was Kiowa,” Milner put in now. “Satanta’s, or Black Eagle’s bunch.”

The messenger lowered his white flag across his left arm, throwing a thumb over his shoulder. “They are.”

“They are … I don’t understand.” Custer shook his head.

“Like I said, I’m no Kiowa.”

Clark couldn’t figure it. The messenger looked as Indian as the next warrior he’d run across on the plains. Those eyes and that nose … this stranger was born in buffalo-hide lodge. No doubt of that.

“My mother was Comanche. My father Texican. I’m in the same line of work you three fellas are. Scout for the army. Work for Hazen down to Fort Cobb. Name’s Cheyenne Jack.”

“You rode up on our advance with those warriors,” Custer said.

“Fort Cobb ain’t but twenty-five miles off.” He studied Custer a moment more. “Who I got the pleasure of addressing?”

“This is General Custer, boy,” Milner spouted proudly.

Clark watched the half-breed’s eyebrows climb a notch.

“You’re the outfit destroyed old Black Kettle’s village, eh? We heard you was out and about in the country for the
winter. Well, I’ll go to hell in a hand cart if General Hazen didn’t have that one ciphered right.”

“Hazen ciphered what?” Custer put an edge to his voice.

“We’ve known all about what you did to that village for some time now. Didn’t take long for word of that fight to come downriver. Week later, some Kiowa showed up on Hazen’s doorstep and we got a better look—”

“Are the Kiowas with Hazen now?” Custer demanded. “That why a civilian employee of the army is riding the wilderness with those hostile Kiowa warriors?”

“General,” the half-breed began as he untied his white rag from the willow branch, “I’m a scout for the same army you work for. We’re the same, just work for different commanders is all.” He tossed aside the branch, stuffing the cloth in his blanket coat. The breezes dallied with his long braids wrapped in red trade wool. A pair of eyes glinting like obsidian never left Custer’s.

“So, General George Armstrong Custer, best you savvy these Indians knowed of your coming our way for some time. You’ve got yourself a slow and noisy bunch of soldiers.”

“Get to the point of it!” Custer slapped his thigh in angry exasperation.

“I got a message here Hazen wanted me to deliver to you personal.”

“Well? Out with it, man.”

“I would. But I never learned to read, sir. Besides, every good army scout knows he can’t read official army papers.”

The half-breed fished out a folded parchment, sealed with a small dollop of wax deeply carved with the impression of an
H.
He held the parchment out. With a flourish
Custer scooped the folded document from the messenger’s hand.

Ripping it open, he immediately read to himself:

Custer’s eyes climbed from the letter, flecked with cold fire. “Does Hazen know who he’s addressing?”

“He ain’t got idea one, General Custer.”

“With me rides the commander of the Department of the Missouri, Philip H. Sheridan himself! Hazen would be interested to know that fact.”

“I’m sure he would.”

Shaking the brittle parchment like an autumn-dried leaf in a tremble of rage, Custer said, “Hazen’s protecting the Kiowa?”

“He doesn’t figure they need protecting, General,” Cheyenne Jack replied. “He just wants to make sure Kiowa camps aren’t butchered like Black Kettle’s.”

“Black Kettle’s! We followed a trail of a hundred war ponies straight to the heart of his village!”

“A hundred warriors in Black Kettle’s village? If that don’t smell of horseshit! Black Kettle’s band hasn’t counted
a hundred warriors since Sand Creek almost wiped his little band out for good.”

Custer slapped a gloved fist into a palm. “Suppose you tell me what’s going on with Hazen and his Kiowa!”

“Love to, General. But, I don’t know any more than what I see with my own eyes.”

“And that is?”

“Kiowa rode in some time back, telling what happened upriver to Black Kettle’s camp. Last fall Hazen hoped the tribes would come to Fort Cobb for safety. But you caught the Cheyenne hunkered for the winter.”

Clark watched Custer’s eyes narrow.

“Hazen protecting his wards, eh?” Custer snapped.

“Looks that way.”

“And now he’s got the Kiowa under his wing? After they sent warriors north to rape and pillage and burn and kill? Right?”

“Hazen doesn’t figure the Kiowa had a thing to do with that.”

“I’m sure Hazen doesn’t!” Custer scowled, once again scanning the message from the commander of Fort Cobb. “What’s he mean the Kiowa will tell me where the Cheyenne and Arapaho are?”

“Cheyenne and Arapaho are assigned to Fort Cobb by treaty, General.”

“By treaty, you say? Seems that Hazen’s wards didn’t stay at home this past summer, did they?”

“If you mean that Hazen’s to keep the tribes under his thumb at all times, watching every move they make across the seasons—you’re poking into a blind hole there. Hazen isn’t here to wet-nurse a single band of these Indians. It’s his job to prevent the trouble that you enjoy stirring up.”

“How dare you lecture me on army policy!” Custer sputtered.

Cheyenne Jack straightened. “I ain’t lecturing, General. You asked the questions. I answered ’em. Now, I’m all talked out.”

The messenger tugged on the reins, backing his Indian pony from the crescent cluster of scouts.

“Wait! You just hold on there!” Custer shouted, nudging his horse forward until he sat opposite the half-breed. “These Kiowa know where the escaping Cheyenne and Arapho are?”

“That’s what Hazen told you, ain’t it?”

“I take it they aren’t nearby?”

“General, you hit the mark on that one.”

Custer flicked his eyes to his scouts. “You hit the nail on the head this time around, boys.”

The half-breed perked up, curious. “How’s that?”

“We already learned the tribes had split up, didn’t we, fellas?” Custer said. “So all we had to do was find out which band of murderers went where. My scouts told me the Kiowa headed down here to Fort Cobb. We just needed you to confirm where the Cheyenne are headed.”

Cheyenne Jack’s dark eyes slewed over Custer’s scouts. “Sounds like you know it all but the shouting.”

“You’re riding back to Fort Cobb now?” Custer asked, his eyes accusing.

“Shortly.”

“You’ll report to General Hazen?”

“Like I said.”

“Be sure you get it right, then. That’s Philip H. Sheridan, Commander, Department of the Missouri. And George Armstrong—”

“Custer
, of the Seventh Cavalry.” Cheyenne Jack smiled, a lick of humor crossing his face. “I won’t forget you, General.”

With that the half-breed wheeled his horse. He turned in the saddle to holler over his shoulder, “Won’t anyone ever forget George Armstrong Custer and his Seventh U.S. Cavalry.”

B
Y
the time the soldiers had camped that afternoon of the seventeenth, the Osage trackers had located the Kiowa camps. From their brown lodges oily smoke raked across the sky a few miles north of Fort Cobb along the icy Washita. Custer figured it was time to let Sheridan in on how Hazen had been protecting the very tribes he had been sent to punish.

Sheridan fumed when Custer told him the commander of Fort Cobb had made government wards of the guilty Kiowa.

“Seems he promised the chiefs that if they camped near Fort Cobb they’d be safe!”

Sheridan’s Irish temper boiled furiously. “Damn is hide! That bastard’s got my hands tied, Custer!”

“Got your hands tied?”

“When you brought me news upon your return to Camp Supply—that you’d found evidence in Black Kettle’s village that his band had received annuities—I passed word on to
division H.Q. I wanted Sherman to know you found them in a hostile village.”

“What’s this got to do with Hazen and the Kiowa?”

“Goddammit, Custer! Can’t you see? I’m made to punish the Indians Hazen is instructed to feed!”

“Sherman?”

“Sherman would have no part of such idiocy! Goddamned Indian Bureau. Time you realized this, Custer. They wear the pants these days over at the War Department. And when they run the War Department, they run Sherman.” Sheridan slammed a fist down on his field desk, scattering papers and maps. “Something must be done to end this insanity.”

“You’re saying on one hand the government’s told to feed and present gifts to those murderers, while the other hand is ordered to hunt them down and shoot them all.”

Again, the hero of the Shenandoah drove a fist onto his field desk. “I’m ordered to fight these goddamned savages while Hazen feeds the beggars. Even shelters them in the shadows of his post! We’ll just have to find a way around Hazen.”

“A way around Hazen?”

“Bastard’s got me trapped. I can’t burn him, Custer,” Sheridan moaned. “As an officer, I’m obligated by Sherman to honor Hazen’s command here in the Territories.”

“But you’re his superior!”

“Best you start to realize the army has two fathers when it marches into Indian Territory: Sherman and Grant on the one hand,” Sheridan said, gazing at his boots, “and the Indian Bureau on the other.”

“Hazen takes his orders from civilians?”

“Most of the time.”

“I must protest! To bring my command all this way, and now you tell me I’m forced to fight with one hand tied behind my back? I’ve got the Kiowa right where we want them. I can punish them now. Attack! The Nineteenth Kansas is itching for a good scrap. They feel cheated, you understand.”

“Cheated?”

“They weren’t in on the Washita battle.”

Sheridan knitted his dark brows. He grappled with the problem a moment longer before speaking. “I must give the Kiowa a chance—”

“A chance, sir? Why not give the Nineteenth Kansas a chance for glory?”

“Goddamn your hide, Armstrong!” Sheridan’s black eyes were full of sudden fire. “You’re the impetuous one. Can’t you see for once that this is something even bigger than you? Hell, even your friend Phil Sheridan couldn’t protect you if you galloped off into that Kiowa camp and wiped them out.

“Who the hell do you think saved you from reassignment to some dead-end, no-account, chair-jockey job when your year of court-martial was up?”

“I had no idea—”

“You don’t enjoy much favor back in the War Department, Custer. Mind you that! Grant himself wonders why he had to spend so much time explaining his fair-haired Boy General who shoots deserters without trial. When Grant and old Bill Sherman start peering over your shoulder, you’d best watch your backside.”

“But one swift blow here!”

“Oh, shut up, Custer. This isn’t the Shenandoah. Don’t
you realize the hour has come and gone when you and I can move freely, without shackles in this army?”

“I thought we were to punish the tribes.”

“Time you learned about the world. You listen to me and listen good, because I’ll say it once. This whole winter campaign’s got nothing to do with these blessed Indians. If they all starved to death, I wouldn’t give a goddamn. What it’s about is you. I designed this campaign for George Armstrong Custer. You’re here this winter on probation. Oh, the little bastards with all their braid back in Washington didn’t want you to know that, but there it is. I talked and talked and finally convinced them that this winter campaign needed someone with your abilities. We don’t want you to think. You’re paid to follow orders. Not go charging off. I did my best for you as a friend. But you’d better understand—you’ve been handed your last chance to make something of your military career.”

Sheridan let that sink in a moment while he drew the withered stub of a cigar to his lips. “That shit about you chasing back after Libbie without permission the way you did—and shooting deserters! You almost bungled yourself right into some dead-end command. With no chance to crawl out of the hole you’d buried yourself in.”