Long Winter Gone: Son of the Plains - Volume 1 (28 page)

Winter’s chill had long since sucked the sun’s light from the heavens when Custer was summoned to Sheridan’s tent. Surrounding the Irishman’s circular Sibley stood a crude pole fence erected by soldiers. Sheridan waited outside his tent, leaning against the fence. Wearing only his wool tunic, he paid little attention to the plummeting temperature, for it had been one of those warm days filled with sunshine, the type so often found in the Territories during winter.

“Evening, Custer,” Sheridan began as the young officer walked up to the tent. “Appears these Kiowa of yours are endeavoring to play us false, eh?”

“How do you read it, General?”

“Seems they want us to listen to their empty, bunghole promises right up to the time the new grass makes their goddamned ponies strong enough to make war.”

“You’re not confident I can get the tribe to come in? I hold their chiefs!” Custer leaned back against the crude fence opposite Sheridan.

“Don’t trust ’em at all. We’ve given them every opportunity
to come in and behave, haven’t we? These red buggers are about the worst I’ve had to deal with. The bastards aren’t scared of us—because they know Hazen’s gonna protect ’em. Feeding, clothing, coddling the vermin!”

Custer grinned.

“You always liked a good scrap, didn’t you, Custer?”

“Pleased to hear you say again how you’re fed up with civilians running the army. Things need changing in Washington City, sir. Our Republic sorely needs a new direction entirely, someone strong at the helm across the next critical decade.”

“Too goddamned long we’ve waited for a leader with a military background, someone who appreciates what it is to open up this great country out here. With Grant in the White House, we’ll see that change you’re wanting.” The look on Custer’s face stopped him. “What is it, Armstrong?”

“You have a lot more faith in Grant than I do, sir. For one thing, the rumpled bugger took more credit for winning the war than he should have. Sherman and Sheridan handed Lincoln Lee’s surrender. Not Grant.”

Sheridan smiled. “The way of politics, Armstrong.”

“Doesn’t change my mind, sir. Grant’s not up to the job. Not just any man can do what’s needed. Ten years from now, the plains should be pacified.”

“The tribes confined to reservations and the land made fruitful, eh?”

“Nothing wrong in that, is there?”

“No wonder you’re the hero to so many of these farmers out here, Custer. You share the same dreams they do.”

Custer gazed at the twinkling dusting of stars overhead. “Not really, sir. Mine aren’t earthly dreams.”

Sheridan slapped Custer on the back. “Should’ve remembered. Long ago recognized that in you. Not about to be held back like mere mortals, are you?”

“You may joke, sir—”

“I’m not joking with you at all, Custer.”

“Then believe me when I say I’m destined for far greater things.”

“Greater than commanding your own goddamned regiment?”

“As colonel?”

Sheridan studied the sunburned face, bright beneath a torch’s glow. “Are you content to climb the ladder one rung at a time?”

Custer grappled with that a moment. “For the time being, sir. I just turned twenty-nine. You’re thirty-seven now, and the next lieutenant general, once Grant’s sworn in as President on the fourth of March. But look at me!”

Custer wheeled, stomped a few steps away. “It’ll be ten years before I become a full colonel and have my own regiment. By then we’ll have the plains pacified and there’ll be no more battlefields on which to earn my promotions. How the blazes will I ever get those general’s stars back on my collar?”

Sheridan scratched at his dark beard, feeling the first of the evening’s chill penetrate his wool tunic. “We could help you climb out a bit, Armstrong.”

“How?”

The general tapped one finger against his thin lips, as he always did when pondering, considering, plotting. “Yes. It just might work.”

“What’s that, sir?”

“By God! We’ll show up for Grant’s inauguration ourselves! Won’t that impress the buzzard!”

Custer tingled. “Yes!”

“And we’ll get Grant’s ear while he’s bubbling with his own juices—the new commander-in-chief!”

“Will Sherman go along?”

“Of course! He thinks the world of you, Custer. Despite that business with leaving your command and shooting those deserters in ’67—Bill realizes your value as much as I.”

“Then you’ll both lobby for a promotion for me in March?”

“Is that too soon for you, Custer?”

“No, sir! Not by a long stretch.”

Sheridan plopped a muddy boot on a fence rail. “All we’d have to do is have a voice inside the Army Appropriations Committee.”

“Senator Chandler?”

Sheridan turned on Custer slowly. “The committee chairman? By God, Custer—you go right to the top, don’t you?”

“A man want’s to make it to the top, he might as well reach as high as he dreams.”

“You sunuvabitch! We’ll get you up in army command yet. Between Bill Sherman and Senator Chandler himself, Custer is on his way to his own command! But before we go to Federal City for the inauguration in March, you have a job to do here in the Territories. If you go east with the tribes still out, there’s no chance for promotion.”

“If the hostiles are punished, I can ride into Washington City assured of promotion.”

“You’ve got to start with these miserable Kiowa. We
don’t get their villages in, you don’t stand a prayer with Chandler.”

“I’m ready, General. They’ve played me for a fool long enough. These Kiowa have me held prisoner here while I should be out hunting down the other tribes. My patience is exhausted.”

“Patience, hell!” Sheridan bawled. “You were ordered down here to the Territories to do a job. You don’t have time for patience with these red beggars.”

“And if I fail to bring the tribes in?”

“Spring will come, Custer. The grass will green and the bastards’ ponies will be strong once more. And you’ll be back out chasing and chasing … and chasing some more.”

“Sir—”

Sheridan cut him off with a wave of his hand. His dark eyes glowed as he spoke, sparking like a wolf that had a hamstrung old bull down, moving in for the kill. “I’m going to see you get that promotion, Custer. See you don’t frig this up.”

Custer’s brow knitted. “What you have in mind?”

“Tomorrow we’re going to give those red mongrels an ultimatum.” Sheridan tapped a finger between the rows of brass buttons on Custer’s tunic. “No more dallying! We’ll give them a time limit to perform, or we’ll make an example out of one of those goddamn flea-bitten savages.”

“How will we—I—make an example of the Kiowa?”

Sheridan whirled on Custer again, half his face dark beneath the torch. “Don’t you remember the orders passed down from Grant, to me, to you? The Shenandoah? August 1864? Turn Custer loose on Mosby!”

“You don’t mean—not these Kiowa!”

“Why not, goddammit? If those villages don’t come in, then string the chiefs up. Hang the bastards!”

“What about the other tribes? If you hang the chiefs—”

“Put the fear of God in ’em. Dammit, Custer—make their assholes pucker when they hear your name!”

“But hanging?” he repeated.

“Better you convince them once and for all that when Custer finds a hostile village, he’ll level it like he did Black Kettle’s. Take prisoner those who can be captured. And kill everything—everyone else.”

“Sir, begging your pardon, but Satanta and the others promised us their villages would come—”

“Bullshit! You’ll trust an Indian? Someone told me once that trusting the word of an Indian was like shoveling fleas in a barnyard!”

Custer found himself without a single thing to say. His mind filled with the smoky images of that sleepy Cheyenne village beside the foggy Washita, old men and women and children … rolling out of their warm sleeping robes to be greeted with the cold, whistling messengers of death. Young women trying to escape a screeching lead bullet or whispering steel saber. He shuddered.

“No, sir,” he answered Sheridan at last. “I’ll no longer allow the hostiles to play me false.”

Sheridan stepped up to Custer again, more paternal now. “Armstrong, you’ve been sent here to do a job. If you don’t act, the army will simply send someone down here who will.”

“I understand.”

Sheridan plopped a hand on Custer’s shoulder. “Besides, we have plans for you, my boy! So if the army sends
someone else down here, the glory and honor and fame would surely go to him.”

Custer swallowed hard. “Tomorrow, sir.”

Sheridan smiled. “Tomorrow, we’ll start back down that road we set out upon when I telegraphed you in Monroe last September. We’ll get this campaign back on track. And your promotion in your hip pocket.”

“My promotion, sir.”

T
HAT
next morning Sheridan marched over to Custer’s tents with his aide at his side. Like Sheridan, Lieutenant Colonel Crosby relished nudging things off dead center.

“Good morning, Custer.”

He rose stiffly from his camp stool, shifting the steamy tin of coffee to his left hand when Sheridan waved him back down to his cold perch.

“Good morning, General. Colonel Crosby.”

“I’ve sent for your interpreter,” Sheridan began without pleasantries. “Romero—wasn’t that his name?”

“That’s correct. Mexican. Captured by the Comanche as a child. Traded and retraded from tribe to tribe until he spent most of his childhood among the Cheyenne.”

“I suppose he picked up the Kiowa tongue along the way,” Sheridan said. “I’m bringing him here because you and I are going to have a little chat with those chiefs. Since we’ve had no word from the tribe after we released that one old beggar yesterday.”

“Good morning,” Romero grumbled.

“Sleeping in again, eh?” Custer asked.

“You wanted me for something, General?”

“I did,” Sheridan replied. “We’re going to have a talk with the Kiowa. I want you to be certain they understand my every word. What I have to say will be very short.”

“And
sweet
, General?”

Sheridan’s eyes darkened at the grinning Mexican. “Don’t you bet on that, Romero. I’m not in any mood to dally with you.”

Sheridan turned away, nodding to Crosby. His aide parted the tent flap.

Both chiefs straightened as the soldiers entered, their eyes darting from white man to white man.

“Who is this man?” Sheridan growled when he noticed a young warrior beside Satanta.

“His name’s Tsalante, General,” Custer explained, gesturing for the young man to rise.

“What the bloody hell is
he
doing here? I gave orders these prisoners aren’t to have any visitors.”

“Tsalante is Satanta’s eldest son, sir.”

“That doesn’t explain why he’s here!”

“Believe me, we had Tsalante completely searched before he was allowed to see his father.”

A smile crawled across Sheridan’s face. He turned to Custer. “Say, we may just have some use for this Tsalante. Yesterday we sent old Licking Bear back to the village with our message for them to come in to Fort Cobb without delay, but the bastard never returned, and the villages haven’t come in as ordered.”

Crosby cleared his throat. “The general’s quite distressed
by that flagrant failure of the Indians to obey his command.”

“Colonel Crosby,” Custer snapped, “he’s not the only one.”

Sheridan put a hand up to silence his aide before an argument started. “I want the Kiowa to know that if
we
are expected to speak the truth to them, we should have every right to expect the truth out of them.”

“I’ve never lied to an Indian, sir,” Custer replied. “Nor will it ever be said that G. A. Custer lied to a red man.”

“What I have in mind is to show these red beggars that I mean to keep
my
oath … even if they cannot.”

“How can we do that?”

“We’re sending a final ultimatum to the Indians this morning. That’s where Satanta’s son comes in.”

“I don’t think Tsalante will let you down.”

“If the boy fails, Custer, it won’t be me he’s letting down. He’ll be killing his own father.”

Custer watched Satanta’s hooded eyes searching their faces for some clue. He could tell the Kiowa chief realized this wasn’t your everyday parley.

Sheridan signaled the interpreter, patting the buffalo robe beside him. “Romero. Sit so we can talk with the chiefs.”

Romero took a deep breath, his eyes briefly touching Custer’s. The scout had never liked Sheridan; he’d always been more than a little afraid of the banty Irishman to boot.

“First, I want you to explain who I am.”

“General, make no mistake. They know who you are.”

Sheridan seemed genuinely surprised. “How’s that?”

“General Custer here, he’s told ’em you’re a great war chief who won the war between the white men back east.”

“Sheridan glanced up at Custer. “You told them of me, Custer?”

“Yessir. Explained about the mighty chief who rode with me.

“I see …” Sheridan stroked his black beard. “Quite! Well, let’s get on with matters at hand. Romero, begin by telling them I’m very angry that Licking Bear didn’t return from their villages. I’m even angrier that their people haven’t come in to Fort Cobb yet.”

While the Kiowa listened to Romero’s words, their dark eyes were glued on the general.

When the chiefs had spoken, Romero translated. “They say they’re sorry Licking Bear didn’t come back. You have them in your leg irons, so they can’t go to their villages, can’t tell their people to come in. They say if they were with their people now, the villages would be moving to Fort Cobb as you ordered.”

“They want me to believe that? Muleshit!”

Crosby laughed nervously. Sheridan waved a hand, shutting Crosby up.

“Tell them that I’m sending Satanta’s son with word from them and War Chief Sheridan that if the villages don’t come in to Fort Cobb immediately their chiefs will hang.”

Romero swallowed hard. The looked carved across his dark features said more than words could, causing a stir among the three Kiowa.

“You want me to tell ’em you’re going to
hang
’em?”