Long Winter Gone: Son of the Plains - Volume 1 (29 page)

“No, Romero. You tell the young man here that the villages must come in so their chiefs will be spared that hanging.”

The Mexican translated. One by one, three pairs of
black eyes widened. Tsalante clutched his father’s arm. Satanta reassured the young man calmly.

The younger chief nodded, ready to speak. “We understand we are in the power of the great war chief and Yellow Hair. Maybe you, Indian-talker, can tell these soldier chiefs that we can send my son to our people with our words—but that does not assure that our village will come in to Hazen’s post. There must be a council with many men from each village. Together they will decide what to do. The hunting is very poor around Hazen’s fort. Already our people are thin from a bad winter of hunting. Our ponies are weak. It would be a hard journey on most of my people. Not just the small and old ones.”

Lone Wolf raised his two shackled hands, imploring. “The soldier chiefs must understand we are not the only men to decide matters such as this for our people. We are not like the white man who has a Grandfather making all the rules for his people. With the Kiowa, each man gets one voice in what is decided among our people. That will take time. Tell these soldier chiefs they must give our villages time to decide what they will do. Enough time to tear down the lodges and load our travois. These soldiers do not give our skinny, winter-poor ponies enough time to stumble in here to Hazen’s post.”

As Romero translated, Sheridan’s face hardened.

“No!” he barked. “I didn’t come here to bargain. Tell them I’ve already give their people plenty of time. Explain to this Satanta’s son that the Kiowa have until
sunrise
tomorrow to come in. I’ll hang the chiefs from that big oak right outside this tent if they don’t show by then.”

With Sheridan’s threat put into Kiowa, Tsalante leapt to his feet, trembling. Crosby immediately jumped in front of
Sheridan, his hand upon his service revolver, Custer’s ironlike grip atop Crosby’s gun hand in the next heartbeat.

“Leave the pistol in the holster!” Custer commanded.

“Unhand me, Custer! I’ll have you on report—”

“Gentlemen!” Sheridan leapt to his feet, struggling to separate the two before matters disintegrated into a brawl. “There’s no need of argument. And no need of reports—understood, Crosby?”

Crosby relented. “Yes, sir.”

“I’m certain Colonel Custer will apologize for his actions. Am I right … Custer?”

“I won’t apologize, General. Tsalante’s unarmed.” He glared at Sheridan’s aide. “He poses no threat to any of us, even to someone as nervous as Crosby.”

“Damn you! He’s a filthy heathen savage!” Crosby roared.

“Colonel Crosby,” Sheridan soothed. “Wait outside for me.”

Crosby turned to go, then stopped. He glared at Custer before he tore aside the tent flap, stomping into the morning cold.

“General,” Custer said, “I think the young man’s got something to say.”

“He sure as hell does!” Romero was clearly agitated. “Tsalante says you aren’t giving him enough time to ride to the villages and get your message spread among his people. They’ve got to call for a council.”

“Dammit! I’ve heard all that prattle before, Romero!”

“Please listen, General,” Custer said. “They may have a point. We must treat them fairly, or what right do we have to ask fairness in their treatment of the white captives?”

“You talk to me of
fairness
, Custer? I saw a goddamned
good example of the Kiowa’s fairness back on the Washita. You remember how fairly these butchers treated that pitiful Mrs. Blinn and her little boy?”

“General—”

“Don’t assume you know more than me about dealing with these Indians, Custer!” Sheridan steamed. “You deal with the savages in fairness and what the hell does it get you? Lies … broken promises … one hand taking our food and blankets and handouts—while the other hand burns and kidnaps, murders and scalps!”

“Enough said, Custer. I believe we have spoken about orders. You and I, in private. Haven’t we?”

That brought Custer up short, as surely as if someone had kicked him in the groin with a blunt-toed, standard-issue cavalry boot.

“I want your complete backing in this policy,” Sheridan continued. “If the Kiowa are serious about doing as we say, if they want their two chiefs alive, they’ll be here at Fort Cobb by sunrise tomorrow.”

Sheridan turned to the interpreter. “Tell this warrior he’s free to go now. Take my message to this people.”

“Tsalante, go now,” Satanta pleaded, gripping his son’s arm. “Take word of this trouble to our people. Quickly, young one!”

“I will get my pony and bring it here before I ride the long trail back to our villages.”

Custer watched the youth dart through the tent flaps. Outside he listened to Crosby explain in an arrogant voice that the Indian was allowed to fetch his mount.

Moments later they heard Tsalante galloping up outside. The pony snorted as its rider wrenched to a halt. Quick moccasined feet ran to the tent. As his son burst through
the flaps Satanta rose, struggling with the heavy leg irons. He took his son in a warm embrace. They murmured some hurried words between them in that way only a father and son can, before the youth reached out to touch Lone Wolfs hand.

“Hoodle-tay!”
the old chief whispered hoarsely, struggling to maintain his stony composure. “Make haste!”

As quickly as he had come, the young warrior whirled about, vaulting to the back of his spotted pony, where he took up the single rein and shot off to the west. Glancing only once over his shoulder at the sun climbing toward a midday peak, Tsalante was off on a race which could mean the lives of two men. Perhaps more.

Crosby held open the tent flap as Sheridan turned to go.

Custer glanced at the two chiefs. “General?” he called out.

Sheridan turned. “What is it, Custer?”

“You haven’t left the Kiowa a hand to play.”

“Precisely!” Sheridan snapped. “I now hold the last two aces in the deck and I’m playing them. When you play with Indians, you don’t play by the rules. Never leave the enemy a hand to play. It’s winning that matters in war. Only winning. There are no parades for the losers.”

“Don’t miss your parade, Custer,” Crosby advised acidly. “Shall we go, General?”

Sheridan nodded and left. The flap slid back in place, throwing the tent into darkness. Custer pushed out, greeted by a brilliant winter’s day.

Behind him trudged Satanta, dragging along the section of clanking chain that bound his ankles together. Here in the gentle light of early morning the Indian’s eyes appeared
sunken, dark, and rimmed with gloom. The once-proud Kiowa chief stood hunched and drawn.

Satanta stumbled across the red mud, slinging the heavy chain behind him with every step, clattering past Custer and Romero without a word. When a guard stepped forward to shove the chief back toward the tent with a nudge of his carbine, Custer waved the soldier off.

The Indian stopped, turned, and gazed at the soldier chief for a moment before he settled down on the trunk of a deadfallen oak like a tired old owl. He shuddered, drawing his thin blanket about his shoulders more tightly. Gazing into the blue, cloudless sky, his eyes sought the warmth of the early sun.

As Custer turned toward his own tent, Satanta’s mournful voice raised the hackles on the back of his neck. The Indian chief had begun his melancholy death song.

“Romero.”

“Yes, General?” The Mexican stepped to Custer’s side.

“I want you to find the worm

“Women, sir?”

“The Cheyenne women.”

“Yes.”

“Bring Monaseetah to my tent.”

“Yes.”

“I want to see her now.”

Custer slipped into the shadows of a huge overhanging oak towering like a monstrous sentinel above his tent.

He needed her.

Waiting for Monaseetah in the frosty stillness of his tent, Custer felt more brittle than he had ever imagined he could be. He stared down at the backs of his pale trembling,
freckled hands, sensing something of his own mortality, his own humanness.

Cursing himself for selling his soul for a promotion. Cursing himself, because destiny demanded it of him.

Through that long afternoon Satanta had persisted in his lonely, melancholy vigil. At times he paced back and forth on the west side of Custer’s tent. Then he plopped cross-legged in the snow, quietly mumbling his incantations to the earth. At times he shaded his eyes with one hand, peering into the west for salvation, hoping for the approach of his tribesmen. With the falling of the sun and the dying of his hope, the great Kiowa chief scooped pinches of red dirt or cold ashes from the guards’ fire.

After chanting a few words of prayer, Satanta put the soil and ashes in his mouth.

Having accepted his death, Satanta said farewell to this land of his ancestors. His mud-smeared, trembling tongue would no more taste the lifeblood of his homeland.

Custer looked at the first tendrils of gray light through the narrow gap in the tent flaps. Dawn wasn’t far behind.

He sensed her beside him. The weight of her beneath the blankets. The warmth of her naked body, the firm pressure of her breasts against his side as she lay cupped into him.

He sighed, drinking in the fragrance that belonged to no other woman in the world. Without fail, her scent stirred a wildness in him, something never before touched until she came into his life. Even more, that part of her he carried within had become like a piece of sunshine glinting off frost-glazed tree branches beneath the morning sun. It
shared the same place in his being as the heady fragrance that rose to a man’s brain as he stood over an open fire at twilight, sparks exploding into the purple sky above, wisps of gray dancing ghostly and haunting on the tickling breezes.

He snuggled against her.

Outside his tent the voices grew louder, tapping like insistent fingertips at the back of his consciousness. They came closer. One of them knifed through the thickness of the oiled canvas.

“Sir—General Sheridan has the prisoners out and he’s yelling for you. Says its time to hang the sonsabitches.”

“Thank you, Sergeant. Please inform the general that I’ll join him shortly.”

The boots dashed off; the sound of hard-leather soles pounding across the snow faded from the tent flaps.

Custer was up on one elbow. Then quietly he slipped from bed and pulled his tunic over his arms, buttoning it over his long-handles when her child’s voice surprised him.

“Good morn-ning,” she spoke in her imitation of his Yankee English.

She was an apt pupil, he had to admit. Custer turned, smiling as he raked a lock of hair from his forehead, combing the curls with his fingers. “Good morning.”

He dressed, then pulled his buffalo coat and cap on before he bent over the bed. Monaseetah sat up, raising her lips to his. The blankets slid away, exposing the tops of her breasts.

With stoic resignation, Custer closed his eyes, bent his head, and kissed her.

“Custer!” Sheridan was calling to him from the instant Custer pushed through the flaps. “What’s the goddamned
meaning of sending this man out to find the Indians?” Sheridan stomped up, livid with anger.

“I didn’t send him out to find the Indians, General.” Custer turned to Romero. “You have any luck?”

“Coming in at a good clip. Be here anytime.”

“Dammit, Custer! What’s this man doing out locating the hostiles?” Sheridan jumped between the two, mad enough to spit.

“I thought you’d want to know if they were sending a delegation here to talk with you, the great soldier chief.”

There. That’s the quickest way to pull yourself out of the frying pan without flopping into the fire.

“Why would they send a delegation to speak with me?” Sheridan growled.

Crosby stepped up, wearing his smirk. “They aren’t to send a delegation, Custer. The Kiowa are supposed to have their villages here.”

Custer turned from Crosby, paying him no mind. He sensed he had Sheridan hooked. They hadn’t spent all those years together for him not to know Little Phil as well as he knew any man.
Still, you best tred lightly, Autie boy. His dander’s up
, Custer reminded himself.

“Why, General—if the Kiowa are sending a delegation to see you, then you can use them to your advantage. You want to make an example out of these two chiefs here, don’t you?”

“You damn well know I do!”

“By waiting for the Kiowa delegation to arrive, you can hang the two chiefs right before their eyes. Seeing their chiefs kicking at the end of the rope will have a far better effect than riding in later to see the chiefs hanging limp from the branch of that tree over there.”

Sheridan regarded Custer suspiciously. “Damn, Custer, if I don’t get the feeling I’m swimming upstream with my mouth open and heading for your hook.”

“I’ve never steered you wrong, and I won’t start now.”

“General Sheridan, sir!” The sergeant of the guard trotted up.

“What is it?” Sheridan grumped.

“We got some Indians in custody at the western perimeter, sir,” the breathless soldier explained. “Pickets said they rode up at a gallop, but weren’t hostile in their actions.”

“How many?”

“Twelve.”

“They say what they want?”

“’Bout all they grunted was
pony chief.”

Sheridan looked at Custer. His eyes said it all. He knew Custer had him whipped.

“I’ve got little choice but to bring the Kiowa in.”

“By all means, General,” Custer replied.

“Sergeant,” Sheridan growled, “bring the Indians to me.”

As the party of Kiowa marched through the milling throng of curious soldiers, Romero slipped past the two manacled chiefs, whispering among them.

He came back with Tsalante, who had accompanied the party of eleven chiefs that had arrived. He spoke to the little soldier chief Sheridan, then waited while the Indian-talker Romero translated.

“General, he says they’ve come to tell you the village is on its way, just like you asked—”

“Whoa!” Sheridan barked. “I didn’t ask the bastards to
be on their way at sunrise. I told them to be here at sunrise!”