Long Winter Gone: Son of the Plains - Volume 1 (39 page)

“Now, Romero—have Dull Knife join me.”

The tall, stately chief, one of the three held captive, followed the pony soldier to a nearby cottonwood. From one of the overhanging branches dangled a length of hemp rope at the end of which hung a noose. Custer signaled Sergeant Lucas.

Two soldiers immediately seized Dull Knife, binding his hands behind him. The warriors shouted furiously. Quickly the soldier guard around them leveled rifles at the delegates. Angrily, the Cheyenne fell silent as the noose fell over the chiefs head, tightened at the base of his skull. The rope was raised until the chief was on tiptoe.

Big Head’s dark eyes glared flinty hatred at Custer. Yet not a muscle in his face betrayed any emotion.

“See your mighty chief now!” Custer cried, flush with anger. “Listen carefully, for you’ll no longer play me the fool. Release the two girls by sunset tomorrow, or you will watch your chiefs hang—one at a time!”

Custer turned to the sergeant. “Lucas, ease the chief down.”

When he could stand flat-footed once more, his neck no longer stretched and his hands released, Dull Knife joined the other captives. He sat rubbing his wrists and raw neck.

“None of you’ll be so brave tomorrow when I have your bodies hanging from this tree!” Custer roared at the Cheyenne. “I’ll watch the magpies feast upon that flesh left on your bones when the buzzards have had their fill!”

In two steps he stood before his interpreter. “Romero, tell our visitors they have five minutes to talk with their chiefs. For if the girls are not freed by sunset tomorrow, this is the last time they’ll see their chiefs alive!”

Throughout the next long, fateful day, a hushed tension wound itself through camp like a watch spring; every man was fearful it would get one rough twist too many and the whole thing would snap. Not a soldier could fail to know this was the day the Seventh Cavalry would go back to war with the Cheyenne.

With its pale, milky light, the winter sun had sunk halfway out of midsky, falling steadily toward sunset. Still no tidings heard from the hostile villages.

“You want to see me?” Custer stepped up to the three captives with Romero.

“Yellow Hair will hang us if our people do not release the white girls?” Fat Bear asked.

Custer flicked his eyes to Dull Knife. “The fat one here thinks my words are hollow. No one believes Yellow Hair. You will hang before I destroy your villages! This I say before your Everywhere Spirit!”

Dull Knife nodded. “I believe.”

“I too,” Fat Bear agreed, quaking. “I am a chief of consequence among my people. They need my counsel. Yellow Hair must release me so I can hasten to my village, speak to the owner of the girls so they can be released in time. I will bring the captives here to save the lives of Dull Knife and Big Head. Hear me—I must hurry!”

“Romero, tell Fat Bear that I want to laugh, if he weren’t so sad. A brave one when surrounded by his warriors. But he has no heart when he’s alone and staring death in the face.”

“Too bad Medicine Arrow himself isn’t here to hang with him,” Romero growled.

“Make this Fat Bear dangle awhile longer—on a rope of his own making. Tell him this: If you’re so important to your people, then you’re just the man I want to hold on to. You’re worth far more to me here than in your village.”

Custer waited as Romero translated, watching the Indian’s eyes widen in fear, his chin sag in failure. “By your own words, Fat Bear—like your lying friend, Medicine Arrow—you’ve tightened the noose around your neck.”

Custer left the prisoners’ tent before he grew angrier. With a fresh cup of coffee in hand, he climbed a low hill where he joined others maintaining an anxious vigil, watching for any sign from the Cheyenne.

When the pale sun hung two hands above the western
horizon, with less than an hour of daylight remaining before sunset, the breeze kicked up, whining through the naked trees like a squaw’s death song.

“General!”

Custer wheeled at the frantic cry from his left. Several soldiers pointed.

“By Jehovah himself!” Moylan roared. “See there on the hill!”

“Believe me, mister—I see it!” Custer cried.

Tom leapt to his side. “What is it? Don’t see a goddamned thing but some riders on that hill yonder. You don’t even know they’re Indians.”

“Maybe Tom’s right,” Yates agreed sourly. “Best we don’t get our hopes up.”

“Even if it is them Injuns,” Lucas said, “who’s to say it ain’t some trick to buy more time? I say we hang the frigging bastards and be done with it!”

“That’s the stuff, Lucas!” Tom spat.

“Hush!” Custer whispered, paying little attention to the angry mutterings of those on the hilltop.

Word reached the three chiefs that riders had been spotted on a hill a mile distant. In their prison tent they sang their thanksgiving, an eerie backdrop for the tense vignette on the hill.

“Moylan!” Custer lunged for his adjutant. “We’re acting like headless shavetails! Give me the glass—quick!”

He yanked the brass telescope from its oiled saddle-leather case. He spent anxious, long seconds focusing on the distant knoll. “All I can tell is that they’re Indians,” he concluded.

“I told you!” Tom shouted, cocky. “Here to pull a fast shuffle on us again, Autie!”

“How many are there, General?” Yates asked.

“Could be a couple dozen. I’ll count. See what we’re dealing with.” He began his tally, slowly swinging the glass from right to left.”

“… eighteen … nineteen and twenty—”

He suddenly pulled the glass down, rubbing the eyepiece with his dusty sleeve. “It can’t be!”

Custer felt the others press close as he looked again. “Yes, gentlemen! There are two figures on one pony up there.”

“Could it be the girls?” Thompson asked.

Custer turned to answer, seeing Daniel Brewster scramble up the long slope toward the officers.

“You spotted the girls?” Brewster rasped.

“We don’t know yet. No sense getting excited until we’re certain.”

“Lemme see for myself!” Brewster lunged awkwardly for the glass.

“You will not!” Custer replied, holding the youth off. “You can remain here as long as you obey orders and remain calm. Otherwise”—he put the glass back to his eye—“I’ll have you dragged back to camp before you can say—”

“Good God!” Yates cried.

“What is it?” Brewster shrieked.

“Look there!” a soldier shouted.

“They’re dropping off the horse!” another yelled.

“Goddamn—gotta be the girls!” Tom cheered.

“God in heaven, Tom!” Thompson growled, slapping him on the back.

“Yes!” Custer’s voice climbed. “It’s two women!”

“Anna Belle!” Tears of joy shimmered down Brewster’s stubbled cheeks.

“Get hold of yourself, Brewster!” Custer said. “We don’t know who they are at this distance.”

“It’s my Anna Belle! I know it is. Little Robe told me. He didn’t lie.”

“They’re headed this way now!” Myers sang out.

“Thompson!” Custer ordered. “Bring me a squad of Kansas volunteers. Quick, man!”

Custer watched the captain lope downhill into the bustling Kansas camp, then put the glass to his eye once more.

“Yes, … yes!” he repeated, studying the two figures hobbling through the brittle grasses skiffed with icy sleet, snow dotting the hillside and meadows in huge sodden patches.

“One appears to have a short, heavy figure,” he muttered. “The other is considerably taller and more slender.”

“You said tall?” Brewster sleeved the moisture from his eyes. “Gotta be Anna Belle, General! Bless her heart!”

The mule-strong, hard-callused settler could fight those tears of joy no longer.

Custer sensed a foreign, salty sting in his own eyes, turning away before it betrayed him. The sensations rushed him all at once: the bittersweet pangs of Brewster’s reunion, the happiness of the others witnessing the captives’ release, his own success snatched from the claws of defeat. Yet …

Someday, too, I must return Monaseetah to her own people
, he realized.
Someday I’ll watch her return to the Cheyenne as surely as these two young women are hurrying across the frozen ground toward the U.S. Cavalry.

Brewster darted off the brow of the hill, but was grabbed by a ring of soldiers and dragged, kicking, back to Custer.

“She’s waiting for me!” Brewster shrieked. “Dear God in his heaven, lemme go to her!”

“Control yourself!”

“General?”

Custer turned at the unfamiliar voice, watching a squad of Kansas volunteers climb the hill.

“Captain Royce Wenzel, sir!” one man announced, saluting. “You have good news for us?”

“Believe I do, Captain.” Custer pointed into the meadow. “Appears the Cheyennes just released the two girls.”

The Kansas men scrambled forward, muttering, swearing, straining to see the figures stumbling across the meadow below.

“Lord of Divine Grace!” Wenzel gulped, his voice thick with emotion.

“Captain”—Custer took hold of Wenzel’s arm—” Brewster here may prove to be the brother of one of the girls. But I’m not convinced he should be the first to go out there—for his sake and the girl’s.”

“Lemme go to her!” Brewster shouted, yanking away from the soldier holding him.

“Understandable,” Wenzel replied.

“I think your men are more detached from the raw emotions of the moment,” Custer explained. “And yet every one of you left homes and families, your livelihoods to accomplish this release.”

“Yes we did—”

“Seems fitting your men should be the first to welcome those girls back to the bosom of friends and freedom.”

“Bless you, General Custer!” Wenzel sang out.

“Hip, hip, hooray!” the Kansans cheered, slapping backs.

“C’mon, men!” Wenzel strode out. “Let’s welcome those Kansas girls back to freedom!” Suddenly he stopped, wheeling around in the midst of his squad, and saluted. “Thank you from the bottom of our hearts, General!”

In the meadow below stumbled two pitiful figures, clawing their way through bare brush and slushy snow, fighting their way back to freedom.

When Wenzel’s squad had marched half the distance to the captives, the volunteers began to wave. Desperate and delirious in joy, the women—for the men could see now that they were not just girls—waved back.

“Gentlemen, that’s a sight not many will ever witness,” Custer said quietly. “We’re party to one of the signal successes on this frontier.”

“C’mere, you!”

Custer whirled at Lucas’s cry. Brewster had torn free, dashing downhill, four soldiers on his heels. A dozen more leaping strides and it was clear as crystal to any man the civilian had the soldiers beat.

“Sergeant, call your men back!”

At Custer’s order, Lucas skidded to a halt, staring back in disbelief. He called to his detail; the soldiers slowed and ground to a stop. Brewster raced on at full tilt, arms pumping under an inspired head of steam as he burst past the smartly marching column of bewildered Kansas volunteers.

Seconds later he skidded to a snowy halt before the women, flinging his oxbow arms around the taller of the two. Anna Belle fell into this strong embrace, crying for joy, her big tears streaking the dirt caked across her ruddy cheeks.

They both held out an arm to welcome Judith White into
their warm embrace of homecoming. All three skipped around and around, giddy and childlike, wrapped arm in arm in the frozen meadow as if it were May Day.

As the volunteers caught up, the air filled with rejoicing and shouts heard back on Custer’s knoll. Whoops, screams, and squeals of happiness climbed into the dusk-gray skies overhead. The first stain of sunset streaked the pewter underbelly of the clouds as some of the Kansas boys tore off their coats and draped them around the women’s shoulders. Wenzel urged his men back to the safety of the soldier’s lines.

Halfway down the slope, Custer met them. Shaking their hands, he found himself unable to utter a single words. All about the girls, soldiers and volunteers jumped and cheered, everyone flinging a hand in to touch the freed captives, welcoming them.

Through it all the women kept their own teary eyes on the ground, out of fear and embarrassment. Their faces sparkled damply with joy. They glanced at one another as if to ask,
Is this real? Are we actually going home at last?

With a full heart, Custer stepped back from the crush, taking it all in, still unable to speak. A knot of sentiment clogged his throat as he studied their deplorable condition, realizing both were pregnant and nearly starved.

“Three cheers for General Custer!”

His eyes swam as Moylan pressed before him. Suddenly there were more Seventh Cavalry and Kansas volunteers.

“Hear! Hear! Three cheers!” Wenzel shouted above the din.

That lump in Custer’s throat didn’t dissolve until the Kansas men escorted the women downhill to camp and
the sun disappeared behind the trees atop the western hills.

“Huzzah for Custer!” Cooke shouted.

“Huzzah!” the hundreds answered. “Huzzah for George Armstrong Custer!”

In closing, Dear Heart—I wanted to tell you of the deplorable condition of the two girls when they were presented to me. Clothed in some sort of short dress made from flour sacks, the brand of the mills plainly visible. This bears witness that the kidnappers of these young women were the same Indians taking our generous annuities of flour from Fort Lamed or Fort Cobb.

Their entire dress was nearly Indian: both wore leggings and moccasins, their hair tied in braids. As if to propitiate us, the Indians gave the women rude ornaments like those worn by Cheyenne squaws. Wrists wrapped with coils of brass wire. Rings on fingers. Round their necks hung colored beads.

Young Brewster was heard to say: “Sister, do take those hateful things off.”

How to tell you of their joy when they found they weren’t the only white women in the territory! You should have seen their faces when Mrs. McNeil stepped from her
cook-tent, wiping her plump hands in her apron, grinning like a cat just eating the canary.

Her arms opened wide as she pressed both girls against her ample bosom. Mrs. McNeil is truly one of a kind, Libbie! Besides baking them the best pies and cornbreads, that old woman allowed those girls to choose something from her personal wardrobe, until she could fashion something better. From a bundle I had given Mrs. McNeil after we had cornered a single lodge of hostiles, she drew calico, thread, and needles—to sew frontier dresses for our new guests. For shoes, I’m sorry they had to wear their crude moccasins and leggings. They feel more comfortable sleeping in my “A” tent next to Mrs. McNeil’s.