Long Winter Gone: Son of the Plains - Volume 1 (41 page)

A
STEADY
spring rain fell on the Smoky Hill country of Kansas, drenching everything the soldiers hadn’t dragged into a tent last night when the dark underbelly of the prairie sky had opened up. Some eleven hours later, the storm persisted, forming creeks in the wagon ruts carved between the rows of company tents that dotted the boggy meadows like prairie wildflowers in bloom.

Custer had selected this summer home for his regiment where Big Creek dumped into the Smoky Hill River. Fort Hays stood some two miles to the west, on the same south bank of the Smoky Hill along the tracks of the Kansas-Pacific Railroad. For better than four months the small stockade of Fort Hays had bustled with the prisoners from Black Kettle’s Washita village, sent north under escort long before Custer led his winter-weary troops back home to Kansas Territory. Custer promptly reported to the new commander of Fort Hays, Colonel Nelson A. Miles.

Here at the Big Creek camp the Seventh Cavalry would stay the summer, until the weather turned autumn cold and
sleety. Then Custer would lead his men back to the fort for the prairie winter. For now, he would put up with these soggy skies and wait for the dog days of summer to belly-crawl across the scorched undergut of the plains.

Over his head tapped a steady staccato of rain. It beat not only the roof of his sidewall erected beneath a wide-branched cottonwood, but also the oiled canvas awning stretched in front of his tent. If the weather would ever break, he had the regimental carpenters ready to hammer together a wood gallery surrounding the tent and the base of the tree itself—with railing—like the porch on the family home back in Monroe.

Monroe.

Oh, for spring in the north country! A little shower and things would cool off. Here the spring smothered a man. Nowhere near as muggy, however, as that summer of ’64 in the Shenandoah. Chasing Mosby’s raiders. Hanging some. Shooting the rest.

Custer sighed, turned back into the tent, deciding he’d wait till tomorrow to write Libbie again.

“General Custer?”

Moylan slogged up between Keim and Sergeant William Johnson. All three were soaked through, their coats no longer any protection from the incessant rain, their wide-brimmed hats soppy, drooping like a beekeeper’s under the weight of a good soaking.

“What is it?”

“I have someone I want you to meet,” Moylan began, then turned and signaled someone who waited outside the tent. Across the sticky gumbo crabbed a young man, carefully positioning himself on two canes with every step.

The newcomer shuddered to a halt, then placed the
right cane with its brother in his left hand so he could hold out a big, callused paw to Custer.

“My name’s John Morgan, General,” he spoke clear and strong.

“Mr. Morgan,” Custer replied.

“I’m looking for my wife. Anna Belle Morgan. Her name used to be Brewster. I understand she’s here with your regiment.” His dark, hooded eyes darted off again.

“General”—Moylan inched forward—“John has come to take the girl and young Brewster home. To what they have left in Kansas.”

“I plan on raising another house and barn, soon as I’m fit,” Morgan explained. “But for now, it’ll be enough just to take my family with me.”

Custer silently regarded this courageous man.

“I figured anyone in camp could lead me to my wife,” Morgan went on. “But told ’em I wanted to meet you first off, to shake hands with the man who saved my bride from the Indians.”

“Dan told me you were seriously wounded.”

“Was, General. On the mend now. Be back in the fields behind them mules by fall.”

“Your leg?”

“No. Took a bullet in the hip.”

“It pains you to move around?”

“Less every day. I laid there that first night, thinking about Anna Belle. Couldn’t move to help when they pulled her up on one of their ponies. Then had to watch ’em put the torch to my place. Some neighbors come to look things over the day after the raid. Found me in the field.”

“You’ll start over?”

“That land’s all I got. That and Anna Belle. Laid on a cot
all fall in Solomon City, nursing my hip. Didn’t get no better, so they took me up to Minneapolis. Finally healed up ’bout as good as I’m gonna be for a while. Spent all winter praying I’d get Anna Belle back. All the time part of me said to forget her—savages had her and likely they’d use her up.”

Custer saw the tears welling in the big man’s eyes, the quiver at his lip.

“Mr. Morgan, your wife’s safe and very sound. She’s been through an ordeal of unspeakable horror, but she’s a strong woman.” He turned to his adjutant. “Moylan, take our guest down to Mrs. McNeil’s tent. The women are with her, waiting for family to fetch them.” Then he turned back to Morgan. “How was it you knew your wife was here?”

“Knew before your regiment got back to Hays. I’d heard talk of your winter campaign to free white prisoners of the Indians. Rode down the Smoky Hill line, past Fort Harker and up to Hays City. Never rode a train before.” He rocked uneasily on the homemade oak canes. “Up to Hays City they been posting stories ’bout your Seventh Cavalry.”

“Stories?” Custer asked.

“Heard Colonel Miles wanted the whole territory to know what a success you’d made of the winter campaign against them damned Indians. So he had the papers all across Kansas print up stories from your dispatches.”

“From what John tells me,” Moylan said, “you’re quite the hero to Kansas folk.”

“No doubt of that, sir.” Morgan gave him a big-toothed smile. “All over, folks say you’re the man who made this country safe for ’em to farm. They say General Custer’s the one who makes ’em sleep easy at night. After they’ve said their prayers for the Seventh Cavalry, that is.”

Custer straightened. “Good to know our winter’s efforts are appreciated. Suppose you go with Moylan down to the officers’ mess while he fetches your wife. I have a feeling she’ll want to freshen up before she sees you. It’s been quite a spell, hasn’t it?”

“More’n half a year. Some eight months now.”

“May I offer a word? Some advice?”

“Of course, General.”

“With all the time that’s passed, I want you to realize that your wife may have … changed some.”

“Sir?”

“When you see her for the first time, just remember what a horrifying ordeal she’s been through. If she didn’t do what was demanded of her, they’d kill her. Remember that when you want to touch her, Mr. Morgan.”

“While I was laid up for the shank of the winter I had a lotta time to think. I know the Indians had their way with Anna Belle—any white woman, I ’spect. But Anna Belle’s prettier than most.”

“A very striking woman,” Custer said.

“At first I wanted to forget her. Tell myself it was over. Then I got to brooding on what she’d be thinking, what she was feeling. All of what happened was no fault of her own. Laying on that cot in Solomon City, I asked God to bring my wife back to me, no matter what. Just bring Anna Belle back.”

“She’s what’s most important to you now.”

Morgan wiped a hand across his eyes. “Her, and the home we’ll rebuild up on the Solomon. Raise some kids.”

“I bet that’s what Anna Belle wants more than anything too. To go home where she can forget what’s happened. To start over.”

“May I say something, General?” Moylan inquired.

“Of course.”

“Last winter when Dan Brewster came down to Camp Supply, telling us that the Morgans been burned out of everything, well … Mr. Keim here came up with a deuce of an idea. I think he should tell you about it, General.”

Keim cleared his throat. “Several of your officers and I got to talking while we spent those two days beside the Washita on the trail back. Started taking up a small collection so we could help the two women. Maybe go some toward replacing what they lost in the way of clothing, household goods. The idea just took off on its own, with donations pouring in. Even the Kansas soldiers. Why, we’ve got over six hundred dollars to divide between Mrs. Morgan and Miss White!”

“Three hundred dollars apiece?” John Morgan whistled low.

Keim said, “I’ve never seen such an outpouring.”

Morgan wagged his head. “Can’t believe it. Thank God for you all! For your kindness and your bravery. God bless the Seventh Cavalry!”

Custer felt embarassed as he watched the big man shed tears too long held back. Moylan, Johnson, and Keim looked away, sniffling a bit themselves.

“Moylan,” Custer said, “I think Mr. Morgan would like to see his bride now.”

“Bless you, General Custer,” Morgan blurted like an adoring schoolboy, holding out a big hand once more. “Bless you for the job you’ve done for us.”

“It’s what I’ve been sent here to do, Mr. Morgan.”

They turned from his tent and slogged away through
the mud and gumbo along the wagon road, dodging puddles and horse droppings.

Nothing like rain to make a man feel lonely. More than the cold of a winter storm. A long, endless rain isolated him.

Custer hurt for her return.

He glanced at his pocket watch again, setting it on his field desk.

He had given Monaseetah full run of the Big Creek camp. His regiment made her welcome, watched her protectively.

Once a day she would leap atop her pony, galloping west to visit Cheyenne friends in the Fort Hays stockade. Among her people, she told stories of the soldiers’ winter march to Fort Cobb, or their come-spring chase of Medicine Arrow’s Sweetwater villages. Each time she returned to him, Custer found Monaseetah more animated and cheerful, ready to jabber with him, relating the condition of every soul in the stockade.

Everyone except the three chiefs Custer had captured on the Sweetwater.

“They are haughty, Yellow Hair,” she had grumped one night. “They won’t speak to me.”

Even with a lot of coaxing, for the longest time Monaseetah would not tell him why the chiefs would not speak to her. Her face eventually reddened with shame, her eyes refusing to touch his, she explained. “Cheyenne warriors do not talk to women dishonored by white men.”

“Dishonored?”

“Yes,” she had whispered. “I am disgraced, they say—because I am Yellow Hair’s
whore.”

Custer remembered how that had angered him. Still did,
remembering that cold rock in his gut when he watched her lips speak those words.

He sipped his coffee, now cold, then stepped to the flaps where he flung the coffee into the muddy company street.

The Nineteenth Kansas would pull out tomorrow. Some to march east to Fort Riley, while others would push south to Fort Zarah and Fort Lamed. Fewer still would ride west to Fort Wallace and Fort Dodge. They were citizen soldiers, mustered out from that army post closest to their homes and fields and families.

He’d been in camp less than a month and already Custer yearned for the thrill of the campaign trail. It was in the march itself that he felt full of purpose. Now he waited out the spring thunderstorms, fighting mosquitoes and boredom—worrying about the decision he’d long since made.

Custer turned and sat on a crude wooden bench that slid under the long plank table in his tent. Beside his rope prairie bed stuffed with a grass-filled tick squatted a low stool and a tripod where his tin washbasin sat. On a cord from the ceiling over the basin hung a small shaving glass. Still he had put off shaving the beard that had grown full and red during the winter.

From the ashwood water bucket he raised a dipper and walked to the tent flaps, sipping at the cool water, gazing west toward Fort Hays in the shimmering distance. These days he tried to keep her close. Her tent beside his, where she stayed with her infant son.

He hurt. Wondering when she’d be coming back.

Is it this way with a parent and child?
he brooded.

He glanced at the calendar poking out beneath the dispatches and maps on his table. A week from Thursday
Libbie would arrive with their Negro maid, Eliza, by train from Monroe.

Since last September too much had passed between them: not only time, but distance too.….

Custer watched the rain batter the puddle in front of his door, mesmerized into a half-dream, recalling the winter he thought would never end, wanting her musky flesh beside him all the more.

How am I to tell him?

Her reflection danced upon the surface of Big Creek, rippling like a prairie storm, staring back at her without an answer.

Monaseetah knelt on the grassy bank, enjoying this shady sanctuary from the muggy heat. She remembered how, as a young girl, she had escaped to river or creek in the heat of the day to find there a private place to think on important things.

I must find a way to tell him.

How could she, when he had grown so angry that time she confessed her love for him? Then she had promised herself she would never utter that word again in his hearing.
Love.

As desperately as she clung to life itself she loved this man. She had left her people, her way of life—left everything she was for him.

And now I’m afraid.

Scared of what he might say, of what he might do if she told him. Scared of losing him forever.

Somewhere nearby a pony snorted. Her body tensed as she peered from the brush, seeing no one coming. Her
body relaxed, taut vigilance gone, like raindrops from greased rawhide.

She must think of the words to use. For what she had to say was not something so simple that it could be said, then forgotten. Such matters of the heart resisted her understanding as easily as pond water slipped from a crane’s back.

Another moon come and gone.

She could not deny it. Eighteen summers now—no longer easy to fool herself. Instead of thinking on what should bring great joy, Monaseetah ached with dread.

She dropped her head against the cool, fragrant grass, listening to the water lap against the bank. Its merry chatter eased some of the pain in her uncertainty.

Until something deep within the dark part of her gripped her—knowing he would send her away. With the news she had to tell him, Yellow Hair would send her away.