Long Winter Gone: Son of the Plains - Volume 1 (5 page)

From daybreak to well past sunset, he watched herders drive horses in or out of camp, grazing the mounts on the excellent pastures surrounding the site. The animals needed every ounce of strength they could muster for the task ahead. In addition, one of the frontiersmen along for
the campaign showed Keim a seed from a mesquite tree that grew in the area, claimed to be every bit as good for fattening the big army horses as the oats the soldiers relied on.

Good sweet water flowed past the camp. Ample firewood could be found in the groves along both waterways. Enough timber for a stockade. First the soldiers muscled trenches out of the frozen soil some 126 feet square in which to bury the upright timbers. At the same time water wells were dug and the nearby meadows mowed for emergency hay. From the time Keim crawled out of his blankets in the morning until well past dark, cursing civilian teamsters whipped their plodding mules up and down the course of Wolf Creek or the Beaver River hauling logs for the cantonment and hay that the soldiers piled into huge windbreaks along company rows.

Almost daily the young reporter accompanied Custer’s hunting party into the surrounding woods in search of game of all description: deer and elk, buffalo and turkey, rabbits and quail, pheasant, dove, and prairie chicken. Yet as the hour for the regiment’s departure in search of hostiles drew near, Custer realized the time had come to sift through the herds in search of a special animal.

“He’s a beautiful horse, General,” Keim said, admiring the sorrel with excellent spirit.

“Quite an animal.” Custer turned to his brother. “I believe I’ll call this one Dandy, Tom.”

“A fine configuration!”

“I’ll ride him this winter. Then give him to Libbie as a present when the campaign’s over. She will rejoin me come spring.”

Keim self-consciously cleared his throat and stepped
away before Custer spoke again. “We’ve not had a good year, Tom.”

“That dalliance with Mrs. Lyon down in Texas bothering Libbie again?”

“That and the young wife of an officer on Sheridan’s staff when we passed through St. Louis two years ago. More and more it returns to haunt me.”

“You two will make up and things’ll be as they were during the war—when you were inseparable. Always remember, dear brother, there’s never a winter so long that spring doesn’t come.”

“General?”

“Come in, Lieutenant. I’ve been expecting you.”

James M. Bell, regimental quartermaster, ducked through the flaps of Custer’s wall tent, kicking the ice from his boots. It had begun snowing just before supper, right after Bell had finished issuing each soldier his weapons for the coming fight: a magazine-loaded Spencer carbine and a Colt revolver using paper cartridges and caps.

“Every man has his buffalo greatcoat and hip leggings General Sheridan had made for the campaign.”

“A capital idea, wasn’t it, Bell? Nasty as it’s beginning to look out there. Were there enough to go around?”

“Yessir. Along with a fur cap and fur-lined mittens for every soldier who’ll saddle up in the morning.”

“By a stroke of divine providence itself, Lieutenant. My troopers will have their furry protection … like veritable beasts plunging into this wilderness. Thank you for reporting, Mr. Bell. We’ll talk again before departure in the morning. Get some rest now. Lord knows you can use it.”

“Thank you, General. Just wanted to do my part … see we really hurt the savages this time out.”

Late that night Custer finished supper and set his plate aside. Tonight’s would be the last hot meal he or his men would remember for some time to come.

The snow continued to pile up outside as the camp settled into that restless peace of soldiers on their last night before departing into the unknown. A solitary tent glowed with lamplight. Well past midnight Custer continued to push his numb fingers across the sheet of paper, scribbling a final letter to his wife.

It snowed all night.

When reveille sounded at four
A.M
., yanking soldiers from their warm blankets, the Seventh Cavalry found better than fifteen inches on the ground; and the storm wasn’t letting up. Still more snow pushed angrily through the bone-bare trees.

Despite his wool blankets and buffalo robes, Sheridan had found it hard to sleep through the icy night. Now he lay alone in his tent, listening to the familiar, reassuring sounds of men and animals preparing for departure. Surprised at himself, the general suffered a momentary pang of doubt in sending good men out in such bitter weather. His melancholia was just as quickly interrupted by a sturdy rap at the front pole of his huge wall tent.

“Yes?” Sheridan demanded.

The buglers were blowing “The General,” that familiar call ordering troopers to strike their tents and pack the wagons for the march.

“It’s Custer, sir. May I have the honor of saying farewell to an old friend in person?”

“Of course, Custer. Come in.”

Clutching a blanket around his trembling shoulders, Sheridan stood to turn up the wick on his lamp, its feeble, flickering saffron light wind-dancing on bitter gusts that sneaked in on Custer’s heels.

“Damn this infernal thing!” His numb fingers were unable at first to adjust the wick roller.

“May I be of some help?”

“There.” Sheridan got the lamp to respond. “That’s better, now.” He pointed to the corner by his trunk. “Grab one of those stools, Custer.”

The young cavalry officer settled on his perch, clumsy in his bulky buffalo coat, looking like a portly blackbird balanced precariously atop a delicate branch. His thick mustache dripped melting hoarfrost into the beard framing his face.

“Warm enough, Custer?”

“Yes, sir. What’s more, I’m happy to report the Seventh is prepared for what may come in this campaign.”

“I see.” Sheridan rose from his cot and paced to the front flap, where he allowed the cold to slice in at him as he peered out at the men and animals, dark smudges across the new snow. “Seems the storm has moved east at last.”

Custer stood, stepped to the flap beside Sheridan. “It’s a good sign for us, pulling out just as we are.”

Sheridan trudged back to his cot, where he sank heavily. “I had forgotten how you look at things sometimes. Searching for a good omen in every turn you make in life.”

“But, of course. I’ve been blessed with what many of my men have come to call Custer’s Luck.”

“You’re the first to believe in it, too, eh?”

“If I didn’t, how could I ask my men to believe in me?”

Sheridan studied the bushy eyebrows of the taller man. “You damn well go out there and make your own luck, don’t you? You did it with General McClellan when you recklessly waded the Chickahominy. Then you impressed General Pleasanton with your daring charges, and by jingo you were on your way to capturing the cream of the Confederate cavalry at Appomattox—right when Lee himself saw fit to hand his flag of surrender to no one else but you.”

“I was the only one there to take his flag, sir.”

“That’s bullshit and we both know it, Custer. He wanted to hand that flag to the one man who had repeatedly stymied the cream of his Reb cavalry under Stuart.”

“I learned from the best, sir. Philip H. Sheridan.”

“Perhaps I am the only one better than you, goddammit.” Sheridan knocked his boots together to shock some warmth into his frozen feet, “Still, I’m having some second
thoughts about campaigning in the jaws of winter. Perhaps that old scout Bridger was right after all. I’m not so sure we won’t suffer casualties to the goddamned weather you’ll encounter on your march.”

“On the contrary, sir—begging your pardon.” Custer stuffed his hands in his coat pockets and glanced down at the squared toes of his tall black boots. “This deep snow is exactly what I had in mind. It could not come at a more opportune moment. My men are ready, capable of marching through that snow. By the same token, the hostile warriors we seek won’t even consider moving out of their villages for days to come.”

“You are one of a kind, Armstrong.”

“Shall I take that as a compliment, sir?”

“Of course, my eager young friend.” Sheridan rose to his feet and clapped his hands on Custer’s broad shoulders. “I’ll buy your optimistic estimate on this weather … and your men.”

Sheridan shook Custer’s hand. “I made you what you are, Armstrong. I can’t ever forget that.”

“General!” Custer saluted and wheeled toward the tent flaps.

“Custer?”

The young officer turned, one of the canvas flaps still clutched in his buffalo mitten, admitting a cold slash of winter into the tent. “Sir?”

“Take good care of your troops, my friend. They are your backbone.”

“Understood, sir. They’ve never let me down.”

Custer saluted smartly before he tugged the buffalo cap down on his forehead and plunged into the cold. To his side leapt his beloved Blucher and Maida, the two splendid
Scottish staghounds he had brought from Monroe. At the Bluff Creek Camp south of Fort Dodge, Blucher had run down and killed a young wolf during one of his master’s frequent hunts.

Custer knelt to pull at their ears playfully. Lieutenant Myles Moylan stomped up through the calf-deep snow.

“How will this do for a winter campaign, General?”

“Just what we want, Moylan,” came Custer’s swift reply. “Exactly what the gods ordered for me.” Custer stood, squared his shoulders, then stomped off, stiff-legged.

With Custer’s words fading into the darkness, other voices hung just beyond Sheridan’s tent, strong voices come stinging to his ears. Familiar voices, some of them, familiar to an old soldier. Other wars, other battles, other campaigns … different names but soldiers just the same.

Sergeants ordered their men to “Prepare to mount!” followed by a rustle of frozen, squeaky harness, jangling bit chains, and cold black leather as the officers called out, “Mount!”

The coughing and wheezing of a few of the troopers slithered through the oiled canvas of his tent as Sheridan stood framed in the cold flickering light of his single hurricane lamp, eyes fixed on that patch of ground where snow threw itself beneath the tent flaps.

Rhythmically plodding with the creak and swish of cold harness and frozen buckles, two columns of shivering pony soldiers lumbered past, their broad shoulders smeared upon the taut canvas wall of his wind-whipped tent. Sheridan recognized the shrill voice of handsome Major Joel H. Elliott as Custer’s headquarters staff rode by.

“Goddammit all, but I wish I was home right now!”
Elliott’s was a voice full of youth and mirth and a soldier’s camaraderie.

“I’ll bet you do, Major!” Sergeant Major Kennedy replied. “And we know just what the hell you’d be doing at home right now with that pretty wife of yours you’ve kept tucked away back at Leavenworth!”

A cruel gust of wind flung open the flaps of his tent, shoving Philip Sheridan back against his cot. Snuffing out the oil lamp with its icy breath. The solitary gust brought with it such a blast of cold that the general scurried beneath his blankets, pulling them just below his eyes.

“Get a goddamned hold on yourself, Philip.”

Shuddering with more than the cold of that icy gust, the commander of this Department of the Missouri glanced anxiously at the extinguished lamp. A ghostly wisp of purple smoke climbed out of the glass chimney in that pale light of predawn gray seeping into his tent.

Outside in the snow and darkness the regimental band began to pump out that Seventh Cavalry favorite, “The Girl I Left Behind Me”:

Once more Sheridan’s mind replayed those orders he had written for Custer like some broken telegraph key:

It was the coldest time of day on the prairie, now when night was undecided in yielding it’s place—harsher still with the cruel battering winter gave the defenseless plains each year.

Sheridan closed his eyes, shut out the gray light awakening the frozen world outside. The band continued to play.

A somber Black Kettle returned to his Washita camp two days after the great snow had buried the land.

The sun finally broke through the gloomy overcast and shone over his little village. The news their chief brought from General Hazen at Fort Cobb was nowhere near as bright and warm.

“Black Kettle, I wish I could find something to say or do
to persuade you to stay here at the fort,” Hazen had told him. “I’m sticking my neck out to offer you personal sanctuary.”