Long Winter Gone

CHAPTER 11

NEAR midafternoon on the thirtieth, Moses Milner spotted a band of horsemen emerging from the gray oak timber a mile below. Barely two days ago, Custer had dispatched Milner and Jack Corbin to ride north to Camp Supply with word on their victory for General Sheridan. Now, on their way back to rejoin Custer’s column, it appeared their return might be in doubt.

“We got company, boy,” Milner barked.

“I see ’em,” Corbin replied. “And lookee yonder.”

“Brownskins. Damn!”

A handful of feathered warriors burst from the timber a mile to their left.

“More visitors over ’long the creek.” Corbin pointed to the right.

“Hostiles?” asked Ed Guerrier, a courier sent by Sheridan to ride back to Custer’s Seventh Cavalry with Milner and Corbin.

“Time we made ourselves scarce, fellas,” Joe said.

“Don’t have to tell me twice!” Guerrier replied.

Corbin was first into the trees. He reined up and slid from his horse before it completely stopped. “We almost made it, California Joe.”

Milner spit mud into the snow. “Them red niggers’ll pay dear to raise this ol’ scalp, they will.”

Guerrier joined the pair after tying their horses back in the darkened timber. “I count three bands of ’em.”

“They’re tracking somebody,” Corbin said.

“Can’t figure why we ain’t run onto the general and his troops by now,” Milner hissed. “It don’t fit that we run across this war party first.”

“Lookit that, Joe,” Guerrier said.

“Well, I’ll be a mother’s son,” Milner whispered.

Down below in the meadow the central party of horsemen had reined up. One of the figures held something to his face for some time. Meanwhile, the handful of Indian horsemen rode in from the left flank. A moment later riders came loping in from the right.

“If that don’t beat all!” Milner said, scrambling to his feet. “It’s Custer his own self. C’mon, Ed. We’ll introduce you to the boy.”

Back in the saddle, the trio cleared the timber. Once free of the trees, Milner spurred Maude to a gallop, tearing his old sombrero from his shaggy head. Back and forth he waved it at the end of his outstretched arm. “Whoooop! Hep-hawwww, ol’ gal,” he shouted to the mule.

Custer bounded ahead of his columns alone, his arm held high above his buffalo cap. He reined up and waited once he recognized Milner’s wild cheers. All three scouts rode up abreast, bringing their army mounts to a snow-spray halt a few feet in front of Custer.

“Afternoon, General!” Corbin sang out every bit like a boy just returned from a romp in the hills.

“General!” Milner saluted in his own lazy way, then spit a brown stream of tobacco juice to the snow. “Mighty glad to see it’s you and your soldier boys.”

“Sorry to disappoint you, Joe—you think we’re a war party out to relieve you of your sizable scalp?”

“I counted on you being soldiers when I first got my eyes fixed on you until I saw two Injuns in your squad. Forgot about all them Osages come along. Damn—General! I’m powerful glad to see your face again!”

Custer turned to Guerrier. “I suppose you riding in with these filthy renegades bodes good news, eh?”

“Can’t keep a thing from you, can we, General Custer?”

“I take it you fellas got to Camp Supply and General Sheridan with my report?” Custer inquired.

“In the flesh!” Milner grinned.

“You were right again, Joe. I wanted to send a whole squad with you boys.” Custer smiled.

“A fancy notion that’d been, General. Always a heap better to have just two for the journey. More can be done by a lot of dodging and running than we can do by fighting.”

“Two sprightly men can do far better than twenty, Mr. Milner. I congratulate you both!”

Milner beamed proud as a boy given a shiny penny. “Why, I was some happy to see Little Phil my own self! He was monstrous glad to see me back so soon too. Say, did I ever tell you I used to know the general when he was a second—or was it a third?—lieutenant? Post quartermaster back to Yakima country in Oregon years ago?”

“Sheridan a lieutenant? That was before my time! Well, Jack—what’s word from the general?”

“He turned us near right around, riding south with a packet of orders, dispatches, and letters for the men. Sheridan was damned happy to hear your fight was a success. Spent near four hours stomping up and down, in and out of his tent. Reading your report over again. Asking us questions about the Indians.”

Milner jabbed a hand half-covered with a threadbare mitten inside the flap of his greasy mackinaw coat to bring forth a leather pouch. From it he pulled a piece of foolscap folded and sealed with a dollop of blue wax. Nudging his old mule forward two steps, Milner handed it over to Custer.

The soldier ripped open the notice, his eyes flying over the familiar Sheridan scrawl. The general’s words to his field commander were brief and to the point, the way Sheridan was in person.

“Splendid!” Custer cheered. “Lieutenant Moylan, have the officers form the troops for review in that meadow ahead.”

“Yes, sir!”

Custer watched his adjutant gallop away, heading back along the columns. Not until the companies began marching into the wide meadow did he turn once more to the three scouts.

“How far are we from Camp Supply?”

“You’ll be there by this time tomorrow,” Corbin answered.

Custer slapped his right thigh. “By glory, back home with our victory, gentlemen! What say we share this good news with the regiment?”

Custer nudged Dandy into a showy hand gallop as he tore into the meadow where the troops had gathered for review. With Milner, Corbin, and Guerrier at his side,wagons behind him facing rows of weary soldiers, and the Osage trackers scattered around the captives, Custer began his speech.

“I have most welcome news for the gallant and courageous men of the Seventh Cavalry: the finest cavalry the world has ever known!”

He waited a moment as the cheers and shouts died among the ranks. A hard knot of sentiment clotted in his throat.

“Moments ago we received word from General Philip H. Sheridan, who most eagerly awaits our arrival at Camp Supply. Almost as much as you look forward to getting there yourselves!”

Another spontaneous cheer mingled with hearty laughter. The tension of a cold march and bloody campaign drained at last from weary shoulders.

“In this dispatch handed me moments ago”—he waved the sheet high in the breeze—”General Sheridan sends his highest compliments and praise to the officers and men who comprise the finest horse soldiers on the face of this—or any other—continent!

“The General says:

“The Battle of the Washita River is the most complete and successful of all our private battles, and was fought in such unfavorable weather and circumstances as to reflect the highest credit on yourself and regiment.

“The energy and rapidity shown during one of the heaviest snowstorms that has visited this section of the country, with the temperature below the freezing point, and the gallantry and bravery displayed, resulting in such signal success, reflect the highest credit upon both the officers and men of the Seventh Cavalry; and Major-General commanding,while regretting the loss of such gallant officers as Major Elliott and Captain Hamilton, who fell while gallantly leading their men, desires to express his thanks to the officers and men engaged in the Battle of the Washita, and his special congratulations are tendered to their distinguished commander, Brevet Major-General George A. Custer, for the efficient and gallant services rendered, which have characterized the opening of the campaign against hostile Indians south of the Arkansas.’”

Upon hearing the congratulations of the highest-ranking officer in the whole of the department, lusty cheers rang through the winter-cloaked meadow.

“He goes on!” Custer shouted above the clamor.

“‘For your bravery in the face of hostile fire, for your steadfastness in the face of bitter cold and conditions that deprived you of warmth and food for much of your campaign, I express my eternal gratitude to you, your officers, and your men. What is more, my dear friend Custer, you will have the eternal and benevolent gratitude of those very citizens of the frontier who are bringing the blessings of civilization to this wilderness, order out of chaos. In summary, be assured my superiors, both Generals Grant and Sherman, have been apprised of the efficient and gallant services rendered by the Seventh Cavalry, U.S. Army, under the capable command of the late brevet Major-General of the Army of the Potomac, your most able Lt. Col. George A. Custer.

By command of LIEUTENANT-GENERAL

PHILIP H. SHERIDAN’

“Scouts Milner and Corbin have rejoined our command. Besides some long-overdue letters from Fort Hays, they have some exciting news, gentlemen! They tell me this will be the last night you sleep on the trail. Tomorrow night … we’ll be quartered at Camp Supply!”

That singular bit of news caused cheering that drove masses of blackbirds flapping from off their roosts in the skeletal trees. At the height of the clamor, Custer signaled Moylan and his standard bearer to follow as he whirled his dark stallion about, leading his columns from the snowy meadow.

Mahwissa beamed maternally at Monaseetah. The young Cheyenne princess fluttered her eyes, embarrassed that she had been caught gazing hypnotically at the soldier chief.

“Hiestzi is brave. A leader of strong men. One who can exhort and inspire.” All this Mahwissa said to the young woman beside her.

“And he will make a fine husband for you. Many fine warrior sons will spring from the fire in his loins, Monaseetah.”

Romero rode behind them, herding the captives like cattle, prodding and swearing at the prisoners in their own Cheyenne tongue, whipping the rumps of the Indian ponies that failed to move quickly enough to suit him.

“My first child comes soon,” Monaseetah whispered. “From that dog of a husband I was made to marry in the shortgrass time.” Monaseetah pouted, her head hung in shame.

“You are heavy with child?” Mahwissa asked, surprised.

“It comes soon.”

“I did not know this when I married you to the soldier chief.”

“I kept it a secret after my father ransomed me back from the bad husband.”

“But you do not show!” The old woman’s eyes narrowed on Monaseetah’s belly, well hidden beneath the folds of her red blanket.

“A curse of the young, Mahwissa.”

“Your young body won’t put on much fat in the way the cow buffalo readies for her calf.”

“For three months now the land sleeps beneath the cold mantle of winter. I hide myself beneath warm robes and blankets.”

“I see, young one.” Mahwissa gazed into the distance.

“He will not be ashamed of me?” Monaseetah pleaded in a little-girl voice ringing with fear and loss. “Will Hiestzi throw me away when he finds I carry another man’s child?”

Mahwissa studied the course of Wolf Creek. “I do not think he will throw you away, little one. However, the white man is a strange animal for me to sort out. It will take many winters perhaps for you to learn about him. But I have seen how this soldier chief studies you with his eyes of blue fire. The yellow-haired one cannot hide his heat for you.”

“I think I want him to want me. Never before have I needed a man.”

“Little one, for two summers now you live in the body of a woman—a body that drives the young men wild with burning for you. Yet until this very moment you were but a little girl. Perhaps you now become a woman in full.”

“Why then does my heart give me such pain in missing him, or when I want him to look at me with those egg-blue eyes that tell me he wants me too? Why is there so much pain if being a woman is to bring me so much pleasure?”

“Ah, young one! Yes, there is real pain, much hurt and anguish to be suffered. I am afraid you will suffer that anguish all too soon in your young life.” She looked away, letting her moist eyes clear.

“There are men you might fall in love with,” Mahwissa continued, “men who will bring you so much more pleasure and happiness than sadness. I pray the soldier chief you give your heart to is not one who will leave a scar upon it.”

“A scar?”

“Yes, little one. On your heart a scar borne of sadness and despair, an empty ache that can never be filled. The more you feed that kind of love, little one … the more empty you become.”

By late that afternoon of the last day of November, breezes from the south blew a warm, welcoming breath at the column’s back. That night the troopers slept in their creekside camp, relishing an end to weeks of flesh-numbing cold.

Little snow remained to chill the wild land with the coming of the next morning’s sun, and what few drifts had escaped the chinooks warm breezes hid themselves in the shadows and shade of gullies and draws. Throughout the day Custer’s troops enjoyed welcome winter sun caressing their backs with warm promise. Spirits climbed; the men knew they drew close to Camp Supply. Yet amid the joy of a triumphant return was found a hardened, joyless handful who remained angry at the fate of Elliott’s men, abandoned in the valley of the Washita by their regimental commander. For now, the grumbling remained subdued. For now …

No man could be as exuberant with this triumph as the commander of the Seventh Cavalry himself. Again and again he considered the approach of his twenty-ninth birthday, barely four days away. What a glorious gift this campaign had proven to be—once and for all healing every last caustic wound done him at the hands of both detractors and superiors alike who had doubted his abilities, both as a commander of men and as an Indian fighter.

How he yearned for Libbie to be with him on his birthday.….

Inside—deep and unsettling—reeled something foreign. It caused him to twist in his saddle and gaze behind him at that long line of bundled troopers snaking around the brow of a hill. Back there, somewhere near the end of the procession, marched the prisoners. He squinted his eyes, unable to catch even a brief glimpse of the captives.

Why in God’s name am I doing this to myself? Something’s overwhelming me.

Once only had he lost control. “That awful, drunken scene played out in front of Judge Bacon’s house in Monroe many years ago,” he whispered to himself. “No, perhaps I allowed myself too many liberties with that Lyon woman down in Texas just after the war while Libbie visited Monroe—Mrs. Farnham Lyon. And the next year, that young wife of a fellow officer on Sheridan’s staff, during that stopover in St. Louis, while Libbie and I made our way to the regiment’s first home at Fort Riley. Twice already … would that there be no more.”

Over and over Custer reran through his mind those lines he had penned in his journal a short day and a half after the battle, scratching out words of passion, unable still to escape a haunting vision of those black-cherry eyes and wind-rouged cheeks burnished rose beneath a winter sun as she flicked her quick, inviting smile up at him.

Monaseetah is exceedingly comely … her well-shaped head was crowned with a luxuriant growth of the most beautiful silken tresses, rivaling in color the blackness of the raven and extending when allowed to fall loosely over her shoulders, to below her waist.

Custer reveled in the warm breeze at his neck. “I must keep that journal safe from prying eyes that might by accident or design seek to read between those lines. Surely any man reading my thoughts would discover I care all too much already. Pray, how could I ever claim innocence?” Custer was startled by a voice.

“General?”

The commander turned, finding Moylan at his side.

“For a moment there I figured you nodded off with your eyes open … as you often do. Seems you were gone somewhere in a dream perhaps.”

“What is it, Lieutenant?”

“Corbin’s riding in.”

Custer glanced at the bone-yellow sun nailed against a pale, winter-blue sky. Late morning.

“Maybe he’s spotted camp, Lieutenant.”

Custer kept his men at a march as the scout charged up at a full gallop. Wheeling his mount in a knee-sliding circle, Corbin brought the snorting, sidestepping animal alongside the Seventh’s commander.

“Quite a show, Jack.”

“I been on into camp. They’re waiting for you.”

“Much farther?”

“Ain’t but a stone’s throw now. Less than two miles. They got every man-jack called out—seems Sheridan fixes to welcome you home in real style.”

“He does, eh? Then I suppose there isn’t a better spot than here and no better time than the present to shape up our columns. Moylan, pass the word that we’ll halt on that bench up ahead. I want the men prepared for review before General Sheridan!”

“Hurry, goddammit, Perkins! You’re gonna miss the best show of your miserable life!”

“I’m coming, Hinkle. Damned boots rubbed a blister on the back of my heel. Governor Crawford showed no mercy on us Kansas boys.”

“Lucky any of us survived that snowstorm. C’mon! I hear this General Custer puts on a show no man can forget! Pick up your feet. I don’t wanna miss a minute of his ride-through. Custer’s the man who not only whipped J.E.B. Stuart’s ‘Invincibles’ and turned the tide at Gettysburg—but he’s the one who forced ol’ Robert E. Lee himself to throw in the towel at Appomattox!”

Beneath a glorious winter sun warming this first day of December, the air more vibrant than it had been for weeks, General Philip H. Sheridan formed the men to review Custer’s regiment. Flanked by his officer staff and joined by every infantryman not otherwise on duty in camp, along with the Nineteenth Kansas Volunteers who had failed to march through the snows of Indian Territory in time to join with the Seventh Cavalry before the attack on Black Kettle’s camp, Sheridan awaited his dashing young protégé.

“Custer won’t dare disappoint any audience, Perkins,” Hinkle said. “Someday you’ll tell all your grandchildren about this day—seeing the Boy General hisself marching home in victory after his Seventh Cavalry crushed the Cheyenne nation!”

First into view rode the Osage trackers, led by Little Beaver, the aging, stoic warrior who had painted himself for this grand march. Right behind him pranced Hard Rope and the younger trackers, each singing his personal war chant—songs of victory and glory, accompanied by frequent whoops of joy punctuated by firing their army-issued rifles into the air.

Up and down the column galloped a young warrior named Trotter who brandished aloft the long scalp of a Cheyenne he flaunted for all to see—a scalp he bragged belonged to none other than Chief Black Kettle himself. Other Osage trackers waved captured lances they had decorated with dangling, blood-encrusted Cheyenne scalps. Some beat on small hand drums while others shook their bows and rawhide shields, all astride their prancing mounts, every mane and tail resplendent with red and blue, green and white strips cut from captured Cheyenne blankets.

Directly behind these joyful warriors who had just secured a victory over a longtime enemy rode Lieutenant Silas Pepoon’s civilian scouts. Ben Clark and Jack Corbin rode in tandem, Moses Milner and courier Ed Guerrier on their heels. Only Milner had refused to clean up for Custer’s show. His well-matted beard still bore bits of fluff and lint, scraps of many a meal. On his head the long-tangled hair was in much the same disheveled condition, and everything about him remained coated with a well-cured patina of red dirt and mud.

Right behind the scouts marched the regimental band,piping that airy, raucous theme song of the Seventh Cavalry, “GarryOwen”:

Let Bacchus’s sons be not dismayed,

But join with me each jovial blade;

Come booze and sing, and lend your aid

To help me with the Chorus.

In place of Spa we’ll drink brown ale,

And pay no reckoning on the nail,

No man for debt shall go to jail

From GarryOwen in glory!

No man for debt shall go to jail

From GarryOwen in glory!

We are the boys that take delight in

Smashing the Limerick lights when lighting,

Through the streets like sporters fighting,

And tearing all before us.

Let no man mistake that jaunty Irish quickstep now firmly identified with the gallant Seventh Cavalry and its dashing young commander. A hundred years before, this regimental march was named for “Garry Owen,” Gaelic for Owen’s Garden, a suburb of Limerick, Ireland, which throughout the eighteenth century was noted for its rowdy melees of drunken soldiers. While the merry tune had been associated with such groups as the Queen’s Fifth Royal Lancers, it was later adopted by some units of the Union Army of the Potomac during the Civil War.

But by 1868 this rousing, heart-pounding Irish melody firmly belonged to one regiment and one regiment only—the Seventh Cavalry.

To the stirring call of trumpets, Custer pranced into view astride Dandy, curried and gleaming for the triumphant entry. Custer’s buckskin leggings had been brushed clean for the occasion, their long fringe fluttering on the breeze, topped by a hip-length sack coat trimmed with fur collar and cuffs. He had combed his red-blond beard, letting his shoulder-length curls stream over his collar. Atop his head sat a pillbox otter cap.

“What a figure he cuts, Hinkle!”

“I’d say! See how firmly he’s in control of that sidestepping stallion, waving to spectators like they was paying him court!”

“That they are, Hinkle!”

Directly behind Custer plodded the captives. He had expressly wanted the Cheyenne to witness the grand spectacle first-hand, to experience how the soldiers revered their Boy General. Scores of widows and orphans trudged past Sheridan, their dark eyes averted, many hiding their faces. They feared torture and death now that they had come to the pony soldier camp. Some older women keened their death songs.

The enlisted men of the Seventh Cavalry followed the prisoners, while behind them rumbled the wagons of Lieutenant Bell’s quartermaster corps. In some of the slat-beds rode the wide-eyed and fearful wounded captives. In another lay Custer’s resplendent Cheyenne lodge. As the last wagons rattled into view, Custer pranced around in a tight circle, then nudged Dandy forward with his golden spurs.

“General Sheridan!” Custer called out, saluting.

“Custer, my friend!” Sheridan saluted, then presented a bare hand to the young officer. “How glad I am to see you.”

“No more happy than I!”

“You’ve done it, by damn! Showed ’em all, haven’t you?”

“I hope now to get on with my career—what needs doing here on the plains.”

“There’s not a goddamned thing to stop us now, Custer. You’ve seen to that with this stunning victory. Like the Shenandoah, you haven’t let me down!”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Come, Armstrong. We’ll have some refreshments at my headquarters. You can tell me all there is to tell of routing these bloodthirsty savages!”

“It’d be my honor. I’ll return in a moment after I’ve passed the orders for encampment.”

“Dismissed!” Sheridan saluted again, that Irish smile bright within his dark beard.

Custer answered the salute, then brought Dandy around smartly with the gold spurs.

“I won’t dare miss our victory celebration, sir!”