Long Winter Gone

CHAPTER 12

“CLARK! Glad I found you!”

Ben Clark turned to see Captain Frederick W. Benteen headed his way. “Benteen, isn’t it?”

“Right!” The young, bearded officer presented his hand. “Didn’t know you’d remember me from the Washita.”

“Yeah, I remember,” he replied, suspicions aroused. He went back to sharpening the knife on a whetstone. “What can I do for you?”

Benteen settled on a stump near the scout. “I figured you’d be the man for what I had in mind. Got a good head on your shoulders—a memory as sharp as that blade you’re honing.”

“Sounds like I’m the family turkey getting fattened for the holiday feast, Captain. You said you’d found me a’purpose for something. Care to spit it out and stop knocking ’round in the brush so much?”

“I’ve something of great import to ask of you, Ben,” the young captain began with a rush. His eyes slid this way,then that. “I really think it best we talk somewhere a little more private. This spot’s a bit too public.”

Clark measured the man. “So tell me, why something private?”

“Too many ears in an army camp. How quickly I learned that during the Rebellion down south.”

“You were regular army?”

“Breveted a lieutenant colonel. Proud of every battle and the action of those men assigned to me.” Benteen hunched forward to whisper. “That’s precisely the reason I find myself talking with you.”

“I was a Jayhawker myself. Odd to think a Missouri boy like you’d go over to the Union cause. Me, I had a Cheyenne wife at the time. Did what I could for the Union army, what was a decent employer—but I get the feeling none of that’s what you’ve come to hear.”

Benteen warily cast his eyes around. “I’ve watched you and have come to believe you’re a man to trust. I want you to keep what we say here in confidence. Can I trust you, Ben?”

For the first time Clark really studied Benteen. “I suppose if it’s all that serious, Captain—” he spit a brown stream from the side of his cheek, “then it’s something worth the telling, ain’t it?”

“More of a question, Ben.” Benteen slid a little closer. “What do you know about Major Joel Elliott’s men in Black Kettle’s camp on the morning of the battle? Where they were, what they were doing, any of it.”

“Suppose I’d know about as much as the next man.” Clark knit his brow, scowling at Benteen.

“Did you know of Custer’s refusal to send Elliott any aid when he first learned of the major’s predicament?”

“Whoa! Hold on a goddamned minute! Just what the Katy hell are you after here, Captain?”

“Looking for corroboration for the many reports concerning Custer’s refusal to offer Elliott assistance. Not only that, but Custer failed to determine what became of Elliott’s squad later in the day.” He began counting off on his rough, callused fingers. “Before it got too dark. Before leaving the battlefield. Before leaving the damned Washita Valley itself. Who in hell’s creation knows right now what happened to Elliott’s men except—”

“All wiped out,” Clark said calmly. “Down to the last man.”

“How can you be so—”

“If they wasn’t dead when the general pulled out of that valley, they sure as hell are now.”

Benteen straightened. “Precisely the information I want to hear from someone who’d know—”

“Why the hell you want me to tell you anything? What good’s it going to do you? Or the general himself? Most of all, I can’t help but wonder what the hell good’s it going to do Elliott and his soldiers.”

“Precisely, Clark! If we see that something’s done about Custer, we can prevent this sort of sad affair from repeating itself. We want to be sure Custer never orders another field officer into battle, then abandons the man.”

Clark eyed Benteen for a long moment, sizing the captain up as a cranky man who carried around every bit as big an ego as Custer. “So, tell me what you plan on doing to make things any different for the boys in blue.”

“If the requisite testimony’s there, we can bring Custer up on charges on this Elliott matter. Beginning with the abandonment of his men under fire, all the way to his failure to properly search the area for survivors.”

“You want to file charges against the general?”

“Yes. If the investigation leads to charges. We’ll need affidavits from witnesses like you.”

“Me! Who else you got to testify?”

“Right now we have a few soldiers from Godfrey’s company who heard some of the scattered rifle fire from across the river and were present when Godfrey told Custer about—”

“All right. You got Godfrey. Who else?”

“Uh … no, Ben. You got the wrong impression there. I can’t convince Godfrey to testify against Custer, nor prefer any charges.”

“Who else? You’ve got some other officers.”

Benteen swallowed hard. He felt his one chance slipping through his fingers, fluttering just out of reach. Hoping Clark would help him cement together a case. “Since we can’t get an officer to prefer charges against Custer, we were hoping to find one of you civilian scouts—”

“Can’t find an officer to prefer charges!” Clark squeaked. “Captain, it sure sounds like you’ve got yourself a real bitch of a problem here—and Ben Clark ain’t the man to help you out of it.”

“But Custer could’ve ordered—”

“My God, Benteen! Haven’t you realized this Injun fighting ain’t at all like chasing Rebs? Rebs fought you like white men. They didn’t butcher and maim—hack off your head and arms, legs, even worse. The sun was going down on your regiment. Custer sat in the middle of a thousand warriors, all madder’n a bunch of riled-up hornets with what they saw done to Black Kettle’s camp—not to mention the pony herd. Ain’t a damned thing more that man could’ve done one way or another would’ve changed things for Elliott’s men.”

The young captain sighed deeply, then swiped at his dripping nose, reddened with the cold of twilight. “I take it you won’t reconsider.”

“Not a thing I got to say is going to help those men now.”

“Really figure they’re dead, don’t you?”

Clark glared flints at Benteen for a long moment. “I said it before. Doesn’t matter much anymore. Not even to Elliott and his men. If they weren’t dead before we pulled outta the Washita …”

Benteen filled in the scout’s pause. “They are now.”

“Nothing I can do help ’em now.”

“What about all the Major Elliotts or the brave troopers to come who’ll serve under Custer in the years ahead? What about them?”

Clark shook his head. “The future, Captain? Seems like that always takes care of itself—or it’ll take care of George Armstrong Custer.”

Clark dropped to his knees and threw some chunks of kindling on the fire. “I damn well won’t be around, if you want to know what I think. You boys play soldier long enough, hard enough, maybe you won’t be around long either.”

Clark plopped back down on his stump. “Truth is, I don’t like Custer any better’n you. But the way I figure it, I’ve got a job scouting for the man. If Custer doesn’t choose to listen to me, that’s his business. But I know damned well someday it’ll be his neck, providing he doesn’t start paying heed to his scouts.”

Benteen creaked to his feet, realizing the scout wasn’t about to change his mind.

“That’s just the difference between me and your soldiers, Captain. I got enough good sense to know when I should disappear over the next hill. I know Injuns. I know the country. That’s why I’m a scout—and a civilian. And I’m learning a lot about army officers, too, this goddamned winter.”

The man in buckskins rose, squarely facing the captain. “I keep my hair ’cause I’ve learned what goes on inside you brass-buttoned, paper-collar officers.”

“Regrettable you can’t see things my way, Ben.” The captain resigned himself to defeat. “You could’ve been a big help to a lot of young soldiers.”

“Let’s just say I’ll keep my own fat out of the fire.”

“Read you loud and clear, mister.”

“Your soldier boys could help themselves the same way if they’d a mind to.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, Mr. Clark. The army shoots deserters. Being a soldier means following the orders your superior officer gives you.”

“Even if that order will kill you?”

Benteen swallowed hard. “I suppose that’s in the nature of military life, Mr. Clark.”

“Then I ain’t in so bad a shape, am I, Captain? I’ve got no one but me to follow. While you and your soldiers … you have General Custer. Clark slipped his knife into its sheath, then high-stepped the log he had been sitting upon. He disappeared down a row of company tents without another word.

Benteen watched the scout fade into the twilight. “Make no mistake about it, Mr. Clark. You surely do have the better end of the deal.”

Twilight fell by the time Mahwissa and Monaseetah raised Custer’s captured Cheyenne lodge beside his Sibley tent. A hundred yards away the triumphant Osage trackers celebrated around a huge bonfire down on the banks of the Beaver River. Roasts and ribs broiled on stakes jammed into the softening ground near the edge of the flames. At last the Osages would count coup over their old enemies. For too long they had hungered to dance with the blood-encrusted Cheyenne scalps. Out would come the drums and some of the pony soldiers’ whiskey. On through the frosty night the trackers would dance to celebrate the army’s winter victory on the Washita.

“General?”

Custer had been watching the two Cheyenne women struggle with the lodgeskin lashed to the lifting pole. At Lieutenant Moylan’s voice he turned, as the women pulled the heavy, painted buffalo hide in both directions from the rear of the lodge, circling to the front to lash the lodgeskin together above the tiny doorway using long willow pins.

“Yes?”

Moylan was not alone. “Sir, may I introduce Daniel Brewster?”

Custer yanked a buffalo mitten from his right hand. “A new recruit, Moylan?”

“Not exactly, sir.”

Custer studied the young man. “Mr. Brewster, is it?”

“Y-yes, sir,” and he bowed his head, shuffling his big feet for an awkward moment after he dropped Custer’s hand.

“Lieutenant, care to explain why Mr. Brewster’s here, if not a recruit for the Seventh Cavalry?”

“Sir, Daniel here—” Moylan cleared his throat nervously, “he’s been waiting down here at Camp Supply for a while already … waiting for our return from the Washita.

“Not exactly to join up,” Moylan continued. “But he did come to ride with the Seventh, sir.”

Brewster stepped up, crushing the soft brim of his worn slouch hat in his huge, scarred hands. “I tried to get to Fort Dodge, General. Before you pulled out.”

Custer appraised the young man all the while. He’d make a fine recruit—strapping, hale fellow that he was. Brewster stood just above six feet. Just as surely he carried close to two hundred pounds across his broad frame. It wasn’t likely a man would find an ounce of fat on the boy—young men of his breeding and background had sweated off every bit of tallow every day of their hard, simple lives.

Daniel Brewster’s face, well tanned beneath a hat’s brim line scarred across his forehead, told the rest of the story. That, and the huge ham hocks of work-worn hands that hung at the end of arms the size of an elk’s foreleg. Especially those hands—roughened, cracked, callused, and perpetually scabbed. The sort of hands owned by a man who could wrench more pleasure out of the simple things of each day’s existence than Custer knew he ever would. For that alone, he instantly admired this young man. More than that, he found himself genuinely liking the open, sun-baked face and deep-seared eyes that held hidden some sad story of long-earned pain.

“Lieutenant, why don’t you fetch some coffee. What say to that, Mr. Brewster? Then we’ll talk over what made you trail the Seventh Cavalry into Indian Territory.”

“I … I’d like that very much, General, sir.” He crimped the soft slouch hat, then nervously tugged at his heavy mackinaw coat. Both had long ago seen their better days. Each sleeve bore a crude leather patch at the elbow. Custer could see the stitches on the patching were not those of a man’s thick, clumsy fingers. Not a plowman’s handiwork. Instead, the hands which had sewn Daniel Brewster’s patches had been feminine, precise—and loving.

“Let’s have a seat over there.” Custer pointed to some cottonwood logs rolled up to his cheery fire. He found himself glancing over as the women finished pinning the hide together from the doorway up to the smoke flaps, then drove long pegs through the edge of the hide into the cold earth with hand-sized stones used as mallets.

“When I missed catching your army back to Fort Dodge, had no choice but to ride down here on my own. Got pinned down in the middle of that Cimarron River country for a few days while a blizzard blew over. By the time I rode in, you had already pulled out on me again.”

Moylan brought two cups of coffee, then stepped away.

“Sounds like you’ve had a straight run at some bad luck trying to catch up with us. Why don’t you tell me what you’re doing here.”

Brewster watched Custer sip his coffee. “Making decisions still pretty new to me, sir. Ever since my pa and brother got killed, I’ve been the one to take care of my mother and sister.”

“How was it your father and brother died?”

“The war, sir.” Brewster looked away self-consciously.

“What engagement?”

“Gettysburg.”

“Meade lost too many good men those three days at Gettysburg. Every inch of ground bloody expensive for both armies.” He gazed into the firelight, remembering the horrible sacrifice in young life that had littered the hills and meadows as wave after wave of Pickett’s infantry and charge after charge of Jeb Stuart’s cavalry had hurtled themselves suicidally against Union positions. “Left to care for your mother and sister?”

“Mama passed on soon after.” Brewster turned away, pulling hard at his hot coffee, scalding his lips and tongue.

“You’ve had much more than your share of grief in five short years. How’d your mother die?”

“Lost her mind from grief, sir. Too much for her to bear—both a son and husband taken at once.”

“Yes … I can understand.” In his mind appeared the vision of that heartrending scene replayed every time he himself had to bid farewell to his own mother following a visit back home. “How’d you find yourself out in Kansas, Mr. Brewster?”

“Thought it best for me and my sister to get a fresh start out this way.”

“Yes. A fresh start in a new land …”

“I happened across a nice parcel up on the Solomon River, about a two-day ride from the Smoky Hill. Then I sent for Anna Belle—my sister, General.”

“Ah, it was your sister, after all.”

“Sir?”

“The patches,” he explained, pointing at Brewster’s elbows.

“Oh, them.” Daniel grinned. “Sewed by my sister just before she got married back in June. Man named John Morgan—nice fella—lived up the river from us. Carpenter by trade. From the east too. Trying his hand at working the land. A kind, good man for Anna Belle.”

His voiced trailed off as he stifled a sob, head falling onto arms he crossed atop his knees. His whole body shook with a long-pent sorrow. “They … they come and shot my sister’s husband! Been married but a month … shot him as he ran back to his cabin … cut down not far from his own door. Running for his rifle.”

“Who shot him?”

Brewster raised his head, wiping the back of a hand across his face, wrenching tears and sniffles away on a wool sleeve. “Indians shot him right in front of my little sister.”

“Your sister tell you the story?”

“No! The same damned red niggers drug Anna Belle off with ’em after burning the place! John was hurt something fearful. But he lived. Wanted to come find Anna Belle with me, but he’s still bedrid and weak.”

“You don’t figure on joining the Seventh to even the score … do you, Mr. Brewster?”

“General, I only want to find my sister. That’s why I’m here to beg of you, sir—” he grabbed hold of Custer’s tunic in his huge, trembling hands, “Let me go with you when you head back after the rest of them murderers. I’m gonna find my sister.”

Custer rose slowly. “It’s not as simple as all that. Let me put this in the kindest possible way, Mr. Brewster. My orders are to put an end to the Indian depredations—their marauding, murdering, stealing, and kidnapping white prisoners.”

“Like my sister—”

“I feel for your plight—really I do. After all, it’s due to sad, sorrowful cases such as yours that I’ve brought my Seventh Cavalry in the middle of this winter to the heart of Indian Territories. I’ll find and punish the guilty Indians. Still, I cannot allow any civilian who feels it his right to use the Seventh Cavalry and the U.S. Army to exact his private revenge.”

“I ain’t asking you for no special treatment!” Brewster blared, leaping to his feet. “Said I’d work for my keep, even if you can’t pay me no wages while we’re on the march. I ain’t out after none of them savages. Just want my sister back.”

“It’s quite out of the question, taking you along with this fighting force. While we hope to free any and all white captives … that’s by no means the priority of my orders. I’m concerned with the punishment of those Indians responsible for crimes the likes of which your sister—”

“Afraid you didn’t understand. It ain’t just that she’s all I got, sir … I’m all Anna Belle’s got in this whole world. Lord God in heaven knows she’s counting on me in her every prayer. Being all my sister has, I can’t stop trying to rescue her.”

“Afraid my mind’s made up, Mr. Brewster.” Custer sipped at his coffee, finding it had grown cold on him. He sloshed it toward the fire ring. “In any event, you’re free to remain here at Camp Supply until our return. If we locate any camps holding white prisoners, we’ll promptly return those captives here. It’d be my fervent prayer that we’d find Anna Belle safe and as sound as could be.”

“Thank you anyway, General.” Brewster dug out a pair of threadbare wool mittens from the deep patch pockets of his mackinaw. “Gotta go ahead on my own. Already decided if you didn’t see fit to take me with you, I wasn’t about to wait no longer. Been almost a half-year now. Gotta do something. She’s counting on me.”

He surprised Custer by taking two long steps around the fire so he stood nose to nose with the Seventh’s commander. Something wounded and pinched had come over his face.

“Maybe no one ever counted on you, General. So you don’t rightly know how it feels for me to be all she’s got left in this whole dang world. I know the Lord God’s gonna help me. Well, I spoke my piece. All I come to say. Thank you for your time, sir.”

Awash in thought, Custer watched Brewster go, studying the strong, wide back, the thick arms stuffed like sausage into his bulky wool coat, and those cracked, flop-eared boots crusted with red clay.

“Brewster!” Custer was still not sure why he hollered out.

“To hell with you, General!” Brewster stopped, whirled about.

“Come here, Mr. Brewster. If I have to, I’ll call the guard.”

He lunged forward, glaring at Custer. Jaws clenched, both big hands tensing at his sides. “That’s what you figure to do, huh? Throw me in irons so I can’t go after Anna Belle on my own? Damn your cowardly hide. If you don’t have the backbone it takes to go after them murdering red savages, there’s men who will.”

“Done, Mr. Brewster?”

“Go ’head. Fetch the guard on me!”

“You’re on army land, within a federal territory ceded to the Indians. Calm yourself—”

“Calm myself? My sister’s out there!” He pointed into the darkness.

“As a civilian employee of the Seventh Cavalry, Mr. Brewster, you’d better cease your noisy tantrum this instant—or I most certainly will be forced to clamp you in irons.”

Brewster’s mouth gaped. “A civilian employee of the Seventh Cavalry?”

“I used those exact words.”

“You mean, work for the army?”

“Unless you figured this was to be a free ride.”

“Why … no, sir. It’s just that—”

“I’m assigning you as a substitute teamster.”

“Thank you, General!” He scooped up Custer’s hand, pumping the whole arm enthusiastically.

“You thought you had me figured out, didn’t you, Mr. Brewster? That’s your first serious mistake. Learn from it.”

“Why’d you change your mind?”

“That’s something I can’t begin to answer.” Custer stared into the firelight thoughtfully.

“Where’re the teamsters camped, sir?”

“We’ll get you there straightaway. Moylan!”

“Yessir!”

Custer watched his young adjutant trot into the light. “Take Mr. Brewster with you. Introduce him to Bell. Give the lieutenant my compliments and have him get Mr. Brewster outfitted.”

“You’ve hired him on, sir?” Moylan’s voice rose with excitement.

“As substitute teamster. He’ll earn his keep while we attempt to free his sister. Isn’t that right, Mr. Brewster?”

“Yes. Absolutely, sir!”

“C’mon, Dan.” Moylan slapped the young farmer on the shoulder. “Let’s go find you a warm blanket to roll up in tonight. You’re in the army now!”

“Not just the army, Myles!” Brewster cried. “By damned—I’m part of the Seventh Cavalry now!”