Long Winter Gone

CHAPTER 15

LIKE any morsel of gossip, the discovery of Elliott’s command spread through the regiment like wildfire. Barely controlling his own rage, Custer ordered three of Bell’s wagons emptied and dispatched with another squad to follow Sergeant Nels Schmidt, with orders to bring in the bodies of Elliott’s men. At the same time, Sheridan and Custer determined to take two companies of troops with them as they marched downstream toward the nearby camps deserted following Black Kettle’s defeat.

“From the lay of the land, Custer, I get an idea why you didn’t learn of the other villages until it was almost too late.”

“Not just the rolling countryside, sir. Bloody poor scouting on our part. Should’ve known more of what I was going into before I attacked that Cheyenne village.”

“You feel lucky you rode out of this valley with your hair?”

“It’d never come to that, General! Not like poor Elliott.”

“Perhaps it was fortuitous that you retreated from the Washita when you did. Appears you would’ve had your hands full finding time to scratch your ass with thousands of hostiles breathing down your neck.”

“I’ve learned my lesson. Too late for Major Elliott to learn his. Have to rely more on my scouts. Pay a bit more attention to their advice.”

“Haven’t learned it all yet, eh, Custer?”

Custer flashed a nervous slash of a grin at Sheridan. “No. Seems life has a way of dealing me a surprising card every now and then.”

Both chuckled at Custer’s easy joke on himself, until a small group of civilian and Osage scouts, clustered in a loose knot up the trail, drew their attention. The guides sat sullen and silent atop their horses, waiting for Custer to ride up.

Corbin spoke first. “Joe’s downstream, searching a village. This’un here appears to be where the Arapaho pitched camp.”

“Very well. Lead on, Jack. Show me what you’ve learned.”

By late afternoon, Custer had scoured every camp. The best estimates by trackers and scouts alike put the number of Indians who had been camped in the valley of the Washita the morning the Seventh Cavalry thundered into Black Kettle’s camp as somewhere between five thousand and sixty-five hundred. What could quickly raise the hackles on the back of any trooper’s neck was that of this number, at least a third could be counted as warriors of fighting age, each one of them carrying government-issue weapons, each warrior spoiling for a good scrap with the U.S. Cavalry.

The Osages informed Custer they believed the small camp had been Arapaho under Little Raven; the largest, Cheyennes under Medicine Arrow; and in addition, two bands of Kiowas under Satanta and Lone Wolf. They had found enough signs in the abandoned camps to know the Washita had been visited at the time of the battle by some small bands of Apache and Comanche.

“When I said you’d struck a nest of yellow jackets, General”—Moses Milner paused to spit a stream of brown juice into the trampled snow, “was I far wrong?”

“No, you weren’t, Joe,” Custer admitted. “Appears there was plenty enough of ’em to fight that day.”

“Them Cheyenne can give a fella all the fight you want—if’n you plan on running onto ’em again sometime down the line.”

“Soon, Joe,” Custer growled. “I want to find out what these Kiowa and Cheyenne are made of.”

In every camp lay signs of a hasty retreat. Stuffed in the forks of the winter-bare trees stood hundreds of peeled lodge poles the tribes planned to use as replacements come spring and breakup of the Washita camps. As the cavalry officers rode into the last abandoned village, identified by the Osages as a Kiowa camp, they noticed hundreds of buffalo robes and old, vermin-infested blankets scattered across the grounds. Kettles and other cast-iron cooking utensils had been abandoned in a hurried and disorderly flight, along with adzes, knives, even an ancient coffee mill.

“Near as the scouts can determine it, General,” Custer said to Sheridan, “this was Satanta’s crowd—camped right here.”

“General Custer!”

They wheeled at the sound of the familiar voice. Ben Clark jogged up to the cluster of officers.

“Begging pardon, General Sheridan. Should be calling the lieutenant colonel by his proper rank.”

“That’s quite all right, son.” Sheridan smiled genuinely.

“You act as if you’ve got the jitters bad, Ben. Seen a ghost?” Custer inquired.

“Kiowas—the ones raiding Kansas, sir.”

“How’re you so sure of that?” Sheridan demanded.

“We finally have some evidence, General. No mistaking it now.”

“Show me!” Sheridan flagged his arm impatiently.

Clark led the officers past snowy circles clearly showing where the lodges had been pinned to the earth, each complete with a blackened, rock ring signifying a fire pit. Milner, Corbin, and a handful of Pepoon’s army scouts waited with Hard Rope and other Osage scouts in a mute circle.

As Custer and the others approached, the scouts shuffled out of the way. On the ground lay two stiffened, snow-dusted bodies. They were not Indians.

The smaller of the two was a boy about two years of age. While he appeared malnourished, with sunken cheeks and ribby flanks, along with several bruises coloring his death-pale face, no man was certain just how the boy had died.

Beside the youngster lay a larger corpse, more pitiful to look at. Despite the blood, decay, and predators, any man could tell she had been a beauty—blond, in her early twenties. Her skull crushed. Two bullets fired point-blank into her forehead from such close range that powder burns smudged the edges of the tiny, puckered holes.

“They ain’t been captive here long, General,” Milner said, breaking the tense silence.

“Why do you say that?” Custer inquired.

“She’s still got her civilian clothes on. That dress, them gaiters on her legs to hold up them torn stockings, all of it. She been here very long at all, them clothes’d be worn out. Be wearing Injun dresses an’ leggings.”

“I see …” Custer’s voice trailed off.

“You might want to see this too, General.” Jack Corbin stepped up, opening his hand. In it lay a small piece of cornmeal cake.

“What’s that, pray tell?” Sheridan demanded.

“Food for the road, sir,” Corbin answered sourly.

“Found it when we turned the body over. Gal had it stuffed down between her breasts. Near as we can figure, she was fixing to light out,” Milner said, his teeth tearing at a new hunk of black tobacco.

His eyes slewed around the group of high-ranking officers for a few breathless moments more before he continued. “When Custer’s soldiers rode down on Black Kettle’s camp, the news traveled downriver damned quick. Wasn’t long before news hit this village and all hell broke loose, most like. Warriors hustling out for the fight, getting weapons and ponies ready to ride out to do battle. Women and kids screeching to beat the band, tearing down lodges so the camp’d hit the trail running.”

“Goddammit! What of the woman?” Sheridan griped, perturbed at the long-winded way of scout Milner.

“General—” Milner spat a stream of tobacco juice, letting Sheridan suffer a bit more of a wait, “we figure this poor woman got wind of what was going on in all the excitement. Somehow she figured out the army was attacking the villages and she sure didn’t want to be dragged along by the squaws when they broke camp. Seems she figured to tear off and make good her escape, get downstream some-ways to soldiers. But that’s probably when she was found out.”

“And murdered!” Sheridan roared into the silence around him.

“Two bullets in the head, close range. That’s murder in my tally,” Milner said.

Custer knitted his bushy blond eyebrows to tell Milner he disapproved of openly baiting his superior. “Before or after her skull was crushed?”

“She’s shot after. Dead a’ready.”

“My Lord!” Sheridan whispered angrily.

“First time a man sees such savagery, General, it leaves its scar,” Custer said.

“Granted, I witnessed my share during the recent rebellion—yet I saw nothing as inhumane as this.”

“I wouldn’t call an Indian human by any stretch of the imagination, General,” said Schuyler Crosby, Sheridan’s aide-de-camp.

“Spoken like a truly ignorant soldier boy!” Milner spat at the well-scrubbed officer.

Crosby puffed like a challenged prairie rooster. “Why, I’ll not be lectured by some half-savage, unkempt wild man smelling no better than an Indian of bear grease.”

“Ain’t no different than any stupid pencil-pushing desk soldier smelling of lilac water yourself!” Milner barked back into the trembling officer’s crimson face.

“Gentlemen! Please!” Custer barked.

For the moment it appeared the young Lieutenant Colonel Schuyler Crosby would draw his pistol on Milner. Custer was certain that should Crosby break leather with that revolver of his, Crosby would be the dead man.

Custer clamped Crosby’s wrist. “I recommend you think twice about it, Colonel, then take your hand from your belt and scratch your nose with it.”

Crosby stared into the cold, icy blue of Custer’s eyes. Instead of scratching his nose, Sheridan’s aide jerked his arm free as he wheeled about and stomped off.

“You were a bit hard on him, Joe,” Custer chided.

“Nowhere near as hard as I’d been had the dumb bastard cleared leather with that popgun of his.” Milner brought his left hand out from under his coat where he gripped his own Walker Colt. “Never got the goat of a man so quick before.”

“You egged the man on!” Sheridan moved closer, his eyes flaring with accusation.

“Begging pardon, sir!” Custer stuck an arm out, stopping Milner from starting a ruckus with Sheridan. “I think Crosby there was provoked by nothing more than his own impetuous nature. Besides, I agree with Joe.”

“Agree?” Sheridan snapped.

“We really aren’t all that different from the savages we’re chasing, General.”

“Explain yourself, Custer.”

“Simple, General. Only difference between us and the Indians is that these hostiles live more closely to nature and the wilderness than white men do. We have in all of us that selfsame capacity for brutality. Since the red man’s that much closer to the wild side of a man’s soul, it doesn’t take all that long for him to get from peaceful happiness to the savage murder of a woman when she’s seen as nothing more than an enemy who’s trying to escape.”

Sheridan fumed. “Explain why—”

“Ironic thing about it was that Crosby was just about to prove the very point Joe was making.”

Sheridan huffed at last. “I suppose you do have a point there.”

“I’ll send Moylan with some men back to remove the bodies to our camp for the night. Given a decent burial.”

“Very well,” Sheridan growled, still shaken by the fiery exchange that had nearly ended in bloodshed.

A winter sun had begun to settle among the western hills when Sheridan jabbed a finger into Custer’s chest. “Custer, we must stop them now. There’s no other course.” The iron was in Sheridan’s voice.

“Believe me—we’ll stop them. If the General pleases, a moment in private?” Custer turned away from the cluster of officers with Sheridan at his side and stepped off a few yards.

“General, we can’t afford to get bogged down here on the southern plains. We must remember not to put a match to the situation here … or we won’t be free to see to problems north of here.”

“You concentrate on this damned department,” Sheridan growled. “It’s your job—and your career. If you don’t stop these wild savages from murdering and stealing and Lord knows what right here and now, by God, you never will make command!”

Custer held his pride in check. “Your plans for this operation show we can stop them here, this winter.”

Sheridan bit off the end of a stogie. “Better you decide what you’re gonna do with your career, Custer. Lines are being drawn, not only out here but in Washington City. Can’t you see there’s a great imbalance in justice here on the frontier.”

“Justice?”

“If a man in these parts commits murder, what do we do to him?”

“We hang him.”

“Precisely!” Sheridan’s face grew more animated. “If a man steals a horse, what do we do?”

“Imprison him.”

“Right again.”

“I don’t get your point, General. What’s all this have to do with the hostiles?”

“When the goddamned redskins commit these same crimes, we give the bastards better annuities! More blankets, flour, sugar—and guns. Always the guns! Under this present confusing government policy the civilization of the wild man will progress very slowly. If at all.”

“I agree. If the government only kept the weapons from the young warriors. The officials back east who’re awarding these annuities to the hostile tribes are the same officials bawling for the army’s help in stomping out the raids and killings. If they’d keep the guns away from the agencies, the history of these plains would be written with far fewer bloody chapters.”

“My young friend,” Sheridan said, “you’re beginning to understand the bitter truth about the soldier’s life. History’s not written by soldiers like us. History’s written by the politicians. They’re the ones who hold the real power. We poor soldiers do nothing more than live or die in those scenarios written for us by the men who wield the true power. With all our might of men and arms—we old soldiers are nothing more than paper tigers.”

“I’m surprised to hear you say that, sir. I can’t believe we’re unable to change the outcome of things here in the western lands.”

“If you don’t believe me now, young friend, I’ll give you a few years. Then you should see things in a truer light. You’ll realize we have no real control over the destiny of this frontier.”

“A few years?” Custer swallowed. “I don’t have that long to wait, General. With the way things are going now, it’ll be eight to ten years before I can expect to make colonel. Too damned many officers and too few command slots.”

Sheridan whirled on him. “Then if you want to make something of your future, Custer … there’s one and one way only. You crush these red sonsabitches on the southern plains. Give those starch-collared bastards back east something to sit up and take notice of. You’ll make a name for yourself. Hang every goddamned warrior you get your hands on, burn the villages and drive the rest back to their reservations. You do that … George Armstrong Custer will never have to worry about his future again!”

A pale winter sun lost itself behind the hills as Sheridan’s detail pushed into camp east of Black Kettle’s devastated village. Here they’d stay upwind of those rotting pony carcasses.

“Dr. Bailey,” Custer said to the surgeon assigned to the Kansas Volunteer Cavalry, “you and Major Jenness will be in charge of identifying the young woman and child. Perhaps someone in your regiment will know the deceased.”

“Very good, General,” Bailey answered. He and Major George Jenness trudged back to that pair of horses bearing the frozen corpses.

The Kansans spread blankets across the icy snow, then gently lowered both bodies to the ground. Jenness himself carried the grim news to each of the volunteer companies.

An eerie pall of silence descended over the camp of the Nineteenth Kansas. One by one the companies began a sad procession past the grotesque corpses. Two soldiers volunteered to hold torches over the bodies stretched out on the gray of army blankets. Winter’s twilight tumbled headlong into the blackness of a tarry, silent night, punctuated only by an occasional cough or sneeze of a soldier standing patiently in line, waiting for his turn to inspect the mortal remains of mother and child.

From those surrounding hills drifted the yips and the howls of four-legged predators, finished gorging themselves for the day. Stiff leather soles scuffed across the crusty, trampled snow as each man shuffled forward in line until his turn came at last, stepping into that spooky corona of torchlight, bending down to stare into the horrifying death masks of mother and son.

Moylan stood beside Custer, shivering involuntarily with the aura of melancholy. Surely, Myles thought, these Kansas men would rather be at home, tending their stock or repairing plow harness.

He drank long from the tin of coffee one of the Kansas mess cooks kept warm for him. Wondering when he might slip off to find some sow belly. Hardtack, if nothing else—

“Oh, sweet God!”

A soldier’s screech yanked Myles out of his hunger. Beneath the fluttering torches the Kansas farm boy’s knees went to mush. He fell on hands and knees over the bodies. Confusion broke out as others crushed around him, friends helping the young man to his feet when he sank like a wet sack of oats, sobbing.

“It’s her! And the boy, Willie! Oh, goddamn ’em!”

Moylan sloshed the coffee out of his cup, following Custer into the crowd, where together they pushed their way through the volunteers until they confronted Dr. Bailey and the young soldier.

“What’s your name, son?”

The soldier studied Custer’s face before answering. His dirty cheeks were tracked with tears, his reddened eyes sunken deep in a pinched face matted with the peach fuzz of youth.

“Simms, sir.”

“I’m Custer.”

“I know, General.” His quivering chin dropped against his chest, stifling a sob as it broke past his cracked lips. The soldier’s body shook with torment.

“You know the woman, Simms?”

“Yes.” More hot tears gushed free. Bailey and another soldier steadied the young private. “She was my cousin’s wife!”

“This is her boy?” Custer whispered.

“Willie Blinn.”

“That means this is Mrs. Clara Blinn, General,” Bailey said, touching Custer with his dark-ringed eyes. “She was with her husband, coming back from a trading venture with several others, when their train was attacked on the old Arkansas River Road, just inside the Colorado line. For three days the savages shot up the group pretty bad, even though the folks used their wagons for cover. Not one mule or horse left standing when the bloodthirsty murderers pulled out.”

Custer turned to Simms. “You’re that certain this is Clara Blinn and her son Willie?”

The soldier nodded before he spoke, lips trembling, as if he knew should he make a sound it would surely turn into something horrifying of itself. “Yessir. I was there myself. Not many of us come out of that fight.”

“You were at the attack on the wagon train?”

Simms nodded.

“Did Blinn himself die in the attack and siege on the train?” Custer inquired.

“No,” Bailey replied. “Only seriously wounded. Their kin was hopeful she’d be found alive. Barely twenty-three years of age. Her boy can’t be more than two years old now, from what I can tell of his little bone structure.”

“General Custer!”

“Over here, Cooke!” Custer shouted into the tar-black of night, responding to the voice thick with the Canadian Scotch accent of Billy Cooke’s motherland.

“Ah, General, been searching for you everywhere. Tom—Lieutenant—Custer’s detail’s bringing in the remains of Elliott’s men now.” He watched Custer’s shoulders sag.

“He was a fine officer. Been with me and the Seventh from the start.”

“I remember,” Cooke replied. “We joined near the same time, when the new regiment was created.”

“They’re bringing them soon?”

“Wagons pulling in now.”

“What time do you have, Moylan?”

Myles pulled a watch from his tunic pocket, turning it so that he could read the face beneath the dancing torchlight. “Almost nine o’clock.”

“Time to go.” He took his reins from Moylan and climbed to the saddle. “Dr. Bailey? Please see that Mrs. Blinn and her son are wrapped securely in blankets then bound with rope. Better that we take them north with us. Home to their folk. Can’t think of a reason why we should bury them in Indian Territory.”

“Not a goddamned reason. General.”

Moylan followed Custer as he sawed the horse about, easing his way through that mob of muttering volunteers, who were angry hearing that one of the women captives had been found … dead. By the time Custer and Moylan made it back to the Seventh’s camp, Regimental Surgeon Henry Lippincott had already ordered a sweeping crescent of bonfires started by the soldiers. In the light of that half-ring lay sixteen bodies. Already a handful of the frozen corpses had been positively identified by friends and bunkies. Custer slid from his cold saddle and Dandy was led away.

“Lippincott.”

“General?”

“Thanks for seeing that things got started in my absence.”

“You’re welcome, General. Regarding disposition of the remains, we’ll await your decision.”

On his way back to camp earlier, Custer had decided. “We’ll bury them here. Where they fell.” He looked up from the naked, grotesque corpses. “You seen Benteen?”

“No, General. I haven’t—”

“Sir!” An older soldier strode up. “I saw him yonder while ago.”

“Thank you, soldier. Run him down. Ask him to see me at once.”

“Sure thing, sir!”

Custer turned to the surgeon. “Have you identified Elliott?”

Without a word, Lippincott motioned for Custer to follow. They walked quietly among the soldiers parading past the frozen corpses.

“Several of us think this was Major Elliott.”

His eyes narrowed on a corpse brutally beheaded. The scalp of the head they had found had been torn away before the back of the skull was smashed to jelly. Blood and ooze had blackened over the entire head. Lippincott turned the grisly object so the wide, glazed eyes stared up at Custer. Moylan heard Custer draw a deep breath of cold air. The young adjutant swallowed repeatedly to keep his own stomach down.

“That’s Major Elliott,” Custer agreed, tearing his eyes from the frightening gore. He let another breath out slowly. “As each man is identified, I want it recorded in your medical records. The number and type of wounds, weapons used, if possible—all of it. Wrap each of the remains in a blanket, binding it with rope. Let’s make it hard for any predators to get at the men now.”

“Very good, sir.”

“You’ve had supper, Lippincott?”

“No. Weren’t many of us had an appetite after seeing what was done to these men.”

“General? You wanted to see me?”

Custer turned to face the strapping Missourian. “Benteen! Yes. I want your company to prepare a mass grave for these bodies. You need enough room for all the enlisted.”

“What of Elliott, sir?”

“We’re taking him back with us. He’ll not be left here. As an officer, he deserves the honor of a military funeral. I believe you can understand that?”

“Perfectly.”

“We’ll lay his men here in the valley of the Washita. Where they fell in duty to their country.”

Benteen saluted, his back snapping ramrod rigid. “I’ll be at it straightaway. Is there a particular spot you had in mind?”

Custer appraised the officer a moment. “You’re familiar with the country immediately west of the village?”

“I am. We rode in for the attack from that direction.”

“There’s a hill just west of the village. Dig the grave atop that hill, overlooking the village and the river beyond. From there, a man can see the defeated village and the icy Washita.”

Benteen snapped a quick salute and was gone.

“He doesn’t like you, General,” Moylan said.

Custer turned to Moylan. “He doesn’t have to, Lieutenant.”

“With your permission, if I was you, I’d picked someone else for grave detail, sir.”

Blue eyes flashed in the torchlight. “Mr. Moylan, you aren’t me. Besides—” Custer gazed after the tall Virginia-born officer disappearing into the gloom of night, “Benteen’s a good soldier. He may hate my insides, and I his—but Benteen is a soldier above all. And he’ll always do exactly as ordered.”