Seize the Sky

CHAPTER 1

THE dawn air was filled with that heady, earthy fragrance of fresh dung dropped by a few of the hundreds upon hundreds of mules and horses crowding the parade ground.

Springtime brought with it at least one blessing to this land of tractless, far-reaching prairie: enough rain to hold down the thick yellow dust. But rain also brought mud and great, swampy puddles that collected across the swales and at the foot of every hillock. Those puddles in turn bred mosquitoes, winged tormentors soon to rise over this northland as they had for his last three springs here on the Missouri. Huge creatures swarming above these great grasslands in a dark cloak like the horde of locusts swarming above the Egypt of ancient pharoahs.

Still, it would take something far hardier than a plague of mosquitoes to drive him from this western frontier. Perhaps only a call to Washington City itself.

“Mr. Burkman.” He turned to his personal aide. “I see you scribbling in your little book again.”

The short, dark orderly looked at that tall soldier beside him with something akin to worship. “Yes, General.”

“So tell me what you’ve written about this momentous morning so far … a morning of which grand destinies are made, Mr. Burkman.”

The young private cleared his throat and glanced up at his benefactor nervously. “Uhhh, all I’ve written so far is Wednesday, seventeen May, 1876, sir.”

“Nothing else?” His azure blue eyes scanned the activity on the parade ground. “All this time here on the porch this morning, and all you’ve been inspired to write is the date?”

“There’s more, sir—but I’m a little at the loss for words, General. I’ve never been on a campaign before … it’s all a bit overwhelming to me right now.”

“I quite understand, Private,” the officer replied with that famous, peg-toothed smile of his, slapping his orderly on the back. “Tell me, then, have you scribbled anything else of note?”

“Only … Fort Abraham Lincoln, Dakota Territory,” John Burkman said. Then he uttered the rest more softly. “We prepare to embark on a mission of national importance, one that will spell the final subjugation of these plains for the settlement of white civilization, or the continuation of the Indian Wars, which have so long plagued this great land.”

The officer smiled beneath the bushy mustache that hung like corn straw over his mouth. “Very good, John. I like it. But—you ought to scratch the last part of that. We’re going to put an end to the Indian Wars once and for all.”

The young private licked nervously at the dulled point of his pencil, then set it to work, scratching across the sheet of his ledger, attempting to capture more of his commander’s words for history. “Yes, sir,” he replied absently as his hand flew across the page.

“Keep at it, Striker!” He patted the young man’s shoulder again. “You’ll have much to tell your grandchildren about this campaign. There won’t be a man, woman, or child across this great republic of ours who won’t know about the glory-bidden U.S. Seventh Cavalry.”

He stepped toward the edge of the porch, eyes raking the parade ground approvingly. Finally he stuffed his pale fingers into the skintight yellow doeskin gloves and tugged at the tall fringed gauntlets as he plodded down two steps and stopped, breathing deeply of the air of anticipation that hung thick over the parade.

“John, there won’t be a soul from Washington City to St. Louis who fails to know about George Armstrong Custer when the dust settles and my personal standard flies over the battlefield.”

“Yes, General!” Burkman hopped down the steps of the Custer home constructed just west of the massive parade ground so he would stand beside the taller man. He truly idolized the dashing “Boy General,” hero of the Union Army of the Potomac during the Civil War.

He turned to Burkman and again smiled engagingly beneath the bristly mustache. “St. Louis is the site of the Democratic convention next month.”

Burkman was purely muddled now. “I thought you hated politics and politicians both, sir. Why, after what President Grant and the Congressional Committee did to you—”

“Power brokers, Mr. Burkman.” Some of that bright smile had drained from a face beginning to show the signs of age and the toll exacted by years lived at the mercy of wind and rain, sun and cold. The march of time was marked like a war map on that face. “Power to accomplish much of what needs to be done rests in the hands of a few power brokers … and they can select men who will grab the reins of our nation and lead it into our second century.”

“Yes! Our centennial, sir. What an opportunity—”

“Let us take that opportunity in hand—a destiny thrust on few men, Mr. Burkman, a destiny most men would shrink from. Stay at my side, young man, and I’ll take you into this great republic’s second century.”

“I’d be privileged to stand beside you under any circumstances, sir.”

“For the time being, Private Burkman, what say we just head for the Yellowstone?” Custer tugged the cream-colored, wide-brimmed slouch hat over the short, uncharacteristic stubble that covered his head. He worried the new hat’s sweatband into place. “It’ll take some time getting used to this damned haircut Libbie gave me yesterday.”

“Why so short, sir?”

“I wasn’t the only one. Lieutenant Varnum, who heads up our detail of scouts talked me into it, really. Seemed like a good idea at the time. Easier to care for and a hell of a lot cooler. So I got a pair of horse clippers from the livery sergeant and set Libbie to work in the parlor.” He yanked the hat off again and ran a callused, freckled hand over the reddish, thinning stubble. “Not a bad job of it either.”

Custer quickly added, “Not a bad job for a green recruit going west on his first campaign to fight hostiles along the Yellowstone! A dad-blamed shavetail! That’s just the way I feel with this jack-gagger haircut.”

He skipped on down the rest of the wide steps that spilled onto the parade ground from the front veranda of the second home he had built for Libbie at this northern post. Standing across the river from the frontier town of Bismarck, Dakota Territory, the first army outpost built nearby in 1872 had been christened Fort McKeen, home then for the Sixth U.S. Infantry. Not far from it the new buildings of Fort Abraham Lincoln had sprung up on the northern prairie to house some nine companies so that when Custer’s regiment arrived late in the summer of 1873 after a futile pursuit of the Sioux along the Yellowstone, this new home of the Seventh Cavalry sat ready in its fresh coat of paint. Army gray, a color known only for its distinction of losing itself against the prairie background. For some time, quarters were cramped, as the post had room enough for only half the regiment.

Winters could be murderous, with subzero temperatures for weeks at a time, brutal temperatures requiring one soldier’s full-time efforts to keep the numerous fireplaces stoked in the Custer household: six fireplaces on the ground floor and four on the second story. It had been one of those second-floor fireplaces that caused the house to burn to its foundation in the frigid month of February 1874. Just about everything the Custers owned had been destroyed in that disaster, but Libbie mourned most the loss of but one cherished item: a wig she had woven from trimmings of her beloved husband Autie’s long, curly, red blond hair.

As soon as the ground thawed that spring, a second luxurious home had risen on the same foundation. The pride not only of the Custers, but of the entire Seventh as well, it boasted a thirty-two-foot living room with a wide bay window, and a billiard room on the second floor.

No home with so much style would be complete without a library adorned with Custer’s favorite classics, along with biographies of famous generals, history texts, and a smattering of fiction. In addition, there were several rooms where he exhibited his collection of guns, Indian artifacts, and stuffed animal trophies collected over his years in the west. In that decade Custer had harvested quite a collection of trophies, each taken with a nonregulation sporting weapon. His reputation with a rifle had spread far and wide. Even Richard A. Roberts, civilian secretary assigned to General Alfred H. Terry for this summer’s Sioux campaign, had written, “Custer is the best shot with a Creedmore rifle.”

Over the door to Custer’s study, where many of his most prized mementos were displayed, hung a hand-lettered sign reading:

MY ROOM

Lasiate Ogni Speranza, Voi Ch’entrate

(All hope abandon, ye who enter here)

CAVE CANUM

(Beware the Dog)

In that study Custer had spent many hours toiling over his memoirs the last couple of years, insisting that Libbie be in the room with him while he wrote “Battling with the Sioux on the Yellowstone” and began his “War Memoirs” for Galaxy magazine readers back east. It seemed everyone on the other side of the Missouri River thirsted for his vivid tales of action and adventure, danger and bloodshed along the western frontier. So important was reading and writing to his own life, Custer even enjoyed teaching others to read. Many were the hours he would spend on idle winter afternoons with servants’ and enlisted men’s children gathered round his knee, a reader in one hand, a speller in the other. These scenes were a delight for Elizabeth Custer to watch, for Libbie and her darling Autie had long ago given up the hope of ever having children of their own.

Custer ordered a huge garden planted behind his house, enclosed by a tall, stout fence to keep his numerous hunting dogs and staghounds out. The general preferred a lot of fresh vegetables to the usual army rations. Family cook Mary saw to it that the general and his lady were fed appetizing meals envied all along Officers’ Row.

In the spring of 1875 a ballroom had been added to the house so that Custer and his lady Elizabeth could entertain in a much grander style. Libbie was fond of inviting young ladies from their hometown of Monroe, Michigan, or even new acquaintances from their visits to New York City, all to come spend their summers at the fort as guests of the regimental commander. That warm, exhilarating laughter of young women went a long way toward brightening the dull prairie duty of many a young officer himself far from home. Elizabeth had seen to it that a special chandelier was purchased and hung in the ballroom, along with a harp and a grand piano she had rented in St. Paul, Minnesota, and freighted all the way back to Fort Lincoln in an army wagon.

Music and plays contributed to a livelier atmosphere than existed at most frontier posts of the time. The minuets, waltzes, and Virginia reels played in the Custer’s grand ballroom provided some diversion for an otherwise drab existence. One might hear some soldier plucking out tunes such as “La Paloma,” “Susan James,” or “Little Annie Roonie” on a banjo or guitar, or scratched on a fiddle. Whenever Libbie found any trooper to have even the slightest talent at anything musical, that ability was exploited for everyone’s amusement and entertainment.

Even a Swiss cavalryman recently immigrated from his mountain homeland became a regular visitor to the Custer home. While the general lounged on a bearskin rug in his parlor, the Swiss musician performed Tyrolean melodies on his zither. So fond of music itself and a bird’s cheerful songs, Custer had even brought a pet mockingbird all the way from Kentucky when his Seventh Cavalry had been transferred back to frontier duty.

Still Custer had grown restless after a short time in Dakota. Even during the busy social season at Fort Abraham Lincoln, with the fames and the charades and those vignettes played before backdrops of painted canvas, Custer grew restive and bored. Those costume balls and plays were not enough to satisfy this commander of an isolated fortress on the far western edge of an immense frontier. There was something unnamed lacking in his life, and for so long now he had dared not admit it to himself.

Each fall Libbie would join him on a trip back east, perhaps going on to Chicago or New York for some of the bright lights and bustling activity of those teeming cities. Yet the sophisticated veneer wore thin all too quickly, and he found himself suffering that gnawing emptiness once more … needing to replenish the well of his own soul with those desolate prairies and high plains of the far west. Only there on the wild land did he feel himself near whole again—as near to being whole as he had been for the seven years since that long winter gone.

Only then did Custer feel somewhat closer to the Cheyenne woman’s wildness once more.

“Your mount is ready, Mr. Burkman?”

“It is, General.” The private shoved the stub of the pencil back in his pocket and stuffed his notebook in his blue tunic. “I saddled Vic for you, sir. And the troop farrier has Dandy ready for Mrs. Custer—just as you requested, sir.”

“Splendid! I want both those fine animals to get their fill of clean prairie air on this campaign.”

Burkman watched the general remove his hat and swipe his forearm across his brow. In the short time he had known Custer, the young private had watched the general’s hairline recede at a steady pace. Burkman declared cheerily, “Gonna be a hot one for sure today, General.”

He winked at his orderly. “Not even summer yet, John. I’ll just bet you can’t wait.”

Custer stood in Dakota Territory after all, where every scorching summer the land lay blistered like steamy rawhide beneath a merciless one-eyed sun. Winters were just as deadly if not even more brutal, with nothing to slow the arctic wind but the grasslands of Canada.

Still, winter or summer, one of the biggest problems remained that the fort had no well, not even a cistern. Every day water wagons made that bumpy ride down to the river to draw the day’s rations. By late December or early January, those on the water detail would have to chop through as much as five feet of ice before they could haul water up from the Missouri.

If it wasn’t the snow swirling like white buckshot in an eye-stinging winter blizzard, then the soldiers of the Seventh found the summer sky turned black with grasshoppers. If the grasshoppers clinging to everything and everybody wasn’t enough, all a man had to do was wait until the cool of the evening for relief from the excruciating temperatures, when the hordes of mosquitoes would rise up above the Big Muddy like a biting, bloody curse suffered upon the land. Some of the soldiers who had to be outdoors at that time of day had even taken to wearing a balloonlike helmet made with wire and draped with a special netting for protection from the bloodsucking monsters.

After a while a lot of those old-timers with the Seventh Cavalry cursed their lot, wondering what they had done to deserve their imprisonment in this hellhole on the Upper Missouri. Many of them joked that Satan’s roaring fires of sulfur and brimstone could be no worse than late summer at Fort Abraham Lincoln when the thermometer still hovered at better than ninety degrees come sunset and the clock chiming off nine bells.

“Thank you, Mr. Burkman.” Custer admired his stocking-footed, blaze-faced sorrel. “Vic looks ready as ever, doesn’t she?”

Handing the general his reins, John said, “She does that, sir. Even more splendid when you’re in the saddle.”

“If I didn’t know better, I’d say my orderly was bucking for a promotion!”

Custer laughed easily as he tightened Vic’s reins to turn his mare toward the massive parade where the troops gathered for review. Most of the men had spent the last few nights in tents off a distance from the post on a shakedown to ready them for what lay ahead on their march across the western prairie.

“Be sure to fetch Dandy for Mrs. Custer and have him saddled promptly, John,” Custer reminded as he pranced away, waving his big cream-colored hat in the humid dawn air. “Her luggage is down in the foyer, just inside the front door. Have it thrown in my wagon, will you?”

Burkman nodded. He watched the general bring the hat down to strike Vic on her right flank, spurring the mare into that bustle of activity that was the Seventh U.S. Cavalry marching to war.