Long Winter Gone: Son of the Plains - Volume 1

by Terry C. Johnston

The bugler caught his breath, swallowing hard, choking down the pain of the arrow still hanging in his scalp. After he had broken the shaft and pulled the arrow out by himself, Murphy daubed at the oozing wounds with a dirty bandanna he yanked from his own greasy neck. The next task was to rip the graying scalp from the old warrior’s head. He stuffed the dripping trophy in the folds of his blue tunic, smearing his wool shirt with the Indian’s warm, sticky blood.

  Damn, but his feet were cold.

  For seasons without count, Black Kettle had counseled peace with the white man. So many times he had been promised his people could live where they wanted and hunt where they must. Despite the repeated broken government promises to all tribes roaming the southern plains, the chief remained sure that a way would be found allowing red man and white to live side by side.

  With those first early-morning blasts of rifle fire, shouts of soldiers joining the valiant death songs of angry warriors and screams of women and children, Black Kettle yanked his wife from the warm robes of their bedding. Stumbling from their lodge, the couple plunged into the terror.

  Nearby stood some war ponies Cheyenne warriors always staked in camp. Black Kettle frantically tried to lift his woman onto a pony but found he didn’t have the strength left in his cold, tired bones. He crawled atop the nervous, mule-eyed animal, grasping its mane in one hand. The other he extended for his wife to grab, and held stiff his naked foot for her to use as a step. Together they struggled to get her seated in front of him on the prancing, skittish pony, frightened by the shrill noise and gunfire, made madder yet by the smell of gunpowder and fresh blood.

  Ahead of them dashed a ragged line of troopers heading east toward the edge of camp and the horse herd—some of Major Elliott’s men charging toward the open plain.

  There seemed little choice for the Cheyenne chief. Simply a matter of running the gauntlet to cross the river. From there to race south for those Arapaho, Kiowa, and Cheyenne camps downstream.

  “Be of strong heart, woman!”

  Her only reply was the squeeze she gave his old hand.

  “I am with you always, old woman!” Hep-haaa!” he sang out to the stouthearted little pony beneath them.

  A simple matter for the old man to jab the little pony in its ribs, driving the overburdened mustang toward the icy river. Crashing straight through the shredded line of confused, blue-shirted troopers.

  “Holy—”

  “What the hell?”

  “Look out!”

  “There goes one … behind you, Kennedy!”

  Black Kettle found himself near the crossing at the bank of the Washita. Several soldiers wheeled with a jangle of saddle gear, training their carbines on the old Cheyenne’s wide back. They did not notice the old woman nestled within the arms of the chief like a tick clinging for life itself.

  They fired a ragged volley.

  Black Kettle stiffened as the hot lead tore deep into his body, piercing both lungs and shredding his abdomen. Shuddering with the first throes of death, he clutched both arms around Medicine Woman Later.

  If only I can make it to the river …

  A second wild volley crashed into the old warrior’s body. For winters without count the heart of the grizzly had beat in his chest. Yet it was not enough against the soldiers’ carbines.

  A third volley riddled the little pony. In a death spasm the animal stumbled, lunged valiantly, pitched the old couple to the edge of the icy river. Black Kettle was dead before he hit the water.

  Like angry hornets the soldiers’ bullets buzzed and stung. It was nothing short of miraculous that Medicine Woman Later found herself alive. Though bleeding from several wounds, she struggled to her hands and knees, crabbing across the rocky bottom of the stream. Her husband was dead. She must plunge into the river alone, without him for the first time in more years than she could remember. But before she could turn, red blossomed across her chest and belly, the side of her face. Numbing impact drove her backward several stumbling steps. Through the water grown red around her, Medicine Woman Later dragged herself a yard at a time, back to Black Kettle’s side. She collapsed, breathless, unable to crawl any farther. She reached out with the one good arm left her, and clutched his hand in hers.

  She moved no more.

  “C’mon, boys! Here goes for a brevet or a coffin!” Major Elliott hollered enthusiastically to the squad of soldiers close on his heels.

  Elliott’s troopers leapt their horses over the bloodied old chief, galloping southeast from the village along the Washita’s course, chasing a band of Indians scattering on foot. None of those soldiers or their commanding officer realized they had just killed the peacemaking chief of the Southern Cheyenne. Few would have thought it mattered much at all.

  In less than a hundred yards Elliott watched the fleeing Cheyenne break into two groups. To the left scampered older women and men, along with young children. To the right darted the warriors and fleet-footed young women. They turned to taunt the soldiers, urging them in the chase, as a sage hen lures the coyote away from her young.

  “Simmons! Take a squad with you—there! Follow that group!” Elliott pointed toward the old ones. “Kennedy! You and the rest, follow me!”

  The major whirled his horse, kicking up the untrammeled snow as they tore after the Cheyenne disappearing around the brow of a hill.

  “We’ll rout them, Major!” Kennedy shouted. “Like the cowardly Johnnies they are!”

  Around the hill, through the trees and brush. One young woman stumbled and fell. Elliott saw her disappear in the snowy bramble, watching a trooper rein up to capture her. The major galloped on, accompanied by sixteen troopers who followed him across the deep gash of a dry wash. They were gaining on the warriors, who scurried this way and that through the trees like rabbits.

  Another hundred yards now … and you’ll have them trapped in the middle of that open meadow ahead!

  —Surrounded! In the open!

  “Sunuvabitch! Where’d all them come from?”

  “Major!”

  Elliott reined up so savagely his mount went down in the snow. Kennedy and the others clattered up, crashing into one another, pitching two men from their horses. The men cursed. They were surrounded by more Indians than any of them had ever seen in his short life. And in this last heartbeat, the Indians had turned the winning card.

  “Back, goddammit!” Elliott ordered. “Retreat!”

  Bouncing against one another, the troopers started a ragged dash, reining up as soon as they had started. The neck through which they had galloped into the meadow closed up. A hundred warriors or more plugged all hope for escape.

  “Dismount!” Elliott was already on the ground. “Skirmish formation, dammit! Pull your ammunition off—let the horses go! They’ll do us no good now.”

  “Sir!”

  It was his sergeant major. Gripping the bridle of Elliott’s horse.

  “Yes, Kennedy! You’ll ride. If any man can make it—” Elliott laughed almost cheerfully. “I know you can!”

  The troopers freed their horses now, squatting in the tall, frozen grass, taking their positions in a circle, guarding each other’s backside. Elliott shook Kennedy’s hand quickly, shoving him aboard his horse. The major slapped its flank, sending it on its way up the side of a snowy, tree-lined hill where two dozen warriors raced to head the pony soldier off.

  “Ride, you sunuvabitch!” Elliott cried, fighting back the tears. “Ride!”

  CHAPTER 8

  LIEUTENANT Edward S. Godfrey had crossed the Washita with Custer at daybreak, leading his K Company into the village. His orders dictated that he not stop for any reason. His men were to drive on through the hostile camp and capture the enemy’s most prized possessions—their herd.

  Less than a mile from the village, where Custer’s scouts supposed they would be, Godfrey located the ponies scattered among the frosty meadows. After he had detailed a platoon to drive the herd toward the village, Godfrey loped to the top of a hill overlooking the timbered co
untryside. From there he saw a handful of escaping Cheyenne scampering across the north side of the valley.

  “Damn!” he muttered. “Must be a trail of some kind after the bastards ford the river.”

  Godfrey raced off the hill, gathering his command to pursue the fleeing Cheyenne. In the growing light of day Godfrey located the shallow river crossing. Without slowing he plunged his force across the Washita and up the icy north bank.

  “Trail sure as hell shows a lot of use, sir,” Sergeant Quinton O’Reilly commented.

  “I aim to find out the reason,” Godfrey replied.

  Minutes later, they understood the beating the narrow trail had taken. In a large, wooded draw they bumped into a second pony herd. A herd bigger than any a young soldier could imagine.

  “Pony boys,” he muttered softly. Last night the Osage scouts had found a small fire on the north bank, a fire that pony herders used to warm themselves through a subfreezing night. Only hours ago he and a few officers had speculated why that herder fire was found on the north side of the river, while the village was found nestled on the south bank. Now it all made sense.

  “Seems the hostiles figure their precious horseflesh might be that much safer if kept some distance from their village.”

  O’Reilly pointed. “Lookee there, Lieutenant!”

  Across the meadow the Indians he had spotted fleeing on foot were leaping atop ponies. One by one or in pairs they darted off into the broken timber leading toward a series of rolling hills. Two of the riders drew up at the top of that first hill while the rest of their party disappeared over the rise. The pair circled their ponies.

  Godfrey reined up, more than surprise crawling the pit of his gut. “Halt! Dammit, halt!” he bellowed over the jangle of saddle gear, yelling soldiers and whinnying horses.

  “What the hell you stopping us for, Lieutenant?” O’Reilly demanded. “You ain’t ’fraid of a lil’ bunch of—”

  “Best have yourself a look up there!” Godfrey pointed uphill. “Two will get you ten they’re signaling someone beyond that ridge yonder. Whoever’s over there is being told an enemy is down here in pursuit.”

  “Why, who the Sam Hill’s gonna be on the other side of that ridge, sir?” the sergeant asked.

  “Hell, I don’t know for sure, but I’ve got a suspicion.”

  He twisted in his McClellan. “Reload if necessary! File out at a gallop—sergeant on the point! Forward, ho!”

  Near the top of the ridge, Godfrey and O’Reilly signaled a halt for the men charging up the slope on their heels.

  “You keep the men here. I’ll have a look over it myself,” Godfrey said.

  “But sir!” O’Reilly protested. “Why the hell should you expose yourself?”

  “I damn well won’t expose my command, Sergeant!”

  “Yessir!”

  Godfrey dug his heels into his mount, tearing up the rise. Peering over the crest, he stared at the winter landscape below. Across it raced the black, beetlelike forms of the Cheyenne escaping on horseback. As his eyes scanned the white plain below him, following the direction the escaping Cheyenne were taking—

  What he saw would chill the blood of even the most fire-hardened veteran Indian fighter.

  Below him the Washita oxbowed its way north for several miles through a heavily wooded river glen. Down in that valley stood a camp of several hundred lodges. Beyond that camp, another. Farther downstream, still another. Already more than a hundred warriors had spilled from those lodges, scurrying like maddened black ants across the snow.

  For a few cold moments he watched the advance force spur straight for him. Half-naked warriors ready for battle and screeching for blood.

  Savagely he kicked his lathered mount downhill, hollering at O’Reilly. “We’ve stirred up a damned hornet’s nest!”

  Godfrey got his men headed back down the slope toward the meadow in a ragged retreat about the time the first warriors howled over the top of the rise on their heels. The sight of those screeching demons was all his men needed to understand what all the yelling was about as their lieutenant tore pell-mell down the hill toward them.

  It was a footrace to the river.

  Lieutenant Godfrey could not know that these warriors were Arapaho, Little Raven’s band, several thousand strong. Riding fresh ponies, the Arapaho under War Chief Left Hand began to overtake the rear of Godfrey’s disorderly retreat, intent on making things hot for that squad of soldiers forked atop played-out army mounts.

  Godfrey realized his men didn’t stand a prayer in a footrace. They’d have to turn and fight.

  Yelling, he ordered his men to form a skirmish line. With pride the West Point graduate watched his men perform the drill by the book. As they dropped from the saddle, three troopers threw themselves down behind cover after handing their reins to a fourth soldier retreating to the rear with four horses.

  “Make damned sure of a target before you fire!”

  That command sent a return of solid, deadly fire smashing into the face of the attacking Arapaho. Though the first blast spilled only three warriors, it drove the rest retreating to a stand of oak, dragging their wounded. From that thick cover the Indians began to pour their heavy fire into the troopers.

  More Arapaho poured over the top of the ridge. With every passing moment Godfrey’s squad grew more outnumbered.

  “Sergeant! If we’re not careful, these goddamned savages will pin us down.”

  “By Gor, Lieutenant, not enough ammo left to make a fight of it.”

  “Pull back—in skirmish formation!”

  “Damned right, sir!”

  “Keep the men together. Hold your defensive perimeter as we retreat. Make it orderly!”

  “We’ll give ’em hell on the way!” O’Reilly dashed off, spreading the word among the troopers pinned down in the brush and timber.

  Step by step they began their retreat. Those with the horses pulled back first. The others, low on ammunition, fired only enough to keep the warriors at bay. Close on the sunrise shadow of every trooper darted ghostly forms—Arapaho who continued to advance, made bolder as the soldiers retreated. Tree line by tree line, ridge by ridge, Godfrey urged his men back toward the Washita, fighting for every foot of ground they could hold until it came time to fall back a few more yards. At last they reached the heavy timber at the river’s edge. With hoarse shouts of relief the soldiers plunged into the icy water, leading their horses with them.

  And with their relief, something even more miraculous happened. The Arapaho fire slackened, faded, then died off. As quickly as they had been attacked, Godfrey’s men found themselves alone.

  From the moment the soldiers had reached the thick timber at the river’s edge, they had heard heavy rifle fire coming from the rolling meadows across the Washita, southeast of the crossing. Godfrey couldn’t be that sure, but from the sound of things he thought it could only be one outfit—Major Elliott’s. The Arapaho had discovered Elliott while forcing Godfrey’s retreat to the river.

  “Into the came, men. Now!”

  Out of the icy Washita, into the captured village. Godfrey felt he must find Custer, make his report on Elliott’s predicament with the Arapaho. The major needed help in the worst way.

  Custer held the village. Thompson’s and Myers’s troops held the ground to the south.

  For those Cheyenne still alive in the village there existed little chance for escape from the blue-coated terror—only the riverbed of the icy Washita itself.

  “When we reach the river,” Clown whispered to the warriors at his side in the brush, “we can fight our way down to the high banks of frozen red clay. Protection there.”

  “We must chance it,” Roll Down agreed.

  Scabby said, “Pray we make it downstream to our Arapaho and Kiowa cousins.”

  Unknown to these retreating Cheyenne warriors was that Custer had figured the hostiles would seek just this avenue of escape. He had positioned Lieutenant Cooke’s sharpshooters among the bone-bare trees atop the north
ern bank. When the first of the women and children and old people burst from the lodges into the trees at the water’s edge, Cooke ordered his hidden platoon of forty marksmen to open with a deadly fire.

  Their first volleys left many dying and wounded in the icy water or scattered across the frozen bank. Down they crumpled, their blood seeping into the crusty red mud. A few riddled bodies washed into the main channel, to be carried downstream toward those camps the fleeing Cheyenne had sought to reach alive.

  Scabby, Clown, and Roll Down witnessed every moment of the horror at the river. Their only choice was to retreat so they might battle these soldiers another day. This last fistful of warriors decided the time had come to fight their way to the river crossing.

  Clown was the first to spot his old friend at the water’s edge. Black Kettle’s body lapped against the frozen shoreline, a captive now only of the river. Medicine Woman Later lay at arm’s length from him.

  Scabby and Roll Down crabbed along the muddy bank, firing behind them, holding some of Thompson’s troopers at bay. Afraid of Beaver slipped over the edge of the frozen bank to join them. Only then did they notice Clown kneeling over the bodies sprawled in the water.

  “You will see to them,” Scabby ordered Clown. “We will protect you.”

  The three wheeled as one to provide cover for Clown while he tore the blue blanket from his back. Over the bank clambered more warriors retreating to the river crossing. Time to bid farewell to this battle. They would fight another.

  Most knelt beside their dead chief for a heartbeat as they crawled by, touching Black Kettle before they plunged into the water, dodging a lead hail from the north bank.

  Clown called out. Afraid of Beaver crabbed over to help pull the two old people from the river onto the frozen bank. Bullets slapped the water around them, smacked the trees overhead.

  Tears of anger coursed down Clown’s cheeks. Wrapping the bodies in his blue blanket was the least he could do for the dead ones.

  “No more will Black Kettle mourn the passing of the golden days of the Tsistsistas.” Clown cried out. “The sun has begun to set on our people.”