Long Winter Gone: Son of the Plains - Volume 1

by Terry C. Johnston

  With Sheridan’s threat put into Kiowa, Tsalante leapt to his feet, trembling. Crosby immediately jumped in front of Sheridan, his hand upon his service revolver, Custer’s ironlike grip atop Crosby’s gun hand in the next heartbeat.

  “Leave the pistol in the holster!” Custer commanded.

  “Unhand me, Custer! I’ll have you on report—”

  “Gentlemen!” Sheridan leapt to his feet, struggling to separate the two before matters disintegrated into a brawl. “There’s no need of argument. And no need of reports—understood, Crosby?”

  Crosby relented. “Yes, sir.”

  “I’m certain Colonel Custer will apologize for his actions. Am I right … Custer?”

  “I won’t apologize, General. Tsalante’s unarmed.” He glared at Sheridan’s aide. “He poses no threat to any of us, even to someone as nervous as Crosby.”

  “Damn you! He’s a filthy heathen savage!” Crosby roared.

  “Colonel Crosby,” Sheridan soothed. “Wait outside for me.”

  Crosby turned to go, then stopped. He glared at Custer before he tore aside the tent flap, stomping into the morning cold.

  “General,” Custer said, “I think the young man’s got something to say.”

  “He sure as hell does!” Romero was clearly agitated. “Tsalante says you aren’t giving him enough time to ride to the villages and get your message spread among his people. They’ve got to call for a council.”

  “Dammit! I’ve heard all that prattle before, Romero!”

  “Please listen, General,” Custer said. “They may have a point. We must treat them fairly, or what right do we have to ask fairness in their treatment of the white captives?”

  “You talk to me of fairness, Custer? I saw a goddamned good example of the Kiowa’s fairness back on the Washita. You remember how fairly these butchers treated that pitiful Mrs. Blinn and her little boy?”

  “General—”

  “Don’t assume you know more than me about dealing with these Indians, Custer!” Sheridan steamed. “You deal with the savages in fairness and what the hell does it get you? Lies … broken promises … one hand taking our food and blankets and handouts—while the other hand burns and kidnaps, murders and scalps!”

  “Enough said, Custer. I believe we have spoken about orders. You and I, in private. Haven’t we?”

  That brought Custer up short, as surely as if someone had kicked him in the groin with a blunt-toed, standard-issue cavalry boot.

  “I want your complete backing in this policy,” Sheridan continued. “If the Kiowa are serious about doing as we say, if they want their two chiefs alive, they’ll be here at Fort Cobb by sunrise tomorrow.”

  Sheridan turned to the interpreter. “Tell this warrior he’s free to go now. Take my message to this people.”

  “Tsalante, go now,” Satanta pleaded, gripping his son’s arm. “Take word of this trouble to our people. Quickly, young one!”

  “I will get my pony and bring it here before I ride the long trail back to our villages.”

  Custer watched the youth dart through the tent flaps. Outside he listened to Crosby explain in an arrogant voice that the Indian was allowed to fetch his mount.

  Moments later they heard Tsalante galloping up outside. The pony snorted as its rider wrenched to a halt. Quick moccasined feet ran to the tent. As his son burst through the flaps Satanta rose, struggling with the heavy leg irons. He took his son in a warm embrace. They murmured some hurried words between them in that way only a father and son can, before the youth reached out to touch Lone Wolfs hand.

  “Hoodle-tay!” the old chief whispered hoarsely, struggling to maintain his stony composure. “Make haste!”

  As quickly as he had come, the young warrior whirled about, vaulting to the back of his spotted pony, where he took up the single rein and shot off to the west. Glancing only once over his shoulder at the sun climbing toward a midday peak, Tsalante was off on a race which could mean the lives of two men. Perhaps more.

  Crosby held open the tent flap as Sheridan turned to go.

  Custer glanced at the two chiefs. “General?” he called out.

  Sheridan turned. “What is it, Custer?”

  “You haven’t left the Kiowa a hand to play.”

  “Precisely!” Sheridan snapped. “I now hold the last two aces in the deck and I’m playing them. When you play with Indians, you don’t play by the rules. Never leave the enemy a hand to play. It’s winning that matters in war. Only winning. There are no parades for the losers.”

  “Don’t miss your parade, Custer,” Crosby advised acidly. “Shall we go, General?”

  Sheridan nodded and left. The flap slid back in place, throwing the tent into darkness. Custer pushed out, greeted by a brilliant winter’s day.

  Behind him trudged Satanta, dragging along the section of clanking chain that bound his ankles together. Here in the gentle light of early morning the Indian’s eyes appeared sunken, dark, and rimmed with gloom. The once-proud Kiowa chief stood hunched and drawn.

  Satanta stumbled across the red mud, slinging the heavy chain behind him with every step, clattering past Custer and Romero without a word. When a guard stepped forward to shove the chief back toward the tent with a nudge of his carbine, Custer waved the soldier off.

  The Indian stopped, turned, and gazed at the soldier chief for a moment before he settled down on the trunk of a deadfallen oak like a tired old owl. He shuddered, drawing his thin blanket about his shoulders more tightly. Gazing into the blue, cloudless sky, his eyes sought the warmth of the early sun.

  As Custer turned toward his own tent, Satanta’s mournful voice raised the hackles on the back of his neck. The Indian chief had begun his melancholy death song.

  “Romero.”

  “Yes, General?” The Mexican stepped to Custer’s side.

  “I want you to find the worm

  “Women, sir?”

  “The Cheyenne women.”

  “Yes.”

  “Bring Monaseetah to my tent.”

  “Yes.”

  “I want to see her now.”

  Custer slipped into the shadows of a huge overhanging oak towering like a monstrous sentinel above his tent.

  He needed her.

  Waiting for Monaseetah in the frosty stillness of his tent, Custer felt more brittle than he had ever imagined he could be. He stared down at the backs of his pale trembling, freckled hands, sensing something of his own mortality, his own humanness.

  Cursing himself for selling his soul for a promotion. Cursing himself, because destiny demanded it of him.

  Through that long afternoon Satanta had persisted in his lonely, melancholy vigil. At times he paced back and forth on the west side of Custer’s tent. Then he plopped cross-legged in the snow, quietly mumbling his incantations to the earth. At times he shaded his eyes with one hand, peering into the west for salvation, hoping for the approach of his tribesmen. With the falling of the sun and the dying of his hope, the great Kiowa chief scooped pinches of red dirt or cold ashes from the guards’ fire.

  After chanting a few words of prayer, Satanta put the soil and ashes in his mouth.

  Having accepted his death, Satanta said farewell to this land of his ancestors. His mud-smeared, trembling tongue would no more taste the lifeblood of his homeland.

  Custer looked at the first tendrils of gray light through the narrow gap in the tent flaps. Dawn wasn’t far behind.

  He sensed her beside him. The weight of her beneath the blankets. The warmth of her naked body, the firm pressure of her breasts against his side as she lay cupped into him.

  He sighed, drinking in the fragrance that belonged to no other woman in the world. Without fail, her scent stirred a wildness in him, something never before touched until she came into his life. Even more, that part of her he carried within had become like a piece of sunshine glinting off frost-glazed tree branches beneath the morning sun. It shared the same place in his being as the heady fragrance that rose to a man’s bra
in as he stood over an open fire at twilight, sparks exploding into the purple sky above, wisps of gray dancing ghostly and haunting on the tickling breezes.

  He snuggled against her.

  Outside his tent the voices grew louder, tapping like insistent fingertips at the back of his consciousness. They came closer. One of them knifed through the thickness of the oiled canvas.

  “Sir—General Sheridan has the prisoners out and he’s yelling for you. Says its time to hang the sonsabitches.”

  “Thank you, Sergeant. Please inform the general that I’ll join him shortly.”

  The boots dashed off; the sound of hard-leather soles pounding across the snow faded from the tent flaps.

  Custer was up on one elbow. Then quietly he slipped from bed and pulled his tunic over his arms, buttoning it over his long-handles when her child’s voice surprised him.

  “Good morn-ning,” she spoke in her imitation of his Yankee English.

  She was an apt pupil, he had to admit. Custer turned, smiling as he raked a lock of hair from his forehead, combing the curls with his fingers. “Good morning.”

  He dressed, then pulled his buffalo coat and cap on before he bent over the bed. Monaseetah sat up, raising her lips to his. The blankets slid away, exposing the tops of her breasts.

  With stoic resignation, Custer closed his eyes, bent his head, and kissed her.

  “Custer!” Sheridan was calling to him from the instant Custer pushed through the flaps. “What’s the goddamned meaning of sending this man out to find the Indians?” Sheridan stomped up, livid with anger.

  “I didn’t send him out to find the Indians, General.” Custer turned to Romero. “You have any luck?”

  “Coming in at a good clip. Be here anytime.”

  “Dammit, Custer! What’s this man doing out locating the hostiles?” Sheridan jumped between the two, mad enough to spit.

  “I thought you’d want to know if they were sending a delegation here to talk with you, the great soldier chief.”

  There. That’s the quickest way to pull yourself out of the frying pan without flopping into the fire.

  “Why would they send a delegation to speak with me?” Sheridan growled.

  Crosby stepped up, wearing his smirk. “They aren’t to send a delegation, Custer. The Kiowa are supposed to have their villages here.”

  Custer turned from Crosby, paying him no mind. He sensed he had Sheridan hooked. They hadn’t spent all those years together for him not to know Little Phil as well as he knew any man. Still, you best tred lightly, Autie boy. His dander’s up, Custer reminded himself.

  “Why, General—if the Kiowa are sending a delegation to see you, then you can use them to your advantage. You want to make an example out of these two chiefs here, don’t you?”

  “You damn well know I do!”

  “By waiting for the Kiowa delegation to arrive, you can hang the two chiefs right before their eyes. Seeing their chiefs kicking at the end of the rope will have a far better effect than riding in later to see the chiefs hanging limp from the branch of that tree over there.”

  Sheridan regarded Custer suspiciously. “Damn, Custer, if I don’t get the feeling I’m swimming upstream with my mouth open and heading for your hook.”

  “I’ve never steered you wrong, and I won’t start now.”

  “General Sheridan, sir!” The sergeant of the guard trotted up.

  “What is it?” Sheridan grumped.

  “We got some Indians in custody at the western perimeter, sir,” the breathless soldier explained. “Pickets said they rode up at a gallop, but weren’t hostile in their actions.”

  “How many?”

  “Twelve.”

  “They say what they want?”

  “’Bout all they grunted was pony chief.”

  Sheridan looked at Custer. His eyes said it all. He knew Custer had him whipped.

  “I’ve got little choice but to bring the Kiowa in.”

  “By all means, General,” Custer replied.

  “Sergeant,” Sheridan growled, “bring the Indians to me.”

  As the party of Kiowa marched through the milling throng of curious soldiers, Romero slipped past the two manacled chiefs, whispering among them.

  He came back with Tsalante, who had accompanied the party of eleven chiefs that had arrived. He spoke to the little soldier chief Sheridan, then waited while the Indian-talker Romero translated.

  “General, he says they’ve come to tell you the village is on its way, just like you asked—”

  “Whoa!” Sheridan barked. “I didn’t ask the bastards to be on their way at sunrise. I told them to be here at sunrise!”

  “Romero,” Custer said as he stepped forward, “ask how long it will take.”

  “He says the village will be here late tomorrow.”

  “What the hell’s taking ’em so long?” Sheridan asked.

  “Ponies are poor from winter grass, General.”

  “What goddamned horses are these?” Sheridan yelled, pointing at the twelve ponies.

  “The best in two camps. The rest are played out from the long winter and poor grazing.”

  Sheridan grew exasperated. “How the devil can these twelve get here, and the villages takes so goddamned long?”

  “General, these warriors aren’t dragging any travois loaded down with children and old ones. They rode fast—just to keep up with Satanta’s son.”

  Sheridan glared flints for a moment, then walked over to the two manacled chiefs. Suddenly he whirled about, slamming one fist down into an open palm. Smiling at Custer.

  “By damned, Custer!” he roared. “If you don’t always manage to outflank me—like you did Stuart at Gettysburg!”

  Custer laughed with him. “Shall I have the prisoners returned to their tent under guard, sir?”

  “By all means.” Sheridan flung an arm at the rope nooses hanging from the limb above. “But I’m leaving those damned hemp collars right where they are. Might serve as a reminder to the bastards what a chance they’re taking. And a reminder of my personal faith in you, Custer.”

  Custer sensed the weight of Sheridan’s faith once more. “I figured I’d lost much of your faith in the past few weeks, sir.”

  “Perhaps I’ve been a little headstrong of late. Should try harder to give an old friend his due … especially for old times’ sake.”

  He shook his head. “Hope I don’t end up regretting that I didn’t hang these miserable bastards.” Sheridan’s eyes leveled on Custer. “Sadder still if I end up regretting that I believed in you.”

  “Have I let you down, sir?”

  “No, not once.”

  “Nor will I ever, General.”

  CHAPTER 20

  “SO tell me, Romero, is this old man ready for his trip?” Custer asked as the pair walked up to Custer’s breakfast fire.

  “He is.”

  Custer appraised the ancient chief with the stature of a stout oak water keg. The Seventh had been camped here at Fort Cobb since the eighteenth of December waiting for the tribes to show. He couldn’t send a Kiowa on this delicate mission, but Romero had found this ancient Apache chief spending the winter in Satanta’s villages. Iron Shirt’s face was as chisled as the roughened bark of the blackjack oak dotting their camp.

  “Problem is, General, Iron Shirt don’t trust the old she-bitch.”

  “Mahwissa?”

  “Way he sees it, she’d just as soon slit his throat as talk.”

  “You tell him it’s not his to like her or not. She’s going along to help him find the Cheyenne and Arapaho. Tell them to come in to Fort Cobb before the soldiers destroy their villages. Mahwissa saw first-hand what my troops can do to an enemy camp.”

  Iron Shirt waved his hands energetically, jabbering in his toothless Apache generously laced with Kiowa and sign.

  “Old man says he’d tell the tribes what your soldiers did at the Washita. Says you are the strong arm. He’ll tell the other tribes of your mighty power.”

  “
And tell Iron Shirt not to worry about the woman. She’ll cause him no trouble.” Custer nodded toward the four women walking up, Monaseetah among them.

  Romero chattered at Mahwissa, then turned back to Custer. “Says she wants to take the old Sioux along, Stingy Woman.”

  Custer shook his head. “She’s a regular pain in the neck, this one.”

  “I figured her to pain a man a lot lower, like where he sits his saddle!” Romero chuckled.

  “Pray she isn’t a nuisance to Iron Shirt. And inform her the chief is her only companion. She needs no other.”

  “She ain’t gonna—”

  “Just tell her what I said, Romero.”

  As Romero translated, Mahwissa’s eyes stabbed at Custer like bone awls. Stingy Woman crossed her arms, glaring haughtily at Romero.

  When Mahwissa finally spoke, her words burst like a furious dam breaking. She stomped up to Custer, one fist balled on a wide hip, the other hand shaking a scarred and battered finger at him, reminding him of his mother wagging her finger at a naughty young Autie.

  “Says you’re giving her to the old Apache—to warm his robes each night.”

  “Giving her to Iron Shirt? Where’d she come up with that idea?”

  “She figures that ’cause she knows about you and Monaseetah. Says the soldier chief uses the young squaw for his pleasure, so you’re giving her to the old man for his robes.”

  “That’s the most preposterous thing I’ve ever heard! You’d better change her mind about things!” Custer snapped, watching Monaseetah not taking her eyes from the ground. “Tell Mahwissa it’s time to show me that her words are straight. I remember when she told me she would help with her people. Now she can prove it.”

  As Romero translated, Mahwissa’s chin jutted proudly. She glared at the Apache, as if to say, Keep your hands to yourself, old man.

  “She understands, General.”

  “About time. I could have negotiated a cease-fire with the Army of Northern Virginia in less time! Moylan, bring up the horses.”