Long Winter Gone: Son of the Plains - Volume 1

by Terry C. Johnston

  “I do not speak of this day,” Dull Knife answered, his eyelids drooping. “Come a time, soldier folly will bring your end. Just as my time comes before the sun leaves the sky.”

  “No, Dull Knife!” Custer shouted at the body sagging in his arms. “You cannot die. I will see you returned to the homeland of your people!”

  The black-cherry eyes peered into an unseen distance. Down the long, last trail.

  “I will never see my home again, Yellow Hair. Already I am on the road to the other side. I will not see my people again. Only the ones who have gone before. There I will be with Big Head, where he already rides a strong pony. Once more we will raid for sleek horses. And drink clear, sweet water so cold it makes my mouth hurt. Not this warm, bitter water your soldiers give us to drink in this stinking hole of death.”

  Custer heard the rattle, saw it shake the Indian’s huge frame.

  “This hole, Yellow Hair—where we Cheyenne cannot travel beneath the sky, across the breast of the Mother of Us All as Cheyenne were meant to journey. You make us live on reservations, and soon that place begins to stink with our being there too long, like this prison. Yellow Hair, I would rather die a free man than live in a stinking hole like you white men.

  “Everywhere I look in that land where I go, my people are happy. They do not have to look upon the face of the white man, who breaks all promises. I no longer live with a sad heart.”

  With the quickness of a swallow’s wings, Dull Knife’s eyelids fluttered and closed. Pink froth oozed from his lips.

  An old woman bent her head to his chest. She brought her eyes to Custer, wrinkling them behind the smoky incense of burning sweetgrass braids the women offered in prayer. She raised her face and voice to the heavens. High and eerie, her melancholy song rose from the tent.

  Grappling with his own rage, Custer scooped the dead chief into his arms. Clutching the limp frame to his breast as he rocked back and forth. Spitting his words while salty tears scorched his eyes.

  “They were going home! With God’s next breath, these men were going home! Why …?”

  Something inside Custer told him more than just an old Indian had died. Something more precious than any one man’s life.

  “By all that’s holy—these Cheyenne will go home now!”

  As he stared into Dull Knife’s face, peaceful now in death, Custer came to believe that a flickering hope had been extinguished. A hope he had long hidden.

  Nine days later, on 11 June, fifty-four Cheyenne prisoners were herded together arid told they would leave for their homeland in the south at dawn the next day.

  Speaking through an interpreter, Colonel Nelson A. Miles was disappointed to find less than celebration from the Cheyenne with his announcement—until he realized this journey to freedom had come a few days late.

  Too late for Big Head and Dull Knife, too late for the others who would return south whole of body but weak in spirit. South to the reservations, where the bands of Medicine Arrow and Little Robe awaited them. Fifty-three had marched north from the Washita. Three more were captured on the Sweetwater.

  Two bodies, bound in blankets and rawhide strips, lay putrefying in the steamy shade beneath the west wall of the stockade. Two old chiefs heading home for burial in the old way, in the homeland of ages past.

  Romero had appealed to Custer, who sent him on to Miles with his blessings. The Fort Hays commandant had immediately agreed that the intepreter could take himself a Cheyenne wife who had fallen in love with him. To Miles’s way of thinking, the squaw would have a better life with Romero than she could ever have on that parched reservation of the Cheyenne.

  That evening before the rest of the prisoners would start south, Romero waited, as anxious as a virgin on her wedding night, at the stockade gate for his bride. As a purple band of twilight streaked the warm land, she was freed. Romero tramped west and north with his woman, Fort Hays disappearing behind them. Neither one ever looked back.

  Custer watched sadly from the guardhouse along the western wall of the stockade as the pair rode straight for the sinking, red sun. Like beetles scurrying from the light, they disappeared into the hills of gold and brown, brittle-red earth and creeks of lazy blue-green. A pair of riders reaching for that place where the great beckoning land touched the sky … out there far, far beyond.

  Somewhere between earth and sky.

  At last Custer realized the ache upon his own heart was for the coming loneliness. An ache in their parting. A cruel tearing of flesh from flesh as painful as any gaping, bleeding wound—an agony he had no way of healing.

  CHAPTER 30

  FOR days he vowed he wouldn’t make a fool of himself at her leaving.

  Yet here Custer stood like some moonstruck young warrior, watching for a last glimpse of Monaseetah among the prisoners milling anxiously about in the stockade.

  Beneath that dawn-pale light of a thumbnail moon hung limp in the western sky, the Cheyenne had taken Colonel Miles at his word. They were ready to leave at sunrise.

  Custer had killed time in the officers’ mess, drinking coffee, waiting on something he wanted to be gone and done with, something he had hoped would never come to pass.

  Saturday. A working day, 12 June. The sun spread its first crimson tendrils across those dark, eastern hills through which the Smoky Hill had cut its way for ages long, long gone. That haze already lingering over the trees at the river’s banks testified to a hot and muggy day a’birthing. Summer had come to the southern plains at last, with as much vengeance as the past winter had come: a long winter gone.

  Custer moseyed outside to watch the comings and goings of Captain Myers and his K Troop, cavalry escort for Pepoon’s civilian scouts on this journey south to Camp Supply. There the Cheyenne would be turned out and the army would roll back to Fort Hays, their mission complete—the Cheyennes home at last.

  By the time the Cheyenne reached Camp Supply, seven months would have passed since any of the women had enjoyed freedom. Any, except for Monaseetah. For much of her captivity at the hands of the Seventh Cavalry, she had come and gone as she pleased, belonging more to the Yellow Hair than she had ever belonged to her people.

  With the rising of a cold, winter-pale sun, she had come into his life. Now, with the coming of a festering bone-yellow summer sun, he sent her away.

  Custer swallowed against the painful knot in his throat. Not since that awful moment of drunkenness played out in front of the Bacon house in Monroe a decade ago had he suffered such anguish. Never this sort of fear.

  That’s what it was, after all—fear. He had to admit he was scared … frightened he would never see her again. Knowing already he had to.

  With the groan of axles, a train of sidewalled freighters wheeled free of the wagon yard, some already loaded with supplies and foodstuffs for the prisoners and escort. The remaining empty wagons would haul copper people: big and small, wide and thin, young and old; even the dead. Copper people transferred, from the Department of the Platte to the Indian Bureau, Fort Cobb, Indian Territory.

  While Myers’s company stood rigidly by their horses and off-duty soldiers looked on with passing interest, Fifth Infantry guards opened the stockade gates one last time. A faceless interpreter barked orders for the Cheyenne to march through the gate in single file, one prisoner at a time. Each prisoner was checked off on some clerk’s official list.

  Custer shook his head. A pitiful farewell for a proud people taken prisoner in winter battle, freighted home while ink dried on a meaningless scrap of paper that would find rest in someone’s useless file in Washington City. Given a final Indian Department burial by someone to whom the Cheyenne had never been human beings—only prisoners, names, numbers … requisitions, blankets, tents … bullets and bayonets.

  “At goddamn last, the sonsabitches are going home and out of our hair!” an infantryman blared down on the parade.

  Funny to think about it now, Custer brooded, watching the prisoners peeling through the stockade gate the way he would take la
yer after layer from a prairie onion. The Cheyenne are taking more than they had when we pulled them out of the valley of the Washita. Then they had only what they wore on their backs, leaving behind a smoking ruin of Black Kettle’s village.

  “Farewell, old Cardigan!”

  Surprised, Custer glanced at the stockade. Some of the soldiers shouted farewell to Fat Bear, the last surviving Sweetwater prisoner. The old chief ambled through the gate, nodding here, smiling there.

  “Happy hunting, Cardigan!”

  The soldiers cheered Fat Bear using the name they had given him for the worsted mackinaw coat he had taken to wearing. A gift from the army.

  When he reached his assigned wagon, Fat Bear stopped,turned, smiling his wrinkled, cherubic best, and waved to the men in blue. A new cheer erupted, punctuated by applause. No reason for sadness.

  “Goodbye, Sally Ann!”

  Custer recognized Tom’s joy-filled voice among the soldiers lining the gauntlet each prisoner walked through from stockade to wagons. Once inside the high-walled freighters, the captives thrust their heads around the canvas tops to wave and chatter at the soldiers like schoolchildren setting off on a spring outing. So unlike their solemn arrival at Fort Hays, this merry leave-taking.

  “Cheer up, Sally Ann!”

  Custer found her in the crowd, waving to Tom, bravely wearing that beautiful smile of hers. Again her eyes searched the shadows along porches or under the eaves of the buildings squaring the fort parade. Hoping, though her heart knew he would not show.

  Her brave smile disappeared as she reached a wagon and passed her infant up to the waiting arms of an older squaw.

  She couldn’t go. Not yet.

  Monaseetah turned, shading her eyes to the new morning light streaming out of the eastern hills. One last time she searched for him among the others. To hear once more the vow he had made to her and their child.

  “Aren’t you going to say farewell to the young one?”

  Custer whirled, confronted by the bulk of Colonel Miles. “I hadn’t considered it.”

  “Dammit, Armstrong. You haven’t much time left to consider it.”

  Gazing back across the compound, Custer watched the young woman drop her hand from her brow, looking up into the wagon.

  “Yes, Nelson.” Lord, did he want to go. But he was too damned scared.

  “Not a man could blame you for saying goodbye to that woman.”

  Miles stepped closer to Custer and whispered, “Hell’s fire, I’d be skinned alive by Mother Miles if she found out I’d suggested you say goodbye to an Indian girl when you’re married to Elizabeth. But Armstrong—Mother Miles has never been a man far from home fighting a no-win war for the chair polishers back east. Still—” he smiled beneath his shaggy mustache, “Mary isn’t awake yet, so I’m ordering you to say your farewells and pay your respects to that woman.”

  With a shove of his bearlike paw, Miles nudged Custer down the wide steps, showing off a broad row of teeth beneath his Prussian mustache.

  “But Nelson—”

  “Get!”

  “Yessir!”

  Suddenly that famous grin flashed, almost as much a trademark as were those long, red-gold curls streaming across his shoulders.

  As she slipped a foot on the iron helper, ready to swing herself up to the wagon bed, Monaseetah sighted him—a man in buckskin and blue, racing across the compound, stirring up the dry dust of the parade, loping her way with his arm beating the air.

  She resisted her first impulse to dash toward him. Waiting instead, she dropped her eyes. For she was Cheyenne—her lover and husband came for her.

  Yet in her heart, she knew she could wait no longer.

  Flinging her body against him, Monaseetah clung to Custer like ivy to an oak as he carried her the last few steps back to the wagon. By the time he set her down, she was weeping, birdlike sobs choked back in her chest.

  Custer rubbed her cheeks, smearing tears across the copper-colored skin. Then he tugged her chin up so she would look into his eyes.

  She blinked, then blinked again, not sure of what she saw. She had never seen him cry.

  No man had ever shed tears for her … no man until Yellow Hair. Among her people, tears were a sign of weakness. Yet Hiestzi was strong enough to cry without being weak.

  “I will not go,” she sobbed, fighting back the boiling knot of fear in her throat.

  “You must go, little one.” He swiped angrily at his own tears, knowing no one must see his freckled cheeks moist. “It is the only way.”

  “I cannot leave you,” she protested.

  “For a short time, you must. I will see you … be with you again.”

  She stared at the ground, feeling the babe kick in her belly. “I understand. I must have our child among my people.”

  Custer gathered her against him once more, caressing the side of her cheek with his callused fingers. “The little one cannot be born here among the white men. I fear for the child’s safety. A life of suffering, forever roaming, looking for peace, searching for his own spirit. Lost on the winds, as my spirit roams.”

  He embraced her, listening to the familiar sounds of the parade—teamsters adjusting harness and brake, soldiers checking cinches and bits, stirrups and belts. Creaky leather, the way his own guts churned.

  “Promise me the white man will never know of our child, Monaseetah!”

  She nodded, tears streaming.

  “If any of my people learn that Yellow Hair has a child,” he continued, “there will never be peace in that child’s life. Like a curse I had passed onto the blood of my body. Promise me.”

  “I do, on all that my heart feels for you.”

  “See he grows straight and true.”

  “As his father.”

  “A warrior of power and honor, Monaseetah. With mighty medicine no man can dim or shame.”

  She had waited long enough and could wait no longer to ask the question. “When will I see you again?”

  Behind her the old women called out, shouted for her to board quickly.

  Custer glanced up nervously. Myers’s company clambered into their black McClellans, settling their rumps for a sweaty ride into the land of summer.

  “I promise I will come when I can.”

  “Tell me! Give me some dream to hold, though I cannot hold you!” She caressed the back of his freckled hand.

  The squaws yelled for her to join them before the wagons rolled.

  Custer jerked his head in sudden desperation. He wanted to say he would come soon—yet he could not lie to her.

  “I don’t know, Monaseetah. If I am not there before our child is born, then I may come while the child still suckles at your breast. If not then, when the child walks. With the help of the Cheyenne, he will become a mighty warrior.”

  Monaseetah’s full lips trembled. She grew afraid to speak again. The tears flowed as if some river long dammed had burst. She reached for his hand, bringing it to her lips, holding it there. Knowing no hands had caressed her as these hands had … as no man would ever touch her again.

  “Monaseetah—” he licked his dry lips, “you are the woman I have waited for—like waiting for the breath of spring after too long a winter on the land. You are the spring for my heart. I will come for you.”

  She pulled away as the wagons creaked into motion, the shouts for her growing insistent, hands reaching for her. Imploring her to hurry.

  Yells and curses reached the sky as horses and mules were jabbed and kicked and prodded into motion. Saddle gear jangle and brassy braying, shouts and curses and whinnying. No one could overhear his final words to her.

  Custer shouted it here at the last. “I will come to you, Monaseetah. To be with you for all time. When I come, I will never leave you again.”

  She scrambled frantically to pull herself aboard the wagon, yanked up with the help of three old squaws who waved to the soldiers as Monaseetah leaned out the back of the wagon. From between her swollen breasts she took that red bandanna he h
ad given her a long time ago, when she had been crying over something of little consequence. Yet, instead of drying her eyes with it now, she waved the bright bandanna to him as the wagons circled the parade, then pointed west and south toward Indian Territory.

  Custer stood frozen in the center of the emptying parade, dust settling on his shiny boots, smudging his fresh blue tunic with its gold braid shimmering in the new-orange light of summer morn. He held his hand high and still, as if in prayer to what spirits there might be to watch over the future. What gods might guard that future and bring things to pass.

  From her place in the wagon she gazed at that solitary figure standing tall as a mighty, wind-battered oak in the middle of that empty parade, his hand outstretched as if in prayer to her Everywhere Spirit.

  “Yes, Yellow Hair,” she murmured, knowing he heard her with only his heart now, “I know of your promise—to come for me one day in the Moon of Fat Horses.”

  She laid a hand across her swollen belly, the other held aloft waving that bright red bandanna for him to see as the wagons lurched past the last dull-gray cluster of Fort Hays buildings.

  “Your son will know of your coming,” she promised. “In that Moon of Fat Horses when Yellow Hair comes, the son of Yellow Hair will finally know his father.”

  Her black-cherry eyes glazed and she could no longer see him for the dust, for her tears.

  FROM THE AUTHOR

  I was born on the first day of 1947 in a small town on the plains of Kansas. That great rolling homeland of the nomadic buffalo has remained in my marrow across the years of my wandering.

  From Nebraska to Kansas and on to Oklahoma, I’ve spent a full third of my life on those Great Plains. Another third growing up in the desert Southwest an arrow’s shot from the wild Apache domain of Cochise and Victorio. The most recent third of my life has passed among the majestic splendor of the Rocky Mountains—from Colorado and on to Washington state. In less than a year, I am back in Montana, here in the valley of the great Yellowstone River, in the veritable heart of the historic West. The plains and prairies at my feet, the great Rockies as my backrest.