by Tatjana Soli
During the court-martial it became evident that he had created enemies among the officers who were outraged at his perceived ill-treatment of his soldiers. There was the perception that he no longer had the fire in his belly to pursue Indians. Why else abuse his men on such marches, only to abandon them to run off to his wife?
Even to her, he seemed changed.
A vulnerability was in him, one she had first noted during the War. It had started in camp one night in Virginia. She found him in his tent, where he was bent over a washbasin, soaping his hands and furiously using a hard brush on his fingertips until they bled. When she came to him, he held up his hands as if under arrest, claiming grime under the nails. She assured him it was not so and put him to bed.
The search and then the grim discovery of the Kidder party had shaken him, a man who had seen thousands die during the Rebellion. They buried the mutilated remains and pushed on to Fort Wallace, exhausted, demoralized, only to find that base under siege from constant attacks, the supply line stopped, and food low. Provisions consisted of rotten bacon and hard bread. An outbreak of cholera struck down the weakened men.
Although the men were spent, something had to be done. He picked out seventy-five of the strongest horses and pushed on to Fort Harker for supplies. At the court-martial much was made of the brutal pace of the ride, but the select detachment rode through dangerous territory in a weakened state. The shorter the period out, the better the outcome. They covered 150 miles in fifty-five hours of hard riding to Fort Hays. A smaller group covered another 60 miles without change of animals in twelve hours to Fort Harker.
She received long, frantic letters during this period, sometimes thirty pages or more, sections written only hours apart, complaining of his need and longing for her. Last night the thought flashed through my brain that if ever I lost you, no other woman could or ever should reawaken it. You are irrevocably my first, my present, and my last love. He said her letters back to him were more important than food or even air.
Autie’s strength was being in motion, no hesitation, minimal reflection after making a decision. That was his greatness as a cavalry leader. His job done, he boarded a train in the middle of the night without leave to reach Libbie. That was when it happened, the perfect day that would make up for all the others, that assured her that she was the love of his life despite everything. She swore to him that she would never do anything to fan his jealousy again. The only sad thing was that the day had to end. It was mine, and—blessed be our memory, which preserves to us the joys as well as the sadness of life!—it is still mine, for time and eternity.
Married life had turned her into a bit of a contrarian. More often than not she had found that the rosiest picture was run through with veins of gray. Undiluted satisfaction was almost an alien condition to the human mind, and conversely the bleakest hour could usually be mined for its thimble of gold. During and after the court-martial, they remained together, vowing to never again endure long absences, even if it meant Autie resigning his post. For a time she believed him.
* * *
AUTIE AND LIBBIE both claimed that the trial was a diversion from Hancock’s failures against the Indians. The charges during the court-martial were rancorous, fed by the brooding resentments that fester in the army. Sheridan supported them to the point of lending them his living quarters at Leavenworth. What especially rankled her were the accusations against Autie’s character. In addition to the charges of abandoning his post, it was his response during the Indian attack at Downer’s Station and subsequent treatment of the deserters that was brought into question.
Six soldiers had been sent back to find Autie’s straying horse Fanchon and found themselves attacked by a war party of fifty hostiles. Two soldiers were reported killed. During more clement times, the regiment should have gone back to bury the victims and possibly give chase, although experience forecast that the Indians would be long gone. Low on supplies and ammunition, it made no sense to risk further delay. Soldiers testified to Autie’s lack of sympathy for the slain men, but emotion at this time would have wasted precious hours for a futile task, possibly endangering them all. Had Autie not just proven himself by his long, exhaustive search for the Kidder party?
Instead of being praised for his prudence, he was painted with a tar brush. At the trial, irritable, he made the further mistake of indelicately pointing out the flaw in the party’s actions—to have fled instead of offering a tactical defense.
“You never run from Indians,” he said, as if it should be self-evident. “They don’t respect it, and they smell blood.”
Such detached honesty was impolitic in the extreme of men asked to fight and die together. But Autie remembered General McClellan during the War, walking the battlefield and crying over the dead. This behavior had diminished him to his men, and he was shortly after relieved of duty. Autie was determined to remain as tough as Sheridan, or even Sherman if need be.
He was found guilty as charged: absence without leave from his command; conduct to the prejudice of good order and military discipline; overmarching men and government horses; using public vehicles for private business; failing to care for two soldiers shot at Downer’s Station; shooting deserters without trial; withholding care of wounded, resulting in one death.
The punishment was a year’s suspension of rank, command, and pay. Sheridan told him it was considered a lenient sentence, account being taken of his past heroic conduct.
* * *
THE MONTHS SPENT in Monroe were pleasant beyond words, an endless round of socializing, and the novelty of sleeping together in the same bed each night. Libbie did not like to admit that she wished the suspension would last even longer. What kind of harpy had she become, to revel in her husband’s misery? She simply had found the silver lining.
Autie was pleased when, to show support, Tom came home to Monroe on leave of absence. While there, he went on his usual rounds of the local ladies like a bee to a bed of clover. His leave finished, he returned to the army, but came back quickly at the behest of a certain lady. When he took Libbie aside, she was prepared to welcome a new sister, not for what he was about to tell her.
“With child?”
“She claims I’m the father.”
“So it must be true.” She struggled to not show her feeling of shock.
His face twisted for a moment. “Other women are not like you. Not as pure.”
“Oh.”
She had always felt an outsider to the Custer family secrets but now wished Tom had chosen Autie to share this confidence instead of her.
“I will die if I am forced to marry her.”
“But—”
“Die! I say. She is nothing, nothing like you. Virtuous, loyal.”
Libbie recognized the characteristic family theatrics in his words. She blushed.
“Then why did you court her?”
“Cruel words!”
“Perhaps Autie can talk to her—”
“You should hear the men in the regiment congratulating themselves for not being his brother! He jumps on me for every little matter. They pity me.”
Tom stopped in front of her chair and went down on one knee. He took her hand and placed it over his heart, which was hammering. The poor boy was in agony.
“Promise me on your life he will never learn of this.”
“Oh, Tom.”
“I couldn’t bear his disappointment in me.”
He wrapped his arms around her legs and buried his head in her lap. She felt his hot breath through the fabric. She stroked his head. The sweaty hair was fine and thin like his brother’s.
“I’ll talk to the lady in question. You and I will figure a course to take.”
He held her face between his hands, beaming as he gave her a kiss on the lips, then jumped up, relieved, as if the difficulty were already behind him.
“Remember, I’d die of shame if it were ever found out.”
* * *
ON HIS DEATHBED, Libbie’s father had warn
ed her to never try to thwart Autie’s ambition as a soldier, that he was born to the vocation and would be unhappy doing anything else. When the telegram came from Sheridan begging him to come back to head an expedition against the Cheyenne, she pretended a happiness she did not remotely feel. The tearful leave-taking of kin was repeated, the packing away of most of their possessions was done once more. They would take only the most essential things because military life was not conducive to sentimentality, toward either things or people. Oblivious to it all, a euphoric Autie left in advance, taking three dogs with him, on the train back to Fort Hays.
My heart is filled with joy when I see you here today, as the brooks fill with water when the snows melt in the spring. I feel glad as the ponies do when the fresh grass starts in the beginning of the year.
My people have never first drawn a bow or fired a gun against the whites. There has been trouble between us. My young men have danced the war dance. But it was not begun by us. It was you who sent the first soldier.
Two years ago I came upon this road, following the buffalo, that my wives and children might have their cheeks plump and their bodies warm. But the soldiers fired on us. So it was upon the Canadian River. Nor have we been made to cry once only. The blue-dressed soldiers came out from the night, and for campfires they lit our lodges. Instead of hunting game they killed our braves, and the warriors of the tribe cut short their hair for the dead.
So it was in Texas. They made sorrow in our camps, and we went out like the buffalo bulls when the cows are attacked. When we found them we killed them, and their scalps hung in our lodges. The Comanches are not weak and blind, like the pups of a dog when seven days old. They are strong and far-sighted, like grown horses. We took their road and we went on it. The white women cried and our women laughed.
But there are things that you have said to me which I do not like. They were not sweet like sugar, but bitter like gourds. You have said that you want to put us on a reservation, to build us houses and to make us medicine lodges. I do not want them. I was born under the prairie, where the wind blew free and there was nothing to break the light of the sun. I was born where there were no walls and everything drew free breath. I want to die there, not within walls. I know every stream and every wood between the Rio Grande and the Arkansas River. I have hunted and lived all over that country. I live like my fathers before me and like them I live happily.
When I was in Washington the Great Father told me that all the Comanche land was ours and that no one should hinder us from living on it. So why do you ask us to leave the rivers and the sun and the wind and live in houses? Do not tell us to give up the buffalo for the sheep. The young men hear talk of this, and it makes them sad and angry. Do not speak of it more. I love to carry out the talk I heard from the Great Father. When I get goods and presents my people feel glad, since it shows that he holds us in his eye.
If the Texans had kept out of my country there might have been peace. But that which you say we must now live in is too small. The Texans have taken away the places where the grass grew thickest and the timber was best. Had we kept that, we might have done as you ask. But it is too late. The whites took the country which we loved, and we wish only to wander the prairie til we die.
—TEN BEARS, COMANCHE WARRIOR CHIEF, TO GENERAL WILLIAM TECUMSEH SHERMAN AT MEDICINE LODGE CREEK, KANSAS, OCTOBER 1867
Headquarters Department of the Missouri in the Field, Fort Hays, Kansas
September 24, 1868
General G. A. Custer, Monroe, Michigan:
Generals Sherman, Sully, and myself, and nearly all the Officers of your regiment, have asked for you, and I hope the application will be successful. Can you come at once? Eleven companies of your regiment will move about the 1st of October against the hostile Indians, from Medicine Lodge creek towards the Wichita mountains.
(signed) P. H. Sheridan, Major General Commanding
INDIAN TERRITORY, ANTELOPE HILLS, WASHITA RIVER, NOVEMBER 1868
Although those familiar with a plains winter claimed it a fool’s mission, Sheridan gambled everything on the audaciousness of a winter campaign against the hostile tribes. He knew that one on one, the Indian warrior was the superior fighter, one that his conventional forces had not been able to defeat during the previous two summers. But catching them unsuspecting, burdened down by a village of women and children, ponies weakened by poor forage, he might bring a decisive victory that would have the Indians pleading to quit the warpath. What he needed to carry out the plan was a bold and fearless man, a man with something to prove, and that narrowed it down to exactly one.
* * *
RETURNING AFTER NINE MONTHS’ ENFORCED LEAVE, Custer wrote to Libbie: I experienced a home feeling here in garrison that I cannot find in civil life.
At Camp Supply, he drilled his new recruits for six weeks then begged Sheridan to let him go ahead of the delayed Kansas volunteer militia joining him. He feared they would hinder him in his movements. When permission was given, he readied eight hundred men to leave on the morning of a blizzard lest he waste any more time. Sheridan was gratified in his choice. I rely everything upon you and shall send you on this expedition without giving you any orders leaving you entirely upon your judgment.
At four in the morning, Custer paced, watching balefully as a group of officers, including Tom, lingered over their breakfast.
—Hurry, would you?
—Don’t worry, brother. The snow and the Indians will still be there.
When he returned minutes later to a scene unchanged, he charged into the tent and kicked the mess table over.
—You’re done now, he said, and stalked out.
The dozen Osage scouts assigned to the expedition pleased him much more. They were dressed for war, in brightly colored blankets and paint, their guns cleaned and at the ready, and they waited patiently by their groomed mounts. He could win the plains with an army of men like these. The white scouts came over to discuss strategy for the days ahead with their counterparts. A bonus of one hundred dollars was offered for whoever led them to an Indian village first.
* * *
THE TROOPS TRAVELED for days through one of the worst blizzards to hit the region, but it was no matter to Custer because he reasoned that, however they suffered, the hostiles would suffer the same. The key was to destroy their supplies, as they would not be able to replace them. If goaded into being peaceful, it was still the same result.
They barely made eight miles a day, the soldiers dismounting at intervals to walk in order to keep their feet from freezing. Snow balled under the horses’ shod hooves, and if not regularly picked out, the animals slid, eventually going lame from the abuse. Men and animals were equally miserable.
Three days into the grueling trek they were in Indian Territory but did not find a single fresh trail. After conferring with the scouts again, Custer sent his second in command, Major Elliott, with three companies to reconnoiter the South Canadian River. Within hours a courier returned with the news that the trail of an Indian war party had been found, estimated to consist of 150 warriors. Like a bloodhound, once Custer caught the scent of his quarry all else faded away. Cold, lack of sleep, hunger … all were immaterial except for how they affected his troops.
He called his officers together to give orders. The main wagon train would come at its own pace, guarded by eighty troopers with worn horses. The other eight companies would march immediately, each carrying one hundred pounds of ammunition. Seven wagons with the strongest teams would accompany them, carrying light supplies and extra ammunition. A risky exposure given the weather, but he would dare it. He noticed that Golden Buffalo had been assigned to stay with the train, and he called him up.
—You want to stay here or come with us?
—I will come.
He gave a curt nod, satisfied.
Riding all day, they didn’t stop till nine at night, and then only to feed the horses and have a quick meal of coffee and hardtack. They joined back up with Elliott’s troops at midni
ght and continued on.
Custer rode forward with the Osage scouts. Two on foot spearheaded the column. The body of the regiment was told to stay back a half mile to avoid alerting lookouts. He worried that the sound of hundreds of feet on the crusty snow would be heard far ahead.
One of the forward scouts halted and signaled him to dismount and come look. The rest of the scouts stopped in place. A message was passed back for the main body to do likewise. The two crept to the edge of the ridge, and the Osage pointed in the darkness to a large herd of animals in the distance. He touched his nose.
—Fire.
Custer smelled nothing. He peered into the darkness, trying to ascertain if the herd was composed of buffalo or the hoped-for ponies. Elliott said the trail of the war party led straight ahead to the supposed camp.
A dog’s bark echoed through the mineral air, and the Osage guide was pleased. According to him, war parties did not travel with dogs but instead left them in their village. Next, closer, they heard the tinkling of a bell, indicating a lead pony. Finally, proof incontrovertible came in the form of an infant’s cry. A slumbering village lay ahead.
Custer brought his officers together and outlined the attack plan. Major Elliott and his three companies would pass behind hills, swing around, and charge upstream from the northeast. The other eight companies would be divided up thus: Captain Thompson and two companies would cross the river, move behind bluffs, and come in from the south. Captain Myers and two companies would go into the woods, attacking from the west. He, with four companies, plus sharpshooters and scouts, would attack from the north. They must move in complete silence and in darkness. When in place they would wait, simultaneously attacking at dawn on his signal.
It was a classic battle plan learned at West Point, and he would rely on it again eight years later in the Little Bighorn valley in Montana.
