A terrible fate waited her and the child should they be captured alive by the soldiers.
Walks Last struggled to her feet when the trooper fire died. By the back of the infant’s doeskin gown she held the last of her children aloft.
“We go the way of our ancestors!” she screamed in defiance.
“Sarge! She’s got a white baby!”
“White?”
“That ain’t no white child. It’s a Injun nit!”
“A white baby, I say!”
“She’s gonna kill it! A knife! Watch that knife!”
With one swift motion, the Cheyenne mother yanked a knife from her belt and raked it across her child’s belly. The infant jerked spastically as its entrails spilled onto the reddened snow.
Before her next breath, Walks Last vaulted backward, driven into the ravine by a hail of cavalry bullets.
“That was a white baby, I say,” the trooper claimed, still shaken. “One of them captive babies.”
“She ain’t shoutin’ no more.” The sergeant felt last night’s hardtack in the back of his throat. When he had gulped a few cold swallows of air, he ran in a crouch to the snowy ravine and cautiously stuck his rifle barrel over the edge. He placed the muzzle against the woman’s head and fired one last, needless bullet into her brain.
Accompanied by Ben Clark and Little Beaver, young Jack Corbin wandered through camp.
He watched as the old Osage tracker grew more angry. With a private rage Little Beaver inspected every slashed, bullet-torn enemy body. Able to control his fury no longer,Little Beaver fell upon one dead warrior, yanking the body over so that it lay face down in order to take the scalp. His skinning knife ready, Little Beaver found the scalp gone. Not taken by an Osage. Not taken by one of the white scouts. Jack could tell this kind of crude butchery could be done only by some young soldier hankering for a trophy of his first battle.
Little Beaver cursed, hacking the warrior’s head from the body. Splattered in blood and gore, Little Beaver smashed the head into a pile of lodge poles until all he held at the end of his arm was a lumpy, bloody mass unrecognizable as anything human.
Unable to tear his eyes away, Corbin fought down the gall threatening to gag him. Little Beaver dropped the bloody head in the mud. Corbin tried but couldn’t talk, stuttering, the question in his eyes.
The old Osage tracker understood. “My uncle’s wife … killed by Cheyenne many winters ago. Far too long he waits to wear Cheyenne blood on his hands. I do this for him.”
Corbin dared not speak. Unable to control his gagging any longer, his cold, empty stomach lurched.
In another part of the village Ben Clark, adjutant Myles Moylan, and Captain Frederick Benteen, after counting the dead, reported to their commander. Custer learned that a total of 103 men had been killed by his troopers.
“I don’t know what you’re thinking … but most of the dead aren’t fighting men,” Benteen whispered to Clark as Moylan reported to Custer.
“Fighting age for Indians means anything between eighteen and forty,” Clark said. “You’re right. I count only eleven warriors. And two of them were the old chiefs of this camp: Black Kettle and Little Rock.”
“You recognize any others?”
“A few.”
“This one?” Benteen asked.
“Blue Horse. Black Kettle’s nephew. Why?”
“I had to shoot him.”
Clark pointed out Cranky Man, White Bear, Little Heart, Red Bird and Tall Bear, Red Teeth and Bear Tongue as more of the warriors he had known. As for the ninety-two other bodies scattered through the village or in the snowy ravine west of camp …
“Squaws and kids. Goddamn,” Clark whispered.
“General Custer!”
Clark and Benteen both turned at the sound of riders led by Lieutenant Edward Godfrey galloping up, showering snow as they slid to a halt.
“What is it, Lieutenant?” Custer asked. “You can plainly see I’m busy with a count of the plunder—”
Godfrey flushed as he leapt to the ground next to Custer. “We were driven across the river, close to where Major Elliott’s men rode east out of camp while we were chasing—”
“What’s the point of this?” Custer snapped.
“My unit was pressed hard, General. But, of a sudden, the hostiles pulled back. At the same time, we heard a shitload of rifle fire from the direction the major led his men.”
“Meaning what?”
“It’s my belief Major Elliott’s trapped and needs our assistance.”
“To the east, you” say?”
Custer listened to the distant rifle fire.
He smiled. “Can’t you see, Mr. Godfrey? All that racket down below is Elliott giving your savages a hot time of it.”
“Beg pardon, General.” Clark stepped up. “If you listen close you’ll know that isn’t Elliott’s men.”
“How the devil are you so certain?”
“Hear all those high-pitched cracks?”
“Yes, I do. That means Elliott’s—”
“Got his ass in a jamb,” Benteen interrupted. “The sharp cracks are Indian guns. Our Spencers have a deep roar.”
Custer ignored his captain, turning to the scout. “Spit it out for me, Clark.”
“This time I’m afraid you’ve jammed your saber into a real hornet’s nest.”
“Come now. We’ve secured the camp. It belongs to us!”
“The camp may belong to us, General. But we don’t control these hills. Those warriors who chased your lieutenant here back to camp? I’m worried where those warriors came from.”
“Escaped Cheyenne, I’d imagine.”
“Begging pardon, General.” Godfrey shouldered up between Custer and Clark. “What’ll we do about Elliott’s command?”
“I’m unconvinced the major is in any serious danger.”
Godfrey said, “Sir, permission requested to lead a detachment and reconnoiter for the major.”
“Request denied. You and your men will assist the clean-up of the enemy camp.”
“General, I must protest—”
“Protest registered! Now, you’d best be moving your men into the center of camp where I need your help, or you’ll be placed on report!”
“General?” Benteen said.
“Same goes for you, Captain!”
Godfrey saluted and remounted, signaling his men to follow him into the village.
“I know just how he feels,” Benteen whispered to Clark. “Ordered not to go to the aide of a fellow soldier.”
“Aiyiiii!”
They wheeled at the screeching war cry. A warrior dashed toward Custer. Feathers tied from his scalp lock fluttered in the cold breeze as he yanked back on his pony’s halter, sliding to a stop beside the startled soldier chief. Custer was unable to recognize the Indian’s face. But he recalled the clothing.
An Osage warrior whose face was smeared with savage stripes of yellow, black, and bright vermilion.
He held up a dripping souvenir of battle for the cavalry commander to admire. Custer gulped. From the warrior’s hand hung an entire Cheyenne scalp, still heavy with blood and gore.
“Aiyiyi!” Shaking the scalp and slinging blood on Custer, the warrior whirled and tore off through the village to share his joy with his kinsmen.
Custer turned as Romero, the Mexican scout, trotted up on horseback. The swarthy scout herded better than a hundred head of Cheyenne ponies before him, assisted by two captive squaws.
“Romero!”
“Looking for me, General?”
To the trained ear, Romero’s accent sounded more like a Cheyenne speaking English than a Mexican speaking the gringo’s tongue. He had grown to manhood with the Southern Cheyenne.
“What’s all this?” Custer asked, irritated.
“Found these war ponies hidden off a ways.” Romero winked, nodded toward the two women. “Spotted this pair about to hotfoot downriver. Never hurts having some help running ponies into camp.”
“G
ood! I’m putting you in charge of the captives, Romero.”
“You don’t say?” He eyed one of the squaws.
“I’m doing this because you speak their language, know their culture,” Custer continued. “Moylan will assign you a squad of men. See they have every woman and child rounded up and brought to the center of camp.”
“’Bout time I get a job to my liking.” Romero looked at one of the young squaws. She smiled, turning away.
“Be off with you, then,” Custer said.
“Hep-hah!” The scout nudged his squaws and ponies into camp.
CHAPTER 9
BY now the Osages had herded most of the shivering captives into the center of camp, using switches to whip slow-moving Cheyenne women and children toward the holding area. The trackers used this ages-old form of humiliation in order to show their prisoners no better treatment than they would give a camp dog.
Seeing the cruelty etched on the Osage trackers’ faces, the women wailed quiet, discordant death songs. Their fear set the captive children screaming for their own lives. A chilling chorus slashed through the devastated camp.
Custer rode up. Romero figured the commander’s curiosity had been aroused with the noisy keening of the women and children. The Mexican felt Custer’s eyes on him as Romero moved among the captives, interrogating them. From time to time, he glanced over his shoulder at Custer. The soldier chief appeared to savor his triumph. Every trooper who approached saluted him. Even the blood-eyed Osage scouts had shown great respect for the soldier chief. Romero watched the prisoners’ dark eyes. None of this royal treatment of the soldier chief was lost on the captives.
“Romero!” Custer called out.
The stocky scout trotted up to the buckskin-clad soldier chief astride his dark horse, leaving behind the gray-haired woman he had been questioning.
As the younger sister of Black Kettle, Mahwissa had been one of the first to recognize how the soldiers and Osages alike treated this soldier chief who had devastated her sleeping village. Mahwissa whispered woman-talk to the young woman next to her.
“General?” Romero stared up into that light of new day behind Custer’s curl-draped collar.
“I want you to tell me who that young woman is.”
Romero scanned the prisoners. “Which one, General?” There was no mistaking that gleam in Custer’s eyes.
“The young one, there with the red blanket. A smudge on her cheek.”
“The real pretty one, eh? Not at all like them older, fatter ones, is she?”
“Just find out who she is for me.”
“Aye, General.”
Romero obediently approached the young girl. The other women near her fell back. Only Mahwissa stood her ground beside the girl.
“What is your name, little one?” the scout asked politely. She didn’t reply. Then his tone grew cruel and insistent. “I asked your name!”
From the earliest days of his captivity among the Cheyenne, Romero had learned that a woman must not refuse to answer a man. Yet this haughty young one wouldn’t speak.
Angered by her insolence, Romero grabbed the girl’s chin, lifting her face to look directly into his fiery eyes. She jerked her face from his hand. The scout brought his arm back to strike.
Mahwissa lunged to grab the scout’s arm as Custer’s voice split the air. “Romero!”
The interpreter turned slowly, his squinted eyes flashing contempt.
“Only her name,” Custer said.
“Monaseetah.”
Custer and Romero both turned jerked in surprise. Mahwissa’s old voice had cracked the brittle tension between the two men.
The scout turned back to Custer. “Says the girl’s name is Monaseetah.”
Custer slid from Dandy’s back. His eyes never left the girl. “What does that mean in Cheyenne?”
Romero chewed on that a moment the way he might chew on some gristle. “Close as I can figure, means. ‘The Young Grass That Shoots Up in Spring.’”
“A mouthful. I like Monaseetah better. And the old woman?”
Romero inquired. The old woman responded happily this time. She had read the pony chief like spring clouds.
“Her name is Mahwissa,” Romero called back. “Claims to be a sister to old Black Kettle. She says he was killed in the fight.”
“Sorry to hear that. I was hoping to have a chance to meet him. Bargain for captives, perhaps. Unfortunate.”
“She says he died down at the river crossing. Trying to make a run for it.”
“Live to fight another day, eh? So, with all that talk she’s made, what else she tell you about herself?”
“She wasn’t jabbering about herself. Busy telling me about the young one.”
“Yes?”
“She’s the daughter of Little Rock, who was second in power only to Black Kettle. Seems we rubbed ’em both out this morning.”
“A chiefs daughter, you say?”
The interpreter spoke again to Mahwissa.
“Girl’s seventeen summers now,” Romero reported to his commander. “The old gal says Monaseetah is married.”
“Her husband run off with the rest?”
“Lucky one to get his tail over the hills when we rode down on this camp. But, there’s something more.” Romero shook his head.
“How’s that?”
“Old woman says the young gal’s father had to buy her back. Eleven ponies. And the usual plunder: blankets, robes, a kettle or two, maybe a gun … such truck as that. Seems she brought such a fancy price since she was a chiefs daughter.”
“Not married now, you say?”
Romero glanced at the young woman, seeing how she flicked her black-cherry eyes at Custer. Eyes showing no fear. Instead, Romero saw a welcome for the soldier chief written there. In Custer’s eyes gleamed a great interest.
“By Cheyenne custom, Little Rock had no choice when Monaseetah’s husband gave her back.”
“Her mother here in the group?”
Romero shook his head. “Killed by Chivington’s dirty work at Sand Creek. You like the gal, eh, General?”
Custer blinked. But his eyes hardened once more. “Interested only in her sad story. The girl without any family. She just might be of some service to us yet.”
“No good to a man except in the robes—”
“A guide! She knows this territory. I’ll use her to translate.”
“You’re not serious, are you, General?” Romero didn’t wait for an answer. “Shit—I forgot more about this country than she’ll ever know. And you go try to make a translator out of her? She can’t speak a word of English!”
“Perhaps she’s bright. And can learn enough to act as an interpreter.”
“General, all due respect—”
Soldiers’ shouts and women’s screaming whirled Custer about. One of the bloodied captives wrenched past a young private, rushing for the soldier chief. Romero grabbed her before she reached Custer.
“What the devil’s this one babbling about, Romero?”
“This one … isn’t Cheyenne!”
Custer studied the woman. “What, pray tell, is she?”
“She’s Arapaho.”
“What in God’s name is she doing in a Cheyenne camp?”
“Been visiting relatives in Black Kettle’s camp. But she didn’t come from a long way off.”
That stopped Custer cold. “Not far off?”
“A short ways down the river, better than nine hundred lodges all fixing to ride down on your soldiers here.”
“Utter nonsense! It simply can’t be. Those pony tracks led us right here. Question that other one, Romero … Black Kettle’s sister. See if she has anything useful to tell. When you’re done with her, I want one of the captured ponies selected for each of our prisoners. Woman and child. They’ll ride back to Camp Supply.”
“Few of ’em aren’t able to sit the back of a horse, General. Figure we could pack ’em in the wagons?”
“Splendid idea. Put the little ones … and th
e wounded in some of Lieutenant Bell’s wagons for the trip—”
“General!”
Custer turned as Captain Thompson lumbered up, two troopers behind him. Each soldier had a small white child clamped fiercely to his back.
“General,” Thompson wheezed, “we found these two young’uns hiding in a lodge down a ways. Must be white captives. What we do with ’em, sir?”
“Why … find them some clean clothing. Then feed them a decent meal. We’ll take them back to Camp Supply, then forward them to Fort Dodge on the Kansas frontier. Likely someone will soon be around to claim them.”
“General Custer!” Romero shouted. “C’mon over here. The old woman … she wants to see you. Something to do with the young one in the red blanket.”
“By all means—let’s see what this squaw has to say.”
Mahwissa trudged up to Custer, stopping toe to toe with the soldier chief as she began jabbering.
“Says the Cheyenne call you Hiestzi now, General.”
“Which means?”
“Yellow Hair. Color of winter grass out here on the plains.”
“What’s this to do with the young one there?”
“Seems the girl’s got no mother or father now—”
Custer shook his head. “Hurry with this. I’ve got pressing matters to attend to.”
Mahwissa had watched confusion slowly cloud the soldier chief’s face. Pushing Romero aside, the old woman laid Monaseetah’s hand in Custer’s buckskin glove, holding both hands out before her. When Custer tried to yank his hand away, Mahwissa refused to let go, raising her mystical chant to the heavens, eyes closed in prayer.
Intrigued, Custer stopped pulling to free his hand, gazing down into the young girl’s deeply beautiful face. Her eyes never rose to his, but closed in prayerful reverence.
With each passing chorus of Mahwissa’s singsong chant, Romero’s smile widened.
Suspicions pricked, Custer demanded, “What’s this all about?”
Mahwissa released the couple’s hands.
“Prayer to the Everywhere Spirit, for his blessing.”
“Blessing!”
“Mahwissa’s married you to this young gal.”
“By the gods, Romero! You bloody well know I’m married already!”
“I know. But the Cheyenne don’t.”
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