Long Winter Gone sotp-1

by Terry C. Johnston

  “Ah, young one! Yes, there is real pain, much hurt and anguish to be suffered. I am afraid you will suffer that anguish all too soon in your young life.” She looked away, letting her moist eyes clear.

  “There are men you might fall in love with,” Mahwissa continued, “men who will bring you so much more pleasure and happiness than sadness. I pray the soldier chief you give your heart to is not one who will leave a scar upon it.”

  “A scar?”

  “Yes, little one. On your heart a scar borne of sadness and despair, an empty ache that can never be filled. The more you feed that kind of love, little one … the more empty you become.”

  By late that afternoon of the last day of November, breezes from the south blew a warm, welcoming breath at the column’s back. That night the troopers slept in their creekside camp, relishing an end to weeks of flesh-numbing cold.

  Little snow remained to chill the wild land with the coming of the next morning’s sun, and what few drifts had escaped the chinooks warm breezes hid themselves in the shadows and shade of gullies and draws. Throughout the day Custer’s troops enjoyed welcome winter sun caressing their backs with warm promise. Spirits climbed; the men knew they drew close to Camp Supply. Yet amid the joy of a triumphant return was found a hardened, joyless handful who remained angry at the fate of Elliott’s men, abandoned in the valley of the Washita by their regimental commander. For now, the grumbling remained subdued. For now …

  No man could be as exuberant with this triumph as the commander of the Seventh Cavalry himself. Again and again he considered the approach of his twenty-ninth birthday, barely four days away. What a glorious gift this campaign had proven to be—once and for all healing every last caustic wound done him at the hands of both detractors and superiors alike who had doubted his abilities, both as a commander of men and as an Indian fighter.

  How he yearned for Libbie to be with him on his birthday.….

  Inside—deep and unsettling—reeled something foreign. It caused him to twist in his saddle and gaze behind him at that long line of bundled troopers snaking around the brow of a hill. Back there, somewhere near the end of the procession, marched the prisoners. He squinted his eyes, unable to catch even a brief glimpse of the captives.

  Why in God’s name am I doing this to myself? Something’s overwhelming me.

  Once only had he lost control. “That awful, drunken scene played out in front of Judge Bacon’s house in Monroe many years ago,” he whispered to himself. “No, perhaps I allowed myself too many liberties with that Lyon woman down in Texas just after the war while Libbie visited Monroe—Mrs. Farnham Lyon. And the next year, that young wife of a fellow officer on Sheridan’s staff, during that stopover in St. Louis, while Libbie and I made our way to the regiment’s first home at Fort Riley. Twice already … would that there be no more.”

  Over and over Custer reran through his mind those lines he had penned in his journal a short day and a half after the battle, scratching out words of passion, unable still to escape a haunting vision of those black-cherry eyes and wind-rouged cheeks burnished rose beneath a winter sun as she flicked her quick, inviting smile up at him.

  Monaseetah is exceedingly comely … her well-shaped head was crowned with a luxuriant growth of the most beautiful silken tresses, rivaling in color the blackness of the raven and extending when allowed to fall loosely over her shoulders, to below her waist.

  Custer reveled in the warm breeze at his neck. “I must keep that journal safe from prying eyes that might by accident or design seek to read between those lines. Surely any man reading my thoughts would discover I care all too much already. Pray, how could I ever claim innocence?” Custer was startled by a voice.

  “General?”

  The commander turned, finding Moylan at his side.

  “For a moment there I figured you nodded off with your eyes open … as you often do. Seems you were gone somewhere in a dream perhaps.”

  “What is it, Lieutenant?”

  “Corbin’s riding in.”

  Custer glanced at the bone-yellow sun nailed against a pale, winter-blue sky. Late morning.

  “Maybe he’s spotted camp, Lieutenant.”

  Custer kept his men at a march as the scout charged up at a full gallop. Wheeling his mount in a knee-sliding circle, Corbin brought the snorting, sidestepping animal alongside the Seventh’s commander.

  “Quite a show, Jack.”

  “I been on into camp. They’re waiting for you.”

  “Much farther?”

  “Ain’t but a stone’s throw now. Less than two miles. They got every man-jack called out—seems Sheridan fixes to welcome you home in real style.”

  “He does, eh? Then I suppose there isn’t a better spot than here and no better time than the present to shape up our columns. Moylan, pass the word that we’ll halt on that bench up ahead. I want the men prepared for review before General Sheridan!”

  “Hurry, goddammit, Perkins! You’re gonna miss the best show of your miserable life!”

  “I’m coming, Hinkle. Damned boots rubbed a blister on the back of my heel. Governor Crawford showed no mercy on us Kansas boys.”

  “Lucky any of us survived that snowstorm. C’mon! I hear this General Custer puts on a show no man can forget! Pick up your feet. I don’t wanna miss a minute of his ride-through. Custer’s the man who not only whipped J.E.B. Stuart’s ‘Invincibles’ and turned the tide at Gettysburg—but he’s the one who forced ol’ Robert E. Lee himself to throw in the towel at Appomattox!”

  Beneath a glorious winter sun warming this first day of December, the air more vibrant than it had been for weeks, General Philip H. Sheridan formed the men to review Custer’s regiment. Flanked by his officer staff and joined by every infantryman not otherwise on duty in camp, along with the Nineteenth Kansas Volunteers who had failed to march through the snows of Indian Territory in time to join with the Seventh Cavalry before the attack on Black Kettle’s camp, Sheridan awaited his dashing young protégé.

  “Custer won’t dare disappoint any audience, Perkins,” Hinkle said. “Someday you’ll tell all your grandchildren about this day—seeing the Boy General hisself marching home in victory after his Seventh Cavalry crushed the Cheyenne nation!”

  First into view rode the Osage trackers, led by Little Beaver, the aging, stoic warrior who had painted himself for this grand march. Right behind him pranced Hard Rope and the younger trackers, each singing his personal war chant—songs of victory and glory, accompanied by frequent whoops of joy punctuated by firing their army-issued rifles into the air.

  Up and down the column galloped a young warrior named Trotter who brandished aloft the long scalp of a Cheyenne he flaunted for all to see—a scalp he bragged belonged to none other than Chief Black Kettle himself. Other Osage trackers waved captured lances they had decorated with dangling, blood-encrusted Cheyenne scalps. Some beat on small hand drums while others shook their bows and rawhide shields, all astride their prancing mounts, every mane and tail resplendent with red and blue, green and white strips cut from captured Cheyenne blankets.

  Directly behind these joyful warriors who had just secured a victory over a longtime enemy rode Lieutenant Silas Pepoon’s civilian scouts. Ben Clark and Jack Corbin rode in tandem, Moses Milner and courier Ed Guerrier on their heels. Only Milner had refused to clean up for Custer’s show. His well-matted beard still bore bits of fluff and lint, scraps of many a meal. On his head the long-tangled hair was in much the same disheveled condition, and everything about him remained coated with a well-cured patina of red dirt and mud.

  Right behind the scouts marched the regimental band,piping that airy, raucous theme song of the Seventh Cavalry, “GarryOwen”:

  Let Bacchus’s sons be not dismayed,

  But join with me each jovial blade;

  Come booze and sing, and lend your aid

  To help me with the Chorus.

  In place of Spa we’ll drink brown ale,

  And pay no reckoning on the nail
,

  No man for debt shall go to jail

  From GarryOwen in glory!

  No man for debt shall go to jail

  From GarryOwen in glory!

  We are the boys that take delight in

  Smashing the Limerick lights when lighting,

  Through the streets like sporters fighting,

  And tearing all before us.

  Let no man mistake that jaunty Irish quickstep now firmly identified with the gallant Seventh Cavalry and its dashing young commander. A hundred years before, this regimental march was named for “Garry Owen,” Gaelic for Owen’s Garden, a suburb of Limerick, Ireland, which throughout the eighteenth century was noted for its rowdy melees of drunken soldiers. While the merry tune had been associated with such groups as the Queen’s Fifth Royal Lancers, it was later adopted by some units of the Union Army of the Potomac during the Civil War.

  But by 1868 this rousing, heart-pounding Irish melody firmly belonged to one regiment and one regiment only—the Seventh Cavalry.

  To the stirring call of trumpets, Custer pranced into view astride Dandy, curried and gleaming for the triumphant entry. Custer’s buckskin leggings had been brushed clean for the occasion, their long fringe fluttering on the breeze, topped by a hip-length sack coat trimmed with fur collar and cuffs. He had combed his red-blond beard, letting his shoulder-length curls stream over his collar. Atop his head sat a pillbox otter cap.

  “What a figure he cuts, Hinkle!”

  “I’d say! See how firmly he’s in control of that sidestepping stallion, waving to spectators like they was paying him court!”

  “That they are, Hinkle!”

  Directly behind Custer plodded the captives. He had expressly wanted the Cheyenne to witness the grand spectacle first-hand, to experience how the soldiers revered their Boy General. Scores of widows and orphans trudged past Sheridan, their dark eyes averted, many hiding their faces. They feared torture and death now that they had come to the pony soldier camp. Some older women keened their death songs.

  The enlisted men of the Seventh Cavalry followed the prisoners, while behind them rumbled the wagons of Lieutenant Bell’s quartermaster corps. In some of the slat-beds rode the wide-eyed and fearful wounded captives. In another lay Custer’s resplendent Cheyenne lodge. As the last wagons rattled into view, Custer pranced around in a tight circle, then nudged Dandy forward with his golden spurs.

  “General Sheridan!” Custer called out, saluting.

  “Custer, my friend!” Sheridan saluted, then presented a bare hand to the young officer. “How glad I am to see you.”

  “No more happy than I!”

  “You’ve done it, by damn! Showed ’em all, haven’t you?”

  “I hope now to get on with my career—what needs doing here on the plains.”

  “There’s not a goddamned thing to stop us now, Custer. You’ve seen to that with this stunning victory. Like the Shenandoah, you haven’t let me down!”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Come, Armstrong. We’ll have some refreshments at my headquarters. You can tell me all there is to tell of routing these bloodthirsty savages!”

  “It’d be my honor. I’ll return in a moment after I’ve passed the orders for encampment.”

  “Dismissed!” Sheridan saluted again, that Irish smile bright within his dark beard.

  Custer answered the salute, then brought Dandy around smartly with the gold spurs.

  “I won’t dare miss our victory celebration, sir!”

  BOOK II

  SWEETWATER

  CHAPTER 12

  “CLARK! Glad I found you!”

  Ben Clark turned to see Captain Frederick W. Benteen headed his way. “Benteen, isn’t it?”

  “Right!” The young, bearded officer presented his hand. “Didn’t know you’d remember me from the Washita.”

  “Yeah, I remember,” he replied, suspicions aroused. He went back to sharpening the knife on a whetstone. “What can I do for you?”

  Benteen settled on a stump near the scout. “I figured you’d be the man for what I had in mind. Got a good head on your shoulders—a memory as sharp as that blade you’re honing.”

  “Sounds like I’m the family turkey getting fattened for the holiday feast, Captain. You said you’d found me a’purpose for something. Care to spit it out and stop knocking ’round in the brush so much?”

  “I’ve something of great import to ask of you, Ben,” the young captain began with a rush. His eyes slid this way,then that. “I really think it best we talk somewhere a little more private. This spot’s a bit too public.”

  Clark measured the man. “So tell me, why something private?”

  “Too many ears in an army camp. How quickly I learned that during the Rebellion down south.”

  “You were regular army?”

  “Breveted a lieutenant colonel. Proud of every battle and the action of those men assigned to me.” Benteen hunched forward to whisper. “That’s precisely the reason I find myself talking with you.”

  “I was a Jayhawker myself. Odd to think a Missouri boy like you’d go over to the Union cause. Me, I had a Cheyenne wife at the time. Did what I could for the Union army, what was a decent employer—but I get the feeling none of that’s what you’ve come to hear.”

  Benteen warily cast his eyes around. “I’ve watched you and have come to believe you’re a man to trust. I want you to keep what we say here in confidence. Can I trust you, Ben?”

  For the first time Clark really studied Benteen. “I suppose if it’s all that serious, Captain—” he spit a brown stream from the side of his cheek, “then it’s something worth the telling, ain’t it?”

  “More of a question, Ben.” Benteen slid a little closer. “What do you know about Major Joel Elliott’s men in Black Kettle’s camp on the morning of the battle? Where they were, what they were doing, any of it.”

  “Suppose I’d know about as much as the next man.” Clark knit his brow, scowling at Benteen.

  “Did you know of Custer’s refusal to send Elliott any aid when he first learned of the major’s predicament?”

  “Whoa! Hold on a goddamned minute! Just what the Katy hell are you after here, Captain?”

  “Looking for corroboration for the many reports concerning Custer’s refusal to offer Elliott assistance. Not only that, but Custer failed to determine what became of Elliott’s squad later in the day.” He began counting off on his rough, callused fingers. “Before it got too dark. Before leaving the battlefield. Before leaving the damned Washita Valley itself. Who in hell’s creation knows right now what happened to Elliott’s men except—”

  “All wiped out,” Clark said calmly. “Down to the last man.”

  “How can you be so—”

  “If they wasn’t dead when the general pulled out of that valley, they sure as hell are now.”

  Benteen straightened. “Precisely the information I want to hear from someone who’d know—”

  “Why the hell you want me to tell you anything? What good’s it going to do you? Or the general himself? Most of all, I can’t help but wonder what the hell good’s it going to do Elliott and his soldiers.”

  “Precisely, Clark! If we see that something’s done about Custer, we can prevent this sort of sad affair from repeating itself. We want to be sure Custer never orders another field officer into battle, then abandons the man.”

  Clark eyed Benteen for a long moment, sizing the captain up as a cranky man who carried around every bit as big an ego as Custer. “So, tell me what you plan on doing to make things any different for the boys in blue.”

  “If the requisite testimony’s there, we can bring Custer up on charges on this Elliott matter. Beginning with the abandonment of his men under fire, all the way to his failure to properly search the area for survivors.”

  “You want to file charges against the general?”

  “Yes. If the investigation leads to charges. We’ll need affidavits from witnesses like you.”

 
; “Me! Who else you got to testify?”

  “Right now we have a few soldiers from Godfrey’s company who heard some of the scattered rifle fire from across the river and were present when Godfrey told Custer about—”

  “All right. You got Godfrey. Who else?”

  “Uh … no, Ben. You got the wrong impression there. I can’t convince Godfrey to testify against Custer, nor prefer any charges.”

  “Who else? You’ve got some other officers.”

  Benteen swallowed hard. He felt his one chance slipping through his fingers, fluttering just out of reach. Hoping Clark would help him cement together a case. “Since we can’t get an officer to prefer charges against Custer, we were hoping to find one of you civilian scouts—”

  “Can’t find an officer to prefer charges!” Clark squeaked. “Captain, it sure sounds like you’ve got yourself a real bitch of a problem here—and Ben Clark ain’t the man to help you out of it.”

  “But Custer could’ve ordered—”

  “My God, Benteen! Haven’t you realized this Injun fighting ain’t at all like chasing Rebs? Rebs fought you like white men. They didn’t butcher and maim—hack off your head and arms, legs, even worse. The sun was going down on your regiment. Custer sat in the middle of a thousand warriors, all madder’n a bunch of riled-up hornets with what they saw done to Black Kettle’s camp—not to mention the pony herd. Ain’t a damned thing more that man could’ve done one way or another would’ve changed things for Elliott’s men.”

  The young captain sighed deeply, then swiped at his dripping nose, reddened with the cold of twilight. “I take it you won’t reconsider.”

  “Not a thing I got to say is going to help those men now.”

  “Really figure they’re dead, don’t you?”

  Clark glared flints at Benteen for a long moment. “I said it before. Doesn’t matter much anymore. Not even to Elliott and his men. If they weren’t dead before we pulled outta the Washita …”