Long Winter Gone sotp-1

by Terry C. Johnston

Custer gulped. He listened to dry limbs crackling in the fire pit. Above it all, he heard the labored racing of his eager heart pounding in his ears.

  At last he signed that he could not be her husband. “I have a wife. Among the white men, one wife is all a man must have.”

  “Why is your wife not here? Among the Cheyenne, a woman journeys with her husband.”

  “When I fight, my wife does not travel at my side.” He refused to look into those dangerous eyes of hers again.

  “Yellow Hair, I am your wife for here … for now.”

  It was all he could do to shut his eyes and grope his way blindly out the door into the numbing, forgiving darkness. He had cursed himself—because George Armstrong Custer had never retreated.

  Never had he confronted an enemy so powerful. An enemy who wielded such a magnetic hold on him. Except Libbie.

  Sweet Libbie …

  Lord! Why am I standing here again, staring at the dying red coals in her fire pit … their crimson carcasses writhing like coupling lovers in this warm, musky darkness. Why did I return?

  Sweet love of heaven, how he had tossed in his blankets! the delicious, exquisite temptation of Monaseetah’s taunting him. Its fire smoldered along his limbs. He struggled to put her out of his mind, to escape into the numbing anesthesia of sleep.

  But Custer had been unable to forget her. His mind conjured a vision of her with the gentle kiss of slumber caressing her copper face. So he arose and went to her lodge again.

  In the aching silence of the lodge, he heard her rustle in her sleeping robes at the back of the lodge. Custer realized he wasn’t dreaming anymore.

  Her coppery, fire-lit skin slid free of the black-brown fur. Custer’s nostrils flared involuntarily. He smelled her presence even before he saw the woman slipping toward him.

  Now Monaseetah came into him, naked. Stripped of everything but her newfound desire for the soldier chief.

  She tugged aside the flaps of his buffalo coat, slipping inside its warmth with him, snaking her arms around his waist. She buried her cheek against the warm, itchy wool of his blue tunic and sighed.

  Custer shuddered involuntarily, more frightened than he had ever been—scared of a seventeen-year-old captive Cheyenne girl!

  Custer found his hands at her shoulders, his fingers moving along her soft, fragrant flesh burnished bright copper in the firelight. He pulled her to him hungrily. Monaseetah’s firmness met him, startling him, her breasts exciting him all the more.

  Placing his hands on either side of her hips, Custer caressed their round, sensual fullness. With the appetite of an animal caged too long, Custer drank in the scent of her hair. His fingers traced the firm roundness of her belly.

  Monaseetah moaned, whimpering with a primitive animal cry captive within her.

  Suddenly, as if shot, Custer jerked back.

  She … she’s with child! He pushed her back and whirled away. What the devil am I doing? Thank God I was able to stop myself in time.… Before he had succumbed to the crazed animal he knew all too well prowled the nether regions of his soul. He could yet sense the creature howling in the pit of his being, growing hungrier still.

  She drew away, to her bed at the back of the lodge. Monaseetah drew the favored red blanket about her shoulders, covering her slim body.

  She called his name. “Hiestzi?”

  He could not face her.

  “Hiestzi?”

  He took a step toward her and gazed down at her copper face. “I don’t know Cheyenne,” he replied helplessly. Then remembered to form the words in sign.

  She chose her words carefully, hands dancing before her, symbols coming together that allowed her to talk with the man who had captured her heart.

  “Hiestzi is your Cheyenne name—Yellow Hair. I had hoped you came here tonight to become my husband in the way of the Cheyenne.”

  “No!” he shouted, then used his hands. “I am not your husband. I have a wife waiting for me many miles away.”

  “But you came here to sleep in my robes tonight—”

  Custer shook his head, turned away. To look upon her was to cause madness, to invite a consuming passion that knew no satisfaction. He shuddered with the lie of it in his soul even as the words formed in his hands.

  “I do not want another man’s wife. You carry another man’s child.”

  Tears gathered in her eyes, tumbling uncontrollably, cascading down her cheeks.

  “I have no husband, Soldier Chief. This one who forced his bitter seed into my belly—a cruel man.”

  “Monaseetah, I told you—I have a wife.”

  “This wife of yours, does she lie with you?” She pressed her warmth against him. “Does she give you pleasure and happiness?”

  The musk of her invaded every blood vessel within him. Custer turned away, staring at that black hole of the doorway. Then he looked again at the girl.

  She sat up and the robe fell away from her dusky breasts. Her eyes as warm as coals, she signed to him. “I am a part of you now, Hiestzi. I am that wilderness you carry inside you now.”

  As suddenly as she had signed her words, he was gone.

  Custer ducked his head, savagely tearing aside the door flap, exploding from the lodge. He was several steps away from that dark cone punching a coal-black hole in the starry sky before he drew another frosty breath.

  “Damn her!” he rasped.

  Stomping off toward his Sibley tent, Custer paused a moment by that fire the headquarters guard fed through the night. The warmth worked at that icy knot clabbering in his belly.

  “General.” The orderly snapped a salute as he slapped his Springfield carbine alongside his leg.

  “Goodnight, Corporal.” Custer tore through his own tent flaps.

  He lay upon his cot. No one to see the tears of shame on his face.

  There’s something to the Indian girl I don’t yet understand. Hers is not the trick of some painted-wagon, side-show, snake-oil drummer. Something more to her than even that mystical cloak the Cheyenne use to explain everything unexplained—medicine.

  That’s exactly what he needed, all right. Medicine. Something to quench the burning, put out this smoldering fire threatening to flare.

  Custer nestled a warm place for his cheek, praying for sleep to overtake him quickly. Blessed, peaceful sleep. Just a little sleep—that would be medicine enough right now.

  Since the Seventh’s return to Camp Supply four days ago, Sheridan had grown increasingly disappointed by the progress of his winter campaign. Where he had hoped to attack large concentrations of guilty hostiles, Custer had instead defeated a small village of Black Kettle’s Cheyennes. Instead of that blow putting an end to the nagging Indian problems on the southern plains, reality showed him Custer had dealt nothing more than the first blow in what could become a long, drawn-out, and very bloody conflict.

  Winter wrapped the prairie in white and cold. If Sheridan were to deal with the tribes still at large, he would have to do it soon. In the space of a few weeks spring would begin its relentless creep out of the south. By then the tribes and their grass-fattened ponies would again have the strength to move about quickly. By then the warriors would be out and raiding once more.

  If he was to continue his fight, Sheridan understood, it must be now, deep in the heart of winter. And he must continue the fight—whirling, whirling as he had done in the Shenandoah valley, using Custer as his firebrand—until the hostiles cry “surrender” and turn back to their reservations.

  “General?”

  Sheridan turned on his camp stool, finding the young lieutenant colonel at the open door of his Sibley.

  “Custer! Please, come in! Here—sit there on the bed. Best seat in the house.”

  Custer settled as Sheridan stuffed more wood into the sheet-iron stove at the rear of his personal quarters.

  “Do you know what day this is, Custer?”

  “Why, it’s Saturday.”

  Sheridan’s dark, brooding, Irish eyes lit up as he smiled. “I kno
w that, Armstrong. What’s the date?”

  “December fifth.”

  “Damned straight, it is!” he roared as he slapped a knee. “It’s your birthday, for God’s sake! So I have a birthday present for you.”

  “I didn’t know you knew … remembered my birthday.”

  “Damn it, Armstrong, I’ve always known when your birthday is—and this time, I have something very special to give you.”

  “Yessir?”

  “While there’s nothing to wrap and place in your hand, my gift to you is something nonetheless very tangible.”

  “I don’t follow you …”

  “And I hadn’t expected you to understand me.” Sheridan turned fully around to face his friend with a smile. “Simple. We’re going after the rest of the hostiles. Happy birthday, Custer!”

  “Thank you,” Custer replied, a little hollowly. “When are we leaving?”

  “Monday, day after tomorrow.” Sheridan shuffled through some papers and maps on his field desk. “Your Lieutenant Bell, his quartermaster corps, and teamsters are about done preparing the wagons and supplies. I’ve planned to be out thirty days. That should be enough time to locate and crush the hostiles.”

  “Thirty days?”

  “That’s right,” Sheridan replied, searching Custer’s eyes carefully. “What’s on your mind?”

  “Just the weather, sir. Dead of winter. The certainty of much more snow. What may seem like it could take only thirty days … well, might last more than sixty.”

  “I see,” Sheridan replied quietly, a little steam slowly whistling out of his enthusiasm.

  Scratching at his beard, the bantam Irishman rose stiffly and paced to the tent flaps, peering out at the bustling camp.

  “Grant and Sherman want me back behind that goddamned desk again. So, like other battles we’ve fought together, we’ll just have to see what we can accomplish in those thirty days.”

  Sheridan turned, seeing concern cross Custer’s face.

  “You let me go, I’ll get the job done for you with—”

  “I covered your ass in the Shenandoah with Merritt and others, Armstrong,” Sheridan confided, leaning forward. “And I did it again last month with Sully before you marched on the Washita. We make a good team, so don’t fight the bit on me now.”

  Custer flinched at the scolding. He nodded. “What instructions do you have for me, General?”

  “Come back tonight, and we’ll discuss how we’ll mop this up.”

  “General?”

  “Yes, Armstrong?”

  “What would you have done—personally—following the Washita engagement?”

  Sheridan glanced into those ice blue eyes and found he could not hold Custer’s hard gaze for long at all. “I suppose most would have done exactly as you did. Protect your victory, protect your men. Give priority to your wounded and the captives. You did the best you could under the circumstances.”

  “Thank you, sir.” That helped a little.

  “It’s not my place to second guess you. You did only what you believed was right at the time.”

  After a full evening of final planning with Sheridan, Custer hurried back to the warmth of his Sibley late Sunday. At dawn his troops would be miles south, marching on the Washita Valley once more. He banked the fire in his stove for the night, trying to push Monaseetah from his mind. Try as he might, still she troubled someplace deep in the core of him.

  Custer stood by the sheet-iron stove unbuttoning his tunic, letting it hang open a moment while he plopped down on his bed to struggle with his cold, wet boots. When the boots relented, he slipped his feet inside a pair of buffalo-hide moccasins she had made for him.

  A quiet, unsure rattle at his front flap startled him. Custer flared, angry that he had not tied the flaps earlier so he could tell the soldier to go on his way, at this late hour.

  Custer angrily stomped to the door. Ready to tear some soldier’s head off, he flung wide the two flaps.

  “Monaseetah.”

  Her name was all he could say. In a whispered rush of wild surprise caught high in his throat.

  Her eyes touched him gently with their promise. Ribbons of heat stung their way across his cheeks. Like being squeezed in a vice … tightening. Her eyes held him for an instant before she slipped past him into the tent.

  Determined, she had decided she would go to him, to claim the soldier chief as her own. Hiestzi was her husband.

  Tonight she would become his woman.

  With one hand Monaseetah flung her red blanket to his bed, where that it lay atop a dark buffalo robe. Only then did her eyes reach out to capture his.

  “You cannot stay here,” he pleaded in a small voice. He took two steps toward her, not daring to draw any closer. What sweet poison she had become.

  She came to him as Custer swept toward her, enclosing her tiny shoulders. She sobbed—Hiestzi embraced her at last.

  The smell of her readiness swept into his nostrils. Filling them. Tingling his every nerve ending with its fire.

  The last moments before every battle had always aroused the same feelings in him, exciting the same sensations: anticipation, with a generous measure of apprehension. Drawn, knowing he would succumb—yet he was suddenly positive that he stood on the brink of something he would always regret … for the rest of his life. Still, despite that lifelong remorse and possible damnation, he must have her.

  She was his mate.

  Custer realized he had known of its certainty from that first night at Camp Supply when she had pressed herself to him by the fire’s glow in her lodge.

  As his anxious fingers raked into the long, silken hair at the back of her neck, pulling her face up toward his, Custer felt her nipples grow rigid beneath the doeskin dress clinging to her firm breasts, demanding his touch.

  As his dry lips crushed hers in Monaseetah’s first kiss, Custer realized his own readiness. It strained at his trousers, yearning for escape, surging for relief within her deepest regions. With his tongue, Custer gently forced her lips apart, then her teeth, drinking in the animal taste of her.

  She shuddered beneath the savagery of his desire for her. Frightened at first, remembering a brutal husband, she quickly realized Yellow Hair had become all she had ever wanted him to be. Certain now that the animal surging for release in Hiestzi would free the animal in her own being. There came a heated moistening between her legs where before she had experienced only revulsion and pain. For the first time in her young life she sensed her own readiness for a man.

  Monaseetah gasped, drawing away from Custer’s mouth to reach for the buckle on his belt. His lips lay panting against her ear, his breath raspy, labored. To stand here now with her, after all the years looking for the woman who could stir within him exactly this fire she had put a sulphur-head match to.

  His breath caught high in his throat as she pulled open the fly to his trousers and long-handles, reaching inside for his rigid, ready flesh. Custer was certain he’d never breathe again as she hungrily kneaded his burning, swollen flesh—sending him toward a passioned, woman-hungry fury like nothing he’d ever known.

  Monaseetah stopped, moved toward his bed, glancing over her shoulder at him. He stared—hypnotized and immobile—while she slowly inched up the fringed, calf-length hem of her soft doeskin dress.

  She dropped the dress at her feet, then climbed atop his low prairie bed. On her hands and knees, she gazed back over her shoulder at him with a toss of her long, raven-black hair. Taunting him with all that she had to offer, taunting him to come to her the way the ponies mate.

  Custer understood immediately.

  He tugged at his trousers, slipping suspenders off his shoulders, hopping across the warm buffalo robe that served as a tent rug. He yanked the blue wool tunic off his shoulders, tossing it all in a tangled pile at the edge of his bed.

  His mind raced. Ever so slowly his fingers crept across the silky skin of her buttocks. Then crawled over the firm roundness of her hips. After exploring her back and should
ers, Custer cupped the full, firm melons of her young breasts.

  Monaseetah threw her head back at the fire of his touch. Never before had anyone put his hands on her swollen, milky breasts. It was as if Hiestzi had branded her as his woman. Heated, eager for mating, she ground her buttocks back into him. Yearning for his flesh to mingle with hers. Still he continued to fondle her hanging breasts, torturing her deliciously.

  The woman reached between her legs, taking hold of his rigid flesh, guiding it as quickly as a warrior’s lance toward her waiting passion. Animals, they moaned in unison as she ground her buttocks back against his belly. Firmly planting him inside the heat of her.

  They coupled, mated, loved. At the moment of release Custer collapsed atop her. Monaseetah’s own quivering legs were no longer able to hold her. They tumbled together, the man clinging to his woman as if he would never let go.

  Custer cupped her silky chin in his rough hand, turning her head to look at her face. Wiping a few hot tears from Monaseetah’s cheek, he let his own eyes say what his trembling tongue could not.

  “Love,” was all she breathed—her very first English word.

  Moments later she heard him snore softly against the back of her neck, his rhythmic breathing tickling the long, damp hair pasted against her flesh. He had collapsed into a deep, peaceful sleep with his arms locked about her.

  Outside a hard, icy snow flung itself against the stiff, oiled canvas. A harsh rattle of the wind reminded her of horses’ hooves racing along the crust of ice at the edge of a winter river. She sensed the night as if it were stampeding over her, trampling her beneath its thousand sharp, slashing hooves.

  The sob in her heart echoed the eerie howl of a solitary wolf, crying out in loneliness for its mate, lost in the winter-wilderness storm.

  Blinded and cold and alone.

  Clear, sharp notes signaled reveille through Camp Supply, Indian Territory, before dawn. Yet it wasn’t until ten that the call for “Boots and Saddles” sounded through the river camp, ordering each trooper to ready his horse for the coming march.

  On this trip into the heart of the Indian wilderness, ten companies of the Nineteenth Kansas Volunteers would bolster Custer’s regiment, men recruited and organized solely to punish the hostiles responsible for kidnapping and murdering their way across the Kansas frontier during the previous summer and autumn raiding seasons. In addition, Custer welcomed journalist De Benneville Randolph Keim along. The twenty-seven-year-old reporter for the New York Herald joined Custer’s headquarters command to record for posterity this Custer campaign to “polish off Sheridan’s red menace” terrorizing the southern plains.