“I’m surprised to hear you say that, sir. I can’t believe we’re unable to change the outcome of things here in the western lands.”
“If you don’t believe me now, young friend, I’ll give you a few years. Then you should see things in a truer light. You’ll realize we have no real control over the destiny of this frontier.”
“A few years?” Custer swallowed. “I don’t have that long to wait, General. With the way things are going now, it’ll be eight to ten years before I can expect to make colonel. Too damned many officers and too few command slots.”
Sheridan whirled on him. “Then if you want to make something of your future, Custer … there’s one and one way only. You crush these red sonsabitches on the southern plains. Give those starch-collared bastards back east something to sit up and take notice of. You’ll make a name for yourself. Hang every goddamned warrior you get your hands on, burn the villages and drive the rest back to their reservations. You do that … George Armstrong Custer will never have to worry about his future again!”
A pale winter sun lost itself behind the hills as Sheridan’s detail pushed into camp east of Black Kettle’s devastated village. Here they’d stay upwind of those rotting pony carcasses.
“Dr. Bailey,” Custer said to the surgeon assigned to the Kansas Volunteer Cavalry, “you and Major Jenness will be in charge of identifying the young woman and child. Perhaps someone in your regiment will know the deceased.”
“Very good, General,” Bailey answered. He and Major George Jenness trudged back to that pair of horses bearing the frozen corpses.
The Kansans spread blankets across the icy snow, then gently lowered both bodies to the ground. Jenness himself carried the grim news to each of the volunteer companies.
An eerie pall of silence descended over the camp of the Nineteenth Kansas. One by one the companies began a sad procession past the grotesque corpses. Two soldiers volunteered to hold torches over the bodies stretched out on the gray of army blankets. Winter’s twilight tumbled headlong into the blackness of a tarry, silent night, punctuated only by an occasional cough or sneeze of a soldier standing patiently in line, waiting for his turn to inspect the mortal remains of mother and child.
From those surrounding hills drifted the yips and the howls of four-legged predators, finished gorging themselves for the day. Stiff leather soles scuffed across the crusty, trampled snow as each man shuffled forward in line until his turn came at last, stepping into that spooky corona of torchlight, bending down to stare into the horrifying death masks of mother and son.
Moylan stood beside Custer, shivering involuntarily with the aura of melancholy. Surely, Myles thought, these Kansas men would rather be at home, tending their stock or repairing plow harness.
He drank long from the tin of coffee one of the Kansas mess cooks kept warm for him. Wondering when he might slip off to find some sow belly. Hardtack, if nothing else—
“Oh, sweet God!”
A soldier’s screech yanked Myles out of his hunger. Beneath the fluttering torches the Kansas farm boy’s knees went to mush. He fell on hands and knees over the bodies. Confusion broke out as others crushed around him, friends helping the young man to his feet when he sank like a wet sack of oats, sobbing.
“It’s her! And the boy, Willie! Oh, goddamn ’em!”
Moylan sloshed the coffee out of his cup, following Custer into the crowd, where together they pushed their way through the volunteers until they confronted Dr. Bailey and the young soldier.
“What’s your name, son?”
The soldier studied Custer’s face before answering. His dirty cheeks were tracked with tears, his reddened eyes sunken deep in a pinched face matted with the peach fuzz of youth.
“Simms, sir.”
“I’m Custer.”
“I know, General.” His quivering chin dropped against his chest, stifling a sob as it broke past his cracked lips. The soldier’s body shook with torment.
“You know the woman, Simms?”
“Yes.” More hot tears gushed free. Bailey and another soldier steadied the young private. “She was my cousin’s wife!”
“This is her boy?” Custer whispered.
“Willie Blinn.”
“That means this is Mrs. Clara Blinn, General,” Bailey said, touching Custer with his dark-ringed eyes. “She was with her husband, coming back from a trading venture with several others, when their train was attacked on the old Arkansas River Road, just inside the Colorado line. For three days the savages shot up the group pretty bad, even though the folks used their wagons for cover. Not one mule or horse left standing when the bloodthirsty murderers pulled out.”
Custer turned to Simms. “You’re that certain this is Clara Blinn and her son Willie?”
The soldier nodded before he spoke, lips trembling, as if he knew should he make a sound it would surely turn into something horrifying of itself. “Yessir. I was there myself. Not many of us come out of that fight.”
“You were at the attack on the wagon train?”
Simms nodded.
“Did Blinn himself die in the attack and siege on the train?” Custer inquired.
“No,” Bailey replied. “Only seriously wounded. Their kin was hopeful she’d be found alive. Barely twenty-three years of age. Her boy can’t be more than two years old now, from what I can tell of his little bone structure.”
“General Custer!”
“Over here, Cooke!” Custer shouted into the tar-black of night, responding to the voice thick with the Canadian Scotch accent of Billy Cooke’s motherland.
“Ah, General, been searching for you everywhere. Tom—Lieutenant—Custer’s detail’s bringing in the remains of Elliott’s men now.” He watched Custer’s shoulders sag.
“He was a fine officer. Been with me and the Seventh from the start.”
“I remember,” Cooke replied. “We joined near the same time, when the new regiment was created.”
“They’re bringing them soon?”
“Wagons pulling in now.”
“What time do you have, Moylan?”
Myles pulled a watch from his tunic pocket, turning it so that he could read the face beneath the dancing torchlight. “Almost nine o’clock.”
“Time to go.” He took his reins from Moylan and climbed to the saddle. “Dr. Bailey? Please see that Mrs. Blinn and her son are wrapped securely in blankets then bound with rope. Better that we take them north with us. Home to their folk. Can’t think of a reason why we should bury them in Indian Territory.”
“Not a goddamned reason. General.”
Moylan followed Custer as he sawed the horse about, easing his way through that mob of muttering volunteers, who were angry hearing that one of the women captives had been found … dead. By the time Custer and Moylan made it back to the Seventh’s camp, Regimental Surgeon Henry Lippincott had already ordered a sweeping crescent of bonfires started by the soldiers. In the light of that half-ring lay sixteen bodies. Already a handful of the frozen corpses had been positively identified by friends and bunkies. Custer slid from his cold saddle and Dandy was led away.
“Lippincott.”
“General?”
“Thanks for seeing that things got started in my absence.”
“You’re welcome, General. Regarding disposition of the remains, we’ll await your decision.”
On his way back to camp earlier, Custer had decided. “We’ll bury them here. Where they fell.” He looked up from the naked, grotesque corpses. “You seen Benteen?”
“No, General. I haven’t—”
“Sir!” An older soldier strode up. “I saw him yonder while ago.”
“Thank you, soldier. Run him down. Ask him to see me at once.”
“Sure thing, sir!”
Custer turned to the surgeon. “Have you identified Elliott?”
Without a word, Lippincott motioned for Custer to follow. They walked quietly among the soldiers parading past the frozen corpses.
“Several of us
think this was Major Elliott.”
His eyes narrowed on a corpse brutally beheaded. The scalp of the head they had found had been torn away before the back of the skull was smashed to jelly. Blood and ooze had blackened over the entire head. Lippincott turned the grisly object so the wide, glazed eyes stared up at Custer. Moylan heard Custer draw a deep breath of cold air. The young adjutant swallowed repeatedly to keep his own stomach down.
“That’s Major Elliott,” Custer agreed, tearing his eyes from the frightening gore. He let another breath out slowly. “As each man is identified, I want it recorded in your medical records. The number and type of wounds, weapons used, if possible—all of it. Wrap each of the remains in a blanket, binding it with rope. Let’s make it hard for any predators to get at the men now.”
“Very good, sir.”
“You’ve had supper, Lippincott?”
“No. Weren’t many of us had an appetite after seeing what was done to these men.”
“General? You wanted to see me?”
Custer turned to face the strapping Missourian. “Benteen! Yes. I want your company to prepare a mass grave for these bodies. You need enough room for all the enlisted.”
“What of Elliott, sir?”
“We’re taking him back with us. He’ll not be left here. As an officer, he deserves the honor of a military funeral. I believe you can understand that?”
“Perfectly.”
“We’ll lay his men here in the valley of the Washita. Where they fell in duty to their country.”
Benteen saluted, his back snapping ramrod rigid. “I’ll be at it straightaway. Is there a particular spot you had in mind?”
Custer appraised the officer a moment. “You’re familiar with the country immediately west of the village?”
“I am. We rode in for the attack from that direction.”
“There’s a hill just west of the village. Dig the grave atop that hill, overlooking the village and the river beyond. From there, a man can see the defeated village and the icy Washita.”
Benteen snapped a quick salute and was gone.
“He doesn’t like you, General,” Moylan said.
Custer turned to Moylan. “He doesn’t have to, Lieutenant.”
“With your permission, if I was you, I’d picked someone else for grave detail, sir.”
Blue eyes flashed in the torchlight. “Mr. Moylan, you aren’t me. Besides—” Custer gazed after the tall Virginia-born officer disappearing into the gloom of night, “Benteen’s a good soldier. He may hate my insides, and I his—but Benteen is a soldier above all. And he’ll always do exactly as ordered.”
CHAPTER 16
BY midnight Benteen sent a young corporal with word to Custer that his men had finished the mass grave.
As officers and enlisted climbed the knoll behind the three creaking wagons burdened with blanket-wrapped corpses, an eerie pall descended over them all. Torches flickered in the mournful wind that sighed through the bare hackberry and blackjack. Even the moon hid its pale face behind a death shroud of clouds. An uneasy cloak of dread fell upon those men crowding the trench where the bodies lay side by side by side.
Benteen sensed the hair rise on the back of his neck as a wolf howled from the trees off to the west. He was certain the predator’s beastly call signified that something far greater than Custer himself had destined Frederick Benteen to head this detail. He smiled inwardly to himself, but sourly. A small, bitter victory over Custer.
Benteen had been the first to question Custer’s decision to abandon the search of the Washita Valley without finding Elliott’s men, raising his first objection the moment they began their march back to Camp Supply. It was Benteen at the center of those grumbling and secretive complainers who called Custer to task ever since that retreat from this bloody valley. Only right that Benteen now had a hand in laying these men to rest.
“What a bitter sacrifice,” Benteen whispered to Lieutenant Edward Godfrey beside him at the lip of the dark trench.
Although he was a junior officer, Godfrey had made it clear to Benteen that he had disagreed with Custer that morning of the battle. The young lieutenant had with his own ears heard Elliott’s men having a hot time of it. He was amazed that Custer had refused to ride to the major’s aid.
“Many a good soldier sacrificed on the pyre of glowing ambition,” Godfrey whispered.
“Watching good men laid to rest in the ground because of a bad decision will anger any officer who cares about his men. There was no reason for this,” Benteen said acidly.
“It isn’t our lot to understand, is it?”
“Damn him!” Benteen growled under his breath. “Custer was more interested in counting the captured goods—not to mention his interest in the condition of a certain Cheyenne prisoner—than he was interested in the lives of these men butchered by Cheyenne warriors.”
As Benteen’s men lowered the last body into the long trench, Custer himself stepped forward, pulling the buffalo cap from his head.
“Men.” He coughed. “I don’t have to tell you what it means to lose good soldiers like this.” Custer ground the buffalo cap between his two wind-raw hands, staring into the trench before his eyes raked the somber, torch-lit assembly.
“When a man becomes a soldier, he doesn’t expect a life of ease. Even the chance at a long life. A soldier asks only to be given the chance to serve the Republic.”
Custer paused as some of the mourners finished muttering quiet comments, others adding “amens.”
“These men offered the ultimate sacrifice. A sacrifice not only of blood … but of love. Love of country. Love of soldiering. Each one was a soldier. I pray each of us will remember these men as that: soldiers. Not as dead men, for they are not. These gallant souls have gone on to a better reward. These empty shells we bury here serve only to remind us that once they were our fellows, our companions, our friends. Let us remember them as they breathed, and as they fought.”
Custer stepped back. “We commend their spirits to God. Amen.”
He turned, jammed the cap on his head. Blue eyes scanned the crowd until he found Myers and Thompson.
“Gentlemen,” he sighed, “you both will see that some of your men remain behind to assist Benteen in covering the remains.”
Myers glanced at Thompson. “Yes, sir.”
“Carry on, gentlemen. I’ll be in camp if you need me. Yates will be in charge of securing our perimeter for the night.”
They watched Custer wheel and plod downhill. Myers said, “Times I don’t understand the man.”
Thompson shuddered. “It gives me the creeps. Seeing the general not acting in his right mind—what with these men buried here—the wind and wolves all a’howling at us. Damn!”
Myers chuckled with a hollow sound. “Even the trees around us look like some kind of hoodoos with wild arms scratching against the sky.”
“Like they’d grab right ahold of a man.”
“Let’s be about our assignment, Mr. Thompson.”
“Yessir.”
“I suggest your detail scour the hillside for deadfall. Use it to cover the grave so that no goddamn wolves dig up the bodies after Custer’s gone to so much trouble to get them buried. And buried quick.”
“He’s washed his hands of it all now, hasn’t he?” Thompson whispered.
“For the time being. Time comes, that him leaving Elliott behind to die will come back to haunt Custer. My sainted mother was one to say the raven always comes back to roost. They always do. Custer might’ve washed his hands of the whole grisly matter. But as much as he’ll scrub, Custer’ll know his hands will never come completely clean. Someday this’ll come back to haunt him.”
“Think he’ll ever be shet of it?” Thompson asked.
“No,” Myers answered. “Custer’ll carry the blood of young soldiers on his hands till his dying day.”
By first light that following morning the entire command of the Seventh Cavalry and Nineteenth Kansas Volunteers marched southeast down th
e Washita.
By midmorning, Custer’s scouts discovered that the Indian trail split into two directions. Moses Milner and the others sat atop their winded animals among the milling Osage and Kaw trackers, waiting for Ben Clark to bring Custer up.
“Sure wish you’d think about getting yourself a regulation mount, Joe.” Custer smiled.
Milner eyed him suspiciously, then spit a brown track to the snow. “You got something again’ mules?”
“Just figure a horse would outshine that cantankerous, wheezing bag of bones you ride.”
“General, you ain’t ever been held up on my account, have you?”
“Can’t say as I have, Joe.”
“Anytime you’d care to wager, I’ll give you handicap with you on your finest charger and me on the old gal here: I’ll beat you into camp before light falls from the sky, any day you choose.”
“What handicap would you be foolish enough to offer?” Custer appraised Milner’s mule more carefully.
“Why, General, I’ll give you a couple mile on me. Maybe even three—you think you’d need them?”
“Now, why would I need such a handicap, Joe?”
“Damn, General—but I’d give you more credit than you deserved, I suppose. You got yourself a handicap a’ready, if for no other reason than you’re mounted on a army horse!”
Milner spit into the snow as all the scouts laughed at his joke on Custer. Jack Corbin rode into view, whipping his winded pony into that circle of civilians surrounding Custer. He gallantly ripped off his greasy hat and swept it low in salute.
“Morning, General.”
“Mr. Corbin.”
“You was right, Joe,” Corbin declared.
“Ain’t many times I been found wrong, Corbin.” Milner’s tone slid out a bit on the caustic side. He removed the stubby pipe from his lips. “Why you so all-fired anxious to prove me wrong, anyhow?”
“You boys care to let me in on this?” Custer asked impatiently.
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