The Spirit of Thunder

by Kurt R A Giambastiani

  “Unh, no,” Matherly said, still dazed. “If you gentlemen will excuse me?”

  They all nodded and the portly senator rose. He was somewhat paler than when he had arrived, and Custer was sure that he was a little weak in the knees. He managed a slight bow of farewell, and walked to the door, which Douglas opened for him. He hesitated, and Custer thought he saw him shake his head, once, as if to clear it. Then he strode out and down the hallway. Douglas closed the door.

  “That was a bit thick,” Herron said.

  “It got the job done,” Jacob offered.

  “Please,” Herron retorted. “The man’s an idiot.”

  “Perhaps,” Custer said. “But he’s our idiot. And a useful one, too, so far.”

  Herron’s sidelong glance was disbelieving and insolent.

  “General Herron,” Custer said tersely. “What you saw here today was politics, and not that watered-down jockeying for position and power that military men call politics. I’m talking about real politics, with all the lies, flattery, double-dealing, and brazen flat-out pandering there for you to see. It isn’t pretty, and it is rarely honorable. It is however, as I learned during my years in Congress and my time here as President, necessary. It got you the money for your long bridge, and the time to build it. Be grateful.”

  Herron looked at Custer for a long moment. Finally, he came to some sort of decision. He nodded. “As you say, Mr. President,” he said.

  “Now,” Custer continued. “How do you intend to hold this territory when others have failed for so long?”

  “Begging your pardon, sir, and with all due respect, but the men before me failed because the men before you failed.” He pointed to Sherman’s frontier on the wall behind him. “An army can’t protect a half million square miles of open country. An army can’t fight an enemy that disappears like water through a cupped hand.”

  He motioned to his aide and the young captain produced a second map. Herron laid it out on the table.

  “This is the new map of the Frontier. Here is the Missouri, here’s the bridge that will cross it. This line here is our new railroad, and all along it, every hundred miles or so, is a fort. And I mean a fort, sir.” He stood and began to pace. “None of these tent cities with a few clapboard houses that I saw during our civil conflict. No, I mean forts. Forts with walls, with lookout towers. Places of strength to attack from—”

  “Or retreat to?” Custer asked?

  “Yes, by God, if needs dictate it. A fort that is a haven for civilian and soldier alike. A place where we can stand at the walls and pick them off one by one. Let them try their open ground cavalry tactics against a squad of riflemen behind crenellated walls.”

  Jacob chuckled. “You make it sound almost...medieval.”

  “Perhaps I do, but it will work where other strategies have failed. Never attack the enemy on his own ground. Draw the enemy to you, and attack him on your terms.”

  Custer pointed at the blank area on the map. “All right. I think I see where you are going with this. So boil it down for me, General. What will be your end result?”

  Herron smiled and to Custer it looked a grim, relentless thing.

  “By the end of the first year, a single railroad line extends deep into the Frontier. Along it, walled forts with ample fresh water have been raised at strategic points. Around each fort there is a community; little towns at first, small enough so that the population is able to retreat within the fort walls if trouble rides in.

  “Then, by the second year, spurs from the main line branch out from the existing forts and towns, all leading to new forts and towns. The perimeter expands, and the old towns along the mainline grow larger and the old forts are shut down. It is, as Mr. Secretary pointed out, almost medieval, but it has everything that previous administrations have failed to provide. Active goals, defensible targets, and a plan by which we can measure our success.”

  Custer could not help but smile. “General, you have me convinced. When does it all start?”

  “In the spring, sir. We’ll break ground for the bridge and begin staging supplies. Progress on the western bank will be slow until the bridge is operational, which should be by spring of the following year.”

  “1888.”

  “Correct, sir.”

  Custer glanced over at Jacob.

  “Election year,” the secretary said.

  “Sir,” Herron said. “There is still one outstanding problem.”

  “And what is that, General?”

  “The Indians, sir?”

  “What do you mean? It sounds like you’ll have the whole Alliance under your thumb in a couple of months.”

  “On an engagement basis, yes, sir, I will. But I’m talking about the long term. What do we do about the Indians in the long run?”

  “Hmm. I see,” Custer said. “Yes, the methods used so far in Santee and Kansa have not achieved truly satisfactory results.”

  “There’s the plan that Senator Dawes has introduced,” Jacob said. “To give each Indian a plot of land?”

  “And turn those savages into farmers?” Custer dismissed the thought with a wave of his hand. “Let him try. It won’t work.”

  “I have a suggestion,” Herron said. “A military one.”

  “Oh?” Custer said. “What?”

  Herron reached for his tumbler. The maps rolled up into his waiting hand as he lifted the glass to his lips. He tossed off the last finger of Scotch and looked Custer dead in the eye.

  “Kill them,” he said. “Kill every last one of them.

  Early morning snow fell through the stands of silent spruce. The whole of the world was hushed. George stopped to rest at the top of the trail that led back toward camp, sweating despite the cold, the wet load of lichen-robed deadwood heavy on his back. Snowflakes, fat and lazy as eider down, fell reluctantly from a steel-gray sky. Tree branches laden with white winter coats hung low over the trail, waiting for the slightest touch so they might shrug their shoulders and dump their icy burden on unsuspecting passers-by.

  George sniffed at the scents of Indian winter: the sweetness of evergreen boughs burning in lodge fires, the musk of damp buckskin from his Indian-style clothing, the earthy aroma of deadwood on his shoulder, and the crisp, empty smell of winter’s chill, a smell that had no true odor of its own but which sharpened and heightened all others. As he waited for his breathing to slow, he craned his neck to peer past tree trunks and snowy branches.

  The winter encampment of the Tree People band was much different than its summer arrangement. Instead of the summer circles of tribe and band and family, winter lodge sites were scattered in and among the trees without pattern. A family might raise three lodges side by side, and put a fourth a quarter mile upstream, near the high pond. George spied the lodge of Picking Bones Woman—it was no longer the home of Storm Arriving—a mile away across the ravine formed by the still-trickling streamlet. He recognized the dark handprints and the whimsical over-the-smokes, the fox-tail and feathered streamers tied to the tips of the lodgepoles. He could not see his own lodge, but he knew where it stood, a discreet distance further uphill from hers. He had picked the spot carefully, wary of the interpretation his neighbors would give to even the smallest choice made by the man who fell from the clouds. He had chosen a spot uphill from the family he was to watch over, but screened by two large spruce trees. Beneath these trees he had directed his walker to make her winter nest. There, she would represent a second pair of eyes, for although she would be in a somnolent state through most of the winter months, her eyes would remain open, lidded only by milky nictitating membranes. She, with her immense strength and ferocity, represented a strong spiritual force that helped establish George in the role of protector.

  Not that I’m doing any protecting, he thought contritely, re-shouldering his burden. More like the other way ‘round, if anything.

  He headed on down the trail.

  The short winter days brought his neighbors out of their lodges later than usual. On his way
downhill he met a line of women walking uphill, heading out on errands similar to his own.

  “Pévevóona’o,” he said to them—Good morning—and stepped aside to let them pass on the narrow trail. A few of them stared at him warily as they passed. One, a young woman named Fern Tree Woman, was wide-eyed. She pointed to his face, then touched her own chin. She said something to her friend, of which George only understood “He looks like...” George smiled shyly and scratched at the growth of new beard that covered his face. He had stopped shaving during the last moon, for although he preferred to be clean-shaven, staying so without a razor and strop was an agonizing process. His new beard was still seemed a novelty to his neighbors, especially the women, and George assumed it was because their Indian men simply could not grow them. He was the first vé’ho’e most of them had known and, even with his Indian clothing, was a continuous curiosity.

  Fern Tree Woman’s mother urged her on, not wanting her daughter to become the object of gossip for dawdling around a man. The procession of women passed, and George continued once more down toward the creek.

  He heard children sledding down the valley. Two weeks before, the ice had finally covered over the lower pond’s placid water, and a few days ago the community elders had pronounced it safe to play upon. George caught a glimpse of the steely surface. He saw a circle of girls playing football, and a group of boys spinning tops and betting on the outcome. He walked on, and the pond was hidden by a twist of the vale and the heavy growth of evergreens.

  The band’s lodges stood on either side of the quiet streambed like flotsam strewn on a rocky shore. He followed the path past several lodges. Some of the men were up, too—several of them bare-chested despite the cold—preparing their whistlers for a hunting trip, or heading off on an errand or visit. George smiled at the men he met, greeting a few by name. None smiled in return and none stopped to speak to him. While his neighbors were never given to loquacity, primarily due to his still-limited command of their language, today it seemed that they were actually avoiding him.

  As he clambered over the rocky creekbed and started up the far side of the ravine, he saw Long Jaw come out of his lodge. The Indian saw George and ducked back inside his lodge.

  George stopped in his tracks, dumbfounded. He spun around. Wherever he looked, eyes were suddenly averted and backs were hastily turned.

  He stood there, his jaw clenched and his breath coming out in frosty clouds. “For months I’ve tried,” he said through gritted teeth, “and still you shun me.” Months of frustration at his isolation and loneliness came to a boil within him.

  He lifted his burden up over his head and with a roar he threw it down the steep path. Firewood clattered down the slope but still no one looked at him. He shouted again, a wordless howl of rage, and then turned and stomped straight uphill toward his lodge.

  He growled and stormed his way through the branches, angry at everyone and everything. He cursed every time a tree dumped snow down his neck, his bursts of profanity growing longer and more heated with every step until, when he came to the last trees before his lodge he was spouting a continuous flow of malediction in every language he could muster. “God damn it!” he snarled. “Tu me casses les couilles. Quel tas de merde!” Then, as he kicked his way through the undergrowth, he stepped on the trailing edge of his own leggings, tripped, and fell headlong through the trees, landing face down in the snow.

  He lay there a moment, the powdery crystals melting against his skin, and listened to the utter silence that rushed in on the heels of his tirade. There were no sounds of nearby neighbors, no jeers from blue-crested jays; even the children down by the pond were silent.

  He groaned, sure that his tantrum had only worsened his situation.

  “Ame’haooestse?”

  George scrambled up to his knees, blinking through the snow that stuck to his beard, brows, and eyelashes.

  It was Mouse Road. She stood before his lodge, a parcel in her hands and fear in her eyes.

  George sighed and sat down, regretting it immediately as Cheyenne leggings did not cover one’s rear end and his bare rump was now in the cold snow. Calmly, deliberately, he began to brush the snow from his face.

  “Pévevóona’o, Hohkeekemeona’e,” he said. Good morning, Mouse Road.

  “Pévevóona’o,” she said meekly.

  “Éoseetonéto,” he said as he stood and continued brushing snow from his clothing. It is very cold.

  “Héehe’e,” she said slowly, still wary of him. “Eho’eéto.” Yes. It is snowing.

  George stood up, trying to make small talk, but Mouse Road’s obvious uneasiness drove nearly everything from his mind. That he should have so affrighted such a fine young woman was unchivalrous at best; that he had done so to one supposedly under his protection rankled him even further. He clamped down on another surge of frustrated temper, refusing to make the same mistake twice in so short a span of time.

  The Cheyenne words—so long and layered in their construction—eluded his ability. Finally, he settled on a simple statement of fact. “Tsêhe’êstoo’onahe, énâhestovóhe,” Long Jaw, he stays away from me.

  Mouse Road’s features relaxed, softened, and he thought that maybe she understood his anguish. She pointed to him and then touched her own cheeks and chin.

  “Ée’tóhtahe.” He is afraid.

  She continued, speaking slowly so that he could keep pace, explaining that his beard was like a fur covering his face, and many of his neighbors feared that he was turning into a wild animal.

  Wonderful, George said to himself. And I’m sure my running around screaming didn’t help.

  He scratched at his beard. “I will...” he began in Cheyenne. He made motions as if shaving. “...Cut it,” he completed.

  “That is good,” she said. Then she showed him the parcel she brought: a small parfleche of folded hide. She lifted one flap and steam escaped into the chill air.

  “Vétšêškévâhonoo’o,” she said.

  George was not familiar with the word. He shrugged and made the sign for “no,” a flip of the right hand from palm down to palm up.

  She reached in and took out a small golden circle of fried dough. “Vétšêškévâhonoo’o,” she said again, and George’s stomach gurgled with anticipation. Fry-bread. “From my mother. Are you hungry?”

  Now he signed “yes,” and said “Héehe’e. Náháéána. Néá’eše.” Yes. I am hungry. Thank you.

  She took a step, offering him the food. He met her halfway and smelled the warm, grainy aroma of the fried bread in the crisp air. Reaching under the top flap, he pulled out a piece. Steam rose from it as he broke it open, revealing the tender inner pocket lined with moist bread. He took a bite, careful of its heat on his tongue.

  “Very good,” he said. “You want?”

  She reached in and took one for herself and they stood there for a while in silence, enjoying the food her mother had provided.

  Mouse Road had been a patient teacher, even though somewhat hesitant about correcting his mistakes. Usually they met at her lodge or sometimes at the lower pond, where elder eyes could oversee and ensure propriety was met. Even though she was only seventeen or so to George’s twenty-five years, she was of court-able, if not marriageable age. But this was the first time she had come alone to visit him at his lodge, and he wondered why Picking Bones Woman had not come as a chaperone.

  “Your mother,” he said. “She is good?”

  Mouse Road signed no. “Moon-time,” she said around a mouthful of hot bread. “You cannot go there.” She pointed to her lodge, downhill through the trees.

  “I understand,” he said. “Picking Bones Woman moon-time. Her medicine big. Stronger than my medicine.”

  Mouse Road signed her agreement; another hurdle passed. George regarded his teacher as he took another bite of the hot bread.

  Mouse Road was pretty, as her sister had been, with a broad brow and a narrow chin, strong cheekbones and a smile filled with wide, even teeth. Her nose, too
, had the family stamp: long, high-bridged, and straight. Her eyes, though nearly black in color like her sister’s, were quite different in shape. Where her sister’s eyes had been round and doe-like, Mouse Road’s eyes were long and almond-shaped. To George, she seemed to be always looking into a bright light. In repose, her eyes gave her the aspect of being wary and aloof, but when she smiled, they turned up into cherubic crescents that danced with the light. George tried to make her smile as often as he could, and lately she had been obliging him more and more.

  She pointed to the snow-covered pile of branches and leaf litter beneath which George’s walker slept. “She will wake soon?” Mouse Road asked.

  “Yes,” George said. He took a bite of fry-bread. “She too will be hungry.”

  Mouse Road smiled and it gladdened his heart to see it.

  “Only,” he continued, “I am not a good hunter. When I hunt, I do not catch.” He pointed to the mound that hid his somnolent walker. “She catches. Not me. But I want to catch so others do not need to help me. How can I learn to hunt like the People?”

  She thought and ate the last bit of her fry-bread. “You must speak to Little Creek. He is old and knows how to hunt all things. Bring him wood for his fire and he will teach you to hunt. Come.” She bundled up the remaining fry-bread and put it inside the door of George’s lodge. “I will bring you to him and help you with the new words.”

  She smiled for a second time and headed off down the trail, beckoning him to follow.

  More wood to carry, George sighed to himself. But at least there’s some company to be had for it.

  So, trying not to feel like a puppy tagging along behind, he headed off after the young woman.

  Chapter 4

  Spring, A.D. 1887

  Bank of the Missouri River

  Yankton

  General Charles Brandeis Herron stood under the canvas awning and listened to the drumming rain. He did not pass the time by participating in the conversations of the men around him: congressmen, mayors, aldermen. Their debates about the prime planting time for corn or the relative qualities of competing breeds of hogs did not, to say the very least, interest him. Not even the representatives from the railroad company intrigued him with their complaints about the accommodations and cuisine.