Long Winter Gone: Son of the Plains - Volume 1

by Terry C. Johnston

  While some of Custer’s troops ran, most limped painfully into that Washita campground. What a sight were those rows of cheery mess fires, each banked by clean utensils and sides of bacon. Everywhere lay half-empty hardtack boxes, each one surrounded by Custer’s men. Ravenous soldiers ripped at half-cooked sides of bacon, grease dripping down their dirty, bearded chins.

  “General Custer!”

  Custer turned slowly. Striding his way came the stout quartermaster corps’ captain. Custer presented his hand.

  “Inman! Dear God, it’s good to see you!”

  “From the looks of it, you’ve had a deuce of a time!” Inman rattled Custer’s arm like a water pump handle.

  “Nowhere near what it might’ve been,” Custer replied, “had the Cheyenne decided to run, forcing us to pursue. I see you’ve fared well.”

  “Most of us, General.”

  “Most?”

  “Yes,” Inman answered, sighting his duty sergeant. “Lewis! Coffee here, quick!”

  “Sit here, sir,” Inman directed, indicating a downed cottonwood trunk. “We’ll have your animal watered and fed. Oats.”

  “Oats?” Custer moaned. “It’s been so long since our stock had grain.”

  “You’ve been through the grinder, sir.”

  “Yes,” Custer murmured. “This does feel good. Getting out of that blasted saddle. Feels like I’ve lost most of my natural padding the last few months!”

  “I’m amazed you still have your spirits about you, General. We’ll put some meat on those bones of yours soon enough. Ah, here comes your coffee. Drink it while I have some hardtack and salt pork brought over.”

  Custer watched the sergeant scurry off to a mess fire while he sipped at the scalding, heady potion an army man generously called coffee.

  “I lost four couriers,” Inman explained. “Two were civilian scouts Sheridan left here on his way north. The other two were our enlisted.”

  Custer squinted into the middle distance. “Couriers?”

  “Not sure what happened to three of them. Found only one body.”

  “Assume the worst.”

  “One of my patrols found a pair of ripped pantaloons. Civilian pants covered with blood. Savages had themselves quite a field day with that boy. My patrol searched the area, coming up with a bullet-riddled mackinaw, a coat one of our riders wore.”

  “That’s all you found?”

  Inman shook his head. “Wasn’t long before the men spotted a flock of crows and turkey buzzards squawking over their bloody meal and half a dozen wolves.”

  Custer stared at him vacantly. “The bodies?”

  “By following a line of spent cartridges, we figured the scout had his horse shot out from under him. Made a dash for it on foot, into the thick timber, where he made a stand. Found his courier pouch riddled with holes. Blood on everything. Letters scattered through the buckbrush. Even scraps of the reporter’s stories.”

  “Did you save those?”

  “Saved everything we found.”

  “Good. We’ll take the letters back to Hays. And Keim’s stories will reach the New York Herald. More than ever, now, I want the world to know these men have gone through more than four months of hell.”

  Inman coughed, rising, “I suggest you and your men rest here for a few days. Eat decent meals. Sleep in tents again, beneath clean blankets. Before we push on to Camp Supply, then the final leg of our return.”

  “Fort Hays. Perhaps you’re right.”

  To Custer, all that seemed so far away, Kansas and the new headquarters for his Seventh Cavalry.

  And … Libbie.

  When should I have her come west? To Hays? With reddened, gritty eyes, he stared into the distance. Should I delay her departure from Monroe until I settle matters with Monaseetah?

  “What say you, General? Rest for the men, sir?”

  “Of course, Captain. Two days—then back on the trail.” Custer rose unsteadily from the cottonwood stump. “Two days should prove about right.”

  Inman watched Custer wander off, stopping here and there to shake hands with his bony troops, joking now of their endurance and privation, congratulating all for a job well done in the wilderness. Thanking them for those sacrifices and burdens borne as cheerfully as any soldier in any war had ever marched through a winter of hell, and returned.

  On he walked, talking to all, teasing those who would laugh, consoling those who couldn’t.

  And at every fire, he reminded his men exactly how he felt to ride at the head of the best horse soldiers the world had ever known, or was likely to know—the U.S. Seventh Cavalry.

  On the morning of the twenty-seventh, Custer led his troops out of the valley of the Washita for the last time, on their way home.

  Five days later, when the columns were still a few miles from Camp Supply, Custer was greeted by a courier dispatched by Sheridan, with word that Grant and Sherman had summoned the general to Washington City, and giving full command of the base camp over to George Armstrong Custer.

  As the last few miles were crossed, he devoured the dispatches Sheridan left for his return: orders, disbursements, assignments—all quite boring and routine until he came across two items, the first from Washington City itself, dated months ago.

  War Department, Washington City

  2 December, 1868

  LIEUTENANT—GENERAL SHERMAN

  St. Louis, Mo.

  I congratulate you, Sheridan, and Custer on the splendid success with which your campaign is begun. Ask Sheridan to send forward the names of officers and men deserving of special mention.

  J. M. SCHOFIELD

  Secretary of War

  Bitter tears welled in his eyes.

  Who the hell does this pompous ass think he is, Custer thought, singling men out for special mention over and above others who’ve suffered just as much as any? Damn his bloody hide! Damn every one of those puffed-up Washington poltroons who wave their magic wands over the army’s head, pulling strings, making the generals jump!

  He swiped at his dribbling nose, staring into the bright sun.

  To make heros of some … leaving the rest as common soldiers. There’s not a man riding out of the wilderness behind me who can’t be called a hero! Not a single man of these who can’t ride up the hill to the halls of Congress to receive his medal for valor in the face of the enemy, while those reeky bureaucrats tremble and quake in the face of any criticism.

  He crumbled Schofield’s telegram, stuffing it inside his coat. Then he found a sealed envelope with his name written on it, in Sheridan’s familiar scrawl, dated the 2 of March.

  … Though we did not make our trip to Federal City and the seats of power, my friend, rest assured all is not lost! We will—we must—continued to wrench your promotion from Grant’s desk, with Chandler’s support on the Hill.

  We have only begun our work on the frontier. More than ever I need a regiment I can call upon to go where needed. To do what is asked. Once again, I need what you gave me in the Shenandoah. Once again, I need George Armstrong Custer at the head of his own regiment of firebrands!

  Don’t be disappointed about the promotion. It does not lie a’moldering in a grave yet! Trust me. I will push your claims on the subject of promotion as soon as I get to Washington, and, if anything can be done, you may rely on me to look out for your interests.

  Custer’s eyes smarted as he sensed the kinship he shared with Sheridan. Knowing Sheridan would not let him down. Knowing, one day, he would command his own regiment.

  Washington City needs strong men … able men … men unafraid of taking a stand for what’s right and just, he told himself. Someone who’ll bring some sense and order to the frontier, instead of fanning the flames of war from afar. Someone who’ll do more than line the pockets of family and friends with trading contracts on the reservations … while the tribes starve, or wander off their lands in search of food for the empty bellies of their children.

  A spring breeze nudged the dirty, unkempt beard he had wo
rn all winter. He scratched it, thinking he’d shave, once warm weather arrived.

  Custer realized there would long be a need for good soldiers, officers, thinking men. More than ever, this Republic needs a man of vision, he thought. A man of action. Someone who will bring about a change on the frontier.

  Custer stuffed Sheridan’s letter inside his tunic and raised his face to the warming sun of a new season. A sun that would bring rebirth to the land.

  My days aren’t numbered … far from it! My efforts here have only begun to bear fruit.

  From the crest of that hill overlooking Camp Supply, Custer stared down into the valley of the Beaver and Wolf Creeks, both shimmering like a pair of silver ribbons beneath a dazzling sun—a sun that shone no less brightly on George Armstrong Custer.

  BOOK III

  MONASEETAH

  CHAPTER 27

  A STEADY spring rain fell on the Smoky Hill country of Kansas, drenching everything the soldiers hadn’t dragged into a tent last night when the dark underbelly of the prairie sky had opened up. Some eleven hours later, the storm persisted, forming creeks in the wagon ruts carved between the rows of company tents that dotted the boggy meadows like prairie wildflowers in bloom.

  Custer had selected this summer home for his regiment where Big Creek dumped into the Smoky Hill River. Fort Hays stood some two miles to the west, on the same south bank of the Smoky Hill along the tracks of the Kansas-Pacific Railroad. For better than four months the small stockade of Fort Hays had bustled with the prisoners from Black Kettle’s Washita village, sent north under escort long before Custer led his winter-weary troops back home to Kansas Territory. Custer promptly reported to the new commander of Fort Hays, Colonel Nelson A. Miles.

  Here at the Big Creek camp the Seventh Cavalry would stay the summer, until the weather turned autumn cold and sleety. Then Custer would lead his men back to the fort for the prairie winter. For now, he would put up with these soggy skies and wait for the dog days of summer to belly-crawl across the scorched undergut of the plains.

  Over his head tapped a steady staccato of rain. It beat not only the roof of his sidewall erected beneath a wide-branched cottonwood, but also the oiled canvas awning stretched in front of his tent. If the weather would ever break, he had the regimental carpenters ready to hammer together a wood gallery surrounding the tent and the base of the tree itself—with railing—like the porch on the family home back in Monroe.

  Monroe.

  Oh, for spring in the north country! A little shower and things would cool off. Here the spring smothered a man. Nowhere near as muggy, however, as that summer of ’64 in the Shenandoah. Chasing Mosby’s raiders. Hanging some. Shooting the rest.

  Custer sighed, turned back into the tent, deciding he’d wait till tomorrow to write Libbie again.

  “General Custer?”

  Moylan slogged up between Keim and Sergeant William Johnson. All three were soaked through, their coats no longer any protection from the incessant rain, their wide-brimmed hats soppy, drooping like a beekeeper’s under the weight of a good soaking.

  “What is it?”

  “I have someone I want you to meet,” Moylan began, then turned and signaled someone who waited outside the tent. Across the sticky gumbo crabbed a young man, carefully positioning himself on two canes with every step.

  The newcomer shuddered to a halt, then placed the right cane with its brother in his left hand so he could hold out a big, callused paw to Custer.

  “My name’s John Morgan, General,” he spoke clear and strong.

  “Mr. Morgan,” Custer replied.

  “I’m looking for my wife. Anna Belle Morgan. Her name used to be Brewster. I understand she’s here with your regiment.” His dark, hooded eyes darted off again.

  “General”—Moylan inched forward—“John has come to take the girl and young Brewster home. To what they have left in Kansas.”

  “I plan on raising another house and barn, soon as I’m fit,” Morgan explained. “But for now, it’ll be enough just to take my family with me.”

  Custer silently regarded this courageous man.

  “I figured anyone in camp could lead me to my wife,” Morgan went on. “But told ’em I wanted to meet you first off, to shake hands with the man who saved my bride from the Indians.”

  “Dan told me you were seriously wounded.”

  “Was, General. On the mend now. Be back in the fields behind them mules by fall.”

  “Your leg?”

  “No. Took a bullet in the hip.”

  “It pains you to move around?”

  “Less every day. I laid there that first night, thinking about Anna Belle. Couldn’t move to help when they pulled her up on one of their ponies. Then had to watch ’em put the torch to my place. Some neighbors come to look things over the day after the raid. Found me in the field.”

  “You’ll start over?”

  “That land’s all I got. That and Anna Belle. Laid on a cot all fall in Solomon City, nursing my hip. Didn’t get no better, so they took me up to Minneapolis. Finally healed up ’bout as good as I’m gonna be for a while. Spent all winter praying I’d get Anna Belle back. All the time part of me said to forget her—savages had her and likely they’d use her up.”

  Custer saw the tears welling in the big man’s eyes, the quiver at his lip.

  “Mr. Morgan, your wife’s safe and very sound. She’s been through an ordeal of unspeakable horror, but she’s a strong woman.” He turned to his adjutant. “Moylan, take our guest down to Mrs. McNeil’s tent. The women are with her, waiting for family to fetch them.” Then he turned back to Morgan. “How was it you knew your wife was here?”

  “Knew before your regiment got back to Hays. I’d heard talk of your winter campaign to free white prisoners of the Indians. Rode down the Smoky Hill line, past Fort Harker and up to Hays City. Never rode a train before.” He rocked uneasily on the homemade oak canes. “Up to Hays City they been posting stories ’bout your Seventh Cavalry.”

  “Stories?” Custer asked.

  “Heard Colonel Miles wanted the whole territory to know what a success you’d made of the winter campaign against them damned Indians. So he had the papers all across Kansas print up stories from your dispatches.”

  “From what John tells me,” Moylan said, “you’re quite the hero to Kansas folk.”

  “No doubt of that, sir.” Morgan gave him a big-toothed smile. “All over, folks say you’re the man who made this country safe for ’em to farm. They say General Custer’s the one who makes ’em sleep easy at night. After they’ve said their prayers for the Seventh Cavalry, that is.”

  Custer straightened. “Good to know our winter’s efforts are appreciated. Suppose you go with Moylan down to the officers’ mess while he fetches your wife. I have a feeling she’ll want to freshen up before she sees you. It’s been quite a spell, hasn’t it?”

  “More’n half a year. Some eight months now.”

  “May I offer a word? Some advice?”

  “Of course, General.”

  “With all the time that’s passed, I want you to realize that your wife may have … changed some.”

  “Sir?”

  “When you see her for the first time, just remember what a horrifying ordeal she’s been through. If she didn’t do what was demanded of her, they’d kill her. Remember that when you want to touch her, Mr. Morgan.”

  “While I was laid up for the shank of the winter I had a lotta time to think. I know the Indians had their way with Anna Belle—any white woman, I ’spect. But Anna Belle’s prettier than most.”

  “A very striking woman,” Custer said.

  “At first I wanted to forget her. Tell myself it was over. Then I got to brooding on what she’d be thinking, what she was feeling. All of what happened was no fault of her own. Laying on that cot in Solomon City, I asked God to bring my wife back to me, no matter what. Just bring Anna Belle back.”

  “She’s what’s most important to you now.”

  M
organ wiped a hand across his eyes. “Her, and the home we’ll rebuild up on the Solomon. Raise some kids.”

  “I bet that’s what Anna Belle wants more than anything too. To go home where she can forget what’s happened. To start over.”

  “May I say something, General?” Moylan inquired.

  “Of course.”

  “Last winter when Dan Brewster came down to Camp Supply, telling us that the Morgans been burned out of everything, well … Mr. Keim here came up with a deuce of an idea. I think he should tell you about it, General.”

  Keim cleared his throat. “Several of your officers and I got to talking while we spent those two days beside the Washita on the trail back. Started taking up a small collection so we could help the two women. Maybe go some toward replacing what they lost in the way of clothing, household goods. The idea just took off on its own, with donations pouring in. Even the Kansas soldiers. Why, we’ve got over six hundred dollars to divide between Mrs. Morgan and Miss White!”

  “Three hundred dollars apiece?” John Morgan whistled low.

  Keim said, “I’ve never seen such an outpouring.”

  Morgan wagged his head. “Can’t believe it. Thank God for you all! For your kindness and your bravery. God bless the Seventh Cavalry!”

  Custer felt embarassed as he watched the big man shed tears too long held back. Moylan, Johnson, and Keim looked away, sniffling a bit themselves.

  “Moylan,” Custer said, “I think Mr. Morgan would like to see his bride now.”

  “Bless you, General Custer,” Morgan blurted like an adoring schoolboy, holding out a big hand once more. “Bless you for the job you’ve done for us.”

  “It’s what I’ve been sent here to do, Mr. Morgan.”

  They turned from his tent and slogged away through the mud and gumbo along the wagon road, dodging puddles and horse droppings.