The Removes
Page 31
In desperation, a fellow soldier fashioned a crude telegraph key, connected it to the wire running alongside the track, and sent out a message for help. Tom came to their rescue once again.
“This is getting to be a regular habit with the two of you,” he said, nonchalant, as if he had only come to fetch them from the neighbors’.
In retrospect it seemed fate toyed with them. No sooner did they arrive than Autie was called back to Washington to testify against the Indian ring, retracing the treacherous journey they had only just completed. He cited the dangerous traveling and their lack of funds to shut down the possibility of her accompanying him.
Libbie worked hard to hide her jealousy. She did not mind sharing danger if she also partook of the joy. Always the worst thing was being left behind. He preened as he packed, and she noted him being sure to include his best shirts. From Washington Autie wrote that spring had already arrived back east with green grass, flowers, and lightly clad women. What a good thing it is, he wrote, to be out of the cold.
President Grant was angered by Autie’s testimony concerning the administration’s corruption. In revenge, he delayed Autie’s return so that he could not go out with the 7th on the campaign, which had been now delayed into April. Libbie was secretly pleased with the result if not the cause.
Autie could easily have slipped his destiny, but instead he was frantic to embrace it. He begged General Terry to intercede, which he did. This was not altruistic—Terry needed a decisive victory and did not have the stomach to fight. Autie would go wrest victory for him. Newspapers got hold of the machinations in Washington—Libbie suspected with some nudging of Autie’s journalist friends—and wrote that Grant was punishing him for testifying. With the public outcry, he got his heart’s desire.
* * *
EVEN AT THE TIME everyone sensed that it would be a fearful campaign compared with more recent ones. The Sioux had been driven to the edge. The unsubdued were angered over the violations in the Black Hills. Enough time had elapsed so that they knew from their brethren on the reservation that the promises of plenty by the Great Father in Washington were false. Anger was rampant over poor rations, and many young warriors left to go hunting in order to save their families from starvation. Once they left the boundaries of the reservation, they were declared hostile. They had been put in a position from which they had nothing to lose.
When General Crook set out in June, he was attacked by a joint Sioux and Cheyenne war party. He held his ground but did not gain victory. A shift in balance occurred. The Indians gained confidence and would make the summer a violent one. The army needed someone bold and fearless to combat them.
Libbie wished that Autie had hesitated, or that he was forced to go and had been reluctant, but that would be false. He went above and beyond to make sure he was part of the campaign. He loved war and thirsted for victory.
When the column finally set off from Fort Lincoln, they rode one last time circling the parade ground to take leave of their families. The departures always tore a hole in Libbie’s heart. The regiment consisted of the 7th Cavalry, two companies of the 17th Infantry, four of the 6th Infantry, Arikara scouts, a Gatling gun detachment, teamsters, and civilian employees. Usually such a sight of strength reassured, but somehow it failed that morning. She searched and searched the cause but could find nothing out of the ordinary. The melancholy mood was not helped by the fort being enveloped in a thick fog, which made the review spectral and anonymous, contributing to the poor impression.
The expressions of grief from the various women also dampened spirits, and Libbie marveled that such a universal feeling could be expressed so differently. The Arikara scouts, as was their custom when going to war, chanted and made fighting sounds. Their women lay prostrate on the ground and gave heartrending wails, shedding tears that threatened to make all of them lose their composure. She could only imagine the terror of such a sight to their children.
Golden Buffalo and the other “bachelors” seemed not as well loved in comparison. Once they proved themselves, maybe in this very battle, they would also be entitled to marry. Although such open display of grief scandalized Autie, at the moment Libbie wished to join the keening women. Instead, she stood silent, stoic, dry-eyed, in anguish.
Farther up the troops passed “soap suds row,” and the laundresses, too, were extravagant in their sadness, crying loudly and calling names, running up to their men for a last kiss. The somber officers’ wives stood each before her own quarters or in small groups. They bit their lips, at most pressing a kerchief to an eye, no more. Their husbands would have chastised any outsized display of emotion. Strength was expected. Many rushed inside afterward to cry alone. Libbie did not pretend to understand the difference in accepted behavior.
Tom stopped his horse in front of their quarters, dismounted, and ran to his room. He claimed to have forgotten a favorite shirt. Libbie followed and saw him pause at the single cot he used as a bed. His eyes were damp, and she put her hand on his shoulder.
“Is something wrong?”
He shrugged her hand away. “Just thinking I wished there was someone to miss me while I was gone. Cry tears.”
“You’re still a young man. You’ll find her.”
She had noticed Golden Buffalo’s loneliness but had been oblivious to her own family member. Tom seemed as above human frailty as his brother.
Libbie handed him a kerchief from her pocket.
“Will you keep this for me? And bring it back with you?”
He nodded and brought it to his nose. It held her cologne. He began to say something but then thought better of it.
* * *
AS THE COLUMN wound its way up a bluff, the sun at last began to burn through the fog, creating a halo around the men. As they climbed, it appeared as if the cavalry rode from earth to sky and trod on the clouds. Ever hopeful, Libbie took it as an omen of success. It was not.
As usual she camped out with the regiment that first night, riding in the paymaster’s wagon. The custom was for the men to receive their wages while out in the field so as not to splurge on alcohol and other vices. After the battle, witnesses said paper money blew across the hills, as useless to its owners as the army intended it to be.
Over the years she had become every bit the army wife, the camp follower, as at home in a tent as in the grandest house.
That night the couple ate early, and instead of socializing with the men, Autie went to bed. They lay side by side, the cicadas loud in the breeze, the stars floating lazily in the summer night. They held each other in the dark but did not speak. After all their years of marriage, nothing more needed to be said. She squeezed his hand as she began to fall asleep and then he spoke.
The next morning the paymaster hitched his mules for the return trip to the fort. It was as bright and sunny as the previous day had been glum. Libbie lingered at the campfire, a blanket over her shoulders, and drank her coffee. How she wished the moment might never end.
Finally the column was ready and moved off. She felt reassured. The day before had been simply a case of jitters. If all went well, they planned that she would rejoin Autie by supply steamboat in a few weeks.
Riding away in the wagon, she turned for a last glance. No one watching her would have ever guessed her heart quaked, that like the other women she wanted to scream and protest to the heavens at the separation. No, she appeared as cool and composed as if going on a picnic. A worthy wife to the last.
Autie had just reached the top of a promontory and turned around. Thankfully, even if he suspected it, he was too far away to see her façade was already cracking, tears appearing unbidden. He took off his hat and gave a casual wave. She could not reconcile the man on the horse, riding away to battle, with her husband. But it had always been so.
She no longer believed in the mission, only in him, and so now she feared.
The previous night in the tent he had curled against her and kissed her ear.
“I am afraid,” he whispered.
The column moved on up the hill, moved on and went down the other side, went down the other side to disappear forever from her life. She never saw her husband again.
THE SEVENTEENTH REMOVE
Preparation—The dance—A farewell
Anne had stored away a sack of medicines and foodstuffs to last a week if she was sparing in her portions. Her plan was to go fetch Neha, and together they would find their way back to the tribe. To the whites the Indians were nomads, impossible to locate, but within the tribe there were well-known paths north and south along valleys and rivers that varied depending on the season and the migration of the buffalo. Since it was spring, the season of young green grass, within a month the ponies would have fed enough to regain their strength for the long trip north.
The memory brought a catch to Anne’s throat. She did not remember ever not being hungry and in pain during those trips, exhausted by the arduous travel, sure that with the very next step she would expire. Just as vividly she recalled the sting of icy, sweet air in her nostrils, the lifesaving warmth of the weak spring sun on her numbed limbs, the comfort of a buffalo robe to sleep in by the fire. These impressions created an indefinable longing for a life that only now did she choose to claim as hers. Migration had lodged in her blood as it did in a bird’s.
Before her captivity she had always lived protected in houses, inside walls, under roofs. Caged. Even when traveling, she had been hidden away under the canvas canopy of wagons. She had not experienced the immensity of the land around her but rather had lived in fear of it. Did her people hate nature that they were so determined to tame it? The warming prairie in various shades of gold and green appeared to her eyes every bit as beautiful as the prophecy in church, an embodiment of the land of milk and honey if looked at from the right vantage. The pulchritude of nature, its attendant liberty, had been revealed to her in her captivity.
She chided herself for her schoolgirl nostalgia for a life in which she had endured such brutal hardship. Sentimentalizing it was to delude herself, but to deny its isolated joys was equally wrong. The only overwhelming certainty was her continuous ache for her missing children. She could not fathom the advice she received, not only from Lydia and Josiah, but Neha as well, to forget them, pretend they did not exist. Such thinking convinced her more than anything else that she did not belong in her old world.
She did not pretend to herself that she would be welcomed back to the tribe. As likely as not, she might be considered a bad omen. Even if accepted, the life was a brutish one and became more precarious with each passing year, yet she was convinced it would be the only possible existence for her children. She had witnessed the cruelty meted out to Neha by Josiah, and even to herself, a feeling that she had been tainted by her contact with the Indians. Returning was a choice fraught with risk, but the only one that held any hope for a life lived on her own terms.
* * *
A NEW MOON graced the night of the dance, which Anne considered an auspicious sign. It would make tracking her more difficult. She had learned to compass herself by the stars alone. The hop was the largest social gathering of the spring, people coming from far away, and it was easy to lose oneself in the milling crowds. Two fiddlers had been brought in, and their playing exhilarated the dancers. A great storming of heels on the wooden floorboards pounded through the bodies like an extra heartbeat, laughter like an extra bellows of lungs. The music pulsed through Anne’s blood, making her feel as if drunk on spirits. She stood in the middle of it all, letting it pour over her, knowing it would likely be her last such event. She accepted every invitation she received, danced with a joy and abandon she could not have mustered if she were not leaving. Her behavior risked censure.
Josiah sat against the wall throwing disapproving looks. The other young ladies, scandalized their partners were queuing to dance with Anne, tittered about her licentiousness and vowed future snubs. There was one particular boy, Jeremy, to whom she had taken a liking. A farm boy who reminded her of her old beau Michael. She had purposely cultivated the relationship, but even as she did it toward her own ends, it was clear she could not possibly settle for such a life any longer. Perhaps Josiah was correct—she was indeed ruined, tainted in some irretrievable manner.
At the height of the evening when the dance hall was most full, Anne accepted Jeremy’s suggestion that they go for air. Outside, she realized how hot and breathless she had been, dancing as if possessed, unable to take sufficient deep breaths due to the confines of a corset she found repellant. The icy spring night chilled her burning flesh, the perspiration making her shiver. Jeremy took off his jacket and wrapped it around her shoulders.
“You are much the gentleman,” she said.
“I would rather not be and kiss you.”
“Shhh,” she said, and placed her finger on his lips.
“I’d like to talk with your uncle Josiah, with your permission,” he said.
“Maybe tomorrow, but tonight I ask you for one thing.”
“Anything.”
“Go home straightaway. Do not ask why. Tell everyone who asks that I was overtaxed and stayed at your home till morning.”
“But you can’t—”
“Your mother and sister will chaperone.”
She leaned up against him, and he placed his arms around her. She swooned.
“I want my children,” she whispered.
“Yes, I want a family, too. We will, I promise. Strapping boys.”
She is not with the boy in front of her but transported seven years back, a young girl at her family’s house, her mother and father in the kitchen. Michael and she are outside, under the trees. He kisses her for the very first time. That kiss promises a life that will roll out before them like a beautiful golden carpet. Although she did not intend it, she kisses Jeremy, whom she has wronged with her deceitful intentions. The kiss is long and perfect and then she is gone.
THE BISMARCK TRIBUNE
Mark Kellogg
Gen. George A. Custer, dressed in a dashing suit of buckskin, is prominent everywhere. Here, there, flitting to and fro, in his quick eager way, taking in everything connected with his command, as well as generally, with the keen, incisive manner for which he is so well known. The General is full of perfect readiness for a fray with the hostile red devils, and woe to the body of scalp-lifters that comes within reach of himself and brave companions in arms.
THE BADLANDS, JUNE 1876
Truly hell with the fires burned out.
—Brig. Gen. Alfred Sully, describing the Badlands
The regiment rode for weeks, the only sign of a white presence a railroad peg left by surveyors back in ’73. Plenty of signs of the enemy visible. They passed a pole from which a strip of red cloth and several hanks of hair trailed, a clear warning of the dangers of trespassing into Lakota territory. They gave it a wide berth but still they pressed on.
After Custer’s announcement of gold the government demanded a purchase of the Black Hills be negotiated with the Sioux. The tribes were given an impossible deadline to come in to the reservation or war would be declared on them. As expected, they refused, thus supplying a justification.
Custer took a small party to find a path through the Badlands by which the larger column could follow to reach the river. The land grew greasewood, sage, saltbrush, cactus, and not much else. Crow scouts were assigned for their greater knowledge of the contours of that forbidding land, as he had been favorably impressed by their superb tracking ability.
Easterners didn’t understand Indian scouts, why they worked for the army or how they could be trusted, but the tribes were used to making alliances between themselves, some of them unholy. The more prescient saw the inevitable and were seeking the most advantageous accommodation. The on
es that acted on their outrage were doomed.
That first night Custer came to the campfire to compliment the scouts. He was amused that they took it as their due. They in turn said they were proud to be under his command as it was said that he never abandoned a trail; when food gave out he ate mule. That was the kind of man they wanted to fight under. They were willing to eat mule, too.
When they reached base camp, all were gathered there—cavalry, scouts, infantry, band, packers with wagons of provisions, excess horses, mules, and herd of beef. He made sure his brothers Tom and Bos, his nephew Autie Reed, and his brother-in-law Jimmi were near. He felt in need of family.
This being the last opportunity for inspection, Custer demanded to see each man’s mount to determine if it was fit for battle. Turkey Feather, one of the Crow scouts, appeared horseless.
—Where is it? Custer asked impatiently.
—He is already across the river, resting for battle.
Custer’s face went dark.
—Bring him now and quit this nonsense, or I’ll shoot him dead.
The horse was produced. Predictably Custer discovered a sore on his back.
—Is this why you hid him?
Turkey Feather stood expressionless.
—You’re staying, Custer said, moving on.
—This horse born this way. This horse runs as swiftly as the river and stops as little. This horse will outrun your horse.
Custer stopped and turned back.
—Is that so?
—If he stops, I will run to keep up with you.
Custer burst out laughing.
—Since you are named after a bird that does not fly, I’d better give you a ridable horse. Go tell the lieutenant to let you pick one from the cavalry horses.