by John Jakes
On November 11, the camp stirred with the excitement of new orders. Next day, they marched.
The huge, noisy advance started at daybreak. It was a spectacle unlike any Charles had seen since the war. The supply train carrying winter clothing, food, and forage had grown to four hundred fifty white-topped wagons, an immense cavalcade split into four columns traveling abreast. Two companies of the Seventh rode in front, two formed a rear guard, and the rest were divided to ride wide and protect the flanks of the train. The infantry was assigned to march near the wagons but everyone expected that the lazy foot soldiers would soon be hitching rides, which proved to be the case.
Sully and some other officers took the south bank of the Arkansas while the first of the wagons lumbered in and splashed across. So many wagons, their teamsters swearing and popping whips, created a colossal din, augmented by trumpet calls and the creak of horse gear and the lowing of the beef cattle pushed along between the wagons and the flanking cavalry.
Spruce and boisterous, Custer rode with his point detachment, avoiding Sully. Charles saw Custer on his prancing horse on the north bank, the Seventh’s standard, with its fierce eagle clutching sharp golden arrows, unfurled in the wind behind him. The Seventh’s mounted bandsmen played “The Girl I Left Behind Me” as accompaniment for the fording.
The land directly south of the river was a kind Charles had seen with Wooden Foot Jackson: a scoured waste of sand hills cut by dry gulches. Travel for the wagons was slow and difficult. Axles snapped. Coupling poles split. The teamsters whipped their mules and oxen pitilessly but fell behind. The mounted soldiers soon drew away, leaving a great billowing rampart of dust in their wake.
Charles, Dutch Henry, and two of the Osages galloped ahead and sited a camp on Mulberry Creek, barely five miles from their departure point. Sully and Custer jointly decided they would go no farther the first day because the wagons were having so much trouble.
In camp, after Charles ate a supper of beans and hardtack, his luck ran out again.
Stiff from being in the saddle all day, he fed Satan and blanketed him against the night chill. He was walking back toward the scout camp when he saw a familiar figure striding down a low knoll on a path that would intersect his. Captain Harry Venable looked neat and unwrinkled after the day’s march. The eternal prairie wind lifted his overcoat cape as he stepped in front of Charles.
“Main,” he said curtly. His eyes were even bluer, more glacial than Custer’s. “Or should I say May? August, perhaps? Which is it this time?”
“I expect you know.”
“I do. I spotted you a week ago. I know you saw me. I thought that in light of past circumstances you might be smart enough to get the hell away from this expedition.”
“Why? I’m not in uniform. California Joe hired me.”
“You’re still under Army jurisdiction.”
Old Bob, following Charles as he usually did, went up to Venable to sniff. Venable kicked at him. Bob crouched and growled. Charles whistled the dog back to his side. Old Bob obeyed but kept growling.
“Look, Venable, General Custer knows that I rode for the Confederacy. He doesn’t object.”
“By Christ I do.” Venable’s russet beard jutted; his face was nasty. Old Bob growled louder. Venable stepped forward. “You reb son of a bitch!”
Charles reacted by shoving his palm hard against Venable’s dark blue overcoat. “Take your complaints to the general.”
Venable surprised Charles by relaxing, stepping away. A puzzling smile drifted onto his face. “Oh, no. I haven’t said a word about our past encounters, and I won’t. I want you to myself this time. Pounding your dumb skull at Jefferson Barracks didn’t discourage you, and neither did a discharge after you lied your way into the Tenth. I’m going to find something that works. Something permanent.”
“Fuck you,” Charles said. “Come on, Bob.”
Venable ran after him, but Old Bob’s growl brought him up short. “It’s your job to keep your eyes on the trail ahead,” Venable called. “But just remember, I’ll be watching your back, every minute.”
The threat bothered Charles more than he cared to admit. He wanted to tell someone. He drew Dutch Henry away from the other scouts around the fire and in a few words described the run-in, concluding, “So if you find me shot in the back, get that damn Yankee.”
Dutch Henry looked baffled. “Why’s he got it in for you?”
“Because of what John Hunt Morgan did to his mother and sister. I’m not responsible for it, for God’s sake.”
The burly scout gave him a peculiar look, his eyes flecked with points of light from the blazing campfire. “No, and the Injuns we’re chasing probably didn’t chop up your partners. But you’re going to kill them anyway.”
“Henry, that’s—”
“Different? Mmmm. if you say so. Come on back to the fire, Charlie. It’s too damn cold to stand here palavering.”
He stumped off toward the wind-tattered flames, leaving Charles motionless, staring after him with a curious strained look on his face. Almost a look of confusion.
On November 13 they advanced to Bluff Creek, where Custer had rejoined the regiment when he came out of exile in Michigan. They made Bear Creek the following day, and the Cimarron, and the Indian Territory, the day after that. There, a winter norther tore down on them, providing a wicked foretaste of the season to come.
Heading east along the Beaver fork of the North Canadian, they still found no trace of hostiles. A day later that changed. Charles and the Corbins discovered a ford with signs of many ponies having passed, but no travois. A war party. They galloped back toward the main body to report:
“Anywhere from seventy-five to one hundred fifty braves, trailing in a northeasterly direction.”
“To attack settlements, Mr. Main?” General Sully asked. He’d gathered officers and scouts in his big headquarters tent. The lanterns illuminated faces beginning to show beard stubble, trail dirt, fatigue. Venable lounged at the back. He folded his arms, a signal he distrusted anything Charles might say.
“I don’t know any other reason they’d be headed away from Indian Territory in the winter, General.”
Custer stepped forward, almost quivering in anticipation of a fight. Was it accidental that he moved in front of Sully, partially hiding him from the others? “How old is the sign?” he wanted to know.
Jack Corbin said laconically, “Two days, most.”
“Then if we strike out in the other direction, where they came from, we might find their village with most of the men gone. We could take them by surprise.”
“General Custer,” Sully said with weighted irony, “that’s absurd. Do you for one moment suppose that a military force as large as ours, accompanied by such an immense train of wagons, could have gotten this far into Indian country and remain undetected? They know we’re here.”
Instead of arguing, Custer said, “What do you think, Main?”
Charles didn’t like the unexpected and unsubtle shift of responsibility, but there was no point in feeding Sully’s lies, whether he got offended or not. “I think it’s entirely possible no one knows we’re here. The Indians don’t move much this late in the season. That war party has to be an exception. They assume we wouldn’t move either.”
“You see?” Custer exclaimed to Sully. “Let me take a detachment—”
“No.”
“But look here—”
“Permission denied,” Sully said.
Custer shut up, but no one in the tent missed the rush of red in his cheeks, or his glare of resentment. Nor did he intend that they should. Charles figured Sully had blundered in a way he would regret.
“My partner, Jackson, said a white man has to turn his notions upside down out here,” Charles remarked to Griffenstein after the conference broke up. “Sully won’t do it. Same old Army.” He sighed.
Charles and the scouts ranged south, hunting for a suitable location for the supply base. They found one about a mile above the conflu
ence of Wolf and Beaver creeks, which joined to form the North Canadian. There was timber, good water, and abundant game. At noon on the eighteenth of November, the forward detachments of the Seventh reached the site.
Charles, Milner, and the other scouts rode into the woods for game while the infantry fell to chopping trees for a stockade. Additional parties of men began digging wells and latrine trenches, or scything down the frost-killed meadow grass for forage.
Charles flushed a flock of wild turkeys and bagged three with his Spencer. California Joe, temporarily sober, killed a buffalo cow but lost a dozen more that stampeded at the first shot. Most of the scouts brought in a kill of some kind. The expedition would eat better tonight.
Camp Supply rose quickly, a stockade one hundred twenty-six feet on a side, with lunettes at two corners, loopholed blockhouses at the other two. Log palisades protected the west and south sides; barrackslike storage buildings served as the north and east walls. The men had pitched their tents outside; the wagons unloaded inside. The expedition had stretched its supply line a distance of one hundred miles from Fort Dodge.
Charles heard that Custer and Sully were arguing almost continuously. Custer was still furious with his rival.
An advance party of white scouts and Kaw trackers appeared in the north, heralding the arrival of General Sheridan and his three-hundred-man escort from the Nineteenth Kansas Volunteer Cavalry. Custer saddled up and galloped out to greet the Departmental commander. By nightfall, Little Phil was stumping around the camp, shaking hands and grousing obscenely about the fierce norther and howling sleet storm that had plagued his rapid march from Fort Hays. Sheridan was squat and thickly built, with black eyes and a pointed Mongol mustache. Charles had never seen a New York Bowery bartender, but Little Phil fit his mental picture.
Later in the evening, reclining by the scout fire with Old Bob curled up against his belly, asleep, Charles heard music. He recognized “Marching Through Georgia.”
“What the hell’s going on, Henry?”
“Why, I’m told old Curly sent his bandsmen to lighten General Sheridan’s evening with a serenade. Don’t you recognize that tune?” He smirked. “The title should be ‘Farewell, General Sully.’ ”
That was the sixth day after departure from the camp on the Arkansas. General Sheridan took personal charge of the expedition, and then Sully and his staff left suddenly for his headquarters at Fort Marker, It wasn’t hard to tell which commander Little Phil had backed in the dispute over rank.
Quartermasters began issuing overcoats lined with buffalo hide, high canvas leggings, and fur mittens and caps to the men of the Seventh. Sheridan ordered Custer and his eleven troops to prepare to march before daylight on the morning of November 23.
The issuing of rations and ammunition continued all night. Horses were inspected and questionable ones replaced. Custer cut a new one, Dandy, from the remuda. The best teams were matched with the soundest wagons, which were loaded with provisions for thirty days.
After dark, a peculiar stillness settled over Camp Supply. Charles had experienced a similar quiet before Sharpsburg, and several times in Virginia. In these last hours before a campaign began in earnest, a man liked to be alone with himself and his Bible or the pencil he used to write a farewell letter to be left behind, just in case. Charles wrote such a note for Duncan to read to little Gus. He was sealing it when Dutch Henry stomped into the tent they shared.
“Guess what we got outside.”
“The usual. The wind.”
“More’n that now.” He held the flap open. Charles saw a slantwise pattern of white. “She’s piling up fast. They said it’d be a winter war. Damned if they were fooling.”
Old Bob snored now and then, but Charles couldn’t sleep. He was already bundled in his gypsy robe, waiting impatiently, when the trumpeters played reveille at 4:00 a.m.
He made sure his compass was secure in a pocket—not even the Osages knew much about the country south of Camp Supply—and stepped outside while Dutch Henry yawned himself awake. The wind howled. Snow pelted his exposed flesh. A drift in front of the tent measured six inches. Not an auspicious start.
Likewise awake early, General Custer sent for Dandy, and with the staghounds Maida and Blucher loping after him, rode alone over to the headquarters encampment. He was greeted by darkness and silence. Everyone was still sleeping.
Not daunted, he called for General Sheridan. Presently Little Phil emerged from his tent, two blankets clutched over his long underwear. An orderly lighted a lantern while Custer patted his fretful horse. The snow blew almost horizontally. With his sleep-slitted eyes, Sheridan resembled a Chinese.
“What do you think of this storm, General?” Sheridan asked.
“Sir, I think nothing could serve our purpose better. We can move. The Indians will not. If the snow lasts a week, I’ll bring you some scalps.”
“I’ll be waiting,” said Little Phil, returning the salute of his eager commander.
The trumpets sounded the advance. As usual, the scouts were first, horses struggling to step through the mounting drifts. The wind screamed. It was hard to hear anything else, and the earflaps of Charles’s muskrat cap only made matters worse. He had been astounded to see a journalist who’d arrived with Sheridan, a Mr. DeBenneville Keim, climb aboard one of the supply wagons, now lost in the darkness behind the scouts. Perhaps Custer had persuaded the reporter that the expedition would achieve some noteworthy results.
He thought he heard his name. He lifted the left flap of his cap. “What’s that?”
“I said,” Dutch Henry yelled, “we got an observer from Sheridan’s staff. He’s right back yonder with old Curly. Guess who.”
In the snow-lashed darkness, Charles imagined Venable’s eyes and, despite the temperature, felt a hot prickle down his back.
49
WHEN THE DAY DAWNED, the world stayed white. Charles tied a scarf around the lower part of his face but needles of snow still broke painfully against his exposed skin. The incessant moaning and crying of the storm wore on his nerves.
Soon a snow crust built up on his eyebrows. Satan snorted and struggled through deepening drifts. Snow on the horse’s back would shiver and blow away, only to be thick again in a few minutes. Looking to the rear, Charles could see nothing, though he heard men back there. One of them shouted that the teamsters, already a mile behind with their foundering wagons, were still losing ground.
Griffenstein dropped back to ride beside him. The two tried to exchange comments about the storm. The strain on their throats wasn’t worth it. Each man held a mitten near his face, stiffened fingers curled to give some protection to their only reliable guides in the blizzard, the little needles of their pocket compasses. The compasses kept them headed south.
By 2:00 p.m. Custer ordered a halt for the day. The column was strung along the valley of Wolf Creek, which Charles estimated as no more than fifteen miles from their departure point. Horses and men were as blown out as if they’d marched twice that distance. No one knew if they’d see the wagons again.
Stands of timber bordered the frozen creek; around the trunks the drifts were five and six feet high. Among the leafless trees, Charles spied large dark shapes, motionless, very like statues placed in the wilderness by some crazed sculptor. The statues proved to be buffalo standing with their heads down while the storm raged. Only the noise of men wielding axes roused them and started them staggering away. Marksmen brought down three.
Like ants on a white sand beach. Charles and the other scouts moved through a snowy grove. They dug up fallen limbs protruding from drifts, or cut smaller volunteer trees among the bigger ones; they would at least have fires for warmth, even if they got no food from the lost wagons.
Charles and Dutch Henry piled up their wood and went to feed their mounts on the picket line. Satan acted famished; he finished his small ration of oats so greedily, Charles thought the piebald might chew off his fingers.
Next, mostly using their hands, they dug out sn
ow to create their campsite. When they had the snow down to two or three inches, they stomped it to pack it; it was the best floor they were going to get. Of course as soon as they pitched their two-man tent and started a fire outside, the tent floor melted and soaked their blankets.
As the night lowered, Charles heard heavy creakings and poppings—the wagons and their drivers’ whips. General Custer went riding past in the storm, Maida and Blucher loping behind.
Custer’s cheeks were red as blistered skin.
“… want to see every last one of those damn malingering teamsters in twenty minutes in my …”
The general vanished behind a tossed-up cloud of snow. Charles had never seen him in such a bad temper, or heard him curse.
Old Bob, who’d kept up pretty well all day, seemed to know it was a night of misery. He stayed close to Charles, nuzzling his canvas leggings and whining.
They unpacked their skillets, unfolded the handles, melted some snow, and boiled salt pork. Several pieces of hardtack, softened by sticking them in a drift, went into the pork grease and fried up nicely. That and coffee provided a passable meal, though Charles was still frozen, and chafed raw by the rubbing of his layers of clothing. He kept reminding himself of why he was here. He pictured each member of the Jackson Trading Company as he last saw him.
Captain Fred Benteen stomped by, muttering, “Goddamn idiot.”
“Who?” Charles asked.
“The general. Do you know what he just did?”
“What?” Griffenstein asked, in a tone that said a mass execution wouldn’t surprise him.
“Arrested all the teamsters for being so slow. Tomorrow they’re forbidden to ride in their wagons. They have to walk. We won’t have any wagons after that.”
He went away into the falling snow. Old Bob whined, and Charles rubbed his muzzle and fed him a morsel of boiled pork. From that moment, a formless uneasiness about the expedition began to trouble him. It had nothing to do with the presence of Harry Venable.