Long Winter Gone sotp-1

by Terry C. Johnston

  “Thank you, General. Just wanted to do my part … see we really hurt the savages this time out.”

  Late that night Custer finished supper and set his plate aside. Tonight’s would be the last hot meal he or his men would remember for some time to come.

  The snow continued to pile up outside as the camp settled into that restless peace of soldiers on their last night before departing into the unknown. A solitary tent glowed with lamplight. Well past midnight Custer continued to push his numb fingers across the sheet of paper, scribbling a final letter to his wife.

  MY DARLING ROSEBUD,

  Your handsome beau is thinking only of you at this hour. We stand on the precipice of something great. Perhaps all we have dreamed of, my sweet. With one stroke I can right the wrong done me. Continue my career climb. And put our lives back together. I so need you. All others are as toys compared to you. That you must believe.

  The snow grows deeper outside. Already I find more than six inches on the ground, and it’s falling rapidly. Problem is, in this corner of the world, the wind blows every bit of it into icy drifts. Do not worry for me, my love. Destiny awaits me down this wilderness road.

  It snowed all night.

  When reveille sounded at four A.M., yanking soldiers from their warm blankets, the Seventh Cavalry found better than fifteen inches on the ground; and the storm wasn’t letting up. Still more snow pushed angrily through the bone-bare trees.

  Despite his wool blankets and buffalo robes, Sheridan had found it hard to sleep through the icy night. Now he lay alone in his tent, listening to the familiar, reassuring sounds of men and animals preparing for departure. Surprised at himself, the general suffered a momentary pang of doubt in sending good men out in such bitter weather. His melancholia was just as quickly interrupted by a sturdy rap at the front pole of his huge wall tent.

  “Yes?” Sheridan demanded.

  The buglers were blowing “The General,” that familiar call ordering troopers to strike their tents and pack the wagons for the march.

  “It’s Custer, sir. May I have the honor of saying farewell to an old friend in person?”

  “Of course, Custer. Come in.”

  Clutching a blanket around his trembling shoulders, Sheridan stood to turn up the wick on his lamp, its feeble, flickering saffron light wind-dancing on bitter gusts that sneaked in on Custer’s heels.

  “Damn this infernal thing!” His numb fingers were unable at first to adjust the wick roller.

  “May I be of some help?”

  “There.” Sheridan got the lamp to respond. “That’s better, now.” He pointed to the corner by his trunk. “Grab one of those stools, Custer.”

  The young cavalry officer settled on his perch, clumsy in his bulky buffalo coat, looking like a portly blackbird balanced precariously atop a delicate branch. His thick mustache dripped melting hoarfrost into the beard framing his face.

  “Warm enough, Custer?”

  “Yes, sir. What’s more, I’m happy to report the Seventh is prepared for what may come in this campaign.”

  “I see.” Sheridan rose from his cot and paced to the front flap, where he allowed the cold to slice in at him as he peered out at the men and animals, dark smudges across the new snow. “Seems the storm has moved east at last.”

  Custer stood, stepped to the flap beside Sheridan. “It’s a good sign for us, pulling out just as we are.”

  Sheridan trudged back to his cot, where he sank heavily. “I had forgotten how you look at things sometimes. Searching for a good omen in every turn you make in life.”

  “But, of course. I’ve been blessed with what many of my men have come to call Custer’s Luck.”

  “You’re the first to believe in it, too, eh?”

  “If I didn’t, how could I ask my men to believe in me?”

  Sheridan studied the bushy eyebrows of the taller man. “You damn well go out there and make your own luck, don’t you? You did it with General McClellan when you recklessly waded the Chickahominy. Then you impressed General Pleasanton with your daring charges, and by jingo you were on your way to capturing the cream of the Confederate cavalry at Appomattox—right when Lee himself saw fit to hand his flag of surrender to no one else but you.”

  “I was the only one there to take his flag, sir.”

  “That’s bullshit and we both know it, Custer. He wanted to hand that flag to the one man who had repeatedly stymied the cream of his Reb cavalry under Stuart.”

  “I learned from the best, sir. Philip H. Sheridan.”

  “Perhaps I am the only one better than you, goddammit.” Sheridan knocked his boots together to shock some warmth into his frozen feet, “Still, I’m having some second thoughts about campaigning in the jaws of winter. Perhaps that old scout Bridger was right after all. I’m not so sure we won’t suffer casualties to the goddamned weather you’ll encounter on your march.”

  “On the contrary, sir—begging your pardon.” Custer stuffed his hands in his coat pockets and glanced down at the squared toes of his tall black boots. “This deep snow is exactly what I had in mind. It could not come at a more opportune moment. My men are ready, capable of marching through that snow. By the same token, the hostile warriors we seek won’t even consider moving out of their villages for days to come.”

  “You are one of a kind, Armstrong.”

  “Shall I take that as a compliment, sir?”

  “Of course, my eager young friend.” Sheridan rose to his feet and clapped his hands on Custer’s broad shoulders. “I’ll buy your optimistic estimate on this weather … and your men.”

  Sheridan shook Custer’s hand. “I made you what you are, Armstrong. I can’t ever forget that.”

  “General!” Custer saluted and wheeled toward the tent flaps.

  “Custer?”

  The young officer turned, one of the canvas flaps still clutched in his buffalo mitten, admitting a cold slash of winter into the tent. “Sir?”

  “Take good care of your troops, my friend. They are your backbone.”

  “Understood, sir. They’ve never let me down.”

  Custer saluted smartly before he tugged the buffalo cap down on his forehead and plunged into the cold. To his side leapt his beloved Blucher and Maida, the two splendid Scottish staghounds he had brought from Monroe. At the Bluff Creek Camp south of Fort Dodge, Blucher had run down and killed a young wolf during one of his master’s frequent hunts.

  Custer knelt to pull at their ears playfully. Lieutenant Myles Moylan stomped up through the calf-deep snow.

  “How will this do for a winter campaign, General?”

  “Just what we want, Moylan,” came Custer’s swift reply. “Exactly what the gods ordered for me.” Custer stood, squared his shoulders, then stomped off, stiff-legged.

  With Custer’s words fading into the darkness, other voices hung just beyond Sheridan’s tent, strong voices come stinging to his ears. Familiar voices, some of them, familiar to an old soldier. Other wars, other battles, other campaigns … different names but soldiers just the same.

  Sergeants ordered their men to “Prepare to mount!” followed by a rustle of frozen, squeaky harness, jangling bit chains, and cold black leather as the officers called out, “Mount!”

  The coughing and wheezing of a few of the troopers slithered through the oiled canvas of his tent as Sheridan stood framed in the cold flickering light of his single hurricane lamp, eyes fixed on that patch of ground where snow threw itself beneath the tent flaps.

  Rhythmically plodding with the creak and swish of cold harness and frozen buckles, two columns of shivering pony soldiers lumbered past, their broad shoulders smeared upon the taut canvas wall of his wind-whipped tent. Sheridan recognized the shrill voice of handsome Major Joel H. Elliott as Custer’s headquarters staff rode by.

  “Goddammit all, but I wish I was home right now!” Elliott’s was a voice full of youth and mirth and a soldier’s camaraderie.

  “I’ll bet you do, Major!” Sergeant Major Kennedy replie
d. “And we know just what the hell you’d be doing at home right now with that pretty wife of yours you’ve kept tucked away back at Leavenworth!”

  A cruel gust of wind flung open the flaps of his tent, shoving Philip Sheridan back against his cot. Snuffing out the oil lamp with its icy breath. The solitary gust brought with it such a blast of cold that the general scurried beneath his blankets, pulling them just below his eyes.

  “Get a goddamned hold on yourself, Philip.”

  Shuddering with more than the cold of that icy gust, the commander of this Department of the Missouri glanced anxiously at the extinguished lamp. A ghostly wisp of purple smoke climbed out of the glass chimney in that pale light of predawn gray seeping into his tent.

  Outside in the snow and darkness the regimental band began to pump out that Seventh Cavalry favorite, “The Girl I Left Behind Me”:

  The hour was sad I left the maid,

  A ling’ring farewell taking;

  Her sighs and tears my steps delay’d—

  I thought her heart was breaking.

  In hurried words her name I bless’d;

  I breathed the vows that bind me,

  And to my heart in anguish press’d

  The girl I left behind me.

  Once more Sheridan’s mind replayed those orders he had written for Custer like some broken telegraph key:

  You are hereby ordered to proceed south, in the direction of the Antelope Hills, thence toward the Washita River, the supposed winter seat of the hostile tribes; to destroy their villages and ponies; to kill or hang all warriors, and bring back all women and children.

  It was the coldest time of day on the prairie, now when night was undecided in yielding it’s place—harsher still with the cruel battering winter gave the defenseless plains each year.

  Sheridan closed his eyes, shut out the gray light awakening the frozen world outside. The band continued to play.

  Full many a name our banners bore

  Of former deeds of daring,

  But they were of the days of yore

  In which we had no sharing.

  But now our laurel freshly won

  With the old ones shall entwin’d be;

  Still worthy of our sires each son,

  Sweet girl I left behind me.

  A somber Black Kettle returned to his Washita camp two days after the great snow had buried the land.

  The sun finally broke through the gloomy overcast and shone over his little village. The news their chief brought from General Hazen at Fort Cobb was nowhere near as bright and warm.

  “Black Kettle, I wish I could find something to say or do to persuade you to stay here at the fort,” Hazen had told him. “I’m sticking my neck out to offer you personal sanctuary.”

  Silent for a long time, a bewildered Black Kettle finally said, “Why would I need sanctuary, Soldier Chief, if my people are camped far south of the Arkansas River, deep in Indian Territory where we are supposed to live according to the very words of the talking paper I put my mark to for the white Grandfather back east beyond the rivers?”

  Again and again Hazen had attempted to tell this old Cheyenne that because of the young warriors raiding into the Kansas settlements, his tribe might still be in danger of some wandering patrol of mounted cavalry. Problem was, how to warn Black Kettle without directly informing him of Sheridan’s winter campaign plans?

  Seemed nothing got through to Black Kettle.

  The aged Cheyenne nodded sadly. “It would be a dishonorable thing to stay here at your fort for my own personal safety. Black Kettle belongs with his people.”

  Those words were the last he had spoken before beginning his cold, melancholy return trip northwest along the Washita’s icy course.

  “What?” Medicine Woman Later’s voice rose shrill across the camp as she trundled after her husband, following him to their lodge, where she would build up the fire and set some meat to boil.

  “Keep your voice down, woman!” he grumped as she shuffled along beside him through the snowdrifts that had gathered in crusty, wind-sculpted ridges between the old lodges.

  He was weary of the travel. Weary too of her harping at him. Most of all, Black Kettle felt as drained as an empty water skin, trying to keep the peace with the white man while keeping his people alive at the same time. Again he wondered if he was up to the task. Perhaps he should step aside as leader of his people.

  “I do not like this news you bring us!” She was as hoarse as the creaky lid on an old rawhide parfleche box.

  “I am not deaf, woman!” Immediately he was sorry for snapping at her and turned to find that she had ground to a halt in her tracks.

  Medicine Woman Later stood with snow piled up to her knees. Her gray head hung, and as she began to weep, Black Kettle came back to her side. He put his arms around her, gently encircling her within the curly warmth of his robe.

  “Why is it that you cry, woman? Was it that my words were cruel and cutting—sharp like your favorite knife?”

  “No,” she sobbed. “I suddenly realize you truly are deaf, my husband.”

  He snorted. “I hear you perfectly.”

  “Why is it you cannot hear the agent Wynkoop and that soldier chief Hazen when they warn you of danger coming down upon our heads?”

  She scurried through the opening in the lodge cover, seeking the warmth of their fire.

  “I am not deaf, woman,” Black Kettle muttered softly, hoping the argument was over.

  For too long he had hoped to make all things right for his people. He had listened to both the Indian agent and commander at Fort Lyons some four winters ago, taking his people to camp where the white men guaranteed his people would be safe from harm. There in the grassy, shaded meadows along Sand Creek a few miles above its junction with the Arkansas River his Cheyenne camp had awakened that November morning to the rumbling roar of cannon tearing through their hide lodges, iron shrapnel scattering blood and gore across the snow. They were peaceful Cheyenne. Black Kettle had seen to it that the agent’s flag of white stars and red stripes flew above the camp to show any soldiers who came that they were Indians protected by the Grandfather in far away Washington City.

  His flag had not turned the bullets and cannonballs, sabers and bloodlust of Colonel John M. Chivington’s enraged Colorado militia.

  “If you are not deaf,” his wife grumbled, offering him a bowl of hot meat and broth, “then surely you must be crazy.”

  “Perhaps I am touched by the moon.” He chewed on the softened meat with what he had left of teeth.

  She turned away, muttering to no one at all. “My husband, he is a crazy man.” Pulling a small morsel from the kettle, she plopped it on the end of her tongue. “He is told we should move our camp. He is warned the pony soldiers are roaming this land where we camp for the winter—pony soldiers looking for the white prisoners taken by the foolish young men downriver. We could have moved long ago when Hazen and Wynkoop learned where we raised our camp. Their skin is white. Surely, Hazen will tell the pony soldiers where we camp … here where we wait like possums for the pony soldiers to ride down on us again.”

  She sat back atop buffalo robes and blankets, drawing her knees up against her withered dugs. “No, my husband. If you are not deaf and truly can hear Hazen’s words of warning, then you must be crazy.”

  Her clucking slowly faded as she carried on the angry tantrum all by herself. Eventually her tirade was replaced by the sweet, rhythmic melody of the great honkers swooping overhead. What pretty music to Black Kettle’s soul their flying-talk had become through the many seasons of his life. Melody birds, flying south this time, far away from this cold land where the white man had plunged a knife deep into the heart of the Earth Mother.

  Black Kettle ached to be far away to the south where he did not have to worry about the snow and the cold and the pony soldiers searching for a Cheyenne winter camp while the rivers grew slow and icy.

  He wanted nothing more than to listen to the mournful song of the last dep
arting geese.

  CHAPTER 4

  ONCE the sun ducked its head back in its hole far behind the western edge of the earth, the air itself chewed on an old man’s bones. Kiowa chief Lone Wolf wrapped the thick winter robe tightly about his shoulders. Once more he was glad his youngest son had chosen to kill this fat cow almost two moons ago when the shaggy hides grew thick for the coming of winter.

  Lone Wolf smiled as he watched more of the lodges in his village begin to glow, warmed with the cook fires of his people. Earlier each afternoon darkness slithered down this valley of the Washita. Already the shadows ran deep among the villages by the water. To the west lay the old one’s village, as that cold, creeping tongue of night snaked its way up the icy river. Black Kettle’s small band of Cheyennes.

  Turning with a shudder, the Kiowa chief started for his warm lodge and hot supper when what seemed the thunder of half a thousand pounding hooves stayed his feet. Shouts of greeting and cries of congratulation rang through camp. Lone Wolf grinned, wrinkling his leathery face. It must have been a good hunt for the two riders who pulled up beside their chief.

  “Where is Hump Fat?” Lone Wolf asked with chattering teeth.

  “That one, aieeee!” The young warrior Rabbit Way rolled his head back, laughing as only youth can. “He is looking for a Cheyenne bride this night, I think!”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He stays over in Black Kettle’s camp. They invited us to a dance they will hold with the falling of the sun. But Sees Red and I decided we best bring these Ute ponies home to our camp.”

  “You found many horses in the land of the Utes, yes?”

  “Not as many as we would have liked to find, Uncle!” All three laughed. “We had to travel far to find the Ute villages. By my count-stick, forty-three suns have come and gone—so Hump Fat wants to do nothing more until he finds a maiden to warm his robes tonight. He cannot wait!”

  “Does he not know the Cheyenne guard their chastity with more than just a buffalo-hair rope tied about a woman’s loins?” Lone Wolf asked.