Long Winter Gone sotp-1

by Terry C. Johnston

  Peace would burst across the prairie as surely as the spring grasses rose to flower after the hard, dark days of winter. Pony soldiers would come no more.

  “You are tired, my husband?”

  “Yes,” Black Kettle answered as his wife ducked back inside the warm lodge. “Tonight I can once again sleep the sleep of peace.”

  And dream of the great birds flying south.

  CHAPTER 5

  IT was close to nine o’clock, long since dark, before the regiment finally rendezvoused with Elliott’s scouting detail.

  Adjutant Moylan nudged his mount close to Custer. “Sir?”

  “Pass the word. From here the troopers will take only what they need for battle. And Myles, that means only what a man can strap behind his saddle.”

  “I’ll pass the word, General.”

  Moylan loped back into the freezing darkness to give the details of the order: Every trooper was to carry a hundred rounds of carbine ammunition and twenty-four loads for his pistol. In addition, each soldier was to be rationed some coffee and hardtack, along with an equally scanty bit of forage for his mount.

  From here on out their buffalo coats would have to do. Blankets and tents would be left behind with the wagons. Not knowing the exact location of the hostile village, the men must be ready for battle at any moment. Word had it that at least five hundred warriors awaited them on the Washita. Earlier that evening the scouts had run across a “small” war party of over a hundred braves moving south with the smell of home fires in their nostrils.

  For a few minutes the men slid from their saddles after better than fourteen straight hours in leather. A short break to rub some semblance of life back into their numb, cold rumps. One hour and no longer to chew on the crackerlike hardtack, to sip at the scalding coffee Custer allowed them to brew over small fires built beneath the overhang of creek banks.

  A good site had been chosen by Elliott’s chief scout. He had worn the same droopy sombrero for years, a bushy mustache and dirty beard spilling across his chest. Christened Moses Embree Milner, the scout came to call himself Joseph, and later took the nickname California Joe during his gold rush days. A Kentuckian by birth, Milner had escaped his farming home to end up scouting for Kearny’s forces during the Mexican War. After peace had been gained in the southwest, Joe had moseyed to the California gold fields. Until Nancy Emma Watts came along to temper some of his wanderlust. She was all of thirteen but every bit a woman when he met her; she would bear him four children before Joe figured out domestic life really was a scratchy suit. Milner owned up to what he was—a wanderer—taking Nancy Emma and their children north to the ranch of some friends in Oregon.

  Once again on the plains enjoying a man’s freedom, Joe cut quite a figure atop his cantankerous mule Maude.

  Learning of Milner’s qualifications, the Seventh Cavalry’s young commander had snatched up Milner to become his chief of scouts.

  “One thing ’bout a prairie winter,” Milner growled to anyone who would listen, “it don’t stop reminding a man he can never wear enough clothes.”

  He huddled with the rest of the scouts, both white and Indian, around a small fire. They warmed feet and hands, then turned for a moment while they pulled up the tails of their long coats, exposing some weary rumps to the welcome warmth of the flames. With a little rubbing, a rosy sensation of life began to seep back into this single most important part of a cavalry soldier’s anatomy.

  Joe chuckled privately at the thought. He wasn’t all that different really from these numb-ass troopers. Just better paid. The dozen or so Osage trackers and the handful of white guides were all paid about $2.50 a day. In addition, they had Custer’s promise of a $100 bonus paid in gold to the man who led him to the hostile village.

  Milner’s young partner Jack Corbin glanced at him over the lip of his tin cup as he sipped at the boiled coffee. Stiff, Milner eased himself down on his hams beside Corbin. He shared his joke on himself with the other scouts. The white men chuckled, frosty halos engulfing their heads. The Osages drank their coffee, not making a sound.

  A few minutes before ten o’clock, Moylan brought orders to resaddle their mounts. Custer wasn’t taking any chances blowing “Boots and Saddles” on the tin trumpets. By now a milk-pale moon had broken through a thin overcast. What little heat the earth had held would quickly disappear now with no cloud cover to speak of.

  “Damn,” one of the men grumbled, “this next haul could be the coldest stretch yet.”

  Out here in the wilderness, a man had only his dreams or his fears to keep himself warm tonight.

  * * *

  “Found something, Ben?” Custer asked the scout who materialized out of the inky darkness up ahead. Custer and Moylan had left the rest of the column a quarter-mile back, hundreds of weary horses plodding along the frozen river.

  “One of them Osages thinks he smells a fire,” Ben Clark said.

  “Anyone else smell this fire?”

  “No, General. Just the old tracker.”

  “Lead on. Mr. Moylan and I are right behind you.”

  Around the next loop of river the trio loped up on a cluster of forms looming dark against the snow. Overhead a brightening sliver of moonlight splayed across the land. Custer dismounted and handed his reins up to Moylan, motioning for Clark to follow him. A few steps across the crusted snow brought Custer to a circle of trackers squatting out of the wind. Corbin and Milner stood nearby.

  “Clark tells me one of the trackers smelled a fire,” Custer said to the Osages.

  “Me smell small fire.” One Indian rose stiffly, old joints crackling like rusty buggy springs, his heavy wool blanket capote slurring across the crust of snow where he had hunkered out of the keening wind.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Osage name, Paw-Husk. Second chief of my people.”

  “Paw-Husk means what?”

  “My moccasins are tired.” He grinned toothlessly. “You soldiers call me Little Beaver.”

  “Well, Little Beaver, let’s pray your nose is not as tired as your moccasins.”

  Custer judged Paw-Husk to be in his early sixties, skin the color of well-worn gloves, and just as wrinkled. Spare and thin, but with the sinewy muscles of a younger man. This Osage might prove a savvy tracker.

  “So tell me what you found.”

  “Small fire. This night.” He peered into the sky and pointed. “Moon was here.”

  “Something like two hours old, Joe?” Custer asked Milner.

  “Close enough, General.” Milner spit a brown curd of tobacco onto the snow.

  “You smell this fire too?”

  “Not me.”

  “Jack?”

  “Me neither, General.”

  “Well, Little Beaver, looks like you don’t have a soul to back your story up.”

  “Paw-Husk don’t need soldiers to tell him he smelled fire. You come smell yourself.” He walked off across the crumbling snow.

  Custer muttered to himself about it being hard to smell anything with sweaty saddle blankets and bear grease in the Osages’ braids. Hard Rope and the younger Osages rose from the snow to follow the soldier chief.

  Behind him drifted the snorts of horses stomping over the crusty snow as his columns inched up the river. Once a wolf howled in loneliness from the hills. And at his feet the Washita slurred its icy gurgle along its banks. Sounds … but no smell of fire on the wind.

  “Sorry, Little Beaver. I don’t smell a thing like smoke.” He went back to the head of the march.

  “Joe … you and Ben and Jack move these trackers ahead again. We’ll stay right on your heels. And Joe, be sure we stop for something important next time. No pipe-smoke fire. Understand?”

  Milner and the others were mounted and gone without another word.

  “Didn’t smell a thing, sir?” Moylan asked.

  “No, Myles. What worries me isn’t what I didn’t smell—but what I heard with my own ears. This regiment’s making one helluva racket tramping downstr
eam. I bloody well don’t want to alert that enemy camp to our approach. To steal this close to my quarry only to flush them from the brush like frightened quail—that’s what I fear the most, Mr. Moylan.”

  Less than a half hour later, Custer slid from his horse and stomped up to the little knot of Osages hunkered down in a circle on the snow.

  “You smell anything now, Joe?”

  Before Milner got a chance to open his mouth, Little Beaver stood. “White man’s nose no good. No matter how big it gets.” He pointed at Milner’s face with a childish smirk. Several of the younger Osages snickered.

  When Milner waved his arm the Osages rose and stepped back. In the middle of a small area cleared of snow lay the remnants of a tiny fire. A handful of coals still struggled, glowing against the falling temperature hovering close to zero. A gray wisp of smoke circled up from the red snakes, vanishing on the chilly breeze.

  “The fire you smelled, Little Beaver?”

  He nodded. “This old nose never wrong.”

  “Paw-Husk likes to eat too much,” declared a middle-aged Osage who ambled up. “If he ever missed a fire, he might miss out on a meal.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Hard Rope. Old Paw-Husk rides with you, for his is the best nose. We have the best eyes here too. I have the best ears. All to hunt the Cheyenne.”

  “Then tell me—have we found Cheyenne? Was this the fire of some of the hundred warriors returning home?”

  “No.” Hard Rope pointed to the snow leading toward the trees at the river’s edge. “No warriors here. Small tracks only. Pony boys.”

  “Pony boys?”

  “Young’uns watching the herd, General.” Milner stepped beside Custer.

  “Boys guard the Cheyenne ponies?”

  “Not rightly,” Joe answered. “They watch, warn the village if there’s trouble.”

  “Have they gone to alert the camp?” Custer asked.

  “Not from the looks of things. Appears they moseyed on back to camp. No rush a’tall.”

  “Camp guards?”

  “None we’ve run across.”

  “Seems you’ve found nothing conclusive in this tiny fire,” Custer said. “Perhaps we’re as far away from an enemy village as we have been all night.”

  “Soldier chief can’t smell Indian fire, but fire still here.” Hard Rope pointed off to the southeast. “Soldier chief can’t see Indian village, but village still there. Close. You come with Paw-Husk and Hard Rope. You scout with us. We show you village, Custer.”

  “Capital idea!” Custer exclaimed. “I will go with you. Let’s be off!”

  From the top of each knoll the trio encountered, Little Beaver made a careful inspection of the winter countryside below. Hard Rope and Custer shivered in the snow back among the oak and hackberry until the old Indian crept up to the tall white man.

  The toothless scout announced, “Whole lot Cheyenne now.”

  “You see the village?” Custer asked.

  “No. See whole lot Cheyenne ponies.” Little Beaver motioned for the others to follow him to the top of the hill. “Look for worms.” He pointed where Custer should look.

  Try as he might, Custer couldn’t make out anything. “I’ll take your word for it, Paw-Husk. I can’t make out a thing in this darkness.”

  “Come, soldier chief. We find.”

  “Yes, by God. You best find me something better. Not a fire. Not some worms. Find me the village.”

  Two hills later, Little Beaver motioned for Hard Rope to join him at the crest of the knoll. A finger to his lips, the old Indian demanded silence. “I want Hard Rope hear,” he whispered hoarsely.

  This way and that, his head up in the air, then close to the ground, Hard Rope listened to the night. Cold, freezing minutes crawled by until Custer could take this sitting in the snow no longer. He struggled to his feet. “I’m going back. When you have the village located, come fetch me. Seems I might as well be looking for this blessed village with a compass and a map all on my bloody own!”

  “You hear?” Little Beaver whispered, paying no attention to Custer.

  “Yes, Uncle. A dog. There.”

  Hard Rope stuck out his woolen mitten, stretching his arm toward the river course below. Here and there in patches the Washita silvered beneath the moon’s pale light like bands of polished metal.

  “You heard a dog bark?” Custer asked. “Not in this wind, you didn’t!”

  “Man who wants to hear, he must first listen, General.” Hard Rope clamped Custer’s bearded cheeks roughly within his mittens and pointed his face in the general direction of the enemy camp he had located.

  Then he heard it! A dog!

  “How’re we sure?” he whispered. “Not a wolf?”

  Litter Beaver shook his head. “Soldiers never learn the difference.”

  With each pause in the whining chorus of the wind, Custer listened with all that was in him. Then … he heard the dog bark again. Answered by another, different voice.

  Custer muttered, “If only I could be sure—”

  With Custer’s next doubting heartbeat, an infant’s cry rose above the trees lining the silver river course.

  “By all that’s holy, boys!” Custer whispered harshly, flush with excitement and pounding the trackers on the back. “The Cheyenne are here!”

  “We find your Indians for you, soldier chief. Get your hundred dollars ready. Pay your Indian friends,” Hard Rope reminded him.

  “Of course I’ll pay!” Custer said, turning to race downhill.

  Nothing would stop him now. The village was at hand and the enemy hadn’t been warned. The cry of the infant confirmed that much.

  “By glory!” he exclaimed. “I’ve got them now. They’ll learn not to sleep so soundly when Custer’s nearby!”

  CHAPTER 6

  CUSTER countermarched his troops a mile upstream to guard against their discovery by Cheyenne guards. Only then did he send his three civilian scouts to read the lay of the land and size of the village. Corbin reported first, Milner on his heels. Ben Clark finally appeared out of the ice-rimed trees, his story confirming what the other two had seen in their search.

  “They chose a good spot on the south bank of the river,” Clark continued. “Fifty-some lodges, all sitting on level ground in a wide loop of the river—something like this.”

  Clark dropped to his knees, pulling out a knife. The scout scratched the river’s meandering course in the snow, with that big loop where the troops would find the village sleeping.

  “Where are we now?” Custer inquired.

  “Right about here, sir.” Clark’s knife point jabbed the ground. “On the far side of the village is a steep cutbank. Fifty feet high. Noses almost straight up, following the course of the river. Plenty of—”

  “Splendid!” Custer interrupted, slapping his thigh as he stood. “They surely can’t make their escape that way, can they, now, Clark?”

  “Why … not at all.”

  “I expect them to run, you see. Indians always do when we attack.” Custer’s smile faded as his eyes scanned the officers and scouts.

  “They’ll skedaddle, General. Like hens with a weasel in the yard.” Milner spat into the snow. “Make no mistake about it—Injuns always run.”

  Custer grinned beneath a winter-bright quarter-moon. “I’m counting on that, Joe. I must have all the exits sealed—if you catch my drift, gentlemen.”

  “General Custer?” A swarthy scout named Romero rose on creaky knees. “Some of your Osages think your soldiers will be outnumbered by that village.”

  “That so?” Custer turned it over in his mind like a man would inspect something in his hand. He figured this Romero ought to know. Born of Mexican parents. Kidnapped by Indians, growing up a Cheyenne. “What else my Osage got to say?”

  “They’re scared.”

  “Scared of those warriors in the village?”

  “Not scared of Cheyenne. Afraid of your cavalry … and you.”

  “Afraid of us!”
Custer exploded. “Insane! Why in heaven’s name should they be afraid of us?”

  “Way they see it, the Cheyenne in there will give you a real fight of it. So when things turn out a draw, they figure you’ll parley with the Cheyenne to save your men. And to save your men, you’ll hand the Osage over to their old enemies, them Cheyenne.”

  “That’s the most preposterous—”

  “There’s more. These Osages aren’t all that impressed by what you soldiers done so far out here in Indian country. These trackers got their doubts, you making good your attack on that village.”

  Custer glared at Romero. “Seems we’re just going to have to educate these Osages on how the Seventh Cavalry fights Indians. Won’t we, gentlemen?”

  A murmuring of assent arose among the officers before Custer continued. “By General Sheridan’s orders we’ll level the village and kill or hang every man of fighting age. I wasn’t sent here to show these hostiles any mercy at all. So tell your Osages that Custer won’t stop until Sheridan’s orders are carried out—”

  “General?”

  Custer’s eyes snapped to Jack Corbin, youngest of the scouts, who had earned the respect of many frontiersmen on the southern plains. “What is it?” Custer barked.

  “Don’t know what the others think,” Corbin began, toeing the snow as nervously as a schoolboy stammering before a pigtailed, freckle-faced girl. “But I don’t see a way there can be a big war party down in that village. That camp’s just too damned small.”

  “Not a war camp?” Custer’s voice rose an octave. “Why in Hades did these Osage trackers follow Indian ponies here? You remember those ponies, don’t you, Jack? Better than a hundred or more—you all told me that!”

  Corbin shook his head in exasperation. “Something just don’t fit right, General.”

  “Better than fifty lodges, I’m told!” Custer roared.

  Corbin’s pleading eyes darted to Milner, then implored Ben Clark. Joe looked away, studying his dirty fingernails.