Custer stared absently at Tom, still such a tiny, almost indistinct figure among that sea of blue tunics. “After this campaign, he’ll be his own man, Libbie. No longer any need of him following on my coattails. I’ll see to it. Tom is destined to ascend the upper rungs of the army ladder. And I—I’d like to take you on to Washington, my dear.”
“Washington?” She placed a delicate hand against her breast in surprise.
“No … you might fool others, Libbie,” he chided, “but you can’t convince me you haven’t thought of it many times.”
“Why, the last time we were there together was during the war. Our abbreviated honeymoon, as I recall.”
“Just start getting used to the idea!”
He swept her chin into his cupped palm, planting a kiss on her parted lips. Custer held his mouth to hers for a long time, until he finally opened his eyes to find her staring mule-eyed at him.
“At least you didn’t pull away this time,” he said, licking his lips, tasting the tantalizing flavor of her lip rouge. “Perhaps you enjoyed my touch.”
“Y-yes,” she finally stammered. “I have … have always enjoyed your touch—oh, how I will miss you, Autie!”
Libbie raised her ivory chin and closed her eyes for him this time. Her lips parted slightly, inviting.
Custer had never refused her.
CHAPTER 3
JUST before dawn on the eighteenth, a summer squall rumbled over the valley of the Little Heart River, soaking everything that hadn’t been covered with gum ponchos or rubber sheets, leaving cargo, wagons, and tents steaming beneath the new sun.
At eight A.M. the air still hung heavy as the regimental paymaster completed his issuance to the men of the Seventh Cavalry. Custer had purposely ordered him to accompany his troops west on the first day’s march so that no soldier could be tempted to spend his meager pay with the post sutler, or with those painted prostitutes at Sadie’s Shady Bower or Clementine’s Retreat, Bismarck’s infamous fleshpots.
In addition, the general gave his troops a few minutes to write a letter home, as Custer knew many would be sending money back to family in the States.
“Mr. Cooke! Have trumpeter Voss sound ‘The General,’” Custer ordered his adjutant, Lieutenant W. W. Cooke. “Let’s be pulling for the Powder River!”
“Aye, General!” Cooke snapped his heels together, giving a smart salute.
Custer said to Libbie: “Every time I think about it, I’m glad I made Cooke adjutant before we moved the regiment to Kentucky to control those infernal sheet-draped night riders. He’s been a blessing ever since. Not that Moylan wasn’t competent. Just that, well—Mr. Cooke adds a dash of something to our corps.”
“Because he’s a Canadian?” she asked, hinting at a grin.
He shook his head. “I’m not quite sure just what it is, really. He has a way with the ladies, as does brother Tom. Why, I’d dare venture to say those two dandies have seen more—well, let’s just say those two make a rounding pair, they do. Dashing, gallant gentlemen. Exactly what I want folks to think of the Seventh when they lay eyes on officers like Cookey or Tom.”
“You’ve surrounded yourself with the very best, dear,” she reminded him, handing her empty coffee tin to Custer.
“More, Mrs. Custer?” he asked.
“No.” She rose, combing her hands down that long buckskin riding habit her husband had ordered tailored in St. Paul especially for her. “The darkest of hours is upon me, dear, sweet man. I must tear myself from you and let you go off to your other mistress now.”
Custer twitched at her sudden declaration. “Whatever can you mean by that?”
After all these years and all these miles, he brooded, how did she … what can she be thinking of … who would have told—
“That beautiful, dark-eyed, seductive young mistress who keeps calling you away from my arms with her siren song, Autie.” Libbie turned west, gazing down that gentle slope where the bustle of twelve hundred men and many more animals raised a deafening clamor.
As that noise rumbled up the hillside toward their informal officers’ row, she continued. “I’ve known about her for a long … long time, Bo. But, kept it to myself, not wishing to clutter up our lives with decisions … having to choose. Let’s face it—I knew I would lose if it ever came down to it. So why force you to choose between me and her?”
He had struggled to keep the young dark-eyed one out of his mind—out of his mind completely but for those long, soul-chilling winter nights when he found himself recalling a long winter gone.… Only when he was lacking what Libbie had for too long neglected to give him of herself … only when he could no longer force down that memory of the dark-skinned one he had kept hidden away inside him for these seven long years … only then did Custer admit to himself that he had always wanted to go back … back in time and—
How had Libbie found out about Monaseetah? Was it Benteen?
Libbie was in his arms suddenly, spilling the remaining coffee in his cup all over a boot and a forearm. He was even more surprised by her impulsive embrace.
“You silly,” she murmured into the linsey-woolsey shirt she had personally sewn for him. “You can be so thickheaded at times.”
“Thick-headed?”
“Your mistress.” She stepped back, cocked her head at him with a stern gleam of reproachment in her calf-brown eyes and balled both hands atop the hips of her buckskin riding skirt.
“My … my mistress?” he squeaked.
“If you had to choose,” she wagged a parental finger at him disapprovingly, “Elizabeth Bacon Custer would be the one to loose, wouldn’t she?”
He swallowed hard, not believing it had come to this.
“Your love affair with the army, Bo!” She giggled, rallying a brave smile she let rain over him as she took a step closer, gazing up into his sapphire eyes.
He stared down at her in disbelief, the sting of some tears already smarting his eyes, totally dumbstruck in the wonder of this woman he had known for all these years and perhaps never really known at all.
“That’s what I’m jealous of—the truth be known,” she went on. “Your love affair with the wildness and freedom of it. And I’m bitter toward the army because they allow you to run away from me out there and play at being a soldier—just like a schoolboy.”
Custer swept her into his arms and held her close.
“I’ve always known, Autie,” she admitted quietly. “Known that if you had to choose, I would rate second best … only what you came home to when you couldn’t be anywhere else. But I’ve taken what I could of you, when I could … and I’ve lived a very full life.”
“But, it isn’t over—”
“I’ll always be there when you decide to come riding back home to me, my darling Bo.” She flashed him a valiant smile even though her watering eyes told him something far darker.
Elizabeth turned away, smoothing her palms across the buckskin skirt, then fussed with those mother-of-pearl buttons on the front of her jacket. Looking down the slope, she noticed Custer’s sister Margaret striding uphill, arm in arm with husband James Calhoun.
She turned back to Custer suddenly, desperately. “It is come. The hour I dread the most, dear heart. Come … kiss me. And with those lips tell me you have inside some very private and special place reserved just for me still. Kiss me.”
He swept her up and held her fiercely, pressing his lips against her with a consuming passion that surprised him. He too realized the time had come to part—her blackest hour.
Calhoun and Maggie stood some ten feet away, appearing as nonchalant as possible without interrupting the embrace. James stared at the trees, the ground, his fingers—anything. Margaret, on the other hand, grinned impishly at the couple, as if she had just been let in on the biggest secret ever.
“Maggie!” Custer exploded when he noticed her out of the corner of his eye. “How long’ve you been standing there?”
“Long enough!” Libbie answered with a grin, winking at Ma
rgaret. “Plain to tell by the smile on your sister’s face!”
“Sure enough.” Margaret winked back with her own Custer blue eyes. “This isn’t a pleasant time for any of us … but it needs something special in the doing. Might as well do it as well as you two in your private parting … if there’s a parting to take place. Right, Jimbo?”
The tall, strapping lieutenant blushed.
She nudged him with her elbow. “Am I ready to bid you farewell, my love?”
Custer had always liked that about his freckle-faced younger sister—her straightforwardness that cut straight to the core or the quick, depending which side you found yourself on. He had always supposed that trait came from growing up the only girl in a family of prank-pulling, mercilessly teasing boys.
Calhoun said, “The corporal with your horse should be—”
“Here,” she answered, turning to watch the young soldier bringing an animal up the slope, followed closely by Tom Custer, who waved his wide-brimmed hat.
“What the devil are you doing here?” Custer asked of his brother.
“Say—that’s a fine ticket you’ve just handed me!” Tom answered as he halted, handing the reins of the saddled mare over to Libbie. “Here I have a sister of blood and a sister of marriage bidding us a sad farewell, and you actually think I’m going to book out on it?”
“Tom is a dashing, gallant young cavalry captain,” Libbie said approvingly. “And you must keep in mind, Autie—he is very available.”
Tom rushed at Libbie, sweeping her off her feet and swinging her round and round several times to the accompaniment of cascading giggles. Finally he dropped Libbie to the ground and kissed her warmly, ending his embrace with a stout hug.
“Libbie … Libbie … Libbie, you dear old lady,” he said, staring down at her brown liquid eyes. “You will get me married off yet, won’t you?”
“I promise, Tom.” And she laid a lovely white hand over her heart in oath. “You’re next. Then Boston and nephew Harry. I keep trying—”
“Oh, you must keep trying,” he begged, smiling larger than life as he gazed into her teary eyes. “Later this summer, after we return from whipping these damned Indians—excuse my swearing, sisters—but you must have some of your lady friends come back out west and join us for vacation. Perhaps Emma Wadsworth or Agnes Bates. I’ll have to get truly serious about this marrying matter this summer, old lady. Will you still help me, sister? Promise?”
She gazed into her brother-in-law’s eyes, that scarlet spot on his cheek from the bullet wound at Saylor’s Creek still very much a rosy birthmark. “You silly man. You’re everything your older brother is not. Of course, I’ll help see you married off to a fine young maiden from Monroe.”
Tom stepped back, sighed, and swept her hand up for a chivalrous kiss. “Thank you, lady fair. If you find for me but half the lady my big brother married, I shall reside in heavenly bliss for the rest of my days on this mortal plane.”
“You’re an errant knight, Thomas Ward Custer.”
“Farewell, m’lady.” And he swept his hat across the ground in a grand bow, then plopped it back atop his head. “I must be off to the Indian wars. Be-damned—appears my company leaves without me!”
Tom scrambled off downhill, turning once as he dashed through the scrubby brush to wave a farewell to his sister and sister-in-law. “I’ll take proper care of James for you, Maggie!” he hollered back to the little group atop the sun-drenched slope.
“I have no fear you will, you naughty boy!” Margaret teased at her brother.
At that very moment the regimental band struck up the plaintive chords of “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.
Maggie went to Custer. Placing her hands alongside his ruddy cheeks, she boosted herself up on her toes, planting an uncharacteristic kiss on his lips.
“Until I see all those lovely freckles again, brother dear.” Her hands slipped away, swiping at the tears caught in the corners of her eyes.
“Freckles again?”
“You can’t help the sun, Autie,” Libbie remonstrated as she slipped an arm in his.
“I suppose I can’t. A man whose life is outdoors, and me cursed with this fair skin.”
“Just make certain it’s a thick skin, dear,” she reminded, leading him over to her horse. “Able to turn any warrior’s arrow, do you hear?”
He stopped her, turning her round to face him. “The problem I’ll face is not arrows, Rosebud. My main concern is to keep the Indians from running on me. My only fear is that they won’t stand and fight. I don’t want to be left holding onto an empty village again … a hollow victory. If only they’ll stand and fight.”
“Well,” she cleared her throat, thick with sadness, “I myself can’t stand here any longer, dear.” She pressed against him with a fierce, clinging embrace, the way ivy clings to the oak.
Custer himself stood like a plank of rough-hewn timber, arms nailed at his sides, while she hugged him. It was so uncharacteristic of her. In fact, this whole morning had been unlike Libbie. Last night, while she drifted off to sleep with her fragrant chestnut hair spread across his bare chest, he loved sensing her bare breasts rise and fall against his own cool flesh. The closeness of her naked, heated skin … and not being able to have her. All these years—she denied them both their intimacy because it was too painful a reminder. Unable to conceive children, she saw no sense in any intimacy between them at all.
But last night. After all those years.…
Libbie pulled away, running the back of her hand under her nose, and yanked on that scarlet hunting cap he liked her to wear. When she had a bow in the ribbon beneath her chin, right near the ever-present cameo brooch, Elizabeth finally turned to her horse, allowing John Burkman to cup his hands and boost her to the saddle.
For a long, pensive moment, she peered down at the young striker, looking all the shorter against the massive backdrop of tall George Armstrong Custer and the mountainous James Calhoun.
“Good-bye, John.” She finally scratched the words out of her dry throat, wearing a sad smile. “You’ll look after the general for me, won’t you?”
“Why, yes ma’am. I surely will.…” He wrinkled his brow at her woeful expression and was fixing to ask her why she thought her husband needed someone to look after him, but Libbie suddenly whirled away, tapping her high-buttoned boots against the army mount to speed away. She was leaving Dandy behind with her husband. He would take both Vic and Dandy to the Yellowstone.
Margaret galloped off right behind Elizabeth with a wave and a final kiss blown to Calhoun. She trotted up beside Elizabeth before reining back, both women heading east up the bank of the Little Heart River, letting their horses lope frisky and playful in the cool morning air still heavy with the remnants of last night’s thunderstorm.
Libbie couldn’t look back.
She dared not.
Custer stood with his arms hanging useless at his sides, watching her go. Wondering what to do with his big hands, he finally stuffed them into his pockets, feeling like a schoolboy detained after everyone else had headed out to the schoolyard, caught someplace he shouldn’t be. For the first time in their lives together—he sensed something different between them, something sour tasting at the back of his throat.
John Burkman watched Custer staring after Libbie, remembering that sad, somber smile Mrs. Custer had on her lovely china-doll face. For as little a time as Private Burkman had known the general, he had come to love him. And Burkman’s heart more so than his head had sworn a fierce allegiance to George Armstrong Custer. He didn’t mind all those other soldiers jealous of his cushy assignment. The
y called him dog-robber, the common, derisive term applied to orderlies who cared for their superior’s personal needs. Such abuse was a small price to pay to be allowed closeness to this great and noble being.
Custer turned to Burkman, hearing the young soldier step up behind him. Calhoun drew close on Custer’s left, all three intently watching the two women ride the breast of the flowing land beneath a climbing sun.
“You know, gentlemen”—Custer boyishly stuffed his hands deeper into his leather pants pockets and hunched his shoulders up—“a good soldier really has two mistresses. Exactly as Libbie told me.”
He stared at the ground, scuffing a boot-toe into the sodden grass and kicking up some wet soil. “While he’s loyal to one mistress, the other must suffer.” Of a sudden he looked up and said, “Gentlemen! It’s nearly eight-thirty. Let’s ride for the Yellowstone!”
Turning, Libbie gazed back at the two-mile-long columns winding their way up from the valley of the Little Heart in the cool, morning breezes that would have tugged at the women’s dresses had it not been for the buckshot sewn in the hems.
As their horses blew, only then did the faint, faraway strains of “Garry Owen” reach her ears. Off to the Yellowstone and the land of the mighty Sioux. Off to whip Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse.
Our hearts, so stout, have got us fame,
For soon ’tis known from whence we came;
Where’ere we go they dread the name
Of Garry Owen in glory!
In the next heartbeat a solitary figure raced out of the long, dark columns and stopped, wheeling round on his stockinged sorrel mare to peer back at that distant knoll to the east. He pulled away from the lines of blue-clad troopers a few yards, rising to stand like a ramrod in his stirrups, gazing back at the women on top of their rise, silhouetted against the morning sky. He was waving his hat at the end of his long arm, back and forth in long sweeps before he slapped his big charger on the rump with that cream-colored hat and raced pell-mell for the head of the march like the Devil himself was larruping at Vic’s tail.
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