“Drive them into the meadow southeast of camp!”Custer shouted as Hard Rope cleared the top of the bank, riding among the herd leaders.
“Some good-looking stock there, General.” Lieutenant Godfrey dismounted beside his commander.
“I’m going to let each troop commander select a pony of his own. Then we’ll cut out a few to replace the mules we’ve lost. After that, Romero will see that the captives ride a pony back to Camp Supply.”
“And the rest of ’em, General?”
Custer turned to Godfrey. “The rest are yours.”
“Mine?”
“The herd is yours to destroy, Lieutenant.”
A quarter-hour later the ponies grazed in the open meadow southeast of the Cheyenne camp. Custer called in the captain and lieutenant of each troop to make a selection after he gave his brother Tom first choice. When all officers had finished cutting out their chosen ponies, Custer signaled to his Cheyenne interpreter.
“Romero, Lieutenant Godfrey’s men will assist you capturing mounts for the captives. When you have enough ponies for the women and children, take them back to camp. Tether them near Bell’s wagons.”
It didn’t take long for the prisoners to show up at the edge of the herd, each woman carrying one or more rawhide or buffalo-hide hackamores rescued from the loot taken from the lodges for counting. What animals would be spared the coming slaughter were soon picketed near Lieutenant Bell’s wagons.
“How do I handle this destruction for you, sir?” Godfrey’s mouth had gone dry. He watched Custer climb into the saddle.
“Don’t waste a lot of our limited ammunition, Lieutenant but your four companies will have to shoot each one.”
Godfrey nodded, turning to set his men to their grisly task.
It wasn’t long before the soldiers discovered that Indian ponies didn’t take to the smell of white men. Again and again they darted away from the confining ring of soldiers, making it tough keeping the animals corralled when the firing began in earnest. Custer’s slaughter was under way.
Overhead, the winter sun reached midsky, softening the snow into slush, turning the ground into red gumbo beneath the churning of so many hooves and boots. Some frustrated, cold troopers slipped and fell among the frightened, wild-eyed ponies, grumbling curses.
With every boom of a Springfield in that muddy meadow, another Cheyenne pony dropped, its blood seeping into the Washita snows. The whole process took three entire companies more than an hour and a half.
By the time the last frightened, snorting pony dropped to the slime of bloody snow, better than 875 animals lay dead. The earthy odor of their fresh dung was like a heady perfume on a cruel wind. Puffs of steam hissed from each bullet wound. The stench of blood and dung and death hung like an ache over the camp.
With an unbridled fury the milling warriors watched the soldiers loot the village.
Worse still, they could only watch as the slaughter of the prized Cheyenne herd took place. Ponies shot like so many white men’s cattle in a butcher pen. The warriors were helpless to stop the destruction. Deep in each red breast beat an agony at so great a loss of the plains warrior’s greatest possession.
Black Kettle’s band was no more. The survivors would never recover from the loss of those hundreds of ponies that enabled them to continue their nomadic way of life. In less than one journey of the sun, this band of people had been rubbed from the breast of the Mother of All Things.
“We must go on making war against the pony soldiers—fighting for those who cannot!” Arapaho chief Left Hand cried out in fury and dismay atop a tree-lined hill.
“No!” shouted Skin-Head, another war chief, his shoulders slumping in defeat. “These soldiers have dealt us a vicious blow—we must learn from it. This is surely what happens when the pony soldiers hunt down the warriors who raid their white settlements. These pony soldiers slaughter old men, and call it battle. They capture women and children … if those helpless ones do not already lie dead in the snow beside the young men.”
“Cowards speak of giving up! Are you a fool? Is your mind so small not to remember our fight in the snowy meadow this morning?” Left Hand asked. “Those pony soldiers fought with courage. They died like men. Not like these butchers!”
Skin-Head agreed. “Look what crimes the white man commits now. Not only has he killed our people, he hungers to destroy our way of life!”
“Next they will burn Cheyenne homes.”
Soldiers stacked most of the captured Indian goods in huge piles or displayed the items on blankets and robes between the lodges.
Tom Custer stopped beside his brother and Lieutenant Moylan. Nearby, stood some of the civilian scouts and a handful of the Osage trackers.
“Look at that plunder, Autie. I’m taking some of these weapons back with me.”
“Help yourself, brother. Just make it quick.”
“What’re you gonna do with the rest of it?”
“Not going to leave it behind, Tom. Better grab what you want. Moylan, fetch me Captain Myers.”
Myers rode up minutes later, saluted. “General?”
“You’ll be in charge of the destruction of the camp. Tear down the lodges, Captain … put them to the torch —poles and all.”
“All the lodges. Yes, General. Any further instructions?”
“Myers, on second thought—”
“Yes, sir?”
“All the tepees … but that one.” He pointed to a lodge but a few months old, sewn from cowhides taken in a late-summer hunt. “I want that one taken down and the cover folded for travel. Strap every lodge pole to one of Bell’s wagons. Have Romero’s squaws help your men dismantle and pack it for transport.”
“A souvenir, sir?”
“You might say that.”
“Want to save some robes, maybe some blankets to use in the lodge?”
“No. We’ll burn everything here. Gad, the lice and vermin must be thick on it all.”
Myers left to pass along instructions. Within minutes, the first of the Cheyenne lodges came down. Soldiers moved in and out of the tepees.
Captain George Yates approached the commander, shaking a long sheet of foolscap on which he had been scribbling his tallies with the nub of a pencil he moistened on the end of his tongue. The handsome blond hometown Monroe officer cleared his throat nervously before beginning his report, his breath steaming like a halo round his bearded face. “We count two thousand one hundred and eighty-five blankets, five hundred seventy-three buffalo robes, and another three hundred sixty untanned hides. In addition, we captured two hundred forty-one saddles along with numerous lariats, bridles, and other tack used by the hostiles.”
“What of the Cheyenne weapons?” Tom Custer asked.
“Better than a hundred hatchets of various sizes. Along with thirty-five revolvers and forty-seven rifles. As near as we can estimate, we also captured two hundred fifty pounds of lead and better than five hundred thirty-five pounds of gunpowder. Some ninety bullet molds, along with over four thousand arrows and arrowheads, seventy- five spears, thirty-five bows and quivers, plus a dozen rawhide shields.”
The commander turned to his scouts. His bright blue eyes found the Mexican. “This camp could have taken care of itself had we failed to surprise them—wouldn’t you say, Romero?”
“I suppose if you gave ’em the chance … might’ve been a different story to tell by the end of the day.”
“Go on, George. What else?” Custer prompted.
“Better than three hundred pounds of Indian tobacco was seized, sir. Along with that, we didn’t even try counting what must be thousands of pounds of dried buffalo meat they put up for the winter.”
“No need to weigh it.”
“Yes, sir,” Yates replied, eyes dropping to his list once more as it fluttered in a gusty breeze pungent with the acrid odors of smoke and burnt powder, heady with horse dung and aromatic red clay turning to muddy slop under a
