BOOK I
WASHITA
CHAPTER 1
“I’LL be back.”
Those lips below the shaggy, wheat-straw mustache barely stirred. Yet none of the eight officers strung out on either side of him had trouble hearing the soldier’s determined declaration. The chill November air across the parade ground echoed with clatter: low rumbling voices, the incessant roll of drums, the occasional snort of a horse.
“And when I do get back, I’ll show each and every one of these …
“On those counts of courts-martial—” Fort Leavenworth’s adjutant sent his voice crackling across the dusty parade, “the first, disobeying the orders of a superior officer, dereliction of duty, and misappropriation of U.S. Army property.”
Across the chilly parade shot an electricity every man sensed. Here in the waning weeks of 1867 stood the darling of the army, the youngest man ever breveted a major general, a soldier never found wanting in courage who had seen eleven horses shot out from under him during the recent war of rebellion. Now they watched that same officer sit ramrod stiff astride his favorite mount, his pale face a mask to the tempest raging within his soul.
“—Guilty of a second count, that of ordering his subordinate officers to summarily execute deserters escaping from his command without the process of trial.”
“—Refusing to allow proper medical attention to be given to those same wounded deserters he had ordered summarily shot for their infractions of army code. To this count and this count alone the board attaches no criminality.”
“Bloody good of the bastards,” he mumbled, running the pink tip of his tongue across lips drying in a cold breeze that foretold of a harsh winter soon to grip the southern plains.
“—The court found guilt on the charge stating the lieutenant colonel did in fact order the shooting of one Private Johnson without process of trial as deserter, causing same Private Johnson to suffer mortal wounds inflicted by order of the lieutenant colonel.”
A stiff breeze tugged at the blood-colored plume atop his ceremonial helmet emblazoned with an American eagle. His red-blond curls fell over the glittering gold epaulets that crowned his blue tunic. More gold braid and tassels spilled down his chest while broad gold stripes gleamed at his cuffs. Freckled hands encased in white kid gloves gripped the pommel of his McClellan saddle.
“I’ll be back,” he muttered once more, watching the young adjutant square his shoulders. “By then I’ll be —”
“—Sentenced: to one full year of suspension from rank and command, along with the forfeiture of pay for that rank and its command during the same period of suspension.”
Slowly, his breath whistled past his dry lips. Almost imperceptibly he shuddered with the weight of it finally torn from his shoulders. As the adjutant across the parade finished reading, the drums began their stirring roll once again.
“—The Court herewith has ordered the reading of its verdict in regard to the case of Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer, U.S. Seventh Cavalry …”
The drum rolls sank into a staccato cadence. His march to the far edge of the parade ended among a cluster of friends and supporters. The distasteful ceremony was over at last.
Again his pale blue eyes surveyed the assembled cavalry and infantry that symbolized this expanding New Army of the West.
“I’ll be back,” he said, clear and strong, turning the heads of soldiers ambling back to barracks or officers’ quarters. “This country out here needs a man like me. I’ll be back … to take things in hand.”
So many times since that frosty November day in 1867, Custer had ruminated on his brief, explosive tenure in that new land of the West.
Chasing Sioux and Cheyenne up and down the Platte River Road in Nebraska Territory with General Hancock, sweeping down into the Kansas country, whipping his young soldiers along behind him, wishing they would ride as hard and as fast as the young warriors they chased—an enemy who eluded his plodding cavalry. More often lately Custer turned his gaze of a late afternoon to watch the sun setting low and lonely, like his own private ache, upon that far land.
It was here that the judge’s only child, Elizabeth Bacon, had yielded to Custer’s proposal of marriage in the middle of the bloody conflict that had ripped south from north. Only natural following his court-martial that the young couple would return to Michigan, here to hearth and home for both Bacons and Custers alike, to endure that awful year. Still, each night like this at supper time, Custer drew some small measure of satisfaction knowing one more day of private torture had drawn to a close.
“What day is it, Autie?” Libbie threaded her arm through his as he stepped into the kitchen. She used the nickname he had given himself as a tiny lad as yet unable to pronounce Armstrong.
“Thursday, Rosebud.”
“No, dear,” she replied, patting his arm. “What date?”
“The twenty-fourth, I believe. September.”
“There, now. I can’t allow you to wear that droopy face of yours to supper. Thank God it won’t be long until this dreadful year is over.”
“I suppose you’re right after all,” he said, sliding a chair beneath her while the rest of the bustling household noisily sat down to a supper of roast beef, summer corn that snapped in your teeth, crisp pickles, young potatoes bursting fluffy from their skins and biscuits that melted on a man’s tongue.
Custer’s younger brother Boston and nephew Autie Reed both hungrily eyed two fresh-baked apple pies sitting on the sideboard nearby.
With a clearing of throats, everyone’s attention drew as one to Libbie as if she held marionette’s threads in her tiny alabaster hands folded before her. The family bowed their heads.
“Our most gracious and heavenly Father,” Elizabeth prayed, “we gather here before you, beseeching your
