“Thank you, sir.”
“Come, Armstrong. We’ll have some refreshments at my headquarters. You can tell me all there is to tell of routing these bloodthirsty savages!”
“It’d be my honor. I’ll return in a moment after I’ve passed the orders for encampment.”
“Dismissed!” Sheridan saluted again, that Irish smile bright within his dark beard.
Custer answered the salute, then brought Dandy around smartly with the gold spurs.
“I won’t dare miss our victory celebration, sir!”
BOOK II
SWEETWATER
CHAPTER 12
“CLARK! Glad I found you!”
Ben Clark turned to see Captain Frederick W. Benteen headed his way. “Benteen, isn’t it?”
“Right!” The young, bearded officer presented his hand. “Didn’t know you’d remember me from the Washita.”
“Yeah, I remember,” he replied, suspicions aroused. He went back to sharpening the knife on a whetstone. “What can I do for you?”
Benteen settled on a stump near the scout. “I figured you’d be the man for what I had in mind. Got a good head on your shoulders—a memory as sharp as that blade you’re honing.”
“Sounds like I’m the family turkey getting fattened for the holiday feast, Captain. You said you’d found me a’purpose for something. Care to spit it out and stop knocking ’round in the brush so much?”
“I’ve something of great import to ask of you, Ben,” the young captain began with a rush. His eyes slid this way,then that. “I really think it best we talk somewhere a little more private. This spot’s a bit too public.”
Clark measured the man. “So tell me, why something private?”
“Too many ears in an army camp. How quickly I learned that during the Rebellion down south.”
“You were regular army?”
“Breveted a lieutenant colonel. Proud of every battle and the action of those men assigned to me.” Benteen hunched forward to whisper. “That’s precisely the reason I find myself talking with you.”
“I was a Jayhawker myself. Odd to think a Missouri boy like you’d go over to the Union cause. Me, I had a Cheyenne wife at the time. Did what I could for the Union army, what was a decent employer—but I get the feeling none of that’s what you’ve come to hear.”
Benteen warily cast his eyes around. “I’ve watched you and have come to believe you’re a man to trust. I want you to keep what we say here in confidence. Can I trust you, Ben?”
For the first time Clark really studied Benteen. “I suppose if it’s all that serious, Captain—” he spit a brown stream from the side of his cheek, “then it’s something worth the telling, ain’t it?”
“More of a question, Ben.” Benteen slid a little closer. “What do you know about Major Joel Elliott’s men in Black Kettle’s camp on the morning of the battle? Where they were, what they were doing, any of it.”
“Suppose I’d know about as much as the next man.” Clark knit his brow, scowling at Benteen.
“Did you know of Custer’s refusal to send Elliott any aid when he first learned of the major’s predicament?”
“Whoa! Hold on a goddamned minute! Just what the Katy hell are you after here, Captain?”
“Looking for corroboration for the many reports concerning Custer’s refusal to offer Elliott assistance. Not only that, but Custer failed to determine what became of Elliott’s squad later in the day.” He began counting off on his rough, callused fingers. “Before it got too dark. Before leaving the battlefield. Before leaving the damned Washita Valley itself. Who in hell’s creation knows right now what happened to Elliott’s men except—”
“All wiped out,” Clark said calmly. “Down to the last man.”
“How can you be so—”
“If they wasn’t dead when the general pulled out of that valley, they sure as hell are now.”
Benteen straightened. “Precisely the information I want to hear from someone who’d know—”
“Why the hell you want me to tell you anything? What good’s it going to do you? Or the general himself? Most of all, I can’t help but wonder what the hell good’s it going to do Elliott and his soldiers.”
“Precisely, Clark! If we see that something’s done about Custer, we can prevent this sort of sad affair from repeating itself. We want to be sure Custer never orders another field officer into battle, then abandons the man.”
Clark eyed Benteen for a long moment, sizing the captain up as a cranky man who carried around every bit as big an ego as Custer. “So, tell me what you plan on doing to make things any different for the boys in blue.”
“If the requisite testimony’s there, we can bring Custer up on charges on this Elliott matter. Beginning with the abandonment of his men under fire, all the way to his failure to properly search the area for survivors.”
“You want to file charges against the general?”
“Yes. If the investigation leads to charges. We’ll need affidavits from witnesses like you.”
“Me! Who else you got to testify?”
“Right now we have a few soldiers from Godfrey’s company who heard some of the scattered rifle fire from across the river and were present when Godfrey told Custer about—”
“All right. You got Godfrey. Who else?”
“Uh … no, Ben. You got the wrong impression there. I can’t convince Godfrey to testify against Custer, nor prefer any charges.”
“Who else? You’ve got some other officers.”
Benteen swallowed hard. He felt his one chance slipping through his fingers, fluttering just out of reach. Hoping Clark would help him cement together a case. “Since we can’t get an officer to prefer charges against Custer, we were hoping to find one of you civilian scouts—”
“Can’t find an officer to prefer charges!” Clark squeaked. “Captain, it sure sounds like you’ve got yourself a real bitch of a problem here—and Ben Clark ain’t the man to help you out of it.”
“But Custer could’ve ordered—”
“My God, Benteen! Haven’t you realized this Injun fighting ain’t at all like chasing Rebs? Rebs fought you like white men. They didn’t butcher and maim—hack off your head and arms, legs, even worse. The sun was going down on your regiment. Custer sat in the middle of a thousand warriors, all madder’n a bunch of riled-up hornets with what they saw done to Black Kettle’s camp—not to mention the pony herd. Ain’t a damned thing more that man could’ve done one way or another would’ve changed things for Elliott’s men.”
The young captain sighed deeply, then swiped at his dripping nose, reddened with the cold of twilight. “I take it you won’t reconsider.”
“Not a thing I got to say is going to help those men now.”
“Really figure they’re dead, don’t you?”
