Clark glared flints at Benteen for a long moment. “I said it before. Doesn’t matter much anymore. Not even to Elliott and his men. If they weren’t dead before we pulled outta the Washita …”
Benteen filled in the scout’s pause. “They are now.”
“Nothing I can do help ’em now.”
“What about all the Major Elliotts or the brave troopers to come who’ll serve under Custer in the years ahead? What about them?”
Clark shook his head. “The future, Captain? Seems like that always takes care of itself—or it’ll take care of George Armstrong Custer.”
Clark dropped to his knees and threw some chunks of kindling on the fire. “I damn well won’t be around, if you want to know what I think. You boys play soldier long enough, hard enough, maybe you won’t be around long either.”
Clark plopped back down on his stump. “Truth is, I don’t like Custer any better’n you. But the way I figure it, I’ve got a job scouting for the man. If Custer doesn’t choose to listen to me, that’s his business. But I know damned well someday it’ll be his neck, providing he doesn’t start paying heed to his scouts.”
Benteen creaked to his feet, realizing the scout wasn’t about to change his mind.
“That’s just the difference between me and your soldiers, Captain. I got enough good sense to know when I should disappear over the next hill. I know Injuns. I know the country. That’s why I’m a scout—and a civilian. And I’m learning a lot about army officers, too, this goddamned winter.”
The man in buckskins rose, squarely facing the captain. “I keep my hair ’cause I’ve learned what goes on inside you brass-buttoned, paper-collar officers.”
“Regrettable you can’t see things my way, Ben.” The captain resigned himself to defeat. “You could’ve been a big help to a lot of young soldiers.”
“Let’s just say I’ll keep my own fat out of the fire.”
“Read you loud and clear, mister.”
“Your soldier boys could help themselves the same way if they’d a mind to.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, Mr. Clark. The army shoots deserters. Being a soldier means following the orders your superior officer gives you.”
“Even if that order will kill you?”
Benteen swallowed hard. “I suppose that’s in the nature of military life, Mr. Clark.”
“Then I ain’t in so bad a shape, am I, Captain? I’ve got no one but me to follow. While you and your soldiers … you have General Custer. Clark slipped his knife into its sheath, then high-stepped the log he had been sitting upon. He disappeared down a row of company tents without another word.
Benteen watched the scout fade into the twilight. “Make no mistake about it, Mr. Clark. You surely do have the better end of the deal.”
Twilight fell by the time Mahwissa and Monaseetah raised Custer’s captured Cheyenne lodge beside his Sibley tent. A hundred yards away the triumphant Osage trackers celebrated around a huge bonfire down on the banks of the Beaver River. Roasts and ribs broiled on stakes jammed into the softening ground near the edge of the flames. At last the Osages would count coup over their old enemies. For too long they had hungered to dance with the blood-encrusted Cheyenne scalps. Out would come the drums and some of the pony soldiers’ whiskey. On through the frosty night the trackers would dance to celebrate the army’s winter victory on the Washita.
“General?”
Custer had been watching the two Cheyenne women struggle with the lodgeskin lashed to the lifting pole. At Lieutenant Moylan’s voice he turned, as the women pulled the heavy, painted buffalo hide in both directions from the rear of the lodge, circling to the front to lash the lodgeskin together above the tiny doorway using long willow pins.
“Yes?”
Moylan was not alone. “Sir, may I introduce Daniel Brewster?”
Custer yanked a buffalo mitten from his right hand. “A new recruit, Moylan?”
“Not exactly, sir.”
Custer studied the young man. “Mr. Brewster, is it?”
“Y-yes, sir,” and he bowed his head, shuffling his big feet for an awkward moment after he dropped Custer’s hand.
“Lieutenant, care to explain why Mr. Brewster’s here, if not a recruit for the Seventh Cavalry?”
“Sir, Daniel here—” Moylan cleared his throat nervously, “he’s been waiting down here at Camp Supply for a while already … waiting for our return from the Washita.
“Not exactly to join up,” Moylan continued. “But he did come to ride with the Seventh, sir.”
Brewster stepped up, crushing the soft brim of his worn slouch hat in his huge, scarred hands. “I tried to get to Fort Dodge, General. Before you pulled out.”
Custer appraised the young man all the while. He’d make a fine recruit—strapping, hale fellow that he was. Brewster stood just above six feet. Just as surely he carried close to two hundred pounds across his broad frame. It wasn’t likely a man would find an ounce of fat on the boy—young men of his breeding and background had sweated off every bit of tallow every day of their hard, simple lives.
Daniel Brewster’s face, well tanned beneath a hat’s brim line scarred across his forehead, told the rest of the story. That, and the huge ham hocks of work-worn hands that hung at the end of arms the size of an elk’s foreleg. Especially those hands—roughened, cracked, callused, and perpetually scabbed. The sort of hands owned by a man who could wrench more pleasure out of the simple things of each day’s existence than Custer knew he ever would. For that alone, he instantly admired this young man. More than that, he found himself genuinely liking the open, sun-baked face and deep-seared eyes that held hidden some sad story of long-earned pain.
“Lieutenant, why don’t you fetch some coffee. What say to that, Mr. Brewster? Then we’ll talk over what made you trail the Seventh Cavalry into Indian Territory.”
“I … I’d like that very much, General, sir.” He crimped the soft slouch hat, then nervously tugged at his heavy mackinaw coat. Both had long ago seen their better days. Each sleeve bore a crude leather patch at the elbow. Custer could see the stitches on the patching were not those of a man’s thick, clumsy fingers. Not a plowman’s handiwork. Instead, the hands which had sewn Daniel Brewster’s patches had been feminine, precise—and loving.
“Let’s have a seat over there.” Custer pointed to some cottonwood logs rolled up to his cheery fire. He found himself glancing over as the women finished pinning the hide together from the doorway up to the smoke flaps, then drove long pegs through the edge of the hide into the cold earth with hand-sized stones used as mallets.
“When I missed catching your army back to Fort Dodge, had no choice but to ride down here on my own. Got pinned down in the middle of that Cimarron River country for a few days while a blizzard blew over. By the time I rode in, you had already pulled out on me again.”
Moylan brought two cups of coffee, then stepped away.
“Sounds like you’ve had a straight run at some bad luck trying to catch up with us. Why don’t you tell me what you’re doing here.”
Brewster watched Custer sip his coffee. “Making decisions still pretty new to me, sir. Ever since my pa and brother got killed, I’ve been the one to take care of my mother and sister.”
“How was it your father and brother died?”
“The war, sir.” Brewster looked away self-consciously.
“What engagement?”
“Gettysburg.”
“Meade lost too many good men those three days at Gettysburg. Every inch of ground bloody expensive for both armies.” He gazed into the firelight, remembering the horrible sacrifice in young life that had littered the hills and meadows as wave after wave of Pickett’s infantry and charge after charge of Jeb Stuart’s cavalry had hurtled themselves suicidally against Union positions. “Left to care for your mother and sister?”
“Mama passed on soon after.” Brewster turned away, pulling hard at his hot coffee, scalding his lips and tongue.
“You’ve had much more than your share of grief in five short years. How’d your mother die?”
“Lost her mind from grief, sir. Too much for her to bear—both a son and husband taken at once.”
