Stomping off toward his Sibley tent, Custer paused a moment by that fire the headquarters guard fed through the night. The warmth worked at that icy knot clabbering in his belly.
“General.” The orderly snapped a salute as he slapped his Springfield carbine alongside his leg.
“Goodnight, Corporal.” Custer tore through his own tent flaps.
He lay upon his cot. No one to see the tears of shame on his face.
That’s exactly what he needed, all right. Medicine. Something to quench the burning, put out this smoldering fire threatening to flare.
Custer nestled a warm place for his cheek, praying for sleep to overtake him quickly. Blessed, peaceful sleep. Just a little sleep—that would be medicine enough right now.
Since the Seventh’s return to Camp Supply four days ago, Sheridan had grown increasingly disappointed by the progress of his winter campaign. Where he had hoped to attack large concentrations of guilty hostiles, Custer had instead defeated a small village of Black Kettle’s Cheyennes. Instead of that blow putting an end to the nagging Indian problems on the southern plains, reality showed him Custer had dealt nothing more than the first blow in what could become a long, drawn-out, and very bloody conflict.
Winter wrapped the prairie in white and cold. If Sheridan were to deal with the tribes still at large, he would have to do it soon. In the space of a few weeks spring would begin its relentless creep out of the south. By then the tribes and their grass-fattened ponies would again have the strength to move about quickly. By then the warriors would be out and raiding once more.
If he was to continue his fight, Sheridan understood, it must be now, deep in the heart of winter. And he must continue the fight—whirling, whirling as he had done in the Shenandoah valley, using Custer as his firebrand —until the hostiles cry “surrender” and turn back to their reservations.
“General?”
Sheridan turned on his camp stool, finding the young lieutenant colonel at the open door of his Sibley.
“Custer! Please, come in! Here—sit there on the bed. Best seat in the house.”
Custer settled as Sheridan stuffed more wood into the sheet-iron stove at the rear of his personal quarters.
“Do you know what day this is, Custer?”
“Why, it’s Saturday.”
Sheridan’s dark, brooding, Irish eyes lit up as he smiled. “I know that, Armstrong. What’s the date?”
“December fifth.”
“Damned straight, it is!” he roared as he slapped a knee. “It’s your birthday, for God’s sake! So I have a birthday present for you.”
“I didn’t know you knew … remembered my birthday.”
“Damn it, Armstrong, I’ve always known when your birthday is—and this time, I have something very special to give you.”
“Yessir?”
“While there’s nothing to wrap and place in your hand, my gift to you is something nonetheless very tangible.”
“I don’t follow you …”
“And I hadn’t expected you to understand me.” Sheridan turned fully around to face his friend with a smile. “Simple. We’re going after the rest of the hostiles. Happy birthday, Custer!”
“Thank you,” Custer replied, a little hollowly. “When are
“Monday, day after tomorrow.” Sheridan shuffled through some papers and maps on his field desk. “Your Lieutenant Bell, his quartermaster corps, and teamsters are about done preparing the wagons and supplies. I’ve planned to be out thirty days. That should be enough time to locate and crush the hostiles.”
“Thirty days?”
“That’s right,” Sheridan replied, searching Custer’s eyes carefully. “What’s on your mind?”
“Just the weather, sir. Dead of winter. The certainty of much more snow. What may seem like it could take only thirty days … well, might last more than sixty.”
“I see,” Sheridan replied quietly, a little steam slowly whistling out of his enthusiasm.
Scratching at his beard, the bantam Irishman rose stiffly and paced to the tent flaps, peering out at the bustling camp.
“Grant and Sherman want me back behind that goddamned desk again. So, like other battles we’ve fought together, we’ll just have to see what we can accomplish in those thirty days.”
Sheridan turned, seeing concern cross Custer’s face.
“You let me go, I’ll get the job done for you with—”
“I covered your ass in the Shenandoah with Merritt and others, Armstrong,” Sheridan confided, leaning forward. “And I did it again last month with Sully before you marched on the Washita. We make a good team, so don’t fight the bit on me now.”
Custer flinched at the scolding. He nodded. “What instructions do you have for me, General?”
“Come back tonight, and we’ll discuss how we’ll mop this up.”
“General?”
“Yes, Armstrong?”
“What would you have done—personally—following the Washita engagement?”
Sheridan glanced into those ice blue eyes and found he could not hold Custer’s hard gaze for long at all. “I suppose most would have done exactly as you did. Protect your victory, protect your men. Give priority to your wounded and the captives. You did the best you could under the circumstances.”
“Thank you, sir.” That helped a little.
“It’s not my place to second guess you. You did only what you believed was right at the time.”
After a full evening of final planning with Sheridan, Custer hurried back to the warmth of his Sibley late Sunday. At dawn his troops would be miles south, marching on the Washita Valley once more. He banked the fire in his stove for the night, trying to push Monaseetah from his mind. Try as he might, still she troubled someplace deep in the core of him.
Custer stood by the sheet-iron stove unbuttoning his tunic, letting it hang open a moment while he plopped down on his bed to struggle with his cold, wet boots. When the boots relented, he slipped his feet inside a pair of buffalo-hide moccasins she had made for him.
A quiet, unsure rattle at his front flap startled him. Custer flared, angry that he had not tied the flaps earlier so he could tell the soldier to go on his way, at this late hour.
Custer angrily stomped to the door. Ready to tear some soldier’s head off, he flung wide the two flaps.
“Monaseetah.”
Her name was all he could say. In a whispered rush of wild surprise caught high in his throat.
Her eyes touched him gently with their promise. Ribbons of heat stung their way across his cheeks. Like being squeezed in a vice … tightening. Her eyes held him for an instant before she slipped past him into the tent.
Determined, she had decided she would go to him, to claim the soldier chief as her own.
Tonight she would become his woman.
With one hand Monaseetah flung her red blanket to his bed, where that it lay atop a dark buffalo robe. Only then did her eyes reach out to capture his.
“You cannot stay here,” he pleaded in a small voice. He took two steps toward her, not daring to draw any closer. What sweet poison she had become.
She came to him as Custer swept toward her, enclosing her tiny shoulders. She sobbed—
The smell of her readiness swept into his nostrils. Filling them. Tingling his every nerve ending with its
