of the wild man will progress very slowly. If at all.”
“I agree. If the government only kept the weapons from the young warriors. The officials back east who’re awarding these annuities to the hostile tribes are the same officials bawling for the army’s help in stomping out the raids and killings. If they’d keep the guns away from the agencies, the history of these plains would be written with far fewer bloody chapters.”
“My young friend,” Sheridan said, “you’re beginning to understand the bitter truth about the soldier’s life. History’s not written by soldiers like us. History’s written by the politicians. They’re the ones who hold the real power. We poor soldiers do nothing more than live or die in those scenarios written for us by the men who wield the true power. With all our might of men and arms—we old soldiers are nothing more than paper tigers.”
“I’m surprised to hear you say that, sir. I can’t believe we’re unable to change the outcome of things here in the western lands.”
“If you don’t believe me now, young friend, I’ll give you a few years. Then you should see things in a truer light. You’ll realize we have no real control over the destiny of this frontier.”
“A few years?” Custer swallowed. “I don’t have that long to wait, General. With the way things are going now, it’ll be eight to ten years before I can expect to make colonel. Too damned many officers and too few command slots.”
Sheridan whirled on him. “Then if you want to make something of your future, Custer … there’s one and one way only. You crush these red sonsabitches on the southern plains. Give those starch-collared bastards back east something to sit up and take notice of. You’ll make a name for yourself. Hang every goddamned warrior you get your hands on, burn the villages and drive the rest back to their reservations. You do that … George Armstrong Custer will never have to worry about his future again!”
A pale winter sun lost itself behind the hills as Sheridan’s detail pushed into camp east of Black Kettle’s devastated village. Here they’d stay upwind of those rotting pony carcasses.
“Dr. Bailey,” Custer said to the surgeon assigned to the Kansas Volunteer Cavalry, “you and Major Jenness will be in charge of identifying the young woman and child. Perhaps someone in your regiment will know the deceased.”
“Very good, General,” Bailey answered. He and Major George Jenness trudged back to that pair of horses bearing the frozen corpses.
The Kansans spread blankets across the icy snow, then gently lowered both bodies to the ground. Jenness himself carried the grim news to each of the volunteer companies.
An eerie pall of silence descended over the camp of the Nineteenth Kansas. One by one the companies began a sad procession past the grotesque corpses. Two soldiers volunteered to hold torches over the bodies stretched out on the gray of army blankets. Winter’s twilight tumbled headlong into the blackness of a tarry, silent night, punctuated only by an occasional cough or sneeze of a soldier standing patiently in line, waiting for his turn to inspect the mortal remains of mother and child.
From those surrounding hills drifted the yips and the howls of four-legged predators, finished gorging themselves for the day. Stiff leather soles scuffed across the crusty, trampled snow as each man shuffled forward in line until his turn came at last, stepping into that spooky corona of torchlight, bending down to stare into the horrifying death masks of mother and son.
Moylan stood beside Custer, shivering involuntarily with the aura of melancholy.
He drank long from the tin of coffee one of the Kansas mess cooks kept warm for him. Wondering when he might slip off to find some sow belly. Hardtack, if nothing else—
“Oh, sweet God!”
A soldier’s screech yanked Myles out of his hunger. Beneath the fluttering torches the Kansas farm boy’s knees went to mush. He fell on hands and knees over the bodies. Confusion broke out as others crushed around him, friends helping the young man to his feet when he sank like a wet sack of oats, sobbing.
“It’s her! And the boy, Willie! Oh, goddamn ’em!”
Moylan sloshed the coffee out of his cup, following Custer into the crowd, where together they pushed their way through the volunteers until they confronted Dr. Bailey and the young soldier.
“What’s your name, son?”
The soldier studied Custer’s face before answering. His dirty cheeks were tracked with tears, his reddened eyes sunken deep in a pinched face matted with the peach fuzz of youth.
“Simms, sir.”
“I’m Custer.”
“I know, General.” His quivering chin dropped against his chest, stifling a sob as it broke past his cracked lips. The soldier’s body shook with torment.
“You know the woman, Simms?”
“Yes.” More hot tears gushed free. Bailey and another soldier steadied the young private. “She was my cousin’s wife!”
“This is her boy?” Custer whispered.
“Willie Blinn.”
“That means this is Mrs. Clara Blinn, General,” Bailey said, touching Custer with his dark-ringed eyes. “She was with her husband, coming back from a trading venture with several others, when their train was attacked on the old Arkansas River Road, just inside the Colorado line. For three days the savages shot up the group pretty bad, even though the folks used their wagons for cover. Not one mule or horse left standing when the bloodthirsty murderers pulled out.”
Custer turned to Simms. “You’re that certain this is Clara Blinn and her son Willie?”
The soldier nodded before he spoke, lips trembling, as if he knew should he make a sound it would surely turn into something horrifying of itself. “Yessir. I was there myself. Not many of us come out of that fight.”
“You were at the attack on the wagon train?”
Simms nodded.
“Did Blinn himself die in the attack and siege on the train?” Custer inquired.
“No,” Bailey replied. “Only seriously wounded. Their kin was hopeful she’d be found alive. Barely twenty-three years of age. Her boy can’t be more than two years old now, from what I can tell of his little bone structure.”
“General Custer!”
“Over here, Cooke!” Custer shouted into the tar-black of night, responding to the voice thick with the Canadian Scotch accent of Billy Cooke’s motherland.
“Ah, General, been searching for you everywhere. Tom—Lieutenant—Custer’s detail’s bringing in the remains of Elliott’s men now.” He watched Custer’s shoulders sag.
“He was a fine officer. Been with me and the Seventh from the start.”
“I remember,” Cooke replied. “We joined near the same time, when the new regiment was created.”
“They’re bringing them soon?”
“Wagons pulling in now.”
“What time do you have, Moylan?”
Myles pulled a watch from his tunic pocket, turning it so that he could read the face beneath the dancing torchlight. “Almost nine o’clock.”
“Time to go.” He took his reins from Moylan and climbed to the saddle. “Dr. Bailey? Please see that Mrs. Blinn and her son are wrapped securely in blankets then bound with rope. Better that we take them north with us. Home to their folk. Can’t think of a reason why we should bury them in Indian Territory.”
“Not a goddamned reason. General.”
Moylan followed Custer as he sawed the horse about, easing his way through that mob of muttering volunteers, who were angry hearing that one of the women captives had been found … dead. By the time Custer and Moylan made it back to the Seventh’s camp, Regimental Surgeon Henry Lippincott had already ordered a sweeping crescent of bonfires started by the soldiers. In the light of that half-ring lay sixteen bodies. Already a handful of the frozen corpses had been positively identified by friends and bunkies. Custer slid from his cold saddle and Dandy was led away.
