Long Winter Gone

“Lippincott.”

“General?”

“Thanks for seeing that things got started in my absence.”

“You’re welcome, General. Regarding disposition of the remains, we’ll await your decision.”

On his way back to camp earlier, Custer had decided. “We’ll bury them here. Where they fell.” He looked up from the naked, grotesque corpses. “You seen Benteen?”

“No, General. I haven’t—”

“Sir!” An older soldier strode up. “I saw him yonder while ago.”

“Thank you, soldier. Run him down. Ask him to see me at once.”

“Sure thing, sir!”

Custer turned to the surgeon. “Have you identified Elliott?”

Without a word, Lippincott motioned for Custer to follow. They walked quietly among the soldiers parading past the frozen corpses.

“Several of us think this was Major Elliott.”

His eyes narrowed on a corpse brutally beheaded. The scalp of the head they had found had been torn away before the back of the skull was smashed to jelly. Blood and ooze had blackened over the entire head. Lippincott turned the grisly object so the wide, glazed eyes stared up at Custer. Moylan heard Custer draw a deep breath of cold air. The young adjutant swallowed repeatedly to keep his own stomach down.

“That’s Major Elliott,” Custer agreed, tearing his eyes from the frightening gore. He let another breath out slowly. “As each man is identified, I want it recorded in your medical records. The number and type of wounds, weapons used, if possible—all of it. Wrap each of the remains in a blanket, binding it with rope. Let’s make it hard for any predators to get at the men now.”

“Very good, sir.”

“You’ve had supper, Lippincott?”

“No. Weren’t many of us had an appetite after seeing what was done to these men.”

“General? You wanted to see me?”

Custer turned to face the strapping Missourian. “Benteen! Yes. I want your company to prepare a mass grave for these bodies. You need enough room for all the enlisted.”

“What of Elliott, sir?”

“We’re taking him back with us. He’ll not be left here. As an officer, he deserves the honor of a military funeral. I believe you can understand that?”

“Perfectly.”

“We’ll lay his men here in the valley of the Washita. Where they fell in duty to their country.”

Benteen saluted, his back snapping ramrod rigid. “I’ll be at it straightaway. Is there a particular spot you had in mind?”

Custer appraised the officer a moment. “You’re familiar with the country immediately west of the village?”

“I am. We rode in for the attack from that direction.”

“There’s a hill just west of the village. Dig the grave atop that hill, overlooking the village and the river beyond. From there, a man can see the defeated village and the icy Washita.”

Benteen snapped a quick salute and was gone.

“He doesn’t like you, General,” Moylan said.

Custer turned to Moylan. “He doesn’t have to, Lieutenant.”

“With your permission, if I was you, I’d picked someone else for grave detail, sir.”

Blue eyes flashed in the torchlight. “Mr. Moylan, you aren’t me. Besides—” Custer gazed after the tall Virginia-born officer disappearing into the gloom of night, “Benteen’s a good soldier. He may hate my insides, and I his—but Benteen is a soldier above all. And he’ll always do exactly as ordered.”

CHAPTER 16

BY midnight Benteen sent a young corporal with word to Custer that his men had finished the mass grave.

As officers and enlisted climbed the knoll behind the three creaking wagons burdened with blanket-wrapped corpses, an eerie pall descended over them all. Torches flickered in the mournful wind that sighed through the bare hackberry and blackjack. Even the moon hid its pale face behind a death shroud of clouds. An uneasy cloak of dread fell upon those men crowding the trench where the bodies lay side by side by side.

Benteen sensed the hair rise on the back of his neck as a wolf howled from the trees off to the west. He was certain the predator’s beastly call signified that something far greater than Custer himself had destined Frederick Benteen to head this detail. He smiled inwardly to himself, but sourly. A small, bitter victory over Custer.

Benteen had been the first to question Custer’s decision to abandon the search of the Washita Valley without finding Elliott’s men, raising his first objection the moment they began their march back to Camp Supply. It was Benteen at the center of those grumbling and secretive complainers who called Custer to task ever since that retreat from this bloody valley. Only right that Benteen now had a hand in laying these men to rest.

“What a bitter sacrifice,” Benteen whispered to Lieutenant Edward Godfrey beside him at the lip of the dark trench.

Although he was a junior officer, Godfrey had made it clear to Benteen that he had disagreed with Custer that morning of the battle. The young lieutenant had with his own ears heard Elliott’s men having a hot time of it. He was amazed that Custer had refused to ride to the major’s aid.

“Many a good soldier sacrificed on the pyre of glowing ambition,” Godfrey whispered.

“Watching good men laid to rest in the ground because of a bad decision will anger any officer who cares about his men. There was no reason for this,” Benteen said acidly.

“It isn’t our lot to understand, is it?”

“Damn him!” Benteen growled under his breath. “Custer was more interested in counting the captured goods—not to mention his interest in the condition of a certain Cheyenne prisoner—than he was interested in the lives of these men butchered by Cheyenne warriors.”

As Benteen’s men lowered the last body into the long trench, Custer himself stepped forward, pulling the buffalo cap from his head.

“Men.” He coughed. “I don’t have to tell you what it means to lose good soldiers like this.” Custer ground the buffalo cap between his two wind-raw hands, staring into the trench before his eyes raked the somber, torch-lit assembly.

“When a man becomes a soldier, he doesn’t expect a life of ease. Even the chance at a long life. A soldier asks only to be given the chance to serve the Republic.”

Custer paused as some of the mourners finished muttering quiet comments, others adding “amens.”

“These men offered the ultimate sacrifice. A sacrifice not only of blood … but of love. Love of country. Love of soldiering. Each one was a soldier. I pray each of us will remember these men as that: soldiers. Not as dead men, for they are not. These gallant souls have gone on to a better reward. These empty shells we bury here serve only to remind us that once they were our fellows, our companions, our friends. Let us remember them as they breathed, and as they fought.”

Custer stepped back. “We commend their spirits to God. Amen.”

He turned, jammed the cap on his head. Blue eyes scanned the crowd until he found Myers and Thompson.

“Gentlemen,” he sighed, “you both will see that some of your men remain behind to assist Benteen in covering the remains.”

Myers glanced at Thompson. “Yes, sir.”

“Carry on, gentlemen. I’ll be in camp if you need me. Yates will be in charge of securing our perimeter for the night.”

They watched Custer wheel and plod downhill. Myers said, “Times I don’t understand the man.”