evil of friends. Perhaps, this trouble came by the white man’s evil.
“You Kiowa dogs cannot call yourselves warriors! Cheyenne Dog Soldiers will protect you as we protect our women. Or we can watch you destroyed, withering as the grass before the winter winds.”
Amid the silence of the lodge, Medicine Arrow held his bare palm over the flames, his eyes narrowing on Satanta and Lone Wolf, watching their reaction as he burned his own flesh. His wolfish grin grew bigger, until he removed his hand from the flame, showing the Kiowa his charred totem of bravery.
“There, my sacred little brothers! If I would burn my own hand, would I not destroy your camps and all therein if they offend me?”
The Cheyenne chief leapt to his feet, accompanied by the Dog Soldiers who joined him in this grand council of tribes.
“Run, Kiowa! Run! Hide behind your soldier chief who will protect you from Yellow Hair. Know that the mighty Cheyenne are not running. Nor will we hide from Yellow Hair. We stay the winter as we have for winters beyond count. When spring brings forth the buffalo for our hunters, we journey to the Llano Estacado in the south.”
Medicine Arrow glared down at the warriors clustered about Satanta and Lone Wolf. “Once a powerful nation, the Kiowa. Once our brothers in war, vowing to wipe the white man from the face of the land. Now a race of dogs tucking tails between their legs when the name of Yellow Hair is whispered.”
He kicked the fire pit, sending embers and burning wood scattering before the Kiowa’s feet. Sparks shot into the smoke hole overhead like summer’s fireflies.
“Do not worry for me, Kiowa brothers. Yellow Hair dares not attack Dog Soldiers. Worry only for yourselves. Proof of that lies rotting along the banks of the Washita. You have seen that the soldiers of Yellow Hair kill women.” He laughed, like the metallic scraping of knife blade on stone. “Shake, gutless Kiowa! For you are no better than squaws!”
Medicine Arrow swept from the lodge like a spring thunderstorm, followed by his tense warriors. Outside, the noise and bluster of their passing from camp faded, until the Kiowa sat in silence once more.
Satanta studied his old friends, the chiefs of the Kiowa bands. Brooding on what to say the way a toothless one chewed on boiled meat. His own son stood.
“Tsalante wishes to be heard?” Satanta said.
“Yes, Father. In my twenty summers the Kiowa have never been pressed between two forces as we are this winter.” He held up one hand. “We fear the pony soldiers of Yellow Hair, for they have wiped Black Kettle off the earth.” Tsalante listened to the murmurs of the old men as he brought up his other hand. “Over here we have the mighty Cheyenne, who would have us join their war on the soldiers. Like Yellow Hair, Medicine Arrow has the might to destroy our Kiowa villages.”
“Your son speaks with the wisdom of many winters,” Lone Wolf admitted sadly. “We are caught in between. With no place to go.”
“I cannot accept defeat,” Satanta said, wagging his head.
“It is true!” Lone Wolf argued. “Either we flee the jackal by running into the wolfs mouth, or we flee the wolf and find ourselves caught in the jackal’s mouth. We have no choice!”
For a long time, Satanta stared at the flames dying near his feet. He finally sighed, straightened.
“Satanta has decided. As chief I must do what is best for my people. Not only what our warriors clamor for. Satanta does what is best for the women and children. The old ones. The sick ones who will not last the winter.”
“You are chief,” Lone Wolf replied. “Your word will stand.”
Satanta went on, “I tell you this, brothers. If Kiowa join with Cheyenne against Yellow Hair now, we would have the pony soldiers to fear.”
“This is true,” Lone Wolf answered while others muttered their agreement.
“But if we go to Fort Cobb and live in peace as the Yellow Hair wants, we have only to fear the wrath of this evil one called Medicine Arrow.”
“His Dog Soldiers are many!” Lone Wolf cried.
“They are few, while the pony soldiers who would crush us are like the stars overhead,” Satanta answered sadly. “Better to have the pony soldiers to protect us against the war-crazy Cheyenne—better that than live in fear of pony soldiers wiping our villages from the face of the earth.”
A day after the expedition left the battlefield, a harsh storm battered Custer’s command, dumping two more feet of fresh snow on the surrounding countryside. Hacking a path through the wilderness became an ordeal. Civilian teamsters struggled in the predawn darkness, chipping harness and tack out of the ice as they readied their wagons for the day’s march.
Brutal winds slashed at the men for two days. Civilian and soldier alike used axes, picks, and shovels to cut through frozen drifts blocking the trail or to chop ice from slippery creek banks.
On the fourth day the skies cleared as welcome, southerly winds breathed warmth across the land. At first the troopers hailed the warmer weather, until they found the red clay and snow turned to red sticky gumbo. Harder work than before. Custer employed more than two hundred troopers in clearing the narrow trail made by the fleeing Kiowa, hauling his heavy wagons through boggy meadows and windswept lowlands. Hour after hour the men hacked at the impenetrable undergrowth; the columns slogged through a quagmire sucking greedily at every wagon wheel, hoof, and boot.
While the command struggled crossing a sharp ravine on the morning of the seventeenth of December, the air rang with excited whoops. Corbin and Clark galloped into view, tearing through the scattered work details.
“You found something?” Custer piped eagerly, standing in his stirrups as the two scouts slid their horses to a halt.
“Found your Indians, General,” Ben Clark announced. “The bunch skedaddling to Fort Cobb.”
“What’re they up to now? Haven’t made it to Hazen, have they?” Custer rapid-fired his questions.
“Party of warriors on the trail ahead, waiting for us. I figure the Kiowa been watching us for some time.”
“By the gods of Abraham! Tell me something I don’t already know!”
“Sir … Injuns waiting under a flag of truce.”
Custer was speechless. He opened his mouth three times before any words broke free. “By God’s blood! Like Lee himself at Appomattox Wood! Gentlemen—let’s parley with these Kiowa.”
Less than a mile ahead Custer ran across some of his Osage and Kaw trackers who normally scouted the flanks. For the moment they sat staring across an open meadow stretching away to the east. Some eighty yards off waited a half-dozen mounted warriors, most with the butt of a rifle resting atop a thigh. In the middle sat an unarmed comrade who carried only a white scrap of cloth tied at the end of a long willow branch.
“By all that’s holy! We got ’em on the run now, boys!” Custer’s teeth flashed like high-country snow beneath a winter sun.
“Don’t trust them Kiowa,” Milner growled.
“Joe, you, Ben, and Jack come with me,” Custer ordered. “We’ll see what these red fellows have on their minds.”
Custer kicked his mount into an easy lope. Halfway across the meadow, he threw up his arm, halting his scouts. He circled his horse twice, a signal he wanted to parley. The Indian bearing the white flag broke from the rest, galloping toward the white men.
“Any of you know Kiowa?” Custer asked.
“I might know enough to get us by today,” Clark answered.
Custer appraised the messenger reining to a halt before them, his ribby pony nose to nose with Custer’s stallion. Dark, hooded eyes flicked over the three scouts, not missing a weapon carried by any of the white men. The black-cherry eyes came to a rest on the soldier chief. Custer’s buffalo coat hid much of his uniform. But from the way the messenger studied him, Custer sensed the man knew who sat before him.
“Go ahead, Ben. Let’s find out what this fella wants.”
Clark tried out some of his rusty Kiowa. What he got for his trouble was an amused look in return.
“I’m no Kiowa,” the messenger spoke in English, smiling.
“Not a Kiowa?” Custer demanded.
“Goddamn! Why, we had it banked you was Kiowa,” Milner put in now. “Satanta’s, or Black Eagle’s bunch.”
