CHAPTER 17
BY the time the soldiers had camped that afternoon of the seventeenth, the Osage trackers had located the Kiowa camps. From their brown lodges oily smoke raked across the sky a few miles north of Fort Cobb along the icy Washita. Custer figured it was time to let Sheridan in on how Hazen had been protecting the very tribes he had been sent to punish.
Sheridan fumed when Custer told him the commander of Fort Cobb had made government wards of the guilty Kiowa.
“Seems he promised the chiefs that if they camped near Fort Cobb they’d be safe!”
Sheridan’s Irish temper boiled furiously. “Damn is hide! That bastard’s got my hands tied, Custer!”
“Got your hands tied?”
“When you brought me news upon your return to Camp Supply—that you’d found evidence in Black Kettle’s village that his band had received annuities—I passed word on to division H.Q. I wanted Sherman to know you found them in a hostile village.”
“What’s this got to do with Hazen and the Kiowa?”
“Goddammit, Custer! Can’t you see? I’m made to punish the Indians Hazen is instructed to feed!”
“Sherman?”
“Sherman would have no part of such idiocy! Goddamned Indian Bureau. Time you realized this, Custer. They wear the pants these days over at the War Department. And when they run the War Department, they run Sherman.” Sheridan slammed a fist down on his field desk, scattering papers and maps. “Something must be done to end this insanity.”
“You’re saying on one hand the government’s told to feed and present gifts to those murderers, while the other hand is ordered to hunt them down and shoot them all.”
Again, the hero of the Shenandoah drove a fist onto his field desk. “I’m ordered to fight these goddamned savages while Hazen feeds the beggars. Even shelters them in the shadows of his post! We’ll just have to find a way around Hazen.”
“A way around Hazen?”
“Bastard’s got me trapped. I can’t burn him, Custer,” Sheridan moaned. “As an officer, I’m obligated by Sherman to honor Hazen’s command here in the Territories.”
“But you’re his superior!”
“Best you start to realize the army has two fathers when it marches into Indian Territory: Sherman and Grant on the one hand,” Sheridan said, gazing at his boots, “and the Indian Bureau on the other.”
“Hazen takes his orders from civilians?”
“Most of the time.”
“I must protest! To bring my command all this way, and now you tell me I’m forced to fight with one hand tied behind my back? I’ve got the Kiowa right where we want them. I can punish them now. Attack! The Nineteenth Kansas is itching for a good scrap. They feel cheated, you understand.”
“Cheated?”
“They weren’t in on the Washita battle.”
Sheridan knitted his dark brows. He grappled with the problem a moment longer before speaking. “I must give the Kiowa a chance—”
“A chance, sir? Why not give the Nineteenth Kansas a chance for glory?”
“Goddamn your hide, Armstrong!” Sheridan’s black eyes were full of sudden fire. “You’re the impetuous one. Can’t you see for once that this is something even bigger than you? Hell, even your friend Phil Sheridan couldn’t protect you if you galloped off into that Kiowa camp and wiped them out.
“Who the hell do you think saved you from reassignment to some dead-end, no-account, chair-jockey job when your year of court-martial was up?”
“I had no idea—”
“You don’t enjoy much favor back in the War Department, Custer. Mind you that! Grant himself wonders why he had to spend so much time explaining his fair-haired Boy General who shoots deserters without trial. When Grant and old Bill Sherman start peering over your shoulder, you’d best watch your backside.”
“But one swift blow here!”
“Oh, shut up, Custer. This isn’t the Shenandoah. Don’t you realize the hour has come and gone when you and I can move freely, without shackles in this army?”
“I thought we were to punish the tribes.”
“Time you learned about the world. You listen to me and listen good, because I’ll say it once. This whole winter campaign’s got nothing to do with these blessed Indians. If they all starved to death, I wouldn’t give a goddamn. What it’s about is you. I designed this campaign for George Armstrong Custer. You’re here this winter on probation. Oh, the little bastards with all their braid back in Washington didn’t want you to know that, but there it is. I talked and talked and finally convinced them that this winter campaign needed someone with your abilities. We don’t want you to think. You’re paid to follow orders. Not go charging off. I did my best for you as a friend. But you’d better understand—you’ve been handed your last chance to make something of your military career.”
Sheridan let that sink in a moment while he drew the withered stub of a cigar to his lips. “That shit about you chasing back after Libbie without permission the way you did—and shooting deserters! You almost bungled yourself right into some dead-end command. With no chance to crawl out of the hole you’d buried yourself in.”
Custer remained silent, staring at his boots. For the first time in their long relationship, he couldn’t look Sheridan in the eye. “What is it you’d have me do, General?” His voice had that clear, controlled ring to it.
“From this day forward, you’ll never question a command given you, nor waver from it. Is that understood?”
“Understood, General.”
“Armstrong, can’t you see I need you to keep your nose clean? If you botch things now, they’ll reassign you. I need you here with me.”
“Yessir.”
“There’s this matter of the Kiowa now, Custer.” Sheridan turned to his field desk, where he glanced at a slip of foolscap on which he had been scribbling some plans of operation. “We’ll talk with these Kiowa first.”
“Talk them into returning their prisoners?”
“If there are any left alive,” Sheridan growled. “I’d love to hang a few of those bastards for what they did to Mrs. Blinn and her boy.”
“From what you’ve told me, that would only get us in more trouble back east.”
“You’re learning, aren’t you?” Sheridan slapped a paternal hand on Custer’s shoulder. “For the time being, we’ll try talking with them. Surround the villages in the event our parley fails. You must exhaust all diplomatic means before using any firepower.”
“Diplomacy with murderers, sir?”
“That’s what Washington asks of us, Custer. You’re a soldier, and a soldier—”
“Follows orders.”
“I know to some it might seem futile,” Sheridan said. “But you concentrate on one thing and one thing only until this campaign’s over.”
“What’s that, sir?”
“The white captives these red bastards kidnapped. You remember them. When you eat and when you sleep. You think about those poor women and what they’re going through at the hands of the savages. And remember that it rests in your hands to free them. Destroying one village after another won’t win you favor back in Washington. Freeing those captives will.”
“And Washington is the key to my promotion.”
Sheridan smiled that Irish smile of his. “Now you understand how the game’s played.”
“Got a good teacher in Philip H. Sheridan.”
“Before this winter campaign’s over, Custer—we’ll wrangle that promotion out of those bastards back east. We’ll make you colonel and get you your own regiment if we have to hog-tie President Grant himself.”
