Fort Cobb. At Hazen’s post we will show this Yellow Hair we are at peace with the soldiers.”
“Do we have trouble here, Romero?” Custer sounded edgy.
“Not now, General. They’re ready to ride on to Cobb with you, to show they’re peace Indians and don’t want war with Yellow Hair.”
“Peace Indians, eh?” He grinned. “Killers of women and children. Well, you just tell these
Custer glanced over his shoulder, seeing his troops had deployed themselves near the southern edge of the meadow along the river. Fluttering on the cold breeze were colorful regimental guidons and Custer’s own personal Standard carried aloft over the band. Sunlight glinted off the shiny brass instruments. It made his war-horse heart swell with pride.
“Satanta and Lone Wolf will go with Yellow Hair to Hazen’s post,” Romero reminded Satanta.
“This is a good thing, Indian-talker. We will show Yellow Hair what is in our hearts.” Satanta turned, raising an arm to signal his warriors on the hillside to the northeast. From the half-thousand crowding the knoll burst some twenty warriors descending the hill at a lope.
“What’s going on here?” Custer demanded. “Romero!”
“Who are these who come?” the interpreter barked.
“They are our chiefs, Indian-talker,” Lone Wolf explained. “We are first chiefs. There are many head men among the Kiowa. Now Yellow Hair will know what lies in the hearts of all.”
“General—” Romero cleared his throat with a disturbing rattle, “old Lone Wolf here says all the chiefs have to sit in on the parley with you—”
“All of these? Why, there’s more than twenty of them headed this way!”
Romero chuckled. “Appears you’ll have quite a crowd for dinner, General.”
Custer relaxed, seeing the Kiowa chiefs smiling. His own famous grin crept across his face at last. “Appears they’re about to stretch my hospitality pretty thin, aren’t they?”
Custer turned to Lieutenant Colonel Crosby. “Inform General Sheridan that all companies will be on alert for any treachery, Colonel.”
“Sounds as if you’re expecting some treachery, Custer.”
His robin-egg blue eyes studied J. Schuyler Crosby a moment before he answered. Sheridan’s aide had seen little of field service, none of it on the plains with Indians. Crosby was one of those legions in command staffs who had leapt their way up the rungs of the army ladder through a series of prestigious friendships with important officers in the War Department.
“No, Colonel,” Custer finally answered. “I’m not actually expecting any treachery from the Kiowa at all.”
CHAPTER 18
“I’LL curse their bloody hearts straight into the pits of hell!”
Tom Custer had rarely seen his older brother this angry. More than angry—stomping, raring, spitting-fire mad. No soldier in the valley of the Washita could blame Custer, either. After all, what man wouldn’t be driven blind mad when he’d just been lied to, his trust spat on and betrayed.
Yesterday had done it.
Following yesterday’s introductions to more than twenty additional chiefs who would accompany Satanta and Lone Wolf to Fort Cobb, Custer had taken his guests back to Lieutenant Bell’s commissary wagons, opening the larder for his new friends. All to Sheridan’s consternation—and his eventual, begrudging agreement.
“It really isn’t much,” Custer had argued. “Some hardtack and parched corn, a little of the poor sowbelly we have along. Nothing of value, General. But enough to fill the empty, hard-winter belly of Indian chiefs who always serve their guests a meal before talking over important matters.”
When their bellies had been stuffed and the Kiowa custom of complimentary belching satisfied, Custer gave the order to move out once more. By late afternoon the command reached the benchlands near the banks of the Washita. Here Custer’s entire command established camp for the coming winter night.
That evening after supper with their copper-skinned guests at officer’s mess, Custer and Sheridan began more preliminary discussions with the great gathering of Kiowa, Comanche and Apache chiefs. The army commanders listened to repeated guarantees of peace and friendship for the white man, the army itself, and especially for the war chiefs themselves: Custer and Sheridan.
“Doesn’t seem you have much faith in the Kiowa tongue either,” Custer whispered to Sheridan.
“Bastards up to their eyeballs in goddamn treachery,” Sheridan growled. “The whole scheming bunch followed your columns all day, Custer.”
“I feel something in the air, too. And ordered a double guard posted.”
Yet there was something more that irritated the young cavalry commander like a tiny thread unraveling from one of his long wool stockings. “The more I listen to the Kiowa’s speeches, the more I’m convinced they have no intention of bringing their villages in to Fort Cobb.”
“What do you think they have up their sleeves?” Sheridan asked.
“I can only guess—stealing some wagons, running off some stock, harassing our rear guard. Something’s afoot, and I can smell it.”
By the time he finally closed his eyes near midnight, Custer couldn’t escape that hard rock of a feeling lying cold in his belly that he was about to be made the fool. But not by the Kiowa.
The next morning at dawn Custer knew the chiefs had put their foot in it. And what
Awakened by shouting soldiers clamoring around his tent at first light, Custer rolled from his blankets. What he had in his belly wasn’t only growling hunger. Suspicion and anger are never a hearty breakfast. Custer burst from his tent to discover the reason for the uproar.
A few yards off stood three of the chiefs. Only three.
A chagrined sergeant of the guard stomped up, saluting. “General … Custer, sir,” he stammered. “Sometime last night, the rest of the Injuns … well—they slipped away through our pickets. Back to their own camps, I guess, General. These three fellas here … they hung behind to be the last to go, it seems. And they are setting to fly when we caught ’em.”
Custer roared through the troopers surrounding the chiefs like a cat with lightning at its tail. And found Satanta, Lone Wolf, and a Kiowa subchief called Licking Bear huddled together in a ring of army carbines.
“Get me Romero!” Custer bellowed. “He won’t sleep in this morning!”
A corporal turned on his heel and darted away.
“I’ll watch these blackguards burn in hell before they’re shown any mercy from here on out!”
The high-pitched shriek of his voice had done its job. All around him the camp awakened with a start. Within moments Sheridan, Crosby, Moylan, and Tom Custer joined the growing crowd. Dragging in last on the the scene was Romero, groggy and frog-mouthed, wiping last night’s sleep from his eyes.
“Tell these buggers I’m holding them for ransom, Romero! Ransom for the rest of their villages—every last nit and prick of them!”
Custer stomped in a small circle as he spoke, sticking his nose into the Kiowa’s faces from time to time, roaring, spitting mad.
“They won’t play me the fool like this! They’ve picked the wrong tree to shake this time. You tell them every last word of what I said!”
The coloring of his pale eyes had turned that color of blue at the center of a flame wrapping a sulphur-head match.
“Tell them, Romero. This time they’ve knocked down a hornet’s nest and they’re bound to get stung!”
Romero did as he was ordered, and got the response he figured he would. “General, they haven’t got an idea what you’re mad about.”
“They’ve got to be joking! I’m not blind! The lying swine never had any intention of coming in to Fort Cobb!”
