“Damn right it is, Crosby!” From his office he watched some infantry at drill across the parade of Fort Leavenworth. “It took us too damned long to realize the army was inadequate to catch mounted warriors fleeing across the plains. The only way to stop those warriors is to find their villages, then hit the bastards where they’re content to sit out the winter.”
“Sherman agrees?”
“Damn right he does. That’s why we’re pressing ahead with this winter campaign to wipe out—once and for all—this Indian problem down here. In fact—” he shuffled through papers on his desk until he located what he wanted, “in Sherman’s reply of fifteen October, the old warhorse says it is up to the Indians themselves to decide whether they are to live or suffer extermination. These are Sherman’s own words, Crosby:
‘ … we, in the performance of a most unpleasant duty, accept the war begun by our enemies, and hereby resolve to make its end final. If it results in the utter annihilation of these Indians it is but the result of what they have been warned again and again, and for which they seem fully prepared. I will say nothing and do nothing to restrain our troops from doing what they deem proper on the spot, and will allow no mere vague general charges of cruelty and inhumanity to tie their hands.… You may now go ahead in your own way and I will back you with my whole authority, and stand between you and any efforts that may be attempted in your rear to restrain your purpose or check your troops.’”
“Every man in army blue hungers for a decisive victory, General.”
“The cold weather this coming winter will keep those marauding sonsabitches home by their lodge fires, won’t it? Damn right, it will. Home in their villages—where Custer’s Seventh Cavalry can find them.”
“But, sir—what about General Sully? He’ll expect to head the expedition you send down into the Territories, won’t he?”
“I’ll handle Sully when the time comes, Crosby. I owe Custer that much.”
CHAPTER 2
“THE buffalo are plenty,” Chief Black Kettle said with satisfaction. “Here we will stay the winter.” His band of Southern Cheyenne spread out along the Washita River just east of the Texas Panhandle. One by one their browned, buffalo-hide lodges yearned toward the autumn-blue skies. Smoke from many fires rose to join the clouds dancing across the blue dome, pushed by the eager fall winds that foretold a taste of winter.
Black Kettle’s people did not camp alone this robe season. His village of fifty Cheyenne lodges had been joined by one lodge of visiting Arapaho and two Sioux lodges desiring to winter a little farther south than they normally did. Small as it was, Black Kettle’s village stood on the western border of a grander encampment spreading itself some twelve to fifteen miles along the looping river. Arapaho, Kiowa, Comanche, along with other bands of Southern Cheyenne and even a small village of Apache—in all, some six thousand strong—had erected their winter lodges in that ancient valley.
“Here to this valley dotted with hills that will break up winter’s icy blasts has the Earth Mother herself invited us. Here we will laugh and sleep, hunt and dance—safe for the winter.”
He smiled in that gentle way of his, watching his wife waddle off to unload the single travois of their simple possessions. Medicine Woman Later, his lifelong partner, gurgled in the back of her throat, a sound she used whenever she wanted to tell him he should do less talking about the trees and the land. A little less talking and a little more work.
It gave his heart a fierce pride to watch this raising of the few lodges left to his small band, smaller now after the slaughter at Sand Creek four winters ago. These few had survived, clung to life like ticks on summer buffalo. They had moved across the plains and along the river valleys with the seasons, persisting in life as The People had lived it for centuries already. They knew nothing else but to go on as they had lived for time beyond any one man’s memory.
In the heart of this river basin the southern tribes had long visited, the Washita wound its lazy trail in tight twists before it finally looped northward to form a large horseshoe. Black Kettle’s tribe selected that same bend in the river for their winter home. Here they were protected by the sandy red bluffs to the north across the river and the shaded knolls rising behind them. Here they would find no end to fresh water and abundant grazing for their pony herd of nearly a thousand animals. For fires to ward off the chill of autumn mornings and the numbing cold of winter nights, timber grew thick along the bottoms choked with plant life of all description ablaze in color.
One clear, frosty morning, the Cheyenne awoke to find a thin slick of ice coating the water kettles. It was a magical time of year along the Washita. The buffalo hunted by the young men who left camp each day had already grown fat from a long summer grazing on the rich grasses carpeting the southern plains, their curly coats grown thick—a sign of an early and cold winter.
Chief Black Kettle sighed as he bent to retrieve a bundle his wife expected him to bring to her in their lodge. His heart swelled with happiness.
The Cheyenne will sleep here for the Time of Deep Snows.
“Good to have you here with us,” Major Joel Elliott said, dropping his salute. “You belong here, sir. At the head of your men.”
“Thank you, Major.” Custer flashed that famous peg-toothed smile and shook Elliott’s hand.
“Damn good to have you back!” First Lieutenant Thomas W. Custer shouldered his way through the crowd clustered about his older brother.
“Tom!”
“Can’t begin to tell you what it means to us having you leading us into this one, Autie.”
“Trouble?” Custer asked.
“Nothing we can’t handle
Custer waited until the cheering died. “So, tell me. Something’s afoot. I can smell it.” His eyes moved from man to man, watching each of his old friends and fellow officers avoid his look.
“Tom?”
“It ain’t been a pretty sight here,” Tom replied. “Under siege practically every day … small bands of warriors wandering past here heading north out of the Territories. Some bands not so small.”
“That’s trouble?” Custer rocked back on his heels and smiled beneath the corn-straw mustache. “You worried about a handful of roving warriors?”
“They’ve proved us idiots so far,” Elliott answered grimly.
“Buck up, gentlemen!” Custer said. “A new day is coming. We’ll soon show them a force to be reckoned with—our own beloved Seventh!”
“Hear, hear! To the Seventh!” Tom roared, slapping his brother on the back. “To the regiment that will pacify the plains!”
On the morning of 30 September, George Armstrong Custer had arrived at Fort Hays, Kansas, new duty station of the Seventh Cavalry. There he reported to General Sheridan, who had moved his departmental headquarters farther west to station himself closer to the main theater of hostilities.
After less than a day of rest and some final instructions, the young lieutenant colonel pushed west with a small escort, arriving at Fort Dodge on 4 October. There he had learned his regiment was encamped some thirty miles southeast of the fort along Bluff Creek, a small tributary of the Arkansas River. Into this besieged camp the regimental commander had galloped on the afternoon of the fifth to find brother Tom, Major Elliott and the others relieved that he had arrived at last to lead the regiment into the winter campaign.
Along with orders to reorganize the Seventh, Custer brought new ideas for some specialized training he and General Sheridan had designed for troops unaccustomed to winter warfare. Although General Alfred Sully commanded this District of the Arkansas, Sheridan had devised an operational force of eleven companies of the Seventh Cavalry to ride under Custer, along with five companies of infantry and twelve companies of the Nineteenth Kansas Volunteer Cavalry that had yet to march south from Topeka. This massive force would then push out of Kansas Territory due south a hundred miles from Fort Dodge to establish a supply base from which Sheridan would begin his strikes against the hostiles.….
“You haven’t wasted any time getting the regiment shaped up, Autie,” Tom said one cold evening as he
