Long Winter Gone

“Senator Chandler?”

Sheridan turned on Custer slowly. “The committee chairman? By God, Custer—you go right to the top, don’t you?”

“A man want’s to make it to the top, he might as well reach as high as he dreams.”

“You sunuvabitch! We’ll get you up in army command yet. Between Bill Sherman and Senator Chandler himself, Custer is on his way to his own command! But before we go to Federal City for the inauguration in March, you have a job to do here in the Territories. If you go east with the tribes still out, there’s no chance for promotion.”

“If the hostiles are punished, I can ride into Washington City assured of promotion.”

“You’ve got to start with these miserable Kiowa. We don’t get their villages in, you don’t stand a prayer with Chandler.”

“I’m ready, General. They’ve played me for a fool long enough. These Kiowa have me held prisoner here while I should be out hunting down the other tribes. My patience is exhausted.”

“Patience, hell!” Sheridan bawled. “You were ordered down here to the Territories to do a job. You don’t have time for patience with these red beggars.”

“And if I fail to bring the tribes in?”

“Spring will come, Custer. The grass will green and the bastards’ ponies will be strong once more. And you’ll be back out chasing and chasing … and chasing some more.”

“Sir—”

Sheridan cut him off with a wave of his hand. His dark eyes glowed as he spoke, sparking like a wolf that had a hamstrung old bull down, moving in for the kill. “I’m going to see you get that promotion, Custer. See you don’t frig this up.”

Custer’s brow knitted. “What you have in mind?”

“Tomorrow we’re going to give those red mongrels an ultimatum.” Sheridan tapped a finger between the rows of brass buttons on Custer’s tunic. “No more dallying! We’ll give them a time limit to perform, or we’ll make an example out of one of those goddamn flea-bitten savages.”

“How will we—I—make an example of the Kiowa?”

Sheridan whirled on Custer again, half his face dark beneath the torch. “Don’t you remember the orders passed down from Grant, to me, to you? The Shenandoah? August 1864? Turn Custer loose on Mosby!”

“You don’t mean—not these Kiowa!”

“Why not, goddammit? If those villages don’t come in, then string the chiefs up. Hang the bastards!”

“What about the other tribes? If you hang the chiefs—”

“Put the fear of God in ’em. Dammit, Custer—make their assholes pucker when they hear your name!”

“But hanging?” he repeated.

“Better you convince them once and for all that when Custer finds a hostile village, he’ll level it like he did Black Kettle’s. Take prisoner those who can be captured. And kill everything—everyone else.”

“Sir, begging your pardon, but Satanta and the others promised us their villages would come—”

“Bullshit! You’ll trust an Indian? Someone told me once that trusting the word of an Indian was like shoveling fleas in a barnyard!”

Custer found himself without a single thing to say. His mind filled with the smoky images of that sleepy Cheyenne village beside the foggy Washita, old men and women and children … rolling out of their warm sleeping robes to be greeted with the cold, whistling messengers of death. Young women trying to escape a screeching lead bullet or whispering steel saber. He shuddered.

“No, sir,” he answered Sheridan at last. “I’ll no longer allow the hostiles to play me false.”

Sheridan stepped up to Custer again, more paternal now. “Armstrong, you’ve been sent here to do a job. If you don’t act, the army will simply send someone down here who will.”

“I understand.”

Sheridan plopped a hand on Custer’s shoulder. “Besides, we have plans for you, my boy! So if the army sends someone else down here, the glory and honor and fame would surely go to him.”

Custer swallowed hard. “Tomorrow, sir.”

Sheridan smiled. “Tomorrow, we’ll start back down that road we set out upon when I telegraphed you in Monroe last September. We’ll get this campaign back on track. And your promotion in your hip pocket.”

“My promotion, sir.”

CHAPTER 19

THAT next morning Sheridan marched over to Custer’s tents with his aide at his side. Like Sheridan, Lieutenant Colonel Crosby relished nudging things off dead center.

“Good morning, Custer.”

He rose stiffly from his camp stool, shifting the steamy tin of coffee to his left hand when Sheridan waved him back down to his cold perch.

“Good morning, General. Colonel Crosby.”

“I’ve sent for your interpreter,” Sheridan began without pleasantries. “Romero—wasn’t that his name?”

“That’s correct. Mexican. Captured by the Comanche as a child. Traded and retraded from tribe to tribe until he spent most of his childhood among the Cheyenne.”

“I suppose he picked up the Kiowa tongue along the way,” Sheridan said. “I’m bringing him here because you and I are going to have a little chat with those chiefs. Since we’ve had no word from the tribe after we released that one old beggar yesterday.”

“Good morning,” Romero grumbled.

“Sleeping in again, eh?” Custer asked.

“You wanted me for something, General?”

“I did,” Sheridan replied. “We’re going to have a talk with the Kiowa. I want you to be certain they understand my every word. What I have to say will be very short.”

“And sweet, General?”

Sheridan’s eyes darkened at the grinning Mexican. “Don’t you bet on that, Romero. I’m not in any mood to dally with you.”

Sheridan turned away, nodding to Crosby. His aide parted the tent flap.

Both chiefs straightened as the soldiers entered, their eyes darting from white man to white man.

“Who is this man?” Sheridan growled when he noticed a young warrior beside Satanta.

“His name’s Tsalante, General,” Custer explained, gesturing for the young man to rise.

“What the bloody hell is he doing here? I gave orders these prisoners aren’t to have any visitors.”

“Tsalante is Satanta’s eldest son, sir.”

“That doesn’t explain why he’s here!”

“Believe me, we had Tsalante completely searched before he was allowed to see his father.”

A smile crawled across Sheridan’s face. He turned to Custer. “Say, we may just have some use for this Tsalante. Yesterday we sent old Licking Bear back to the village with our message for them to come in to Fort Cobb without delay, but the bastard never returned, and the villages haven’t come in as ordered.”

Crosby cleared his throat. “The general’s quite distressed by that flagrant failure of the Indians to obey his command.”

“Colonel Crosby,” Custer snapped, “he’s not the only one.”

Sheridan put a hand up to silence his aide before an argument started. “I want the Kiowa to know that if we are expected to speak the truth to them, we should have every right to expect the truth out of them.”

“I’ve never lied to an Indian, sir,” Custer replied. “Nor will it ever be said that G. A. Custer lied to a red man.”

“What I have in mind is to show these red beggars that I mean to keep my oath …