“You want to see me?” Custer stepped up to the three captives with Romero.
“Yellow Hair will hang us if our people do not release the white girls?” Fat Bear asked.
Custer flicked his eyes to Dull Knife. “The fat one here thinks my words are hollow. No one believes Yellow Hair. You will hang before I destroy your villages! This I say before your Everywhere Spirit!”
Dull Knife nodded. “I believe.”
“I too,” Fat Bear agreed, quaking. “I am a chief of consequence among my people. They need my counsel. Yellow Hair must release me so I can hasten to my village, speak to the owner of the girls so they can be released in time. I will bring the captives here to save the lives of Dull Knife and Big Head. Hear me—I must hurry!”
“Romero, tell Fat Bear that I want to laugh, if he weren’t so sad. A brave one when surrounded by his warriors. But he has no heart when he’s alone and staring death in the face.”
“Too bad Medicine Arrow himself isn’t here to hang with him,” Romero growled.
“Make this Fat Bear dangle awhile longer—on a rope of his own making. Tell him this: If you’re so important to your people, then you’re just the man I want to hold on to. You’re worth far more to me here than in your village.”
Custer waited as Romero translated, watching the Indian’s eyes widen in fear, his chin sag in failure. “By your own words, Fat Bear—like your lying friend, Medicine Arrow—you’ve tightened the noose around your neck.”
Custer left the prisoners’ tent before he grew angrier. With a fresh cup of coffee in hand, he climbed a low hill where he joined others maintaining an anxious vigil, watching for any sign from the Cheyenne.
When the pale sun hung two hands above the western horizon, with less than an hour of daylight remaining before sunset, the breeze kicked up, whining through the naked trees like a squaw’s death song.
“General!”
Custer wheeled at the frantic cry from his left. Several soldiers pointed.
“By Jehovah himself!” Moylan roared. “See there on the hill!”
“Believe me, mister—I see it!” Custer cried.
Tom leapt to his side. “What is it? Don’t see a goddamned thing but some riders on that hill yonder. You don’t even know they’re Indians.”
“Maybe Tom’s right,” Yates agreed sourly. “Best we don’t get our hopes up.”
“Even if it is them Injuns,” Lucas said, “who’s to say it ain’t some trick to buy more time? I say we hang the frigging bastards and be done with it!”
“That’s the stuff, Lucas!” Tom spat.
“Hush!” Custer whispered, paying little attention to the angry mutterings of those on the hilltop.
Word reached the three chiefs that riders had been spotted on a hill a mile distant. In their prison tent they sang their thanksgiving, an eerie backdrop for the tense vignette on the hill.
“Moylan!” Custer lunged for his adjutant. “We’re acting like headless shavetails! Give me the glass— quick!”
He yanked the brass telescope from its oiled saddle-leather case. He spent anxious, long seconds focusing on the distant knoll. “All I can tell is that they’re Indians,” he concluded.
“I told you!” Tom shouted, cocky. “Here to pull a fast shuffle on us again, Autie!”
“How many are there, General?” Yates asked.
“Could be a couple dozen. I’ll count. See what we’re dealing with.” He began his tally, slowly swinging the glass from right to left.”
“… eighteen … nineteen and twenty—”
He suddenly pulled the glass down, rubbing the eyepiece with his dusty sleeve. “It can’t be!”
Custer felt the others press close as he looked again. “Yes, gentlemen! There are two figures on one pony up there.”
“Could it be the girls?” Thompson asked.
Custer turned to answer, seeing Daniel Brewster scramble up the long slope toward the officers.
“You spotted the girls?” Brewster rasped.
“We don’t know yet. No sense getting excited until we’re certain.”
“Lemme see for myself!” Brewster lunged awkwardly for the glass.
“You will not!” Custer replied, holding the youth off. “You can remain here as long as you obey orders and remain calm. Otherwise”—he put the glass back to his eye—“I’ll have you dragged back to camp before you can say—”
“Good God!” Yates cried.
“What is it?” Brewster shrieked.
“Look there!” a soldier shouted.
“They’re dropping off the horse!” another yelled.
“Goddamn—gotta be the girls!” Tom cheered.
“God in heaven, Tom!” Thompson growled, slapping him on the back.
“Yes!” Custer’s voice climbed. “It’s two women!”
“Anna Belle!” Tears of joy shimmered down Brewster’s stubbled cheeks.
“Get hold of yourself, Brewster!” Custer said. “We don’t know who they are at this distance.”
“It’s my Anna Belle! I know it is. Little Robe told me. He didn’t lie.”
“They’re headed this way now!” Myers sang out.
“Thompson!” Custer ordered. “Bring me a squad of Kansas volunteers. Quick, man!”
Custer watched the captain lope downhill into the bustling Kansas camp, then put the glass to his eye once more.
“Yes, … yes!” he repeated, studying the two figures hobbling through the brittle grasses skiffed with icy sleet, snow dotting the hillside and meadows in huge sodden patches.
“One appears to have a short, heavy figure,” he muttered. “The other is considerably taller and more slender.”
“You said tall?” Brewster sleeved the moisture from his eyes. “Gotta be Anna Belle, General! Bless her heart!”
The mule-strong, hard-callused settler could fight those tears of joy no longer.
Custer sensed a foreign, salty sting in his own eyes, turning away before it betrayed him. The sensations rushed him all at once: the bittersweet pangs of Brewster’s reunion, the happiness of the others witnessing the captives’ release, his own success snatched from the claws of defeat. Yet …
Brewster darted off the brow of the hill, but was grabbed by a ring of soldiers and dragged, kicking, back to Custer.
“She’s waiting for me!” Brewster shrieked. “Dear God in his heaven, lemme go to her!”
“Control yourself!”
“General?”
Custer turned at the unfamiliar voice, watching a squad of Kansas volunteers climb the hill.
“Captain Royce Wenzel, sir!” one man announced, saluting. “You have good news for us?”
“Believe I do, Captain.” Custer pointed into the meadow. “Appears the Cheyennes just released the two girls.”
The Kansas men scrambled forward, muttering, swearing, straining to see the figures stumbling across the meadow below.
“Lord of Divine Grace!” Wenzel gulped, his voice thick with emotion.
“Captain”—Custer took hold of Wenzel’s arm—” Brewster here may prove to be the brother of one of the girls. But I’m not convinced he should be the first to go out there—for his sake and the girl’s.”
“Lemme go to her!” Brewster shouted, yanking away from the soldier holding him.
“Understandable,” Wenzel replied.
“I think your men are more detached from the raw emotions of the moment,” Custer explained. “And yet every one of you left homes and families, your livelihoods to accomplish this release.”
