Long Winter Gone

He had given Monaseetah full run of the Big Creek camp. His regiment made her welcome, watched her protectively.

Once a day she would leap atop her pony, galloping west to visit Cheyenne friends in the Fort Hays stockade. Among her people, she told stories of the soldiers’ winter march to Fort Cobb, or their come-spring chase of Medicine Arrow’s Sweetwater villages. Each time she returned to him, Custer found Monaseetah more animated and cheerful, ready to jabber with him, relating the condition of every soul in the stockade.

Everyone except the three chiefs Custer had captured on the Sweetwater.

“They are haughty, Yellow Hair,” she had grumped one night. “They won’t speak to me.”

Even with a lot of coaxing, for the longest time Monaseetah would not tell him why the chiefs would not speak to her. Her face eventually reddened with shame, her eyes refusing to touch his, she explained. “Cheyenne warriors do not talk to women dishonored by white men.”

“Dishonored?”

“Yes,” she had whispered. “I am disgraced, they say—because I am Yellow Hair’s whore.”

Custer remembered how that had angered him. Still did,remembering that cold rock in his gut when he watched her lips speak those words.

He sipped his coffee, now cold, then stepped to the flaps where he flung the coffee into the muddy company street.

The Nineteenth Kansas would pull out tomorrow. Some to march east to Fort Riley, while others would push south to Fort Zarah and Fort Lamed. Fewer still would ride west to Fort Wallace and Fort Dodge. They were citizen soldiers, mustered out from that army post closest to their homes and fields and families.

He’d been in camp less than a month and already Custer yearned for the thrill of the campaign trail. It was in the march itself that he felt full of purpose. Now he waited out the spring thunderstorms, fighting mosquitoes and boredom—worrying about the decision he’d long since made.

Custer turned and sat on a crude wooden bench that slid under the long plank table in his tent. Beside his rope prairie bed stuffed with a grass-filled tick squatted a low stool and a tripod where his tin washbasin sat. On a cord from the ceiling over the basin hung a small shaving glass. Still he had put off shaving the beard that had grown full and red during the winter.

From the ashwood water bucket he raised a dipper and walked to the tent flaps, sipping at the cool water, gazing west toward Fort Hays in the shimmering distance. These days he tried to keep her close. Her tent beside his, where she stayed with her infant son.

He hurt. Wondering when she’d be coming back.

Is it this way with a parent and child? he brooded.

He glanced at the calendar poking out beneath the dispatches and maps on his table. A week from Thursday Libbie would arrive with their Negro maid, Eliza, by train from Monroe.

Since last September too much had passed between them: not only time, but distance too.….

Custer watched the rain batter the puddle in front of his door, mesmerized into a half-dream, recalling the winter he thought would never end, wanting her musky flesh beside him all the more.

How am I to tell him?

Her reflection danced upon the surface of Big Creek, rippling like a prairie storm, staring back at her without an answer.

Monaseetah knelt on the grassy bank, enjoying this shady sanctuary from the muggy heat. She remembered how, as a young girl, she had escaped to river or creek in the heat of the day to find there a private place to think on important things.

I must find a way to tell him.

How could she, when he had grown so angry that time she confessed her love for him? Then she had promised herself she would never utter that word again in his hearing. Love.

As desperately as she clung to life itself she loved this man. She had left her people, her way of life—left everything she was for him.

And now I’m afraid.

Scared of what he might say, of what he might do if she told him. Scared of losing him forever.

Somewhere nearby a pony snorted. Her body tensed as she peered from the brush, seeing no one coming. Her body relaxed, taut vigilance gone, like raindrops from greased rawhide.

She must think of the words to use. For what she had to say was not something so simple that it could be said, then forgotten. Such matters of the heart resisted her understanding as easily as pond water slipped from a crane’s back.

Another moon come and gone.

She could not deny it. Eighteen summers now—no longer easy to fool herself. Instead of thinking on what should bring great joy, Monaseetah ached with dread.

She dropped her head against the cool, fragrant grass, listening to the water lap against the bank. Its merry chatter eased some of the pain in her uncertainty.

Until something deep within the dark part of her gripped her—knowing he would send her away. With the news she had to tell him, Yellow Hair would send her away.

Monaseetah realized she was crying, finding out at last what it meant to be a woman in love.

“Look at me,” he begged, gripping her shoulders. “Tell me you understand.”

Monaseetah sensed the plea in Custer’s voice. A sound not heard often from Yellow Hair. And every time, it pulled the anger from her heart, making her soft in his hands, like the mud of the riverbank. She gazed into his eyes.

“That’s better,” he said. “Tell me you understand why you must live at the fort.”

Instead, she dropped her eyes and shook free of his grasp. Monaseetah sat upon the prairie bed, staring at the side of the tent. Custer stroked her hair while she pouted.

“I don’t know what to say to you, Monaseetah. Can’t seem to make you understand that nothing’s changed.”

She turned back to him, her eyes flicking like wounded birds before she sunk her head in his lap.

“This wife of mine comes tomorrow. To spend the summer with me. Seven moons is a very long time for me to be apart from her. She will expect me to be very happy to see her.”

“Aren’t you, Yellow Hair?” Monaseetah asked boldly. “And happy to throw me away?”

“No,” he whispered. “I will never throw you away. No matter what the years bring.”

She believed him. As sure as the sun rose each day, Monaseetah knew he would never throw her away. Time and again he grew angry with her, telling her to go, sending her away. Yet each time he called her back, sent for her, or came to her himself. So certain of it now, she realized he must love her. Even though he was mortally afraid of telling her.

Her knowing made this tearing apart no easier.

“Come times when you make me feel like a used-up, worn-out moccasin you throw aside.”

He cradled her head against him. “She comes only to visit me. Come winter, there is no place for her to stay.”

She looked up into his eyes. Not sure if it was the truth she read there. Not really wanting to know if what he told her was a lie.

“When will you free my people from your prison at the fort? Send them back to their homes?”

His face registered surprise at her question. “When the villages return to the reservation. Do you wish to go home with them, Monaseetah?”

More than thinking, she concentrated on his fingertips stroking the side of her face.

“I wish to stay with you, Yellow Hair. Wherever you tell me to stay. To be near you.”

He pulled her against him tightly. “I thank your Everywhere Spirit for letting you to stay with me for the time we have left.”

One of the hounds poked its muzzle through the tent flaps, then leapt onto the bed as a second dog loped in. Their wet noses dove for Monaseetah’s face. Custer’s pets had formed a special attachment for this Cheyenne