Long Winter Gone

east.

“Autie?” Libbie scooted closer as they wheeled past the stockade, slipping her arm beneath his. “Why did those women make such a fuss over my hat?”

He glanced up, studying the hat, set at a jaunty tilt atop her curls. “The bird, dear.”

“What of it?”

“Going into battle, a warrior will often wear a stuffed bird tied to his head. As his special medicine helper. Perhaps they thought your bird served the same purpose.”

“A medicine helper, Eliza. I’m a Cheyenne warrior!”

Eliza threw her head back and wailed like a wild, hard-riding warrior. “Aiyii-yii-yii!” She and Libbie fell against one another laughing as Custer steered the wagon onto the prairie.

“They liked my boots, too, Autie.”

He looked at the strain perhaps only he could read in her eyes. Perhaps the whole encounter was a bit much for her, he thought.

This further confirmed his belief that Libbie didn’t belong out here in the wilderness. She had married an army officer, but she was the sort of army wife who belonged at some eastern duty station. The wilderness will take Libbie’s kind of woman, gobble her up, and spit her right out.

“Dear, Rosebud—they’d trade many pair of moccasins for those high-button boots wrapped around your perfect little feet.”

“You think my feet are attractive, Autie?” She lifted her skirt and petticoats, turning her boots this way, then that.

“Yes, dear. Very.”

“Every bit as pretty as Monaseetah’s feet?”

He was sure his expression did not betray him. “Every bit as pretty. If not more so.”

Libbie snuggled against him.

After some minutes, he said, “They admire you.”

“Admire Miz Libbie for what, Ginnel?” Eliza asked.

“The women take pity on her as my only wife.” He turned to Libbie. “Meaning they think you do all the work yourself.”

“Did you tell them I had Eliza to help?”

“I told them since you weren’t any good at chopping wood and hauling water, tanning hides or making dogmeat stew, I had to take Eliza as my second wife!”

Eliza’s hand flew to her mouth in astonishment. Libbie drew back, wall-eyed, regarding him. On cue, they both beat him with their fists, giggling merrily, getting in their licks for his constant teasing.

Custer cowered beneath an arm, laughing. For the moment he was happy just as he was, not wanting anything to change, to disturb this delicate, precarious balance long maintained in his life.

He gazed across the hills, sienna beneath the late afternoon light, looking at that hazy, ever-distant line no man could ever touch … and wondered just what happiness a man could find out there.

No man had ever touched that place where this land met the never-ending sky: a place so far away, yet as close as the crest of the next hill.

“Colonel Custer. One of the prisoners wants a word with you, sir.”

Custer turned from his horse, watching one of the stockade guards trot in his direction. The soldier’s blue tunic was blotched with coronas of sweat salt, a damp necklace staining his chest.

“One of the chiefs?”

“No, sir. A woman.”

That almost stopped Custer dead in his tracks. “A woman, you say.”

“Young’un. That’un, sir.”

Where the soldier pointed, Custer found her waiting for him behind the stockade fence, peering between the rough-hewn planks.

“Open the gate,” Custer ordered. He slipped inside, listening as the huge wooden gate slammed shut behind him. She ran to his side. Beneath the summer sun, Monaseetah wore only the doeskin dress, now smudged and greasy. His heart hurt for her, finding her treated no better than a common prisoner.

For a moment he studied her as he would appraise something new. Then he realized it was the long braids rolled on either side of her head.

“Your hair,” he gestured.

“Yes,” she answered. “The soldier cook showed me last robe season.”

“Mrs. McNeil.”

“Mac-Neil, yes,” she answered.

There was a long, nervous moment as she fell silent, staring into his eyes. How he wanted to sweep her into his arms, wipe the soot from her cheeks, and kiss her neck. He fought the impulse. His breath came harder and his heart pounded faster.

“Come,” she whispered. “We find a quiet place to talk. Some shade.”

In a little corner of the stockade, tucked beneath a bastion of the compound, they found privacy. Here Custer swept Monaseetah into his arms, hungrily crushing her to him, as if never to let her go.

“I’ve missed you, Yellow Hair,” she sobbed against his chest.

He sensed the delicate tremble of her shoulder blades, like the fluttering wings of a small, helpless bird attempting flight.

“Many times have I wanted to come to you, Monaseetah.”

She pressed two fingertips against his lips. “This first wife of yours—she keeps you happy?”

“She gives me what she can of herself.”

“So many times since that day she was here, I have thought … she is going to have a child for you.”

He smiled down at her. “No. She is not to have my child.” He watched the smile widen on her lips, brightening her whole face. When the tears rolled down her cheeks, he understood.

What relief she must feel that I’m not having a child with Libbie, to leave Monaseetah like some discarded distraction who filled some otherwise empty hours.

“You are happy she is not carrying my child?” Custer asked.

She could only nod, choking on a sob.

“You believed I would throw you away?”

Monaseetah reached up, clamping her arms around his neck as would a drowning person. Not daring to let go.

He pulled her down beside him against the wall, holding her as if she were a young child seeking shelter in his arms.

“She and I,” he explained, “cannot have children. Long have we tried. It is not to be.”

She gazed up at his sunburned face, his bushy eyebrows burnished red-gold like the summer-burned grasses before the first autumn frost. Already little wrinkles marked the corners of his eyes like heron tracks on the wet sands of a riverbank. She wanted their child to have his eyes.

“Perhaps, because this wife of yours cannot have children, Yellow Hair thinks he cannot have children.”

“We have tried for so long.”

“This woman with the pale skin—she is the one who cannot bear a child.”

He looked at her strangely. “How can you be so sure of this?”

Instead of speaking, Monaseetah took his rough hand and guided it to her soft, rounded hip, gliding it across to the mound of her belly. The little life within kicked against its father’s touch.

He yanked his hand away, afraid. Shaking his head. Refusing to believe.

“It is true, Yellow Hair. This is your child. He moves for you now—to show you.”

“This cannot be my child.”

“Your wife cannot bear a child, Yellow Hair—but your loins are strong. Her body is dead inside, shriveled like a dry, brittle flower—hardened against the coming of winter. My body is made to give life to children. Your children, Yellow Hair.”