by surprise at Custer’s sudden departure.
Clouds of yellow dust burst from the hooves as Custer haunch-slid the animal to a halt on the sun-baked parade near the prisoner stockade. His pale eyes scanned the milling captives for some sign of Monaseetah. Tossing the reins to a nearby trooper, he started to dart away when Miles called out “Custer!”
“Colonel! What in tunket’s going on here?”
“The prisoners—”
“Anyone killed?” Custer stammered, anxious.
“Don’t know for sure.”
“How the devil did it start?”
“Near as we make out, for days now the prisoners have been led to believe there were other Cheyenne in the area who’ve come up to rescue them from the stockade.”
“Why, there’s not a bloody Cheyenne within a hundred miles of here!”
“We know that! But the goddamned prisoners didn’t.” Miles ground his teeth a moment, watching Custer seethe. “Seems one of our Indian scouts thought he’d have some fun with the captives, so he started the rumor.”
“Did the prisoners attempt to break out?”
Miles shook his head. “When I learned of the goddamned rumor, I thought I should put the chiefs in the guardhouse, until things simmered down a bit.”
Custer glanced over to the raw-boarded building. “You got them locked up?”
“We didn’t get that far.”
“What the blazes you mean?”
“My sergeant who was escorting the chiefs never learned a word of Cheyenne, so he couldn’t explain things to the chiefs.”
“What difference does that make?”
“Goddammit, Custer! The chiefs thought we were taking them out to a hanging!”
Custer shook his head. “So they decided to die like warriors rather than at the end of a rope. What happened?”
“All hell broke loose. Squaws came up, surrounding the sergeant’s men and the chiefs. One of the soldiers put a bayonet against Dull Knife’s ribs, to prod him to the gate. But the old chief just stood there like a stone. They all watched as that bayonet pushed through the blanket into his ribs. As soon as the squaws saw blood on the old man’s blanket, the knives came out.”
“Where’d they get weapons?”
“Hell if I know. We didn’t search a damned one after they were brought north from Camp Supply. Could be they were mess knives sharpened on stones.”
“Any of our men dead?”
“Not yet. One sergeant gutted pretty bad. Lippincott tells me he may not see the morning.”
“Any others?”
“The lieutenant—officer of the day. He heard the commotion and came running. Got a knife in his neck for his trouble. Blood gushing over his tunic. All hell broke out. The troops fired across the compound.”
“Dear God!”
“In all the excitement, I’m glad no more than the one was killed.”
“Killed? Who?” Custer grabbed Miles’s tunic.
“A chief. Big Head, we believe. A bullet through the heart.”
“But you don’t know if anyone else in there is bleeding or dead.”
“No, that’s why I sent for you. Way they’re worked up, you’re the only one can go in there now.”
“What about Fat Bear?”
“Knocked out cold—a rifle butt to the jaw.”
Custer dashed to the stockade gate. “Open up!” he called to the guards.
“But General. I ain’t got orders—”
“Open those gates or I’ll open up the side of your head!” He shoved aside the sergeant’s rifle. “The rest of you brave soldiers … What can those Cheyenne in there do to you boys out here—penned up as they are, like cattle for the slaughter?”
The gate opened slightly at the sergeant’s urging. Custer dove through, hearing the clunk of wood on wood as the gate clattered shut behind him.
“Custer!”
He turned, finding Miles at the wall. “For God’s sake, come out until things simmer down.”
“Things won’t simmer down on their own.”
“Watch out, Custer!”
Custer whirled at Miles’s warning. Cheyenne squaws crept toward him from all sides like sheep, their eyes wary, watchful of the soldiers at the stockade walls. Fear and panic glistened in every eye. Like the eyes of trapped animals.
Two dozen ringed him, jabbering excitedly. He waved them quiet. “Monaseetah?”
“She comes, Yellow Hair,” said one old woman, her earlobes tattered from earrings pulled out across the years.
“She is hurt?”
“No one saw her hurt,” another squaw answered.
“Will the soldiers shoot us, Yellow Hair?”
“We only protected our chiefs,” another explained.
He said. “The soldiers will not kill you.”
“It is true,” one old woman exhorted the others. “These soldiers will not shoot women down in cold blood like buffalo caught in a narrow valley.”
“They came to hang our chiefs!” an old one shrieked.
“No.” Custer pointed to the guardhouse across the parade. “They were taking your men to the little house.”
He saw Monaseetah hurrying to him across the sun-baked compound. The women parted for her respectfully, as Yellow Hair’s woman.
“You are safe?” he asked, clutching her shoulders.
“I am not harmed.” A hand went to her belly. “Bullets close.” She pulled aside a flap of her blanket, the red one she had worn since that freezing morning beside the Washita.
In a fold of the crimson wool he saw a shabby beam of sunlight pour through the bullet hole. Anger scraped across his bowels. Now, more than ever, he had to get her out of Hays. Far from here.
An old woman shoved her way through the crowd, showing him three bullet holes in her blanket. With a gnarled finger she made a pistol, imitating the whistling bullets zinging around her during the fracus. “Ping! Ping!”
“Yes,” he replied. “No more shooting now. No more—ever.”
Monaseetah pressed against him. There were no easy answers to any of this. Yet, as a man hopes for spring in the cold heart of winter, he realized this tragedy held the solution he had been seeking. Now he could send her south.
“There are no Indians coming to rescue you,” he explained. “Yellow Hair made you his prisoner. Only Yellow Hair can free you.”
He gestured to Monaseetah. “Even she will tell you how Yellow Hair rode alone into the camp of the great Medicine Arrow. Yet no warrior touched a hair on my head.”
Monaseetah nodded in agreement. Her gesture set the women wailing and keening. Tears slid down the deep crevices of their old faces. There was no escape.
“Yellow Hair is mightier than all our warriors!” one old woman shrieked.
“Mightier than our chiefs!” another wailed, ripping at her hair in mourning.
One by one they wandered off to begin their self-mutilation for the dead and wounded. Slashing arms and legs, blood oozing into the sticky, red mud at their feet. They hacked at their hair and chopped off fingertips. Above it all hung a keening wail like a winter wind through dead and dying trees.
