I passed into the stockade with a Cheyenne mother and her daughter. The mother, Three Birds, sold herself to Washitu for whiskey, but her daughter had fourteen summers and had never known a man. Fast Water was hard-muscled from her vigorous childhood but awkward with new womanliness. She kept her eyes on the ground and clutched her mother’s sleeve.
Dr. Daniels, the indian agent, was a minister, and Sundays he preached to the Seizers and the blanket indians who came to hear him. The blanket indians said listening to his sermons brought better rations.
Three Birds asked where we were camped and I lied because she had no husband and if she came to our lodge we’d have to feed and shelter her.
The sun warmed the top of my head. Agent Daniels and his half-breed interpreter Rivière sat before the storehouse. After Rivière decided the woman before him was from a registered household and this was her ration day, she would touch the pen, the agent would sign her name, and half-breeds would fetch her food.
Seizers were parading through the stockade. They said, “Hup, two, three, four.”
Three Birds told Rivière her name. She was from American Horse’s village.
Rivière asked if her daughter was betrothed. He walked around the girl, like a man who is buying a colt.
The indian agent yawned, filled his pipe, and folded his newspaper. The headline was: “Grant Nominated for Second Term.”
I wondered if Grant ever looked into his daughter’s face and understood that Lakota daughters were as dear to us as his was to him.
I did not think so. The Great White Father had been a great general in the Washitu’s Southern war and great generals do not have hearts. Sitting Bull hated every Washitu: man, woman, and child.
While the agent read his newspaper, Rivière told Three Birds that he would give her two demijohns of whiskey to lie with her daughter. He gestured at the register as if asking about Three Birds’s rations, but he was talking about her daughter.
The interpreter told Three Birds he could strike her off the rolls so she could never get rations again.
Three Birds’s husband had been killed in a raid against the Crows. Her family had disowned her because of whiskey.
Now she cried and her daughter started crying and the agent looked up frowning from his newspaper.
“The squaw says she is from Chief Gall’s village,” the interpreter told the agent. He shrugged. “Maybe she is, maybe she ain’t.”
Three Birds knew Rivière was lying but could not speak for herself.
“He is trying to buy this virgin,” I said in the Washitu tongue. “If her mother won’t sell him her daughter, he will strike her from your ration book.”
Rivière hit me so my lip bled. “Lying squaw!”
Agent Daniels jumped to his feet. “Now, see here, Rivière!”
A Washitu in fine buckskins came over. It was my husband’s friend Shillaber. He was Black Face’s new chief of scouts.
“I’ll be damned if it ain’t She Goes Before.” He took my hands. “What’s the fuss?”
When I told Shillaber what Rivière wanted, the interpreter lied. “This squaw got it wrong. I asked the other squaw if her daughter wanted rations for herself or a husband too, if she—”
“Give her rations, Rivière,” Shillaber said in a voice that silenced the man. The soldiers said, “Hup, hup, hup.” Rivière put Three Birds’s hand on the pen and brought her rations himself.
“Do you want to sign the register?” Shillaber asked me.
“I am an ignorant Santee. I will touch the pen,” I replied.
Shillaber said, “Bring this woman fresh beef. Not brined meat.”
I thanked him.
“I hear . . . I hear Red Cloud had a nigger interpreter.”
He was making me nervous.“Yes, it was Plenty Cuts.”
“But no more.”
I shrugged.
Shillaber lifted his hat and smoothed his hair where the hatband had flattened it. He beamed. “I’ll be damned. Old Top’s still on top of the grass.”
I said, “He hates the Agency.”
“Can’t say as I blame him. Might be I’ll come see the old boy.”
Shillaber had been my husband’s friend. I did not wish to bring this Washitu to our lodge but could not think how to refuse him.
I loaded our rations into parfleches balanced over my pony’s hips. Meanwhile, Shillaber went to the Seizer chief Black Face, who was watching Seizers drill. I heard Shillaber say, “United States Colored Troops” and “Medal of Honor.” I did not hear what else he said.
We were camped at the Aspen Bend, which had always had good grass, water, firewood, and shade. But the grass had been grazed so bare the earth was big and little stones, the river water was brown with filth, and after the ponies stripped their bark the aspens died and turned as gray as a ghost forest.
The pony guards preceded us into the village shouting that a Washitu was accompanying She Goes Before. Warriors came out of their lodges carrying weapons, but Shillaber ignored them. We trotted down the village street chatting about matters of no consequence.
Ignoring my protests, Shillabar carried my parfleches into our lodge and when we came outside again, Plenty Cuts was waiting for us. I had forgotten my husband’s smile.
How could his happiness produce my sorrow?
“God Damn it, Ben!”
“Top, you’re fat as a hog!”
Shillaber opened his case and gave my husband a cigar. “I’m Colonel Stanley’s chief of scouts. First Shillaber in history ever hired on with the winning side.”
“They say the West changes a man.”
Shillaber laughed. As generous as if he were Lakota himself, he gave cigars to all the warriors.
In Lakota, Plenty Cuts said Shillaber was a great warrior.
“He is Black Face’s dog,” one Big Belly complained. “He leads Yellow Hair against the Lakota.”
In a loud voice, Plenty Cuts reminded everyone of Red Cloud’s treaty. “Lakota and Washitu will fight no more.”
They did not like to hear this. The Big Belly spat and a young man made a rude gesture my husband pretended he didn’t see.
Shillaber understood more Lakota than he let on and said, “Red Cloud is in Washington again.” He shook his head. “Wish you was there too?”
“Ha, ha.”
Shillaber grinned his broadest grin and said,“How ’bout me and you take a little ride? Might be we’ll find us a buffalo.”
“You whites have killed all the blackhorns,” my husband said.
“Well, then, if we don’t find one I reckon we won’t kill one.”
I wished to stop my husband but had no words.The two men crossed the ford and climbed the river bluffs where Washitu settlers had first appeared in this country in canvas-covered wagons on what they called the “Oregon Trail.”
Plenty Cuts and Shillaber had their heads together as if they were discussing something important. I felt weak. My knees trembled. Touch Dog brought Tazoo to me and I held her in my arms. Tazoo blinked her beautiful eyes and stared at me, as babies do, drinking me in. She sensed my distress and opened her mouth to cry. I pinched her nostrils shut because Lakota babies must not cry.
CHAPTER 50
ON THE SCOOT
CAMP AND GARRISON RATIONS
(PER CAVALRYMAN):
Meat: 12 ounces of pork or bacon, or
1 pound and 4 ounces of salt or fresh beef
Bread: 1 pound and 6 ounces of soft bread or flour, or
1 pound of hard bread (hardtack), or
1 pound and 4 ounces of cornmeal
To every
100 rations: 15 pounds of beans or peas,
10 pounds of rice or hominy
10 pounds of green coffee, or
8 pounds of roasted (or roasted
and ground) coffee
1 pound and 8 ounces of tea
15 pounds of sugar
4 quarts of vinegar
1 pound and 4 ounces of adamantine,
&nbs
p; or star candles
4 pounds of soap
3 pounds and 12 ounces of salt
4 ounces of pepper
30 pounds of potatoes. when practicable
1 quart of molasses
Desiccated (dehydrated) compressed potatoes, or desiccated compressed mixed vegetables, at the rate of 1 ounce of the former, and 1 ounce of the latter, to the ration, may be substituted for beans, peas, rice, hominy, or fresh potatoes.
MARCHING RATION:
Meat and Bread; same as above
Coffee, Sugar, and Salt; same as above
“CHRIST, TOP. YOU SAYIN’ TOM CUSTER REMEMBERED YOU?” SHILLABER asked.
“Most fellas remember the son of a bitch knocked him on his ass.”
“You struck Captain Custer?” Mark Kellogg gasped.
“Hush, now, son.” Shillaber spoke to the older man as if he were the younger. The three mounted men waited slightly behind Colonel Stanley’s infantry officers. The Ariska scouts hunkered in the dirt, gambling. Unlike their Washitu masters, they had all the time in the world.
“Don’t go writin’ that down,” Plenty Cuts instructed. “It ain’t nobody’s business.”
Mark Kellogg had persuaded a Duluth newspaper to let him report the Yellowstone expedition. Although his boots were worn out and his jacket was clumsily patched, he had high hopes. He hesitated before returning his journal—folded sheets, written top to bottom—to his saddlebag. His mule brayed.
The two frontiersmen had adopted him as if he were a stray dog.
Shillaber wore buckskins and a broad-brimmed planter’s hat. Shilla-ber’s indian scouts wore army coats over leggings or breechclouts. Most troopers were dressed for comfort, unbuttoned shirts, bandannas—many tied their blue woolen coats behind their saddles.
Colonel Stanley snapped his watch shut. “Even the God Damned civilians are ready. Is this an army or a kindergarten?”
Stanley’s officers murmured agreement.
The Custer clan was clustered around an empty ambulance with an open backboard. Tom Custer whispered in Captain Keogh’s ear and they laughed, too loudly under the circumstances.
The sun rested on the Dakota horizon like a hissing golden ball.
Colonel Stanley’s lips were clamped so tight they were invisible. He enunciated, “That God Damned stove.”
Earlier that same morning, while soldiers boiled their salt pork and scorched and pounded green coffee beans into a brackish brew, Custer’s negro cook, Mary Ward, had prepared ham, grits, and prairie chicken eggs for the General, Mrs. Custer, brother Tom, and a few of the General’s favorites.
In Custer’s commodious hospital tent they’d supped and yarned about other campaigns, other times. As a joke Tom Custer slipped salt into his brother’s coffee. Everyone but George thought that was funny.
Hence, nineteen companies of United States Infantry, two field guns, ten companies of the Seventh Cavalry, seventy-nine officers, eleven indian scouts, and the Northern Pacific’s three-hundred-man survey crew waited while Custer’s iron stove cooled sufficiently to be loaded into an ambulance.
General Custer and his wife remained in their tent while the stove cooled and his commanding officer heated up.
“When I signed up for this whoop-up, Tom Custer looked me straight in the eye,” Plenty Cuts told Shillaber. “He knew me, all right.”
Shillaber shook his head. “Top, when you dropped Tom and put paid to your army career, you wore a sergeant major’s uniform: Hardee hat, NCO’s sword, gear spit-shined and pressed. Look at you today.”
Plenty Cuts’s ragged uniform coat hung over buckskin leggings almost to his high moccasins. A red-tipped eagle feather was tied in his hair. “Um.”
“Don’t ‘um’ me, redskin. I’d wager if you were to discard your heathen attire and appear before Captain Custer in blue uniform, complete with Medal of Honor prominently displayed, he still wouldn’t recognize you. Yankees can’t tell one nigger from another.”
The scout continued mock-solemnly, “Worst mistake yankees ever made was freein’ you niggers. You’re a primitive people. ’Twas up to you, we’d not be escorting surveyors into Lakota country where we might get ourselves killed and scalped. Hell, ’twas it up to niggers there wouldn’t be no Northern Pacific Railroad.”
“Who you think gonna lay the track?”
“Micks? Chinks?”
“Always plenty nigger work, ain’t there?”
“You think we want to do it?”
THE SUN WAS well up before the stove was finally stowed and the Seventh Cavalry band struck up the jaunty “Garryowen.” General Custer’s farewell embrace was so ardent it brought a blush to Mrs. Custer’s cheeks and appreciative smiles from his favorites.
When the Boy General mounted his stallion Vic, the bored, irritated army stirred into life. Custer’s buckskins were soft, buttery white. Buckskin fringes shimmered in the sunlight. His slouch hat was broad-brimmed (fair-skinned, he burned easily) and his carelessly knotted neckerchief bore black and white checks. The ivory-handled British revolver on his left hip balanced another on his right. No clumsy, regulation saddle for this rider: George Armstrong Custer rode a hunt saddle (so much kinder to horse and man). When Yellow Hair lifted his hat in the air to signal their start, even grizzled veterans found themselves believing there could be nothing finer than to follow, fight, and kill under this American Napoleon. Men stepped off and harnesses jingled and wagon wheels rumbled and sergeants bellowed and mules brayed and cannon limbers creaked and Martino, the Seventh’s Italian bugler, added flourishes to the “Garryowen.”
“We’re on the scoot,” Kellogg announced happily.
“God Damn that popinjay,” Colonel Stanley said to nobody in particular.
As they departed Fort Rice that June morning, Colonel Stanley’s men might have been mistaken for the sturdy farm boys of the Army of the Potomac where Stanley’s noncoms and officers had learned their bloody trade. But an hour onto the plains, with sweat darkening their shirts and dust clotting their spittle, reality intruded. These weren’t General Grant’s stout citizen-soldiers: Stanley’s men were ill-formed, ill-nurtured, and ill-educated. Many recent immigrants barely spoke English. In 1873, not many employers were as myopic as the United States Army. The army overlooked rickety bodies, pockmarked faces, and rotten teeth: the bitter marks of impoverished childhoods. If there was gallantry in the van of the expedition—and there was—misery trudged through the dust behind.
KELLOGG COULD NOT keep silent. Silence was as foreign to him as Paris, France. He didn’t care if anybody was listening: his chatter was more song than sense. He’d worked for one paper. He’d worked for another. He’d married above himself. He’d loved his wife, but she’d died. His daughters were living with his wife’s parents. He wrote them faithfully. He hadn’t seen them in years.
LAKOTA WARRIORS COVETED Winchester and Henry repeating rifles. Tests by Army Ordinance proved the soldiers’ single-shot Springfields were more accurate.
SCOUTS, INTERPRETER, AND chief of scouts rode in front of the column. Often the Custer clan were ahead of the scouts.
The first day became the second, the first week blurred into the next.
Kellogg’s mule almost kept up. Plenty Cuts turned in his saddle. “He’s crossed the creek. Now he’s coming up the ridge.”
“Don’t worry ’bout that fool,” Ben Shillaber said.
Plenty Cuts found himself thinking about the daughters Kellogg never saw.
The Custer clan went hunting. They bet who could shoot distant antelope. They killed and left as much meat as they brought back. From time to time Custer recalled his commanding officer toiling along behind and sent a deer or antelope ham. The clan played poker until midnight.
One morning Tom and George were so far ahead of the scouts they were two dots on the empty prairie.
Plenty Cuts said, “No tellin’ what they might run into.”
“That’s what they come for,” the chief of scouts replied.
“What?”
“To run into something.”
INDIAN PONIES COULD survive on sagebrush and cottonwood bark. The cavalry horses needed grain. Indian ponies carried light riders bareback. Cavalry horses carried a soldier, saddle, weapons, and food and clothing for fifteen days. Indian ponies were a warrior’s wealth. Cavalry horses were expendable.
THE CUSTERS RELISHED a joke. When it rained without letup for one, two, three days, a week, they joked about gumbo. Tom Custer deliberately bumped his horse into Mark Kellogg’s rain-sagging shelter-half, and roared laughter when it deluged the reporter. Rain soaked through slicker seams and slouch hats drooped. George Custer chuckled that any man with saddle sores had earned them.
Colonel Stanley didn’t see the humor, and chivvying a sickly, ill-trained army through knee-deep mud did not improve his chronically acid disposition. Stanley’s miserable troopers were building a pontoon bridge across Muddy Creek when Bugler Martino, Custer’s courier, delivered a note: Stanley’s subordinate wanted grain for his horses.
The roaring creek was chest-deep on soldiers trying to lash the pontoons together. When soldiers lost their footing and were swept downstream, they were roped unceremoniously ashore while replacements crawled across the unfinished bridge, jumped in, and, like as not, were swept away too. They’d been working since daybreak, hadn’t paused for dinner, and their bridge was twenty feet from the far bank.
Colonel Stanley tore the note into shreds and dropped them into the muddy water. “Tell Lieutenant Colonel Custer to report to me.”
MARTINO, CUSTER’S BUGLER/COURIER, believed that God had put George Armstrong Custer on earth so men like Martino would have someone to revere. Martino swelled with Tuscan hauteur before producing an extremely disrespectful salute.
“God Damn that man,” Colonel Stanley told the swollen creek.
That afternoon, Colonel (regular army rank) Stanley (who’d been brevetted a general during the War) had words with Lieutenant Colonel (regular rank) Custer (who’d been brevetted a major general during the War). Stanley ordered the Seventh Cavalry to ride behind the infantry. Custer’s troopers could drag stuck wagons out of the mud.