WASHITA RIVER INDIAN TERRITORY, DECEMBER 1868

The ground was frozen hard. It clanged like metal under the horses’ feet, the remaining snow stiff with its gloss of blood. Many of the Indian dead had been bundled in blankets and hidden under brush to keep the bodies from foraging animals. One figure, a woman, had been pulled out by wolves or coyotes and lay uncovered on the ground, her body bared. Her trunk had been cleaved as with a saber, breasts cut off.

Tom dismounted and threw a poncho over the woman.

Furious, Custer rode behind his young brother and took up the poncho at the end of his saber, appalled by such a display of sentimentality.

—That is the enemy.

—A woman. Tortured by us. Or the Osage under us.

The criticism by Tom was hard, and it galled him that it was just.

—Some of whom had guns and used them against us.

—Tell me, brother, surely you do not countenance such behavior.

Tom shook his head and moved off.

In the hyperborean air, decomposition was at a minimum, the bodies of the Indian ponies fresh as if only recently slain. Wolves had eaten out fleshy caves in their sides. His mouth went dry at evidence of ponies who had been merely wounded and slowly bled out, eating the grass in the vicinity of their heads before expiring.

*   *   *

LIKE MOST MILITARY BATTLES, the nature of the engagement at Washita changed when it encountered public opinion. On first news of the victory broadcast by Sheridan to the press, Custer regained his status as national hero. Reporters wrote that he was continuing to show the brilliance he had during the War. Two weeks later the focus shifted to the fate of Elliott and his men thanks to an anonymous letter written to the papers by Captain Benteen.

Sheridan understood that one made decisions on the battleground with the limited information at hand. Custer’s most pressing concerns had been victory over the village, and then with the appearance of the warriors, not getting overrun. His real mistake was attacking when he did not know the enemy’s numbers nor the surrounding terrain.

Malcontents such as Benteen would go on about his abandoning the men, but Custer had sent Myers out on a quick reconnaissance. The officer had gone two miles downstream and found nothing. The recovery of the bodies might have endangered the entire regiment, including Benteen himself, but that didn’t stop the crosspatch from complaining to the newspapers about the matter.

A commonplace in the military was that men under you thought themselves better qualified to lead. Benteen had been a good soldier in the War, but afterward his lack of success on the frontier, his being outranked by Custer, soured his temper. His constant long diatribes against his commander were well known and bored his listeners.

Newspapers praised the battle as the first victory on the frontier. That dimmed, though, when some of the eastern press began instead to call it a massacre, criticizing the bloodthirsty military, and hanging in effigy Sheridan and Custer. The country was bitterly divided on the Indian question. Expecting such treatment, Sheridan instead concentrated on acting on their momentum by bringing in the remaining tribes. He would personally accompany the 7th Cavalry and the Kansas Volunteers back to the Washita Valley.

*   *   *

CUSTER BROKE OUT into a sweat, spurring his horse ahead to avoid the accumulation of sights that would otherwise lay him low. Absurd for a soldier to feel this way; more absurd to feel nothing. He resented what was now expected of him and took refuge in the fact that he had only followed orders, the utility and ultimate conclusion of which were someone else’s responsibility, in this case precisely Sheridan’s, who now rode ahead of him as if they were out on a hunting trip. Custer had killed for the man, wiped out a village, and then saved most of his men to boot. That should be enough for a day’s work.

It had started during the War, Custer’s separating the general from the man. Instead of grief, one mourned the loss of killing force. This was what one trained for, what one learned rising through the ranks, what he was now criticized for doing. He no more looked at his soldiers as individuals during the heat of battle than they looked beyond the general in him. Men craved leadership, and this he performed ably. Each man wrestled with private torments in deepest night; that was the only place the human was allowed in war.

He’d been wrong to chastise Tom for covering the Indian woman. Tom was still a boy, still tenderhearted. That had all been squeezed out of Custer. Only Libbie fed the little bit of gentleness left him.

*   *   *

HIS THOUGHTS TURNED to Monahsetah as they often did now, the pleasure of her, which he was not finished indulging in. Hard to think that these frozen forms along the ground were her people. What did it mean that he conquered her over and over again each night, and yet she remained with the upper hand? He did not for one moment believe she had surrendered; she was delaying revenge. Would a knife find his throat one night and would he mind the price paid? It was a mystery that from the same people came lover and enemy.

While Sheridan talked with the other officers, Custer told Tom to cover for him and rode away from the column, crossing to the south bank of the Washita. Brush and trees along the river were lustrous in casings of ice. He had entered upon an enchanted glass world.

During the battle he had shot at one warrior in the village before making his way to Headquarters Hill, unaware if the bullet had been fatal, yet when the dark shapes gathered around him at the river’s edge, there was the Indian to confirm the bullet had done its work. He saw the young bugle boy with the bloodied face and was saddened that he had not survived. Added now were women, one in particular who resembled the one Tom had covered, although Custer had strictly forbidden any harmed. He wondered if his relationship with the girl was responsible for extending the guilt now to civilians. Then the children appeared, and he was undone.

Armies were impossible to keep on a tight rein at all times. Things happened in the mire of battle. Innocents suffered. The Osage guides had committed atrocities in their own name, yet he had been culpable by looking the other way. One allowed so much then pulled them back in line. Wasn’t that the very thing for which the army had punished Black Kettle, his not being able to control his young men? Yet Black Kettle was at the bottom of a riverbed for it. The gray specters all stood there in bleak accusation, and there was no redress for him.

He was at pains to hide these visitations from others, did not tell anyone of them, not even Libbie. Were they a version of soldier’s heart, a condition he’d observed during the War, the sense knocked out of some soldiers after going through battle? He was loath to ever admit it and would not now.

A small detachment joined him, and they rode single file, ascending a divide, stopping at the top to let sunlight thaw them as they looked out over the desolate winter countryside.

They dismounted, made coffee to warm themselves, smoked cigarettes, and chewed hardtack to pass the time. Blasts of cold wind cuffed their backs, boxed their ears, stung the exposed skin of their faces. The flames of the fire bent flat against the ground. Conversation was subdued; they mostly said nothing, put in a mood by the death they had just surveyed, which presaged the death they would now surely find. Finally word came of Sheridan moving out.

*   *   *

A STAIN OF RAVENS AND CROWS flew up against the sky, their cries marking the scene. The soldiers came upon the uncanny sight of the naked body of a white man lying in the weeds, his corpse bristling with arrows. The frozen limbs glowed like white marble in the sunlight. The search party stopped and looked down, sickened at the bashed-in head like a melon, its contents spilled onto the dirty snow. Custer felt a deep shame for the exposed body. Angered by his helplessness to change the outcome, he brusquely moved off.

—Cover the body, at least.

Tom raised his eyebrows. Sheridan continued downstream with the main body of soldiers. The horses faltered through a ravine, the deep shaded bottom preserving a high bank of clotted snow. Once across the river, more shapes stranded on a hill became visible. Frenzied spurs and whips were laid on, although time no longer mattered. They galloped to the scene as if after such a long delay a further one would not be accepted. The bodies lay in a circle in the high grass. Farther off were the carcasses of the slain horses. Wearily the rescue party dismounted, but they remained at the sides of their horses, reins in hand, made squeamish by the horror before them.

Sheridan dismounted and stood over the bodies, took off his hat, and crushed it in his hands.

The bodies, naked and frozen solid, had taken on the aspect of sculpture. Rendered anonymous by the fact of their lying facedown, each was surrounded by a pile of spent shells. The mutilations were so macabre that the soldiers could only pray the men had already died and were not tortured alive. They bowed their heads in prayer. Custer closed his eyes, then blamed the wind for smarting tears. Later, Golden Buffalo explained that the Indian predilection for mutilation was to ruin the body so it could not haunt the afterlife or come back to avenge itself.

—I’ll make the guilty suffer in this life, Custer said.

The soldiers marked the forlorn location for the wagons to recover the remains. It was a cruel irony that the dead should be interred on this hostile plain. Only Major Elliott’s body would be taken for burial at Fort Arbuckle. Before it was consigned to a mass grave the camp doctor examined each body and made a report of wounds and mutilations at Custer’s request. He would send that to the eastern papers to print if they dared.

*   *   *

MAJOR JOEL H. ELLIOTT—two bullets in head; one in left cheek; right hand cut off; left foot almost cut off; penis cut off; deep gash in right groin; deep gashes in calves of both legs; little finger of left hand cut off; throat cut.

Sergeant-Major Walter Kennedy—bullet hole in right temple; head partly cut off; seventeen bullet holes in back and two in legs.

Corporal Harry Mercer, Troop E—bullet hole in right axilla; one in region of heart; three in back; eight arrow wounds in back; right ear cut off; head scalped; skull fractured; deep gashes in both legs; throat cut.

Corporal Thomas Christie, Troop E—bullet hole in right parietal bone; both feet cut off; throat cut; left arm broken; penis cut off.

Private Eugene Clover, Troop H—head cut off; arrow wound in right side; both legs terribly mutilated.

Private William Milligan, Troop H—bullet hole in left side of head; deep gashes in right leg; penis cut off; left arm deeply gashed; head scalped; throat cut.

Corporal James F. Williams, Troop I—bullet hole in back; head and both arms cut off; many and deep gashes in back; penis cut off.

Private Thomas Downey, Troop I—arrow hole in region of stomach; thorax cut open; head cut off; right shoulder cut by a tomahawk.

Farrier Thomas Fitzpatrick, Troop M—scalped; two arrows and several bullet holes in back; throat cut.

Private Ferdinand Lineback, Troop M—bullet hole in left parietal bone; head scalped and arm broken; penis cut off; throat cut.

Private John Meyers, Troop M—several bullet holes in head; skull extensively fractured; several arrow and bullet holes in back; deep gashes in face; throat cut.

Private Carsten D. J. Meyers, Troop M—several bullet holes in head; scalped; nineteen bullet holes in body; penis cut off; throat cut.

Private Cal. Sharpe, Troop M—two bullet holes in right side; throat cut; one bullet hole in left side of head; one arrow in left side; penis cut off; left arm broken.

Unknown—head cut off; body partially destroyed by wolves.

Unknown—head and right hand cut off; three bullet holes and nine arrow holes in back; penis cut off.

Unknown—scalped; skull fractured; six bullet and thirteen arrow holes in back; three bullet holes in chest.

*   *   *

FARTHER DOWN THE RIVER, on the spot of the campsites of the other tribes, they discovered the body of the white captive Clara Blinn. She had been shot in the head, and her emaciated frame and filthy clothes spoke of the harsh treatment she’d received since she’d been captured two months before. Beside her was the body of her two-year-old son Willie, plump compared with his mother, his skull crushed.

Mawisa, Black Kettle’s sister, claimed the woman had been taken and held captive by Kiowa, under Satanta. Only later after she escaped did Custer find out that she’d lied to throw off suspicion from her own people and their allies the Arapaho.

During all of this Monahsetah said nothing. Foolishly he felt betrayed.

He lay in his tent, the canvas lit by the dim glow of the stove, and watched the smoke seep up out the opening at the top, obscuring the stars. Reveille would be in a few hours, yet sleep had fled. The mood was dark after the Elliott party discovery. Golden Buffalo had missed their language lesson. Custer wanted the solace of Monahsetah, but she was avoiding him, too. He gave her the freedom to come and go from his bed as she pleased because it gave him more pleasure when she came of her own volition. Many nights she told him stories of her girlhood, and he fell asleep dreaming her life. He would be denied that distraction tonight.

The truth was Elliott had been a grand soldier and a bit of a fool, too. Searching for glory, he found the grave. Here’s for a brevet or a coffin, he’d shouted, and found the latter. He had gone on his own resource, giving chase to a fleeing band of Indians, then found himself surrounded by warriors from the lower camps. Custer could not fault the officer’s bravery, yet he was dead and in a most brutal fashion. It was not more complicated than rotten luck.

Custer was faulted for not having searched sooner, on the afternoon of the battle, as if it would have made a difference to the men’s outcome. What if his little feint had failed, and their own larger regiment had found itself surrounded as well? He would be guilty of poor judgment like Elliott. No matter. They were dead, and he was their leader. In the way that mattered, it remained his fault, in the way that had nothing to do with the politics of the army, or the misguided altruism of the pacifists. He mourned his brave, foolish soldiers and knew already that they would join the others to haunt him. Soldier’s heart indeed.