Although mail deliveries from the Black Hills were infrequent, the fort had regular contact with the outside world through Bismarck. One of the wives received a letter from her sister, also a military wife, about a captive settler woman recently returned to her community. The woman was quite out of her mind, having suffered a year’s captivity by the Comanche before her rescue. Her husband, overjoyed on her return, had after a few months moved out to a brother’s house. All the women took a morbid interest in this dark tale of an unknown woman’s demise. The fear of becoming just such a victim circumscribed their lives each and every day.
Libbie could only add her small knowledge of the return of the two captives that Autie had effected years before.
The famous incident occurred in Texas while Autie tried to bring the last of the tribes off the Llano Estacado. During their short stay at Camp Supply the two women lived in a kind of isolation within the larger population, which would have been cruel punishment in any other circumstance. Autie noticed they only took council and comfort from each other. The soldiers, so zealous in their rescue, had become uncomfortable with the results because although the two women lived and breathed, ate and talked, they had lost what was most precious to their being and to their families.
After hugs, kisses, and tears, the brother of one of the women captives insisted his sister take off the native garb she had been dressed in, which she quickly did, borrowing an old tattered dress from the cook. Libbie did not add that Autie, too, seemed ambivalent about the outcome of the rescue after he was heralded in the newspapers for it. He did not keep in correspondence with the women, which was uncharacteristic on his part.
Without a doubt Autie would have shot Libbie rather than let her endure any such suffering in captivity. She, on the contrary, would want him back at any cost, even if he were missing limbs or was otherwise disabled. Would he really rather her dead than returned under such deleterious circumstances? She knew, without question, that Tom would never have shot her. Despite being so frightened of the stories of depredations, Libbie may or may not have found the strength to shoot herself. One could never know how one would act in extremity.
Stories like those took on a life of their own, engendering others.
One of the wives told of a young girl she knew in her hometown who had swallowed kerosene on her return when the magnitude of her ruination for marriage became apparent.
Another chimed in that a young bride captured after being married only a single month, once rescued from captivity and finding herself a widow, never spoke a word of her ordeal. In a short time she had gone off to another state where she was unknown. There she remarried and had five children. The wives marveled at the woman’s strength and prepossession. The room was quiet for a moment while each of them explored within themselves if they would be strong enough to act thus, and of course they prayed, asking for deliverance from such a fate, hoping they would never be required to face such trials.
The society of the fort became an extended family of sorts, with all the expected rivalries but also loyalty against the outside world. None of the women mentioned the infamous and less known incident of which they were all surely thinking.
The 7th had been patrolling an area rife with rebellious Cheyenne and Sioux when a hunting detachment by pure chance came across a small group of buffalo skinners, including a captive that had been long assumed dead, along with her half-breed family member.
Although surprised by the Indians, once attacked, the soldiers defended themselves honorably. In the course of the conflict, due to quick reconnaissance they realized the presence of captives. Imagine with what renewed ferocity they fought once they understood the life of two white womenfolk hung in the balance. Once they had subdued the aggressors, the two women were delivered into their protection and in due course brought to Autie. He was overjoyed and allowed reporters to document the story of the brave rescue.
When some of those same newspapers started to call the incident a massacre of Indian women and old men, he fell into a dark mood and withdrew. He refused to see one of them when she requested an audience to discuss a search for her children, still being held captive.
A year later while Autie was back east, Libbie was paid a visit by the woman, along with her uncle, a preacher. She had glimpsed the girl through a doorway when she was first rescued, and had been quite haunted by her distress. Libbie was curious how she had settled and what was her true nature, removed from the traumatic terms of her captivity.
The uncle was personally affronted by the fact that Autie wasn’t sitting at the fort waiting for just such a visit although no advance request had been made by letter. The acting commander thought perhaps an audience with Libbie would mollify him.
Both claimed to have sent voluminous correspondence to the fort, which had gone unanswered, and had finally decided to risk coming in person. Libbie at first thought they lied, as Autie was usually meticulous in answering all mail, considering it his public duty. But there was his strange coldness on the matter, the fact that the rescue was tarnished. Libbie suspected they might be telling the truth.
She had made sure she was well dressed and had Eliza put out a nice assortment of teas and cakes. Libbie entered the room late, in a flutter of silk and scent, speaking to them like long-known acquaintances, a trick she had learned in the parlors of Washington and New York.
“Reverend, I hope I haven’t kept you waiting.”
Josiah Cummins stood tall, imposing, in his ill-fitting homespun. His features were large and unfinished as if he were a sketch the artist had been overwhelmed by and abandoned. When he came to shake her hand she smelled the odor of cellars and root vegetables. There was something subterranean about him, which was odd since by vocation he should have been closer to the heavens. His impression compared unfavorably with the average eccentric she encountered on the frontier, and her heart sank at having allowed herself to be bullied into accepting the visit.
“Mrs. General Custer…”
“Libbie, please. Shall we sit down and enjoy some tea?”
“Perhaps I should say a quick prayer of thanks?”
“That would be lovely. We don’t receive—”
“O Almighty God, the Sovereign Commander of all the World, we bless and magnify Thy great…”
The prayer was neither quick nor particularly thankful, but it gave Libbie an opportunity to observe the girl.
She stood in the corner by the door, ill at ease, as if the surroundings might gobble her up. Libbie was used to such behavior from the various Indians who came to petition Autie, but had never seen it in a white person. The truth was that Libbie had accepted the visit partly motivated by prurience in meeting a former captive. In person, the girl broke Libbie’s heart, and she immediately wanted to mother her.
“Come, dear. Sit by me.”
The girl didn’t move, hardly seemed to understand the words directed at her, but she flinched when Josiah spoke.
“Go, Anne! Say hello to Mrs. Custer.”
She came carefully, wearing slippers that were unsuited for use outside or for traveling. They were now threadbare and filthy. She wore the plainest of clothes, with no feminine corset to tie in her waist. Libbie regretted putting her own on, uncomfortable as always with the unnatural constriction.
The girl had a striking face and form, or she formerly had. Now her skin was sun darkened, her limbs hard and sinewy like twisted rope. But the unnerving thing was her gaze, the eyes furtive and darting. Libbie would describe it in no other way than it was like having a doe trapped in her parlor. She’d seen deer so frantic that they’d risk broken limbs to escape enclosure.
“What was your name again, sweetheart?”
Libbie held the girl’s hand in her own as she sat on the edge of the settee, ready to spring at the least provocation. The hand was shockingly hard and callused.
“Anne.”
The word came out so softly it was as though the girl regretted revealing it to the room.
“What a beautiful name. It means full of grace. Anne was the mother of the Virgin Mary.”
No one spoke, so Libbie plowed on. She had learned her role of hostess well.
“A lovely name to go with a lovely face. General Custer will be so sorry to have missed your visit.”
“I am equally sorry,” her uncle said. “We are here on the urgent matter of reparations.”
“Oh, yes,” Libbie said, distracted as she stirred a lump of sugar, rare luxury, in her tea. The girl was looking at the china teacup as if it were a puzzle to pick up.
“Come, dear, it won’t bite.”
Libbie took a small, dainty plate and placed a few tidbits on it, setting it on the girl’s lap.
“You simply must try one of Eliza’s apple fritters. I’ve been told they are the best in the territory. Eliza is from the South, and they know their cooking down there…”
Neither Anne nor the uncle paid the smallest notice to her words.
“Reverend, please have some tea.”
“The Lord does not encourage the drinking of stimulants.”
“Yes, I’m sure, but then…”
Libbie was already tiring of the visit and thinking how to bring it to a graceful conclusion.
“General Custer’s word would go a long way in Congress to get my niece’s application for reparations accepted. We are hoping for land and a monthly stipend. Perhaps you would put in a word?”
“Oh,” Libbie stalled. “I don’t get involved in the general’s official matters. I’m sure Autie…”
The girl plopped the entire fritter in her mouth and then, cheeks bulging, stood so that the china plate slid off and fell to the floor, shattering.
“Look what you’ve done!” Josiah yelled.
He jumped up from his seat, treating the accident as a major maliciousness on her part, but Anne had already moved across the room, oblivious, and now stood at the window.
“Oh, it’s nothing at all,” Libbie said.
It was one of the precious plates from her bridal trousseau. She cursed her foolishness in using her fine china.
“I’ll just call Eliza to sweep it up.”
Now Libbie stood, watching Anne’s rigid back as she pressed herself to the window. What could she be looking at? Was the girl unwell?
Josiah, his breath rancid, came close to whisper in Libbie’s ear.
“Now you understand what I’ve been given back. She’s no longer right in the head. I hope you see the duty in getting her compensation.”
Libbie moved away on the guise of giving Eliza instruction.
On her hands and knees, Eliza swept up the shards. She resented Libbie entertaining such poor folk and causing her the extra work.
Josiah didn’t bother to move his feet from her sweeping.
“When you’re done,” he said to her, “bring me a bottle of your master’s whiskey.” He no longer felt the need for pretense.
Eliza stood upright, shoulders stiff with dislike, her dustpan filled with the general’s precious china.
“Liquor is not served in this house,” she said.
Anne had a hand on each side of the window frame, and Libbie worried she might plunge herself straight through the glass. The girl was fixated on the scout camp in the distance where a few of the Arikara were cooking dinner outside.
Josiah now moved so close to Libbie that she was again immersed in his unwashed, ferine smell.
“They took her when she was a maiden of fifteen.”
He moved even closer, and Libbie’s heart beat wildly. He only slightly lowered his voice.
“She was violated over and over. Ruined. She even bore a few bastards.”
The blood rushed to Libbie’s face and she perspired heavily despite the chill room. She could not believe this man was whispering such obscenities in her ear.
“Her life is worthless. Better if she had died out there. But now … I’m not a wealthy man to take care of her needs.”
Anne whirled away from the window and looked at Libbie as if for the first time.
“My children!”
Libbie had been wrong about the girl. Her face was filled with a surfeit of emotion, her eyes a kaleidoscope of excruciating feeling, a molten sorrow.
“Will you get General Custer to rescue my Solace? My Thomas?”
“Does the general know about your children?”
“Never mind that,” Josiah said.
Anne now rushed at Libbie and went down on her knees, wrapping her arms around Libbie’s legs so tightly it almost unbalanced her.
“I beg you. I want nothing except to have my children returned.”
Libbie trembled. She patted the girl’s head, the hair stiff from being long unwashed. She had never imagined such maternal anxiety in one so removed from the influences of civilization.
“Go wait outside,” Josiah said, his voice low and threatening.
Libbie would not want to be under such a man’s thumb.
The girl slipped out of the room without a word, grateful at the release.
“Damaged beyond return. No one will marry her. Reparations will be all she has to sustain her in this world.”
“I hope that isn’t true.”
“As her relative I’m under obligation to do my best for her. I would hate to think of her ending in a home for the indigent. Or an asylum for the hysteric.”
Libbie shook her head and moved away from him. She could not breathe. Out the window the girl was moving briskly toward the scout camp.
“I will certainly let the general know of your visit,” she said, and walked him to the door.
Sensing a dismissal, his expression became even more dour.
They walked outside, a cool wind blowing, and saw Anne across the distance, sitting crossed-legged by the campfire. She was speaking to one of the Arikara. In her lap was a small boy of three, one of the scout’s children. Libbie did not know the child’s name.
It was strange to see a white woman in a housedress squatting down by the fire as natural as could be, but the girl was more relaxed and animated than she had been the whole time inside with them. The scouts stood around, bemused. Libbie bet that the girl was trying to finagle information as to her tribe’s whereabouts.
When Josiah signaled to Anne to come to the horses, she feigned not to see him. He stalked over the field toward her, his steps stiff, his hands balled into fists. Libbie, feeling protective toward the girl, ran after him.
“She can stay a while longer if it pleases her,” Libbie offered.
Josiah shook his head. “She will come now with me. Where she belongs. She needs to be in the bosom of her family to be right.”
The girl watched his progress toward her and let go of the child, readying herself in a crouch, the fire between them the only barrier.
“I cannot tell you the trial she’s been. Quite demented,” he spat out.
Libbie was sure the same could be said from the girl’s side.
When Josiah ordered her to come, Anne shook her head.
Libbie did not understand the import of what was happening but sensed it was dire.
He lunged at the girl, but she easily dodged him, to the laughter of the scouts.
Libbie was stricken, feeling the animal terror inside the girl, not wanting him to catch her.
“Reverend Josiah!”
Now he leaped over the fire, singeing a pant leg, and caught at the girl’s dress, tearing the hem. She twisted away from him, picking up a sharp stick of kindling, and thrust it in his thigh. He stopped, purple-faced, and looked down as blood saturated the cloth of his pants.
Libbie let out a scream, and now the scouts realized the fun was up, and they easily caught the girl between them, pinning her arms against her like a bird’s banded wings so that she was helpless.
Josiah walked up to her, saying something Libbie could not make out. As if possessed, the girl pitched forward with all her might, even though Arikaras held each arm, and bit his cheek as if it were a ripe apple. More blood, and Libbie was quite sure she would faint.
She could have nothing to do with the girl as much as she sympathized with her plight. The poor child had indeed gone mad.
Josiah smiled as he touched his cheek, blood trickling down his chin and onto his shirt. He now seemed more composed, even pleased at the outcome, as if vindicated. He slapped Anne so hard across her face her whole head was jerked back.
“Sir!” Libbie yelled. “I will not stand for this!”
These were the wages of the brutal life many lived on the frontier, a reality from which Libbie deliberately kept herself aloof. Something terrible, irreparable, had been done to the child. Libbie only wished she knew who was to blame but assumed it went back to a whole line of men who had wronged the girl, possibly up to and even including her Autie in his neglect.
After they left, Libbie never spoke of the girl. When Autie finally did return, she told him nothing of the visit.
* * *
THE DAY OF HOMECOMING ARRIVED. The men rode in, tanned and bearded from their long summer outdoors. Faded and patched uniforms, boots worn out at the toes, even the overloaded wagons looked spent.
Overcome, Libbie hid inside behind the door, her happiness so intense it was akin to pain. Her heart was like to explode. When she heard the band start a tolerable “Garry Owen,” she could contain herself no longer. She ran outside crying and in front of all hugged Autie. Tom stood behind, patiently waiting his turn for a sisterly hug. The men set up a great cheer. Reunions made a moment of unalloyed joy for all there. After the unsettling feeling of the captive’s visit, Libbie was trebly grateful for the life they had together.
The wagons bristled with elk horns strapped to their exterior, giving them the appearance of a strange breed of beetle. Autie would have a magnificent chandelier constructed from a number of them to illuminate their parties and dances in the great room. He gave away the surplus horns as presents. The wagon beds groaned under loads of specimens from scientific investigations as well as the gold exploration. Crowded together were mineral specimens of mica, quartz; petrified specimens of marine shells and wood; pressed flowers; snake rattles; skins of numerous animals; and a menagerie of live animals. Tom had collected an assortment of snakes, which he kept in boxes. The academic nature of the “souvenirs,” rather than the usual gruesome ones of war, pleased her.
As she had doubted the veracity of the brothers’ story, they produced artifacts of the “beau” skeleton found at the cave entrance. Her eyes went wide to see a brass button engraved with the initials of her long-lost admirer although it most certainly did not belong to him.
After all had been unloaded, a lone keg was brought off Autie’s personal wagon. It contained the most heavenly water from a mountain stream. Libbie had Eliza go fetch glasses. After the water was poured, she held hers up to the sunlight, marveling at its clarity as much as its taste. Clear water was only a memory during those years at the fort. It was amazing how deprivation made that first taste gloriously memorable for decades afterward. They had become so habituated to the murky, sediment-filled kind from the muddy Missouri they hardly knew what to make of such a luxury and doled it out in their finest glasses as if it were champagne.