The last summer could only be described as a darkening.
It began with another planned winter campaign to attack the Indian when he was snowbound and his horses depleted. Finances depleted, Autie and Libbie ended their leave of absence in New York and headed back to Dakota Territory, running straight into yet another blizzard. The Northern Pacific, grateful to the army, had outfitted a special train with a plow to get them back to Fort Lincoln despite the heavy snows that had immobilized the plains all winter.
Drifts stranded them in a gully outside Bismarck for a week. Marooned in boxcars, they shared their rations with a small group of soldiers traveling with them, but the cold had to be endured singly. Autie bundled her up in blankets and buffalo robes, and she lay bound like a papoose all the miserable long day.
By the end of the week they were reduced to dried biscuits and hardtack carried in the soldiers’ rations, washed down with melted snow. With Autie in charge, Libbie did not exhibit the same stamina to go through a blizzard again, happy to let him shoulder the burden. She made peace with the idea that this absurd predicament might be their end, but at least they would be together.
In desperation, a fellow soldier fashioned a crude telegraph key, connected it to the wire running alongside the track, and sent out a message for help. Tom came to their rescue once again.
“This is getting to be a regular habit with the two of you,” he said, nonchalant, as if he had only come to fetch them from the neighbors’.
In retrospect it seemed fate toyed with them. No sooner did they arrive than Autie was called back to Washington to testify against the Indian ring, retracing the treacherous journey they had only just completed. He cited the dangerous traveling and their lack of funds to shut down the possibility of her accompanying him.
Libbie worked hard to hide her jealousy. She did not mind sharing danger if she also partook of the joy. Always the worst thing was being left behind. He preened as he packed, and she noted him being sure to include his best shirts. From Washington Autie wrote that spring had already arrived back east with green grass, flowers, and lightly clad women. What a good thing it is, he wrote, to be out of the cold.
President Grant was angered by Autie’s testimony concerning the administration’s corruption. In revenge, he delayed Autie’s return so that he could not go out with the 7th on the campaign, which had been now delayed into April. Libbie was secretly pleased with the result if not the cause.
Autie could easily have slipped his destiny, but instead he was frantic to embrace it. He begged General Terry to intercede, which he did. This was not altruistic—Terry needed a decisive victory and did not have the stomach to fight. Autie would go wrest victory for him. Newspapers got hold of the machinations in Washington—Libbie suspected with some nudging of Autie’s journalist friends—and wrote that Grant was punishing him for testifying. With the public outcry, he got his heart’s desire.
* * *
EVEN AT THE TIME everyone sensed that it would be a fearful campaign compared with more recent ones. The Sioux had been driven to the edge. The unsubdued were angered over the violations in the Black Hills. Enough time had elapsed so that they knew from their brethren on the reservation that the promises of plenty by the Great Father in Washington were false. Anger was rampant over poor rations, and many young warriors left to go hunting in order to save their families from starvation. Once they left the boundaries of the reservation, they were declared hostile. They had been put in a position from which they had nothing to lose.
When General Crook set out in June, he was attacked by a joint Sioux and Cheyenne war party. He held his ground but did not gain victory. A shift in balance occurred. The Indians gained confidence and would make the summer a violent one. The army needed someone bold and fearless to combat them.
Libbie wished that Autie had hesitated, or that he was forced to go and had been reluctant, but that would be false. He went above and beyond to make sure he was part of the campaign. He loved war and thirsted for victory.
When the column finally set off from Fort Lincoln, they rode one last time circling the parade ground to take leave of their families. The departures always tore a hole in Libbie’s heart. The regiment consisted of the 7th Cavalry, two companies of the 17th Infantry, four of the 6th Infantry, Arikara scouts, a Gatling gun detachment, teamsters, and civilian employees. Usually such a sight of strength reassured, but somehow it failed that morning. She searched and searched the cause but could find nothing out of the ordinary. The melancholy mood was not helped by the fort being enveloped in a thick fog, which made the review spectral and anonymous, contributing to the poor impression.
The expressions of grief from the various women also dampened spirits, and Libbie marveled that such a universal feeling could be expressed so differently. The Arikara scouts, as was their custom when going to war, chanted and made fighting sounds. Their women lay prostrate on the ground and gave heartrending wails, shedding tears that threatened to make all of them lose their composure. She could only imagine the terror of such a sight to their children.
Golden Buffalo and the other “bachelors” seemed not as well loved in comparison. Once they proved themselves, maybe in this very battle, they would also be entitled to marry. Although such open display of grief scandalized Autie, at the moment Libbie wished to join the keening women. Instead, she stood silent, stoic, dry-eyed, in anguish.
Farther up the troops passed “soap suds row,” and the laundresses, too, were extravagant in their sadness, crying loudly and calling names, running up to their men for a last kiss. The somber officers’ wives stood each before her own quarters or in small groups. They bit their lips, at most pressing a kerchief to an eye, no more. Their husbands would have chastised any outsized display of emotion. Strength was expected. Many rushed inside afterward to cry alone. Libbie did not pretend to understand the difference in accepted behavior.
Tom stopped his horse in front of their quarters, dismounted, and ran to his room. He claimed to have forgotten a favorite shirt. Libbie followed and saw him pause at the single cot he used as a bed. His eyes were damp, and she put her hand on his shoulder.
“Is something wrong?”
He shrugged her hand away. “Just thinking I wished there was someone to miss me while I was gone. Cry tears.”
“You’re still a young man. You’ll find her.”
She had noticed Golden Buffalo’s loneliness but had been oblivious to her own family member. Tom seemed as above human frailty as his brother.
Libbie handed him a kerchief from her pocket.
“Will you keep this for me? And bring it back with you?”
He nodded and brought it to his nose. It held her cologne. He began to say something but then thought better of it.
* * *
AS THE COLUMN wound its way up a bluff, the sun at last began to burn through the fog, creating a halo around the men. As they climbed, it appeared as if the cavalry rode from earth to sky and trod on the clouds. Ever hopeful, Libbie took it as an omen of success. It was not.
As usual she camped out with the regiment that first night, riding in the paymaster’s wagon. The custom was for the men to receive their wages while out in the field so as not to splurge on alcohol and other vices. After the battle, witnesses said paper money blew across the hills, as useless to its owners as the army intended it to be.
Over the years she had become every bit the army wife, the camp follower, as at home in a tent as in the grandest house.
That night the couple ate early, and instead of socializing with the men, Autie went to bed. They lay side by side, the cicadas loud in the breeze, the stars floating lazily in the summer night. They held each other in the dark but did not speak. After all their years of marriage, nothing more needed to be said. She squeezed his hand as she began to fall asleep and then he spoke.
The next morning the paymaster hitched his mules for the return trip to the fort. It was as bright and sunny as the previous day had been glum. Libbie lingered at the campfire, a blanket over her shoulders, and drank her coffee. How she wished the moment might never end.
Finally the column was ready and moved off. She felt reassured. The day before had been simply a case of jitters. If all went well, they planned that she would rejoin Autie by supply steamboat in a few weeks.
Riding away in the wagon, she turned for a last glance. No one watching her would have ever guessed her heart quaked, that like the other women she wanted to scream and protest to the heavens at the separation. No, she appeared as cool and composed as if going on a picnic. A worthy wife to the last.
Autie had just reached the top of a promontory and turned around. Thankfully, even if he suspected it, he was too far away to see her façade was already cracking, tears appearing unbidden. He took off his hat and gave a casual wave. She could not reconcile the man on the horse, riding away to battle, with her husband. But it had always been so.
She no longer believed in the mission, only in him, and so now she feared.
The previous night in the tent he had curled against her and kissed her ear.
“I am afraid,” he whispered.
The culmination of their marriage, when he finally reached out to her for comfort, and she had failed him. The admission, so unlike him, had petrified her. She pretended she had not heard. Instead, she kissed his cheek, rolled on her side, and feigned sleep.
The column moved on up the hill, moved on and went down the other side, went down the other side to disappear forever from her life. She never saw her husband again.