The days before official word was received passed as if in a dream. The atmosphere was like in a hospital where things are going badly for the patient. People avoided Libbie’s eye. Dispatches had come in and Indian scouts had taken off like lightning to reach the expedition. After they left, the women were told for the first time about Crook’s defeat and how those same victorious warriors had gone on to join Sitting Bull against the army in the valley of the Little Bighorn. Their troops, it was feared, would be overwhelmed by numbers if not warned. The scouts arrived too late.
Each day the fort was subjected to attacks by hostiles, which the guards repulsed. The women were made hostages in their house. They banded together and tried to take comfort in one another’s company, but there was a feeling of dread over the whole place.
Without telegraph lines or steamboats, the Indians had a far more supple, organic way of obtaining information of events, and knew about the massacre long before official word came. Days before the news, an Indian scout had come and talked of Autie being dead, along with his whole company, but these words struck them as fantastical. Libbie watched the scout, saw his extreme grief in describing the rout, and knew it was true.
Then on July 5 the steamer Far West came, bearing the wounded and the terrible, terrible news.
It was the middle of a very hot summer night. The moon pooled like mercury over the land, beautiful and menacing. Knocking could be heard at the back door and then loud voices, the clap of boots along the thin wooden boards. Libbie’s first, sleep-filled thought was that Autie must have come home early. Drowsy, she heard the front door open, admitting more people. Then she knew.
Her hands shook as she fumbled with buttons until finally Eliza had to dress her as if she were a small, distraught child. In the parlor men as pale as wax read the words aloud. She wept, knowing that this was simply the beginning of endless tears, unending grief. The real pain would start soon, but she reminded herself she was Mrs. General Custer. As post commander’s wife, her last duty now was to go with the men and inform the other widows. Despite the heat she wrapped a shawl around herself to stop her shaking.
It was not until she was outside that she realized her feet were bare.
* * *
THE WHOLE COUNTRY AS ONE focused on the national tragedy. The telegraph labored between Bismarck and Fargo and St. Paul and then on eastward: ALL THE CUSTERS KILLED. Not only her Autie, but his brothers Tom and Boston, his nephew Autie Reed, his brother-in-law Jimmi Calhoun. Not a single survivor in his force, 260 killed. It was a disaster hard to comprehend. Headlines ran in The New York Herald, The New York Times, and the Philadelphia papers. No one could believe the truth. At first rumor, even Sherman and Sheridan had insisted it must be false. The entire country was stunned. Her own shock was so great it seemed entirely natural that the world shared her state of mourning. But the sanctity of her bereavement did not last long. Criticism started almost as soon as the condolences had ended. She had to become a fighter to defend Autie even after he was gone. Although in life he had not held a grudge, she would not forgive his enemies now.
My soul is too small to forgive.
Afterward there were rumors.
Scurrilous things such as Custer shot himself. That Indian women drove sewing needles into his ears, shattering the delicate incus bone so that he would hear better in the afterlife. Darker rumors of disfigurements not fit to be told. Articles quoted Reno and Benteen as they lied to cover their misdeeds. Their jealousy translated his bravery into recklessness. She gave the last word on the matter to General Nelson Miles, who wrote: It is easy to kill a dead lion.
Benteen, whose bile did not subside even when his rival was long buried, said that Autie was not among the dead, but that like at the Washita, he had gone off to graze his horse. Seeing the tide of evil, he had escaped.
Another rumor, more painful, was that the Crow scout Curly, realizing the battle was futile, begged Autie to escape with him. Autie dropped his head on his breast in silence for a moment—a gesture Libbie had seen him do hundreds of times before—then waved Curly away and rode back to his men. How could he not choose her?
His men were up against a force far greater than they. The scouts, when they found the fresh Indian trail, estimated from the width and size of the grazing area that the population of the camp was 1,200. They knew that the camp was ahead in the Bighorn Valley but had not yet seen it. History had taught that it was impossible to surprise such a large camp, with its lookouts and signal fires on each hill. If they discovered a large approaching army they would flee. So Terry had the generals divide, each taking a smaller force that the Indians would stand against. Of course Autie felt that the 7th with 600 men was an easy match for 1,200 Indians. What he had no way of knowing was that a greater number of Indian bands had come in from the north. Instead of 1,200, the village was more than 5,000 strong. An unfathomable number, a number never seen before or since.
The Arikara and Crow scouts, having led the 7th to the camp, were allowed to make their exit, although some stayed on to fight. Whether that was due to their fellow feeling for the doomed or if it was an opportunity to fight their traditional enemy remained unclear. Most took off their army uniforms in order to fight as Crow, as Arikara, and give honor for the killing where it was due.
Another wicked rumor was the one that ironically most comforted Libbie over the years, and it came from the Indians themselves. Autie had been wounded at the beginning of the battle, and the soldiers pulled him to safety while they fought on to their death. The actual last stand took only half an hour by all accounts. When the women moved in to do their work—murder the wounded, mutilate the dead—a group of Cheyenne women recognized Autie as the white husband of Monahsetah. Therefore he was family and sacrosanct. He was carried away and nursed back to health, on condition that he live out the rest of his days with them. Did the idea of his being alive, husband to Monahsetah, pain her? Beyond anything except for his being dead.
Sometimes she pretended he was out there, aware of her efforts to preserve his legacy. Perhaps Autie lived in the nature he so loved. Anonymous, immune to fame, he could at last rest. Perhaps he had the sons she could not give him. If only he was alive, she could bear it all.
* * *
AT THE BATTLE the only man who acted on his conscience was Captain Weir, who never recovered from his guilt in not disobeying the cowards Benteen and Reno. By nightfall Weir could stand their inaction no more and made the attempt to break through, but it was too late. He died only a few months later, Libbie believed of a broken heart.
When Terry finally arrived the next day, Reno and Benteen reported a force on horseback riding up to them, clothed in the jackets and hats of the cavalry. They expected it was Custer’s column riding back in victory. Instead, as it got closer, they saw it was warriors wearing the 7th uniform jackets, riding their cavalry horses, bearing the 7th’s flags and arms. Minus only the pants. A great joke that would have made Autie roll in laughter, something that he might have done himself.
The only living being found on Last Stand Hill was the badly wounded horse Comanche. He was nursed back to health and lived out his days in honor. Libbie wondered at the scenes of carnage the animal had been witness to. Did he have equine nightmares as she had human ones? He survived his wounds because his rider, Myles Keogh, died holding his reins, and the Indians were superstitious about taking a horse from a dead man.
Weeks later Dandy was delivered back to her. It was hard to describe the sight of Autie’s beloved horse alive while his owner had perished. Libbie went under the covers of her bed with no intention to rise again. Of course she was not in a position to give the animal a home, and made arrangements for him to go to Father Custer. A collection was taken up among the soldiers to pay the travel fare. The horse gave the old man great comfort, a link to his three deceased sons. In such grief one clings to whatever can sustain one. The two were inseparable companions for the next thirteen years till Dandy passed from old age. He was buried under an apple tree on the farm.
Libbie did not visit the farm, could not bear this link to Autie, but was told that it was a beautiful sight in summer when the blossoms fell to the ground, a fitting tribute to a brave, loyal steed.
* * *
A BLACK-DRAPED TRAIN waited in Bismarck to take Autie and her away a final time. It stopped at each town as if grief weighed it down, and crowds stood in silence to see the car pass. Sad bouquets of flowers were laid along the tracks, wilting in the hot sun.
Never did she regret marrying a soldier. People asked how she managed to survive the heartache, but Libbie had been preparing for the possibility since her wedding day. Each step one took in life, from what one ate for breakfast in the morning to whom one married, involved regret for the choices not taken. Each decision involved a narrowing of the experiences possible. In an honest accounting, the end of the happiest existence still contained a mountain of regrets that were part of being alive. Maybe, just maybe, it was finally the regrets that defined one.
Custer’s scouts at the site of Custer’s death. From left: Goes Ahead, Hairy Moccasin, Curly, and White Man Runs Him
Autie’s mystery was the mystery of them all. Once he was there and then he was not.
At the bidding of men in Washington, whom he would never know, he had been sent out into the wilderness to subdue the Indian, a decision based on avarice and dishonesty, squeezed in between afternoon paperwork and a cocktail party that evening. Autie ended up having more respect for those he fought than for those who sent him. Sometimes bigger events set in motion lifted an individual to fame, and sometimes they dashed him on the rocks. Autie experienced both.
History betrayed him as well as the Indian. The great, fearsome Sitting Bull afterward traveled in a Wild West show. Autie complained often of how he was expected to perform when he was back east in the States. A few decades more of fighting and then the frontier closed.
It had been another world. The land and the freedom that went with it seemed without limit. They had simply glutted themselves.
After the railroads were built shooting parties could be easily brought out to the plains. Rich men rode in private cars for their “frontier” experience, complete with shooting buffalo from the windows of the train. Almost eight million buffalo were killed in the space of three short years for their hides or simply for sport. They, too, seemed as plentiful as the grass or wind, without end. Herds that stretched five miles wide and twelve miles long disappeared. It was almost as unthinkable to the Indians as the oceans being sucked dry or the sun extinguished.
There was a story that by the beginning of the twentieth century the appearance of one lone buffalo wandering the hills near a small town in Wyoming was a major occurrence. It generated a holiday atmosphere, with families hitching up wagons and riding out to see the novel sight. Children were told to look carefully and commit the display to memory—the thin, shaggy beast, knock-kneed, bleating, standing in confusion before them—because he might be the last specimen of his kind to be seen in their lifetime. The people filled their eyes, their imaginations, with the vision of this forlorn creature, who stood in for the mighty millions he had descended from, birthing the very land they stood on. Then, not sure what else to do, they shot him dead. That was the frontier.
* * *
THE BIBLE EXHORTED ONE to love the eternal over the transient, an impossible command. The immortality Autie was so enamoured by was dead and faraway, trapped in history books. For decades Libbie niggled over the prosaic in her quest to restore Autie’s memory to its rightful place. How much more she would have preferred to simply grow old with him. The heart was fugitive, it reached out to its own. Hers had reached out to him. Love, fleeting, was all that mortals could hope to know.
Libbie’s consolation came mostly in sleep because in dreams Autie and she were always together. More often than not, she dreamed of their early days in Kansas, racing along the plains. She felt the thundering speed of the horses as the earth sped under their hooves. Although she never saw his face, she knew it was Autie beside her, their horses running shoulder to shoulder. Strong arms reached around her waist and before she knew it she was airborne, suspended between heaven and earth. Safe.The world had been so big then. So unutterably alive. It was the purest freedom. So perfect she knew she could bear whatever followed. When she woke, tears were in her eyes because for a time she had been so very, very happy.