Chapter 13 #2
He pulled his hat low over his eye, glancing at her perfect profile and trying to warn himself that she might have felt it a wife’s duty to defend her husband—especially against a man like Jenkins.
He needed to guard both his heart and soul against her…
even if she had accepted the locket with far greater pleasure than he had imagined she would.
She had been entirely honest with him—she didn’t want him or the marriage.
She was resigned; he was obsessed. He needed to take the gravest care.
Still…
He paused, touching a tendril of her hair one more time before moving to answer the tapping on his door that was becoming more and more insistent.
He opened his door, only to discover Colonel George Custer’s problems, and the fact that Tom was ready to ride out in a mule wagon with a few of the men to bring back George, his wife, Libbie—and their hounds.
Sloan knew that he probably would have gone out with Tom one way or another; Custer was, after all, a superior officer.
But though he frankly didn’t care if Custer was caught in the snow, he was extremely fond of Libbie and was happy to be of any service to her.
She was small and incredibly vivacious—her husband’s greatest supporter.
Her smile was warm and earnest, and she attracted attention wherever she went.
When the mule wagon reached the stranded train after a brutal day’s ride and a night in the severe cold, she greeted Sloan with a hug, and he hugged her in return and then shook Custer’s hand.
Though he found Custer an arrogant and irritating man, they were seldom in a position to have difficulties with one another; Sloan was officially assigned as a communications officer attached to Sherman.
He wasn’t “officially assigned” to the Seventh Cavalry, but he considered his quarters there his home, despite the amount of traveling he constantly did.
Libbie chatted—nervously, Sloan thought, telling him about other family members.
Custer talked about the three-pronged attack against the hostiles with great enthusiasm, and then launched into a description of his testimony against the Indian agents and Secretary of War Belknap.
The scandal had forced Belknap to resign, and Sherman had moved his headquarters back to Washington.
Custer naturally seemed pleased that Belknap was gone.
Libbie, a trooper in the harsh conditions of the wagon ride back to the fort, still seemed nervous and upset, despite the cheerful front she was trying to maintain.
Sloan thought it odd that he should have formed a friendship with Libbie—especially when Custer had said often enough that he’d rather see Libbie dead than taken alive by the Indians.
Although Sloan was cavalry and the grandson of a renowned general, he was half Sioux, and any man need only look at him to remember it.
Apparently, in Custer’s mind, there was a difference between a half-breed and a full-blooded Sioux living on the plains.
The weather remained severe, the wind against them as they journeyed, but eventually they reached the fort.
Once there, Sloan started back to his own quarters, hoping that he might come in and discover Sabrina there with coffee perking or soup on the stove. He’d been gone more than two days, and he was cold to the bone and tired.
Nothing was on the stove, and Sabrina was nowhere to be seen.
Raleigh, a civilian servant who worked for a number of the men, arrived just as he realized he was alone.
Raleigh brought him water for a bath. Sloan washed, dressed, and stretched out on the bed, reflecting on the orders he had received—and how they had been stressed by his successive correspondences with both Sheridan and Terry, neither of whom seemed to trust him.
He closed his eyes, wishing he could sleep. But he had just begun to drift when there was a tapping on his door. His eyes flew open, and he went out to discover that Tom Custer had come for him again.
“Autie wants you, Sloan; do you mind?” Tom asked.
Tom was a friendly fellow, an extremely competent officer.
Sloan often thought that Tom should have been the brother with the higher rank, but “Autie,” as his friends and family called him, had been the one to ride hell-bent into glory, risking his own life and the lives of those around him every time he went into battle. In the Civil War, results had mattered.
In the plains wars against the Indians, results—dead Indians—also mattered. And Autie could ride hell-bent into battle.
“Well, he is Colonel Custer,” Sloan said, buttoning his jacket and accompanying Tom.
Tom didn’t remain with him when he entered the headquarters room.
Sloan saluted.
George saluted in return.
“I hear you’re about to receive your promotion,” George said, tossing his hat onto his desk and easing back into his chair.
His light eyes raked over Sloan. He smiled suddenly.
“Congratulations. It’s been a long time coming.
It’s hard for the government to recognize a Sioux to such an extent, I imagine. ”
“Maybe,” Sloan said.
“I won’t outrank you anymore,” Custer said with a grin.
“No.”
“Not that it matters—you’ve always been Sherman’s pet.”
“Sherman’s pet? I might point out that although I do have a working relationship with both Sherman and Sheridan, they are both of a mind that war with my father’s people is absolutely necessary, and that hostiles must be exterminated.”
“Your father has been dead a long time, and your grandfather still has a great deal of weight in Washington—he has the power to sway public opinion.”
“He can’t quite compete with gold in the Black Hills, I’m afraid.”
“You’re still Sherman’s pet; would that I could say the same.”
“I could point out that both Sherman and Sheridan have helped you out on a number of different occasions.”
“Because I can fight, and half the fellows we put in a uniform won’t take a step forward. But you…”
“I have a different place in this, and I’ve had different assignments,” Sloan reminded him.
Custer sighed suddenly. “Dammit, Sloan, I’ve really no desire to argue with you. I need help. You do know that. And you know as well that it’s because I tell the truth like I see it.”
Sloan shrugged; he could well acknowledge what Custer was saying.
George was a unique man. He could be arrogant to a fault, he loved to play pranks, and more than anything, he loved to be victorious on the battlefield while playing at war by all his own rules.
There had been times when Sloan had felt an absolute contempt for Custer; he’d been involved in military actions in which innocent Indians of several different tribes—women, children, infants, and old folk—had been slaughtered.
George Custer had been brevetted a general early on in the War Between the States.
After the war, like many officers, he lost his brevet and accepted an appointment as lieutenant colonel of the newly formed Seventh Cavalry.
His first Indian fighting had been in 1867, a badly managed campaign known as Hancock’s War, in which friendly Indians wound up alienated.
Custer was suspended from rank and pay for a year, and he was under sentence of court-martial.
General Philip Sheridan, eager to have Custer with him for an expedition against the Kiowas and the Southern Cheyenne, had had his sentence lifted.
Custer was then part of the Battle of the Washita River, in which Black Kettle’s people were all but annihilated.
Sloan had disliked Custer heartily for his tactics against the Cheyenne, but Custer had gained enemies as well for his lack of concern regarding his own men.
A major named Joel Elliott and his detachment had gone after some of the fleeing Indians when the main fighting was over.
Custer was informed that he hadn’t returned but didn’t take the situation seriously.
It was later learned that Elliott’s detachment had been slaughtered just a few miles away.
Custer might easily have saved the men’s lives.
Ever since that time, there had been a serious split in the Seventh Cavalry.
Custer’s family and friends supported him; many other men turned to Captain Frederick Benteen, the senior captain among the Seventh, who heartily hated Custer from that day forward for his disregard for a fellow officer.
And there were men in the Seventh Cavalry who had never forgiven him for what had happened.
Thankfully, most of the time, the Seventh was split up—spread across the vast spaces and the many army posts of the West. And although Custer had acquired many enemies, his enemies were commanding certain companies of the Seventh at other posts, and trouble was thus frequently avoided.
Sloan respected the fact, however, that Custer knew his enemy.
He was exceptionally fond of his scout Bloody Knife, the half Ree-half Sioux who served him with pride and loyalty.
Bloody Knife and Sloan kept their distance from one another, and so no trouble erupted between them.
Custer knew the differences between the Plains Indians, and he understood a great deal about Indian ways.
And he was actually in trouble now for defending both his fellow soldiers and the Indians.
“They expect us to do our jobs, while they sit like yellow-bellies in their comfortable armchairs and put us in impossible positions!” Custer said angrily.
“Damn it, Sloan! On the eve of my troops taking to the field to seek out and destroy the hostiles forever, I’m being summoned back to Washington! ”
“You’ve just arrived back from Washington,” Sloan said, startled.