Charles, Dutch Henry, and two of the Osages galloped ahead and sited a camp on Mulberry Creek, barely five miles from their departure point. Sully and Custer jointly decided they would go no farther the first day because the wagons were having so much trouble.
In camp, after Charles ate a supper of beans and hardtack, his luck ran out again.
Stiff from being in the saddle all day, he fed Satan and blanketed him against the night chill. He was walking back toward the scout camp when he saw a familiar figure striding down a low knoll on a path that would intersect his. Captain Harry Venable looked neat and unwrinkled after the day's march. The eternal prairie wind lifted his overcoat cape as he stepped in front of Charles.
"Main," he said curtly. His eyes were even bluer, more glacial than Custer's. "Or should I say May? August, perhaps? Which is it this time?"
"I expect you know."
"I do. I spotted you a week ago. I know you saw me. I thought that in light of past circumstances you might be smart enough to get the hell away from this expedition."
"Why? I'm not in uniform. California Joe hired me."
"You're still under Army jurisdiction."
Old Bob, following Charles as he usually did, went up to Venable to sniff. Venable kicked at him. Bob crouched and growled. Charles whistled the dog back to his side. Old Bob obeyed but kept growling.
"Look, Venable, General Custer knows that I rode for the Confederacy. He doesn't object."
"By Christ I do." Venable's russet beard jutted; his face was nasty. Old Bob growled louder. Venable stepped forward. "You reb son of a bitch!"
Charles reacted by shoving his palm hard against Venable's dark blue overcoat. "Take your complaints to the general."
Venable surprised Charles by relaxing, stepping away. A puzzling smile drifted onto his face. "Oh, no. I haven't said a word about our past encounters, and I won't. I want you to myself this time. Pounding your dumb skull at Jefferson Barracks didn't discourage you, and neither did a discharge after you lied your way into the Tenth. I'm going to find something that works. Something permanent."
"Fuck you," Charles said. "Come on, Bob."
Venable ran after him, but Old Bob's growl brought him up short. "It's your job to keep your eyes on the trail ahead," Venable called. "But just remember, I'll be watching your back, every minute."
The threat bothered Charles more than he cared to admit. He wanted to tell someone. He drew Dutch Henry away from the other scouts around the fire and in a few words described the run-in, concluding, "So if you find me shot in the back, get that damn Yankee."
Dutch Henry looked baffled. "Why's he got it in for you?"
"Because of what John Hunt Morgan did to his mother and sister. I'm not responsible for it, for God's sake."
The burly scout gave him a peculiar look, his eyes flecked with points of light from the blazing campfire. "No, and the Injuns we're chasing probably didn't chop up your partners. But you're going to kill them anyway."
"Henry, that's —"
"Different? Mmmm. If you say so. Come on back to the fire, Charlie. It's too damn cold to stand here palavering."
He stumped off toward the wind-tattered flames, leaving Charles motionless, staring after him with a curious strained look on his face. Almost a look of confusion.
On November 13 they advanced to Bluff Creek, where Custer had rejoined the regiment when he came out of exile in Michigan. They made Bear Creek the following day, and the Cimarron, and the Indian Territory, the day after that. There, a winter norther tore down on them, providing a wicked foretaste of the season to come.
Heading east along the Beaver fork of the North Canadian, they still found no trace of hostiles. A day later that changed. Charles and the Corbins discovered a ford with signs of many ponies having passed, but no travois. A war party. They galloped back toward the main body to report:
"Anywhere from seventy-five to one hundred fifty braves, trailing in a northeasterly direction."
''To attack settlements, Mr. Main?" General Sully asked. He'd gathered officers and scouts in his big headquarters tent. The lanterns illuminated faces beginning to show beard stubble, trail dirt, fatigue. Venable lounged at the back. He folded his arms, a signal he distrusted anything Charles might say.
"I don't know any other reason they'd be headed away from Indian Territory in the winter, General."
Custer stepped forward, almost quivering in anticipation of a fight. Was it accidental that he moved in front of Sully, partially hiding him from the others? "How old is the sign?" he wanted to know.
Jack Corbin said laconically, "Two days, most."
"Then if we strike out in the other direction, where they came from, we might find their village with most of the men gone. We could take them by surprise."
"General Custer," Sully said with weighted irony, "that's absurd. Do you for one moment suppose that a military force as large as ours, accompanied by such an immense train of wagons, could have gotten this far into Indian country and remain undetected? They know we're here."
Instead of arguing, Custer said, "What do you think, Main?"
Charles didn't like the unexpected and unsubtle shift of responsibility, but there was no point in feeding Sully's lies, whether he got offended or not. "I think it's entirely possible no one knows we're here. The Indians don't move much this late in the season. That war party has to be an exception. They assume we wouldn't move either."
"You see?" Custer exclaimed to Sully. "Let me take a detachment —"
"No."
"But look here —"
"Permission denied," Sully said.
Custer shut up, but no one in the tent missed the rush of red in his cheeks, or his glare of resentment. Nor did he intend that they should. Charles figured Sully had blundered in a way he would regret.
"My partner, Jackson, said a white man has to turn his notions upside down out here," Charles remarked to Griffenstein after the conference broke up. "Sully won't do it. Same old Army." He sighed.
Charles and the scouts ranged south, hunting for a suitable location for the supply base. They found one about a mile above the confluence of Wolf and Beaver creeks, which joined to form the North Canadian. There was timber, good water, and abundant game. At noon on the eighteenth of November, the forward detachments of the Seventh reached the site.
Charles, Milner, and the other scouts rode into the woods for game while the infantry fell to chopping trees for a stockade. Additional parties of men began digging wells and latrine trenches, or scything down the frost-killed meadow grass for forage.
Charles flushed a flock of wild turkeys and bagged three with his Spencer. California Joe, temporarily sober, killed a buffalo cow but lost a dozen more that stampeded at the first shot. Most of the scouts brought in a kill of some kind. The expedition would eat better tonight.
Camp Supply rose quickly, a stockade one hundred twenty-six feet on a side, with lunettes at two corners, loopholed blockhouses at the other two. Log palisades protected the west and south sides; barrackslike storage buildings served as the north and east walls. The men had pitched their tents outside; the wagons unloaded inside. The expedition had stretched its supply line a distance of one hundred miles from Fort Dodge.
Charles heard that Custer and Sully were arguing almost continuously. Custer was still furious with his rival.
An advance party of white scouts and Kaw trackers appeared in the north, heralding the arrival of General Sheridan and his three-hundred-man escort from the Nineteenth Kansas Volunteer Cavalry. Custer saddled up and galloped out to greet the Departmental commander. By nightfall, Little Phil was stumping around the camp, shaking hands and grousing obscenely about the fierce norther and howling sleet storm that had plagued his rapid march from Fort Hays. Sheridan was squat and thickly built, with black eyes and a pointed Mongol mustache. Charles had never seen a New York Bowery bartender, but Little Phil fit his mental picture.