Soon the bluffs were crowded with them, and more kept coming. Custer said this expedition was blessed, Charles thought. It's cursed.
51
The easy victory wasn't turning out to be so easy. By eleven, the bluffs across the Washita held hundreds of armed Arapahoes and Cheyennes. Custer fretted while the work of collecting spoils continued. His colors were planted in an improvised hospital area near the center of the village. From there, he issued orders deploying men in a defense perimeter just inside the cottonwoods in case the Indians attacked.
They did. A band of twenty Cheyennes came galloping in from the river bend two miles northeast. They dashed over the open ground between the low knolls and fired into the trees. Standing beside Romero, Charles returned the fire. Custer strode behind the defense line, bucking up the men.
"Don't show yourselves. They're trying to draw us into the open. Conserve your fire — we're low on ammunition. Stand fast. They'll never ride into these woods."
The jingle of his little gold spurs seemed to linger after he went on. Romero gave Charles a disconsolate look; Custer was right about ammunition. If they remained pinned down for much longer, the Indians would be able to charge in without the danger of return fire.
Charles put his second-to-last magazine into the stock of the Spencer and wiped his eyes. They were smarting and watering from tiredness and the smoke. He felt someone watching him. Several paces to the right he saw Dutch Henry Griffenstein. With a contemptuous smile, Griffenstein said something to the soldier next to him. The trooper turned to stare at Charles, and Charles knew he had to find an opportunity to apologize for calling the scout a dumb ox.
After their last sweep the Cheyennes galloped away again, out of range. One brave knelt on his pony and thumbed the seat of his breeches. None of the men in the smoky wood thought it funny.
Charles held his place for two hours. During that time a half-dozen attack parties rode down from the heights, though none came close to the trees. Custer was right; the Indians wanted them in the open.
Behind the defense line, other troopers were busy ripping tipis apart and hacking up the poles with axes. California Joe slipped in from the other side of the wood to report that he'd found three to four hundred more Indian ponies. "Must be eight, nine hundred of 'em now, General," Charles heard him say to Custer, who was again prowling the defense perimeter.
One of the Corbins came to relieve Charles. He stumbled away and stepped behind a bullet-scarred tree to relieve his painfully full bladder. It didn't help much. He was in low spirits, remembering how lively and friendly a peaceful Cheyenne village could be, with music, and courting rituals, and storytelling by a fire after a sinfully big feast of buffalo meat. Black Kettle's village was, by contrast, a graveyard, a plundered graveyard. Those troopers not on the defense line continued to pile up goods from the wrecked tipis; dozens of confiscated buffalo robes, painted arrows by the hundreds.
"Pull that one out," Custer said to his orderly. He pointed to a demolished tipi. "If the cover's undamaged, pack it for me. Then move all these separate heaps together and set them afire." Charles listened despondently. What Custer was doing amounted to burning the homes of a civilian population. The owners of the tipis, if they managed to escape, would die of exposure unless they found shelter somewhere else. He thought that driving the Cheyennes out of the village temporarily should have been enough.
Custer thought otherwise. Soon, on open ground out behind the cottonwoods, flames shot up, leaping eight and ten feet in the air as they consumed the great mountain of torn-down tipis. The hide covers produced a bitter dark smoke that trailed across the winter sky like mourning streamers.
The general ordered up a detachment with Joe Corbin and Griffenstein leading it. As the detachment trotted away east, out of the woodland, Charles asked Milner, "Were are they going?"
California Joe eyed him in a suspicious way; maybe Griffenstein had been talking widely about Charles's behavior. "Hunt for Elliott," was all the chief scout said. His speech had a slur again; evidently he still had his supply of alcohol.
"About time the general started worrying about them," Charles said.
California Joe scowled. "You better keep opinions like that to yourself, mister." He walked away.
There was something fierce building inside Charles; something he was powerless to suppress. It was an anger, blind to subtleties, that encompassed every white man in the cottonwoods, including himself. Gnawing on some hardtack, his only food that day, he had an urge to take his Army Colt and shoot Custer. The foolish impulse passed, but not the anger. He hated what was happening here.
Antlike, a file of men moved toward the great fire carrying robes, quivers, bullet molds — every personal article the foragers could find. The flames shot high again, filling the woods with scarlet light and shifting shadow. If the survivors ever came back, they would also have no food or household goods to sustain them through the winter, which was evidently what Sheridan intended.
As the burning continued, men on the defense line raised a shout. "Bell's coming! Here comes Bell!" Charles and the others ran to the edge of the woods on the river side. Careening toward them from a ford somewhere upstream came their seven wagons. Cheyenhes and Arapahoes galloped on either side, peppering them with arrows and bullets.
The teamsters returned the fire. One warrior dropped. Up on the bluffs, more war parties were assembling, probably to intercept the wagons. They didn't move quickly enough. With Lieutenant Jim Bell whipping up the lead team, the wagons thundered into the grove. Sparks and flames spurted from overheated axle hubs. Bell's wagon veered to avoid a tree, the mules tore the traces, and the wagon tipped and crashed on its side, dumping its load of ammunition chests. The troopers rushed to them and tore them open.
Sooty, a smoking pistol in his hand, Bell staggered to Custer. "Couldn't wait for orders, General. Bunch of 'em surprised us and we had to dash for the ford upstream."
"It's good you did," Custer said. "Now we have the ammunition we need."
Indeed, the troopers seemed revitalized by the arrival of the wagons, which had reached the cottonwoods without serious injury to any of the drivers. The troopers climbed over the wagons and threw more ammunition chests to the ground. With the bonfire blazing and the mules braying and the teamsters shouting and the Cheyenne women wailing and the children crying and the angry Indians again sniping from horseback, Charles began to think he was in some grotto in hell reserved for the damned of the U.S. Cavalry.
More commotion then. The search detachment was riding in from the east. Pale frightened troopers dismounted and talked excitedly. Custer ran to them, shouting for silence. Charles's eye raked the search party. No Griffenstein.
"How far did you go?" Custer demanded.
"Two or three miles," Joe Corbin said. "We ran into hot fire and turned back. We lost one man. We didn't find Elliott."
"All right. I'm sure you did your best," Custer said. Captain Fred Benteen immediately stepped out to confront him.
"General, we can't let it die there. Elliott may be pinned down somewhere. I'll take another detachment —"
"No!" Custer scanned the bluffs above the river, where bands of Indians walked their ponies back and forth, restless from their failure to draw the soldiers out. Seeing Benteen about to protest again, Custer lashed him with a sharp, "No, you will not. Not now. We are in a predicament, and we must get out."