Long Winter Gone: Son of the Plains - Volume 1 Read Online Free Page A

companies of the Seventh Cavalry to ride under Custer, along with five companies of infantry and twelve companies of the Nineteenth Kansas Volunteer Cavalry that had yet to march south from Topeka. This massive force would then push out of Kansas Territory due south a hundred miles from Fort Dodge to establish a supply base from which Sheridan would begin his strikes against the hostiles.….
    “You haven’t wasted any time getting the regiment shaped up, Autie,” Tom said one cold evening as he slipped through the tent flaps. His brother sat hunched over a lap desk. “Orders? Or another letter home to Libbie?”
    That smile flashed again. Custer could keep nothing from his little brother.
    “Orders first, Tom. Then, yes, I’ll get another letter off to Libbie tonight.”
    “All work and no play. You’ve heard me say it many a time.”
    “You! Preferring the cards or the bottle—even the ladies—to your soldier’s work.”
    “By the heavens, Autie! Your brother? Wouldst that I prefer the feel of a perfumed breast beneath my hands or the sting of strong whiskey upon my tongue to drilling and target practice?”
    Laughter came easily to them both, laughter rooted in a bond nurtured from childhood, a closeness now mellowed like aged Kentucky whiskey.
    “Be gone with you, then.” Custer shooed with his left hand, the right bringing the nub of a pencil to his tongue once more. “I’ve too much work to be done and so littletime to do it. Go off and play then while your poor brother works his fingers and his pencil to the bone!”
    Tom’s easy laughter rang through the tent flaps as Custer returned to his sheet of foolscap atop the small lap desk.
So bloody much to do
, he thought.
All of it riding on a perfect execution of Philip’s plans for this winter campaign.
    First, fresh horses had to be purchased. Not an easy task on the western plains of Kansas along the Arkansas River. But once accomplished, those horses had to be wrangled in and drilled with their new riders. And through the ordeal the regimental blacksmiths had been pushed beyond all endurance, beginning their hot work before dawn every morning, toiling into the dripping black of twilight, fitting each and every new mount for its journey into Indian country.
    Infantry marched on the feet of its men while cavalry depended on the hooves of its horses. For every mount headed into Indian Territory he had ordered an extra fore and hind shoe fitted and carried in the trooper’s saddle pocket. An unshod horse would be worse than useless on this campaign through ice and snow.
    Every clear day Custer had his men practice signaling cross-country with small mirrors from the top of nearby hills—”nature having formed admirable signal stations over this part of the country,” he explained, writing to Libbie.
    At the same time he held a competition among his troops to determine the best marksmen in the regiment. With the dual promise of a separately marched unit of sharpshooters along with his order that the marksmen be exempted from mess details and picket duty, the competition grew stiff for those forty slots placed under the leadership of young Canadian Lieutenant W. W. Cooke. With the best selected,an intensive regimen of target practice with repeating Spencer rifles began for this elite corps.
    Custer sat the lap desk on his crude bunk and rose, stretching the knots from the muscles along his back.
So much riding on the success of this venture, Libbie.
He would write her later when the camp quieted and his only companion would be the night wind bringing with it a promise of early snow.
    If this winter operation fails, Sheridan alone might take the blame. And, if the operation smacks of a massacre, why, Philip alone might stand court-martial … considering the nasty mood of those Quakers in power at the Indian Bureau back in Washington City.
    Rubbing his palms together eagerly, he stared out at the glowing fire points of red-orange, cooking fires along