Very adroitly General Custer visited, and exchanged compliments, and parleyed and waited, playing his game faultlessly till even the quick-witted Cheyennes were caught by it. When the precise moment came the shrewd commander seized the chief men of the village and gave his ultimatum—a life for a life. The two white women safe from harm must be brought to him or these mighty men must become degraded captives. Then followed an Indian hurricane of wrath and prayers and trickery. It availed nothing except to prolong the hours, and hunger and cold filled another night in our desolate camp.
Day brought a renewal of demand, a renewal of excuse and delay and an attempt to outwit by promises. But a second command was more telling. The yellow-haired general's word now went forth: "If by sunset to-morrow night these two women are not returned to my possession, these chiefs will hang."
So Custer said, and the grim selection of the gallows and the preparation for fulfilment of his threat went swiftly forward. The chiefs were terror-stricken, and anxious messages were sent to their people. Meanwhile the Cheyenne forces were moving farther and farther away. The squaws and children were being taken to a safe distance, and a quick flight was in preparation. So another night of hunger and waiting fell upon us. Then came the day of my dream long ago. The same people I knew first on the night after Jean Pahusca's attempt on Marjie's life, when we were hunting our cows out on the West Prairie, came now in reality before me.
The Sweetwater Valley spread out under the late sunshine of a March day was rimmed about by low hills. Beyond these, again, were the Plains, the same monotony of earth beneath and sky above, the two meeting away and away in an amethyst fold of mist around the world's far bound. There were touches of green in the brown valley, but the hill slopes and all the spread of land about them were gray and splotched and dull against a blue-gray sickly sky. The hours went by slowly to each anxious soldier, for endurance was almost at its limit. More heavily still they must have dragged for the man on whom the burden of command rested. High noon, and then the afternoon interminably long and dull, and by and by came the sunset on the Sweetwater Valley, and a new heaven and a new earth were revealed to the sons of men. Like a chariot of fire, the great sun rolled in all its gorgeous beauty down the west. The eastern sky grew radiant with a pink splendor, and every brown and mottled stretch of distant landscape was touched with golden light or deepened into richest purple, or set with a roseate bound of flame. Somewhere far away, a feathery gray mist hung like a silvery veil toning down the earth from the noonday glare to the sunset glory. Down in the very middle of all this was a band of a thousand men; their faded clothing, their uncertain step, their knotted hands, and their great hungry eyes told the price that had been paid for the drama this sunset hour was to bring. Slowly the moments passed as when in our little sanctuary above the pleasant parks at Fort Sill I had watched the light measured out. And then the low hills began to rise up and shut out the crimson west as twilight crept toward the Sweetwater Valley.
Suddenly, for there had been nothing there a moment before, all suddenly, an Indian scout was outlined on the top of the low bluff nearest us. Motionless he sat on his pony a moment, then he waved a signal to the farther height beyond him. A second pony and a second Indian scout appeared. Another signal and then came a third Indian on a third pony farther away. Each Indian seemed to call out another until a line of them had been signalled from the purple mist, out of which they appeared to be created. Last of all and farthest away, was a pony on which two figures were faintly outlined. Down in the valley we waited, all eyes looking toward the hills as these two drew nearer. Up in a group on the bluff beyond the valley the Indians halted. The two riders of the pony slipped to the ground. With their arms about each other, in close embrace, they came slowly toward us, the two captive women for whom we waited. It was a tragic scene, such as our history has rarely known, watched by a thousand men, mute and motionless, under its spell. Even now, after the lapse of nearly four decades, the picture is as vivid as if it were but yesterday that I stood on the Texas Plains a soldier of twenty-two years, feeling my heart throbs quicken as that sunset scene is enacted before me.
We had thought ourselves the victims of a hard fate in that winter of terrible suffering; but these two women, Kansas girls, no older than Marjie, home-loving, sheltered, womanly, a maiden and a bride of only a few months—shall I ever forget them as they walked into my life on that March day in the sunset hour by the Sweetwater? Their meagre clothing was of thin flour sacks with buckskin moccasins and leggins. Their hair hung in braids Indian fashion. Their haggard faces and sad eyes told only the beginning of their story. They were coming now to freedom and protection. The shadow of Old Glory would be on them in a moment; a moment, and the life of an Indian captive would be but a horror-seared memory.
Then it was that Custer did a graceful thing. The subjection of the Cheyennes could have been accomplished by soldiery from Connecticut or South Carolina, but it was for the rescue of these two, for the protection of Kansas homes, that the Nineteenth Kansas Cavalry had volunteered. Stepping to our commander, Colonel Moore, Custer asked that the Kansas man should go forward to meet the captives. With a courtesy a queen might have coveted the Colonel received them—two half-naked, wretched, fate-buffeted women.
The officers nearest wrapped their great coats about them. Then, as the two, escorted by Colonel Moore and his officers next of rank, moved forward toward General Custer, who was standing apart on a little knoll waiting to receive them, a thousand men watching breathless with uncovered heads the while, the setting sun sent down athwart the valley its last rich rays of glory, the motionless air was full of an opalescent beauty; while softly, sweetly, like dream music never heard before in that lonely land of silence, the splendid Seventh Cavalry band was playing "Home Sweet Home."