Yet it was not a grand occasion when seen against the vasty bleakness of the country, as the forward troops mounted the benchland above the valley in a thin string of blue. I rode at the end of the column with the pack mules and after us come only a little rear guard. Custer had dropped off to say goodbye to Terry, leaning across his mare to shake hands with him and Gibbon, and just as I passed at the foot of where they was, I heard the latter say: “Now, don’t be too greedy, Custer. Leave some Indians for us.” This was spoken half in jest, I thought.
But Custer replied in sober face.
“Yes,” he says, “yes,” salutes, and gallops towards the head of his column, which already was dipping over the farthermost bluff. When I got to the high land, I looked back and seen them officers, small as flies, a-riding to where the Far West was tethered to the shore small as a floating leaf.
Well sir, the pack train started giving trouble when we was hardly out of camp. I was, by the way, still in my peculiar situation as to job, but now had more or less established myself, so far as the others went, as belonging to the little team of civilian packers. Looking at the way the supplies was lashed to the animals, you would have thought a woman had tied them on. Four or five packs fell off before we got twenty minutes out of camp. Now when you realize these mules was carrying ammunition that the Seventh was supposed to use against the Sioux, as well as the rations for a fifteen-day campaign, why, it was a serious deficiency, so Custer sent back a lieutenant to get things in order and in addition to the civilians there was a detachment of troopers to help out, but were the truth known, that pack train was never worth a damn from the minute it started.
The Rosebud ain’t much of a waterway in quantity, being three or four foot wide and three inches deep throughout much of its length and even less in spots, but where we camped that evening was a deeper pool or two and some of the troopers went fishing in order to get a little change from the hardtack and bacon which was all that was provided in the way of food for the next two weeks. Hunting was not allowed from here on, for the discharge of a firearm can be heard great distances in wild country. But now that his favorite sport become so popular, Lavender of course abandoned its practice.
That’s another example of the strange style of that man, as I have mentioned, and he was not getting any more normal as we proceeded further towards the Sioux. I’ll tell you how he bedded down at night: we had left all tenting behind, traveling light as we was now, and the soldiers slept upon the ground, maybe scratching out little hollows for their hips. Luckily the weather stayed dry.
But Lavender, he made himself an Indian wickiup, which is a bush or a couple branches stuck into the ground and your blankets throwed over the top, creating a little hut therein. Now since it wasn’t raining he obviously done that for privacy; nor did he invite me to share it with him though I was what at least passed for his only friend.
Wandering about that evening I spotted his establishment, off by itself. He had left the closure open at the top, and as I come up smoke was rising from inside. I thought he was cooking his bacon underneath, and thought: damn me, but he is right queer, for there was hardly room in that type of dwelling for a person to sit upright. But shortly I smelled tobacco rather than pork and figured: oh, he is just taking a smoke-still, I wouldn’t burst in upon him, but rather I stamped my foot and called out, and the blanket slowly opens to reveal his dark face a-shining sweaty, for it was warm enough even outside a wickiup.
Lavender was holding an Indian pipe with two-three foot of wood stem and a red stone bowl, and he looks dully at me and never says a word.
Now I took this lack of hospitality amiss, for I knowed him from away back and had lived with the Indians myself and felt just as strange about returning with an army sent to punish them. But he was in a more compromising position than me; I had joined up under false pretenses, but he was getting paid. So for his conscience’ sake he could play at Indian rituals, but in practical effect all that mattered was his membership in this command a-tracking down his former friends.… That’s what it seemed like to me at the time, but I guess you are smart enough to understand, as I then did not, that when I looked at Lavender, I was seeing myself.
Yet right now I was annoyed, and says: “Well, if you are busy-” and starts to leave, but his eyes cleared and he says: “Come on and set.” So I did and we exchanged that Sioux pipe now and again, and at length I says: “I guess it wouldn’t do no good for us to run off.”
“No,” he says, “no, it would not.”
I blew out some spicy smoke. He had got the real Indian mix somewhere, maybe from the Ree scouts.
“Look, Lavender,” I says. “I asked you once and you never really answered: Why did you come on this campaign?”
He says: “I wanted to see this country again before I die.”
I appreciated what he meant, though not everybody would have when they saw the cactus and sage and bullberry bushes, along with a few cottonwoods and box elders, which constituted the growth of that district, and the ravines and cutbanks of the terrain.
“Say,” I asks, “did you ever find any descendants of that kin of yours who went with Lewis and Clark?”
“Not a one,” Lavender says, “that I could verify, though some Sioux is right dark of skin. But I didn’t look much, for the thing is, when you join the Indians, you got all the relatives you need. There might be people in the band what ain’t overly fond of one another, but they save their real spite for the enemy.”
Lavender had throwed back the blanket when I set with him, though that bush was still arched over us, and a tribe of mosquitoes was also sharing the wickiup. I had took several bites already.
“It is otherwise with this here bunch,” I says.
“Oh my yes,” says Lavender. “The way they hate General Custer, and they ain’t nobody thinks well of Major Reno, who was slapped once in the face by Captain Benteen at the officer club at Lincoln. And Captain Benteen wrote the newspapers a bad letter on what happened at the Washita. And General Custer was a-fixing to horsewhip him for it, but the Captain put his hand onto his pistol and he say: ‘Come ahead,’ but the General decided not to.”
Lavender shook his head. “I’ll tell you this about Captain Benteen. Did you ever know he come from a Southern family what was Rebel in the War and called him a traitor when he joined the Union Army? His old Daddy put a curse upon his head, hoping he’d be killed. So the Captain worked it that his Daddy was arrested and throwed into a Federal prison till the War was over. Think of it!”
“The Cheyenne killed my Pa, but took me for a son.” I don’t know why I said that.
“I never knowed my Daddy,” says Lavender. “My master sold him to another before I was born.”
Then I got to telling him about Olga and Gus on the one hand, and Sunshine and Morning Star on the other, and as long as I had started, related the rest of it, Denver and Wild Bill and Amelia and, yes, the Washita.
“Well,” says Lavender when I had finished, “I never knowed being white was so complicated.”
“I don’t reckon it is for everybody,” I allowed. “Take General Custer. He not only knows who his family is, but he takes most of them along when he goes to war.”
“That’s right,” Lavender says, and he looks uneasy.
I says: “You like him don’t you.”
His pipe had went out and he scraped the ash from it and took his time. Finally he says: “He has always treated me well, Jack. That’s all I got to go on. You got to remember he is a soldier.”