Chapter 14: The Prisoners
GEORGE Armstrong Custer, a stout, mustached and long-haired lieutenant colonel of the American Seventh Cavalry Regiment, turned his mount on the road’s sharp bend and galloped towards the fort. He’d been woken up that night by a subordinate with news the high-ranking officer found so upsetting that he quickly donned his military outfit and rode out to the fort.
Sioux spies had infiltrated the mining settlements near the Black Hills east of the fort, and had reportedly killed a man and kidnapped a girl, leaving behind three of their own children in order to delay their pursuers. The children had stolen the dead man’s book as well.
“Where are they?” the lieutenant colonel asked the sentry posted before the prison house as he and his men, alongside an Indian scout of the Crow tribe, alighted from their mounts inside the heavily fortified compound.
“They’ve been incarcerated inside, sir,” the guard replied. “The general will arrive shortly.”
Custer nodded and walked in with the soldiers around him. The three Indian children were sitting on a rough table near the prison’s first cell room. There was a boy, a girl and a little girl. Those who caught and brought them to the prison house that night stood around with the soldiers guarding them. He recognized some of his cavalrymen amongst the men in this group and noticed the older Indian girl start as if she knew him.
“Oh, my God, it’s Custer,” Nora whispered beside Matthew in their native tongue. She looked like she always did when she’d seen a ghost.
“Who?”
“George Armstrong Custer! The George Armstrong Custer?” she clarified.
“Never heard of him.”
“I got to know him in History class,” she whispered. “He was killed by the Sioux Indians at the Battle of the Little Bighorn.”
“Why did they kill him?” Matthew asked her. “Was he alone?”
“He wasn’t alone,” Nora said. “All those with him died in that battle for some mistake he made. There’s even a monument to his name near Bighorn County.”
“Hey, you,” the subject called out to them in English. “Big Indian girl! Stand.”
Nora heard this and quickly obeyed. The lieutenant colonel studied her for a while and noted that her beauty was a waste on an Indian.
“Have you seen me before, my dear?” he authoritatively asked her.
“No,” she simply said in English.
“Then sit down and stop whispering.” Custer turned to the chief guard here. “Well, my dear Kevin, it appears you’ve got your hands full this night, eh?”
“Indian rascals, sir,” the man replied with a frown. “Their dead victim we’re yet to find, but the men are hoping their children would lead us to Sitting Bull, himself.”
“They kidnapped Tom’s daughter in our company, sir,” an old soldier, who had been instrumental in catching the Indian kids, reported.
“We assumed they were more than this,” the mentioned Tom added, and he spat out towards the children.
“Is that so?” Custer said, visibly impressed. “May we ask them, then?”
“Here goes,” Matthew whispered. He thought the lieutenant colonel a nice man, but appearances could be very deceiving.
“How many were you?” the American officer asked the children in English. The Indian with him interpreted this and Matthew discovered he hated this native for no identifiable reason. “Answer me.”
“We alone,” Stephanie buttressed with fright and the man calmed down with great effort.
“Your leaders are stubborn,” Custer told the Indian kids, drawing nearer. “Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse and—and Rain-in-your-face! You shall lead us to them tomorrow, and may God have mercy on your souls if we find Tom’s little girl already dead.”
“My Mariana,” the sorrowful Tom exclaimed. He would’ve suggested a sweeping night search to the lieutenant colonel if not for the dangerous hills.
“But we don’t know these people,” Matthew protested in his native language, wondering why this cursed adventure wouldn’t allow him to speak English as freely as he was hearing it. “We only came to take back Mary Ann.”
The Crow scout translated what the boy had just said and Custer glared at him. “You will know them when you face death tomorrow,” he snarled, showing his white fangs again and causing Stephanie to hug Matthew with all her might. “And where the hell do you think Mariana belongs? In your tepees?”
“I think he’s right, Matthew,” Nora whispered dejectedly when the lieutenant colonel turned away. “Those he just mentioned led the Sioux and other war tribes to the battle I just told you about. We might even be unconsciously aware of where they are right now. This is crazy.”
“Enter General Howe Terry,” an officer announced at the door and an impeccable gentleman dressed in a superior military uniform came into the room to the nod of the men there. Matthew rightly sensed that he ranked above every other soldier there.
“Why,” the general said with a smile, coming towards the Quentin kids. “They’re just children.”
“Right you are, sir,” Custer agreed with a little indifference. “Children pushed into the cold face of conflict by those who should know better.”
“They must be returned to the reservation tomorrow, Major Reno,” General Terry ordered a younger man who simply nodded. He turned to Custer. “Your regiment must scout ahead of us tomorrow, lieutenant colonel. General Crook has encountered fierce resistance and we must finish this war without him. Locate the main Sioux body along the Yellowstone and get south of it. We’ll face them from the north.”
“Yes, sir,” Custer agreed.
“We’ll waste no time in defeating them,” his senior continued. “The Bureau estimates there to be five or eight hundred of them. We shall discuss this tomorrow.”
Terry’s men saluted him as he left and Custer cynically turned to the young major ordered to return the children to the reservation. “We’ll have to bend the general’s directive a little, Reno,” he said, nodding in the direction of the Quentins. “They must lead us to the Sioux tomorrow! Our Crow scouts can tail them to find out where they go.”
“What if they refuse to help us, sir?” the officer asked.
“Then we’ll kill the youngest,” was the chilling reply. “Private Conrad will also be with the Crow scouts, and he still shoots well.”
A young handsome fellow wearing a military hat intentionally slanted to cover half his face shyly nodded as everyone turned round to glance at him. Nora immediately got hooked when she noticed him. “He’s beautiful,” she whispered, trying to make out what his hidden face looked like.
“He’ll kill me tomorrow,” Stephanie whispered, trying to understand why he should do that.
George Armstrong Custer turned on his heels and took his leave without another word, his entourage closely behind him. The handsome sniper remained, however, since he’d noticed the conspicuous beauty of the female Indian fugitive staring at him the way her siblings were not.
“This is what we get for all our efforts on our own soil,” Matthew despaired as he was herded into a barred cell with the others. Three guards took positions outside this cell and he noticed Mariana’s father amongst them.
“You can be assured they’ll never escape, Tom,” one of the guards told the man. “You can join us early in the morning for the search.”
“No, I’ll guard them with you,” Tom insisted, refusing to leave with the others. “I cannot go back home without Mariana.”
“At least, Mr. Sniper won’t disturb us this night,” Stephanie observed with optimism.
“I—I think I’ve found a new crush,” Nora whispered unconsciously to herself as she stared at this sniper and Matthew forgot the book he was glaring at, which was on Sergeant Kevin’s table across the room, and turned his attention to her.
“Can’t believe you just said that,” he threw at her.
“He’s just a crush,” she defended. “He’s not Leonard.”
“I can see that,?
?? Matthew helped her with, and walked over to the back of the cell to squat on the floor beside Stephanie, his chin on his hands. The man they called Tom was grinning at them, his gun pointed directly their way and his right index finger on its trigger. Matthew thought he saw him mouth the word ‘bam’ and shifted about arduously.
“I’m gonna kill you all if I don’t find my daughter,” the aggrieved fellow snapped. “I’m gonna kill you all.”
“Did you hear that?” Stephanie asked her brother. “Matthew, he means it.”
“We still have time,” Matthew assured her. “He can’t kill us in here. It must be against the law.” His eyes were once more drawn to the book and he realized that the man behind the desk had slept off. It wouldn’t be for long now!
Mr. Sniper was still watching Nora as she leaned on the iron bars. As long as the other soldiers didn’t fall asleep, he could never draw near to talk to her, and Matthew tried to see an opportunity in this eventual meeting since the guards were beginning to ward off their unwelcome but necessary night guest.
He saw none.
“Hi,” the soldier began, starting towards their cell, which was the only occupied one in the place. The fellow looked around at his sleeping comrades and stepped towards Nora.
“Hello,” Nora said in English, shifting her weight to the other leg and blushing through and through. Matthew turned to arrange a sleeping Stephanie on his thighs with disgust. Girls. They were so unpredictable!
“I like your hairdo,” Nora was told. “I’ve never seen an Indian blonde before.”
“Thanks.” She broadly smiled and brought her gaze down to his rifle. “Shoot good?”
“Yes, can you?”
“No?”
“Here, I’ll show you.” The sniper brought the weapon up to the bars before her. “This is the barrel. Bullets come out from its muzzle, and this is the trigger. You shoot from there.”
For a moment, Matthew thought he saw Nora tense all over and wondered whether she was going to attempt the impossible, but she did not and he felt so disappointed in her. Little did he know that she had other ideas up her sleeve.
“Very good. Good.” Nora laughed with Conrad, furrowing her forehead as if she was concentrating on what he was saying, and the sniper eased up a little, revealing his face a little more.
“What’s your name?” he asked Nora.
“Kora,” she replied, surprised at the name. Half of her new friend’s face was still underneath his hat and Matthew frowned at this. Who did he think he was? Clint Eastwood?
“Kora pleads for black book,” Nora began, smiling broadly and foolishly at the sharpshooter and pointing at Sergeant Kevin’s desk.
“They say your people stole it,” Conrad said, smiling back.
“No,” Nora denied. “Book from my father! Very precious to me.” Her eyes pleaded on her behalf. “Please help me get book back. It is taboo if I lose book.”
Conrad thought about this in the throes of infatuation he was experiencing near the Indian girl. He wondered if his charm was getting to her at all.
“Help me, please?” Kora continued. If only the sniper knew that she really liked him. He reminded her of Leonard.
“Very well,” Conrad decided, leaving the girl’s side to retrieve the book from Kevin’s desk.
“Not so fast,” a drowsy Tom yelled as the sniper turned to the barred cell with the black book in his hand. “I knew it from the start,” the man whispered. “You wanna help ‘em.”
“Far from that, soldier,” Conrad said. “I’m just giving them back their book. No harm in that, right?”
“Well . . . I guess not,” Tom agreed. “Since we’ve seen no dead persons, I think it’s theirs alright. But don’t you think it could be a book of Indian spells? An Apache medicine man I once knew had such a book, and he goes around with it.”
“Could be . . . ,” Conrad faltered, eyeing the book’s worn-out edges. He opened it and stared into it with a blank expression. “There’s no ancient writing on its pages, though. They haven’t been written on, yet.”
“Book for English,” Nora pointed out, feeling relief wash over her at what the sniper had just said. Her brother nodded. She knew he felt the same way.
“I don’t believe you,” Mr. Tom snapped, but those asleep remained so. “You want to deceive us.”
“I believe her, Tom,” Conrad told the older man, who appeared shaken by the mention of his name. “I think it’s not a spell book . . . yet.”
“There’s another way to make sure of that,” the man snarled, stumbling to his feet. “We must hold the little one accountable for all this.”
“No way,” Matthew objected in his native Indian. Nora frowned at him and he realized his mistake.
Tom was delighted by this. “See? I told ya! He’s against what I’ve just said, if you ask me,” he quipped.
“Very well,” Conrad agreed, stooping to unhook the cell’s keys from a slumbering guard.
The siblings inside the cell never considered this new development, and they looked on with horror as the sniper apologetically woke Stephanie and dragged her out of the cell, while Mariana’s father covered them with his rifle. Stephanie, herself, could not say a word due to blunt fear and her siblings felt so ashamed and helpless in the face of this unwanted incursion that they refused to look at her.
Tom took charge of the little girl and Nora received the book from the sniper without looking at him, either.
“I am sorry, Kora,” he apologized again.
“Not your fault,” she stammered, and she meant it.
The plan had been a complete failure.