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Kennedy replied. “And we know just what the hell you’d be doing at home right now with that pretty wife of yours you’ve kept tucked away back at Leavenworth!”
    A cruel gust of wind flung open the flaps of his tent, shoving Philip Sheridan back against his cot. Snuffing out the oil lamp with its icy breath. The solitary gust brought with it such a blast of cold that the general scurried beneath his blankets, pulling them just below his eyes.
    “Get a goddamned hold on yourself, Philip.”
    Shuddering with more than the cold of that icy gust, the commander of this Department of the Missouri glanced anxiously at the extinguished lamp. A ghostly wisp of purple smoke climbed out of the glass chimney in that pale light of predawn gray seeping into his tent.
    Outside in the snow and darkness the regimental band began to pump out that Seventh Cavalry favorite, “The Girl I Left Behind Me”:
    The hour was sad I left the maid,
    A ling’ring farewell taking;
    Her sighs and tears my steps delay’d—
    I thought her heart was breaking.
     
    In hurried words her name I bless’d;
    I breathed the vows that bind me,
    And to my heart in anguish press’d
    The girl I left behind me.
     
    Once more Sheridan’s mind replayed those orders he had written for Custer like some broken telegraph key:
    You are hereby ordered to proceed south, in the direction of the Antelope Hills, thence toward the Washita River, the supposed winter seat of the hostile tribes; to destroy their villages and ponies; to kill or hang all warriors, and bring back all women and children.
     
    It was the coldest time of day on the prairie, now when night was undecided in yielding it’s place—harsher still with the cruel battering winter gave the defenseless plains each year.
    Sheridan closed his eyes, shut out the gray light awakening the frozen world outside. The band continued to play.
    Full many a name our banners bore
    Of former deeds of daring,
    But they were of the days of yore
    In which we had no sharing.
     
    But now our laurel freshly won
    With the old ones shall entwin’d be;
    Still worthy of our sires each son,
    Sweet girl I left behind me.
     
    A somber Black Kettle returned to his Washita camp two days after the great snow had buried the land.
    The sun finally broke through the gloomy overcast and shone over his little village. The news their chief brought from General Hazen at Fort Cobb was nowhere near as bright and warm.
    “Black Kettle, I wish I could find something to say or doto persuade you to stay here at the fort,” Hazen had told him. “I’m sticking my neck out to offer you personal sanctuary.”
    Silent for a long time, a bewildered Black Kettle finally said, “Why would I need sanctuary, Soldier Chief, if my people are camped far south of the Arkansas River, deep in Indian Territory where we are supposed to live according to the very words of the talking paper I put my mark to for the white Grandfather back east beyond the rivers?”
    Again and again Hazen had attempted to tell this old Cheyenne that because of the young warriors raiding into the Kansas settlements, his tribe might still be in danger of some wandering patrol of mounted cavalry. Problem was, how to warn Black Kettle without directly informing him of Sheridan’s winter campaign plans?
    Seemed nothing got through to Black Kettle.
    The aged Cheyenne nodded sadly. “It would be a dishonorable thing to stay here at your fort for my own personal safety. Black Kettle belongs with his people.”
    Those words were the last he had spoken before beginning his cold, melancholy return trip northwest along the Washita’s icy course.
    “What?” Medicine Woman Later’s voice rose shrill across the camp as she trundled after her husband, following him to their lodge, where she would build up the fire and set some meat to boil.
    “Keep your voice down, woman!” he grumped as she shuffled along beside him through the snowdrifts that had gathered in crusty, wind-sculpted