Chapter 22

I had no doubts that the resolution of General Custer’s unwise expedition would end in disaster. Unfortunately, I was in no position to change the outcome even if I wanted to. The Indians had been playing against a stacked deck for a long time and in the flow of things, it was their time to make a point.

My scouts looked at me for orders when we heard the crackling of rifle fire off to the east carried by the chilly morning air. They were certain it was Custer giving the Indians a taste of what real fighting was all about. Of course, I knew the truth and I could discern the rapid fire of the Henrys and the Spencer rifles almost certainly in the hands of the hostiles. They were supplied by the same troublemakers that wanted to move things according to their own agenda out in Indian Territory. My suspicion was that the railroad people were dancing to the tune of political expedience in Washington, D.C. and they wanted to get rid of the tribes more than they wanted the buffalo gone to rob them of their way of life and their primary source of protein.

I just poured another cup of coffee from the kettle on the fire and they rested back on their haunches knowing that we would eventually get around to moving in the direction of the sounds of heavy combat on the open plains. I saw Reno’s men spread out and racing in that direction but I knew it was too little and too late to help Custer out of a trap of his own making.

The scouts and other men that clustered under my small command listened to me as I proposed a long journey up north to the lands of the far-away Queen. I wanted to search out some of the missing frontier women that were doomed to banishment in another country because of lack of governmental fortitude. Things at that time were not a bed of roses. We had invaded their country twice in our history and they had invaded ours the same number of times hoping for revenge for the loss of the dream of a “New France” right in the middle of our blossoming country. I had always considered the French our natural enemy and not the great ally that saved our bacon in the Revolution. The British were always the British and there was no changing their sense of superiority, but the French were so duplicitous that if they told you something, you could be certain just the opposite was the true fact of the matter. Even their religious folk were all sunshine and light on the outside and dark and devious underneath.

I felt a sense of shame that all those women were stolen right out from under our noses and figured it was high time to do something about it even if it meant losing a steady paycheck from the U.S. Army at a time when things were getting more dangerous with every passing day.

Our movement north was started in the dead of night and we spent the next few days traveling at night and holing up during the daylight hours. Once we were safely across the border, we could revert to a more orderly plan of movement and do a systematic search of the most likely places they would be holding our women captive and working as slave labor or in sexual service for the female-starved populace. Strangely, the Indians were most helpful in locating the victims of the trafficking in human suffering across invisible borders, but they might have been equally ineffective even if they were identified by a twenty foot wall. There were just too many places to sneak across and not enough mounted men to stop the illegal crossings.

We accidently ran into a small contingent of Royal Mounted Police or “Mounties” in their distinctive scarlet red jackets. They were nervous because my Indian scouts were looking particularly vicious that morning because ran across a sign of a bear family of at least four bears. They hated to find bear sign of that nature because it ran against their concept of bear individualism and love of solitude. I assured them it was because they were Canadian bears and did not behave with logical attitudes just like most of the folks north of the border. They didn’t see my humor in the proclamation and accepted it as something outside their sphere of interest.

I showed the sergeant in charge my letter of commission issued by the Department of the Army and countersigned by the Canadian outpost just outside of Detroit city. I could tell they really didn’t understand the logistics of my expedition, but seemed ready to look the other way if push came to shove. There were six of them and only the sergeant seemed to have any experience with dealing with the Indian tribes. I found that to be an exposure of significant weakness because the fleeing tribes were making major inroads in the Northern provinces and they were not too friendly to the civilian settlers mostly from Nova Scotia and European centers of civilization. I think the Indian tribes didn’t see any difference between these citizens of the crown and the fighters for American Independence in the south. It had been a decade of joy and celebration when the “white-eyes” fought a bloody war against each other in the 1860’s and virtually ignored their campaign to move the American Indian tribes to pacified reservation and out of the hair of the American civilian populace.

Now the time for revenge had flowered with horrific bloodletting in the valley of the Little Big Horn and things in the west would never be quite the same again.

I was personally glad to be shut of the Mounties because they were a typically officious bunch and their dislike of any influence from their neighboring country was so rampant that it didn’t take a genius to figure it out that was the best course of action under the circumstances.

We started to come across a number of women captives that were all slaves of the Indian tribes down on the plains in Indian Territory but only a few of them were second generation half breeds. They had no command of the English language and seemed resigned to their fate in the hands of the northern masters. I had to admit none of them were noteworthy in terms of either pleasant facial characteristics or shapely bodies, not that that was the criteria of our search.

Our first find was a former Bostonian school teacher with a sharp intellect and a sharp tongue despite her servitude to a French trader that made his profits on selling whiskey to the Indians. She was a clean-looking piece with long slender legs and naturally red hair marking her as being originally from Ireland. Her name was “Wet-Bottom” assigned to her for her inability to hold her water on a long trail. I didn’t blame her none, because those Sioux were harsh on their captives and seldom gave them an inch of comfort in moving from place to place.