weight of the whole British army by themselves.
But no-they were breaking away from combat, too, falling back to screen the retreat of the Regulars. That was humiliating. Even more humiliating was that the British cavalry showed no great inclination to pursue. Roosevelt 's Unauthorized Regiment had given the limeys all they wanted and then some.
The boy colonel rode over to Custer. 'What now, sir?' he asked, as if his superior hadn't just finished feeding his own prized regiment into the meat grinder.
What now, indeed? Custer wondered. Without Tom, he hardly cared. But he had to answer. He knew he had to answer. 'We fall back on our infantry and await the British attack as the enemy awaited ours,' he mumbled. It was a poor solution-even with Welton's infantry, he didn't have the manpower General Gordon did. But, battered and dazed as he was, it was the only solution he could find.
'Yes, sir!' Roosevelt, by his tone, thought it brilliant. 'Don't worry, sir-we'll lick 'em yet.'
'Come on, men!' Theodore Roosevelt shouted. 'We've got to keep the damn limeys off the Regulars' backs a little bit longer.'
First Lieutenant Karl Jobst gave him a reproachful look. 'Sir, I wish you would have found a politer way to put that.'
'Why?' Roosevelt said. 'It's the truth, isn't it? Right now, General Custer's men couldn't fight off a Sunday- school class, let alone the British army. You know it, I know it, and Custer knows it, too.'
His adjutant still looked unhappy. 'They fought General Gordon's men most valiantly-smashed the lancers all to bits and hurt the infantry, too.'
'That they did. They charged home as bravely as you'd like,' Roosevelt said. 'So did the six hundred at Balaclava. They paid for it, and so did the Regulars. Custer's brother's down, I heard, among too many others. We won our part of the fight. Unfortunately, the result is measured by the whole, which here proves less than the sum of its parts.'
Off from behind him came a brief crackle of rifle fire. The British cavalry, confident he would not turn on it with the whole Unauthorized Regiment, was dogging the tracks of the U.S. force, keeping an eye on it as it retreated. Every so often, British scouts and his own rear guard would exchange pleasantries.
'Sir, do you happen to know where Colonel Welton has positioned the Seventh Infantry?' This was not the first time Jobst had asked the question. Though normally a cold-blooded fellow, he could not keep concern from his voice. The Seventh Infantry was his regiment, Henry Welton his commander, to whose rule he would return when Roosevelt went back to civilian life.
Now, though, Roosevelt had to shake his head. 'I wish I did, but General Custer has not seen fit to entrust that information to me.' He rode on for another few strides, then asked a question of his own: 'You being a professional at this business, Lieutenant, what is your view of Custer the soldier?'
'I told you before he came up to Montana, sir, that he had a name for impetuous boldness.' Karl Jobst started to say something else, stopped, and then began again: 'The reputation appears to be well founded.'
After a while, Roosevelt realized that was all he'd get from his adjutant. If Jobst said anything more- something on the order of, He took a perfectly good regiment and chopped it into catmeat, for instance-and word of that got back to Custer, it would blight the lieutenant's career. No one could possibly doubt Custer's courage. He'd done everything he could, going straight into the British. But that hadn't been enough, and hadn't come close to being enough, to turn them back.
Roosevelt sighed. 'Well, in his shoes I might well have done the same thing. With the enemy in front of him, he could think of nothing but driving them off.'
'I do believe, sir, that you might have handled the engagement with rather more finesse,' Jobst said. Roosevelt needed a moment to realize that was praise, and another moment to realize how much. If a Regular Army officer felt a colonel of Volunteers could have done better than a Regular brevet brigadier general, that spoke well of the Volunteer indeed-and not so well of George Custer.
A few minutes later, Custer rode back to confer with Roosevelt. Even if Custer had been overeager in the attack, even if the loss of his brother left his face raw with anguish, he was handling the retreat about as well as any man could. He kept a firm rein on both his unit and the Unauthorized Regiment, and made sure he found out whatever Roosevelt 's riders could learn about British dispositions and intentions.
Roosevelt found a moment to say, 'I'm sorry about your loss, sir.'
'Yes, yes,' Custer said impatiently-he was surely doing his poor best not to think of that. 'Now we have to see to it that our country's loss does not include the whole of this force.'
'Yes, sir. I wish I could tell you more,' Roosevelt said. 'Their cavalry screen keeps us from finding out as much as we'd like, just as ours does to them.'
Custer gnawed at his mustache. 'I wish I knew how far ahead of their infantry the cavalry's got. Not far enough to suit me, unless I miss my guess. Infantry pushed hard can almost keep up with horsemen. Once we've joined with Colonel Welton, odds are we shan't have to wait long before they attack us.'
'You don't think they'll simply ignore us and go on down toward the mines around Helena, which I presume to be their goal?' Roosevelt said.
'Not a chance of it, Colonel.' Custer spoke with decision. 'We shall be far too large a force for them to dare to leave us in their flank and rear. We could and would work all sorts of mischief on them.'
'That does make sense,' Roosevelt said. 'And, from what I've heard, their General Gordon is a headlong brawler, as I believe I've mentioned once before.'
'Yes, yes,' Custer said again. Roosevelt bristled at the tone, even if Custer was not, could not be, quite himself. Had the general commanding U.S. forces in Montana Territory done so well, he could afford to ignore what anyone told him? The answer was only too obvious. Had the general done as well as all that, he and Roosevelt would have been riding north, not south. But then Custer showed he'd heard after all: 'If he's so very headlong, maybe he'll run onto our sword, the way bulls do in the arena.'
'I do hope so, sir,' Roosevelt said. Custer's response let him ask the question in whose answer both he and Karl Jobst were keenly interested: 'Where has Colonel Welton set up the position that awaits us?'
'Not far from the Teton River,' Custer replied, which told Roosevelt less than he would have liked but more than he'd already known. The brevet brigadier general went on, 'He has orders to pick the best possible defensive position. We should be in it, wherever it proves to be, by nightfall.'
There was information worth having. 'If we are, we'll fight in the morning,' Roosevelt said.
'I expect we will,' Custer said. He hesitated, gnawing at his mustache once more. That was unlike him. After a moment, he went on, 'I am thinking of dismounting my men and having them fight on foot. That would leave your regiment, Colonel, as our sole force on horseback. I shall rely on you to keep the British cavalry off our flanks.'
'We'll do it, sir,' Roosevelt promised. 'That's the sort of job Winchesters were made for.' The Unauthorized Regiment would never have got close enough to the British infantry to engage them with the repeating rifles, whose effective range was not great. With Springfields, Custer and the Fifth Cavalry had slugged it out with the foot soldiers in red-and had come out on the short end of the fight.
'I shall rely on you, as I did in the engagement farther north,' Custer said. Roosevelt didn't mention that his part of the force had driven back their opponents. Custer already knew that. He nodded absently to Roosevelt and then trotted south, to the regiment he had long commanded.
No sooner had he gone than Karl Jobst rode over to Roosevelt, a questioning look on his face. Roosevelt repeated what Custer had said. Jobst brightened. 'Colonel Welton knows how to read a field as well as anyone I've ever seen,' he said. 'He'll pick the best place he can find for us to make a stand.'
'Good,' Roosevelt said. A moment later, he wished his adjutant had put it a different way. Making a stand implied that defeat carried disaster in its wake. That was probably true here, but he would sooner not have been reminded of it.
As Brigadier General Custer had said, they met Henry Welton about four that afternoon. And, as Lieutenant Jobst had said, Welton did indeed know how to read a field. He'd chosen to defend the forward slope of a low, gentle rise. No one could possibly approach without being seen and fired upon from as far out as rifles could reach.
And not only had he picked a good position, he'd improved on what nature provided. His men had dug three long trenches and heaped up in front of them the dirt they'd shoveled out. The trenches and breastworks didn't look like much from the front. Roosevelt wondered if they were worth the labour they'd cost.
So did Custer, who was arguing with Welton as Roosevelt rode up. Welton looked stubborn. 'Sir,' he was
