that his fault?
One of the newspapermen said, 'General, isn't it a fact that the Unauthorized Regiment performed better against the limeys than the Fifth Cavalry did?'
'Like hell it's a fact,' Custer snarled, 'and if Roosevelt has been saying that, he's a damned glory-sniffing liar.'
'No, General, I never heard it from him,' the reporter said hastily. 'But didn't the Unauthorized Regiment fight Gordon's cavalry to a draw and then chase the redcoats halfway back to Canada after the what-do-you-call-'ems- the Gatling guns-chewed them to smithereens?'
'The Unauthorized Regiment,' Custer said, as if lecturing on strategy at West Point to a class of idiots, 'engaged the enemy forces pursuant to my orders. Had I placed them in the center and us on the wings, we would have done as well against the British cavalry, but they would have fared far worse against Gordon's foot. Since my men were fighting dismounted at the battle by the Teton, they were not so well positioned to pursue as were the Volunteers.'
All that was true, too. Had Theodore Roosevelt been sitting by the campfire, Custer was sure he would have agreed with every word. (Custer was also sure he would have tried to aggrandize himself one way or another, though; that trait being acutely developed in him, he had an eagle eye for spotting it in others.) But reporters were not after agreement. Agreement didn't sell papers. Argument did. 'What about the-Gatterling? — guns, General?' another news hawk asked.
'Gatling guns,' Custer corrected. 'Gatling.' Idiots indeed, he thought. 'Well, what about them? Even if we hadn't had a one of them, Gordon's men hadn't a prayer of carrying our position.'
He thought that was true, too, but he wasn't quite so sure. Bold as he was, he wouldn't have cared to mount an infantry assault on men in earthworks. Even in the War of Secession, that sort of business had proved hideously expensive. With the right troops, though-good American boys, not those limey bastards-he might have had a go of it.
Charlie Worth said, 'I hear tell Roosevelt says those Gatling guns saved your bacon in that fight-chewed the Englishmen up and spit 'em out again.'
'This being a free country, Mr. Roosevelt may say whatever he likes,' Custer answered. 'If you prefer the word of a man who became a soldier only because he was rich enough to buy himself a regiment over that of one who has devoted his entire life to the service of his country, you may do so, but I daresay no one will take you seriously afterwards.'
That flattened young Worth, who gulped his coffee down in a hurry so he could get a big tin cup in front of his red face. But one of the other men asked, 'Colonel Welton, down at Fort Benton, tells it pretty much the same way, doesn't he?'
'I haven't heard what Henry has to say,' Custer replied. 'I will note that, while I and many of the officers of my regiment were promoted for our work by the Teton, Colonel Welton remains a colonel. In this you have the War Department's judgment on the value of our respective contributions.'
The reporters scrawled furiously. One of them muttered, 'When the devil are we going to be able to get to a telegraph clicker?'
Charlie Worth came up with a question no one else had asked Custer: 'Andrew Jackson licked the British after the War of 1812 was over, and he ended up president of the United States. Now that you've done the same thing in this war, would you like to end up the same way?'
'Why, Charlie, the notion never entered my mind till this moment,' Custer answered truthfully. Also truthfully, he went on, 'Now that it is in there, I have to tell you I like it.' The reporters laughed.
'You're a Democrat, aren't you, General?' somebody asked.
'What sensible man isn't?' Custer returned. 'Did I hear rightly that Lincoln has shown the Republicans' true colors by going Communard?' Several reporters assured him he had heard rightly. Sadly, he shook his head. 'If Blaine weren't in the White House, General Pope could have done the country a good turn by hanging old Honest Abe. He'll cause more trouble now, mark my words.'
'Lots of Democratic politicians who could run for president,' Charlie Worth observed. 'We don't have so many soldiers who know how to win battles. What if they want you to stay in the Army?'
'I shall serve the United States wherever that service can lend the greatest aid,' Custer declared, his tone grandiloquent and, on the whole, sincere.
Winter was on the way to Sonora and Chihuahua. That was obvious to Jeb Stuart: instead of being hotter than blazes, the weather was all the way down to warm. As for Stuart himself, he was on the way to El Paso, which suited him down to the ground.
He turned in the saddle and spoke to Major Horatio Sellers:
'Won't it be fine, getting to spend Christmas somewhere near the edge of civilization?'
'Yes, sir,' his aide-de-camp agreed enthusiastically. 'If El Paso isn't civilization, at least it's on the railroad line to it.'
'I like that,' Stuart said. 'It's true both literally and metaphorically. We are going to have to build a line through to the Pacific just as fast as we can scrape together the capital. Until we have one, and the feeder lines down to the city of Chihuahua and to Hermosillo, we aren't going to be able to control these provinces.. Territories… states… whatever we finally call them.'
'That's true, sir.' Major Sellers nodded. 'I expect we'll end up with a Pacific Squadron in the Navy, too, and we'll also need the railroad to keep that supplied.' He chuckled. 'The damnyankees will love having us for neighbors, too; you can just bet on it.'
'One of the reasons they fought this war was to keep our frontier from touching the Pacific; no doubt about that,' Stuart said. 'But they lost, and now they'll have to make the best of it.'
'Serves them right for starting the fight in the first place,' Sellers said. 'You ask me, sir, President Longstreet ought to squeeze an indemnity out of them that would make their eyes pop. Paying for a railroad would be a lot easier then.'
'Old Pete knows what he's doing-you can doubt a lot of things, Major, but you'd better think twice before you doubt that,' Stuart said. 'My guess is, he reckons the United States hate us plenty now that we've licked them twice. Piling on an indemnity would be adding insult to injury: that's how he'd see it, I think.'
Before Major Sellers could reply, a commotion to the rear made him and Stuart both look over their shoulders. Stuart soon heard men calling out his name. He waved his hat and shouted to show where he was.
A grimy, sweaty rider on a lathered horse came pounding up to him. 'General Stuart, sir,' the Confederate trooper gasped, 'everything's gone to hell back in Cananea, sir.'
'Oh, Lord.' Stuart did not look at his aide-de-camp. Horatio Sellers had been sure nothing good would come of cooperating with the Apaches, and maybe he'd turned out to be right after all. 'I left a troop of cavalry behind there to make sure the Mexicans and the Indians didn't go at each other.'
'Yes, sir,' the trooper said. 'Wasn't enough, sir. You remember that Yahnozha who ran away with the Mexican gal, and she says he drug her off and he says she was beggin' for more?'
'Oh, yes. I remember,' Stuart said, a sinking feeling in his mid-section. 'What about him? Did he steal another woman?'
'No, sir,' the soldier answered. 'The gal's father and her brother, they was layin' for him, and one of 'em put about three bullets in his belly, and the other one, he put two, three more in his head. Then they cut off his privates, sir, and left 'cm sittin' by the carcass for the Indians to find. That started the fightin', and it's been a regular war ever since-you'd best believe it has.'
'Christ,' Stuart said, an exclamation that had nothing to do with the approach of the holiday season. 'What the devil have you men been doing to put the lid back on the place?'
The look the trooper sent his way reminded him how insubordinate so many Confederate soldiers had been during the War of Secession. They were men accustomed to speaking their minds regardless of the niceties of rank. This cavalryman was stamped from the same mold. He said, 'What we've been doing, sir, is trying to keep from gcttin' ourselves killed. Hell of a lot more Apaches down by Cananea than we-uns, an' every one of 'em totes a Tredegar just like the ones we've got. Hell of a lot more Mexicans than we-uns, too. They got every damn kind of rifle you ever did see. We try and get between the greasers and the redskins, only means we get shot at from both sides at once.'
