that.' He tilted his head back and blew a ragged smoke ring.
1 October
Near New Cumberland, Pennsylvania
Long blond hair streaming out behind him, Captain George Armstrong Custer came galloping from General McClellan's headquarters to those of General Burnside, who commanded the Army of the Potomac 's left wing. Brass Napoleons roared. Their cannonballs tore holes in the ranks of the advancing Confederates. Up ahead — up not far enough ahead-rifle muskets barked. Black-powder smoke drifted in choking clouds, smelling of fireworks.
Custer jerked his mount to an abrupt halt by Burnside's tent. An orderly came over and held the horse's head. Custer sprang down. He ran to General Burnside, who was standing outside the tent, a telescope in his hands. 'Damn it, General,' Custer said, running a hand through his hair, 'I've lost my hat.'
Burnside shielded his own bald crown from the elements with a tall hat that gave him something of the look of a policeman. The whiskers sprouting luxuriantly on his cheeks and upper lip made his round face rounder yet. 'I trust the nation will survive,' he said. 'What word from General McClellan?'
'Sir, you are to hold your position at all hazard,' Custer answered.
'I shall do everything in my power.' Burnside's frown deepened the dimple in his clean-shaven chin. 'They are pounding us hard, though.' As if to underscore his words, a Rebel shell screamed down and exploded perhaps fifty yards from the tent. Custer's horse let out a frightened whinny. It tried to rear. The orderly wouldn't let it.
'You must hold,' Custer repeated. 'If they get around your left, we are ruined. Also, General McClellan said, you must not fall back any farther. If Jackson 's corps is able to bring its artillery to bear on the bridge over the Susquehanna, our line of retreat is cut off.'
'General McClellan should have considered that before offering battle on this side of the river,' Burnside said tartly.
'This is where we met the Confederates-this is where we fight them.' For Custer, that was an axiom of nature.
Burnside stared gloomily at the sun. Through the clotted smoke, it looked red as blood. 'Two hours till nightfall, perhaps a bit more,' he said, and frowned again. 'Very well, Captain. I have my orders, and shall essay to carry them out. You may assure General McClellan on that point.'
'I'll do it.' Custer started back toward his horse. He was about to mount when the drumroll of musketry from the battle front suddenly got louder, fiercer. 'Wait,' he told the orderly, his voice sharp.
Burnside was peering through the shiny, brass-cased telescope. Custer had no such aid, but did not need one, either. Men in blue were streaming back toward him. Now and then, one of them turned to fire his Springfield muzzle-loader at the foe, but most seemed intent on nothing more than getting away from the fight as fast as they could.
'What in blazes has gone wrong now?' Custer demanded of the smoky air. The whole campaign had been a nightmare, with Lee getting up through Maryland and into Pennsylvania almost before McClellan learned he'd left Virginia. Never a fast mover, Little Mac had followed as best he could-and been brought to battle here, in this less than auspicious place.
Custer vaulted lightly into the saddle. He set spurs to his horse and sent it at a fast trot, not back toward General McClellan's headquarters, but in the direction from which the retreating Federals were coming.
'Go back, sir,' one of them called to him. 'Ain't no more we can do here. D. H. Hill's men are over Yellow Breeches Creek and on the Susquehanna. They're a-rollin' us up.'
'Then we have to drive the sons of bitches back,' Custer snarled. Libbie Bacon, his fiancee, wanted him to stop swearing. He hadn't been able to make himself do it, much as he loved Libbie.
He rode forward again. A few men cheered and followed. More, though, kept right on back toward that one precious bridge. Craack! A Minie ball zipped past him. Another cut his sleeve, so that he wondered if someone had tugged at his arm till he glanced down and saw the tear.
He yanked an Army Colt out of his holster and blazed away at the Rebels till the six-shooter was empty. He wore another, piratically thrust into the top of one of the big, floppy boots he'd taken from a Confederate cavalryman he'd captured. He emptied that pistol, too, then yanked out his saber.
The sun sparkled from the glittering steel edge. Custer urged his mount up into a caracole. He felt the perfect picture of martial splendor.
'Get out of here, you damn fool!' a grimy-faced corporal yelled.
'You reckon you're gonna slaughter all them Rebs with your straight razor there?' He spat on the ground and trudged north toward the bridge.
Suddenly, Custer realized how alone he was. The horse dropped down onto all fours. Custer spurred it through and then past the soldiers from Burnside's beaten left. Behind him, Rebel yells rose like panther screams.
Rebel artillery thundered. Splashes in the Susquehanna said the guns were reaching for that one bridge offering escape from the gray-clad, barefoot fiends of the Army of Northern Virginia. Screams from the bridge said some of the guns were finding it.
As he had in front of Burnside's tent, so Custer leaped down from his horse in front of General McClellan's. Like General Burnside, Little Mac, so hopefully called the Young Napoleon, stood outside. He pointed south, toward Burnside's position. 'I hear the fighting building there, Captain,' he said. 'I trust you conveyed to General Burnside the absolute necessity of holding in place.'
'Sir, General Burnside listened, but Stonewall Jackson didn't,' Custer answered. 'The Rebs are on the river on this side of Yellow Breeches Creek, and I'm damned if I see anything between there and the bridge to stop 'em.'
McClellan's handsome face went pale, even with that ruddy sunlight shining down on it. 'It is the end, then,' he said in a voice like ashes. His shoulders sagged, as if he had taken a wound. 'The end, I tell you, Captain. With the Army of the Potomac whipped, who can hope to preserve the Republic intact?'
'We're not whipped yet, sir.' Even in Custer's own ears, the brave words sounded hollow, impossible to believe.
'Fire!' somebody shouted off in the distance. 'Jesus God, the bridge is on fire!'
'The end,' McClellan said again. 'The Rebs have outnumbered us from the start.' Custer wondered about that, but held his peace. McClellan went on, 'We are ruined, ruined, I tell you. After this defeat, England and France will surely recognize the Southern Confederacy, as they have been champing at the bit to do. Not even that buffoon in the White House, the jackass who dragged us into this war, will be able to pretend any longer that it has any hope of coming to a successful resolution.'
Custer, a staunch Democrat, had if anything even less use for Abraham Lincoln than did McClellan. 'If that damned Black Republican hadn't been elected, we would still be one nation, and at peace,' he said.
'After the disaster his party has been to the Union, it will be a long time before another Republican is chosen to fill the White House,' McClellan said. 'I take some consolation in that-not much, I assure you, Captain, but some nonetheless.'
Another of McClellan's officers galloped up from the northwest. 'Sir,' he cried, not even dismounting, 'Longstreet is pounding our right with everything he has, and General Hooker-General Hooker, sir, he won't do anything. It's as if he's stunned by a near miss from a shell, sir, but he's not hurt.'
McClellan's mouth twisted. 'In his California days, Joe Hooker was the best poker player the world ever knew,' he said heavily, 'till it came time to raise fifty dollars. Then he'd flunk. If he flunks now-'
As it had on the left, a great burst of musketry and cannon fire told its own story. 'General McClellan, sir, he just flunked,' Custer said. He reloaded his pistols-not a fast business, with ball and loose powder and percussion cap for each chamber of the cylinder. After one Colt was charged, he lost patience. 'By your leave, General, I'm going to the fighting before it comes to me.'
'Go ahead, Captain,' McClellan said. His posture said he thought all was lost. Custer thought all was lost, too. He didn't care. Fighting in a lost cause was even more splendid and glorious than battle where victory was assured. He sprang onto his horse and rode toward the loudest gunfire.
He looked back once. McClellan was staring after him, shaking his head.
