'The only way I want the Rebs to have my problems is for them to have problems I give 'em,' Custer said, which made his brother laugh. 'I don't want any problems myself, and they're welcome to as many I don't have as they like.'
He waved back toward the two Gatling guns, which weren't having any trouble keeping up with his troopers. The men weren't going flat out, of course, and he'd taken pains to make sure the Gatlings had fine horses pulling them. Tom understood his gesture perfectly, saying, 'Yes, that's the kind of problem the Rebels should have, all right. Those guns mowed them down same as they did to the Kiowas.'
One of Custer's men let out a yell. The colonel's first glance was to the south-were they about to collide with the Confederates? He looked around for a rise on which to site the Gatling guns. What had worked once would probably work twice.
But he saw no Rebel horsemen, nor Indians, either. More troopers were calling out now, and some of them pointing north. Custer spied a courier riding hard for the regiment. He waved to the bugler, who blew Halt. The men reined in. A couple of them took advantage of the stop by getting out their tobacco pouches and rolling cigarettes.
Bringing his lathered horse to a halt, the courier thrust an envelope at Custer. 'Urgent, sir,' he said, saluting. 'From Brigadier General Pope, up at Fort Catton.'
Custer stared at him. 'Good God,' he said. 'That's all the way up in Nebraska.' The troopers close enough to have heard him started buzzing with speculation. He didn't blame them. Why the devil was General Pope reaching down to the border with the CSA?
Only one way to find out. Custer tore the envelope open and read the orders it contained. When he was done, he read them again. They still said the same thing, no matter how hard a time he had believing it. 'What's the news, Autie?' Tom Custer demanded impatiently.
'We- the whole regiment, including the Gatlings- are ordered to report to Fort Catton as expeditiously as possible.' Custer knew he sounded numb. He couldn't help it. In the slang of the War of Secession, this was a big thing, and no mistake. 'A regiment of volunteer cavalry will take over patrolling here in southern Kansas.'
' Fort Catton? On the Platte?' Tom sounded as bewildered as his brother felt. 'It's a couple of hundred miles from here, and a couple of hundred miles from any fighting, too. Why don't they send the volunteers there?'
'I don't know. It says we'll get further orders when we arrive.' Custer pointed to the courier. 'You there, Corporal- do you know anything more about this?'
'No, sir,' the horseman answered: a simple but uninformative reply.
'What in the blue blazes does General Pope want with me?' Custer muttered. He wondered if it dated back to his service on McClellan's staff during the War of Secession. Pope and Little Mac had been fierce rivals then. After Lee whipped Pope at Second Manassas, Lincoln had relegated Pope to fighting Indians in the West, and he'd been here ever since. Of course, a little later on Lee had whipped McClellan even worse up at Camp Hill. That relegated the whole war to the ash heap, so Pope was in a sense already vindicated.
'We'll have to find out when we get there, that's all,' Tom said. He worried less about Army politics than his brother did. If it was a legal order, he would obey it, and that was that.
And it was a legal order. No questions there. Custer muttered again, this time something Libbie would not have approved of. But Libbie was in Fort Dodge. Who could guess when he would have the pleasure of sleeping in the same bed with her again? He raised his voice and called out to his troopers: 'We are ordered to Fort Catton, men, and to leave the defense of the plains to others.' Through the surprised exclamations the horsemen sent up, he went on, 'We are ordered to reach the fort as quickly as we can. By the speed with which we arrive, I want to show General Pope what sort of men he is getting when he calls upon the Fifth Regiment.' The troopers raised a cheer and set out to the north with a will. Not all of them were disappointed to ride away from the dangers of combat.
Fort Catton lay by the confluence of the North Platte and South Platte, across the river from the Union Pacific tracks. From southern Kansas, Custer and his command reached it in a week. The pace told on the men-and even more on the horses. Had Custer had to go much farther, he could not have pressed so hard. But the surprise the sentries at the fort showed when he and the regiment arrived made up for a lot of weariness and discomfort.
He found himself ushered immediately into Brigadier General Pope's office. Pope was a handsome man of about sixty, who wore his hair long-though not so long as Custer did- and had a fine silver beard. 'I am altogether delighted to see you here so promptly, Colonel,' he said in a deep, rumbling voice; he'd had a reputation for bombast during the War of Secession, and hadn't changed since.
'Reporting as ordered, sir,' Custer said. 'The orders you sent me said I would receiver further information on coming here.'
'And so you shall,' Pope declared. 'Colonel, President Blaine has named me military governor of Utah Territory. The Mormons there are this far- this far, Colonel'-he held thumb and forefinger together so they almost touched-'from open revolt against the authority of the United States. They have cut off rail service through the Territory, and telegraphy as well. I am charged with restoring them to their allegiance to the USA by any means necessary, and I intend to do exactly that.'
'Yes, sir. I see, sir.' Custer hadn't heard anything about what the Mormons were up to, but he'd been in the field and then on a forced march. 'Trying to take advantage of our being busy elsewhere, are they? A coward's trick, sir, if you care anything for my opinion.'
'That is my precise view of the situation, Colonel,' Pope said, beaming. 'I aim to bring them to heel and to keep them from perpetrating any such outrage in the future. We've tolerated their evil sensuality far too long, and what is our reward? Disloyalty. Well, thanks to it, they have placed themselves beyond the pale. I am assured on highest authority that whatever I do will be accepted, as long as they are reduced to obedience.'
'Very good, sir.' Custer breathed a silent sigh of relief that arguments left over from the War of Secession were not what had brought him here. Now to find out what had: 'How does my regiment fit into your plan, sir?'
'I am assembling an army with which to occupy the Territory, especially the essential rail lines,' Pope said. Custer remembered his own recent thoughts on the importance of railroads. Pope went on, 'You and your men have already shown you can do good work, and, as regulars, are more reliable than volunteer units. And I have noted your success with the Gatling gun. I aim to overawe the Mormons, to demonstrate how futile any resistance to my might must be. Many of them, no doubt, have rifles. But they have no artillery to speak of, and they have no Gatlings. Once they see the destructive power of these weapons, they will be less inclined to try anything rash, and more likely to suffer if they do.'
'Yes, sir!' Custer said enthusiastically. He hesitated, then asked, 'And if they persist in their foolishness, sir? If they attempt to resist us by force of arms?'
'If they are so stupid, Colonel, then we wipe them off the face of the earth.' Pope sounded as if he looked forward to such a result. 'That's what we've done with the savages who presumed to challenge our expansion over the western plains, and that's what we'll do with the Mormons. If they resist us, they deserve destruction even more than the redskins, for they are not primitive by nature, but rather men of our own stock corrupted by a wicked, perverse, and licentious doctrine.'
'Yes, sir,' Custer said again. Having come out of McClellan's camp, with the natural bias of Little Mac's staff officers against the Young Napoleon's rivals, he had never imagined John Pope to be a man of such obvious and evident good sense. 'If they transgress against the moral code universally recognized as correct and legitimate, on their heads be it.'
'Well said.' Pope was studying Custer with some of the same surprise with which Custer had eyed him. After coughing once or twice, the brigadier general said, 'I hope you will forgive my saying this, Colonel, but I had not expected us to see so many things in so nearly the same light.'
'If the general will pardon me, sir, neither had I,' Custer answered. 'I suspect we are both bound by the prejudices of the past.' Impulsively, Custer thrust out his hand. Pope clasped it. Custer went on, 'The only enemies I recognize as such-the only enemies I have ever recognized as such-are the enemies of the United States of America.'
'I think we shall work very well together, then, for my attitude is the same in every particular,' Pope said. His smile, which showed a couple of missing teeth, was not altogether pleasant. 'Do you know who happens to be in Salt Lake City at the moment, Colonel?' When Custer shook his head, Pope took no small pleasure in enlightening him: 'Abraham Lincoln. I have it on good authority from the War Department.'
'Is he, by thunder?' Custer said. 'Well, there's the first good reason I've heard yet for letting the Mormons go
