wanted. In Custer's eyes, that was what it was.
'Just so. Well, we've both known lo these many years the man is a scoundrel, so why should one more proof of it surprise us?' Pope started to say something else, then caught himself. 'I remember what I wanted to tell you, Colonel. The War Department is letting us have another half-dozen Gatling guns. As you've had experience with the weapons, I'm assigning them to your regiment.'
'Yes, sir,' Custer said. 'Lord only knows what I'll do with eight of the contraptions, but I will say I can't think of anything handier than one of them for making a pack of rioters wish they'd never been born.'
'Just so,' Pope repeated. 'Once we start hanging Mormon big shots, we may have those rioters. I hope not. If we should, however, I'll expect you and these fancy coffee mills to play a major part in putting them down.'
'Sir, it will be a pleasure,' Custer said.
C happo came up to General Stuart. Geronimo's young son politely waited to be noticed, then said, 'Our first men come in. The bluecoats are not far behind them. They push hard; they think they have only us to fight. In another hour, maybe two, you will show them they are wrong.'
'Yes.' Stuart rubbed his hands together. He waited for the action to begin as eagerly as a bridegroom for the night of his wedding day. 'You're sure about the time?'
'How can a man be sure?' Chappo asked reasonably. 'If the bluecoats do not scent a trap, though, that is when they will be here.'
'Good enough.' Stuart turned to his trumpeter. 'Blow Prepare for Battle.'
As the martial notes rang out, Chappo said, 'For white men, you hide yourselves well. You should fool other white men.' With the precision of youth, he revised that: 'You should fool them long enough.'
Jeb Stuart reminded himself the redskin meant it as praise, not as a slight. This desert was the Apaches' country, not his own. He and his men would never know it as they did. That was why they made such useful allies against the damnyankees.
That was also why, while he wouldn't turn on them himself as Major Sellers kept urging, he wouldn't mind seeing a good many Apaches killed and wounded in the fight that lay ahead. They wouldn't be able to blame that on him if it happened. They'd been as ready for this fight with the U.S. soldiers as he was: more ready, since the fight had been their idea. He'd sound as sympathetic as an old mammy when they counted up their losses.
Meanwhile, he sent messengers to the men who'd been sweating in the hot, hot sun the past few days. All the runners bore the same order: 'Don't open fire too soon,' Stuart instructed them. 'Wait for the signal. Wait till the Yankees are well into the canyon. We don't want to just frighten them. We want to ruin them.'
Chappo listened to that with approval. 'The only reason to fight is to win,' he said. 'You see this clear.'
'You bet I do,' Stuart answered. Even with a general's wreathed stars on his collar, he carried a Tredegar carbine like any other cavalryman. Some officers felt their duty in battle was to lead and inspire the enlisted men, without actually doing any fighting past self-defense. Stuart had never seen the sense in that. He wanted to hurt the enemy any which way he could.
Waiting came hard, as waiting always did. When, off in the distance to the north, he heard rifle fire, his head swung that way like a hunting dog's on taking a scent. He looked around for Chappo. The Apache had vanished, Stuart could not have said exactly when. One second he was there, the next gone. No white man was able to move like that.
Here came the Apaches, some mounted, others afoot. They retreated steadily through the canyon. Watching them, Stuart knew nothing but admiration. By the way they were carrying out their fighting retreat, they gave the U.S. forces not the slightest clue they had allies lying in wait. When they formed a line of sorts near the southern end of the canyon, it looked like nothing more than a delaying action on the part of a few to let the rest put more distance between themselves and their pursuers.
And here came the Yankees, riding in loose order, a puff of gray smoke rising every now and then as one of them or another fired at the retreating Indians. Some, a couple of troops' worth, weren't properly bluecoats at all, but men in civilian-style clothes: volunteers, Stuart supposed. Now that the Indians weren't retreating but had formed a line, the U.S. soldiers began to bunch, those in front slowing while those in back came on.
It was the sort of target of which artillerymen dreamt. Stuart waited for the gunners, off on their rise, to decide they had enough damnyankees in their sights. If they waited much longer, some trigger-happy idiot was going to start shooting before they did, and warn the enemy of the trap.
Crash! All the field guns fired as one. All the shells burst close together among the Yankees. The result, seen through smoke and kicked-up dust, was gruesome: men and horses down and thrashing on the burning desert floor, other men and horses, and pieces of men and horses, down and not moving at all.
As to sweet music, Stuart listened to the confused and dismayed cries rising from the U.S. forces. As he'd hoped, they hadn't yet spotted his guns, and thought the Apaches had waylaid them with torpedoes. 'Go wide!' someone yelled, which sent bluecoats riding toward the gentle slopes of the canyon walls-and straight into the withering rifle fire the Confederates, now waiting no longer, poured down on them.
Stuart's Tredegar bucked against his shoulder. The Yankee at whom he'd aimed slid off his horse into the dirt. The Confederate general whooped with glee as he slipped a fresh round into the rifle's breech, though he wasn't absolutely sure his was the bullet that had brought down the U.S. cavalryman. Other soldiers might also have aimed at the fellow.
Now the U.S. soldiers realized they'd run headlong into a box. They still hadn't figured out what kind of box, though. 'Straight at 'em!' shouted an officer leading a squadron of volunteers. 'You charge 'em, the damn redskins'll run every time.' He swung his hat. 'Come on, boys!'
He rode forward at the gallop, brave but stupid. A moment later, he was brave and stupid and dead. The bullet that caught him in the face blew off the back of his head. Another bullet took his horse in the chest. The beast went down, and in falling tripped up the horse behind it, which fell on its rider.
More shells crashed down on the U.S. troops, not in a single neat salvo but one by one as the guns reloaded and fired. 'Christ almighty, it's the Rebs!' That cry and others like it announced that, too late, the Yankees had figured out what was going on.
They fought back as best they could. The volunteers seemed to be armed with Winchesters rather than government-issue Springfields. The hunting rifles' magazine feed and lever action meant those volunteers could fire faster than the regulars on both sides with their single-shot breechloaders. At close range, they did a fair amount of damage.
But not many of them got to close range. The U.S. forces were at the center of three fires: the Apaches and artillery from ahead, and dismounted Confederate cavalry to either side. Had Stuart been their commander, he didn't know what he would have done. Died gallantly, he hoped, so nobody afterwards would have the chance to blame him for sticking his head in the noose in the first place.
After dying gallantly, the next best thing the officer in charge of the U.S. force could have done was pull back and escape with as many men as he could, perhaps sacrificing a rear guard to hold back pursuit. The enemy commander didn't try that, either. Instead, though he could not have helped knowing what he was up against, he tried to punch his way through the Confederates dug in on the sides of the canyon.
A young lieutenant close by Stuart screamed as he was wounded. Then he examined the wound and screamed again: 'My God! I am unmanned!' Stuart bit his lip. He knew the horrid chances war could take, but no man ever thought of that particular injury without a shudder of dread. Then a bullet cracked past his own head, so close he thought he felt the breeze of its passage. That refocused his mind on his own survival.
He had never seen a battle that came so close to running itself. That was as well, for, with the Yankees in the trap, his messengers had to travel a long, roundabout route to reach the Confederates on the other side of the canyon. But the other half of the army knew perfectly well what it had to do: hold its place and keep shooting at the damn-yankees either till none was left or till the ones who were left had enough and ran away.
The same applied to the men on the west side of the canyon with him. The U.S. soldiers, regulars and volunteers alike, pushed their attacks with the greatest courage. Many of them advanced on foot, to present smaller targets to their foes. Some got in among the Confederates. The fighting then was with clubbed rifles and bayonets and knives as well as with bullets. But, though the Yankees got in among the C.S. troopers, they did not get through. Those few who survived soon ran back toward the center of the canyon, bullets kicking up dirt near their heels and stretching them lifeless under the sun.
Stuart looked up to the sky. Buzzards were already doing lazy spirals. How did they know?
