They found the U.S. force a little past nine o'clock, better than an hour earlier than Stuart would have expected. "Did the damnyankees spy you?" he asked.
"Don't reckon so, sir," one of the scouts answered, and the rest nodded.
Stuart glanced over to Ruggles. "We outnumber 'em. If we spread out and hit 'em from three sides at once, the way the whole army did with the Yanks at Tombstone, they shouldn't be able to stand against us."
"Expect you're right, sir," Ruggles said. "I wouldn't say this if we were riding horses, but I think we ought to go in mounted. The stink of camels panics horses that aren't used to them-you'll have seen that-and the sight of them ought to panic Yankees who never set eyes on the like before."
"Good," Stuart said. "We'll do it."
He swung north with three troops from the regiment. Firing had already broken out from the west when his men came into sight of the Yankee position. It was a roadblock with an encampment beyond it, fine for ambushing a supply column but not intended to hold against a serious assault.
The Fifth Camelry howled Rebel yells as their ungainly mounts bore down on the horrified U.S. forces. A few Yankees got into the saddle, but their horses wanted nothing to do with the Confederate camels. More U.S. soldiers fought as infantry, but, taken in the flank and caught by surprise, they didn't hold out long.
A couple of rounds snarled past and over Stuart. He fired his Tredegar carbine four or five times, and thought he might have wounded one running Yankee. Then white handkerchiefs and shirts began fluttering in lieu of flags of truce. The fighting couldn't have lasted more than half an hour.
"You damn Rebs don't fight like you should ought to," a disgruntled U.S. sergeant complained.
"Wouldn't have had to fight at all if it weren't for you people," Stuart said, borrowing Robert E. Lee's scornful name for the Yankees. He found himself in an expansive mood -the U.S. forces hadn't yet sent all the captured supply wagons up into New Mexico and out of his reach. That made him add, "The way we fight is to win-and I reckon we're going to do it." The sorrowful sergeant did not disagree.
Chapter 15
R edcoats!" the scouts' cries echoed across the Montana prairie. "The redcoats are coming!"
"Come on, lads!" Theodore Roosevelt called to the men of the Unauthorized Regiment, or those troops of it that had joined him to try to impede the progress of the British column penetrating U.S. territory. "Come on!" he repeated. "The English wore red a hundred years ago, too, when we licked 'em in the Revolution. And the patriotic Continental soldiers wore blue, just as we do. They won against great odds, and so can we. Forward!"
Forward they went, with cheers on their lips. First Lieutenant Karl Jobst said, "Sir, I have to commend you. My opinion of volunteers has gone up immeasurably since we began harassing the British."
Roosevelt noted his adjutant's phrasing. Jobst didn't say, My opinion of volunteers has gone up since I joined the regiment. He'd waited till he saw the Unauthorized troops fight before approving of them. Maybe that made him a hard man to please. Maybe it just made him an old-or rather, a young-stick-in-the-mud.
"They do grow brave men outside the Regular Army, Lieutenant," Roosevelt said. He filled his chest with air, then let it out in a shout like the cry of a bull moose: "Close with 'em, boys, and fill 'em full of lead!"
That got another cheer. As Roosevelt rode north after the scouts, he made sure his own Winchester had a full magazine. Only the firepower his men had at their disposal let them slow down the enemy at all. Most of the British cavalry was armed with single-shot carbines much like the ones the U.S. Regulars carried. Some of the others were lancers, who but for their revolvers might have fought against Napoleon or Louis XIV or, for that matter, against Joan of Arc.
They were brave, too. He'd seen that. He hadn't seen that it helped them much.
He pointed. Bugler's horns cried out a warning. There ahead was the cavalry screen the British used to protect the infantry and baggage train advancing into Montana Territory. "Charge!" Roosevelt roared. He wanted to wave his sword about to help inspire his men, but in the end hung onto his Winchester instead. Knocking a few limeys out of the saddle would be the best inspiration possible.
Rapidly, the British horsemen swelled from little red specks visible across the prairie to an astonishing distance to scarlet-tunicked, whitc-helmcted men. They opened fire at several hundred yards, well beyond the reach of the Unauthorized Regiment's Winchesters. Puffs of dirty gray smoke shot from their carbines. A horse went down. A man slid out of the saddle.
But not enough horses fell, not enough saddles were emptied, to keep the U.S. soldiers from getting close enough for their Winchesters to bite. And when the magazine rifles bit, they bit hard. A man could shoot two or three times as fast with one as with a single-shot breechloader.
As had happened several times before, the British outriders recoiled back onto the rest of the cavalry in General Gordon's force. Before, the larger force had been enough to drive back the volunteers. Now Roosevelt had a couple of more troops than he'd been able to deploy at the last skirmish. "Keep at 'em, boys!" he shouted, and waved his hat.
Bullets sang past him. He'd been delighted to discover, not that he felt no fear in battle, but that he had no trouble keeping under control the fear he did feel. And the savage exultation that filled him almost canceled out even his controlled fear.
He raised the rifle to his shoulder and sent a stream of lead at the Englishmen who had stabbed the United States in the back. A redcoat dropped his carbine and clutched his right arm. Roosevelt whooped. He wasn't sure that was the limey he'd been aiming for, or that his bullet had wounded the foe, but who could prove it hadn't?
With his extra men, with his extra firepower, he drove back even the reinforced British cavalry. They in turn fell back toward the red-coated infantry. The foot soldiers shook themselves out from column into line of battle. They too fired single-shot Martini-Henrys, but there were far more of them than troopers of the Unauthorized Regiment.
One thing coming out West had eventually taught Theodore Roosevelt: when not to raise on a pair of threes. "Back!" he yelled. A bugler always rode close by him. The order to retreat blared forth.
The British cavalry did not pursue his men when they broke off the fight and galloped off to the south. They'd learned from painful experience that they paid a high price if they got too far separated from the infantry they screened. Lancers, Roosevelt thought derisively. We 're nearing the end of the nineteenth century, and the British still have lancers in the line.
"Well done, sir," Karl Jobst said, wiping sweat from his face with his sleeve. "They'll have to go back from line into column, and that will delay them. We bought our country another hour or so there."
"You have a cold-blooded way of looking at war, Lieutenant," Roosevelt said.
"It's the Regular Army way, sir," his adjutant said. "War is your hobby; it's my profession. Our job is not to drive the British back into Canada. We can't, not with one regiment against a much larger force. Our job is simply to slow them down as much as we can, so they don't get the chance to plunder anything important before reinforcements join us."
For him, it was a chess problem. He was interposing a pawn into a rook's threatening path so other pieces would have time to move forward and defend his king. As far as Roosevelt could tell, he would have been as happy deciding the result on a chessboard as on the plains of Montana, too.