As if held by a single man, all the rifles along the British firing line leveled on the Fifth. As if held by a single man, all those rifles fired at the same instant. A great cloud of black-powder smoke rose above and around the enemy. Through it, flames thrust like bayonets from the muzzles of the Englishmen's Martini-Henrys.
Three balls snapped past Custer. Not all his men were so lucky as to have bullets miss them. The charge broke up almost as if the troopers had slammed into a wall. Men screamed. Horses screamedlouder, shriller, more terrible cries than could have burst from a human throat.
The British infantry fed more cartridges into their rifles. Precise as so many steam-driven machines, they gave the Fifth Cavalry another volley, and another, and another. The horsemen replied as best they could. Their best was not enough, not nearly. The redcoats not only outnumbered them but were also firing on foot rather than from the bounding backs of beasts. Englishmen, many Englishmen, toppled and writhed and cursed and shrieked. The Americans, though, melted away like snow on a warm spring afternoon.
"We can't do it, Autie!" Tom Custer shouted.
If Tom said a piece of fighting could not be done, no man on earth could do it. "We'll have to fall back," Custer said, and then, to the bugler, "Blow Retreat." But no call rang out. The bugler was dead. "Retreat!" Custer yelled at the top of his lungs. "Fall back!" The words were as bitter as the alkali dust of Utah in his mouth. So far as he could remember, he'd never used them before.
Fewer of his men heard him than would have heard the horn. But they would have fallen back whether he ordered it or not. They now made the same discovery the British lancers had not long before: some fires were too galling to bear.
Then Tom shouted again, wordlessly this time. The shout ended in a choking gurgle. Custer stared at his brother. Blood poured from Tom's mouth, and from a great wound in his chest. Ever so slowly, or so it seemed to Custer, Tom crumpled from his horse. When he hit the ground, he didn't move.
Custer let out one long howl of pain. The worst of it was, that was all he had time for. Even without Tom-and Tom, surely, would never rise again till Judgment Day-he had to save his force. His head swiveled wildly to east and west. Did the Volunteer cavalry know he couldn't maintain the fight? If they didn't, they would have to face the weight of the whole British army by themselves.
But no-they were breaking away from combat, too, falling back to screen the retreat of the Regulars. That was humiliating. Even more humiliating was that the British cavalry showed no great inclination to pursue. Roosevelt 's Unauthorized Regiment had given the limeys all they wanted and then some.
The boy colonel rode over to Custer. "What now, sir?" he asked, as if his superior hadn't just finished feeding his own prized regiment into the meat grinder.
What now, indeed? Custer wondered. Without Tom, he hardly cared. But he had to answer. He knew he had to answer. "We fall back on our infantry and await the British attack as the enemy awaited ours," he mumbled. It was a poor solution-even with Welton's infantry, he didn't have the manpower General Gordon did. But, battered and dazed as he was, it was the only solution he could find.
"Yes, sir!" Roosevelt, by his tone, thought it brilliant. "Don't worry, sir-we'll lick 'em yet."
"Come on, men!" Theodore Roosevelt shouted. "We've got to keep the damn limeys off the Regulars' backs a little bit longer."
First Lieutenant Karl Jobst gave him a reproachful look. "Sir, I wish you would have found a politer way to put that."
"Why?" Roosevelt said. "It's the truth, isn't it? Right now, General Custer's men couldn't fight off a Sunday-school class, let alone the British army. You know it, I know it, and Custer knows it, too."
His adjutant still looked unhappy. "They fought General Gordon's men most valiantly-smashed the lancers all to bits and hurt the infantry, too."
"That they did. They charged home as bravely as you'd like," Roosevelt said. "So did the six hundred at Balaclava. They paid for it, and so did the Regulars. Custer's brother's down, I heard, among too many others. We won our part of the fight. Unfortunately, the result is measured by the whole, which here proves less than the sum of its parts."
Off from behind him came a brief crackle of rifle fire. The British cavalry, confident he would not turn on it with the whole Unauthorized Regiment, was dogging the tracks of the U.S. force, keeping an eye on it as it retreated. Every so often, British scouts and his own rear guard would exchange pleasantries.
"Sir, do you happen to know where Colonel Welton has positioned the Seventh Infantry?" This was not the first time Jobst had asked the question. Though normally a cold-blooded fellow, he could not keep concern from his voice. The Seventh Infantry was his regiment, Henry Welton his commander, to whose rule he would return when Roosevelt went back to civilian life.
Now, though, Roosevelt had to shake his head. "I wish I did, but General Custer has not seen fit to entrust that information to me." He rode on for another few strides, then asked a question of his own: "You being a professional at this business, Lieutenant, what is your view of Custer the soldier?"
"I told you before he came up to Montana, sir, that he had a name for impetuous boldness." Karl Jobst started to say something else, stopped, and then began again: "The reputation appears to be well founded."
After a while, Roosevelt realized that was all he'd get from his adjutant. If Jobst said anything more-something on the order of, He took a perfectly good regiment and chopped it into catmeat, for instance-and word of that got back to Custer, it would blight the lieutenant's career. No one could possibly doubt Custer's courage. He'd done everything he could, going straight into the British. But that hadn't been enough, and hadn't come close to being enough, to turn them back.
Roosevelt sighed. "Well, in his shoes I might well have done the same thing. With the enemy in front of him, he could think of nothing but driving them off."
"I do believe, sir, that you might have handled the engagement with rather more finesse," Jobst said. Roosevelt needed a moment to realize that was praise, and another moment to realize how much. If a Regular Army officer felt a colonel of Volunteers could have done better than a Regular brevet brigadier general, that spoke well of the Volunteer indeed-and not so well of George Custer.
A few minutes later, Custer rode back to confer with Roosevelt. Even if Custer had been overeager in the attack, even if the loss of his brother left his face raw with anguish, he was handling the retreat about as well as any man could. He kept a firm rein on both his unit and the Unauthorized Regiment, and made sure he found out whatever Roosevelt 's riders could learn about British dispositions and intentions.
Roosevelt found a moment to say, "I'm sorry about your loss, sir."
"Yes, yes," Custer said impatiently-he was surely doing his poor best not to think of that. "Now we have to see to it that our country's loss does not include the whole of this force."
"Yes, sir. I wish I could tell you more," Roosevelt said. "Their cavalry screen keeps us from finding out as much as we'd like, just as ours does to them."
Custer gnawed at his mustache. "I wish I knew how far ahead of their infantry the cavalry's got. Not far enough to suit me, unless I miss my guess. Infantry pushed hard can almost keep up with horsemen. Once we've joined with Colonel Welton, odds are we shan't have to wait long before they attack us."
"You don't think they'll simply ignore us and go on down toward the mines around Helena, which I presume to be their goal?" Roosevelt said.
"Not a chance of it, Colonel." Custer spoke with decision. "We shall be far too large a force for them to dare to leave us in their flank and rear. We could and would work all sorts of mischief on them."