"What a bully show!" Roosevelt exclaimed. "Enemies they may be, but they are splendid men." He raised his Winchester to his shoulder and tried at very long range to pot some of those splendid men.
Unlike the luckless lancers, the British infantry fired as they advanced; their breechloaders made reloading on the move, which had been next to impossible during the War of Secession, quick and easy. A cloud of smoke rose above them, thicker and thicker with every forward stride they took.
Smoke rose from the trenches where the bluecoats crouched, too. Englishmen began falling. Their comrades filled their places. No doubt Americans were falling, too, but Roosevelt couldn't sec that. What he could see was the red British wave flowing forward, steady and resistless as the tide. The redcoats drew within four hundred yards of the frontmost entrenchment, within three hundred…
"They're going to break in!" Roosevelt cried in bitter pain.
And then, through the din of the rifles, he heard a sound like none he'd ever known before, a fierce, explosive snarl that might have been a giant clearing his throat, and clearing it, and clearing it.
… Amazing puffs of smoke blossomed in the center of the U.S. front line. "The Gatlings!" Karl Jobst yelled, somewhere between astonishment and ecstasy.
Roosevelt had no words, only awe. In what seemed the twinkling of an eye and was perhaps two or three minutes of actual time, those steadfast British lines abruptly ceased to exist, in much the same way as a slab of ice will rot when hot water pours over it. For the first half of that time, the infantry kept trying to go forward in the face of fire unlike anything they'd ever met or imagined. They dropped and dropped and dropped. Not one of them got within a hundred yards of the trench. After that, the foot soldiers, those of them still on their feet, realized the thing could not be done. They also realized they were dead men if they didn't get out of range of the terrible stream of bullets pouring from the Gatling guns.
It was not a retreat. Custer had led a retreat. It was a rout, a panic-stricken flight, a stampede. The British, surely, were as steady in the face of familiar danger as any men ever born. In the face of the snarling unknown, they broke. Some of them- Roosevelt took off his spectacles and rubbed his eyes to be sure he was seeing straightthrew away their rifles to run the faster.
He spent only a little while luxuriating in amazement. Then he started thinking like a soldier again. "After them!" he shouted. "After them, by jingo! They thought they'd run over us like a train, did they? Well, they've just been train-wrecked, boys. Now we haul away the rubbish."
Now his men, cheering as if their throats would burst, pressed hard upon the fleeing foe. The British horse, which had been screening an advance, suddenly had to try to screen a broken army falling back. The enemy's field guns fired a few rounds of canister before the men of the Unauthorized Regiment, coming at them from three directions at once, overran them and killed their crews.
"Captured guns," Lieutenant Jobst said cheerfully. "That's the true measure of victory. Has been as long as cannons have gone to war."
"After them!" Roosevelt shouted. "We don't want to let even a single one get away. No, maybe one, to tell his pals up in Canada what it means to invade the United States." He fired at an English cavalryman and knocked him out of the saddle. "Easy as shooting prong-horns!" he exulted.
North over the prairie went the pursuit, as it had gone south the day before. The troopers of the Unauthorized Regiment took rifles away from slightly wounded or exhausted Englishmen they passed and rode on after the main body. Roosevelt didn't think he had enough men to beat them, but they were so shaken he intended to try if he got the chance. They might all throw down their guns and give up at a show of force.
And then, from behind, he heard not one but several buglers blowing Halt. His men looked at one another in surprise, but most, obedient to the training he'd drilled into them, reined in. "No!" he raged. "God damn it, no! I didn't order that! I'll kill the idiot who ordered that. We've got 'em licked to a faretheewell."
"Halt!" a great voice shouted: George Custer, who must have almost killed his horse catching up to Roosevelt 's men. To Roosevelt 's amazement, tears streaked Custer's cheeks, not just tears of grief but tears of fury. To his further amazement, Custer reeked of whiskey from twenty feet away. "Halt, damn it to fucking hell!" he shouted again.
"What's wrong, sir?" Roosevelt demanded.
"Wrong? I'll show you what's wrong!" Custer waved a sheet of paper. "What's wrong is, a cease-fire with the English sons of bitches went into effect yesterday, only we didn't know it. We just licked the boots off the shitty limeys, we just got my brother killed, in a battle we never should have fought, and now we have to let what's left of the bastards go home. I haven't had a drink of liquor, save for medicinal purposes, in almost twenty years-not since before I married Libbie. Do you wonder, Roosevelt, do you wonder that I got myself lit up riding after you?"
"No, sir," Roosevelt said, and then, "Hell, no, sir." After a moment, he added, "Is anything left in your bottle, sir?"
"Not a drop," Custer answered. "Not a single fucking drop." "Too bad," Roosevelt said. "In that case, I'll just have to find my own."
Frederick Douglass got off the train in Rochester. His wife and son were the only black faces on the platform. Anna Douglass burst into tears when she saw him. Lewis folded him into a hard, muscular embrace. "Good to have you home, Father," he said. "Let me take your bag there."
"Thank you, my boy," Douglass said. "Believe you me, it is very, very good to be home again." He gave Anna a gentle kiss, then stood up tall and straight before her. "As you see, my dear, I have come through all of it unscathed."
"Don't sound so proud of yourself," she said sharply. "I reckon that was the Lord's doin', a whole lot more'n it was yours."
He looked down at the planks of the platform floor. "Since I cannot possibly argue with you, I shall not even try. The Lord took me through the valley of the shadow of death, but He chose to let me walk out the other side safe. For that, I can only praise His name."
Anna nodded, satisfied. Lewis Douglass asked the question his father had known he would ask: "What was it like, sir, coming up before Stonewall Jackson?" A frown twisted his strong features; he laughed ruefully. "If working with you on the newspaper hasn't yet taught me the futility of asking what something is like and then expecting to feel the answer as did the man who had the experience, I don't suppose it ever will."
"If it hasn't yet taught me that futility, why should it have done so with you?" Douglass returned. "What was it like? It was frightening." He held up a hand before his son or wife could speak. "Not in the way you think, either. It was frightening because I found myself in the presence of a man both formidable and, I judge, good, but one who believes deep in his heart in things utterly antithetical to those in which I believe, and who reasons with unfailing logic from his false premises." He shivered. "It was, in every sense of the word, alarming."
They all walked out toward the carriage, Anna on Frederick 's arm. As Lewis put the last suitcase behind the seat, he remarked, "You have said before that it is possible for a slaveholder to be a good man."
"Yes." Douglass helped his wife up, then climbed aboard himself and sat beside her. "It is possible," he went on as Lewis took the reins. "It is possible, but it is not easy. Jackson… surprised me."