His stomach knotted at the thought. He had loved his country longer and more faithfully than he had loved his wife. Now, as in 1862, the United States were going down to mortifying defeat, and that despite his victory, a victory which, had he learned of the cease-fire in time, would never have happened. When he'd married Libbie after the War of Secession, he'd promised to stop cursing and stop drinking.
He'd held to the promise till he learned his victory counted for nothing. He'd stayed drunk for days after that, and let out all the oaths he had in him. He was still drinking, he was still swearing, and he'd taken up smoking for good measure.
Camp that evening brought everybody up close to everybody else; men stayed near the greasewood fires for warmth. To the north, the campfires of the troop of British cavalry were a constellation of brightly twinkling stars on the horizon.
Custer and his troopers wolfed down salt pork and hardtack. Some of them crumbled the biscuits and fried them in the grease from the pork, of which there was always an adequate supply. "How do you people eat this stuff day after day, week after week, and live to tell the tale?" one of the reporters asked.
"So sorry, boys," Custer said. "Next time you ride along with us, we'll make sure we cater the affair from Denver."
That got a round of laughter, as he'd hoped it would. Then one of the reporters-it was Charlie Worth, damn him-asked, "How did Colonel Roosevelt and the Unauthorized Regiment take to Army rations?"
"I'm afraid I really don't know," Custer answered, his voice all at once as cool as the breeze hissing down from the north. "I never discussed that with Mr. Roosevelt." He laid the tiniest bit of stress on the civilian title.
The reporters, of course, made their living noticing tiny stresses. "Come on, General," one of them said. "What do you really think of Colonel Roosevelt"-he laid the tiniest bit of stress on the military title-"as a soldier? What do you think of the men of the Unauthorized Regiment as soldiers?"
"Have mercy, gentlemen," Custer said. "I've answered those same questions a lot of times over the past weeks." And I'd like it a lot better if you asked them a damned sight less often. Having to share the limelight with the boy colonel gave him worse dyspepsia than salt pork and hardtack gave the reporters.
They wouldn't leave him alone. He might have known they wouldn't leave him alone. "Come on, General," Charlie Worth coaxed. "Give it to us straight. You can do that."
"I can only repeat what I've said a great number of times," Custer answered: "Colonel Roosevelt and his volunteers were gifted, patriotic amateur soldiers, and fought as well as men of that sort could be expected to fight." Every word of that was true. If the reporters judged the tone to be ever so little on the slighting side, was that his fault?
One of the newspapermen said, "General, isn't it a fact that the Unauthorized Regiment performed better against the limeys than the Fifth Cavalry did?"
"Like hell it's a fact," Custer snarled, "and if Roosevelt has been saying that, he's a damned glory-sniffing liar."
"No, General, I never heard it from him," the reporter said hastily. "But didn't the Unauthorized Regiment fight Gordon's cavalry to a draw and then chase the redcoats halfway back to Canada after the what-do-you-call-'ems-the Gatling guns-chewed them to smithereens?"
"The Unauthorized Regiment," Custer said, as if lecturing on strategy at West Point to a class of idiots, "engaged the enemy forces pursuant to my orders. Had I placed them in the center and us on the wings, we would have done as well against the British cavalry, but they would have fared far worse against Gordon's foot. Since my men were fighting dismounted at the battle by the Teton, they were not so well positioned to pursue as were the Volunteers."
All that was true, too. Had Theodore Roosevelt been sitting by the campfire, Custer was sure he would have agreed with every word. (Custer was also sure he would have tried to aggrandize himself one way or another, though; that trait being acutely developed in him, he had an eagle eye for spotting it in others.) But reporters were not after agreement. Agreement didn't sell papers. Argument did. "What about the-Gatterling?-guns, General?" another news hawk asked.
"Gatling guns," Custer corrected. "Gatling." Idiots indeed, he thought. "Well, what about them? Even if we hadn't had a one of them, Gordon's men hadn't a prayer of carrying our position."
He thought that was true, too, but he wasn't quite so sure. Bold as he was, he wouldn't have cared to mount an infantry assault on men in earthworks. Even in the War of Secession, that sort of business had proved hideously expensive. With the right troops, though-good American boys, not those limey bastards-he might have had a go of it.
Charlie Worth said, "I hear tell Roosevelt says those Gatling guns saved your bacon in that fight-chewed the Englishmen up and spit 'em out again."
"This being a free country, Mr. Roosevelt may say whatever he likes," Custer answered. "If you prefer the word of a man who became a soldier only because he was rich enough to buy himself a regiment over that of one who has devoted his entire life to the service of his country, you may do so, but I daresay no one will take you seriously afterwards."
That flattened young Worth, who gulped his coffee down in a hurry so he could get a big tin cup in front of his red face. But one of the other men asked, "Colonel Welton, down at Fort Benton, tells it pretty much the same way, doesn't he?"
"I haven't heard what Henry has to say," Custer replied. "I will note that, while I and many of the officers of my regiment were promoted for our work by the Teton, Colonel Welton remains a colonel. In this you have the War Department's judgment on the value of our respective contributions."
The reporters scrawled furiously. One of them muttered, "When the devil are we going to be able to get to a telegraph clicker?"
Charlie Worth came up with a question no one else had asked Custer: "Andrew Jackson licked the British after the War of 1812 was over, and he ended up president of the United States. Now that you've done the same thing in this war, would you like to end up the same way?"
"Why, Charlie, the notion never entered my mind till this moment," Custer answered truthfully. Also truthfully, he went on, "Now that it is in there, I have to tell you I like it." The reporters laughed.
"You're a Democrat, aren't you, General?" somebody asked.
"What sensible man isn't?" Custer returned. "Did I hear rightly that Lincoln has shown the Republicans' true colors by going Communard?" Several reporters assured him he had heard rightly. Sadly, he shook his head. "If Blaine weren't in the White House, General Pope could have done the country a good turn by hanging old Honest Abe. He'll cause more trouble now, mark my words."
"Lots of Democratic politicians who could run for president," Charlie Worth observed. "We don't have so many soldiers who know how to win battles. What if they want you to stay in the Army?"
"I shall serve the United States wherever that service can lend the greatest aid," Custer declared, his tone grandiloquent and, on the whole, sincere.
Winter was on the way to Sonora and Chihuahua. That was obvious to Jeb Stuart: instead of being hotter than blazes, the weather was all the way down to warm. As for Stuart himself, he was on the way to El Paso, which suited him down to the ground.
He turned in the saddle and spoke to Major Horatio Sellers:
"Won't it be fine, getting to spend Christmas somewhere near the edge of civilization?"