Her voice dropped almost to a whisper: "Do you think you can be nominated for the presidency? Do you think you will be nominated for the presidency?"
"I can be," he answered. " Jackson was. Harrison was. Taylor was. Winfield Scott was, too, though he failed of election."
"Whoever faces Blaine year after next will not lose," Libbie said.
"No, I shouldn't think so," Custer agreed. "Whether I will be nominated depends on whether I can keep my name in the public's eye between now and then, and also on whether the leaders of the party decide I am the man whose name they want to put forward at the convention."
"And whatever fame this Roosevelt gained at your expense will make both of those things less likely," Libbie pointed out. "There. Do you see? You have contradicted yourself." She looked as triumphant as if she had just driven back an invading British army.
Before Custer could reply, someone knocked on the door to his quarters. Through the yowling wind, a soldier called, "Colonel Welton's compliments, General, and would you and your lady care to join him for supper?"
"Yes, we'll come," Custer said, and then, to Libbie, "Wrap yourself up warm, my dear, and we'll see what the cooks have done with- or to-supper." Her coat was of Angora sheep, and warm. His own, of buffalo hide, had served him well in the field.
Even so, that first dreadful breath of air once he left his quarters almost froze him from the lungs outwards. His teeth chattered. A moment later, he heard Libbie's clicking away, too.
Snow swirled around him, making even the short walk to the officers' dining room an adventure. The way was made more uncertain because the dining-room shutters, like most of the rest at Fort Benton , were closed to help hold in heat. Custer had to grope for the latch. Only when he opened the door did yellow lamplight spill out and illuminate the endlessly blowing snow-and no sooner had he opened the door than shouts of "Close it!" rang out from within.
He waved Libbie in ahead of him, then went into the dining room and shut the door after himself. The first breath of warm air inside was nearly as stunning as the first frigid breath outside had been. Sweat sprang out on his forehead. He got out of his overcoat in a hurry. So did Libbie.
"Good evening, General Custer, ma'am," Henry Welton said. He rose and saluted.
Custer returned the salute. "Good evening, Colonel," he said. Yes, everything was perfectly proper, perfectly correct, and colder than the blizzard outside. Everything had been that way since he'd brought the Fifth Cavalry down to Fort Benton after the first of the year. He sniffed and smiled. "What's for supper?" he asked. "Whatever it is, it sure smells good."
Sometimes his pretense broke the ice for a little while. Today was one of those times. Henry Welton actually smiled back and answered in civil tones: "Fried potatoes from our own garden, boiled beans and salt pork, and roast prairie chickens." He even essayed a small joke: "Not too hard keeping meat fresh, this season of the year."
"No, indeed." Custer tried to joke back: "Not too hard keeping meat hard, cither, this season of the year."
Welton smiled again. So did a couple of his junior officers. So did Custer, with some effort. It didn't help much. He and the officers of Welton's Seventh Infantry were smiling past one another, like carriages going by on opposite sides of the road.
Custer was fond of fried potatoes, though he would have liked fried onions-or onions of any sort-even more. The beans and pork were beans and pork; he'd been eating them for so many years, he hardly noticed them on his plate except insofar as they helped fill his belly. He enjoyed the prairie chickens. They were all dark meat, and full of flavor.
A couple of whiskey bottles and a pitcher of lemonade from concentrate went around the table. Most of the officers drank whiskey. Libbie filled her tin cup with lemonade and pointedly passed the pitcher to Custer. "Wouldn't you like some, Autic?"
That would have sounded harmless to anyone who didn't know her well. To Custer, it was anything but. "With the weather like this, I do believe I'd sooner have something to help keep me warm," he said. One of the whiskey bottles sat within reach. He poured some-not an enormous tot, by any means-into his cup, then raised it high. "Confusion to our enemies!"
Not even Welton and his officers could find fault with that toast. They drank with Custer. As the liquor ran down his throat, Libbie gave him a look that should have completely counteracted its warming effect, but somehow didn't quite. She did no more than that. In public, she stood foursquare behind Custer, for behaving in any other way might have harmed his chances. What she was liable to say when they went back to their quarters was another matter. Custer didn't care to think about that. To help keep him from thinking about it, he poured more whiskey into the cup. Libbie sent him another glacial glance.
"Confusion to our enemies indeed," Henry Welton said. He was drinking whiskey, too, and making no bones about it. "It's the best thing that could strike them, from our point of view, and the only thing that could bring them down to our level."
When it came to politics-with, no doubt, the exception of Custer's political ambitions-Custer and the officers of the Seventh Infantry were not so far apart. Almost to a man, they loathed the administration currently in Washington, or rather in Philadelphia, having been shelled out of Washington. Only the presence of Libbie Custer and some of the other officers' wives kept them from expressing their opinion in terms even more forceful than the ones they used.
Custer said, "We didn't know what the devil we were doing when we made war, and we don't know what the devil we're doing now that we're trying to make peace, either."
" Blaine can't stomach giving away half of Maine," Welton said scornfully. "If he does, it'll make the state we ship him back to smaller."
"We should have hanged Lincoln -look at the rabble-rousing he's doing now-and we should hang that dashed idiot Blaine, too," Custer said. Even with whiskey in him, he would not curse in the presence of women.
"That's what comes of electing Republicans," Libbie said. There her opinions marched with her husband's.
"Once we finally do have peace-if we finally do have peacethat'll be a sham, too, nothing but a hoax and a humbug," Custer said. "It always has been. Sooner or later, the Fifth will go back to Kansas, and we'll ride along the border with the CSA, and sure as the devil the Kiowas and the Comanches will ride up and burn a farm and kill the men and do worse to the women, and then they'll go back down into Indian Territory where we can't follow 'em. It's been going on ever since the War of Secession, and what can we do about it? Not a blasted thing I can see." A considerable silence followed. Into it, Custer added, "That's the way it's always been, and I don't sec it changing any time soon. I wish I did, but I don't."
Not quite quietly enough, one of Henry Welton's officers muttered, "I wish to Jesus the Fifth would go back to Kansas, and get the devil out of our hair."
Another considerable silence filled the room, this one not nearly so sympathetic nor companionable as the first. Custer might have blown up. Instead (and he saw Libbie looking at him in surprise), he sipped his whiskey and affected not to hear. When the Fifth did go back to Kansas, he would not be going back with it, at least not as regimental commander. That was too small a position for a brigadier general to hold. Maybe, as John Pope had been doing before being sent to Utah, he would take charge of several regiments. Maybe the War Department would send him back to Washington, to help clean up the mess there. Whether or not he did that, someone would have to take care of it.
And maybe, when 1884 rolled around, he would lay down his commission, take off his uniform, put on a civilian sack suit and top hat, and campaign not against the British or the Confederates or the Indians but against the manifest and manifold iniquities of the Republican Party. That, though, was not entirely up to him. He would have to see what-and whom-the leaders of the Democrats had in mind.