How Few Remain Part 39

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 hors.e.m.e.n. 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."

"That does make sense," Roosevelt said. "And, from what I've heard, their General Gordon is a headlong brawler, as I believe I've mentioned once before."

"Yes, yes," Custer said again. Roosevelt bristled at the tone, even if Custer was not, could not be, quite himself. Had the general commanding U.S. forces in Montana Territory done so well, he could afford to ignore what anyone told him? The answer was only too obvious. Had the general done as well as all that, he and Roosevelt would have been riding north, not south. But then Custer showed he'd heard after all: "If he's so very headlong, maybe he'll run onto our sword, the way bulls do in the arena."

"I do hope so, sir," Roosevelt said. Custer's response let him ask the question in whose answer both he and Karl Jobst were keenly interested: "Where has Colonel Welton set up the position that awaits us?"

"Not far from the Teton River," Custer replied, which told Roosevelt less than he would have liked but more than he'd already known. The brevet brigadier general went on, "He has orders to pick the best possible defensive position. We should be in it, wherever it proves to be, by nightfall."

There was was information worth having. "If we are, we'll fight in the morning," Roosevelt said. information worth having. "If we are, we'll fight in the morning," Roosevelt said.

"I expect we will," Custer said. He hesitated, gnawing at his mustache once more. That was unlike him. After a moment, he went on, "I am thinking of dismounting my men and having them fight on foot. That would leave your regiment, Colonel, as our sole force on horseback. I shall rely on you to keep the British cavalry off our flanks."

"We'll do it, sir," Roosevelt promised. "That's the sort of job Winchesters were made for." The Unauthorized Regiment would never have got close enough to the British infantry to engage them with the repeating rifles, whose effective range was not great. With Springfields, Custer and the Fifth Cavalry had slugged it out with the foot soldiers in red-and had come out on the short end of the fight.

"I shall rely on you, as I did in the engagement farther north," Custer said. Roosevelt didn't mention that his part of the force had driven back their opponents. Custer already knew that. He nodded absently to Roosevelt and then trotted south, to the regiment he had long commanded.

No sooner had he gone than Karl Jobst rode over to Roosevelt, a questioning look on his face. Roosevelt repeated what Custer had said. Jobst brightened. "Colonel Welton knows how to read a field as well as anyone I've ever seen," he said. "He'll pick the best place he can find for us to make a stand."

"Good," Roosevelt said. A moment later, he wished his adjutant had put it a different way. Making a stand implied that defeat carried disaster in its wake. That was probably true here, but he would sooner not have been reminded of it.

As Brigadier General Custer had said, they met Henry Welton about four that afternoon. And, as Lieutenant Jobst had said, Welton did indeed know how to read a field. He'd chosen to defend the forward slope of a low, gentle rise. No one could possibly approach without being seen and fired upon from as far out as rifles could reach.

And not only had he picked a good position, he'd improved on what nature provided. His men had dug three long trenches and heaped up in front of them the dirt they'd shoveled out. The trenches and breastworks didn't look like much from the front. Roosevelt wondered if they were worth the labor they'd cost.

So did Custer, who was arguing with Welton as Roosevelt rode up. Welton looked stubborn. "Sir," he was saying, "from everything I saw in the War of Secession, any protection is a lot better than just standing out in the open and blazing away at the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds on the other side."

"All right, all right." Custer threw his hands in the air. "Have it your way, Henry. The dashed things are dug, and you can't very well undig them. But while you've been building like beavers, we've been fighting like fiends."

"Yes, sir, I know that," Henry Welton said. He nodded to Roosevelt. "And was I right about the Unauthorized Regiment?"

"They fought well, I'll not deny it," Custer replied. Theodore Roosevelt drew himself up straight at the praise. He thought his troopers deserved even better than that; they'd outfought the Regulars seven ways from Sunday. But, whatever else Custer might have been about to say, he didn't say it. Instead, he stared and pointed. "Colonel, you've posted all my d.a.m.ned"-he didn't bother with dashed; dashed; he was exercised-"coffee mills in the forward trench? Don't you think we'd be better off with riflemen there?" he was exercised-"coffee mills in the forward trench? Don't you think we'd be better off with riflemen there?"

"Sir, I thought we might as well use the Gatling guns, since we've got them," Welton answered. Roosevelt stared at them with interest; he'd never seen one before. They did look rather like a cross between a cannon and a coffee mill. Welton went on, "If they perform as advertised, they should be well forward, I think. If they don't, we can always bring riflemen in alongside them."

"They're the only artillery we've got," Custer said worriedly. "That means they belong in the rear." He looked around-probably for his brother, Roosevelt thought. He did not see Tom Custer. He would never see Tom Custer again. Not seeing him, the brevet brigadier general settled for Roosevelt. "What's your opinion in this matter, Colonel?"

"They're already emplaced," Roosevelt answered, "and they're not quite like artillery, are they, sir? If you're asking me, I say we leave them."

Custer yielded, as he likely would not have done with Tom to back him: "Have it your way, then. If they don't work, it doesn't matter where in creation they are. I reckon that likely, myself. As you say, though, Colonel Welton, we can always bring up riflemen."

"Sir, with your permission, I'm going to throw out a wide net of cavalry pickets, to make sure the British don't try anything in the night," Roosevelt said. "When the real fight comes, I'll keep them off your flanks."

"That's what you're here for," Custer agreed. "Go do it." It wasn't quite a summary dismissal, but it was close. Roosevelt saluted and stomped off.

Occasional rifle shots punctuated the night, as American and British scouting parties collided in the darkness. The British weren't trying a night attack; their pickets rode out ahead of their main force to keep the Americans from unexpectedly descending on them. Roosevelt s.n.a.t.c.hed a few hours of fitful sleep, interrupted time and again by riders coming in to report.

He drank hot, strong, vile coffee before sunup as he deployed his men. He commanded the right, as he had in the earlier fight against General Gordon's army. The left wing was largely on its own; he knew he wouldn't be able to keep in touch with it once the fighting started.

And it would start soon. When men found targets they could actually see, cavalry skirmishing picked up in a hurry. On came the British infantry, deployed in line of battle, rolling straight toward the position Custer and Welton were defending. Roosevelt's men tried without much luck to delay them; their British counterparts held them off.

Behind the British line, the field guns accompanying the men in red opened up on the U.S. entrenchments. Custer and Welton had nothing with which they could reply; the Gatlings couldn't come close to reaching those cannon. In the trenches, the Regulars, infantry and dismounted cavalry alike, took what the enemy dished out. Roosevelt's respect for them grew. That had to be harder than fighting in a battle where they could strike back at what was tormenting them.

"Once General Gordon has us properly softened up, or thinks he has, he'll send in the infantry," Karl Jobst said.

Gordon let the two field guns pound away at the entrenchments for half an hour, his foot soldiers pausing just outside rifle range. Then the cannon fell silent. Thin in the distance, a bugle rang out. The British infantry lowered their bayoneted rifles, as the cavalry had lowered their lances. The bugle resounded once more. The Englishmen let out a great, wordless shout and marched forward.

"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 see 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 straight-threw 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 p.r.o.nghorns!" 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 pa.s.sed 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. "G.o.d d.a.m.n 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, d.a.m.n it to f.u.c.king h.e.l.l!" 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 b.i.t.c.hes went into effect yesterday, only we didn't know it. We just licked the boots off the s.h.i.tty 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 b.a.s.t.a.r.ds 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, "h.e.l.l, no, sir." After a moment, he added, "Is anything left in your bottle, sir?"

"Not a drop," Custer answered. "Not a single f.u.c.king drop."

"Too bad," Roosevelt said. "In that case, I'll just have to find my own."

Frederick Dougla.s.s got off the train in Rochester. His wife and son were the only black faces on the platform. Anna Dougla.s.s 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," Dougla.s.s 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 Dougla.s.s 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?" Dougla.s.s 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 ant.i.thetical 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." Dougla.s.s 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."

"I reckon you surprised him, too." Anna patted her husband's arm.

"I hope I did. I rather think I did," Dougla.s.s said. "And I have what may be great news: in Chicago, I heard that the Confederates are-no, may be-planning to manumit their bondsmen once the war, now suspended, is truly ended, this being a quid pro quo quid pro quo in return for their allies' a.s.sistance against the United States." in return for their allies' a.s.sistance against the United States."

"Wonderful news, if true," Lewis said. "We've heard the like now and again down through the years, though, and nothing ever came of it. Who told you this time, Father? Lincoln?"

"No, John Hay," Dougla.s.s answered. "Since he was minister to the Confederate States, he should know whereof he speaks. Lincoln had other concerns." He let out a bitter sigh. "Lincoln has had other concerns than the Negro before, which I say though he is and has always been my friend. In the summer of 1862, he drafted a proclamation emanc.i.p.ating all slaves within the territory of the Confederate States, then waited for a U.S. victory to issue it, lest it be seen as a measure of desperation rather than one of policy. The victory never came, and, when our straits indeed grew desperate, he let that paper languish, having been convinced it was by then too late to do any good. I shall go to my grave convinced he was mistaken."

"Of course he was, Father," Lewis said angrily. He looked back over his shoulder. "In all the years since, you have never spoken of this, nor has anyone else I ever heard."

"The proclamation was never widely known, for obvious reasons," Dougla.s.s answered. "Once the Confederate States succeeded in breaking away, it became moot, and what would have been the point to mentioning it? As you'll remember, the fight to emanc.i.p.ate the Negro slaves remaining within U.S. territory after the War of Secession was quite hard enough."

"That is so, and you may be right about the rest, too," Lewis said, "but it galls me to think the United States went down to defeat when we still had a weapon we could loose against the enemy."

Frederick Dougla.s.s let out a hoa.r.s.e whoop of laughter. "You say that, after the ignominious cease-fire to which President Blaine has agreed? We have an army's worth-no, a nation's worth-of weapons we have not loosed against our enemies in this fight, and now we shall not loose them."

"And that's a right good thing, too," Anna Dougla.s.s said, "on account of the only thing we would do with 'em is shoot our own selves in the leg."

Lewis pointed north, toward Lake Ontario. "Two ironclads flying the Union Jack steam back and forth out there. We are under their guns, as we have been since they first bombarded us.

We are helpless against them. The problem is not only poor use of the weapons we have, but also weapons we lack."

"We have now twice gone unprepared to war," Dougla.s.s said. "May G.o.d grant that, where we did not learn our lesson the first time, we shall do so the second. I hope that, in years to come, smoke will billow from the stacks of the factories producing every manner of gun and munition so that, should another war ever come, we shall at last be ready for it."

When the carriage reached the street on which Dougla.s.s lived, Lewis had to rein in sharply to keep the horses from running down Daniel, who was pedaling his bicycle along without the slightest care for where he was going. The boy handled the high-wheeled ordinary with far more confidence than he'd shown before Dougla.s.s left for Louisville: too much confidence, perhaps.

Seeing Dougla.s.s, he whizzed close to the carriage. "Welcome back!" he shouted. "Welcome home!"

"Thank you, son," Dougla.s.s answered. By then, Daniel was speeding away again. Dougla.s.s wondered whether he heard. Even so, the journalist softly repeated the words: "Thank you." To Daniel, he wasn't a Negro, or, at least, wasn't first and foremost a Negro. Before that, he was a neighbor and a man. To Dougla.s.s, that was as it should be.

Lewis reined in again, in front of the house where Dougla.s.s and Anna had lived so long. "Here we are, Father." He grinned and tipped his cap. "Cab fare, fifty cents."

Dougla.s.s gave him two quarters, and a dime tip to boot. He would not let Lewis return the money, either, saying, "It's the best ride I've had since I left home, and one of the cheaper ones, too."

"All right, since you put it that way." Lewis shoved the coins into his pocket. "Good to know I have a trade I can fall back on at need. Heaven knows the newspaper business isn't so steady as I wish it were."

"See what you get for not pandering to the most popular opinions?" Frederick Dougla.s.s kept his tone light, but the words were serious, and he and his son both knew it. He got down, then helped Anna. She felt fragile, bony, in his arms. Anxious, he asked, "My dear, how are you?"

"As the good Lord meant me to be," she answered, to which he found no response. She went on, "Pretty soon I'll see Him face-to-face, and I intend to have a good long talk with Him about the way things do go on in this here world."

"Good," Dougla.s.s said. "I'm sure He could have made a much better job of things had He had you to advise Him."

Anna glared, then poked him in the ribs. They both laughed. Together, they walked into the house. Dougla.s.s stopped in the front hall. The feel of the throw rug under his feet, the rows of framed pictures on the walls, the infinitely familiar view of the parlor on one side and the dining room on the other, the faint smell of paper and tobacco and food-all told him he was home, and nowhere else. A long, happy sigh escaped him.

"Are you glad to be back?" Anna asked slyly.

"Oh, maybe just a bit," he answered. They laughed again.

Lewis came downstairs, brisk and quick and sure of himself. "I've put your bags in the bedroom, Father. That's settled for you." He was a young man still, and certain that things were easily settled. A small problem solved, he moved on to a greater one: "Where do we go from here?"

"How do you mean that?" Frederick Dougla.s.s asked. "I myself am going upstairs before long, to find out if I still remember what sleeping in my own bed feels like. If, however you mean Where does the colored man go from here? Where does the colored man go from here? or or Where do the United States go from here? Where do the United States go from here?-well, those questions require a little more thought. Only a little, you understand."

"I had suspected they might." Lewis chuckled without much mirth. "Any quick answers, before I see to the horses and the carriage?"

"You let your father rest," Anna said with a touch of asperity. "He hasn't had hisself an easy time of it."

Nothing could have been better calculated to make Dougla.s.s say, "I will answer-a horseback guess, before Lewis goes back to the horses. As I said before, the lot of the colored man in the Confederate States may improve, though to what degree I cannot now guess. The lot of the colored man in our own country? I see no great change on the horizon, though I wish I did. We shall have to go on working state by state for laws a.s.serting our rights, for the national government, having finally broken our chains, can go no further without another Const.i.tutional amendment, and you know as well as I how likely that is."

"Un-," Lewis said wryly. "All right, that's not a bad summation for us. Can you do as well for the country?"

"No one can guess where the country goes from here," Dougla.s.s said, shaking his ma.s.sive head. "We shall have to see what the full effect upon us is of this defeat. Lincoln believes the white laborer will be pressed down until he is no better off than the Negro-but Lincoln, being white, cannot fully grasp all the vicissitudes of being black. Ben Butler, if I understand him rightly, feels the national government needs to organize us down to our shoelaces, to make certain we are never again caught short by our enemies. Whether the national government can do that, whether it will do that, whether it should do that-if I could read a crystal ball, I would wear a turban on my head, not a derby."

"What does President Blaine think?" Lewis asked. "Did you get any hint of that in Chicago?"

"No," Dougla.s.s answered. "Surprisingly little was said of him at that meeting. Perhaps that was because he is sure to fail of reelection when his term is up, perhaps because he has not clearly shown he has any thoughts to speak of past unwavering hostility toward the Confederate States, and he has bought only disrepute on that policy."

"More Democrats," Lewis said with a sigh.

"More Democrats," Frederick Dougla.s.s agreed, as mournfully.

Anna said, "You was right the first time, Frederick. Now go on upstairs and get yourself some rest. You can do that your own self, and do it this here minute. The rest of it'll still be here when you get up."