They lay in the darkness for some time, and then the general sighed deeply, making the anguish of his thought echo through the room: ‘Tonight I was a general once more. Tomorrow the bugles will sound, dawn will break, and I shall be a captain again … and forever.’
The second investigating team was completely different. Lieutenant General Philip Sheridan, a marvelously concentrated Irishman with a bullet head and drooping walrus mustaches—a sort of roundish, ineffectual-looking man until one discovered that every bulge was muscle—rode into the fort with three of his pet colonels, men, he said, of infinite promise. Most powerful was Ranald Mackenzie, a man so intense, said his troops, that ‘his eyes could cut rocks’; he was destined to leapfrog his contemporaries and stand at the threshold of commander in chief, until his mind snapped, destroyed by syphilis and by the burdens he had placed upon it.
There was Nelson Miles, not a West Point man but something much better: the nephew-by-marriage of both General William Tecumseh Sherman, head of the Army, and Senator John Sherman, the powerful political leader from Ohio; he was an unproved quantity at the threshold of his career, but with his uncles’ help he would gain constant promotion, a vain, arrogant, impossible man with only one credit to his name: he was a phenomenally brave officer when leading men into battle.
Most impressive, to men and women alike, was Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer, nearly six feet tall, never weighing more than a hundred and seventy, and of such elegant bearing that he commanded attention wherever he went. Like the other two, he was thirty-four, but he was totally unlike them in other respects; they wore ordinary military uniforms, well pressed and tended; he wore custom-tailored trousers and jacket, spats over his General Quimper boots, and a remarkable Russian-type greatcoat cut from a heavy French cloth and with a monstrous cape adorned with Afghanistan caracul fur at the neck, along the front and at the cuffs. His face was cadaverously thin, with romantic hollows under his cheekbones, and he was obviously worried about the gradual retreat of his hair, for like many vain men he twisted and trained it to lie across his forehead and hide the loss. At the neck he wore his hair very long, and since it was naturally wavy, enhanced by his wife’s constant attention with hot irons, it added considerably to his appeal. Like most officers of that period, he wore a mustache which he kept so carefully trimmed that it added dignity to a face already as compelling as that of any Roman emperor’s.
They were, as both Sherman and Sheridan agreed, three remarkable young colonels, and it was inevitable that one of them would gain supreme command. Mackenzie, perhaps the ablest of the three, would be disqualified because of creeping insanity; Custer would perish because of his inexcusable arrogance at the Little Big Horn; Miles, the political conniver, would prevail. In the military, as in all human endeavor, it can sometimes be the man who merely survives who triumphs, whether his skills warrant it or not.
Sheridan and his three aces needed little time to assess the situation at Fort Garner: ‘Second rate in every respect. When a wife misbehaves like Nellie Minor, she should be soldiered out within the day. When an important supply train approaches, it should be protected by more than an untested second lieutenant. And when an Indian marauder like Matark ravages a countryside, he should be caught and hanged. Captain Reed is moderately acceptable, but the only officer present who seems to have an understanding of what a frontier fort should be is Captain Hermann Wetzel, who is hereby commended for his attention to detail.’
No formal rebuke was leveled against Captain Reed, but a kind of sorrow suffused the visit, as if the young colonels regretted that he was not a better man. Colonel Custer went out of his way to applaud Mrs. Reed’s handling of the Johnny Minor affair, and he spellbound the other wives with his graciousness and warmth of understanding.
When Sheridan led his team away, the fort continued under the aura of the three colonels and there was much discussion as to which one would triumph in the battle for promotion. Wetzel summarized opinions: ‘Miles is political, but very strong in the field, a powerful combination. Custer can achieve anything if he attends to details. Mackenzie’s the one I’d like to lead me into battle.’ The women did not bother with the credentials of the other two colonels: ‘Custer is magnificent.’ And he was, for he was considerate, charming, persistent, and suffused with that glamor which can only be called romantic. Even their husbands could not denigrate him when their wives applauded, for he was unquestionably the most dramatic leader ever to have visited Fort Garner, and his heavy felt spats and fur-trimmed greatcoat would long be remembered.
The fort received a shock when Lewis Renfro arrived with his alert wife, Daisy, for the traditional desk-hog was apt to be an obese, slovenly fellow with little military bearing. Renfro was quite the opposite, a thirty-six-year-old West Point man from a good family in Ohio, tall, erect, ten pounds underweight from daily horsemanship in the parks of Washington, and a man determined to give a good account of himself on the frontier. He would take Minor’s place as head of Company S, 10th Cavalry under the command of Captain Reed, to whom he said unctuously: ‘I want you to rely on me as one of the best officers you’ve ever had. When you give me an order, consider it executed.’
Fawningly eager to create a good impression, he sought out Captain Wetzel and assured him: ‘I’ll not permit any ridiculous cavalry-infantry unpleasantness while I command the Buffalo Soldiers. They’ll be disciplined.’ But that same day he implied quite the opposite to Jaxifer, to whom he told an outright lie concerning his experiences in the war: ‘I served with Negro troops on three different occasions. None better. If the infantry give you any trouble, you’ll find me on your side all the way.’ But despite this trickery in fort politics, whenever an expedition against the Indians was organized he wanted to be in the lead, and from that position he gave a good account of himself.
‘He knows how to fight,’ Sergeant Jaxifer told his troopers. ‘We got a good man this time.’
This was a sensible estimation, because when an energetic foray led by Renfro ran into outriders of the main Comanche force, a bitter running battle ensued, forty Indians on mounts of superior speed against nineteen cavalrymen with superior firepower. Neither side could claim a victory, but Renfro pursued the Indians with such vigor that any Comanche whose horse faltered even slightly was overtaken and shot. Renfro was always in the lead, probably the best single horseman on the field that day, and when the chase was over, the black soldiers were satisfied that they had gained a proficient leader.
In a second fray, when Reed was in command, Renfro accepted his subordinate position graciously and moved his contingent instantly when Reed signaled. He was a good officer, and Reed told Wetzel: ‘Had he stayed out here with us instead of hiding in Washington, he could have been one of Sherman’s Young Colonels,’ and the German agreed that Renfro was first class. ‘I think his name must be German,’ Wetzel said. ‘He carries himself so well.’
But Lewis Renfro had no intention of laboring on the frontier to establish his reputation as the fourth of the Young Colonels. He would perform impeccably with the troops, but he would also pull every string to get back to his desk job in Washington. By-passing established channels, he and his wife bombarded everyone in real command with clever petitions, and were assured: ‘As soon as anything interesting happens, back you’ll come.’ What the incident might be the Renfros could not guess, but their hammering at the doors of preferment became so well known that Mrs. Reed felt she had to caution Daisy against her excesses, and in the room where so many had been quietly reprimanded, Daisy now took her place, but she proved to be quite different from her predecessors.
‘Do you not see that your actions may be prejudicing your husband’s chances?’ Louise Reed asked.
‘I am improving them. Lewis was born to serve in Washington, and I shall do my best to see that he does so.’
‘But he is so capable at the front. He could be one of the great leaders.’
‘He’s already one of the great leaders, Mrs. Ree
d. He fights in Washington with a skill that not even Sherman and Sheridan could exhibit.’
‘But the real fighting is out here, against the Indians.’
‘Half of it is,’ Daisy replied. ‘And I do believe that the more important half, in peacetime, is back with us, fighting the battles in Congress.’
‘But look at this fort, Mrs. Renfro. Does not the building of an establishment like this mean anything to you? When my husband came here … not a post erected, not a wall in place. He built a mud fort, and when the dead-house is finished, it will all be stone. A permanent testimony to the brave men who occupied it.’
Mrs. Renfro had to laugh: ‘One act of Congress and this fort vanishes. Back to the mesquite. It’s in Congress where the peacetime army fights its battles, and Lewis is going back to work with Congress, where he can do some good.’
Mrs. Reed had to be blunt: ‘Mrs. Renfro, you certainly must be aware that your husband’s report will be written by my husband. Why are you so daring in disregarding my counsel?’
‘I do not disregard it, and I’m sure Lewis doesn’t disregard your husband’s. What can possibly be reported except that Lewis was foremost in battle, striking in his courage and immediately responsive to orders?’
‘Yes, yes.’
‘We both try to be like that. Haven’t you seen that if you even hint at an instruction, I comply?’
‘But I am now more than hinting that you should stop these letters.’
Now it was Daisy’s turn to be obdurate: ‘That’s quite a different matter, dealing with the welfare of the entire army, not with a single fort. Lewis can aid immensely in getting our army the funds it needs, the support it requires. Of course I shall continue to help him get the post he deserves.’
The interview ended poorly, with battle lines drawn and animosities flaring, but the impasse did not continue long, because the kind of incident which the Renfro adherents in Washington needed to bring their man back home occurred, with an incandescent explosion that not even the most stalwart Renfro supporter could have anticipated.
During the hottest part of the summer of 1874, Renfro, Jaxifer and all the effectives of Company S, forty-seven in number, set forth on the supposed trail of Chief Matark, whose braves had spent that summer ravaging the ranches along the frontier. The Texas government had warned settlers not to venture too far west, and the United States government had explained that protection even from forts like Richardson and Garner could not ensure safety, but the insatiable hunger for land which would always characterize Texans lured the adventurers farther and farther west. Just as the four Larkin brothers had dared the empty plains, claiming their six thousand acres and holding them nicely until the Comanche struck, so now other daring men and women staked out their claims beyond the forts, and during this summer alone, sixty white men, women and children had been slain, usually in a manner so brutal and horrifying as to shock even those Texans who had become accustomed to the barbarisms.
After the annihilation of four ranch families well to the south and west of Fort Garner, Renfro sought permission to make a major sortie, and with innate cleverness he did not ride directly south to where the crimes had occurred, but in a contrary direction, far to the west toward the Palo Duro Canyon and the extreme limits of the Indian Territory, for he reasoned that the triumphant Indians would have sped away from the burning ranches, then taken their time to head for sanctuary.
He was right. He and his men attacked the celebrating Comanche from the north, sweeping down on them in a sudden shattering attack, and because newspapers throughout the nation gave much space to what happened next, it is essential that the exact details be understood.
With Renfro in the lead, the 10th Cavalry launched a major attack, and according to plan, at the height of battle half the troops swung west under Renfro, half to the east under Jaxifer. Renfro and his men performed with signal valor, everyone testified to that, and by tremendous exertion turned the flank of the advancing Comanche, throwing the rest of the Indians into confusion.
When this occurred, Sergeant Jaxifer on the east saw a chance to sweep in and disrupt the Comanche completely, and he did this, but as his men galloped through the Indian ranks he caught sight of what he believed to be a white girl, and the idea flashed through his mind: That must be the Larkin child. Reacting more to instinct than to conscious plan, he wheeled his horse and pursued that group of Indians who held the girl. Alone and threatened by dozens of braves, he plunged on, overtook the fleeing Indians, reached out, and miraculously snatched the girl from her captors, clubbing with his gun the head of the brave who had been holding her.
Turning once more, he broke through the confused Indians to a point where his astonished black troops could give him coverage, and for some moments a violent struggle ensued, but with the girl in his arms, Jaxifer rallied his men until they prevailed. At this moment Renfro galloped up, saw the girl, and perceived at once her magical significance. Taking her gently from the sergeant, he held her close and asked: ‘You are Emma Larkin?’ and she replied, with full knowledge of what her words meant: ‘I am.’
Thus the legend was born. Lewis Renfro, in an attack upon the savage Comanche when his men were outnumbered a hundred to forty-nine, had recovered the white child Emma Larkin, whose family had been murdered at Bear Creek in 1869 and who had been captive of the savages for five long years. Stories were written in such a way as to indicate that Renfro’s feat was the more astonishing in that he was supported only by Negro troops, whose effectiveness in such warfare was not proved. Apparently it was his heroic persistence that had made the rescue possible.
The story proved wildly popular, with Harper’s and the New York newspapers sending artists to Texas to depict the battle and the manner of Emma’s rescue. Pictures proliferated, but they all faced two difficulties: it was not practical to show black troops at the scene, so faces were blurred, except for Lieutenant Renfro’s, and the fact that Emma had no nose or ears meant that she could not be shown either, which meant that Renfro pretty well stole the show. In fact, on two occasions when the press were permitted to see Emma, some of the men vomited, and quite a few of their stories said merely that she had been ‘poorly treated by her captors,’ and even those two or three reporters who did mention the mutilations did not speak of the rapes. Americans then, as later, wanted their stories heroic but also respectful of the niceties.
More than two dozen detailed interviews spelled out Renfro’s heroism and audacity; no one questioned Jaxifer. At one point Emma told a woman reporter the facts, but when this woman searched out Jaxifer, she was frightened by his bigness, his lack of a neck and his thick lips, so his part in the rescue was ignored.
This was the incident that Daisy Renfro needed to get her man back to Washington, and she orchestrated the affair skillfully. She sought a congratulatory telegram from Colonel Custer, and tender stories from other Texas settlers who said they wished that Lieutenant Renfro would rescue their lost children from Matark. Before the month was out, Washington was clamoring for its newest hero to return, and when Daisy and Lewis left Fort Garner they took care to ensure that both Captain and Mrs. Reed received credit for the fine manner in which the fort had been administered. Said Renfro to the press: ‘You cannot have brave soldiers at a lonely frontier unless you have a fine commander in charge of them. Than Captain Reed there can be no finer.’
When the train pulled out of the station at New Orleans, he told his wife: ‘We’ll never see Texas again. What a desolate land.’
Emma Larkin, a twelve-year-old captive of the Comanche, had been a kind of holy grail of the plains, with all decent men striving to rescue her, a challenge that would not dissipate even with the passage of years; but Emma Larkin, a seventeen-year-old young woman aged beyond her years, was an embarrassment, and after the first flush of her victorious recapture, no one knew what to do with her.
The women at the fort, of course, had rejoiced at her return, but quickly they realized that there was no place for he
r in their lives; nor anywhere else, for that matter. For one thing, she had no family, all of her immediate relatives having been exterminated at Bear Creek and possible ones back east having been lost in the normal experiences of immigration. But more important, she was hideously ugly, a frail, stringy girl with almost no bosom and those terrible scars where her ears and nose should have been. Furthermore, she had formed the habit of speaking in a whisper, so that she often seemed like a ghost wandering in from another world. And after a few days of compassion, no one wanted to have her around.
Mrs. Reed did take it upon herself to represent the girl’s interests in the land court at Jacksborough, for it was clear that Emma must have inherited all the lands once owned by her father and her uncles; rapacious men had tried to obtain squatter’s rights on the six thousand acres when no surviving Larkins stepped forward to claim them, but it was apparent that if poor Emma had experienced such tortures, the least society could do was return her patrimony. As always when Texas land was involved, the fight became vicious, and Mrs. Reed was advised to withdraw lest she endanger the good community relationship with the fort, and she would have done so had she not obtained unintended support from Earnshaw Rusk, up at Camp Hope.
Rusk now had Matark’s fleeing Comanche living peacefully on his grounds, and they had many complaints against Captain Reed and his soldiers: ‘This man Renfro, he attacked us when we were hunting buffalo. We were doing nothing but hunting, and his Buffalo Soldiers charged upon us and killed our braves. He also stole one of our women.’
This latter charge, delivered with much excitement and waving of arms, electrified Rusk, for it represented exactly the kind of army behavior that he was determined to stamp out, so on a clear day at the end of summer, 1874, he and two of his Comanche assistants rode the fifty-eight miles south to Fort Garner to lodge an official protest, but before departing he thought it prudent to inform his superiors in the Interior Department of what he was about, lest contrary reports filter in from the fort:
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