An Obituary for Major Reno

by Richard S. Wheeler

  Yet the aftermath of the battle, in which the major had found himself called a coward and an incompetent in the national press, had scarred his soul, and the wounds had altered and coarsened Reno’s very nature. Gradually he became combative, reckless, hard-edged, trouble-prone, and a sot on occasion, though not ever a serious drunkard.

  Richler knew that Reno had been hurt far more than the cigarchomping major would ever admit; hurt less by Whittaker than by highranked officers such as Nelson Miles, whose open scorn cut deep. It was Miles’ flippant view that when seven of twelve companies of the Seventh Cavalry were halted on a hilltop by a timid officer, Custer didn’t have a chance.

  It was scarcely a measured opinion, didn’t weigh the difficulties, and yet Richler knew it must have cut deeply to the heart of the cavalry major. Reno could endure the press but he had a bad time enduring the condemnations of his peers, the whispered criticism, even contempt, that sometimes burst into his awareness, often from the correspondence published by the Army and Navy Journal. There, in that undaunted magazine, he had found few friends. And with every sting, he lifted his flask, and with every nip of spirits, he courted trouble.

  He had tried to resume his life and career, command the bases to which he had been assigned, but nothing was ever the same after that. He was listening for insult, listening for disdain, and he who listens hard enough will surely find it.

  And yet … Joe Richler was not a man to sympathize too deeply. Reno could have weathered the storm if he had governed his appetites better. He could have had an illustrious career. He might have ended up as a general officer. The Little Bighorn was not so devastating as to ruin his military life. That was the paradox of the man. Just when you began to empathize with him, you were suddenly aware that he was not made of stern stuff.

  Richler could find nothing unexceptional in Reno’s later life. He moved to New York and lived there for a while, working closely with Scott Lord to forward his case. The attorney aggressively pursued every possible avenue, and Reno did not lack for a superb advocate. But the bright lights of New York were a far cry from the crude life of a Western fort, and Reno did not spare the expense of good food, good cigars, and good wine.

  That was when he met Isabella McGunnegle, widow of a naval lieutenant commander. She was a little older than Reno, had four adult children, and was struggling to survive on a small government pension of thirty dollars a month and a clerking position. They took to each other, and eventually married.

  The marriage began to deteriorate soon afterward, and Richler could only guess at the reasons. Perhaps it was money: Marcus Reno was living high in New York and Isabella may have thought he had more of an inheritance than he actually had. Whatever the case, Richler knew the reasons lay buried along with Marcus Reno. She was estranged from him at the time of his death and had filed for divorce, citing intolerable, but unspecified, insults to her person. And later she sued him for nonsupport. There was no way of knowing what that was all about.

  Richler wondered what sort of man Reno really was. The odd thing was that he didn’t have the faintest idea. He had known only the dying man, and everything else was hearsay, or gossip, or correspondence. What’s more, everything about him was contradictory. But that sort of puzzle was the usual lot of reporters, and if he was worthy of his craft he would penetrate to the bottom, read between the lines, and come up with a true bill. The more he tried to grasp Reno, the more elusive the major became.

  Reno had eventually moved to Washington, rented a small flat, and had gone to work as a clerk for the Pension Bureau of the Department of the Interior for sixty dollars a month. It was no living at all, not after a comfortable major’s salary and emoluments. There, in perfect anonymity, he toiled away, shuffling file cards, making notations, recording deaths and address changes. It was a long way down a terrible slope from his days in the army.

  He had trouble with his son, who developed spendthrift ways, and Reno found it necessary to go to court for permission to pay Ross’ debts from the trust set up for him. Richler thought that was natural; Reno had hardly set any good examples for the boy. And yet … there was the major, toiling honorably day by day at a nondescript job, setting a good example, faithfully and without complaint making something of a living during hard times, and that should have been example enough for Ross. Eventually the boy reached his majority, acquired control of his estate, and headed toward Kentucky where he married and bought into a liquor wholesaling company operated by his wife’s family.

  The financial records revealed what Reno was falling into: he sold numerous lots and properties to his brother-in-law for a token hundred dollars. What of that? Did it conceal a loan? Or repayment of a debt? In 1887 Reno was compelled to sell the larger properties, the excellent farm, his rented house in Harrisburg. It all slowly vanished, some into the hands of his lawyers, some to his son, the rest into making ends meet.

  And there was the striking thing, the amazing thing. Richler marveled at it. The man refused to give up or settle into a new life. To his dying day he sought to return to the cavalry, to repossess his rank, to engage in service to his country. With every new session of Congress there would be bills introduced to reinstate him into the ranks of officers.

  The details were no longer important. What he said was no longer important. What Scott Lord did by way of lobbying or filing briefs was not important. But one thing flabbergasted Joseph Richler as he reviewed those last declining years of Reno’s life: the man spent a substantial inheritance trying to reinstate himself, cleanse his name and honor, and died broke. There was not enough to pay for a funeral or a gravestone. What other man, given the circumstances, would spend his very substance on all of that?

  Why had he done it? What had he believed about it? What led him, year after year, to assault the military establishment? When he began putting the last of his properties on the block, had he come to any understanding that his long struggle would not avail? Was this dogged effort, this bulldog tenacity, the true nature of a man who had been pilloried as a coward?

  Richler marveled. In all of his years of reporting the affairs of great men and small, he had never come across anyone else with so fierce a mission, so obsessive a need, so rigid a goal.

  Yes, Marcus Reno was different.

  Richler turned down the wick until the lamp blued out, and he sat at the rolltop in the dim light of a gas lamp across the room. Fog lay thick over the capital city, and he could see nothing from his dew-streaked window. He would go to bed in a moment, the evening having yielded few additional clues about the late Marcus Reno.

  There were things to think about: the major’s deathbed wish was to have his name and honor restored. But there were really two issues here. Did Reno want only to triumph over accusations of cowardice at the Little Bighorn? Or was it the indiscretions and unsettled conduct that followed the battle that Reno wanted expelled from the record of his life? Or both?

  The dying man had asked for his good name and honor.

  Why bother?

  For a moment, Richler thought he might simply scuttle the whole project. Yes, he had promised the man on his deathbed that he would defend his honor. But what did that come to? He was only trying to comfort a man who had unfinished business and no time left. That was all it was; a quick, kind way of letting Reno die in peace.

  And yet … Richler was not a man to discard his promises. Some sure swift voice in him told him that he had made his commitment, and he must do all that was required, or he himself would be a man whose words were as loose as sand.

  “All right, then, I will,” he said into the near gloom, with only the faint light of the city probing into the parlor.

  He had some leeway. He could not defend the indefensible, and some of Reno’s conduct after the battle fell into that category. But he would do what he could, if only out of that charity that all human beings hope covers their worst failings and forgives them their trespasses.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  JOSEPH RICHLER
EYED HIS LUNCHEON COMPANION, CAPTAIN EDWARD Godfrey, wondering how much the man would say. The captain was well known as one of Marcus Reno’s detractors, and during the court of inquiry had come closer than anyone else to calling the major a coward.

  Godfrey exuded an impatient, patronizing air, as if nothing in the world quite suited him, especially lunch with a newsman. He peered down his formidable nose, which so dominated his face that Richler found himself staring at the long lumpy proboscis, which terminated in thick shrubbery. Somewhere in that foliage a mouth opened periodically to receive dessert.

  The interview that Richler had in mind was forbidden in the hallowed chambers of the Washington Cosmopolitan Club, but Richler thought he could get away with it. The imperial and imperious club had admitted him only reluctantly; it didn’t want reporters and other lowlifes mucking about among those who ran the country. On the other hand, James Gordon Bennett’s New York Herald was the nation’s preeminent newspaper, and the club had finally opened its doors to Richler, with the gentle admonition that its quiet chambers were not to be employed for business. Whatever was spoken in the Cosmopolitan Club was to be treated as private and sacrosanct. If there should be the slightest complaint, his name would be brought before the membership committee.

  Richler had nodded, avoided reply, paid his dues, which he passed along to Bennett because they were ten times what any working newspaper correspondent could afford, and regularly patrolled the precincts where cabinet secretaries, generals of the army, admirals of the navy, and powerful legislators gathered to forge friendships, say unguarded things, and generate policies. He always got his best stories there, but was so adroit about it that none of the nabobs noticed.

  This was business. But as far as Richler was concerned it was more. The Reno case had an odd hold on him, bordering on obsession, and he itched to dig deeper than anyone had so far into the Little Bighorn. And hovering always in the background was a promise made to a desperate and dying man. He hated that promise, which now imprisoned him and kept him occupied.

  Maybe the potted palms and Sevres china would open the captain up.

  “Captain, the Little Bighorn still fascinates me, and I thought I would pick your mind a little,” Richler said, after a vanilla ice cream and tangerine dessert. “It’s an obsession of mine.”

  “Richler, I’ve said what needs to be said. It’s all in the court of inquiry.”

  Richler ignored him, and stirred sugar into his coffee.

  “You commanded Company K, under Benteen, I take it. And lived to tell about it.”

  “It was a hot fight, all right.”

  “You came up with Benteen, found Reno up on the hill, right?”

  “I did. We were at the rear. There was a fight ahead, plenty of shooting, and Reno was scrambling up there, and we couldn’t see Custer at all. None of us imagined what had happened or what was about to happen. Damned if I can’t see it all again, before my eyes.”

  “I’ve studied the transcript of the court of inquiry. It’s plain you didn’t think that Major Reno conducted himself gallantly.”

  Godfrey stared. “You know, I’d rather refer to the man as Mr. Reno.”

  The correspondent smiled. “I guess that says it.”

  “Yes, it does.”

  “You are no admirer of Reno.”

  “Let us speak no ill of the dead.”

  “But you didn’t like him.”

  “Oh, in the army, one gets along with all sorts.”

  “You didn’t like him.”

  “Let us change the subject—ah, it’s well known. He was an ass.”

  “How so?”

  Godfrey paused, plainly wondering whether he should plunge into such a topic, and obviously decided that he would. His thick finger started wagging, like a hammer pounding a nail.

  “The cavalry is not a place for cowards.”

  Now at last Godfrey was showing signs of candidness.

  “From the beginning of that fight until it was over, Reno showed himself for what he was. The cavalry, Richler, is an attack force. It’s not much good for defense. You attack; you drive forward, you don’t count enemy but you do count objectives. You head into a village and send it scattering like tenpins, and you don’t quit just because you’re outnumbered.”

  “You were there?” Richler asked, knowing that Godfrey had not been on hand in the valley fight.

  “In a way, yes. I walked that terrain afterward. Every foot of it. I saw every tepee ring. I walked through those woods. I saw no reason why a cavalry charge should be aborted, or men should dismount and form a skirmish line or hide in the woods. At close range in the village, their revolvers would have been effective. They would have met Custer, two pincers with the village in its jaws, and the result would have been very different.”

  “You’re a firm Custer partisan, then.”

  “It was a sound plan, sir.”

  “Then how did it go awry?”

  “Reno. I’ll say it now, I’ll say it until I die.” He wagged that blunt finger again. “Custer did not receive the support he counted on.”

  “Reno fought well during the War of the Rebellion.”

  “Bah! He was supposed to control Mosby’s guerrillas in Pennsylvania, and played the fool. The man was not only craven but incompetent.”

  “He received glowing reports from his superiors after several fights.”

  “Battlefield talk. You didn’t see him being elevated one brevet after another, the way Armstrong Custer was.”

  “Reno was a brevet brigadier of volunteers by war’s end, I believe.”

  “Politics.”

  “General Sheridan called him one of the best.”

  “Bah! Nothing.”

  Richler was delighted. He had opened the reluctant captain up entirely. “Why didn’t you like him, captain?”

  The finger started wagging again. “I’ll tell you why. I wasn’t there, but I heard all about it. The night of June twenty-fifth, when the command was surrounded on the hilltop, Reno and Benteen had a little private powwow about what to do. Reno put it to Benteen: we’ve been deserted by Custer. We could sneak out, try to hook up with the command, wherever it is. If we did, we would have to mount the wounded who could ride, abandon the rest. Benteen told Reno that he wouldn’t have any part of abandoning the wounded to those fiends. That, Mr. Richler, is reason enough to despise the man. Leaving wounded behind to save his fat carcass.”

  “I’ve heard the story, captain, and most people interpret it differently. It was simply a look at an option. He and Benteen were discussing options, the pros and cons of any tactic at a time when the command was isolated, in danger of being overwhelmed, and out of touch.

  “No one, including Benteen, has ever suggested that Reno actually advocated the plan. He could have ordered it, you know. He was commanding. In fact, by all accounts, Reno attempted to contact Custer; the scouts wouldn’t go. By the same token, no scout from Custer had gotten through to Reno. I’d be looking at all options myself, if I were commanding.”

  Godfrey reddened. “That porker just wanted to sneak out to save himself from the Sioux butchers, and that’s all there was to it.”

  “You’re sure of that? You knew his mind that well?”

  “I’m as sure of it as I’m sure I’m sitting in the Cosmopolitan Club.”

  “Then you feel that Reno’s entire conduct was not honorable.”

  “The word should not even be applied to the man.”

  “Well, you make yourself plain. But what about competence? Was Reno a competent officer, do you believe?”

  Godfrey snorted, wiped crumbs from his thick moustache, and eyed Richler. “The man was West Point, but barely made it, you know. I suppose even the class dunce is competent to a degree, or else the academy is failing to do its duty.”

  A nice evasion. Godfrey always started gently, but a little prodding would open him up, Richler thought. “That retreat from the woods at the Little Bighorn. What do you think of it?”

&n
bsp; “I’m glad you called it what it was. Reno called it a charge. I admit there’s some controversy among officers as to whether Reno should have tried to hold there. The testimony at the court of inquiry varied widely.” Godfrey leaned forward and waggled that finger. “It was a rout, cost Reno a third of his force. They didn’t even cross that stream at a ford. High banks, horses clawing up, and the Indians shooting them like ducks.”

  “Is that a commander’s failing?”

  “Who else’s?”

  “What if the troopers bolt? Panic? What if sergeants and company commanders can’t hold them? What if nothing any officer says can stop them?”

  “Then the officers are … less then competent, shall we say.”

  “Who? French? DeRudio? Moylan?”

  “You’re not going to trap me into something like that, Richler. They’re all good men, led on that occasion by an incompetent who panicked and ran.”

  “Did anyone see Reno running?”

  “He ran across that river with the rest. He should have stayed behind, restored order, been the last man to reach that summit.”

  Richler suppressed a smile. “You saw none of this, though. You weren’t there. You arrived later, under Benteen?”

  “Richler, officers talk. I listen.”

  Richler nodded, sipped some cold coffee, and eyed the dining room, which had largely emptied. Several of the new Harrison administration’s fat-bottomed undersecretaries were huddled in a corner.

  “Put yourself in Reno’s boots, captain. What would you have done at that point?”

  “Richler, I don’t appreciate this grilling,” Godfrey said, pushing back his chair. “I thought we’d just talk a little about the fight because it’s your hobby.”