Custer at the Alamo

by Gregory Urbach

  Mitch Bouyer rode up. A grizzly half-breed scout, part French Canadian and part Santee Sioux, there was nothing about Indians that Mitch didn’t know. With Bouyer came Sergeant Jimmy Butler of L Troop, the best marksmen in the regiment, and Mark Kellogg, a reporter for the Bismarck Tribune. Corporal Voss rode nearby with his trumpet, as did Sergeant Bobby Hughes, bearing my personal red and blue silk guidon.

  “Told ya thar were too many Injuns, Gen’ral,” Bouyer said, leaning forward on his saddle horn while chewing on a chaw of tobacco. Another habit I didn’t approve of.

  “We still have a chance,” I said. “We’ll charge the northern end of the village and ride through them. Where can we cross the river?”

  Bouyer laughed, which annoyed the hell out of me.

  “There’s a ford ’bout two miles downriver, but we’ll never make it across. The Sioux is gonna chase our butts up into the hills and chop us to pieces. Literally, sir. Chop us all to hell. We had better skedaddle if you wanna see another sunrise,” Bouyer said.

  “We will attack,” I said.

  I twisted in my saddle and motioned for the command to move out. We were being screened by the bluffs. With luck, which I’ve always been blessed with, we’d be in the village before they knew what hit them.

  “Autie, you know this isn’t going to work, don’t you?” Tom whispered, riding close at my side.

  “We’re committed, Tom. It’s got to work,” I said.

  “We can still fall back. Regroup,” Tom suggested.

  “If we retreat, the Indians will scatter. White settlers will be murdered from the Yellowstone to Deadwood. Civilian militias will massacre the Indians in retaliation, and not just the warriors. The squaws and children, too, like Chivington did at Sand Creek. Either we end this war today or get three months of blood. Is that what you want?”

  “You’d rather be fighting with them, wouldn’t you?” Tom asked, and not for the first time.

  “If I was an Indian, I’d fight for my land and people. Just like you would. But we’re not Indians. We’re officers in the United States army,” I answered.

  I turned Vic around and rode down from the bluff into the ravine behind the ridge. Most of the command was already moving ahead. Cooke and Bouyer were waiting for me along with a young Italian private. Martini, I think he was called. Cooke gave Martini a written order for Captain Benteen to come on quick. His three companies were badly needed if we were to have any hope of success. Tom took a saddlebag of ammunition off Martini’s horse.

  “Gentlemen, to hell or glory,” I said.

  We rode hard to catch up with the command. Within minutes I heard heavy gunfire up ahead. Not just the Model 1873 Springfield carbines issued to the cavalry by the quartermaster, but rapid fire weapons. Winchester and Henry rifles. The Indians not only outnumbered us, they had repeating rifles, too.

  From the top of a long draw that Bouyer called Medicine Tail Coulee, I saw we were already in trouble. Companies C and E, led by Captain Yates, were being repulsed at the river. The remaining three companies were climbing a ridge to the north struggling for high ground. Hundreds of Indians were pouring from the village on foot and horseback.

  My headquarters staff charged on the heels of F Company, anxious to lead our comrades or share their fate. If nothing else, we were better armed than the average soldiers. I carried my .50-caliber Remington hunting rifle. Tom and Bill Cooke carried lever action 1873 Winchesters, as did most of my officers. Sergeant Butler carried a custom-designed .45/70 Sharps. Kellogg was a good shot with his Spencer rifle, while Bouyer insisted on keeping his old buffalo gun. It kicked like a sassy mule but could take a man’s head off at six hundred yards. I also rode with two ivory-handled English Bulldog revolvers, one of which I drew as we rode toward the river.

  I must admit, the odds didn’t look good. But I had a plan. I always have a plan. If we could only . . . ?

  Suddenly a swirl of dust kicked up. No, not dust, but a cloud. Gray at first, then black. I reined Vic in, the cloud so thick I could no longer see the trail. I shouted for Tom but couldn’t hear him. The gunfire increased, coming so fast and loud it seemed impossible anyone could live through such a storm. I heard a swishing sound, like the air above my head was being cut with whistling arrows. And then more arrows, hundreds more, raining all around me. Men were screaming. Horses were neighing in their death throes.

  Then, from the dust and confusion, there was a vision . . . no, a premonition. I saw myself standing on a weed-covered hillside surrounded by overwhelming numbers of Sioux and Cheyenne. My revolvers were so hot I could barely hold them, the ammunition nearly gone. Dozens of wounded soldiers lay around me in a circle of dead horses. Tom was yelling at me to get down as I stood near the colorful guidon Elizabeth had sewn for me, the tattered banner hanging limp in the airless heat. I looked back down the bleak treeless ridge, wondering where Benteen was. All I saw was a broken line of fallen soldiers. Why hadn’t Benteen come to our support? Or Reno? Couldn’t they hear the gunfire? The volley fire we’d used as a signal? Suddenly I felt a thud in my chest and fell over backwards, landing on a dead trooper. The shooting slackened off until all that remained was a deathly quiet and the smell of late spring grass.

  The cloud drifted away. I was no longer on the blood-soaked hill. The day was no longer hot. And there were no Indians, only me and my horse. Vic kicked his white hooves and snorted, just as spooked as I was. The harsh wind was cold, damp with winter rain. I buttoned up my buckskin jacket and tucked my red scarf tighter around my neck. The mountains were gone, replaced by a broad, barren prairie.

  Damned if it wasn’t the most bizarre thing. I couldn’t help wondering if I’d been killed, cast into some sort of purgatory for my sins. I’d lived a boastful life filled with a lust for glory, and though I loved my Libbie dearly, I had not been blind to the flirtations of pretty women. But that explanation made no sense. I have never believed in supernatural occurrences.

  I wasn’t dressed for winter. Like most of my officers, I wore a fringed leather jacket and buckskin pants, a blue campaign blouse, and a white wide-brimmed trail hat now stained gray with sweat. Except for my saddlebags, all of my kit was back with the mule train. A freezing blast of wind made me wish I hadn’t cut my hair so short. That is, the hair I had left. My hairline had been receding for several years.

  Wherever I was, it seemed a long way from where I’d started. I was born in New Rumley, Ohio, in 1839, and for awhile, I taught grade school. Maybe I would have stayed a school teacher if not for West Point, but I grew up reading of history’s great heroes and always believed myself cut out for a special destiny. In 1857, a few months before my eighteen birthday, I entered the Academy by appointment of my local congressman, and though I graduated 34th in a class of 34, no one thought me stupid, merely undisciplined. I went straight from graduation to the First Battle of Bull Run, a green second lieutenant with more sass than sense.

  That was fifteen years ago. Fifteen years of Civil War, garrison duty in Texas, suppressing the Ku Klux Klan in Kentucky, and fighting Indians on the plains. I’d spent eleven of those years as a Lt. Colonel with little chance of promotion. I retained the privilege of being called a general, my brevet rank during the war, but everyone knew my army career had reached a dead-end. Even my financial prospects had dimmed with a series of ill-advised investments. Perhaps it’s not always a good thing to outlive one’s moment of glory.

  The cold, scrub-covered prairie rolled gradually toward the southwest. Vic was restless. I took out my pocket watch, the silver Waltham 57 that Libbie’s father had left me. It had stopped, but didn’t appear to be broken. I gave the crystal face a tap and it started ticking again. Had I forgotten to rewind it?

  Vic and I would need water and shelter by nightfall. A light drizzle began. We traveled for more than an hour without hint of civilization, discouraging me greatly. The sun was setting, the weather turning to a nasty, bone-chilling frost. I had spent many such afternoons on the plains, for General Sheridan
often placed me at the forefront of the government’s efforts to pacify the West, but this day felt strangely different. This was not the same country I had ridden for so many years.

  Then I saw smoke up ahead, just beyond a low hill. Puffy streaks of a campfire made with scrub wood. It could be Indians, or not. Feeling as I did, even enemies would be better than no one. From the top of the next rise, I found a pleasant surprise. Cavalry. Dozens of soldiers camped along a muddy creek huddled around a string of fire pits. A blue and red guidon embroidered with crossed sabers blew from a leafless tree.

  I drew my pistol and fired a shot in the air. Two men wearing buckskin jackets jumped on their horses and rode in my direction. It was Tom and Bill Cooke.

  “Autie! Autie, thank God you’re all right,” Tom shouted, his voice higher pitched than usual.

  We dismounted and embraced. Somehow it had not occurred to me to worry about the young scallywag, thinking the strange adventure a delusion of my own. That belief had been an egocentric mistake. Sadly, not an unusual one.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  “Strangest damn thing anyone ever heard tell of. One minute we were forming a skirmish line along the ridge. Gunshots coming from every direction. Indians all over the place. Then this fog rose up. The next thing I knew, we were strung out across this plain. No Indians. No village. Nothing. Cold, though. Glad we finally got the fires started,” Tom said.

  “The command?” I requested.

  “Still gathering up stragglers,” Cooke reported, his accent as crisp as the cold air. “We’ve counted ninety-two enlisted men and six officers. Seven, now that we’ve found you. And two civilians, Bouyer and Kellogg. Smith and Yates are leading search details. Harrington’s trying to find enough brush for some shelters. No sign of Keogh or Calhoun yet. Doctor Lord is by the fire. Not faring so well.”

  “I’d like to get a feel of that fire myself. Any food?” I asked.

  “Caught a couple of fish. Hope you don’t mind the bones,” Tom said with a grin.

  We rode down to the water, a wide stream cutting a flat basin. A thick grove of cottonwoods lined the bank, providing a windbreak. I recognized men from several different companies, all tired and worried. Confounded by our unfathomable situation. The first order of business was a hot meal.

  Captain George Yates and Lieutenant Algeron Smith rode in just before sunset with nineteen more men. Second Lieutenant Henry Harrington had made a bonfire on the hill to guide them. Among the newcomers was Captain Myles Keogh, my best officer and a soldier of long experience. Along with a few dazed troopers who had followed our signal, it brought our total to eight officers, the doctor, and a hundred and twenty-six enlisted men. What happened to the other members of my command may never be known. There was no sign of my brother-in-law, Jimmy Calhoun, or my nephew, Autie Reed. Thank God my youngest brother, Boston Custer, had been left behind with the pack train.

  We made camp, such as it was, hunched down in a gully using tumbleweeds stuffed between trees to block the wind. Some of the men had shot a few skinny winter rabbits. A dreary quarter moon lit the prairie. The horses were tethered near the creek where they could chew the damp grass. Grain-fed horse weren’t likely to thrive on such fodder, but I wanted to parcel out the oats slowly while they made the transition. There was no telling how long it might take to find proper stables.

  “Going to be tough on them,” Sergeant Major Sharrow said, stroking the neck of his favorite horse, a Morgan-Mustang mix named Sue.

  A thirty-one-year-old Englishman from Yorkshire, William Hunter Sharrow was the Seventh’s ranking non-commissioned officer, a burly man usually in charge of supply. And unruly men. Or really anything that needed attending to. Everyone knows that an officer without a good top sergeant is bound for failure, so I made sure to acquire the best.

  “We only have a few pounds of fodder per animal,” I said, for we had not thought it necessary to carry oats into battle.

  “Better plan on riding easy for awhile,” Sharrow recommended, though it sounded more like an order. “Switching feed on these mounts is gonna cause gastric disruptions. The sort of disruptions you don’t wanna think about. Won’t catch me riding at the back of the column for awhile.”

  “Thanks for the warning, sergeant-major,” I said.

  With our horses cared for and the men settled in, I gathered my officers around a campfire, everyone huddled as close as they dared. Saddle blankets were wrapped around our shivering shoulders.

  “Well, Myles, you served with the Papal Guards. What would the Pope think of this?” I asked the tough Irishman.

  “Don’t know that the Pope thinks much about witchcraft,” Keogh answered with a frown.

  “Witchcraft?” Tom said, almost with a laugh.

  “You got a better explanation?” Keogh asked, his brogue always stronger when he was excited.

  “Not yet,” Tom said, even less superstitious than I.

  “What are we going to do, George?” Cooke asked, holding his hands close to the flames. It struck me as strange. My God, Cooke was a Canadian. Since when do they get cold?

  “Rejoin the command, somehow,” I said. “Jimmy is still out there, and Reno and Benteen. Terry will be coming up river sometime tomorrow with the Seventh Infantry.”

  “Don’t think so, sir,” Bouyer disagreed.

  “Why is that, scout?” I asked.

  Bouyer gave me that insolent look, again, his long stringy black hair sticking out from under a tall possum hat. He was not a member of the Seventh, having been loaned to me by General Terry. Bouyer and I had been acquainted for several years but were not on familiar terms.

  “Cuz we ain’t lost. We is goddamned stranded,” Bouyer said.

  “How’s that?” Tom said.

  “This ain’t Dakota territory, Tommy boy. We’re hundreds of miles south. Maybe a thousand,” Bouyer said. “Just look at them stars. This here is Comanche country.”

  “Impossible!” Cooke sputtered.

  “Stars don’t lie, Canada,” Bouyer said, taking a puff on his corncob pipe.

  Tom held a cigar. Keogh and Smith had taken to rolling their own cigarettes. Georgie Yates sat quietly back, watching but saying little. Dr. Lord was half asleep, too tired to indulge. For myself, I hadn’t had a smoke or hard alcohol since 1862 and wasn’t going to start now.

  “You’re talking fantasy, like those dime novels by that Frenchmen,” Lt. Harrington said. Twenty-seven years old, thin and blond-haired, Harrington was only four years out of West Point. Of my surviving officers, only he and 2nd Lt. Reily had not served during the Civil War.

  “Jules Verne,” Mark Kellogg said, a reporter’s notepad in his lap.

  “We’ll know more when we reach a settlement. Should find something by going downriver,” I said. “Saddle up first thing in the morning. Prepare for a hard day.”

  “Another one?” Doctor Lord unhappily said.

  “Sorry, doctor. Not much choice,” I replied.

  Lord, normally a robust man typical of his native Massasschuetts, had developed a mild case of dysentery on the Yellowstone. The cold weather was making it worse. Chances were he wouldn’t last long in the damp air.

  As my officers rejoined their men, Yates paused by the fire. We’d first met back in Monroe during the war and served together with General Pleasonton. Four years younger than I, blond and blue-eyed, Yates’s good temper never seemed to fail regardless of difficult circumstances. If I had a best friend, I suppose it would be George.

  “What do you think the wives would say about this?” Yates asked.

  “May be awhile before we find out,” I replied.

  “I told Annie to take the kids home to Michigan if the campaign went beyond summer. Hope it doesn’t come to that.”

  “Libbie promised to stay at Fort Lincoln until I return. Probably put up those new lace curtains she keeps talking about.”

  “Any idea how long this will take?” Yates asked.

  “Not a clue in the world, Georgie. N
ot a clue.”

  That night we slept bunched together for warmth. Most of the command prayed. I didn’t.

  * * *

  We were on the move at dawn, following the creek until reaching a minor river. The command rode under a gray sky in column of twos, our horses enjoying a slower pace that the previous few days. The recent rain had swollen the river, making it difficult to cross. Not that any of us had a desire to get wet. The sun came out around noon, and given the short period of time it took to reach its zenith, it was clearly a winter day. Probably late winter. Running short of grain for the horses, we had to stop each time we found a pitiful patch of grass.

  Tom and Cooke rode at my side. I envied the protection Cooke’s mutton chops gave him from the cold wind. The battalion was divided into four groups, the largest detachments under the command of Yates and Keogh. Smith led a scouting party of twelve men, riding the trail ahead. Young Harrington was ordered to make a final sweep of the area for stragglers and catch up before sunset. Tom and I agreed that Bouyer might be right. After the Rebellion, we’d both had duty on the southern plains. This seemed more like Indian Territory than the Dakotas.

  “Buff’lo, Gen’ral. Hundreds of ’em,” Bouyer announced from the next rise.

  Tough and stringy though it may be, a nice buffalo steak sounded awfully good at that moment. Tom and I went forward with Sergeant Jimmy Butler, we being three of the best shots in the regiment, leaving most back so as not to scare off the herd. Bouyer and Kellogg trailed behind. As civilians, they were only nominally under my authority.

  It was a big herd, bigger than I’d seen in years. The shaggy beasts were gradually wandering southwest toward a misty valley in the distance. It’s said there were once millions of buffalo, enough to cover an entire state, but hunters had been cutting the herds down to make fur hats. In another hundred years, I feared the buffalo might disappear entirely.

  “First kill wins the prize,” I said, giving Vic a nudge.

  We galloped for a few minutes, then slowed as we approached a wide bend in the river where a stand of trees blocked our view of the valley. The grass was thick here, the soil too loose for hard riding. We climbed a low hill for a better view, and much to my surprise, spotted a small campsite about a thousand yards downstream. And not just any campsite. There were two buffalo hide teepees with half a dozen Paint ponies grazing nearby. Twenty paces from the camp, I saw a heavy freight wagon hitched to four white oxen. Several mules were tethered together. Two horses of the larger Kentucky breed were tied to the tailgate.