Herndon spoke in a monotonous drone: "President Blaine is reported to be studying the situation and will comment further when more is known." He went back to his normal voice: "He's probably hiding under the bed, waiting for the Rebs to walk in and cart him off."
"Why would they want to cart him off?" Sam asked with a bitter snort. "He does them more good right where he is. I don't suppose he's said anything more about Longstreet's call for peace since yesterday?"
"Nary a word," Herndon answered.
Clemens snorted again. "Well, I don't reckon we ought to be surprised. Since the last time Longstreet said he could have peace if he wanted it, we've been licked up and down both coasts, in New Mexico, and on the Great Lakes. If that wasn't enough to give the man a clue, why the devil should he take any notice of throwing away half of what's supposed to be the best army we've got?"
"Damned if I know." Herndon paused to light a cigar, then added, "You forgot about Montana."
"Oh? Have we been licked there, too?" Sam asked. "You didn't say anything about that."
"Don't know if we have or we haven't," his friend replied. "Not enough telegraph lines up where the soldiers are for anyone to know anything. Word goes from Louisville to Richmond to London to Berlin to New York to here a hell of a lot faster than it leaks out of a place like that."
"They've kicked us around everywhere else," Sam said, "they being whoever's gone up against us. No reason to expect anything different out in the middle of nowhere, is there?"
"Can't think of any," Herndon said. "Wish I could."
"Don't we both?" Sam walked over to his desk and sat down. All unbidden, he saw in his mind the grimy face of the Royal Marine who could have killed him out in front of the newspaper offices. Even though he was sitting, his knees quivered. "We were at their mercy," he muttered, more than half to himself. "They could do anything they wanted with us—and they did."
The telegraph clicker started delivering a new message. "Let's see what's gone wrong now," Herndon said. Out came the message, a word at a time. "London by way of Berlin by way of New York City— the British and Canadians are saying they've reached the line in Maine that was the British claim line before the Webster-Ashburton Treaty, and they'll stop there and annex it to Canada."
"Is that what they're saying?" Clemens raised a bushy eyebrow. "How does that square with what Longstreet's been saying about peace without losing pieces of the USA?"
"Damned if I know," Herndon said again. "Of course, Longstreet only speaks for the Confederate States. Not likely the limeys would let him tie their hands. They do as they please, not as Old Pete pleases."
"You're right about that," Sam agreed. "The British Empire is the biggest dog around, which is why Englishmen can act like sons of bitches all over the world. But good God, Clay, now they've given Blaine a reason to keep fighting, and one that makes some kind of sense. This damned war is liable to drag on forever."
"Congressional elections next year," Herndon said reassuringly. "With the House of Representatives Blaine'll get after this fiasco, he won't see two bits of money for the Army. He'd have to give up then."
"He should have given up weeks ago," Clemens snapped. "He shouldn't have started the blamed war in the first place." He shook his fist in the direction of Philadelphia. "I told you so, Mr. President! Now if only you'd gone and listened to me. But what the hell: no one else does, so why should you be any different?"
Herndon didn't answer that. Sam fired up a cigar and filled the space around him with noxious fumes. Thus fortified, he attacked the pile of stories on his desk. Colonel Sherman was proclaiming that more fortifications could make San Francisco invulnerable to attack from the sea. Sam scribbled a note at the bottom of the article: Comments about stolen horses and locked barn doors would seem to fit here.
Edgar Leary had covered Mayor Sutro's latest pronunciamento about the urgency of rebuilding what the Royal Navy and Marines had devastated. Sam devastated Leary's prose, shelling adjectives and bayoneting adverbs. He had a scrawled suggestion for a further line of development on this piece, too: The faster we rebuild, the less anyone checks on how much money gets spent and on who spends it. It will stick in somebody's pockets, odds are those of some of His Honor's chums. Whose? Find out, and we'll shake this city harder than any earthquake ever did.
He didn't think Leary could or would find out; Adolph Sutro had proved adept at covering his tracks and those of his henchmen. But it would give the kid something to do and keep Leary out of his hair for a while, which wasn't the worst bargain in the world. And Leary, even if he couldn't write for beans, was pretty good at getting to the bottom of things.
The rest of the pieces were routine: a looter caught in the act and shot dead, the usual rash of robberies and burglaries and assaults, and praise for the entertainments offered in those theaters to which the Royal Marines had not applied the most incendiary form of dramatic criticism. Having covered both the police-court circuit and the theaters in his time, Clemens knew how hard it was to breathe life into reports concerning them. After marking the copy with a relatively gentle hand, he passed it on to the typesetters.
That done, he pulled out a blank sheet of paper, inked his pen anew, and . . . did not write. He knew what he wanted to say. He knew what he needed to say. He'd been saying it ever since the war broke out, and suggesting it before the war broke out. What point to doing it again? If your editorials sounded the same day after day after day, how did that differ from touring the police courts and recording the never-ending human folly and viciousness they memorialized?
At last, he found a way. "No wife-beater ever born," he muttered, "no wife-beater with the worst will in the world, does a millionth part of the harm James G. Blaine caused with only good intentions."
That scornful grumble gave him a title for the editorial that would not write itself, GOOD INTENTIONS, he printed in block capitals at the top of the page. The title gave him an opening sentence.
We know what road is paved with good intentions. What we need to do now is take a long, hard look at how the United States found themselves on that road, and how they will be able to get off it again without becoming too badly scorched in the doing. Heaven and the infernal regions both know there is blame and to spare to go around.
Ever since the voters in their wisdom threw Abe Lincoln out on his car—after in their wisdom electing him four years earlier and thus proving what a remarkably changeable commodity wisdom can be; quicksilver won't touch it, and not a single, nor even a married, woman in the electorate to blame it on—after heaving Lincoln over the side, I say, we spent the next many years electing Democrats whose notion of statecraft, as best anyone can tell, was to bow down to Richmond as the pious Mussulman bows in the direction of Mecca. And the voters saw this, and said that it was good.
And Richmond said it was pretty good, too, and gobbled down Cuba without so much as calling for a toothpick, and sent redskins into Kansas until any old run-of-the-mill bald man was reckoned to have had his coiffure lifted by the Kiowas. And the Democrats in the White House sighed and wrung their hands and likely knocked back a beaker or three of whiskey on the sly, since they had hardly more use for the Kansas Jayhawkers than they did for the niggers of Cuba.
Kick a country or any other dog long enough, though, and it will turn and try to bite you. As we had coughed up Abe Lincoln, so in the fullness of time—if last November will do duty for that article—we coughed up James G. Blaine. And Blaine snarled, and Blaine growled, and, like a fierce old bulldog tormented past endurance, Blaine bit.
Like an old old bulldog, though, Blaine unfortunately neglected to equip the said bite with anything in the least resembling teeth. And so, having closed his gums round the leg of the Confederate States, he has hung on like grim death while they and England and France all belabour him with a fine assortment of clubs and switches and bludgeons. He will gnaw off the Rebels' leg or die trying—so his mumbled growls proclaim.
That he will die trying—that we wi
ll die while he tries—has long since become obvious to everyone save him alone; he is evidently an old blind bulldog as well as an old toothless one.
Our own fair city has already paid the price for his bullheaded bulldoggery. If he persists, how long will it be before we once more play the role of a china shop?
What will it take to make him come to his senses, if by some accident he should have any left? He—
Sam hadn't noticed the telegraph clicking away. In a voice filled with excitement, Clay Herndon cried, "Blaine's calling for an unconditional cease-fire on all fronts. He's thrown in the sponge, Sam!"
Clemens stared at the editorial he'd been writing. He picked up the sheet, tore it to shreds, and flung them into the waste-paper basket. He was grinning from ear to ear as he did it, too.
Chapter 17
“On, men!" George Custer shouted. "are we going to let a pack of damned Volunteers get the better of us?"
That made his men ride harder, which was what he'd had in mind. It also made Colonel Theodore Roosevelt, who was trotting along beside him, display a mouthful of very large teeth in a grin the Cheshire Cat might have envied. "I'm glad you think well of my regiment, General Custer," Roosevelt said.
"I've seen worse," Custer allowed, which only made Roosevelt's grin wider. After coughing a couple of times, Custer went on, "Colonel Welton, who is an old friend of mine, spoke highly of them, and I do begin to understand why. He spoke highly of you, too, Colonel."
"He's very kind," Roosevelt said. The grin did not diminish. Roosevelt knew others had a good opinion of him. He had a good opinion of himself, too.
Custer wondered if he'd been such an arrogant puppy at the same age. He probably had; as Henry Welton had said, he never would have bulled his way onto General McClellan's staff otherwise. Now, observing the phenomenon from the outside, as it were, he wondered why no one had taken a gun and shot him for the way he'd carried on.
Roosevelt said, "General, didn't I hear that you brought a good many Gatling guns up with you from Utah Territory?"
"I brought them," Custer admitted. "I left them behind with the Seventh Infantry. They slowed down my riders to an intolerable degree." He felt nothing but relief at finally having got rid of the contraptions.
But Roosevelt frowned. "We haven't enough horse here, even with your regiment and mine combined, to halt the damned Englishmen. The mechanized firepower the Gatlings represent would have been most welcome. Don't you agree that war is increasingly a business where the side with more and better weapons hold an advantage mere courage is hard pressed to overcome?"
"I most assuredly do not," Custer snapped. "Put brave men in one army and a rabble of clerks and tinkers in another, and I know which I would favor. Why do you suppose the dashed Rebels licked us in the War of Secession?"
Roosevelt was not one to back down, any more than Custer was. "How do you think Lcc's men would have fared, General, had they gone up against today's rifles and artillery with their muzzle-loaders and Napoleons?"
That question had never crossed Custer's mind. He was not much given to abstract thought. Before he could answer, the need for him to answer went away: a scout came riding up, calling, "General Custer! General Custer! The British are coming!"
Colonel Roosevelt whooped. "Tell me your name's not Paul Revere, soldier."
The scout ignored him. "Sir, their infantry is drawn up in line of battle, they've got cavalry in front and on both wings, and I spotted a couple of field pieces with 'em, too. If we don't get out of their way, they're going to try and bull right through us, you mark my words, sir."
"If they want a fight, they shall have it," Custer declared.
"Sir, I've been dogging that army for a while now," Roosevelt said. "As I told you before, they badly outnumber us: your regiment and mine together, I mean. Should we not find a defensible position and let them move upon us?"
"Colonel, if you wish to withdraw, you have my permission," Custer said icily. "Perhaps you will permit some of your braver soldiers to remain?"
"Sir, I resent that." Roosevelt scowled and went red. "My men, begging your pardon, have done a damn sight more fighting in this war than yours have. You'll not find us backward now."
"Very well, then," Custer said, having insulted the younger man into doing what he wanted. Roosevelt, if he was any judge, would fight his men with no thought for tomorrow to prove his courage and theirs. "I will want your troopers on either flank, to oppose the enemy's cavalry while we Regulars discuss matters with his foot soldiers."
"Yes, sir." Roosevelt's salute was so precise, Custer wondered if his arm would break. After a moment, he added, "I understand that General Gordon, the British commander, is very much a straight-ahead fighter, too."
"Is he?" Custer shrugged. It mattered little to him. He knew what he was going to do. Past that, he didn't much care. "I intend to send him straight to a warmer clime than this." Roosevelt liked that. The grin came back to his face. He saluted again, this time as if he meant it rather than as a gesture of reproof, and rode off shouting orders for the Unauthorized Regiment.
Custer started shouting orders, too. "Sounds like a big fight brewing, Autie," his brother said.
"I reckon so, Tom," Custer agreed. "Not quite the enemy I wanted—I still owe the Rebs a couple of good licks—but this will do. This will do, by jingo."
"I'll say it will." Tom Custer beamed. "Did I hear right? Have they got a lot more men than we do?"
"That's what Roosevelt says." Custer shrugged. "He's the one who's been skirmishing with the limeys ever since they came down out of Canada. If anybody knows what they've got, he's the man."
"Fair enough." The prospect of going up against long odds didn't bother Tom—quite the reverse. "They won't expect us to hit 'em, then. They'll be looking to have everything their own way. Let's lick 'em, Autie."
"I sure aim to try." Custer reached out and slapped his brother on the back. They grinned at each other. Tom was the only man in the whole U.S. Army who might have relished a good scrap more than he did.
The Regulars deployed from column to line with a nonchalant ease that came from not just weeks but years of endless repetition on the practice field. Roosevelt's Unauthorized Regiment was nowhere near so smooth. But the Volunteer cavalrymen weren't slow, either. Custer found nothing to complain about on that score. From the right flank, Roosevelt waved his hat to show he was ready to go forward.
Custer waved, too, so Roosevelt would know he'd seen him. The brevet brigadier general turned to the trumpeter beside him. "Signal the advance," he said. As the horn call rang out, the men of the Fifth Cavalry cheered loudly. Not to be outdone, so did the regiment Roosevelt had raised.
When Custer reached the top of a low swell of ground, he pointed ahead and cried out, "There is the enemy. Let us sweep him from our sacred soil, as our forefathers did a hundred years ago in the Revolution." The forefathers of a lot of his troopers had been grubbing potatoes out of the ground of Ireland a hundred years before, but no one complained about the rhetoric. The men raised another cheer.
General Gordon had ordered his army as the scout described: cavalry right and left, a screen of horsemen in front of the infantry, and the thin red line of foot soldiers stretching across the prairie. Off to the right of Custer, Roosevelt's men shouted. Idly, Custer wondered what their colonel had told them.
The British army disappeared from sight for a while when Custer rode down the far slope of the rise. He wished the Englishmen would vanish as easily when the time for fighting came, as it would in mere minutes. Up another swell of ground he trotted, his men close behind. Thin over a couple of miles of ground, the enemy's cheer reached his hear.
"They've seen us!" he called. A moment later, he spied a flash, and then another one, from behind the line of British infantry. A couple of hundred yards ahead of him, dirt fountained up into the air as two shells landed. Custer laughed out loud. "They can't hit the side of a barn, boys!"
Calmly, methodically, the British arti
llerymen served their field guns. The cannons flashed and roared again. One of the shells fell short. The other landed behind Custer. Glancing back over his shoulder, he saw a horse down and kicking. His troopers cheered once more.
"This is nothing," Tom called to him.
"You're right," he said. "During the War of Secession, a couple of miserable little popguns banging away like this wouldn't even have been enough to wake us up." He pointed toward the British cavalry ahead. "By God, they do still have lancers! I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes."
His own men rode in loose formation. The lancers, mounted on horses that might have carried knights of the Round Table, formed lines that were real lines. All their lances came down at once; sunlight glittered off steel. As one, those big horses began to trot.
"What a bully show!" Custer cried, nothing but admiration in him for his enemies' horsemanship.
"Yes, and now we're going to smash it all to pieces," Tom replied. Custer nodded, and then felt his face grow hot. What they would smash it with were breech-loading carbines—modern industry set against medieval courage. Maybe Colonel Roosevelt had known what he was talking about after all.
Custer gauged the range. "Fire at will!" he shouted. Behind him and to either side, the Springfields began to bark. He raised his own carbine to his shoulder, picked one of those lancers, and fired at him.
The man did not go down. Custer had not particularly expected him to, though he'd hoped he would. But a lot of troopers were blazing away at the Englishmen. All along the line of lancers, those big horses crashed to the ground. Men slid from the saddle or threw down their steel-shod spears to clutch at wounds. The ones who were not hit kept coming. Riders moved up from the second rank to take the places of those in the first who had fallen.
As the lancers drew nearer, Custer felt . . . not fear, for he had never known fear on a battlefield, but a certain amount of intimidation. The big, tough men looked ready to ride over the Fifth Cavalry and trample them into the grass and dirt of the prairie as if they had never been.
How Few Remain Page 57