Valley of the Shadow: A Novel

by Ralph Peters

  He was about to ride back to his waiting brigade, to organize the next phase of his attack, when a rust-whiskered sergeant marched up, shoving a prisoner.

  “Your pardon, sir, but coffee there weren’t. Only this dirty dog and a lovely rifle.” He pronounced the last word “roy-fool,” Irish as a shamrock on St. Paddy’s Day.

  Custer nodded his thanks, but quickly turned his attention to the prisoner. The fellow looked as wild and filthy as some desert prophet, with dark eyes that stabbed and ragged trousers that ended at midcalf, revealing starved legs. Custer could smell him from six feet away.

  The remains of the fellow’s tunic were so discolored that Custer had almost missed the rank on one sleeve.

  “Well, Corporal, hard luck,” Custer said. “Who do you march with?”

  The fellow was not above a wry smile. He wanted a few more teeth. “Reckon I’ll be marching under some back-of-the-army Yankee soon enough.”

  “I’d reckon that, too. Who did you march with?”

  “General Breckinridge. Darn proud of it.”

  A lively duel had sprung up above the creek.

  “Fine officer, General Breckinridge,” Custer said. “I believe he means me some ill this morning, though, so with your permission…” He touched his hat in a friendly salute.

  But if he was done with the prisoner, the Reb wasn’t done with him.

  “You Custer?” the Johnny called out.

  “Sure, and that’s General Custer,” the sergeant admonished him.

  Custer grandly swept off his hat and made his stallion rear.

  “Ain’t he sumpin?” the prisoner said.

  * * *

  Custer called forward his 7th Michigan and the 25th New York, a regiment newly assigned to his brigade to rebuild its strength.

  Lieutenant Colonel Brewer of the 7th and the eager Major Seymour of the New Yorkers rode up and awaited orders. Custer noted that Seymour’s men had adopted the red scarves of his Michiganders.

  “Mel,” he told Brewer, “your regiment leads. Column of fours until you pass the hill where Jimmy’s boys are potting away, then wheel them into formation for a quick charge across that creek. May have to dismount some men, once you make the other bank. Get on their flanks, root the devils out, if they won’t run. You might want—”

  “Sir, if I may?” the New Yorkers’ commander interrupted.

  “You’ll follow Mel’s outfit,” Custer said. “I was getting around to you.”

  Seymour squared his shoulders. “Sir … given that this is our first proper engagement since my regiment was privileged to join your brigade…”

  Oh, here it comes, Custer thought. But better too much spirit than too little.

  “I request the honor of leading this attack. My men wish to show their mettle.”

  Custer looked at Mel Brewer, who shrugged. Mel had led his share of attacks and more.

  “Splendid, then!” Custer told his newest subordinate. “Don’t fuss. Move fast and get across that creek. Then dismount and get up the hillside on their flanks.”

  Beaming, Seymour saluted and yanked his horse about, too excited to wait for his dismissal.

  Custer met Brewer’s eyes. Each man lifted an eyebrow.

  “Prop him up, if he needs it,” Custer said. “If he lives through the day, I don’t doubt he’ll do fine.”

  “Aye, sir. We’ll do what’s to be done.”

  “Off you go, then.”

  “Sir? Don’t you think we should be hearing cannon? If Sheridan’s going at them? It’s five miles distance, and not a mile more.”

  Brewer was right, Custer realized. But he refused to be daunted. Brightening, he said, “Well, bully for the cavalry, if we get to Winchester first! Go on now, Mel.”

  Brewer saluted and returned to his men. Seymour’s New Yorkers came forward in column, uniforms unweathered and Spencers braced on their thighs.

  Abreast of Custer, Seymour shouted, “At a canter … forward!”

  After waving his newest troopers along, Custer turned to ride back to Jim Kidd’s perch to watch the fight. The morning’s ration of drollery had been fully consumed, and it was time for him to oversee his brigade and behave himself.

  But he would have preferred to be the first across Opequon Creek. Nothing like a mounted charge in the morning.

  He dispatched a rider to fetch Pete Stagg, commander of the 1st Michigan, his favorite regiment and his reserve this day. If any problems developed now, he didn’t want to waste time explaining things. Pete could take things in with his own eyes.

  Meanwhile, Custer rode on alone, recrossing the field that had seen the first attack. Old, crushed furrows were straddled by a body or two, and wounded men who could walk trudged toward the rear. Gaining the crest near the cabin, he remained mounted, the better to see. And the better to be seen.

  Custer watched the New Yorkers swing around the hill and leave cover, followed by the 7th Michigan. Bugles sounded the charge too soon, before the New Yorkers had wheeled from their column into lines by battalion. Their order broke as they tried to execute the close maneuver at a gallop. Ragged clusters of horses and riders plunged down the slope toward the drop to the creekbed.

  Pete Stagg rode up, accompanied by his two field officers, George Maxwell and Tom Howrigan. If that sergeant had been as Irish as poteen, Howrigan had still more of the green about him, a lovely, raw man.

  “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Howrigan said, “what are those buggers about?”

  The men watched as Seymour’s New Yorkers splashed into the creek, only to be met by a nasty volley that made them pause when they should have dashed ahead.

  The Rebel firing was a serious business and a deadly one, and the riders milling about in the creek, popping away with their Spencers from the saddle, merely offered themselves as targets. Then somebody sounded “Recall,” and instead of rushing the far bank, the forward-most troopers spurred their mounts to the rear.

  The sun caught their wet brass and steel amid clots of mud thrown upward from the bank.

  Worsening matters, the retreating New Yorkers galloped into the 7th Michigan, throwing Mel Brewer’s own attack into chaos.

  Custer yanked off his wide-brimmed hat and slapped it against his leg, not once but over and over. “Damn me, damn me to Christmas, that mule-pimping jackass…”

  His horse shied, bringing him back to his senses. As he mastered the beast, Custer looked around at the officers who had joined him. “Not one of you will repeat what I just said,” he told them in a no-nonsense voice that suggested courts-martial and hangings. “The New Yorkers just have to learn our way of doing things.”

  But he was hot.

  “Pete,” he said to Colonel Stagg, “bring up the First and fix this.”

  Stagg saluted and rode back toward his men, followed closely by Maxwell and Howrigan. On impulse, Custer spurred after them, but veered off toward the copse where his mounted band waited.

  By the time he reached the bandsmen, the First, a crack outfit, was already on the move.

  “Time to earn your hardtack, boys,” Custer called out. “Follow the First, stay with them. And keep one eye on me. When I wave my sword, you give ’em a rousing tune.”

  Then he was off again, galloping across the fields and leaping hedges with all the delight of a boy let loose on the world.

  When Custer regained the cabin’s grounds, he recognized Maxwell below, leading two squadrons toward the creek to feel the Rebels while Pete Stagg formed his attack. The Johnnies were putting up a fair resistance, as if they had read the portents of the day.

  A number of Maxwell’s men fell from the saddle, but he kept his squadrons in hand.

  Howrigan, though, galloped hell-for-leather back toward the cabin. Custer could see from a distance that the major’s temper was up. On the crest, he whipped his horse toward Kidd, not Custer.

  “Damn it, your firing’s slack as Methuselah’s pecker. You call that support, James Kidd? They’re shooting our men off their horses.�
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  As Custer watched, more amused than troubled, the Irishman’s saddlebag jerked, tore open, and spattered. The major’s stallion backstepped.

  Bewildered for a moment, Howrigan looked around himself, wide-eyed. Reassured that he had not been hit, he pawed open the satchel and extracted the dripping neck of a broken bottle.

  “God damn their black souls, the buggers,” he cried. “’Twas my last bottle of Saint Brendan’s piss.”

  Despite the deadly goings-on, the men about him laughed.

  Down below, on the approach to the creek, the bandsmen had gotten ahead of half of the 1st Michigan’s squadrons. Custer permitted no cowards among his brass-blowers, but it took him aback to see them near the front of the looming attack.

  In for a penny, in for a pound, he decided.

  He drew his sword, lifted it high, and waved it.

  The band struck up “Yankee Doodle,” his favorite tune for a charge. Stagg’s bugler called the men forward.

  The 1st surged down the slope and into the creek to face the same rough handling as the others, but Stagg’s lads didn’t falter. Splashing and crashing through the water, the lead men reached the far bank and spurred their horses up the steep incline, digging steel into flanks, cursing and lashing, until the beasts found their footing.

  They next faced a tangle of undergrowth and Rebs hidden in the trees, but these were bully boys. After slipping from their saddles, Spencers in hand, they pushed up through the brambles, emptying magazines toward any movement.

  Still, it promised to be an ugly scrap.

  Atop the commanding ridge across the creek, forms in gray and butternut started running. It didn’t make sense to Custer for them to break like that. The Rebs rarely fled while they still held the least advantage, then they slipped away, covered by sharpshooters.

  Soon, too soon, he heard other bugles from the far high fields and spotted blue-uniformed troopers advancing along an open stretch up on the high ground.

  He turned to yellow-mugged Jimmy Kidd, who’d been watching events through his field glasses.

  “Lowell?” Custer asked.

  “That’s his flag. Reserve Brigade.”

  Custer snorted. “And Merritt with him, no doubt.” He felt the first real warmth of the day and suddenly found himself conscious of the time. “We should’ve finished this. Without any help.” But then he shrugged. “Well, first blood, not the last.” He grinned and threw back his locks. “Plenty of opportunity ahead.”

  He rode down through the creek, trailed by his brigade flag, with staff men spurring their horses to catch up. Topping the far ridge, he saluted Merritt and nodded at Lowell. “Delighted to provide entertainment, gentlemen. But you interrupted the play.”

  “Oh, shut up, George,” Merritt said.

  7:30 a.m.

  Ramseur’s headquarters, Dinkle farm

  “Don’t send any more of your boys forward,” Fitz Lee cautioned Ramseur. “Wait a bit.”

  “Blue-bellies need a lesson,” the division commander snapped back. “Yank cavalry’s getting altogether too fond of themselves.”

  “Lord’s own truth,” Lee agreed. He cleared his raw throat. “But let’s wait a while. See what’s what.”

  Both men listened to the crack of rifles and bugle calls a mile to the east, where Ramseur’s forward elements and Johnson’s cavalry were sparring with the Federals.

  “It’s just another of their damned raids,” Ramseur said. “I need to send out Pegram, give them just what they’re asking for.” He canted his head to look up at Lee. “How’s the ’fluenza?”

  Swallowing a cough, Lee said, “I’m licking it.” The truth was that he felt sick as a gut-shot dog. And his old Comanche wound had come calling again, to add to his pleasures.

  Lee had been awakened by a courier from Brad Johnson, warning that the Federals were advancing in strength up the Berryville Pike toward Winchester. Before he could hack and spit his way up from his sickbed, another rider had brought in a message from Lomax, reporting Union cavalry probes to the north, not far from Brucetown. Lee had dressed as swiftly as he could, but merely pulling on boots was an ordeal. And riding into Ramseur’s lines, he had not liked the way things felt at all. Sick man’s notions and gloom aside, the danger seemed real enough to talk reason to Ramseur, who was ready to further divide his small division and send a brigade out into the unknown.

  Of course, there was more than fighting spirit behind Ramseur’s impulse to rush forward willy-nilly. Brought in to bolster Early’s struggling cavalry, Major General Fitzhugh Lee understood Ramseur’s emotions. Hardly an envious man himself, he’d felt an untoward jealousy of Wade Hampton, vying for Stuart’s favor: Limited doses of envy, even spite, were common enough in the military, persisting right alongside the jovial comradeship Lee preferred. But the rivalry among Early’s infantry division commanders had gone beyond competition to verge on unwholesomeness. Rodes, an old hand at division command, and Gordon, who just seemed to have a knack for the business, kept things friendly enough, at least on the surface of that deep pond. And Breckinridge, their elder and a recipient of dignities aplenty, seemed above the pettiness, as much as a man could be. But Ramseur was smarting from a number of errors and his rashness at Stephenson’s Depot, just as Lee felt a lingering sting over losing to coons in blue suits at Fort Pocahontas. The problem was that the younger man’s remedy for rashness was more rashness.

  Younger man? Ramseur was but the younger by two or three years, Lee cautioned himself, and his own frontier service, his status as a veteran, of which he had been so proud when the war began, had become no more than the guff of campfire tales, of joshing and reminiscence against a ruckus of fiddles and banjos. Apart from friendships sundered by secession, his years in the 2nd Cavalry meant nothing now. The scale of this war had forged a whole new world.

  The firing spiked. Ramseur moved to issue orders.

  “I’m sending Pegram out.”

  It was clear to Lee—painfully, tragically clear—that Ramseur wanted to score a pretty win before Early got back.

  As for Early, Lee had sent him a signal, following up with a courier. He needed Early to hurry on down, to judge how things were forming up and, if need be, concentrate the outnumbered army. Before Ramseur threw away what slight advantage of terrain he had and the blue-bellies poured into Winchester.

  The cavalryman caught Ramseur by the upper arm.

  Stepping close so that no man but Ramseur would hear, Lee said, “Dod … I have never begged another man for anything in my life. But I am begging you not to advance Pegram’s Brigade. Something’s just plain wrong out there. Stay put.”

  He released his grip on the division commander. Ramseur’s expression had passed, quickly, from anger through resentment to a hint of doubt. He stared at Lee as if he hated him.

  “I’ll give it another fifteen minutes,” Ramseur said. “That suit you, Fitz?”

  Unsettled soldiers had been watching them, but Ramseur, absorbed, seemed oblivious. Calling up a grin from his deepest reserve of strength, Lee announced in his hear-me-now voice, “Splendid, General Ramseur. They’d never get by these men of yours. You could hold this position all day.”

  Ramseur flashed hellfire eyes. But he said nothing.

  Lee could no longer restrain his cough and gave in to a fit.

  He just wanted to be back in his borrowed bed. He had awakened not only to the news of the Yankees, but to sodden undergarments and soaked sheets, along with a fever that seemed to hollow him out. He could smell drool in his beard, smell his big body. But the purest lesson he had taken from his uncle was that sickness, even agony, did not excuse a man from doing his duty.

  And he feared there would be a surfeit of duty this day.

  Raising the stakes, a battery whumped in the distance. Lee caught the startled look on Ramseur’s face.

  It didn’t require fifteen minutes for the division commander to change his mind about the wisdom of leaving his entrenchments. A courier arrived from o
ne of Ramseur’s outposts.

  Wide-eyed and sweating like a sick man himself, the rider failed to salute, crying out, “Sheridan’s whole army’s out there.”

  NINE

  8:45 a.m.

  Eversole’s Knoll, off the Berryville Pike

  Sheridan struggled to keep his temper. The last of the Sixth Corps divisions—Davey Russell’s lot—had just emerged from the gorge, well behind schedule. It was a good thing, Sheridan told himself, that Wright had gone forward to guide Ricketts into position, or the corps commander might have gotten a tongue-lashing that cut bone.

  Damned muddle. All of it.

  Sheridan’s approach to leadership was crisp: You never showed fear or doubt; drove subordinates hard, but praised them generously; cut down threatening peers; and gave your superiors victories, damn the cost. But many a day he was tempted to strip the skin off a general or colonel serving under him. Today, Horatio Wright wanted a flaying. To say nothing of Emory, whose Nineteenth Corps seemed to have disappeared.

  Quick-marching along the Pike, the regiment leading one of Russell’s brigades soon spotted Sheridan. The men cheered, and Sheridan waved, offering his troops a practiced smile. He made out Upton, a brutal babe in arms, chiding the soldiers forward. Sheridan valued Upton. Despite the lad’s dreary fondness for Bible verses, the young brigadier was a killer, Old Testament, not New. Astride his roan he looked savage as a Comanche.

  But the rest of the day’s business crawled, as if his army were a mule of a mind to test its master. Wilson’s cavalry had done its work, securing the mouth of the gorge and knocking back Ramseur’s boys from their forward positions, but even those early attacks had gone in at much too slow a pace. Now the situation demanded infantry to finish off Ramseur before Early reinforced him.

  As the army slogged up through the “Berryville Canyon,” Sheridan’s plan had begun to come apart. It made him burn. The war had taught too damned many officers caution. Audacity and ferocity won battles, the Rebels saw that much.

  He had realized, too late, that inspiriting an entire army was an altogether different matter from instilling dash in a few divisions of cavalry. For the first time, the scope of his new command seemed daunting: What if, after so many triumphs, he failed?