“Later.”
“Ah, sir, if it was you commandin’ I’d be happy to do it, but you’re not commandin’.”
Reno knew what the man was talking about. Rorty had been in the Washita fight.
“How much, Mr. Rorty?”
“It comes to, ah, thirty-one dollars even, major.”
“I didn’t know I was so far behind.” Reno dug into his purse. He had just been paid; he pushed three tens and a single across the bar, exact change.
“That’ll square us.” Rorty smiled confidentially. “The paymaster’s not going to pay the corps until they’re a few miles out.” He laughed. “They’ll go to war with a pocket full of dollars.” The army was not dumb about the temptations lurking near a post when enlisted men had cash in their pockets.
Rorty was a gossip. Reno nodded and pierced into a quiet night. The whole regiment was spread before him, including the sixty or so new recruits he had worked hard to ready for this campaign. Some could barely ride a horse and even fewer could shoot worth a damn. The pinchpenny army had limited training to ten rounds a month. These recruits hardly knew how to aim. He had drilled them, had them dry-fire their carbines, taught them what he could about sitting a horse, but they were mostly dead weight. He had scattered them through the companies, knowing they would learn faster next to veteran soldiers rather than working with instructors.
There was another thing worrying him. Some of those Springfield carbines were faulty. The extraction mechanism sometimes pulled the back of the expended shell off, leaving the copper cylinder jammed in the barrel. It didn’t happen often, but in a fight each jammed weapon would be the same as a casualty. He had told his company commanders to make sure the men knew to keep their carbines and shells clean. Maybe that would help.
Well, hell, that was the United States Army.
He bit off the end of a good Baltimore stogy and fired up, sucking and exhaling as he gazed over the post. The place wasn’t his anymore, and George Custer had let him know it in a hurry by reorganizing the command, putting Custer cronies, such as Tom Weir, in charge of squadrons.
Well, that was the army, too, and the Seventh was Custer’s private domain. Half his family was gathered in the regiment.
The windows of Custer’s house radiated light, and there were people on the generous veranda. Libbie was entertaining again, even as the lieutenant colonel gathered his intimates around him for one last huzzah. Tom Custer would be there, and so would Boston, along as a civilian herdsman, as well as Autie Reed, his nephew, and Captain James Calhoun, his brother-in-law, married to Custer’s sister Margaret. Calhoun was a good officer, and Reno admired him. There might be others in that bright-lit house: Myles Moylan, George Yates, both capable officers, maybe Myles Keogh, probably Tom Weir, a good man but one Reno disliked, and the feeling was mutual.
Custer had his coterie, and Reno wasn’t one of them, though he wasn’t openly hostile, the way Captain Frederick Benteen was. Benteen made no bones about his contempt for Custer, and anyone who cared to listen would get Benteen’s version of the battle of the Washita in which Custer narrowly escaped disaster and abandoned the hard-pressed Major Joel Elliott and his remnant to their fate.
Reno shared Benteen’s perception of that battle. The boy general had conducted a skillful winter campaign up to that point, closing in on the hostile Cheyennes. But once he located their village on the Washita, he abandoned all caution, failed to reconnoiter, and thus failed to learn that there were several more villages camped nearby along the river that winter, and failed to discern that the village he was about to engulf was that of Black Kettle, a peace chief cooperating with the whites. Both the chief and his wife died of soldier bullets in that affray. It was called a victory, but if Custer had lingered moments longer, while the neighboring villages responded to the fight, it would have turned into catastrophe.
Reno was no friend of Benteen, either, and the two had exchanged sharp words in the past. Benteen was a good and competent officer but a carping critic who grated on most every other officer. Mostly, Reno was a loner, keeping his opinions to himself, making few friends but fewer enemies. Once he had had many more friends, when Mary Hannah was with him and entertaining his fellow officers, her outgoing nature and cheer contrasting to his own gloom. Those were good years, when his own house radiated warmth and companionship, and she supplied the graces he lacked.
She was even close to Libbie Custer. Mary Hannah and the officers’ wives at the various posts had knit together in complete harmony even when their husbands were rivals or antagonists. Now Mary Hannah was dead at the age of thirty, and Libbie reigned as the grande dame of Fort Abraham Lincoln, perfectly reflecting her husband’s every mood and prejudice and opinion, even wearing her own female versions of his cavalry uniforms, in which, Reno confessed to himself, she looked ravishing.
She was beautiful and spirited and Marcus Reno envied Custer his lovely wife. Nothing seemed right anymore with Mary Hannah gone, and only an empty bachelor quarters awaiting him each evening.
Maybe it was time to retire. He had been in the army a long time. He had hoped to make colonel but promotions came slowly in the postwar army; the years had whirled by and he knew he wouldn’t even make lieutenant colonel anytime soon. Maybe retire, return to Harrisburg, look to Ross’s upbringing. But it would be hard to tear himself from the soldier’s world he loved.
He walked through the close evening to his immaculate quarters, and found only emptiness within, like the emptiness within himself. He had long since packed his kit for war; that had taken all of five minutes. He decided to take along his oval miniature of Mary Hannah just for good luck. She peered out at the world, slightly amused, her glossy dark hair hanging down in ringlets, her large eyes wide and questing, and her lips promising a kiss.
He drew on his cigar, felt the old hollowness again, filled his flask to the brim with Kentuck, and tucked it into his tunic. He would take what comfort he could into war.
CHAPTER SEVEN
GREAT THINGS HUNG IN THE AIR THE SEVENTH CAVALRY AND ITS scouts and civilians rode out of Fort Abraham Lincoln almost seven hundred strong, its entire complement of twelve companies together for the first time. Custer led the parade, gallantly dressed in a blue flannel shirt, red kerchief, and buckskins. He had shorn his long locks for this occasion.
General Alfred Terry, commander of the Department of Dakota and the top-ranking man present, rode along with a complement of infantry and staff. He was headed for a rendezvous on the Yellowstone with Colonel John Gibbon of Fort Ellis, Montana. And riding up from the south, so far as anyone knew, was General George Crook with another column of twelve hundred cavalry and infantry. Between these pincers, the hostiles would be hunted down and trapped and returned to their reserves.
Libbie Custer rode along beside her husband that first day, dressed pertly in her own blue uniform. She would return with the paymaster the next day. The guidons flapped in the misty air and the soft clop of four thousand hooves in wet clay filled the valley of the Missouri. It had stormed for two days, delaying the march until this hazy dawn.
Major Reno watched the column form by twos, until it stretched two miles in length, nine hundred strong, with a Gatling gun battery included. Behind it came a herd of cattle, the commissary on the hoof, and one of its drovers was Custer’s nephew. The long blue line looked impressive, but Reno wondered how effective so many new troopers might be in a fight. In addition to the new recruits, another large contingent had been in the Seventh for less than six months and had seen no warfare. To make matters worse, many of the mounts were green and unruly, and had no experience of battle.
Still, he was content. This was a force to be reckoned with. By the time this long column reached the hostiles, the horses would be subdued, the men would become better horsemen, and they would know more about their carbines and the copper jacketed cartridges they carried.
It was all grand, and the band saw them off with the rowdy regimental air, “Garryowen,” which so
me said Custer swiped from the Irish Brigade that had distinguished itself in the Civil War. But the song that suddenly afflicted the major was of a different sort:
I’m lonesome since I crossed the hill,
And o’er the moor and valley,
Such heavy thoughts my heart do fill,
Since parting with my Sally.
I’ll seek no more the fine and gay,
For each but does remind me,
How swift the hours did pass away,
With the girl I left behind me.
Some men would have some Sally to come home to. Some wives would light a lamp in their windows. Some men were blessed. Libbie and George Custer would enjoy the privilege of a last night in his tent, a day’s ride from the post. Reno tried to put it out of mind. He watched his own command, Keogh’s and Yates’s battalions, and was content. The two veteran officers had men and mounts moving smartly. Still, Reno could not shake the melancholia that had afflicted him every day of every hour since Mary Hannah died.
At dawn the next day, the paymaster distributed a satchel of greenbacks to the troops, who grinned and stuffed their thirteen dollars into their trousers. They would go to war with a pocket full of cash and no place at all to spend it. While the troops formed up, Custer kissed his lady good-bye, and soon the long blue line was passing in review before the colonel’s wife and the paymaster detail that would escort her home.
Custer looked grand aboard his favorite mount, Dandy, but Reno had no use for theatrics. Libbie was smiling and waving, and the troopers smiled back, keeping their thoughts to themselves. After that, all present were male. Reno wondered how that would affect Custer, who kept Libbie with him every possible moment, and had gotten into trouble about it back in Kansas.
Mark Kellogg, a newspaperman from Bismarck, was never far from Custer, and enjoying the trip.
They traveled uneventfully through sultry weather, arriving in Montana Territory the third of June. Custer had been having a high old time in western Dakota, exploring the Little Missouri for some forty-one miles while the column marched west.
One day Reno commanded the column while Custer was off on a scout, and that day he got to know his new adjutant, Lieutenant Hodgson, as they rode together through the quiet afternoon, the guidons fluttering before them in a soft wind, their horses moving comfortably under them at a fast walk, the air neither fierce nor still.
“You know much about the Sioux?” Hodgson asked.
“No. I’ve been on detached duty for years. Before the war I spent some time in the far northwest dealing with Indians. But nothing like this.”
“These are angry people. Won’t reconcile, I imagine.”
“The army’s taking them seriously,” Reno said. “Three columns, any one of which could lick them.”
“Maybe,” said Hodgson. “I keep remembering Captain Fetterman.”
“He’s a presence among us,” Reno said. “He boasted he could ride through the Sioux nation with eighty men, and he got his chance, and he was wrong.”
“You see any similarities?”
Reno turned cautious. “Ben, we’ve all learned a few things, the lieutenant colonel included.” He hoped he was right. The fight at the Washita wasn’t a ground for much confidence.
The high plains seemed to blot up sound, so that the column progressed in silence, save for the occasional clank of metal or the soft thump of a hoof. The prairie grasses had burst upward but would not grow tall, not in this dry land. The horses were thriving on the fresh grass.
Reno wondered whether this vast land would ever be settled, apart from a few remote ranches running range cattle after the buffalo had been killed. He had no feeling for the country; it wasn’t beautiful, nor did it lift his spirits. It was an empty land, but one being fought over by those who had always roamed there, and invaders like himself.
When they struck the Powder River a few days later, things began to change. General Terry, with a body of cavalry and his staff, rode to its confluence with the Yellowstone, and there he made contact with Gibbon’s advance guard, waiting for the Dakota Column on the riverboat, Far West. Soon Gibbon and Terry were conferring, and when Terry returned to the camp on the Powder, late that night, he knew that the Indians were further west.
On June tenth, Terry summoned Major Reno to his command tent, and welcomed him. Custer was there, looking dour. Terry had a crude map spread out before him, showing the watercourses in a land little known to the army or any white men.
“Major, we have an important task for you,” he said. “Some reconnaissance. We wish to make sure that the country between the Powder River and the Tongue is not occupied by the hostiles, and toward that end, we will be sending you out on a scout.”
“I’m ready at any time, sir,” Reno said.
“We believe the hostiles are south of the Yellowstone. We have no intelligence of their being north of it. They now have a very large village, or several allied villages, and a large herd, and that requires grass and water. Here,” he said, tracing the map. “We want you to head up the Powder, examine certain tributaries, here, head west, cross over the divide to the Tongue, and follow it down to the Yellowstone, where we’ll await you. You’ll look for General Crook, whose column is working toward us. You’ll have your scouts and trackers look for the encampments of a large village.”
Reno nodded. He liked Terry, a quiet, dispassionate, and thoughtful commander whose Civil War record shone brightly. Terry put on no airs, took no liberties, and won his fights.
“We don’t know, but suspect they’re on the Rosebud, which is the next stream west, or beyond that, on the Little Bighorn, closer to the mountains. I’ll give you a fairly large command for this scout, major, the Seventh Cavalry’s Right Wing, plus a hundred pack mules. Not to pick a fight, but to defend yourself. If you can locate the camp without being seen, all the better. Surprise is what we’re after. I’m putting the best scouts we have under you, and sending along one Gatling just in case. Now, here are your written orders. Have you any questions?”
Reno studied the document. He would command half the Seventh plus a contingent of crack scouts and guides. It seemed an odd force to engage in a reconnaissance, too large to move swiftly, too small to fight a formidable force of Sioux.
Reno read: he was to make “a reconnaissance of Powder River from the present camp to the mouth of the Little Powder. From there he will cross to the headwaters of Mizpah Creek and descend it to its junction with the Powder. Thence he will cross to Pumpkin Creek and Tongue River and descend the Tongue to its junction with the Yellowstone, where he may expect to meet the remaining companies of the Seventh Cavalry and supplies of subsistence and forage.”
There was more, but that was the heart of it. Mitch Bouyer would guide the command. Surgeon Porter would accompany it.
“It’s clear, sir. No questions.”
“Good. We’ll be waiting for you. We’ll either have a report of villages on the move, or we’ll know we’re still too far east. I have every confidence that you will perform these duties admirably, major.”
“Reno, faint heart never won fair maiden,” Custer said, taunting him, and he did not wish his second-in-command success.
Reno left the tent filled with the pleasantness that comes of being chosen by a general he admired for a delicate and important task, and with other thoughts as well: why had Terry chosen him rather than Custer? To save the experienced Custer for the big fight, or because he thought Custer might act rashly?
Reno knew that Terry was not pleased with Custer’s forays and unannounced departures from the column as it wended its way west. And Reno knew that when he returned to the rendezvous at the confluence of the Tongue and Yellowstone, Custer would not be friendly, especially if Reno found the hostiles without Custer’s help. But that was the army.
CHAPTER EIGHT
RENO LED HIS COMMAND UP THE POWDER RIVER AT ABOUT THREE o’clock that afternoon of June tenth, knowing that Custer was unhappy. The man had exuded something cl
ose to a sulk.
Whatever it was, Major Reno set it aside and concentrated on lining out his column. He had good company commanders with him, men like James Calhoun, Algernon Smith, and Henry Harrington, who had worked hard to turn their troops into effective and close-knit battle-ready units. He had some good scouts, and the masterful half-breed Mitch Bouyer with him as a guide and resource.
He had a Gatling, which lumbered along on its limber behind four condemned cavalry horses. He had the usual mix of men. Some of his noncoms were Reb officers who had reenlisted as privates in the postwar Federal army under assumed names, and soon rose in the ranks because of their skills.
There were no doubt a few criminals in the regiment, but not many on this trip. The shrewd officers had put those they suspected of dodging the law in Company A, known jocularly in the regiment as the Forty Thieves, where they could be closely watched. But Company A was not a part of Reno’s command.
There were immigrants and dreamers, bounders and boys, a few men who had seen service in Europe with various armies and even the Papal Guard, but many of those he took with him had never fired a shot in combat and he didn’t know how they would respond to trouble.
Reno turned to Calhoun, who was riding beside him. “Have we much of a commissary?”
“Hardtack, side pork, and beans.”
“The usual, then.”
“An army travels on its stomach, which is about half-starved around here. Put out some hunters?”
“It’s beans this time. We won’t hunt. Not on a reconnaissance. Tell Bouyer to send the Arikaras out, and wide. I want to know what’s on our flank. And tell them not to hunt.”
Calhoun trotted off to put Reno’s request in motion. The command would be stalking its quarry, and his men would be nibbling hardtack, dry squares of tough biscuit that didn’t sustain a man for long, along with some moldy bacon and some beans.
An Obituary for Major Reno Page 4
