CHAPTER TEN
RENO WAS COMING FROM THE WRONG DIRECTION. GIBBONS MONTANA column was bivouacked on the north shore of the Yellowstone a mile below its confluence with the Rosebud, and there was no way across the river there. Reno’s arrival from the west, across the river, stirred some excitement, and eventually a swimmer established some sort of communication. Gibbon dispatched a courier to Terry saying that Reno had appeared at last—from the direction of the Rosebud.
It took another night’s bivouac before Reno reached the Tongue River encampment and the irritated officers and men who had waited for days for the absent major. When at last they all came together at Terry’s windshivered headquarters tent, the mild-mannered General Terry fumed.
“You deliberately violated my orders,” he said. “Explain yourself, because your dispatches fail to do so.”
“It seemed the best choice, out in the field.”
“Why?”
“To identify the big village we were following from the Tongue. To see what direction it was headed. To determine its size. I did so. It’s the village we’re looking for, and it’s drifting southwest. You now know where to go, and you know where the Indians are not.”
“And you risked exposing our presence to the enemy. Do you think you weren’t seen?”
“We had scouts and vedettes wide and forward, sir, and I doubt that we were seen.”
Terry’s gaze bored straight through Reno.
“I expressly confined you to the Powder and Tongue Rivers, precisely so you wouldn’t give it all away. Do you suppose my orders were a mere slip of paper to read and crumple up? You felt free to do whatever you chose to do?”
Reno had supplied his reasons, and good reasons they were, so he remained silent.
“My entire plan is ruined. I don’t know where Crook is or how we can tell him that we’ll be doing something else. I don’t know how we’ll trap that village now.”
“You know where the village isn’t, sir, and approximately where it is: the Bighorn Valley.”
But Terry had had his fill of Reno. “I’ll consult with Gibbon. You’re dismissed. Report to Colonel Custer. He’s paced around this place for four days waiting for you.”
Reno saluted. Terry was a lawyer turned into a brigadier general as the result of the Civil War, one of the few civilian volunteers who reached high rank in the regular army. His very nature was courteous, but this interview had been etched with acid, and Reno knew he was facing more trouble than he had bargained for.
His company commanders were seeing to the worn-out horses and footsore men, so Reno headed directly to the field headquarters of the Seventh Cavalry, where guidons flapped lazily in the gusty air. He surmised that if the unemotional Terry had been enraged, Custer would be furious, and one look at the leonine commander affirmed it. Custer was pacing like a caged cat.
He pounced at once. “You deliberately violated orders. Violated written, express orders! You’ve endangered this entire operation. You were told not to go where you went, and now the Sioux know we’re here and we’ve lost any chance of surprise. Worse, having given chase, and itching for some laurels, you failed to attack, and turned tail.”
Reno waited.
“Explain yourself.”
“I found the village.”
“You weren’t asked to find the village. You were asked to determine where the village was not. I should put you under arrest. I should strip you of command. I would, except we’re on the eve of the biggest battle in the history of Indian warfare. Everything’s up in the air. General Terry and Colonel Gibbon and I”—Custer emphasized the general and the colonel—“will be conferring. We’ll deal with you later. What is the condition of the horses?”
“They’re trail-worn and need shoeing.”
“On the eve of a battle you wear out the horses. And the men?”
“They are in good enough shape, sir.”
“No, after wandering over half of Montana Territory that long, they are not in good enough shape. They are not rested.”
Reno could see how it would go, but he was stubborn and wouldn’t quit. “If General Terry had attempted to act on incomplete intelligence, his three-way pincers would have missed the hostiles, sir. They’re not on the lower Rosebud as he had thought. It all would have been wasted motion. I took the initiative to confirm what no one knew for certain, and that is the area where the hostiles are hiding, and the size of their encampment.”
But Custer had grown weary of the confrontation. His cold bleak gaze raked the major. “Dismissed,” he said. “I will decide what to do about you.”
“Yes, sir.”
It had gone far worse than Reno imagined. Reno’s Luck, he called it. Some officers, including Custer himself, could routinely violate or trim or ignore orders and somehow avoid becoming scapegraces. But other men were somehow expected to follow orders to the letter, and not allowed the slightest discretion in the field. Reno wondered how, and why, he had been cast among the latter. And why neither Gibbon nor Terry nor Custer had thanked him, nor even kindly acknowledged, that he had found the goddamn Indians.
It was his turn to be angry. He pulled a stogy out of his kit, bit off the end, and lit it with a lucifer. He had no confidantes and would not whine anyway. He didn’t always enjoy being alone; it was simply how his life played out, and what his nature led him to.
That close June night few of the men sheltered themselves. Most preferred to use their shelter half as a ground cloth against the dampness of the rain-saturated soil. But Custer’s field tent was up, and a lamp burned within, burnishing the canvas with a mustard glow and limning the boy general’s shadow on the cloth wall. Custer was writing again. Reno wondered what he was writing this time, what complaints he was voicing to Libbie, what shortcomings in his staff he was noting, especially Major Reno the order violator.
Reno stalked the bivouac, which was stretched over half a mile. Nine hundred men in all, the whole Dakota column, cavalry and infantry and the Gatling battery reunited. Sentries were posted; the horse herd was secured and guarded. This was the army at its best, turning a riverside flat into a fortress. The lingering twilight of the summer solstice blued the sky to the northwest. Fires blazed at each company mess, and shot sparks into the black sky. The stink of sweat, unwashed bodies, urine, and horse manure crowded the faint breezes. Armies stank, and Reno could sense from the smell whether an army was under duress or at ease. Tonight the odor was ease, even though every man by now knew that Reno had pinned down the hostile village and that a fight was in the offing.
A lamp burned in Terry’s tent, and Reno knew the brigadier was revising his plans, based on the information the major had brought to him. But the general did not evoke Reno’s anger. Terry was a quiet, reasoning sort of man, and would ultimately come around. Soldiering offered paradox: obey every order, but show initiative and courage.
Reno slid a weather-chafed hand into the bosom of his tunic, extracted his silver-plated flask, unstoppered it, and swilled a fiery charge of Tennessee whiskey, and then another. He stoppered the flask and returned it to his bosom. Whiskey was not something to waste when the supply was so limited. He sucked on his cigar, seeing the end brighten in the darkness. The whiskey washed through his anger, leaching and refining it.
He liked the army. He liked being here in this warrior’s camp where disciplined men in blue each looked after the honor and safety of the whole regiment. He didn’t like or trust his regimental commander. He balled his left hand into a fist and slammed it into his right hand.
“Nice night,” said Lieutenant Hodgson.
Reno whirled, and discovered his friend and adjutant drifting close, faintly lit by the blue band of afterlight lingering in the northwestern sky.
“You could let a man know you’re approaching.”
Hodgson ignored Reno’s testiness, and stood beside him. “I hear you found the village.”
“Four hundred lodges.”
“That’s maybe eight hundred warriors. We
can deal with that even if we get no support from the other columns.”
“A quarter of our men are recruits,” Reno said.
“Were, you mean. They’ve been hardened these past weeks … I hear Custer was unhappy with your scout.”
Hodgson wanted to gossip, as lieutenants often did because they were starved for news.
“Don’t believe what you hear,” Reno said, roughly.
“They should be clapping you on the back. But for you, they would have run their pincers and caught nothing.”
“Let it rest, Ben.”
“Do you know that the lieutenant colonel was pacing and stewing around here for four days, waiting for you to return? He would have blistered your ear just for being late, even if you had …” Hodgson suddenly left the rest of the thought hanging in air.
“Followed orders,” Reno said, drawing hard on his cigar.
“I bet he’s writing Libbie all about it in that tent,” Hodgson said. “It’ll go out with the next courier to Fort Lincoln.”
“Lieutenant, let’s not gossip,” Reno said.
Hodgson grinned, unrepentant. “What was his complaint? Why did he chew on you?”
“I risked being discovered. Surprise is everything in a campaign like this. Maybe he was right. I risked it. Maybe I’ll end up costing us lives.”
Hodgson stared at him. “Touchy tonight, aren’t you? It gets heavy to carry. Lives, risks, dangers, getting in harm’s way, that’s what we’re each facing every day in the army, major, you’re not alone. We’re here with you, and we’ll fight beside you.”
And die beside me too, Reno thought.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
PLANS CHANGED AND GENERAL TERRY WAS TESTY ABOUT IT. GENERALS don’t like shifting realities to get in the way of their operations. Now Gibbon would march his Montana column, primarily infantry, up the Bighorn River, lying to the west. Terry’s Dakota column, largely the Seventh Cavalry, would probe the upper Rosebud and move west to the Bighorn if it found nothing. And with any sort of luck, Crook’s column off to the south would push the hostiles into the guns of the other columns.
By the twenty-first day of June, the Montana and Dakota columns had gathered at the mouth of the Rosebud. Aboard Captain Marsh’s riverboat, Far West, the commanders conferred: Terry, Gibbon, Custer, and Major James Brisbin, who commanded four companies of the Second Cavalry in Gibbon’s column.
Reno knew he would hear all about it soon enough. He had brought the regiment upriver from the camp at the mouth of the Tongue and had helped whip it into fighting condition as it rested on the north bank of the Yellowstone. Even as the commanders conferred, Gibbon’s column started up the Yellowstone to the Bighorn. There would be no more delay: it was time to strike.
On a sultry June twenty-second, the Seventh Cavalry, led by Major Reno, passed in review before Terry, Gibbon, and Custer, the men and horses responding smartly to the bugles shrilling “Boots and Saddles,” the silky guidons flapping softly in the summer zephyrs, the men armed and ready. War and glory hung in the air. The Seventh had received the signal honor of finding the village, and that knowledge swelled the bosom of every cavalryman.
Then Custer joined his command. Reno watched the lieutenant colonel, who looked dashing in buckskins, wave to General Terry from his high-stepping well-curried Vic, one of his two mounts, and then wheel his long blue column through thick silvery sagebrush up the Yellowstone to the east bank of the Rosebud. Custer was leaving the regimental band behind, along with the wagons, and relying on a hundred pack mules for provisions. He was provisioned for twelve days.
He plainly wanted speed and mobility. He had declined the Gatling battery as being too slow for his operation, and seemed determined to win laurels for the Seventh Cavalry alone. Custer had over six hundred enlisted men and officers with him, thirteen quartermaster employees, the Bismarck newspaper reporter, Mark Kellogg, and about fifty civilian packers, herders, and scouts including Custer’s brother Boston and nephew Autie Reed. Enough to cut through the whole Sioux nation.
“Custer, don’t be greedy,” said Gibbon.
“No, I will not,” Custer replied.
Reno thought that Gibbon’s comment was apt and Custer’s response was ambiguous. Of Custer’s exact orders and plans, Reno knew nothing though he was second in command. Whatever Terry had written by way of orders, it was plain the commander had placed utmost confidence in the lieutenant colonel. Terry himself and his headquarters staff would traverse the Yellowstone by riverboat, accompanying Gibbon’s column up the Yellowstone and Bighorn Rivers.
No sooner did the column get under way but the packers were having trouble with their loaded mules. Custer force-marched them twelve miles that afternoon, stopping on the Rosebud at last to permit his teamsters to put their packs in order. It had not been an auspicious start for a commander bent on a lightning thrust against unsuspecting hostiles.
That evening Custer gathered his officers to him. He seemed unusually quiet in the softness of a late June evening, even reflective, with a gentleness in him that none of his officers had ever witnessed before. Reno stood among them, wondering what his own fate would be: Custer could shunt him to some minor command, or embrace him as a part of the attacking force.
The lieutenant colonel began routinely: “I want surprise. That means no trumpet signals. I want speed. That means you’ll awaken your men at three each morning and we’ll march at five. We’ll do short marches at first and then stretch them further. We’ll follow the trail of this large village, wherever it leads.”
He went on to lay responsibilities on each officer, making it clear who was to do what. And then he paused, ran a hand through his recently shorn yellow hair, and addressed them most earnestly: “We are in this together, and I would welcome the counsel and wisdom of each of you. I will listen to anything you wish to offer me throughout this command. I want you to share in the triumph of the Seventh Cavalry and feel yourselves a part of this, the greatest test ever to come down to us. I honor and esteem you all. In a few days this republic will celebrate its hundredth birthday. Let us give our great nation a gift it will never forget.”
Coming from George Custer, that was remarkable, and Reno wondered what had inspired it. Was it something stern that General Terry had said to Custer? Was it something simpler, such as the wish to cohere the regiment as tightly and seamlessly as possible? To heal old wounds and bad blood on the eve of battle? Whatever it was, Reno knew that the gesture, along with those words, were gracious and found their way into the hearts of his staff officers. To a man, they were all startled. It was as if George Custer, the shorn Samson, had transmogrified himself into a new person.
Lieutenant Godfrey caught up with Reno after Custer had dismissed them.
“I’m not sure I believe the evidence of my own ears,” he said. “What do you suppose got into him?”
Reno didn’t like the discussion of personalities and fended off the question. “Did you double your stable guard, lieutenant?”
“Serves me right,” Godfrey said. “But it’s a good omen.”
The young man rubbed his huge nose and hastened into the twilight. Godfrey was a good man. The camp this night was hushed, partly by design because Custer wanted it so, but also because the men had war on their minds, the whip of bullets, the shriek of the hurt, the hard, exacting thing that was creeping up on them.
It may well have been a good omen, this reaching out to the staff. But it unsettled some of the officers.
The valley of the Rosebud had greened because of ample spring rain, and now the crickets chorused through the night. A mist hung over the creek. Major Reno was long accustomed to the cadences of nature and found nothing amiss.
Some men were writing letters in the semi-dark, letters to sweethearts, or wives, or children, or parents. Those letters might be last words, if that should be their soldier’s lot. A few who couldn’t write were dictating letters to those who could write for them. The letters would ride safely in the pack train until t
he engagement had passed, and would wind their way back to Fort Abraham Lincoln, and on down the Missouri.
Reno knew he should write Ross, or Mary Hannah’s younger sister Bertie, and brother-in-law, J. Wilson Orth, or his own siblings, but he was not close to them, and scarcely knew what to say. Ross would probably not be interested in hearing from a father he knew so little.
He wished he might be writing Mary Hannah, but now she seemed unfathomably distant, as if her soul had steadily traversed the vast universe, sailing farther and farther toward some destination beyond imagining, while he was caught here in the webs of war and life. He tried to remember her, but even her face had blurred in his mind, as if the handtinted photograph had faded and almost vanished.
Then he did remember, not her laughter or her voice, but her pale body, ever unknown to the sun, on just such a June night as this, when the windows of their bedroom in Harrisburg were opened to the soft night breezes that sometimes billowed the gauzy curtains into the room. He remembered her white arms, always timid at first, and then closing tightly about him with a fine sweet madness. “Oh! My captain!” she always said, as some sort of ritual that sealed their union.
Crickets there, and crickets here, and soft summer night winds that dried their sweat after their embrace.
He composed a letter to her in his mind: “My dear Mary Hannah, in a day or two I will once again be caught in war, caught in harm’s way, uncertain as always what war may bring to me. Your locket is all I possess of you now, save for the memories. I send my love out upon the stars, out upon the constellations, out upon that road you travel through eternity, and even in the midst of danger the love we bear for each other will sustain me … .”
He had seen a bald eagle that day, soaring in circles, its wings motionless, ignoring the column of soldiers.
An Obituary for Major Reno Page 6
