The reporters, of course, made their living noticing tiny stresses. "Come on, General," one of them said. "What do you really think of Colonel Roosevelt"—he laid the tiniest bit of stress on the military title—"as a soldier? What do you think of the men of the Unauthorized Regiment as soldiers?"
"Have mercy, gentlemen," Custer said. "I've answered those same questions a lot of times over the past weeks." And I'd like it a lot better if you asked them a damned sight less often. Having to share the limelight with the boy colonel gave him worse dyspepsia than salt pork and hardtack gave the reporters.
They wouldn't leave him alone. He might have known they wouldn't leave him alone. "Come on, General," Charlie Worth coaxed. "Give it to us straight. You can do that."
"I can only repeat what I've said a great number of times," Custer answered: "Colonel Roosevelt and his volunteers were gifted, patriotic amateur soldiers, and fought as well as men of that sort could be expected to fight." Every word of that was true. If the reporters judged the tone to be ever so little on the slighting side, was that his fault?
One of the newspapermen said, "General, isn't it a fact that the Unauthorized Regiment performed better against the limeys than the Fifth Cavalry did?"
"Like hell it's a fact," Custer snarled, "and if Roosevelt has been saying that, he's a damned glory-sniffing liar."
"No, General, I never heard it from him," the reporter said hastily. "But didn't the Unauthorized Regiment fight Gordon's cavalry to a draw and then chase the redcoats halfway back to Canada after the what-do-you-call-'ems—the Gatling guns—chewed them to smithereens?"
"The Unauthorized Regiment," Custer said, as if lecturing on strategy at West Point to a class of idiots, "engaged the enemy forces pursuant to my orders. Had I placed them in the center and us on the wings, we would have done as well against the British cavalry, but they would have fared far worse against Gordon's foot. Since my men were fighting dismounted at the battle by the Teton, they were not so well positioned to pursue as were the Volunteers."
All that was true, too. Had Theodore Roosevelt been sitting by the campfire, Custer was sure he would have agreed with every word. (Custer was also sure he would have tried to aggrandize himself one way or another, though; that trait being acutely developed in him, he had an eagle eye for spotting it in others.) But reporters were not after agreement. Agreement didn't sell papers. Argument did. "What about the—Gatterling?—guns, General?" another news hawk asked.
"Gatling guns," Custer corrected. "Gatling." Idiots indeed, he thought. "Well, what about them? Even if we hadn't had a one of them, Gordon's men hadn't a prayer of carrying our position."
He thought that was true, too, but he wasn't quite so sure. Bold as he was, he wouldn't have cared to mount an infantry assault on men in earthworks. Even in the War of Secession, that sort of business had proved hideously expensive. With the right troops, though—good American boys, not those limey bastards—he might have had a go of it.
Charlie Worth said, "I hear tell Roosevelt says those Gatling guns saved your bacon in that fight—chewed the Englishmen up and spit 'em out again."
"This being a free country, Mr. Roosevelt may say whatever he likes," Custer answered. "If you prefer the word of a man who became a soldier only because he was rich enough to buy himself a regiment over that of one who has devoted his entire life to the service of his country, you may do so, but I daresay no one will take you seriously afterwards."
That flattened young Worth, who gulped his coffee down in a hurry so he could get a big tin cup in front of his red face. But one of the other men asked, "Colonel Welton, down at Fort Benton, tells it pretty much the same way, doesn't he?"
"I haven't heard what Henry has to say," Custer replied. "I will note that, while I and many of the officers of my regiment were promoted for our work by the Teton, Colonel Welton remains a colonel. In this you have the War Department's judgment on the value of our respective contributions."
The reporters scrawled furiously. One of them muttered, "When the devil are we going to be able to get to a telegraph clicker?"
Charlie Worth came up with a question no one else had asked Custer: "Andrew Jackson licked the British after the War of 1812 was over, and he ended up president of the United States. Now that you've done the same thing in this war, would you like to end up the same way?"
"Why, Charlie, the notion never entered my mind till this moment," Custer answered truthfully. Also truthfully, he went on, "Now that it is in there, I have to tell you I like it." The reporters laughed.
"You're a Democrat, aren't you, General?" somebody asked.
"What sensible man isn't?" Custer returned. "Did I hear rightly that Lincoln has shown the Republicans' true colors by going Communard?" Several reporters assured him he had heard rightly. Sadly, he shook his head. "If Blaine weren't in the White House, General Pope could have done the country a good turn by hanging old Honest Abe. He'll cause more trouble now, mark my words."
"Lots of Democratic politicians who could run for president," Charlie Worth observed. "We don't have so many soldiers who know how to win battles. What if they want you to stay in the Army?"
"I shall serve the United States wherever that service can lend the greatest aid," Custer declared, his tone grandiloquent and, on the whole, sincere.
****
Winter was on the way to Sonora and Chihuahua. That was obvious to Jeb Stuart: instead of being hotter than blazes, the weather was all the way down to warm. As for Stuart himself, he was on the way to El Paso, which suited him down to the ground.
He turned in the saddle and spoke to Major Horatio Sellers:
"Won't it be fine, getting to spend Christmas somewhere near the edge of civilization?"
"Yes, sir," his aide-de-camp agreed enthusiastically. "If El Paso isn't civilization, at least it's on the railroad line to it."
"I like that," Stuart said. "It's true both literally and metaphorically. We are going to have to build a line through to the Pacific just as fast as we can scrape together the capital. Until we have one, and the feeder lines down to the city of Chihuahua and to Hermosillo, we aren't going to be able to control these provinces . . . Territories . . . states . . . whatever we finally call them."
"That's true, sir." Major Sellers nodded. "I expect we'll end up with a Pacific Squadron in the Navy, too, and we'll also need the railroad to keep that supplied." He chuckled. "The damnyankees will love having us for neighbors, too; you can just bet on it."
"One of the reasons they fought this war was to keep our frontier from touching the Pacific; no doubt about that," Stuart said. "But they lost, and now they'll have to make the best of it."
"Serves them right for starting the fight in the first place," Sellers said. "You ask me, sir, President Longstreet ought to squeeze an indemnity out of them that would make their eyes pop. Paying for a railroad would be a lot easier then."
"Old Pete knows what he's doing—you can doubt a lot of things, Major, but you'd better think twice before you doubt that," Stuart said. "My guess is, he reckons the United States hate us plenty now that we've licked them twice. Piling on an indemnity would be adding insult to injury: that's how he'd see it, I think."
Before Major Sellers could reply, a commotion to the rear made him and Stuart both look over their shoulders. Stuart soon heard men calling out his name. He waved his hat and shouted to show where he was.
A grimy, sweaty rider on a lathered horse came pounding up to him. "General Stuart, sir," the Confederate trooper gasped, "everything's gone to hell back in Cananea, sir."
"Oh, Lord." Stuart did not look at his aide-de-camp. Horatio Sellers had been sure nothing good would come of cooperating with the Apaches, and maybe he'd turned out to be right after all. "I left a troop of cavalry behind there to make sure the Mexicans and the Indians didn't go at each other."
"Yes, sir," the trooper said. "Wasn't enough, sir. You remember that Yahnozha who ran away with the Mexican gal, and she says he drug her off and he says
she was beggin' for more?"
"Oh, yes. I remember," Stuart said, a sinking feeling in his mid-section. "What about him? Did he steal another woman?"
"No, sir," the soldier answered. "The gal's father and her brother, they was layin' for him, and one of 'em put about three bullets in his belly, and the other one, he put two, three more in his head. Then they cut off his privates, sir, and left 'cm sittin' by the carcass for the Indians to find. That started the fightin', and it's been a regular war ever since—you'd best believe it has."
"Christ," Stuart said, an exclamation that had nothing to do with the approach of the holiday season. "What the devil have you men been doing to put the lid back on the place?"
The look the trooper sent his way reminded him how insubordinate so many Confederate soldiers had been during the War of Secession. They were men accustomed to speaking their minds regardless of the niceties of rank. This cavalryman was stamped from the same mold. He said, "What we've been doing, sir, is trying to keep from gcttin' ourselves killed. Hell of a lot more Apaches down by Cananea than we-uns, an' every one of 'em totes a Tredegar just like the ones we've got. Hell of a lot more Mexicans than we-uns, too. They got every damn kind of rifle you ever did see. We try and get between the greasers and the redskins, only means we get shot at from both sides at once."
"Who's winning?" Major Sellers asked. His voice was exuberant, almost gleeful. "Whoever gets killed off, long as it isn't our own soldiers, we're well shut of 'em." Stuart glared at him. He stared right back, not so noisily insubordinate as the man who'd ridden in from Cananea, but not backing away from his opinion by even an inch, either.
"Well, sir, that's right hard to say," the Confederate trooper answered. "The Mexicans, they don't get to go out of their houses a whole lot, but they've got plenty of vittles, and any Injun sticks his head up inside of rifle range, he's liable to end up with his brains rearranged, you know what I mean? Every now and again, some of the greasers, the ones with the best guns and the most balls, they'll sneak out of a night and shoot at the Apaches' camp."
"We can't have that," Stuart said. "We can't have any of that sort of nonsense. If we let it go on there, it'll go on all over these two provinces." He heaved a deep, regretful sigh. "So much for Christmas on the edge of civilization. Bugler!"
"Yes, sir!" The trooper produced his polished brass horn.
"Blow Halt," Stuart said. He sighed again. "Then blow About-face. We're going to have to go back there and stamp out that foolishness."
"The whole army, sir?" Major Sellers sounded appalled. He'd been looking forward to Christmas in Texas, too, perhaps even to taking leave and traveling back to Virginia for Christmas with his family.
But Stuart answered, "Yes, the whole army. The Apaches and the Cananeans arc going to think they were strolling along the railroad tracks when a train ran over them. If we smash both sides now, it will save the Confederate States a lot of trouble for years and years to come."
"All right, sir; we'll do that, then." Sellers' laugh held a gravelly rumble of doom. "I've been saying all along that we ought to clean out those Indians. The faster and harder we do it, the better off these provinces will be."
"I knew you'd say, 'I told you so,' Major," Stuart said, and his aide-de-camp grinned, altogether unabashed. The commander of the Department of the Trans-Mississippi stroked his beard, working through the orders he would have to give to make the army reverse its course. "First thing we need to do is send a wire to El Paso, letting people know what's happened. Next thing—" He glowered his discontent at the desert all around. "We're already the other side of Janos, better than two days away from Cananea no matter how hard we push." He shook his head, annoyed at his wits for working slower than they should have. "No, most of us arc better than two days away from Cananea. Colonel Ruggles!"
"Sir!" At that shout, the commanding officer of the Fifth Confederate Cavalry rode up on his camel. Stuart's horse snorted at the other beast's stink and tried to rear. He didn't let it. Calhoun Ruggles went on, "What can I—what can we—do for you, sir?"
Briefly, Stuart explained what had gone wrong in Cananea. He finished, "I want the Fifth Camelry to ride out ahead of the rest of the army and hit the Indians and the Mexicans before either side expects you. If you can, smash 'em up by yourselves. If you can't manage that, do everything you can. You know we won't be far behind you."
"All right, sir, we'll handle it," Colonel Ruggles said. "And if the redskins light out for the mountains, I reckon we'll chase 'em down before they can get there. They say they can go faster on foot than troopers can on horseback. I'd like to see 'em try and outrun my critters." He leaned forward in his peculiar saddle and set an affectionate hand on the side of his mount's neck. The camel twisted and tried to bite. Ruggles laughed as if he'd expected nothing else.
As Stuart had seen for himself, the Camelry was not in the habit of wasting time. Aboard their moaning, snorting, hideously homely mounts, Ruggles' troopers soon headed west. Stuart would have sworn his horse let out a sigh of relief when the camels trotted away.
Major Horatio Sellers gave Stuart a sly look. "I notice you're not riding with the Fifth this time, sir," he said.
"That's right, I'm not, and I'll give you two good reasons why," Stuart answered. "The first one is that anybody who gets on a camel more than once proves to the world he's a damned fool." He waited for his aide-de-camp to grunt laughter, then went on, "And the second one is that Colonel Ruggles and his regiment are perfectly able to handle the size of the trouble they've got in Cananea without me, and I don't want them thinking that I think they can't."
"Ah." Sellers nodded. "Yes, sir; that makes good sense."
The men grumbled as they headed back toward Cananea. Some of them had wives in El Paso. Some had sweethearts. All of them, by now, had had a bellyful of Chihuahua and Sonora. But, aside from that grumbling, without which they would hardly have been soldiers, they went where they were ordered.
When they came into Janos just before sundown, they found the town in an uproar. The camels of the Fifth Cavalry had gone through and past the town two or three hours earlier. A couple of companies of Confederate soldiers occupied the adobe fortress that was Janos' principal reason for being, and from which Mexican troops had withdrawn when Maximilian sold his northern provinces to the CSA. They were as indignant and almost as upset as everyone else in town; the Camelry had passed by so swiftly, the men of the garrison had hardly had the chance to learn why they were on the move.
"Something in Cananea, ain't it?" one of the Confederates asked as the force Stuart led got ready to camp for the night.
Bugles roused the soldiers well before dawn. Stuart drank cup after cup of strong black coffee, and was still yawning when he swung aboard his horse. His bones ached. He wondered if he was getting too old for much more campaigning. If he was, he wouldn't admit it, not even to himself—perhaps especially not to himself.
He and his troopers kept to a moderate pace on the road between Janos and Cananea, the road they were getting to know altogether too well. Not much water lay between the two towns, and pushing too hard would have killed horses even at this season of the year. Major Sellers remarked, "The Apaches aren't worth a single good cavalry horse, you ask me, and the same goes for the Mexicans."
"We wouldn't have had nearly so much fun up in New Mexico Territory if it hadn't been for the Apaches," Stuart remarked. Since Sellers could hardly disagree with that, he grunted and did his best to pretend he hadn't heard it.
Stuart waited to see if he would get more reports from Confederate troopers forced out of Cananea, but none came back to him. "Either they aren't coming," he said to Major Sellers, "or Colonel Ruggles is keeping them for himself. If I had to bet, I'd go the second way."
His aide-de-camp nodded. "I think so, too. He's ahead of us, so he needs to know worse than we do."
"Which doesn't mean we don't have to know at all," Stuart said fretfully.
A couple of hours later, a camel rider did come
back to Stuart's force with news that fighting in and around Cananea still was going on, or still had been going on when the troopers who brought word to Colonel Rugglcs left the town. "By what everybody says, sir," the messenger reported, "they're going at it hammer and tongs." He paused to spit a stream of dark brown tobacco juice into the light brown dirt. "Reckon they purely don't like each other."
Stuart got another short night and woke too soon to the blare of the horns. Walk, canter, trot—instead of the ambling pace they'd set on the way east, when they saw no need to hurry, his troopers used the alternating gaits that kept their horses freshest while eating up the ground. As morning passed into afternoon, he heard one of the men say to another, "I hope the damn camel boys kill all the lousy sons of bitches on both sides, so when we get there tomorrow we've got nothin' to do but spit on their graves."
Toward evening, a thick column of smoke rose in the west, silhouetted against the light sky there. The troopers cheered. "I expect that's the Camelry, cleaning up the fight," Horatio Sellers said.
"Hope you're right," Stuart said, and rolled himself in a blanket on his folding cot as soon as he had seen to his horse.
Sometime in the middle of the night, a sentry shook him awake. "Sorry to bother you, sir," the man said, "but Colonel Ruggles just rode in."
That was plenty to make Stuart open his eyes. He pulled on his boots and ducked out of the tent. Calhoun Ruggles stood by the embers of a campfire perhaps twenty feet away. "I saw the smoke, Colonel," Stuart said around a yawn. "Was that us, putting down Apaches and Mexicans alike?"
He expected Ruggles to nod, but the commander of the Fifth Confederate Cavalry shook his head. "No, sir. That was the damned Apaches, burning damn near all of Cananea to hell and gone just before we got there. Not much of the place left standing, and a hell of a lot of Mexicans dead."
"Jesus," Stuart said, yawning again. Ruggles joined him. He went on, "How in blazes did that happen?"
"In blazes is right," Colonel Ruggles answered. "A couple of the Mexicans who lived—Salazar the alcalde is one of 'em—says the Indians got hold of some kerosene some kind of way, and that clever one called Batsinas poured it in front of doors and such. Then they shot fire arrows into it, and the wind did the rest of the job for 'em."
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