‘Gentlemen,’ Myles Keogh was off duty and lounging in an expensive smoking jacket when Grand and Batchelor knocked on his door. ‘To what do I owe the pleasure?’
‘Trooper McGee,’ Grand said. ‘One of yours, I believe?’
‘Well, now,’ Keogh’s smile was tight. ‘In the light of what we now know, I’m not so sure.’
‘She was a member of I Company?’ Batchelor’s face was stony. Keogh looked at him.
‘She was,’ the captain said, ‘and already I’m having difficulty with that concept.’ He ushered them to comfortable seats. ‘I’ll be looking at all my troopers more carefully from now on.’
‘It goes without saying, I assume, that you had no idea?’ Batchelor had to raise the question.
‘That McGee was a woman?’ Keogh handed round the cigars. ‘Of course not.’ He rang a little silver bell on the table and Bugler Dobbs appeared, ramrod straight and ready to serve. ‘Coffee, gentlemen? I don’t approve of anything stronger at this hour of the morning – you’ve had breakfast, I presume?’
‘We have,’ Grand said. ‘And thank you.’
‘Three coffees, Dobbs,’ Keogh said. ‘Then make yourself scarce. These gentlemen and I have things to discuss.’
‘Very good, sir.’ Dobbs saluted and scuttled off into the kitchen, clattering pots and pans. Buglers like him were in short supply – a man whose job it was to communicate, but who knew when to shut up and when not to hear. Buglers like him were all three wise monkeys, rolled into one. At least, that was how Bugler Dobbs saw himself.
‘What do you know about McGee?’ Batchelor asked Keogh.
The captain twirled his cigar for a while, then said, ‘I’m intrigued to know your interest in all this, Mr Batchelor – other than the prurient, I suppose.’
‘Prurience has nothing to do with it, Captain,’ Batchelor snapped. ‘I happened to be with Charley Reynolds when we found McGee, out on the prairie.’
Keogh narrowed his eyes. ‘You don’t much like the Irish, do you, Mr Batchelor?’ He was smiling, but Grand felt uneasy.
‘The Irish, Captain Keogh,’ Batchelor said, ‘spend a lot of their time blowing up parts of my home town, not to mention Manchester. You’ll forgive me if I’m a little partisan in such matters.’
‘I will,’ Keogh said, ‘but I’m not sure I’ll forgive you for the potato famine.’
‘You were telling us about Trooper McGee.’ Grand thought it was time to intervene.
Slowly, Keogh turned his gaze to the American. ‘So I was. Ah, Dobbs, thank you. Find Lonesome Charley for me, will you? Tell him I’d like a word.’
‘Yessir.’ Dobbs saluted and left.
‘Reynolds doesn’t say a great deal but what he does say is worth listening to.’ Keogh poured the coffee. ‘I’ll be mother,’ he said, winking, ‘with all due respect to Trooper McGee.’
‘How long had he … she … been with the Seventh?’ Grand asked.
‘Joined in ’73 if memory serves,’ Keogh said, ‘in Kentucky. A paper-hanger before that. Apprentice and all.’
‘Why the army?’ Batchelor asked.
Keogh laughed. ‘Do you want me to answer that one, Captain Grand?’ he said. ‘Or will you?’
‘For me, it was a means of getting out from under my father’s business,’ Grand shrugged. ‘Number crunching was never my idea of a career. Then, of course, the war came along. So before long, the choice would not have been mine to make.’
‘True enough. I was ADC to General Stoneman, among other things. You were with the Third Cavalry, I believe?’
‘Among other things,’ Grand nodded.
‘But to answer your question, Mr Batchelor; Other Ranks enlist for reasons different from officers. The rye, the pay, the rough life – who knows? It’s not a bad life – comrades, three squares a day, a dry billet. And if you like horses, it’s made for you. And what girl doesn’t love a man in uniform?’ He stopped, hearing what he had just said but it was too late to backtrack now. He was saved by a knock on the door. ‘Come in!’ he bellowed.
Charley Reynolds stood on the threshold with his rifle slung over his shoulder. ‘On my way to Bismarck,’ he grunted. ‘What is it you want?’
‘Set a spell, Charley,’ Keogh patted the sofa alongside him. ‘We’re talking about Trooper McGee.’
The scout hauled the rifle-strap off his back and sat on the floor, cross-legged. He liked Myles Keogh, as much as he liked anyone, but he’d no more accept his hospitality than fly to the moon.
‘You didn’t know, I suppose.’ Keogh raised an eyebrow.
‘What a cuss hides under his breeches is his concern, I reckon,’ Reynolds said. ‘It’s no business of mine.’
‘I agree,’ Keogh said, ‘but it is, apparently, of Mr Batchelor here.’
‘I just want to know who killed her,’ Batchelor said.
‘Oh, well, that’s easy.’ Keogh was pouring himself another coffee. He hadn’t offered one to Reynolds. ‘Gall.’
Grand and Batchelor looked at each other.
‘The Hunkpapa chief?’ Grand checked, though it was unlikely there would be two with that name.
‘Chief, horse thief and murderer,’ Keogh shrugged. ‘Take your pick. Gall is all things to all men.’
‘He don’t shoot troopers for target practice,’ Reynolds grunted, looking Keogh in the face.
The captain of the Wild I looked at him, then at Grand and Batchelor. ‘Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘I think we’re all missing the point here.’
‘Which is?’ Batchelor asked.
‘This has nothing to do with Trooper McGee,’ Keogh said, ‘but it has everything to do with the General.’
Again, Grand and Batchelor exchanged glances. Nobody spoke.
‘Think about it. McGee, God rest her soul, was nobody. God alone knows what possessed her to join this man’s army, but Charley here’s right. Gall wouldn’t waste his tomahawk on a wasichu, but …’
‘A what?’ Batchelor thought he’d misheard.
‘Dog-face,’ Reynolds said. ‘It’s what the Lakota call us whites on account of our whiskers.’
‘… but Custer, now, that’s different,’ Keogh went on. The others still looked suitably blank; Grand and Batchelor from years of experience; Reynolds – who knew why? ‘McGee was riding Custer’s horse,’ Keogh explained, as though he was talking to the fort idiot. ‘It wasn’t until Gall got close enough, he realized his mistake. McGee wasn’t scalped, was she?’
All three shook their heads. It was hard to see how she could have been; there would have been nothing to grab hold of but stubble.
‘That’s because there’d be no point,’ Keogh went on. ‘But Long Hair, now. That would be a prize Gall couldn’t resist.’
‘It’s not Gall,’ Reynolds said defiantly.
‘I know you’ve got a soft spot for the Indians, Charley …’ Keogh started.
The scout was back on his feet, slinging the rifle over his shoulder. ‘It’s not a soft spot,’ he said, ‘it’s plain justice. We’ve broken every goddamned treaty we ever made with the Indians. White men don’t make promises, they make progress.’ And he swept out.
Keogh’s cigar had gone out and he relit it. ‘He has a point, of course,’ he said, ‘but in my view, that only underlines Gall’s motivation. The word in the lodges is that he has sworn to kill Custer. Poor old Charley’s turning into an old woman.’
‘What kind of rifle does Gall carry, Captain?’ Grand asked.
‘Any he can get his hands on,’ Keogh shrugged. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘And who does he know back in Washington?’
Keogh frowned. ‘Gall?’ he said. ‘In Washington? Man, that might as well be the far side of the moon. What a strange question, if you don’t mind my saying so. I know you haven’t been here long, but surely, it’s been long enough to know that if hostiles aren’t welcome in the Dew Drop Inn, they sure as hell aren’t welcome in the White House.’
Grand leaned forward. ‘Because, I think you’re right,’ he said, ‘about Custer being the real target here, not McGee. It’s happened before.’
‘What has?’ Keogh asked.
‘Attempts on Custer’s life,’ Batchelor said.
‘In Washington?’
‘A runaway cab near the Capitol building,’ Grand said. ‘Killed a senator by mistake.’
Keogh clicked his fingers. ‘Hal Maitland,’ he said. ‘Yes, I read about that in the Tribune. But surely, that was a political thing, wasn’t it? Jealousy; it’s rife in Washington, or so I hear.’
‘And Custer was attacked by roughs in the Division,’ Batchelor said. ‘Irish roughs.’
Keogh laughed. ‘I wouldn’t expect there to be any other type,’ he said. ‘And I won’t even ask what the General was doing in the Division either. Did Libbie know?’ He looked from one man to the other. ‘Of course she did. Libbie knows everything that Georgie does and thinks it’s wonderful.’
‘So, you’ll agree,’ Grand went on, ‘that the chances of Gall being involved in that are pretty remote.’
‘On the face of it, yes,’ Keogh had to admit. ‘Assuming you’re right, of course – about the Washington attempts, I mean. And if you are …’
‘If we are,’ Batchelor said, ‘then we’re not looking for a Hunkpapa Lakota, are we?’ And he felt proud of himself for even being able to say that out loud.
‘I must admit,’ Keogh said, lolling back on his sofa, ‘that the Washington connection has me stumped. The list of people with a grudge against the General must stretch to the Mexican border, but who’s got the links east and west? All right, so Reno and Benteen can’t stand him …’
‘Reno and Benteen?’ Batchelor repeated.
‘You must have met them,’ Keogh said. ‘Of course you have – at the dinner the other night. I thought everybody knew … a fort like Lincoln has its cliques, gentlemen. Grand, you know how this works.’
‘We had other priorities in the Wilderness, Captain,’ Grand said. ‘Scuttlebutt wasn’t high on the list for spare-time activities. It was more a case of staying alive.’
‘Fair enough,’ Keogh nodded, ‘but out here … Apart from the occasional hostile and somebody’s drunken antics in the Dew Drop, the overriding atmosphere is one of stultifying boredom. I daresay you’ve even heard gossip about me being a womanizer.’
‘You are a womanizer, Captain,’ Grand pointed out.
‘Granted, but I think you would be surprised to learn how little of what they say about me is true.’ He paused and stared into the distance. ‘Most of it isn’t true.’ Grand stared at him, unblinking. ‘All right, most of it is true, but it’s just as well for them that I give them something to talk about. People have too much time on their hands here. They become … introspective, I guess you’d say. When you’re thrown back on your imagination for long enough, nothing seems too unlikely to spread as gossip.’
‘Is that what Reno and Benteen do?’ Batchelor asked.
Keogh laughed. ‘You make them sound like some sort of double act on the stage,’ he said. ‘Technically, Marcus Reno is my superior officer, so I shouldn’t, of course, be saying a word …’
‘But if we overlook technicalities?’ Grand persisted.
‘Then the man’s an asshole. Took him years to get through West Point because of the number of demerits he’d racked up. Never quite got over Custer getting the Seventh; he thought it should have gone to him.’
‘What about Benteen?’ Batchelor asked.
‘Never trust a man whose hair is a different colour from his eyebrows.’ Keogh patted the side of his nose. ‘He may look like everybody’s favourite uncle, but he’s an utter shit when it comes down to it. Ask anybody in D Company.’
There was a silence and, during it, Myles Keogh grew serious. ‘But, gentlemen, if you’re suggesting that either of those officers – comrades of mine, remember – wants to see Custer dead, I’d have to say you were barking up the wrong tree.’
The fort was humming with activity, much of it of the useless variety designed to keep men busy who might otherwise sneak off for a snooze in the fast-increasing heat of the day. Buttons and buckles were polished, scabbards burnished. Bales of fodder were moved from one stable to another. Buckets of water were hauled from the well to fill horse troughs and the water from the horse troughs was collected and tipped down the well to keep the water sweet. Dust was swept. Stones were whitewashed and if the men chafed under such treatment, they didn’t let it show. There were even outbreaks of singing, mostly of old Irish ballads, and if the words were not always for ladies’ ears, well, the ladies were as yet not really stirring.
Libbie Custer never rose before eleven. Before she had gone out West, her mother had warned her that the early morning sun was death to a peaches-and-cream complexion like hers, as was the moist heat of noon and the dry heat of the afternoon. As for the icy cold of the desert night, it must be avoided at all costs. In short, any sort of weather they didn’t have in Monroe, Michigan, was an unmitigated disaster. Libbie ignored her mother’s advice by and large, but she had never been an early riser, so adamantly believed the bit about the early morning.
She was lying back in bed, cocooned in lace-trimmed pillows, when Georgie looked in. She held out her hands to him and patted the bed. Land, but didn’t he look handsome this morning? ‘You look solemn, Georgie,’ she said, turning down her pretty mouth.
‘I’ve had some news, Libbie,’ he said, in his most portentous tone, the one he used in front of the mirror when he was accepting the Presidency. ‘And you must brace yourself.’
She put her hands up to her mouth. ‘Oh, Georgie!’ Her eyes were wide. ‘Not Bleuch?’
He shook his head, and before she went through the list of all the animals she knew, he cut in quickly. ‘It isn’t the dogs or the horses.’
‘Not … Mama?’ The tears were already in her eyes.
George didn’t share her distress in the event of something fatal happening to his mother-in-law but he let it pass. ‘No, Libbie, it’s Trooper McGee.’
She let her hands fall and she frowned. ‘Who?’
‘Trooper McGee. I Company. You must have heard the commotion last night?’
She pulled a sulky face. ‘There’s always a commotion, Georgie. Land, sometimes I wonder how I sleep at all. And I didn’t see James all yesterday. Or today, for that matter.’
‘Well, in a way, Mr Batchelor was involved. You see, he and Charley Reynolds found Trooper McGee, dead out in the Plains.’
‘How dreadful for poor James! Is he all right?’
Custer didn’t often get angry with his wife, but sometimes he really wanted to give her a good one upside the head. While he admitted he wouldn’t want her to look like Martha Madden, a bit more of her pioneer grit would come in handy. ‘James is fine, I’m sure. He just found the body, he isn’t dead. Anyhow, he and Charley found McGee and … well, Libbie, this is hard for me to speak of, even as a husband to a wife, a man who has …’
‘Thank you, Georgie,’ she said with a blush. ‘I don’t think we need to have too much detail on that score.’
He patted her hand. ‘I’m sorry, my love, but … I am trying to prepare you. You see, it turns out that Trooper McGee was … a woman.’
Libbie looked at him with an eyebrow raised quizzically but said nothing.
‘Did you hear what …?’
‘Of course I heard you, George,’ she said, with asperity. ‘I’m not deaf, even though it is barely dawn. I’m just wondering what you think will upset me. I am as upset at Trooper McGee’s death as I would be at anyone’s passing. Land, I hope I am not heartless. But that she was a woman … I think it’s fair to say that we all knew that.’
‘We? All?’ This wasn’t going at all the way the General had expected. He had expected tears. Fainting. Tears and fainting.
‘All we ladies. Well, possibly not Susie Chater, who hasn’t the sense God gave sheep, but the rest of us, yes.’ She leaned forward and took her husband’s hand and patted it condescendingly. ‘There are times for a woman, George, of which you may be aware, when her … health … is precarious. Martha Madden used to help poor Tilly out at those times.’ She gave a merry little laugh. ‘It wasn’t as though she could ask her bunkmate, was it?’
‘Tilly?’ Custer was floundering.
‘Tilly McGee. I can’t say that I knew her. I thought in my position it was best I stayed aloof. But yes … most of the ladies knew about her. Oh!’ Her hand flew to her mouth again. ‘How is Calamity taking it? They were great friends, you know.’
Custer took in a deep breath but let it go again without speaking. He had taken his little mouse out of her milieu and dropped her miles from anywhere and sometimes he wondered how she had survived. And then, along came a conversation such as this, and he had no doubt that whatever life threw at her, she would rise above.
‘But, how did Tilly die?’
‘She was shot. Riding Vic.’
‘Vic?’ The question was a scream. ‘Then … they meant to kill … you!’
He nodded, solemnly, aware of how his golden hair caught the sun streaming through the blind. ‘I have wondered, my dear.’ He used the Presidential voice again; it seemed the most appropriate to the occasion.
Then Libbie Custer played to her strength and fainted dead away.
The mindless non-activity in the fort had stopped. Even the dogs lying in the shade seemed quieter. The horses stopped flicking their ears and tails at the flies which buzzed around. The air seemed heavier, the silence like a stifling blanket over everything. Not a creature was stirring. Then, almost beyond the limit of hearing, came the sound of distant shovels, breaking a hole big enough for a man in the dust of the burial plot. Trooper McGee was going to her reward. No one called attention to her sex. No one looked away. Her comrades in arms stood in silent ranks as she was lowered into her grave and if anyone noticed a weeping mule skinner at the back of the lines, they said nothing. The chaplain intoned the words over the coffin, the dust was replaced on her dust and Bugler Dobbs blew ‘Taps’ as best he could. He wasn’t note perfect – no one would ever accuse him of being musical – but it was heartfelt and, if Trooper McGee could hear it where she had gone, she would indeed have been proud. Soon, the grave would level with the winds from the Plains and just a wooden cross would mark the place. And everyone knew, it wouldn’t be the newest grave for long. Twelve troopers, six each side, fired their rifles into the air and the regiment was dismissed. Soon, bales would be moved from place to place, water drawn and poured back down the well and Fort Abraham Lincoln would return to its usual gentle, insular pace.
Later that day, Grand and Batchelor sat on the veranda of their quarters. The afternoon heat made everybody drowsy. Custer’s dogs lay sprawled on the edge of the parade ground, in the shade. Only his pet porcupine risked the direct sun, but he, outlawed by Libbie from the General’s bedroom, had the run of everywhere else and made a point of such perambulations.
Grand was idly tossing a silver dollar in the air. ‘Heads or tails, James?’ he asked.
Batchelor looked at him. He’d done this before, many times, and it never ended well. ‘Tails,’ he said.
The coin flashed as it turned in air and Grand caught it expertly. ‘It’s heads,’ he smiled, showing it to his doubting partner in crime.
‘So?’ Batchelor, defeated again, waited for the inevitable.
‘So, I’ll take Frabbie Benteen. You can have, in the nicest possible way, the horse-doctor’s wife.’
The horse-doctor’s wife wasn’t used to visitors, especially interesting, foreign visitors from thousands of miles away. Martha Madden’s many children were all away at school, bar the youngest who was out back with the nursemaid who doubled up as maid and sometimes surgery assistant. She missed them, but while her husband was in the Fort Lincoln post and she was a captain’s wife, she had little to do for much of the time. She could – and did – embroider for America, and the walls of her parlour were crammed with uplifting texts and associated pictures. Currently, she was working on ‘Nearer My God to Thee’ with an ecstatic angel in one corner. Occasionally, she was called upon to chase the rabbit, as the common parlance had it; helping to deliver the babies of soldiers’ wives.
‘Mr Batchelor!’ Her face lit up as he had hoped it would. ‘What a nice surprise.’
‘Am I interrupting, Mrs Madden?’ he asked, sweeping off his hat.
‘Land, no.’ It was an irritating expression she’d picked up from Libbie Custer and she had no idea just how annoying it was. ‘Come in. Can I offer you a raspberry tea?’
Batchelor had little idea what that might actually be made of, but he accepted gratefully. The Maddens’ quarters stood at the end of Officers’ Row, nearest to the Suds, which were the Other Ranks’ married accommodation, and the babble of children and the wailing of babies wafted in through the open windows. It was an incongruous sound in a frontier fort but James Batchelor, to whom the Wild West had, until now, been Wimbledon Common, didn’t know that.
‘I hope you don’t mind,’ he said, perching on furniture that was nowhere near as comfortable as Myles Keogh’s, ‘but I’d love to hear all about frontier life, from a woman’s perspective, I mean.’
‘Pity you couldn’t have asked Trooper McGee that,’ she said, waspishly. When Tilly McGee had been her special protégée, that was one thing. Now she was public property, quite another.
‘Indeed,’ Batchelor said, impassively.
‘We women who actually wear frocks,’ she went on, ‘have a pretty hard time of it, I can tell you.’
‘Are you from the West, Mrs Madden?’
‘No, no. I hail from Virginia,’ she trilled, although if she was trying to emulate the daughters of the Confederacy, she was failing abysmally. ‘Madden is Pennsylvania through and through. If this country of ours had used our experience, a mingling, as it were, of North and South, there might never have been a Civil War in the first place.’
‘Indeed not,’ Batchelor smiled. ‘It must be nice, though, to have friends like Mrs Custer and Mrs Benteen.’
She looked oddly at him. ‘That depends on which Mrs Custer you mean,’ she said.
‘Well, Libbie,’ Batchelor explained. He had momentarily forgotten about Tom’s wife, but even Tom did that most of the time.
‘Libbie is all right,’ Mrs Madden nodded. ‘She’s the commandant’s wife and she handles it well. Belle, on the other hand, is a snob who preens over the rest of us ’cos she’s the General’s sister-in-law. And don’t get me started on Frabbie Benteen!’
‘Mrs Benteen,’ Matthew Grand swept off his hat and stood at the entrance to the villa.
‘Why, Captain Grand,’ the woman gushed. ‘This is a pleasant surprise. I’m afraid Frederick is on outpost duty with his company.’
‘Well, actually,’ he said, ‘that’s sort of why I’m here.’
‘Won’t you come in?’
‘Thank you.’ He stepped inside and almost gasped. He wasn’t ready for the wallpaper or the zebra-skin rug on the living-room floor, but he was a man of the world and took such things in his stride. ‘You know I was with the Army of the Potomac during the late war?’
‘In a place like this, Captain,’ she said, ushering him to an armchair, ‘word gets around. So, yes, I had heard.’
‘I’m sure I’ve met your husband before, but for the life of me, I can’t remember where. I didn’t like to ask.’ He smiled deprecatingly. ‘It’s not very polite to admit that you’ve forgotten someone, especially someone as obviously able as your husband.’ He felt his stomach flip over as he laid it on with a trowel.
‘His family were music publishers,’ she said. ‘Raspberry tea?’
‘Thank you.’ He smiled at the sudden appearance of a silver pot.
‘He did various jobs before the war, but of course, it’s during the war that you’ll have met him. So, let’s see … he joined the Tenth Missouri soon after Fort Sumter. It broke his father’s heart. My father-in-law, Mr Grand, was a son of the South through and through. The last letter he wrote to Frederick ended with “I hope the first Goddamned” … oh, excuse my French … “bullet gets you”.’
‘Delightful,’ Grand said.
‘Yes, he was a delightful man,’ Frabbie went on. ‘Oh, it’s so difficult to remember Frederick’s campaigns. Let me see … were you at Bolivar?’
Grand shook his head.
‘Milliken’s Bend?’
Likewise.
‘Selma?’
Nothing.
‘Little Osage?’
The list droned on through the afternoon, not helped by the sweet warmth of the raspberry tea and the warm winds wafting in from the Plains outside.
‘Major Reno is another matter.’ Martha Madden, already flattered by Batchelor’s gushing, was warming to the occasion.
‘In what way?’
She leaned forward, checking to see that there was no one in actual earshot. ‘Drink,’ she mouthed.
‘Really?’ Batchelor sat back and did his best to look appalled.
‘Disgustingly so, on several occasions. I wonder General Custer doesn’t kick him out. He’s brave enough, I suppose – led a cavalry charge against Fitzhugh Lee near the Rappahannock and had his horse shot from under him. All he got out of that was a hernia.’
‘Dreadful,’ Batchelor commented, grimly.
‘After that, it was rebuffs all the way. To hear him tell it, of course, it was all somebody else’s fault – Custer’s in particular. I think it rankles that the General is younger than he is and got all the plaudits.’
‘Do you know,’ Batchelor asked, forcing down a second cup of raspberry tea, ‘if he has any links with Washington?’
When the list of the minor skirmishes of Captain Benteen was over, Grand accepted another raspberry tea and said, ‘Does he have any connection with the capital? My father has offices there; perhaps that’s where …’
Frabbie Benteen frowned, then shook her head. ‘Well, he was hoping for some sort of post there,’ she said. ‘You know, via Belknap, but it never happened.’
‘Well,’ Mrs Madden became even more confidential. ‘I do know, because Corporal Dobbs, who is the regiment’s telegrapher told me, that Major Reno was in touch with William Belknap. That, of course, was before he resigned as Secretary for War. And please, Mr Batchelor, don’t tell a soul. I was told it in strictest confidence!’
‘Belknap!’ Grand and Batchelor chorused when the door closed on their quarters that evening. It really came as no surprise that he would be in the mix somewhere.
‘So that’s it,’ Batchelor said. ‘Reno can’t stand Custer and Benteen’s no big fan either. On their own, they wouldn’t so much as break wind, but together, and spurred on by Belknap, who has a real motive …’
‘One of the oldest in the book,’ Grand said. ‘Revenge.’
‘And it’s as sweet out here in the Black Hills as it is in DC. The next question is – and I’m looking to you for soldierly advice here, Matthew – how do we proceed?’