October 3, 1864, 9:00 p.m.
Petersburg, Virginia
Lieutenant Colonel Charles Marshall rose and extended the letter.
“From Governor Smith,” the military secretary said.
“Again?”
“I’m afraid so, sir.”
“The same matter?”
“Yes, sir.”
Robert E. Lee paused short of Marshall’s desk, exasperation poisoning his eyes. Six months back, the older man would have concealed his ire.
Lips tightened, Lee took the letter. He did not sit to read it, but steered to a table lamp and drew out his spectacles. The eyeglasses, too, had appeared only of late.
Masking his glances, Marshall considered the general. It had been yet another hard, bad day, with all of Grant’s armies whittling away at the South, a wasting disease in blue. Lee’s digestion and angina had improved since the awful spring and desolate summer, but his arthritis had worsened. Lee hid his discomfort from the men, maintaining a flawless posture in the saddle, but among his closest aides his crispness wilted.
Lee muttered to himself, another new habit.
The week before, Marshall had been struck by a revelation. Riding past soldiers gaunt as the victims of famine, Lee had been received not as a general, but as a wondrous father, even a savior. That was hardly new, but amid the cheers raised from jutting Adam’s apples and starved throats, Marshall had realized that he himself no longer served out of loyalty to the Confederacy, but out of devotion to Lee. He suspected that Taylor and Venable, the other two members of the staff’s triumvirate, felt just as he did.
It was not a matter gentlemen discussed. It smacked of treason.
Yet, it was true. Experiencing Richmond’s haughty self-regard from nearby Petersburg was enough to dishearten any man. And were that squalid vanity insufficient, the way officials treated not only the hungry army but Lee himself was mortifying.
As he finished reading the letter, Lee’s hand trembled. But the general composed himself and handed back the paper, revealing a frayed sleeve, a sight once unthinkable.
“Do you wish to reply, sir?”
Lee shook his head. “Not tonight, not tonight.”
“Yes, sir.”
The older man looked drained of all vitality.
“Any other matters, Colonel Marshall?”
“Nothing pressing, sir.” There were, of course, countless matters that wanted attention, but Marshall preferred to handle them himself and let Lee rest.
The general nodded. Marshall expected Lee to leave the room, to retire to his bed in this once fine house, perhaps to ponder private woes in turn. His wife’s condition had worsened again, and Custis, his son, remained ill. On top of that, his nephew had been severely wounded at Winchester. And after contemplating his private sorrows, Lee would pray, ravaged knees on bare planks. Marshall knew him better than Lee imagined, well enough to break a decent heart.
Instead of leaving the room, Lee took a chair. His flesh seemed to sigh.
“What does the man expect me to do? Who do I have to replace Early? Who could I send?”
Governor “Extra Billy” Smith’s letter had been drafted with crimson claws.
“The governor’s faction favors General Breckinridge,” Marshall reminded him. “The soldiers are said to want Gordon.”
“Not Gordon, not yet. Too soon. As for General Breckinridge…”
Marshall knew Lee well enough not to expect the completion of the sentence. Lee did not think Breckinridge had the gift of commanding armies, not even depleted ones.
“I feel…,” Lee went on, in one of his franker moods, “I feel that Governor Smith is behaving ignobly. Command appointments cannot be undone based on our antipathies. As for factions, Colonel Marshall, ‘faction’ will be the death of this Confederacy, should the Lord ever see fit to withdraw his favor.”
“Hasn’t come to that, sir,” Marshall said. “Thanks be.”
Not listening, Lee resumed speaking: “They don’t understand Early, they refuse to see him entire. If my ‘bad old man’ is flawed, so are we all, Colonel Marshall, so are we all. Early’s done his best, I cannot doubt that. Nor am I convinced that any of our generals would have proved abler. The newspaper people do him an injustice. And the Richmond papers…”
Marshall understood what went unsaid: The newssheets were despicable and none more so than Richmond’s, accusing Early of everything from incompetence to drunkenness on the battlefield, charges against which even Breckinridge defended his sometime friend and erstwhile tormentor. Everyone assumed that Virginia’s governor lurked behind the press as well. There was a torrent of bad blood between Old Jubilee and Extra Billy.
Lee had not finished. “What angers me, Colonel Marshall, what I find unacceptable—ungentlemanly—are these anonymous allegations, these unnamed sources of information Governor Smith proclaims he’s sworn to protect. Think of it, think of it! What cowardice for a man to blacken another’s reputation, yet lack the decency to sign his name. Anonymous attacks lack even the brute assassin’s measure of courage. No man, Colonel … no man should ever malign another anonymously, the practice is contemptible.”
Marshall knew that Lee also found Virginia’s governor contemptible. And Marshall, who shared a Warrenton tie with Smith, agreed in full: Extra Billy had been a wretched officer and proved no better as an elected official. The governor was a man of endless schemes and few achievements. Lee, of course, would never voice such views, but Marshall could read his thoughts from a lifted eyebrow: Lee despised Smith. But Lee would never say as much to any man.
For his part, Marshall wished the general would confront Richmond’s iniquities and handle President Davis with less deference. Lee’s rigorous—almost ostentatious—subordination to civil authority, his unwillingness to chide even villains like Smith, threatened to lead the army into tragedy.
Lee was the last man trusted by all, yet he restricted himself to tactical questions. Marshall had begun to think it was possible to be too much of a gentleman.
“If I had another man, I would replace General Early,” Lee said abruptly. “For his own sake, to spare him all this. But not because he was gainsaid a victory, not when I have fallen short myself.” He pawed the air for invisible support. “This expectation of miracles, this pharisaic demand for impossible wonders, is as unjust as it is irreligious. General Early may be abrasive when out of temper—I grant you, I grant you—but no man has a higher sense of duty.” Lee met his assistant’s eyes. “Others talk, he fights.”
Marshall agreed with much of what Lee had to say. But he also knew it wasn’t only Smith who’d lost faith in Early. Accustomed as all were to victories in the Valley, two sharp defeats shocked soldiers and civilians, high and low. When misfortune struck, men didn’t want explanations. They wanted someone to blame.
But Lee had chosen to send Early reinforcements, all the men possible, returning Kershaw’s Division to the Valley, then dispatching Rosser and a cavalry brigade, stripping the Petersburg defenses to a dangerous degree. Even so, the reinforcements were paltry compared to Sheridan’s newly reported strength.
Lee rose, not without effort. “I will not blame General Early. But I do blame General Sheridan for this … this general alarm. His conduct, these … these atrocities … have no place in the affairs of civilized nations.”
Reports claimed that a man perched atop the Blue Ridge would see more fires blazing than he could count. Sheridan wasn’t making war on Early now, but on the entire Shenandoah Valley, on the people.
The bitterness graven on faces around the headquarters had grown fearsome, etched deep by concern that such might be the fate of the entire South. The one thing burning the Valley did not do was to incline men to surrender.
On the threshold of the parlor serving as Marshall’s office, Lee paused again.
“We must all have faith,” he said. “We must have faith.”
That seemed to end the evening’s exchange, but upon reaching the stairs, the older man turned and surprised Marshall with a smile.
“I forget myself, Colonel. You have a birthday today. My congratulations. I wish you many more.” The smile faltered. “In better times.”
October 3, 9:00 p.m.
Outside Harrisonburg
The darkness between the tents produced Doc Joe. Face bedeviled by shadows and the campfire’s orange light, he appeared to a mournful fiddle tune that rose from the depths of the camp.
“I come, dear brother-in-law, bearing good news.”
“Miracles do happen,” Hayes said. He moved to stir the fire, then chose to let the flames weaken. “Take a seat.”
“Little cold to be sitting out,” Joe said. “Fire or not.”
“Sit down, or tell your news standing.”
The surgeon took a camp chair. “It’s Russ Hastings. Sawbones’ telegraph tells me he’s likely to live.”
Hayes closed his eyes for a moment, thanking the Lord in whom he could not believe.
“That is good news. Wonderful news.”
“Most of the pieces seemed to fit together. He may even look presentable again. To the extent that boy ever did.”
“Get word to Will McKinley. He feels guilty.”
Joe stirred up the fire Hayes had neglected. “Wait till morning, I expect.”
“Still holding Russ at Winchester?”
The surgeon nodded. “Can’t move him yet. May be some time.”
“When we get back to Winchester, I need to see him.”
“Sounds like it isn’t only Will McKinley. Who’s feeling guilty.”
Hayes shook his head in denial, but he did feel a trace of guilt. He remembered telling Hastings, “Stay close to me.” And the aide had stayed close and had paid for it.
“May not be that long,” Joe said, “before you get to see him. I also hear, from a very different and generally dependable chain of informants—that would be the commissary sergeants—that we’ll be moving north again right soon. To the Cedar Creek line, at least.” He nodded at the southern horizon, the view that had kept Hayes mesmerized all evening. “Get away from all this.”
“That’s a military secret, Joe,” Hayes noted.
“There aren’t any secrets in the military,” his brother-in-law said. “Might as well try to hide a dose of clap as a general’s plans.”
“Still…”
“I’m not pumping you. Just offering up what the sergeants are all saying. In case my cherished relative—who I hear has been recommended for brigadier general—in case that august gentleman has not been informed by the mighty powers about the latest change in the situation. Hate to see a hero look plain ignorant.” Joe tossed the stick atop the reborn flames. “When were you going to tell me? About the promotion?”
“Hasn’t happened yet.”
“It will. And you know it. And next week, after the ballots are counted for the Ohio elections, you’re going to be a congressman-elect. Yet, here you sit, moping like Hamlet in a traveling troupe.” Casting a wild shadow on stained canvas, Joe stretched wide his arms, then slapped his hands together. “Papers back home are full of you, I hear. ‘Hero of the Opequon.’” Joe chuckled. “Sounds a bit like ‘The Song of Hiawatha.’”
“That about captures it, I’d say,” Hayes told him. “Made-up stories.”
“I will admit that the illustrations—’least, the one I saw—look somewhat more dashing than the somewhat unkempt reality. Lucy’s going to be wondering who she married.”
On the southern horizon, flames soared.
“You know,” Hayes said, soft-voiced, “this is as close as I’ve ever come to taking your advice.”
“About trimming that beard, if you want to keep the lice off?”
“About resigning my commission.”
“Well, hallelujah! Let me shake your hand, Congressman Hayes. Boys are talking about you for governor, you know that? And it wouldn’t hurt you to go home and stump for Lincoln ahead of November.”
“I didn’t say I was taking your advice. Only that I’ve never come so close.”
“Well, come a little closer. You’ve done your part. Lucy and the boys need a husband and father.”
“Nearing her time,” Hayes said, changing the subject.
“Don’t you worry about that, either. She’ll be fine, that gal. Probably birth a twelve-pounder, in honor of du Pont’s artillery.”
“Her rheumatism worries me.”
“Rheumatism doesn’t affect childbirth. As a practitioner of the high science of medicine, I can attest to that with fair authority.”
“But after.”
“Worry about ‘after’ after. Lord almighty, Rud. You’re about to be elected to Congress, you’ve been recommended for a general’s star, you’re a hero to the folks back home, and your wife is set to give birth to a healthy, strapping infant who, no doubt, will have the lungs of a company first sergeant. How about tossing some joy into the pot?”
Hayes gestured toward the countless glows that pinked the horizon in the direction of Staunton. “It’s that, Joe. All that.”
“Nothing you can do about it.”
“No,” Hayes agreed. “But I can be ashamed.”
“Turn around and face north. Forget it. This damned war.”
“These people won’t forget it. Their great-great-grandchildren won’t forget it.”
Joe coughed up a laugh. “Two weeks ago, you were the apple-pie optimist. Telling me how good men would patch this country up.”
“Not after this.”
“They had it coming.”
“No.”
“Sounds insubordinate, Colonel Hayes. General Sheridan’s orders—”
“I’ve followed my orders. But I don’t have to like my orders.”
“Seems to me, dear brother-in-law, you’ve gotten off light enough. ’Far as conscience goes. Our boys haven’t had to do with the worst of it. Cavalry’s been happy to do the chore.”
“I’ve had over a dozen reports of unauthorized pillaging. Just today. Done by men in this division. Men in my old brigade, even our old regiment.” He turned to face his relative, shunning the conflagration for a moment. “You might want to write a piece for that medical journal, that London one you read. About the epidemic breakdown of military discipline, how it spreads quicker than any plague known to man.”
“I suspect,” the physician said, voice half good-old-Joe and half sepulchral, “that the article has been written. By some unsavory Greek, if not a Babylonian in high dudgeon.”
Hayes didn’t answer but turned back to the horizon. He grasped the logic of the vast destruction, eliminating the Valley’s ability to feed either an army or Virginia. Barns burned by the hundreds, haystacks by the thousands. Mills, forges, depots, granaries, even root cellars met the torch, while stock was driven off or simply slaughtered. Homes were to be spared, but some burned, too. Anyway, what good was shelter? After soldiers, whether under Pharaoh’s standard or the flag of these dis-United States, robbed every ham from your smokehouse, the chickens from your yard, the last egg from your kitchen, and the final sack of flour from your pantry? When invaders made a science of denying you the food to feed yourself or nourish your children? Hayes understood the logic, and he hated it.
He imagined the same acts perpetrated against Lucy and the boys.
But he also knew that he would not resign. For the same reason as always: The men down in the ranks could not resign. And for a new reason now: It was more important than ever to end this war, to bring it to a conclusion, however baleful, before the torch and hunger made the breach truly irreparable.
For all that, for all the idealism that sounded more and more like a cheap tin bell, he hoped that he had seen his final battle, that Sheridan, Crook, and all the others were right, that Early was finished and the war’s end near. And if the war had to last another winter, he hoped his men would draw an assignment guarding a railroad in some quiet corner.
Down in the tidy rows of tents, the fiddler played “Cumberland Gap.”
“You know,” Joe said, “you bewilder me, Rud. You and your darling Emerson. Or whichever other high-flown ink-dripper you’re reading nowadays.”
Hayes laughed, surprising his brother-in-law. “Hardly ‘high-flown.’ I just finished a novel Lucy sent me. East Lynne, by a Mrs. Wood.” He shook his head. “I don’t believe it was meant to be comical, but if a body could concoct a more impossible plot … well, I suppose I should stick to my practice of shunning novels. A man needs beefsteak, not just trimmings.” He sighed. “I’m sure Lucy was trying to ease my mind, draw me away from all this.” Again, he gestured toward the arson pinking the southward night.
“Now that,” Joe said, “is what you and your literary friends back home might call a dichotomy, it’s just what I was getting at. Here we are, nearing—we hope—the end of a savage war. Hundreds of thousands dead, passel of whom shit themselves to death before hearing a shot. And you may not have liked it, but you didn’t reject that war and all the killing on moral or ethical grounds. But now you’re at your wits’ end, brokenhearted, because inanimate objects, barns and corncribs, suffer the torch. Have you thought about that, Rud? That you’re sitting here more outraged over a water mill or hay barn up in flames than you’ve ever been about the casualty lists? And by the way: I recall you devouring Great Expectations like a bowlful of fresh-picked cherries.” He flashed uneven teeth by the fire’s sear. “But, then, hypocrisy never disqualified a man from serving in Congress. Or the Army.”
October 6, 5:00 p.m.
Harrisonburg
“Well, Rosser,” Early said, “I hear tell you’re the ‘Savior of the Valley,’ sent to put us all to rights and show the rest of the cavalry how it’s done. Wonder who spread that high-flown claim about? ‘Savior of the Valley,’ yes, sir! Wouldn’t, by any chance, have been Brigadier General Thomas Lafayette Rosser himself now, would it?” Early cackled. “Best take care the Yankees don’t crucify you, hah! I’m counting on you to perform your wonders first, turn this whole war around. God almighty, Rosser, I won’t stand in your way, that I will not.” Dripping spite, he added, “I’ll expect you to demonstrate your supernatural proficiency by moving out tomorrow morning and teaching the Yankees a proper lesson, not the pissant skirmishing you did today.”
“I assure you I’ll do my best, sir,” Rosser replied, “and the Laurel Brigade will consider it an honor to lead your cavalry to victory.”
Early kicked a charred board and glared at the Texan who claimed a Virginia birth. “‘Laurel Brigade,’ hah! I want you on your warhorse, not your high horse, so get on down and don’t you back-talk me, son.” He knew all about Rosser’s exploits at West Point and his departure to serve the Confederacy right before graduation. But the high jinks and gestures of 1861 didn’t draw cards in 1864, and Early was unimpressed by Rosser’s war record. On top of all, Rosser was just the sort of big, handsome, pomaded pet that Early detested.
Savior of the Valley, indeed. They’d soon see.
“Look around you, Rosser, look around you. Think ‘gentlemen’ burned that house and barn, that goddamned corncrib? And threw a cow down the well just to piss in the soup? Those were your West Point friends—Merritt, Custer, the pack of ’em.” Early spit a brown gob and wiped his beard with the back of his hand. “You just forget about being a high-flown gentleman and give them a whipping like they’ve never had. And not just one whipping, either. Take those nag-kickers of yours and get revenge for … for all this.” He waved an arm almost madly. “You go out there and forget what the Lord has to say about vengeance, Rosser, because it ain’t his business this time. You take the Devil’s vengeance on those bastards.”
“I reckon we can handle Custer and Merritt,” Rosser assured him.
October 8, 8:30 p.m.
Strasburg
Sheridan didn’t just enter the house: He exploded through the door like a burst of canister. The gathered cavalry generals and colonels looked up from their plates in bewilderment followed by dread. No man among them had ever seen the army’s commander in such a rage.
Taking in the bones of the turkey and the near-empty plates, Sheridan threw down his riding gloves and bellowed.
“Well, I’ll be damned! If you ain’t sitting here stuffing yourselves! You, Torbert—and you, Merritt—generals, staff, and all. While the Rebs are riding right into our camp.” He glared at Torbert. “Having a party, ain’t we? While Rosser’s carrying off your guns—next thing, he’ll have Merritt’s drawers off his dainty ass.” Sheridan gave them a wordless growl and continued: “Oh, and you even got on your nice clothes and your clean shirts, ain’t that a sweet picture! What is this, the king of Prussia throwing himself a ball? With all the fixings but Champagne and hoors?”
He lunged toward the table, as if barely restraining himself from striking out with his fists. “Torbert, mount quicker than Hell will scorch a feather. Follow me to headquarters.” He growled again. “Leaving Custer out there to lose wagons and runaway darkies and his blacksmith train. Under your orders not to counterattack.” He raised a hand as if to wipe the leavings from the table, then lowered it in disgust, eyeing Torbert again. “I should cashier you and have you horsewhipped besides.” Heated past words, he glowered.
“Sir…,” Torbert stammered, “you … you said not to—”
“I don’t give a damn what you think I said. I want you to go out there in the morning and whip that Rebel cavalry. Or get whipped yourself. Put every sonofabitch you can collar in the saddle. I’ll be watching you—all of you—closer than a priest watching the poor box.”
Sheridan turned and stamped out, leaving his gloves on the floor, unwilling to lower himself before any man.
Custer had been all but crying in his livid rage, harassed by Rosser for two days and restrained by orders not to turn on his antagonist and fight him. Sheridan had ordered a withdrawal, all right, but he hadn’t expected his men to bend over for buggery.
What was Torbert thinking? Like a … what was the goddamned fancy word? A goddamned epicure. Gobbling a goddamned banquet when he should have been out taking scalps. The Rebs were whipped, finished. And here his cavalry, men he’d favored, were letting themselves be shamed by scarecrows on nags.
Sheridan galloped down the Valley Pike, trailing sparks from his horse’s shoes and curses from his mouth.
October 9, 7:00 a.m.
Back Road, Tom’s Brook
Custer was in such glorious spirits, he couldn’t subdue his grin. The air was clean and crackling crisp, the sky was clear, and Pennington’s boys, led by the 5th New York Cavalry, had just driven Tom Rosser’s skirmishers all the way from Mt. Olive, down across the creek, and back against the main Rebel position.
As Peirce’s guns rolled up to a forward position, Reb batteries tried to stop them, but the Regulars of the 2nd U.S. Artillery never faltered. Booms and blasts and splashing dirt soon quickened the morning, promising all the delicious splendors of battle.
This was it, his first real chance to show what he could do with his new division. And there was poor Tex Rosser across the creek, waiting to be played upon like the splintering piano at Benny Havens. Custer meant to hammer Rosser’s keys, in fair return for the sport his West Point friend had enjoyed during the withdrawal.
God bless Sheridan, though! That little fellow showed more fight than a rally of rabid wildcats. Bless him, bless Little Phil!
With a breeze chill against his cheeks and autumn flaming, Custer trotted up to Pennington, who was assessing Rosser’s position on the opposite ridge. Pennington’s brigade had done its merry work since dawn, but Custer could feel the impetus weakening now, faced with a bristling defense and the naked glen before it. The stream at the bottom wasn’t much, but any charge would plunge down one steep slope, then climb another. Rosser hadn’t done badly when choosing his ground.
Custer rather wished he still had his Wolverines at hand, men whose qualities and quirks he knew. But taking over the Third Division had been too great a prize for him to resist.
“Isn’t this grand?” Custer called to his subordinate. “Handsome day for a fight, it couldn’t be better.”
Pennington nodded toward the opposite ridge. “Rosser’s no fool.”
Delighted, Custer laughed. “Oh, but he is! Tom’s a magnificent fool. Just wait and see!”
A fine Reb shot struck just in front of one of Peirce’s twelve-pounders, splintering wheels and cutting down half the crew. The other cannoneers went about their business as if nothing at all had happened.
“Bully boys,” Custer said. “Count on the Regulars.”
Down a sharp slope to their front, blue-coated horsemen skirmished with dismounted Johnnies. The Rebs had stiffened and the lads from the 5th New York were no longer getting the best of it.
“Sound recall,” Custer ordered, relishing the authority of his second star.
Pennington gaped, bewildered.
“Do it,” Custer told him. “Now.”
As the colonel turned to his bugler, Custer listened for battle noise off to the east, where Merritt’s division and his old brigade were going at the rest of the Rebel cavalry on the Pike. It was vital to outdo Merritt, who had the advantage of numbers and Torbert’s favor.
The bugler sounded the recall: sharp metal notes that fit the morning’s snap.
Pennington eyed him, still showing surprise. “I give you that we appear to be outnumbered, sir. But we could hold here, keep the Johnnies busy, while General Merritt—”
“Nonsense,” Custer told him. As the skirmishers filtered back, the firing quieted. “Watch this.”
Spurring his mount down the forward slope, he tore off his hat and waved it, letting his hair flow and his grin expand. A few yards below the military crest, he reined in and made his stallion prance. Swinging his floppy hat like a tiny flag, he sought Tom Rosser’s attention, offering up a display to all on the scene, in gray or blue.
“Let’s have a fair fight!” he called cheerily to the Rebs. “No malice, boys!”
He made his horse dance a bit longer, letting the world admire him, convinced the Rebs would be too amused to shoot. All the while he inspected Rosser’s lines, scouting the weak points.
When Custer had seen all he needed to see, he gave a last wave and spurred his horse back to the ridgetop.
Major Krom of the 5th New York had joined Pennington. Custer reined up and told him, “Neat work this morning, Krom. Well done!”
Krom nodded. Pennington said, “I make it three to two. Against us.”
Custer’s grin reappeared yet again. “But didn’t I tell you, poor old Tom’s a fool? Oh, the position’s strong in itself, but he’s dismounted all his men. That’s all well and good against infantry, but not against us, gentlemen, not against us. He’s given up his ability to maneuver.”
Grasping that Custer meant to fight despite the odds, his subordinates hardened their faces. They, too, wanted revenge for their recent embarrassments. And with excellent timing, Colonel Wells, his other brigade commander, trotted up.
“Their left flank’s dangling in thin air,” Custer continued. “Just begging to be rolled up. Can’t see it from here for that screen of trees, but I spotted it from down there.” He looked at Wells and Krom, then back to Pennington. “Here’s what we’re going to do.…”
7:30 a.m.
Rosser said, “Yes, indeed, that was Old Curly. That’s Custer through and through. He’ll prance for Lucifer on the Day of Judgment, Georgie will.” He smirked. “I intend to give him the best whipping today that he ever got. See if I don’t.”
7:45 a.m.
With his preparations nearly complete, Custer joined the 5th New York.
“Mind if I ride with your boys this morning, Krom?”
“Honored, sir.” Abruptly, the major looked past him, eastward. Finding his hat’s brim inadequate, Krom lifted a gloved hand to shield his eyes. “Who the devil…?”
Custer turned.
A mile off, across rolling fields, blue-clad horsemen advanced in a column of fours, headed for Custer’s position.
“Your glasses,” Custer said. “Quick.”
Krom unsnapped the case protecting his field glasses and tossed them over to Custer.
As soon as he found the focus, Custer blasphemed to himself. The riders were his Wolverines, instantly recognizable by their red scarves. Coming to his assistance. Or worse, sent. By Merritt.
He wouldn’t have minded commanding them this day, but he damned well wouldn’t borrow them from Merritt. As if Tex Rosser had thwarted him already, leaving him in need of his rival’s help.
Worse, the column’s approach suggested that Merritt had already dealt with his Rebs on the Pike. Wes had gotten a jump on him. It galled.
“Well, isn’t that wonderful?” Custer declared for all around to hear. “Those are my old Wolverines, seems they can’t stay away! Loyalty, boys, that’s loyalty! Shall we show them how it’s done, though?”
He didn’t ride back to make certain that Pennington was ready. Nor did he pause to send orders to his band; the music could wait. He turned to his bugler and snapped, “Sound the advance!”
Wesley Merritt was not going to claim one shred of Custer’s victory.
7:45 a.m.
Jim Breathed rode behind his guns in a barely contained rage. Rosser’s overconfidence, his bravado, was a match and more for that devil Custer’s theatrics. No wonder they were said to be fast friends.
His guns let loose in sequence, jarring the air around him, smoke thinning into a perfect October sky, gunners and officers adjusting elevations with cold precision. Beside and below the guns, the intermittent crackle of rifle fire seemed almost trivial.
As he reached the second battery, Breathed called encouragement to the cannoneers, determined to accomplish all that artillery could to stymie the Yankees this day. But experience told him two things. First, Rosser, a newcomer to this strain of Valley fighting, didn’t grasp how the Federal horse had changed, what a formidable weapon their cavalry had become. Rosser had mistaken a few successful raids on wagon trains and inconsequential skirmishes over fords for telling victories. Now it looked like the Yankees had come out to fight.
Trouble a dog a time too many and he’d turn.
The second problem was the position Rosser had chosen. It looked just grand to a novice. High up on a ridge above a creek. And it might have done for an infantry division. But the guns could not be depressed enough to cover the low ground, not even for oblique fires. Worse, Rosser’s flanks hung open, especially the left. And the Yankees had just demonstrated, twice, at Winchester and Fisher’s Hill, that they had developed a taste for biting flanks.
What he wouldn’t have given to have Fitz Lee back in command!
Peering across the little valley at Custer’s force, Breathed didn’t think the Yanks had the numbers to take the heights, at least not yet. But the one thing the Yankees did seem able to do was to prestidigitate a near-endless supply of timely reinforcements. No, time wasn’t on Tom Rosser’s side, nor was this dull-witted waiting, this queer chest-pounding passivity, that handed the initiative to that yellow-haired, primping dandy.
Waiting for the Federals to come on, all Breathed could do was to champion his batteries and be grateful that, this single time, the Yankees were the ones caught out with defective ammunition in their caissons, half of their shells just burrowing into the earth. Even so, he recognized the handiwork of the 2nd U.S. Artillery and Charlie Peirce, his old nemesis. Breathed had managed to knock out one of Peirce’s guns early in the action, but—bad shells or not—the Yankee Regulars had done the same to one of his own pieces, tit for tat.
He’d tried to talk to Rosser, but there was no reasoning with the man, who seemed downright entranced by his opponent. Full of bluster, Rosser was empty of sense. Now all Breathed could do was to hope that Custer—the worst of the Yankee barn-burners and thieves—would be fool enough to mount a frontal attack.
Maybe it was just the disgruntlement that followed a string of defeats and devastation, Breathed figured, but for the first time in a war that long had pleased him he wondered if he should not have remained a physician.
With no further warning, a bugle rang out across the creek, soon seconded by others. And the Yankees came on, carbines and sabers glittering, headed straight for Breathed’s horse artillery.
7:55 a.m.
Custer rode beside the 5th New York’s color-bearer, pressing the nose of his horse ahead of the others. Pennington’s men advanced in perfect measure: They crested the ridge at a walk and, dropping down toward the creek, answered the call to increase their pace to a trot with alert discipline, a thousand horsemen moving almost as one.
The ground was too steep for a textbook gallop, but this wasn’t meant to be a classroom example. All he needed to do was to fix the Johnnies’ attention, to keep them occupied with a pretty display.
“Sound the charge,” he called back to his bugler.
Near instantly, the brigade and regimental buglers picked up the call. Hooves thundered and turf flew.
The Reb artillery concentrated their fires on the first rank, but the horsemen soon reached the bottom, where the guns could no longer find them. They leapt the creek and pounded up the far slope. Rifle volleys sought them now, unseating the first casualties.
“Keep blowing!” Custer bellowed over his shoulder. “Blow like Gabriel!”
But before the bugler could bring the mouthpiece back to his lips, other bugles sounded. High and off to the right.
Custer couldn’t contain himself. He shouted, “Charge! Charge!” although his voice was lost in the thunder of hooves, the boom of guns, and the racket of rifles firing as fast as they could.
His men roared, a great blue beast. And their roar was answered by hurrahs from regiments still invisible. But Custer knew where they were.
So did the Rebs. Stalwart a moment before, they began to run. Racing for their horses, while the artillerymen hastened to withdraw their pieces.
“Go on! Go on!” Custer yelled, screamed.
Bugles, hooves, shouts, cries. But fewer and fewer shots.
Up on the ridge, Reb officers struggled on horseback, frantic in their efforts to hold their soldiers to the firing line.
Soon there was no firing line to save.
Custer was among the first to leap his horse over the shoddy, improvised breastworks, followed by dozens and then hundreds of other riders.
He saw them now, their sabers flashing, the regiments he had sent around the flank to turn Rosser’s position. They advanced on a broad front, cutting down Rebs as they tried to reach their horses. For once, a plan had gone off perfectly, timed to the second by a sweet felicity, by that happenstance men referred to as “Custer’s luck.”
You were taught that you should never split your forces before the enemy, but he’d made the tactic his favorite. A man had to be bold and take his risks.
“New York!” he cried. “Vermont! Come on, boys. After ’em.”
His men swept up prisoners, captured horses, and sabered men from caissons. Rebels brave enough to attempt to resist were swept away in clashes of steel or fell to flurries of carbine fire.
“Get their guns! Follow the guns!”
He reined in his stallion so sharply, its forelegs lifted. Briefly, he turned to look back over the field.
Yes. His own guns were following, quick as their wheels could turn, with Peirce riding at the fore as they jounced down the Back Road.
Elated and joyous, he turned his mount again and rejoined the pursuit.
8:20 a.m.
Breathed was so angry, he felt puking sick. “Physician, heal thyself!” he whispered wryly.
Through a miracle and grit, he’d brought off his guns. But the Yankees had snatched two caissons and some wagons. And after they’d chased him two miles, they were still coming on hot, delayed all too briefly by hasty defenses got up along the road by dispirited horsemen, defenses that melted quick as ice in summer.
Something had to be done.
And the choice, as Breathed saw things, was up to him. He could keep on going and save his guns, or take up a position and—maybe—save the damned cavalry from complete annihilation. It was a harder decision than any he had faced over a patient.
“Over there, Johnston,” he shouted to his nearest battery commander. “Deploy up on that rise, in front of the tree line.”
Spurring his horse back to his trailing battery, he called, “Thomson, take the other side of the road. Sweep the lower fields that Johnston can’t cover.”
His officers and soldiers didn’t hesitate, but went into battery as smoothly as if drilling.
Clusters of blue-clad horsemen rushed into range, but Breathed’s guns didn’t open, letting the riders come on, aware of how wasteful long-range fires would be with half their ammunition lost and the Yankees dispersed by the speed of their success. Breathed raised his binoculars, only to see Yankees saber the drivers of a last few wagons careening southward.
Munford came up, though, with a good hundred men still under his command. Soon others joined them. A raw defense developed.
The Yankees had lost all order in their pursuit, galloping after prizes until the fields resembled a massive, madcap steeplechase.
Still gentleman enough to recall that profanity had to be stayed behind the lips, Breathed watched gray riders throw up their hands, some in surrender, others in the dependable reflex of men shot in the back.
But Munford gathered in more of his fleeing troopers. Then Payne came up with a company’s worth of Virginians.
The men wanted to rally, that was the thing. They still had a dose of fight in them.
Where was Rosser? Not that Breathed missed him unto a heartache.
“Let them get close,” Munford warned him. The colonel was sweating and panting, but hardly from fighting. Breathed had suffered about as many cavalrymen’s prescriptions as he could abide in a single morning.
“I know my business,” he said, voice sharpened past insult.
He was hot, he couldn’t help it.
Munford looked at him hard, but let it go. The cavalryman rode back to the tree line and his much-diminished command.
When the leading Yankees spotted the guns, they weren’t deterred in the least. Instead, they closed together again, into packs just short of military order, responding to animal instinct and training, neither factor weightier than the other. Some increased their pace and began to hurrah, swinging their sabers or extending their carbines.
Breathed trotted out into the roadway, where all of his artillerymen could see him. And he raised his hand.
Waiting. Listening to Yankee shots rip by, fired from the saddle and longing to hit him.
Closer. A little more.
As soon as the Yankees entered the effective fan of canister, he dropped his hand.
Horses and riders tumbled. But not enough, not nearly enough. The attack slowed, though, with riders milling about, as if they’d lost their bearings and needed orders.
His men reloaded, working swabs and ramrods with veteran speed.
Munford and Payne, the damned fools, didn’t wait. With ragged cries, their horsemen burst from the trees, from swales, countercharging the Yankees.
And the Yankees turned all right, the few hundred of them who had neared the batteries. They took off like rabbits in their turn, pursued by hallooing Confederates. But Breathed’s lips had tightened to a grimness. He knew every step of this cotillion and didn’t care for the music the band would play next.
8:40 a.m.
Custer found his men in retreat, rallied them, and quickly repelled the Confederates who’d chase them. Had to admire the Johnnies’ pluck, they kept up their end of the game as best they could. He had hoped to spot Tom Rosser—wouldn’t it be lovely to capture old Tex?—but the big fellow hadn’t showed since his lines collapsed.
Custer had called in his brigade commanders to issue new orders. Before his old brigade, advancing at a walk, could overtake them.
“Wells, you’re on the right,” he said. “Pennington, the left. Get your boys sorted out quickly. I want a division front, two ranks. And not a second to spare, you understand?”
He was not going to let Merritt in on this prize. Not even Merritt in the guise of his Wolverines.
Trailed by their pennants and flags, his brigade commanders hurried off. After giving an aide instructions for Peirce and his artillery, he turned to scan the fields for his old brigade. Instead, he spotted damnable George Sanford, one of Torbert’s pet captains and a creature who had always favored Merritt.
Sanford rode up and saluted. Custer returned the salute with a practiced smile.
“So glad I found you, sir,” Sanford told him. “Given that you’re lagging a bit, I thought you’d want to be apprised of developments. General Merritt has given Lomax a thrashing out on the Pike, it’s a complete rout.” Smirking like the cat that ate the prize goldfish, the captain added, “Merritt has taken five guns, it’s been something of a spectacle.”
“Sanford, you’re just in time!” Custer said in the merriest voice he could scavenge. “Hold on a minute and I’ll show you six.”
Sanford raised an eyebrow under his kepi but said nothing.
“Sound the advance,” Custer ordered. Hoping that Pennington and Wells had their men ready.
They were ready. The entire division moved forward, first at a walk, then at a trot. It was a glorious sight, almost rivaling Winchester, and Custer wished his darling girl could see it. Wouldn’t she be proud of her boy today?
Rather to Custer’s surprise, Sanford joined the advance. Custer called to him, less indulgently now, “Off you go, Sanford. If you see my old Wolverines, tell them they’re welcome to follow and share in the spoils. Plenty for all, I’m not the jealous sort, you know.” And he touched his horse’s wet flanks with his spurs.
9:05 a.m.
Breathed saw the Yankees coming, with a few gray horsemen preceding them, heralds of disaster, men crying warnings of doom and dragging it with them.
He had tried to rally more troopers around his guns, but few had halted: Terror was the order of the day. Under such circumstances, the artillery officer’s version of the Hippocratic oath said, “First, save your guns.” But Breathed had decided to risk everything. In the hope of buying a few more slivers of time, not for the cavalry to reorganize itself and put up a fight—that was beyond all hope now—but for the horsemen to escape to fight another day: They had been savaged, but not destroyed. Not yet. And Breathed saw clearly that only he stood between them and destruction.
He rode the lines of his two batteries in turn, giving an order he never had imagined would pass his lips.
“Fight the guns to the last. Then save yourselves. If we can bring them off, all right. But I want heroics before we’re driven, not afterward. Fight the guns to the last, then leave them, if need be.”
No man said a word. No japes, no gibes. Not even frowns. Just faces cast in mottled brass, as hard as any gunmetal.
Across the fields, a magnificent show materialized: blue lines, metal and leather gleaming, their front a half mile wide. Breathed guessed their number at two thousand horsemen. Maybe more.
In the distance, a band began to play a piece Breathed didn’t recognize.
“Open at maximum range,” he called. “No need to conserve ammunition now.”
9:15 a.m.
New command, new music. Throughout his days leading a brigade, Custer had favored “Yankee Doodle” as the anthem for his attacks. Now, commanding a division, he’d decided he’d need something more distinctive, uniquely his own. And “Garryowen,” an Irish jig, stuck in a fellow’s ear and jollied the spirit.
The division’s band, a hodgepodge affair not yet up to his standards, didn’t render it perfectly, but could play it well enough to quicken a charge. He’d been saving it up all morning. For the coup de grâce.
And a lovely charge it was about to be, over perfect ground: harvested fields with their fences long since removed by soldiers hunting firewood and copses of trees so slight they didn’t figure. It was almost as he imagined the western plains.
A few quick clashes had brushed aside the ragged bits of resistance that turned up, and Custer was surprised to crest a low ridge and see, in the distance, guns in battery on each side of the road, apparently unsupported.
Those guns were his, he wouldn’t let the Rebs bring them off a second time. He’d thought to bluff Sanford, but here the pieces were, after all, just begging to be captured. Six, at least.
Custer’s luck.
The guns across the fields puffed smoke, and rounds whistled down their arcs. Explosive shells ruptured the earth before his ranks, hurling cascades of dirt and stone upward and outward.
“Sound the charge!” he called.
That clarion call. The rumble of hooves swelling into earthly thunder. And, behind them, the brass band striking up to give them “Garryowen.”
Hurrahs. Lowered sabers. Flags snapping overhead.
The Johnnies reloaded quickly, but had trouble adjusting the range, given the speed of the attack. He’d issued the order to charge so quickly, the Rebs had been thrown off balance.
Along the Back Road, a lone lost wagon clattered between the forces, its teamster doubtless terrified.
The charge gobbled distance. Reb guns spit. Horses tumbled. Custer drew his own saber and leaned forward, torso paralleling his stallion’s neck.
Men shouted, “New York!” or, “Pennsylvania!” or, “Vermont!” But the words were barely intelligible amid the uproar. The earth quivered.
He expected the Rebs to run up their limbers and try to haul off their guns. But they didn’t. As the distance between the cannoneers and their attackers narrowed, the crews went about their work, as if unaware of the danger.
They got off last blasts of canister, the Rebs did. But too late to save them. And what damage Custer glimpsed was blessedly slight.
And the Rebs took off, abandoning their guns to leap on team horses cut free of harness, plunging back into the trees where a charge would slow and promptly lose order.
He had the guns, though. There were exactly six.
Noon
Custer’s riders pursued the Rebs for a dozen miles and more, all the way to Woodstock and beyond the hard-used town. Their route had been scarred with the wreckage of an army, overturned wagons and caissons, lame horses left by their masters, dismounted men with terrified eyes, eager to surrender to the blue swarms covering the countryside or clearing the road ahead in a column of fours, sabers sheathed, so indisputably victorious that the pride-swollen riders rarely felt the need to draw a revolver.
Prisoners wept, cursed, asked for food, and stumbled northward in beggars’ rags. Their wounded waited, disconsolate, by the roadside, objects of pity for the few, of satisfaction for others, but of disinterest to most.
Along the main street of Woodstock, Torbert and Merritt caught up, trailed by their staffs and—it seemed to Custer—ridiculously somber, under the circumstances.
“Why, gentlemen!” he called, doffing his hat. “Where have you been all morning?”
And yes, Merritt took only five guns.
The pursuit faded off. The horses were blown and there hardly seemed to be anything left worth chasing. The haul in booty was simply grand, given the awful poverty of the Johnnies. They’d taken Rosser’s entire wagon train, his ambulances, a load of Enfield rifles still in their crates, a battalion’s worth of caissons, strings of skeletal remounts, and, as Colonel Wells had ridden up in person to inform him, Rosser’s headquarters equipage, complete with the general’s personal effects.
Wouldn’t Tex have a fit, though? He’d have to send him a thank-you note for the gifts. He pictured the color rising in Rosser’s face through choler to blue.
Custer already had decided that the day’s events would be christened “the Woodstock Races,” canceling the embarrassment of the previous year’s “Buckland Races,” a decidedly lesser affair across the Blue Ridge. That time, the Johnnies had printed captured love letters from Libbie in their papers, a despicable act, and Tom Rosser was going to get a taste of it now.
Poor Tex!
Oh, it was all grand, bully, splendid, though! The smell of a hot horse on a cool day, a drink of sweet water, and a proper shit to crown the victory. He wished the band had been able to keep up, but he reckoned he’d worn their lungs out.
Followed by a staff drunk on elation, Custer rode back through the ramshackle town whistling his newly chosen musical signature and enjoying the sullen looks of the Rebel gals who dared to come out on their porches.
A little tornado of red leaves danced around him.
On such days, Custer wished the war could last. Certainly, he wanted to see his darling—needed to see her, to caress her and the rest, to hear her whisper, “Oh, Autie!” in the darkness. But what else would be left when this was over? And, he feared, it would be over soon. He meant to stay in the Army, of course, could imagine no other life, no other calling. But what would it be like when the Army returned to its duties on the Plains, with its dusty, dreary garrisons and uneventful days, the rare, one-sided clashes and plodding chases that ended in frustration more often than not, or, at best, in the capture of a few starved and stinking wretches? The frontier was a place, Custer foresaw, where a man might soon be forgotten by the world.
9:00 p.m.
Sheridan’s headquarters
“All right, Torbert, all right,” Sheridan said, all but laughing with pleasure at the reports of captives and booty, of the vaunted Confederate horsemen scattered with unprecedented ease. “It’s the greatest overthrow of their cavalry in this war, I can hardly believe it myself. Almost pity the hopeless, hapless bastards.” He shook his head. “Early’s finished, this proves it beyond a doubt.”
The officers in the crowded headquarters tent murmured their agreement. More than a few of them wished to get on to a celebratory round or two of whiskey, Sheridan knew. But he wasn’t quite finished.
“Casualties to the Cavalry Corps?” he asked Torbert. “What was the butcher’s bill?”
“Nine killed, forty-eight wounded,” Torbert said. “And some horses, of course.”