How Few Remain (63 page)

By the expression on Pope’s face, the military governor was contemplating the horns of the same dilemma. “Six traitors dead,” he said, walking up to Custer. Apparently choosing to look on the bright side, he added, “God grant the rest learn their lesson.”

“Yes, sir.” Custer looked back toward the gallows. “They died well.” He shrugged to show how little that mattered to him. “Redskins die well, too. In my view, the Mormons are about as fanatical as the Sioux and the Kiowa.”

“And in mine as well.” Pope took off his plumed hat and mopped his forehead with a linen handkerchief. “I took a chance with that rascal Pratt, and I know it. But I reckoned he couldn’t make things much worse, and might make them better. And his fanaticism, I have seen, includes a fanatical truthfulness.”

“It worked out well, sir.” Custer was not about to criticize a superior to his face, especially not after that superior had scored a success. What he said to Libbie come evening was liable to be something else again. He thought of Katie Fitzgerald, of her mouth, of her breasts, of her coppery bush. Ever so slightly, he shook his head. No matter how much of a tigress Katie was between the sheets, he was glad his wife had come to Fort Douglas. He could unburden himself to her as to no one else on earth.

Pope pointed to the limp bodies swaying in the breeze. “We’ll have to cut that carrion down and bury it. I don’t fancy giving the bodies back to the Mormons so they can riot at a funeral where they didn’t at the hanging.”

“That’s—very clever, sir,” Custer said, and meant it. Worrying about the funeral would never have entered his mind. He turned to the eight Gatling-gun crews. “Men, you have helped keep order in Utah Territory. The United States are in your debt.”

“Well said, Colonel,” Pope agreed. “That goes for all of us
here. We have subdued this Territory, and we are reducing it to obedience. And we have done it with a minimum of bloodshed, and with no need to summon excessive forces away from the armies in the field against the Confederate States.”

“I wish I were serving in an army in the field against the Confederate States,” Custer said.

“So do I,” Pope replied. “We also serve here, however. I remind myself of this daily. And, were I facing the Rebels, I should not have had the opportunity, after all these years, to pay Abe Lincoln back at least in part for the bitter lot he imposed upon me and rendered far more bitter by the fact that my sacrifice was made in vain. But I am in some measure avenged for my exile to Minnesota.”

“I wish he’d tried to tread the air with the Mormons here today,” Custer said. “From what I hear, he continues to spread trouble wherever he goes.”

“You know we are also in complete agreement on that score,” Pope said. “But, being soldiers, we can only obey the orders we receive from the duly constituted civil authorities.” He cocked his head to one side. “It
is
a pity, isn’t it?”

“Yes, sir, it is,” Custer said. “I was General McClellan’s man during the War of Secession, and you, of course, were anything but, yet all soldiers who served during that unhappy time cannot possibly have any other view of Honest Abe.” He freighted the title with as much contempt as it would bear.

Pope set a hand on his shoulder. “Since coming to Utah, we have proved to be in harmony on more than that view alone, Colonel. You have carried out my wishes in a fashion with which I can not only find no fault, but which pleases me very highly indeed, and I have so stated in my reports at every opportunity.”

“Thank you, sir!” Custer said joyfully.

When he told Libbie about it at supper that evening, she beamed, too. “That’s splendid news, Autie,” she said. “Of course you deserve it, but a man does not always get what he deserves.” Her lip curled. “As you said, Lincoln is the chiefest example there.”

“Yes.” Custer cut a piece off his beefsteak and tossed it up in the air. Stonewall caught it before it touched the ground, gulped it down, and barked for more. “Later, boy,” his master told him. Custer patted the dog’s head. To his wife, he went on, “I always
marvel at how you manage to move everything we have, beasts and all, without missing a beat.”

“Your duty is to be a soldier, Autie. My duty is to keep an eye on you, and one way or another I do it.” If Libbie’s mouth narrowed a little, if her voice held the slightest edge, Custer, whose gaze was ever most focused on himself, failed to notice.

The cook came out of the kitchen. “Anything else, sir, ma’am?” she asked.

“No, thank you, Esmerelda,” Libbie said before Custer could reply. Esmerelda nodded and withdrew.

In a low voice, Custer said, “She cooks well—no one could deny it—but that is one of the homeliest women I have ever set eyes upon, even in Salt Lake City.”

“Really? I hadn’t noticed,” Libbie said. Custer chuckled at women’s blindness about other women. If Libbie wasn’t quite so blind as he thought she was, he failed to notice that, too, as he’d failed for a good many years.

He was pouring cream into his coffee when a soldier rushed up thumping in booted feet to the door to his quarters and pounded on it, shouting, “Colonel Custer! Colonel Custer! General Pope needs to see you right away, sir!”

Custer pushed back his chair and sprang to his feet. “I wonder what it can be,” he said. Whatever it was, Stonewall wanted to come along and find out, too. “Down, sir. Down!” Custer commanded. The dog stared at him with resentful eyes as he dashed off, as if to say,
Why do you get to have all the fun?

“Hurry, sir!” the orderly said when Custer opened the door.

“Hurry I shall.” To prove it, Custer dashed past the soldier and beat him to Pope’s office by half a dozen strides. He wasn’t quite so young as he had been, but kept himself in top shape. Not breathing hard at all, he saluted and said, “Reporting as ordered, sir.”

Pope held up several telegrams. “Colonel, within the last half hour, I have learned that British forces have invaded Montana Territory.”

“Good God, sir!” As if lightning had struck close by, electricity arced up Custer’s spine.

“I can only presume that their goal is to plunder and ravage the mining regions of that Territory, as the Confederates have done to such unfortunate effect in New Mexico,” Pope said. “Whatever
their purpose, though, we must and shall beat them back, punishing them as they deserve for thus testing our mettle.”

“Yes, sir!” Custer said. “We’ll lick them. We
must
lick them, and so we shall.” And then, hardly daring to hope, he asked, “What can we here in Utah”—by which he meant,
What can I, myself, personally
—”do to lend a hand?”

And Pope replied, “As I told you earlier today, I have spoken highly of you in my reports back to Philadelphia. That praise has apparently borne fruit.” He picked through the sheaf of telegrams for one in particular. “You and the Fifth Cavalry, and, specifically, the eight Gatling guns attached to your regiment are ordered to Great Falls, Montana, there to join in defending our beloved country. And you, Colonel, are ordered to take overall command of that defense, with the brevet rank of brigadier general.” He stood up and shook his hand. “Congratulations, General Custer!”

In a pink-tinged daze, Custer shook the proffered hand. “Thank you very much, sir,” he whispered. He’d dreamt of stars on his shoulder straps since the day he entered West Point. Now, at last, they were his. “I shall save our country, sir,” he declared, while an interior voice added,
In spite of those Gatling guns
.

XIV

Sam Clemens walked into the office of the
San Francisco Morning Call
, hung his straw hat on a branch of the hat tree, and asked, “Well, boys, what’s gone wrong since I went home last night?”

A chorus of voices answered him, so loud and vigorous that he had trouble sorting out one piece of bad news from the next. The British army in Montana Territory was still moving south. British gunboats on the Great Lakes were bombarding U.S. lakeside cities again, with apparent impunity. Louisville remained a bloody stalemate.

“President Blaine didn’t think he had reason enough to give over the war before,” Clemens observed. “Our enemies seem to be giving him reason now, don’t they?”

“And Pocahontas, Arkansas, has fallen back into Rebel hands,” Clay Herndon added.

“Good God!” Sam staggered, as if taking a mortal wound. “That proves the struggle truly hopeless. How, save by the grace of a thick skull, can Blaine keep from yielding to common sense?”

Edgar Leary delivered the topper: “The wires say British ironclads have appeared off Boston and New York, and they’re bombarding the harbors and the towns.”

“Good God,” Clemens said, this time in earnest. “They are taking the switch to us. You’d think that, if we were going to get into a war with the whole world, we might have made some sort of an effort to be ready for it ahead of time. But the Democrats reckoned saying ‘Yes, Massa’ to the Rebs once a day and twice on Sundays would get us by without fighting, so they didn’t fret much about the Army and Navy. And Blaine didn’t fret about ’em, either; he just up and used ’em, ready or not. And now we know which.”

From the back of the office, somebody shouted, “Holy Jesus! Telegraph says the French Navy is shelling Los Angeles harbor.”

“That does it!” Sam cried. “That absolutely does it! The Confederates wrestle us to the ground, England jumps on us as soon as we’re down, and now France bites us in the ankle. Can’t you see her, yapping and panting? Pretty soon, she’ll piss on our leg, you mark my word.”

Off in the distance, thunder rolled.

Clay Herndon frowned. “It was clear when I got here half an hour ago. Don’t usually get thunderstorms this time of year, anyhow. Hell, we don’t usually get any rain at all this time of year.”

“Fastest thunderstorm I ever heard of,” Clemens said. “It was clear when I walked in five minutes ago.”

“Look out the window,” Leary said. “It’s still clear.”

Sam couldn’t see the window. He opened the door. Bright daylight streamed in. Another rumbling roar sounded, though, this one not so far away. “That isn’t thunder!” he exclaimed. “It’s cannon fire.”

“It can’t be,” Clay Herndon said. “It’s not coming from the direction of the forts, and we’d have heard if Colonel Sherman were moving any guns. Most of those big ones don’t move, anyhow.”

“I didn’t say they were our guns, Clay,” Clemens answered quietly. “I think somebody’s navy has just brought the war to San Francisco.”

“That’s cra—” Herndon began. Then he shook his head. It would have been crazy yesterday. It wasn’t crazy today, not with the Royal Navy shelling Boston and New York harbors, not with the French—whose ships, Sam judged, had to be sallying from some port on the west coast of their puppet Mexican empire—bombarding Los Angeles.

And, as if to confirm Clemens’ words, more thunderous reports rolled out of the west. But they were not thunder. A few seconds later came another blast, close enough to rattle the front window of the
Morning Call
offices, through which Edgar Leary was still staring as if expecting rain. A rending crash followed. “That’s a building falling down,” Herndon whispered.

“No.” Clemens shook his head. “That’s a building blowing up.”

Now, at last, from the northwest came the thunderous reports that had grown familiar through the summer: the cannon in San
Francisco’s fortifications opened up, defending the harbor against the foe. “They’ll never make it through the Golden Gate!” Leary exclaimed.

“I wonder if they even care to try.” Sam was thinking out loud, and not liking any of his own thoughts. “By the sound of their guns, they’re standing off the coast—maybe out past the Cliff House—and shooting across the peninsula, either toward the wharves or just toward us. I wonder if they know which themselves, or care.”

A shell landed only a couple of blocks away. The floor jerked under Sam’s feet from the explosion, as if at a small, sharp earthquake. A moment later, he heard the rumble of collapsing masonry. He’d heard that during earthquakes, too, but not during small ones. Blast and rumble were so loud, he marveled at how faint and distant the following screams seemed.

But, where the roar of the cannons had not, those screams reminded him he was a newspaperman. “Jesus Christ, boys!” he burst out. “We’re sitting in the middle of the biggest story that’s happened in this town since 1849. We’re not going to be able to cover it standing around here or hiding under our desks. Leary! Get over to Fort Point. See what the devil the garrison’s doing to drive the enemy away. See if they’re doing anything to drive the enemy away. See if they know who the devil the enemy is. That’d be a good bit of news to put in a story, don’t you think?”