Valley of the Shadow: A Novel (46 page)

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.