"No, Custer hasn't got all the credit," Welton said. "You've managed to lay your hands on a good-sized chunk yourself. And do you know what, Colonel? I don't think Brigadier General Custer likes that for hell. And do you know what else? I don't give a copper-plated damn what Brigadier General Custer likes or doesn't like." He sipped more whiskey.
"You've known him a long time," Roosevelt said, to which Welton nodded without saying anything. Roosevelt took another drink, too. As if to be fair, he said, "He is a brave man."
"I've seen very few braver," Welton agreed. "But I'll tell you something else, too: I've seen very few who love themselves more, or who work harder to make sure other people love them. There's an old saying that if you don't toot your own horn, nobody will toot it for you. Custer's got himself bigger cheeks than a chipmunk coming out of a corncrib."
Roosevelt would have found that funny had he been sober. Drunk, he laughed till the tears rolled down his own cheeks. "I'll miss you, Colonel, by God I will," he said with the deep sentiment of the whiskey bottle. "They can't hold off much longer on releasing the Unauthorized Regiment from service, and then I go back to being a rancher outside of Helena."
Welton yawned against the hour and the liquor. "Won't be the same, will it, Teddy?" He'd never before called Roosevelt that. "You're not only an old man of twenty-three now, you're a real live hero to boot."
"I'm-I'm-" Roosevelt yawned, too. Suddenly, figuring out what he was seemed like too much trouble. "I'm going to bed, Colonel."
"Good night," Welton said vaguely. By the look of things, he was going to fall asleep where he sat. Roosevelt rose and went outside. It had snowed the day before; the cold slapped Roosevelt in the face, sobering him a little. No snow now-the night was brilliantly clear.
The moon had set a couple of hours before. Jupiter and Saturn shone in the southwest; Mars was brilliant, and red as blood, high in the south.
Slowly, methodically, Roosevelt made his way out to the gate. The camp of the Unauthorized Regiment was only a few yards away. "Here's the old man back," his own sentries called, one to another. He found his tent, wrapped himself in a blanket and a buffalo robe, and either passed out or fell asleep very, very quickly.
Come morning, his head pounded like a locomotive going up a steep grade. The dazzle of sun off snow only made him hurt worse. Every one of his soldiers who spotted him greeted him with "Merry Christmas. Colonel!" — greeted him loudly and piercingly, or so he thought in his fragile state. He had to answer the men, too, which meant he had to listen to his own voice. It sounded as loud and unpleasant as anyone else's.
After a breakfast of coffee, two raw eggs, and half a tumbler of brandy begged from the regimental physician on the grounds that easing a hangover was surely a medicinal use for the stuff, he felt like a human being, although perhaps one whose parts were not perfectly interchangeable. A cigar helped steady him further. He smoked it down to a tiny butt, flipped that into the snow, lighted another, and headed into town.
The saloons were open. As far as he could tell, the saloons in Fort Benton never closed. Somebody was playing a piano, not very well, in the first one past which he walked. Several people were singing. The words had nothing to do with the holiday season. Even so, the saloon boasted a Christmas tree, with candles gaily burning on all the branches and a red glass star at the top. Why the tree didn't catch fire and burn down the saloon and half the town was beyond him, but it didn't.
Two doors down stood another saloon, also tricked out with a Christmas tree full of candles. Inside, people were singing carols in the same loud, drunken tones the folks in the first place had used for their bawdy song. Would God be happy to hear carols sung like that? Roosevelt chewed on the question as he made his way toward church.
Before he got to the white clapboard building, a man came out, spotted him, and extended a forefinger in his direction. "Colonel Roosevelt!" the fellow called. "Merry Christmas! May I speak with you for a moment?"
"And a merry Christmas to you, Zeke," Roosevelt replied. Zeke Preston wasn't the preacher. He was a reporter. Most of the men who had swarmed into Montana Territory to cover the British invasion were gone now. Of the handful still in Fort Benton, Preston was probably the best. Not only that, a lot of papers back in New York State printed what he wrote. Thus Roosevelt knew it behooved him to stay on the reporter's good side. "What can I do for you today?"
Preston came down the steps and kicked his way through the snow. "Can I trouble you with a couple of questions before you go in?" He was a lean man in his thirties who wore a walrus mustache that didn't go with his pale, narrow face; Roosevelt wondered if he was consumptive.
"Go ahead," Roosevelt said. "You've caught me fair and square."
"Good." The reporter reached into an overcoat pocket and drew out a notebook and pencil. "Lucky I don't have a pen," he remarked. "Weather like this, the ink'd freeze solid as Blaine 's head." He waited for Roosevelt 's chuckle, then said, "The more time passes after the battle by the Teton, the more credit General Custer takes for himself. What do you think of that?"
He'd told Colonel Henry Welton exactly what he thought of it. Welton was his friend. He knew reporters well enough to know they had their own axes to grind. "He was the overall commander, Zeke. If we'd lost, who would have ended up with the blame?"
"He says your men fought well-for Volunteers." Sure as hell, Preston was trying to goad him into saying something that would make a lively story.
"It's Christmas. I'm not going to pick a quarrel on Christmas." But Roosevelt couldn't quite leave that one alone. "I will say that the Unauthorized Regiment was the force running Gordon and his men back toward Canada when word of the cease-fire reached us and made us hold in place."
Preston scribbled, coughed, scribbled again. "What's your opinion of Gatling guns, Colonel?"
Roosevelt had been over that one with Henry Welton, too. For the reporter, he put on a toothy grin and answered, "My opinion is that I would much rather be behind them than in front of them. If you ask General Gordon, I expect you will find his opinion the same."
"I've heard some argument about how those guns should have been positioned," Preston remarked after an appreciative chuckle at Roosevelt 's comment. "Where do you stand on that?"
"They did well where they were," Roosevelt said. "I saw no point to moving them from the front line-and they were not moved, if you'll recall. General Custer was persuaded they belonged there."
He waited for Zeke Preston to ask him about that persuading. Maybe, belatedly, Colonel Welton wouldn't be an unsung hero after all. But Preston flipped the notebook shut and stuck it and the pencil back in his pocket. "Thanks very much, Colonel. I won't bother you any more, not today I won't. Merry Christmas to you." Off he went, breath smoking in the chilly air.
Roosevelt sighed and went up into the church. It was Methodist, which would have to do; that faith certainly came closer to his own than the one preached in the two Catholic churches Fort Benton also boasted. When he walked in, the congregation was singing "Away in the Manger," a good deal more tunefully than the same carol would have been managed in the saloon.
He added his own booming baritone to the song. His voice, his uniform, and his upright carriage drew the notice of the folk who crowded the little church, almost all of them in their holiday best. Roosevelt gave notice as well as drawing it; some of the women were worth noticing. A blonde in a deep blue princess dress with a satin jabot and laced, pleated cuffs-it would have been the height of style in New York City five years earlier-caught his eye and held it.