Then, while others studied Custer, Benteen’s gaze was drawn to brother Tom.
Benteen figured no others would read that hollow despair round his blue eyes. If he knew any man as well as he knew Custer, Fred Benteen thought he understood Tom Custer.
Yet only Tom would truly understand that ever since the Washita, Autie had grown increasingly afraid. Not of death. Never that. No man could ever seriously entertain the idea of George Armstrong Custer wetting his pants over the thought of death.
No, instead it seemed Custer was afraid of risking his last great victory earned along the Washita in Indian Territory eight long winters behind them. Only Tom realized that his brother now stood the chance of winning for himself a seat among Washington’s powerful—and this close to the precipice, Custer might also stand to suffer a complete defeat of all his hopes and dreams.
Yes. Benteen understood it now, watching the way Tom gazed at his older brother. Tom looks at him like Peter himself looked at Christ. The young one knows how crucial it is for big brother to have everything successful and glorious. From here on out there can be no taint of defeat or withdrawal for the Seventh. Custer will be satisfied with nothing short of victory. This close to the edge of greatness, a man often teeters when looking back to see just how far he’s come in so short a time.
“I want it understood,” Custer continued, “that I’ll allow no grumbling in the slightest and shall demand exact compliance with orders from every officer. Not only my orders, but every officer’s as well.”
The general wiped his empty palm over his bristling mustache, watching his men with intensity. “It has come to my attention recently that some of my actions have been criticized to Department HQ by a few of you officers.”
Here he goes, Benteen thought, fidgeting.
“Criticism going right to Terry’s office. Now, I’ll always take recommendation from even a junior-grade second lieutenant in my command, but I want that recommendation to come to me in the proper manner.”
Bending to rip open the flap of his canvas haversack, Custer yanked forth a smudged, field-weary copy of Army Regulations from which he read the pertinent section regarding the offense in criticism of actions of commanding officers.
“I put you each on notice.” He ground his words out as he slammed the book shut. “Should there be a repeat of this offense among any one of you in the future, I shall take the necessary steps to punish the guilty party.”
To Benteen, Custer’s challenge polluted the air like the acrid stench of burnt gunpowder as the general let his words sink all the way to the core of every man. Benteen couldn’t llet it pass. Although he had never been one to provoke Custer needlessly, neither was he a bootlicker who would let this challenge pass.
“General.” Benteen took a step forward. “If I may be so bold. Appears you’re lashing the shoulders of all—just to get at some. Now, as your entire officer corps is present, wouldn’t it do to specify the officers whom you accuse?”
Benteen knew well enough the answer to his own query. He stood toe to toe with Custer, as the same man who years ago mocked the general in his scandalous letter exposing Custer’s questionable actions immediately after the Battle of Washita when Major Joel Elliott and his men were abandoned to their fates and the butchery of the Kiowas.
“Captain—” Custer glared at the bulky Missourian with flinty eyes, though the salutation came out barely whispered above the hush. “I want my words to be a steel bit—and that bit shoved in the mouth that should wear it.”
Benteen ground a boot-heel into the soft grass. “Then, General, would you be kind enough to tell me—before my fellow officers—if I’m the one who’s been grumbling and complaining to HQ about you?”
“Captain, I’ll not be catechized by you, or any man on regulations, nor the management of my own command. However, for your information—here before these fine men—I will state that none of my remarks were directed toward you. I know of no grumbling on this or on any other campaign, by you.”
A sad smile graced Custer’s sunburned face as his sapphire eyes took on a distant glow. “I know I can rely on each and every one of you from here on out. I always have. Whether you knew it or not. I’ve relied on my officer corps like they were my own family. Sure, there’ll be bickering in a family—just like the Custer household back in Monroe. Right, Tom?”
“Sure, Autie.” Tom never took his eyes from Benteen.
“We are family, gentlemen. We will support each other in what the future brings. We’re horse soldiers, after all.”
A man didn’t have to be standing right beside Custer to hear sentiment catch in his throat as the general rasped out the name of his beloved regiment: “We’re the Seventh. We’ll succeed only by hanging together, above dissension … or we’ll die alone in miserable solitude because we failed each other.”
With those last words Custer flung the limb aside and brought his right hand up, saluting his subordinates in a rare gesture of fellowship. Nervously, as they glanced furtively at one another, one by one the men of this command brought their right arms up to answer the sudden, unexpected salute from their general. It was an odd, uncanny feeling that shot like a thunderbolt through that assembly on the banks of the Rosebud at twilight.
Never before had Custer saluted them first.
He brought his arm down snappily, forcing a grin to crease his sunburned face. “That will be all, gentlemen. We march at five.”
CHAPTER 9
THE officers shuffled off downstream, back to their companies and bedrolls.
Uneasy, Lieutenant Edward S. Godfrey wasn’t really sure he had caught all of it right, as he was rather deaf in one ear, but he nonetheless sensed an unexplained anxiousness in his pit when he strolled away from Custer’s bivouac at that moment. He stopped and turned to glance one last time at the general he had served since the Seventh Cavalry’s earliest days at Fort Hays in Kansas Territory.
In Godfrey’s way of thinking, Custer had for the first time shown a genuine reliance on his officers. And with this unexplained openness, Godfrey was more than certain there was something inextricably not Custer at all. Even something more profound than the mere tone of his voice, which, while normally brusque and somewhat curt, was on this occasion conciliatory and subdued.
Almost like an appeal for help, Godfrey considered. As close as he can come to making an appeal for help … as if something’s eating away at him.
Finding his unshakable commander shaken in this way touched Godfrey clear down to his roots.
Lieutenant George Wallace, the regimental recorder but four years out of West Point himself, strolled along with Godfrey and Lieutenant Donald McIntosh in silence until they reached their bivouac. Lavender light was only then sliding headlong from the western sky. Off in the east a sliver of moon was rising when Wallace tore his eyes from the horizon and studied his two companions.
“Godfrey, McIntosh,” he whispered, snagging their attention. “I believe General Custer is going to be killed.”
Godfrey’s eyes flicked to McIntosh apprehensively, finding him every bit as stunned as he. Then Godfrey found his voice. “Why?”
He was a veteran of the Seventh, after all. He ought to know everything about his commander. He had ridden with Custer at the Washita, down through the Yellowstone campaign and the Black Hills expedition. No, Godfrey himself didn’t like the nervous wings rumbling round inside him at this moment.