Custer at the Alamo Read Free Page A

could live through such a storm. I heard a swishing sound, like the air above my head was being cut with whistling arrows. And then more arrows, hundreds more, raining all around me. Men were screaming. Horses were neighing in their death throes.
    Then, from the dust and confusion, there was a vision . . . no, a premonition. I saw myself standing on a weed-covered hillside surrounded by overwhelming numbers of Sioux and Cheyenne. My revolvers were so hot I could barely hold them, the ammunition nearly gone. Dozens of wounded soldiers lay around me in a circle of dead horses. Tom was yelling at me to get down as I stood near the colorful guidon Elizabeth had sewn for me, the tattered banner hanging limp in the airless heat. I looked back down the bleak treeless ridge, wondering where Benteen was. All I saw was a broken line of fallen soldiers. Why hadn’t Benteen come to our support? Or Reno? Couldn’t they hear the gunfire? The volley fire we’d used as a signal? Suddenly I felt a thud in my chest and fell over backwards, landing on a dead trooper. The shooting slackened off until all that remained was a deathly quiet and the smell of late spring grass.
    The cloud drifted away. I was no longer on the blood-soaked hill. The day was no longer hot. And there were no Indians, only me and my horse. Vic kicked his white hooves and snorted, just as spooked as I was. The harsh wind was cold, damp with winter rain. I buttoned up my buckskin jacket and tucked my red scarf tighter around my neck. The mountains were gone, replaced by a broad, barren prairie.
    Damned if it wasn’t the most bizarre thing. I couldn’t help wondering if I’d been killed, cast into some sort of purgatory for my sins. I’d lived a boastful life filled with a lust for glory, and though I loved my Libbie dearly, I had not been blind to the flirtations of pretty women. But that explanation made no sense. I have never believed in supernatural occurrences.
    I wasn’t dressed for winter. Like most of my officers, I wore a fringed leather jacket and buckskin pants, a blue campaign blouse, and a white wide-brimmed trail hat now stained gray with sweat. Except for my saddlebags, all of my kit was back with the mule train. A freezing blast of wind made me wish I hadn’t cut my hair so short. That is, the hair I had left. My hairline had been receding for several years.
    Wherever I was, it seemed a long way from where I’d started. I was born in New Rumley, Ohio, in 1839, and for awhile, I taught grade school. Maybe I would have stayed a school teacher if not for West Point, but I grew up reading of history’s great heroes and always believed myself cut out for a special destiny. In 1857, a few months before my eighteen birthday, I entered the Academy by appointment of my local congressman, and though I graduated 34th in a class of 34, no one thought me stupid, merely undisciplined. I went straight from graduation to the First Battle of Bull Run, a green second lieutenant with more sass than sense.
    That was fifteen years ago. Fifteen years of Civil War, garrison duty in Texas, suppressing the Ku Klux Klan in Kentucky, and fighting Indians on the plains. I’d spent eleven of those years as a Lt. Colonel with little chance of promotion. I retained the privilege of being called a general, my brevet rank during the war, but everyone knew my army career had reached a dead-end. Even my financial prospects had dimmed with a series of ill-advised investments. Perhaps it’s not always a good thing to outlive one’s moment of glory.
    The cold, scrub-covered prairie rolled gradually toward the southwest. Vic was restless. I took out my pocket watch, the silver Waltham 57 that Libbie’s father had left me. It had stopped, but didn’t appear to be broken. I gave the crystal face a tap and it started ticking again. Had I forgotten to rewind it?
    Vic and I would need water and shelter by nightfall. A light drizzle began. We traveled for more than an hour without hint of