How Few Remain (33 page)

“How big a body of troops?” the sentry asked, unimpressed. “You got five men? Ten? Fifteen, even? Dribs and drabs is what we’re gettin’, and they’re hell to put together.”

Roosevelt’s chest inflated with pride. “My friend,” he boomed, “I have a complete and entire regiment of cavalry, ready for action. Your colonel has only to give us our orders, and we shall ride!”

He had the satisfaction of watching the sentry drop his rifle and catch it before it hit the ground. He had the further satisfaction of watching everyone within earshot—and he hadn’t tried to keep his voice down: far from it—turn and stare at him. Had the sentry had a plug of tobacco rather than a pipe in his mouth, he might have swallowed it. As things were, he needed a couple of tries before he managed to say, “You’re that Roseyfelt fellow down by Helena, fry me for bacon if you ain’t. Heard about you a couple-three days ago, but I didn’t believe a word of it.”

“Believe it,” Roosevelt said proudly. “It’s true.”

The sentry did. “Bert!” he called to a soldier within. “Hey, you, Bert! Come take Mr. Roseyfelt here to the old man’s office. He’s
the one that’s fitted out a cavalry regiment by his lonesome.” Bert exclaimed in astonishment. The sentry now seemed to believe he’d invented Roosevelt, saying, “It’s a fact. You go right on in, Mr. Roseyfelt. I can’t leave my post, but Bert there’ll take care of you.”

“Thank you.” Roosevelt strode into Fort Benton. He wouldn’t have wanted to try bombarding the place; the walls had to be thirty feet thick. Two bastions at diagonal corners further strengthened the fort. All the buildings faced inward, having the outer wall as their back.

Bert led Roosevelt across the parade ground to the regimental commandant’s office. Through the window, Roosevelt saw a man busily wading through paperwork. He understood that more vividly than he would have a few weeks before; regimental command, even of the as yet Unauthorized Regiment, involved more attention to detail and less glory than he would have dreamt.

When Bert announced him, Lieutenant Colonel Welton set down his pen and stared in astonishment.
“You’re
the Roosevelt we heard about?” The officer rose from behind his battererd desk. “Good God, sir, I mean no offense, but I believe my son is older than you are.”

“It’s possible, Lieutenant Colonel,” Roosevelt admitted. Henry Welton was about forty-five—twice his own age, more or less—with red-gold hair going gray and a formidable mustache. His grip as they shook hands was odd; he was missing the last two joints of his right middle finger. Once the polite greetings were out of the way, Roosevelt went on, “No one else down toward Helena was doing the job, sir, so I resolved to undertake it myself.”

“That’s—most commendable, Mr. Roosevelt. A whole regiment? By God, that’s amazing.” Welton still sounded flummoxed. “Please, sir, sit down.” His gray gaze speared Roosevelt as he grew more alert. “I’ll bet you call yourself a colonel, too, don’t you?”

“Well—yes.” Roosevelt was suddenly very glad he’d left the uniform in the wagon. The man with whom he was speaking looked to be a veteran of the War of Secession, and had earned regimental command with years of patient service. Next to that, having the wealth to outfit a unit all at once seemed a tawdry way to gain such a post. Unwontedly humble, Roosevelt went on, “I
would not presume to claim rank superior to yours if and when we are accepted into the service of the United States.”

“Ah, that. Yes.” Welton shook his head. “I never thought I’d have to worry about taking in a whole regiment at a gulp. You’ve had ’em gathered together for a bit now, too, if what I hear is anywhere close to straight. I bet they’re eating you out of house and home.”

“As a matter of fact, they are.” Roosevelt leaned forward in his chair. “That’s not the reason I ask you to accept them, though.” He pointed north, toward Canada. “What lies between this fortress and the Canadian border but miles of empty land? Would you not like to have a regiment of mounted men patrolling that land, guarding against attack from the treacherous British Empire and perhaps taking the war into Canadian soil?”

“If the regiment is worth having, I’d like that very much,” Welton answered. “If they’re a pack of cutthroats, or if they’re fair-weather soldiers who look pretty on parade but won’t fight, I want no part of ’em.” He leaned forward in turn. “What precisely have you got down there by Helena, Mr. Roosevelt?”

For the next hour, the Regular Army officer subjected Roosevelt to a searching interrogation on every aspect of the Unauthorized Regiment, from recruitment to sanitation to discipline to weapons to medicine to tactics. Roosevelt thanked his lucky stars he had done such a careful job of keeping records. Without them, he would never have been able to respond to the barrage of questions.

“Why Winchesters?” Henry Welton snapped at one point.

“Two reasons,” Roosevelt answered. “One, I could gain uniformity of weapons for my men with them but not with Springfields, which are far less common among the volunteers. And two, mounted men being widely spaced in combat, rapidity of fire struck me as a vitally important consideration.”

He waited to see how Welton would respond to that. The officer’s next question was about something else altogether, which, Roosevelt hoped, meant the reply had satisfied him.

At last, the commander of the Seventh Infantry set both hands down flat on the desk. After staring down at them for a few seconds, he said, “Well, Mr. Roosevelt, I had trouble believing it when I heard about it, and I had a damn sight lot more trouble believing it when I saw you’re still wet behind the ears. But, unless you’ve got P.T. Barnum for your adjutant, I’d say you’ve
done a hell of a job—a
hell
of a job, sir. I saw damn few volunteer regiments twenty years ago that could hold a candle to yours. And you’re telling me you had no soldierly experience before you decided to organize this regiment?”

“That’s right,” Roosevelt said. “I’ve always strongly believed, though, that a man can do whatever he sets his mind to do.”

“I already told you once, I wouldn’t have believed it,” Welton said. “Where did you learn what you need to know about being a colonel?”

“From books—where else? I am a quick study.”

“Quick study be damned.” Henry Welton gave Roosevelt a very odd look. “Do you have any notion how rare it is for any man, let alone a pup like you, to read something and then up and do it, just like that?” He held up the hand with the mutilated finger. “Never mind. You don’t need to answer that. You’ve answered enough of my questions. Bring your regiment—the Unauthorized Regiment”—amusement glinted in his eyes—”up here, and I’ll swear ’em in. If they’re half as good as they sound, Colonel Roosevelt, Uncle Sam’s getting himself a bargain.”

“Yes, sir!” Theodore Roosevelt sprang to his feet and saluted as crisply as he knew how. As soon as he did it, he realized he shouldn’t have, not while he was wearing civilian clothes. He felt ready to burst with pride when the Regular Army officer returned the salute: even if it wasn’t proper, Welton accepted it in the spirit with which it was offered. Roosevelt hardly remembered the polite words they exchanged in parting. He was amazed the soles of his boots kicked up dust as he left Fort Benton: he thought he was walking on air.

No one had absquatulated with the wagon while he was in the fort talking with Lieutenant Colonel Welton. He didn’t see Philander Snow’s body stretched out on the planks of the sidewalk, either bloodied or just stupefied from too much whiskey downed too fast. It was, in fact, in his judgment, as near a perfect day as the Lord had ever created.

A woman in a basque so tight-fitting it might have been painted on her torso and a cotton skirt thin almost to translucence came strolling up the street twirling a parasol for dramatic effect. She paused in front of Roosevelt. “Stranger in town,” she remarked, and set the hand that wasn’t holding the parasol on her hip. “Lonely, stranger?”

He studied the soiled dove. She had to be ten years older than
he was, maybe fifteen. The curls under her battered bonnet surely got their color from a henna bottle. Despite inviting words, her face was cold and hard as the snow-covered granite of the Rockies. Roosevelt had broken an understanding of sorts with Alice Lee when he came out West, and was far from immune to animal urges. He sometimes slaked them down in Helena, but tried to pick friendlier partners than this walking cashbox who smelled of sweat and cheap scent.

Besides, the exultation filling him now was in its way nearly as satisfying as a thrashing tussle between the sheets. As politely as he could, he shook his head. “Maybe another time.”

“Tightwad,” the harlot sneered, and strutted off.

Roosevelt almost called after her to let her know a new cavalry regiment was coming to town. That would put fresh fire under her business. But no; Philander Snow deserved to know first. Roosevelt strolled through the swinging doors of the saloon. There sat Phil, still upright but showing a list. “We’re Authorized!” Roosevelt shouted in a great voice.

“Hot damn!” Snow said when the news penetrated, which took a bit.

“Drinks are on me!” Roosevelt said. Such open-handed generosity had won him friends in Helena, and it did the same in Fort Benton.
Good
, he thought.
I’ll be coming back here soon
.

    Colonel Alfred von Schlieffen had hoped that, by traveling to Jeffersonville, Indiana, to observe the U.S. attack on Louisville, he would escape the ghastly summer weather of Washington and Philadelphia. In that hope, he rapidly discovered, he was doomed to disappointment. Along the eastern seaboard, the Atlantic exerted at least some small moderating effect on the climate.

Deep in the interior of the continent, as Schlieffen was now, nothing exerted any moderating effect whatever. The air simply hung and clung, so hot and moist and still that pushing through it required a distinct physical effort. His uniform stuck greasily to his body, as if someone had taken a bucketful of water from the Ohio and splashed it over him. Almost every house in Jeffersonville, even the poorest shanty, had a porch draped with mosquito netting or metal-mesh screen on which people slept in summer to escape the furnacelike heat inside the buildings. Even the porches, though, offered but small relief.

All the Americans insisted the climate in the Confederate
States was even hotter and muggier. Schlieffen wondered if they were pulling his leg, as their slang expression put it. This side of the Amazon or equatorial Africa, a worse climate seemed unimaginable.

Under canvas in among General Willcox’s headquarters staff (not that, to his mind, it was a proper staff for a general: the men around Willcox were more messengers than the specialists and experts who could have offered him advice worth having), Schlieffen was as comfortable as he could be. He also found himself happy, which puzzled him till, with characteristic thoroughness, he dug out the reason. The last time he’d been under canvas, during the Franco-Prussian War, had been the most active, most useful stretch in his entire career, the time when he’d felt most alive. He could hardly hope to equal that feeling now, but the back of his mind had recalled it before his intellect could.

Accompanied sometimes by Captain Richardson (who, like General Rosecrans’ adjutant, had a smattering of German he wanted to improve), sometimes by another of General Willcox’s staff officers, Schlieffen explored the dispositions of the building U.S. army. “You have indeed assembled a formidable force,” he said to Richardson as they headed back toward headquarters from another tour. “I would not have thought it possible, not when a large part of your numbers is made up—are made up?— of volunteers.”

“Is made up.” Richardson helped his English as he helped the American’s German.
“Danke schön, Herr Oberst.”
He fell back into his own language: “We fought the War of Secession the same way.”

“Yes.” Schlieffen let it go at that. The results of the war did not seem to him to recommend the method, but his guide would have found such a comment in poor taste.

Nevertheless, the U.S. achievement here was not to be despised. Kurd von Schlözer was right: Americans had a gift for improvisation. He did not think Germany could have come so far so fast from nearly a standing start (whether the USA should have begun from nearly a standing start was a different question). Fifty thousand men, more or less, had been gathered in and around Jeffersonville and the towns nearby, with the supplies they needed and with a truly impressive concentration of artillery.

“How is the health of the men?” Schlieffen asked. The hellish
climate hereabouts only added to the problems involved in keeping large armies from dissolving due to disease before they could fight.

“Ganz gut.”
Richardson waggled a hand back and forth to echo that. “About what you’d expect. We’ve had some typhoid. No cholera, thank God, or we’d be in trouble. And a lot of the volunteers are country boys. They won’t have had measles when they were little, not living out on farms in the middle of nowhere. You come down with measles when you’re a man grown, you’re liable to die of ’em. Same goes for smallpox, only more so.”

“Yes,” Schlieffen said, this time without any intention of evading the issue. The German Army faced similar problems. He wondered whether relatively more German or American soldiers had been vaccinated against smallpox. Then he wondered if anyone knew, or could know. So many things he might have liked to learn were things about which no one else bothered to worry.

“One thing,” Oliver Richardson said: “I know the Rebs won’t be in any better shape than we are.”

Schlieffen nodded. That was, from everything he’d been able to gather, a truth of wider application than Richardson suspected or would have cared to admit. The two American nations, rival sections even before the Confederacy broke away from the United States, thought of themselves as opposites in every way, as enemies and rivals were wont to do. They might indeed have been head and tail, but they were head and tail of the same coin.

“Oh, Christ,” Captain Richardson muttered under his breath. “Here comes that damn nigger again.”

The Negro walking toward them was an impressive man, tall and well made, with sternly handsome features accentuated by his graying, nearly white beard and head of hair. His eyes glittered with intelligence; he dressed like a gentleman. Schlieffen had thought
nigger
a term of disapproval, but perhaps his mediocre English had let him down. “This is Mr. Douglass, yes?” he asked, and Richardson nodded. “You will please introduce me to him?”