How Few Remain (45 page)

Colonel George Custer rode back toward Salt Lake City in high good humor. He had not succeeded in running the elusive John Taylor to earth, but he was bringing back to U.S. justice George Q. Cannon, another eminent leader of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Cannon, his hands manacled and his feet tied together under his horse, glumly rode along behind Custer and his brother.

In splendid spirits himself, Custer said to Tom, “Did you hear about the Mormon bishop who passed away leaving behind nine widows?”

“Why, no, Autie, I can’t say as I did,” Tom Custer answered. “Why don’t you tell me about the poor fellow?” By his expression, he suspected a joke of lurking in there somewhere. Since he couldn’t see where, he willingly played straight man.

“It was very sad,” Custer said with a sigh. “As the preacher put it by the graveside, ‘In the midst of wives we are in death.’ “

Both Custer brothers laughed. So did the other soldiers in earshot. Tom Custer looked over his shoulder at their prisoner and asked, “How many wives are you in the midst of, Cannon?”

“One,” the Mormon answered tightly. He was a round-faced little man, his hair cut close to his head, cheeks and upper lip clean-shaven, with a short, curly tangle of graying beard under his chin.

“Why lie?” Custer said with something approaching real curiosity. “We know better. You must know we know better.”

“First, I am not lying.” Cannon had a precise, fussy way of speaking, more like a lawyer than a revolutionary. “Second, and now speaking purely in a hypothetical sense, if the penalty for polygamy be harsher than the penalty for perjury, would it not profit one in such a predicament to lie?”

“It might, if those were the only charges you were up against,” Custer answered. “Next to treason, though, they’re both small potatoes.”

“I am not a traitor,” George Cannon said, as he’d been saying since Custer’s troopers caught him in a hayloft near Farmington. “I want nothing more for my people than the rights guaranteed them under the Constitution of the United States.”

“Life, liberty, and the pursuit of wives?” Custer suggested, which drew another guffaw from his brother and made the captured Mormon fugitive set his jaw and say no more.

John Pope had established his headquarters at Fort Douglas, north and east of the center of Salt Lake City. The fort sat on a bench of land higher than the town. From it, the artillery Pope had brought with him—and the guns that had come in since government forces reoccupied Utah Territory—could direct a devastating fire on any insurrection that broke out.

Custer rode into the fort like a conquering hero. “Another Mormon villain captured!” he cried in a great voice. The soldiers manning the gates and up on the stockade raised a cheer. Custer took off his hat and waved it about. That drew another cheer.

Hearing the commotion, Brigadier General John Pope came out of his office to see what was going on. “Ah, Colonel Custer!” he said, and then looked past Custer to the prisoner. “So this is the famous George Cannon of whom you telegraphed me, is it? He doesn’t look so much like a wild-eyed fanatic as some of the ones we snared before.”

“No, sir,” Custer agreed: close enough for his superiors to hear him, he made a point of agreeing with them. “But without their coldhearted, coolheaded comrades egging them on, the wild-eyed fanatics could not do so much damage.”

“That, as we have seen here, is nothing less than the truth,” Pope said heavily. “Well done, Colonel. Get him down from his high horse”—the military governor laughed at his own wit, and so, of course, did Custer—”and take him to the stockade. In due course, we shall try him, and, in due course, I have no doubt we shall hang him by the neck until he is dead.”

Politely, Cannon said, “I presume you shall be the judge at these proceedings? Good to know you come into them unbiased.”

“You Mormons have corrupted courts in Utah Territory too long,” Pope replied. “You shall not have the opportunity to do so any more.”

Dismounting, Custer walked over to George Cannon’s horse and cut the ropes that bound his feet. He helped the manacled prisoner get down from the animal, then started to lead him to the row of cells that had been intended for drunk soldiers who got into brawls but now held as many Mormon leaders as the U.S. Army had been able to track down.

After a couple of steps across the parade ground, Custer stopped dead. Since he had his arm hooked to Cannon’s, the Mormon bigwig perforce stopped, too. Custer, for the moment, entirely forgot the prisoner he’d been so proud of capturing. Pointing across the grounds, he growled, “What in blazes is
he
doing here?”

John Pope’s gaze swung toward the tall figure walking along at a loose-jointed amble. In something approaching a purr, the military governor answered, “Honest Abe? He’s under arrest for consorting with John Taylor, and for refusing to tell us the miserable rebel’s whereabouts.”

“Is that a fact, sir?” Custer’s eyes glowed. “Can you hang him, too? Heaven knows he’s deserved it, these past twenty years. If it hadn’t been for him, we wouldn’t have had to fight the War of Secession—and, if it hadn’t been for him, I think we should have won it.” By putting it that way, he managed to blame Lincoln for his treatment of both McClellan and Pope.

“I am forbidden to hang him,” Pope said unhappily. “I am even forbidden formally to keep him under lock and key, though President Blaine in his generosity does permit me to retain him in custody here at the fort.” He muttered something into his beard. Aloud, he added, “Blaine is a Republican, too.”

“Republicans,” Custer made the word a venomous oath. “They get us into wars, and then they fight them every wrong way they can find. If half—if a quarter—of what the wires are saying about the fighting in Louisville is true—” He kicked up a small cloud of dust, then rubbed his boot clean on the back of his other trouser leg.

“Orlando Willcox always was better at praying than he was at fighting,” Pope said. “That impressed the redskins when he was out here in the West. He’s not fighting the redskins any more. He’s fighting Stonewall Jackson.”

“We both know about that,” Custer said with a grimace. He abruptly seemed to remember he still had hold of George Q.
Cannon. “Come along, you.” He jerked the Mormon prisoner forward.

Once he had raced through the formalities of turning Cannon over to the warder, he hurried out to the parade ground once more. He needed only a moment to spot Lincoln, who was strolling along with as little apparent concern as if in a hotel garden. Custer trotted over to him. “How dare you?” he demanded.

Lincoln looked down at him: a long way down because, even though beginning to be shrunken by age, the former president was still the taller of them by half a foot or more. “How dare I what?” he asked now, his voice mild. “Take a walk here? I didn’t know it was private property, and I’m not stepping on the grass to any great degree.”

The parade ground being bare dirt, there was no grass on which to step. Custer scowled at Lincoln, who bore the glower with the air of a man who had borne a lot of glowers. “How dare you treat with the Mormons without leave?” he snapped.

“I hoped I might persuade Mr. Taylor to yield in such a way as to make this occupation do as little damage to the Constitution as possible,” Lincoln answered. “In this, I fear, I was unsuccessful, Mormons possessing the same aversion to having their necks stretched as any other segment of the populace.”

“Force is the only lesson the Mormons understand,” Custer said.

“He who sows the wind will one day reap the whirlwind,” Lincoln returned. “The store of hatred the U.S. Army builds for itself will come back to haunt it.”

“As the Confederate States ought now to be reaping the whirlwind whose wind you sowed,” Custer said. That got through to Lincoln; Custer smiled to watch him grimace. He went on, “How dare you presume to hide from us John Taylor’s whereabouts?”

To his surprise, Lincoln laughed at that. “My dear Colonel, do you mean to tell me you believe Taylor will still be where he was?”

Custer felt foolish. He covered that with bluster. “No, of course not. Had you come to the U.S. military authorities directly you returned from this illicit meeting, we might have been able to capture the traitor, as he would have had only a short head start on our men.”

“There you may possibly be correct, Colonel Custer,” Lincoln answered. “But, in his seeking to use me as an intermediary, I judged—and judge still—that Mr. Taylor in effect made me his
client, and I would be violating my responsibility to him in revealing where we met.”

“If you are going to hide behind every jot and tittle of the law to save a criminal and a traitor from his just deserts, then in my view you deserve to go up on the gallows with him when we do seize him,” Custer said. “I have no patience with legalistic folderol and humbug.”

“If we do not live by law, what shall we live by?” Lincoln asked.

“When the law fails us, as it has plainly done in Utah Territory, shall we live by it no matter how dear that may cost us?” Custer returned.

Lincoln sighed. “There, Colonel, you pose a serious question, whether that be your intention or not. Much of the history of the law in the United States—and, indeed, in the world, or what I know of it—springs from the dialectical struggle between your observation and mine.”

“The what kind of struggle?” Custer asked.

“Never mind,” Lincoln said. “I would not expect you to be a student of either Hegel or Marx. Their works have come late to this side of the Atlantic, and are not yet appreciated as they should be.”

Custer had not heard of either of them. That made him feel smugly superior, not ignorant. “We’ve got no need for a pack of damned foreign liars. We’ve got enough homegrown liars, seems to me.” He glared fiercely up at the former president. “And if you didn’t have a president of your own miserable party to protect you from the consequences of your treason, we would see if we could build a gallows tall enough to stretch you on it.”

“My legs have always been long enough to reach the ground,” Lincoln said. “I should prefer that they continue to do so.”

“I shouldn’t,” Custer said, and turned his back on the man he blamed for so many of the country’s misfortunes of the previous generation. He strode off. Although he thought he heard Lincoln sigh again behind him, he didn’t turn around to make certain.

Instead, he sought out General Pope, who was glad enough to see him after his capture of George Cannon. “One by one, Colonel, they fall into our hands,” Pope said, “and one by one we shall dispose of them.”

“Yes, sir,” Custer replied. “It is truly a pity we can’t dispose of
Lincoln in the same way, or perhaps have him meet with an accident while attempting escape.”

“I have been specifically cautioned against letting any such accident befall him, though he does not know that,” Pope said. “It
is
too bad, isn’t it?”

“Hiding behind the law to break the law,” Custer muttered. Lincoln could put whatever fancy name on it he wanted. In Custer’s eyes, that was what it was.

“Just so. Well, we’ve both known lo these many years the man is a scoundrel, so why should one more proof of it surprise us?” Pope started to say something else then caught himself. “I remember what I wanted to tell you, Colonel. The War Department is letting us have another half-dozen Gatling guns. As you’ve had experience with the weapons, I’m assigning them to your regiment.”

“Yes, sir,” Custer said. “Lord only knows what I’ll do with eight of the contraptions, but I will say I can’t think of anything handier than one of them for making a pack of rioters wish they’d never been born.”

“Just so,” Pope repeated. “Once we start hanging Mormon big shots, we may have those rioters. I hope not. If we should, however, I’ll expect you and these fancy coffee mills to play a major part in putting them down.”

“Sir, it will be a pleasure,” Custer said.

    Chappo came up to General Stuart. Geronimo’s young son politely waited to be noticed, then said, “Our first men come in. The bluecoats are not far behind them. They push hard; they think they have only us to fight. In another hour, maybe two, you will show them they are wrong.”

“Yes.” Stuart rubbed his hands together. He waited for the action to begin as eagerly as a bridegroom for the night of his wedding day. “You’re sure about the time?”

“How can a man be sure?” Chappo asked reasonably. “If the bluecoats do not scent a trap, though, that is when they will be here.”

“Good enough.” Stuart turned to his trumpeter. “Blow Prepare for Battle.”

As the martial notes rang out, Chappo said, “For white men, you hide yourselves well. You should fool other white men.”
With the precision of youth, he revised that: “You should fool them long enough.”

Jeb Stuart reminded himself the redskin meant it as praise, not as a slight. This desert was the Apaches’ country, not his own. He and his men would never know it as they did. That was why they made such useful allies against the damnyankees.

That was also why, while he wouldn’t turn on them himself as Major Sellers kept urging, he wouldn’t mind seeing a good many Apaches killed and wounded in the fight that lay ahead. They wouldn’t be able to blame that on him if it happened. They’d been as ready for this fight with the U.S. soldiers as he was: more ready, since the fight had been their idea. He’d sound as sympathetic as an old mammy when they counted up their losses.

Meanwhile, he sent messengers to the men who’d been sweating in the hot, hot sun the past few days. All the runners bore the same order: “Don’t open fire too soon,” Stuart instructed them. “Wait for the signal. Wait till the Yankees are well into the canyon. We don’t want to just frighten them. We want to ruin them.”

Chappo listened to that with approval. “The only reason to fight is to win,” he said. “You see this clear.”

“You bet I do,” Stuart answered. Even with a general’s wreathed stars on his collar, he carried a Tredegar carbine like any other cavalryman. Some officers felt their duty in battle was to lead and inspire the enlisted men, without actually doing any fighting past self-defense. Stuart had never seen the sense in that. He wanted to hurt the enemy any which way he could.