1882: Custer in Chains

Chapter 10

“Well,” said Lang, “what do you think?”

Ryder looked at the way the barbed wire encircled much of the defensive perimeter on the top of the hill. There wasn’t enough to totally go around the hill’s defenses without making it a fairly useless single strand fence, but what Lang had done with what little he had was impressive.

“I can’t believe the army wasn’t interested. After all, similar defenses like chevaux de frise or abattis have been around for centuries,” Ryder said, referring to many styles of obstacles that had been developed over time. “This is so much quicker to install and possibly more difficult to remove.”

“Not only that,” Lang added, “you can shoot through the stuff if it isn’t too thickly stranded. I’m not trying to butter you up, but your idea of using the wire to steer any attackers towards your Gatling guns is brilliant. It’s just human nature to not want to be impaled on something sharp, so, like the way water flows, the Spaniards should go to where they think there is no wire.”

Ryder thought of piles of bodies stacking up in front of his guns. It was unsettling, but what was the alternative? “We need more wire, lots and lots of wire.”

“It’s coming, but just when I don’t know.”

“And you’re paying for it?”

“Consider it my little contribution to the war, along with my troop of cavalry who are entirely useless on this hill.”

Lang’s sixty troopers had been a welcome addition to Ryder’s forces. “Your horses might not have a role to play right now, but you say that your men are all excellent shots and they sure look mean as hell.”

Lang agreed. “Some of the older boys fought for the Confederacy, but the younger ones just wanted to get the hell out of Texas and see at least some of the world and a part of it that is green instead of a desert, and where there’s an ocean. I’ve got ten thousand acres of shit land that is flat and burned dry most of the time, which, I suppose, is better than having only one thousand acres of shit land. Then I’d really be poor and I’m not. You know, sometimes I wonder just why we wanted to take Texas from the Mexicans in the first place. As to my boys, they see this as maybe a once in a lifetime chance to do something exciting. That and they didn’t think it would hurt none to take a few shots at Spaniards. There’s no love lost between Texans and Mexicans and most of the boys don’t see much difference between a Mexican and a Spaniard.”

They walked the perimeter of the trenches, always keeping their heads down. The Spanish had snipers and some of them were pretty good. To prove the point, there was the snap of a gunshot and the sound of swearing a few yards away. The sniper had missed, but the shot had come close and they weren’t always that lucky. Two of his men had been wounded before everyone got the message that some Spaniards actually could shoot straight. Barnes had recalled seeing a contraption consisting of a couple of mirrors and a box that enabled spectators to see over crowds at big events. He also recalled that the navy had some and that they were called prisms or periscopes. He had a couple constructed and they helped out a lot. The men were protected and they could still see the enemy if they started to approach.

The snipers had made it necessary to install the wire at night, when the soldiers were hidden by darkness. Ryder had his own sharpshooters and there was continuous skirmishing between the two forces.

Ryder yawned. He was exhausted. He missed Sarah. It annoyed him that his stocky gremlin of a sergeant, Haney, was finding many excuses for going into town to see his own lover. He would have to make up his own excuse. Perhaps he would raise an issue about sanitation problems and ask her for assistance resolving them. A lot of his men had come down with diarrhea recently. That, he smiled and thought, would not be a very romantic excuse. He wondered if Sarah would mind making love on a pile of tenting like Haney and Ruth did. She’d probably turn him down flat, he sighed, and she’d be right. Sarah was worthy of far better things.

“Anybody watching the weather?” asked Barnes. “We might want to take a look to the west.”

The trees on the hill had obscured their view and, besides, they’d been concentrating on the barbed wire and the Spanish. A wall of dark clouds was approaching. As they watched, the wind began to pick up and heavy raindrops commenced to fall. They’d all been told that it was a couple of months before hurricane season, but that did not mean that Cuba was exempt from enormous thunderstorms.

Ryder was annoyed. “Barnes, are you telling me that nobody on the towers saw this coming?” Barnes said he’d check it out later. The lookout towers had been built on the hill to extend their view of the bay and the enemy. It was likely that the men fifty additional feet in the air didn’t think a few dark clouds were very important. It was something else that would have to be corrected.

“I think it’s time to batten down the hatches,” Ryder said and the others began to scurry to cover. He thought about sending a warning to the army down below but realized that he had no real way of doing it. He could ring alarm bells but they were supposed to be used in the event of a Spanish attack. Ring them and the American army would run to their positions, which might not be the best idea. He decided to send a telegram from the hill to headquarters on their recently installed line and hope somebody did something about getting the men undercover. And, of course, there was always the heliograph. Maybe Kendrick would write an article about soldiers and tropical storms. The reporter had been hiding with Ryder’s men on the hill.

There was a rumor that Custer, now ensconced in St. Augustine, was mad as hell and wanted Kendrick arrested. That was not going to happen. Ryder had quickly decided that he owed the man too much. Custer could find Kendrick all by himself if he wanted him that badly. Thus, Kendrick had been doing a good job of keeping himself out of sight on the hill with Ryder.

Then Ryder had another thought. When was the last time he’d seen Kendrick? He looked around, “Just where the hell is Kendrick?”

* * *

Sarah and the other nurses took shelter from the violent storm in the magnificent and elegant seventeenth century church of San Charles de Borromeo that was now being used as their hospital. The thought of going through the downpour to their rooms was put on hold. The rain couldn’t last forever, could it? No more than forty days and nights, they’d laughed. Ruth brought up the thought of thousands of American soldiers stripping off their uniforms to shower in the rain and be clean for the first time in weeks. It reminded them of the sight of soldiers bathing in the gentle surf as they landed at Matanzas.

“I hope they have enough sense to dry off when they’re done. I’d hate to have them all hear dying of pneumonia,” Sarah said.

“Be honest,” said Ruth, “you’d very much like to see Martin Ryder frolicking naked in the rain and I’ll bet you’d like to be with him.”

Sarah agreed that she’d like to be rained upon and genuinely clean, although jumping around in a rain puddle did not seem like something they were quite ready for. She wondered if they could rig something on the flat roof of the house where they lived that they could use for real cleansing during a rainstorm instead of using water in a metal tub that came from some filthy stream. Water for drinking they boiled, but not the water for bathing.

At first she’d thought it mildly sacrilegious that the church would be used to house the wounded but quickly changed her mind. What could be better than a church to help heal men’s bodies as well as their souls? Statues of the Virgin Mary and other saints gazed benignly down on the men.

A couple of the non-Catholic chaplains and some of the officers had complained about the overwhelmingly Catholic nature of the building and urged that the statues and other symbols be removed or at least covered. General Miles had sternly confronted them and told them that what they wished was impossible without gutting the building and offending the local population even though those people had largely fled. He added that when they left Matanzas the U.S. Army would not leave a desecrated church in its wake. The protestors had reluctantly accepted that reasoning and the comforting thought that they wouldn’t be in Matanzas forever.

At this time, there were very few wounded being treated. Most of the serious casualties from earlier fighting had been patched up and then sent by ship to St. Augustine where there were better facilities. The hospital ships were clearly marked with very large Red Crosses and the Spanish government in both Havana and Madrid had agreed to honor their safe passage as long as no military supplies were transported. In the event that a Spanish warship hadn’t gotten the message, ships’ captains traveled with passes signed by the Spaniards. It was an oasis of decency in an increasingly ugly war.

At least they were dry in the church, Sarah thought. Most of the permanent buildings in and around Matanzas had been built of some concrete like substance the locals called adobe. Fascinating stuff, it held in the heat at night and kept buildings cooler during the day. Right now she was thankful that it kept them dry. Other than a couple of leaks in the roof, the men in their beds were comfortable and dry.

A couple of the windows had been broken during the invasion, but they’d been covered with wood planking that now served to keep out the thunderous rain. “Once again, we must contemplate building an ark,” said Ruth.

“So much for a tropical paradise,” added Sarah. “If this is a normal rainstorm, I wouldn’t want to be here during the hurricane season. I understand the winds can blow the trees right out of the ground, just like a tornado, only cutting a much broader swath. I guess there’s a lot to be said for living inland.”

“Good morning, ladies,” said a smiling naval lieutenant Prentice. He’d just ducked into the hospital and was soaking wet. “Once again we meet during a rainstorm.”

Sarah remembered the incident all too well. “Just as long as we don’t spend the day soaking in a trench and have it followed up by gunfire.”

“I have it on good authority that all of the Spanish warships, at least those that can do any real harm, are snugly berthed in Havana, and that is why I’m here. I’m working on the modification of a steamer for some very special purposes.”

“And what might those be?” Ruth asked.

Prentice was about to respond when he suddenly looked distressed. “Oh dear,” said Sarah, “is it possible that you’ve said too much already?”

Prentice looked around frantically. Had anyone else overheard him? “You’re right. I have a very big mouth sometimes. It’s only that what I’m doing is so remarkable that I have a hard time keeping my thoughts bottled up.”

Sarah had a hard time keeping from laughing. Good grief. The young officer was still in his early twenties. How much information could he possibly possess and how much impact could it have on the course of a war between the United States and Spain?

“Don’t worry,” she said. “Whatever you’re doing-and we really don’t know what that might be-your secret’s safe with us. We have shockingly little to do with the Spanish Army, except to patch up some of their wounded and none are around at this time.”

“I think I should leave,” Prentice said glumly.

“It’s still raining very hard,” said Ruth.

Prentice shrugged. “And not likely to stop anytime soon.”

The nervous young lieutenant stepped outside and headed to the bay and the spot where the Aurora was anchored. In only a step or two he was soaked to the skin. He wanted to kick himself. He was so proud of what he was doing with Captain Janson and the Aurora that he wanted to shout it to the skies. However, doing that might just get him either court-martialed or killed.

* * *

For a man with a strong fast horse and good guides, the distance from Matanzas to Havana could be traveled in a day and a night. Kendrick’s original idea had been to go to Cuba’s capital and simply observe what was happening. However, his informers in the Spanish camp had informed the American that his nemesis, Gilberto Salazar, was in a military hospital and was likely to be there for a while. Therefore, he thought it likely that Juana might be interested in having a visitor.

He knew he should not have left Ryder’s camp without informing him, but he was afraid that he’d be denied permission, which he knew would be the correct thing to do. He knew too much about the American army, its position, leadership, and problems. He also knew that, if captured, he would not stand up very long under torture by the people who had invented the Spanish Inquisition. What he was doing was insane, but he wanted to see Juana and know that she was all right.

With two of Diego Valdez’s men as guides they easily made their way through the Spanish army. As one laughingly said, the Spaniards had a large army but not large enough to be everywhere. Kendrick wondered if the American generals knew of the gaps in the Spanish lines. After a few miles in fields and woods, they took the miserable road to Havana and made no attempt to hide.

When he arrived at Juana’s house a servant directed him elsewhere, to the house of one of her friends. Cursing, he rode the couple of miles to an elegant estate on heavily wooded grounds, where he was further directed to a small cottage several hundred yards away from the main house. He dismounted and nervously walked the few paces to the door. It had begun to rain and if nobody let him in he was going to be a soaked fool.

He knocked timidly. At first, there was no response. Then it opened and a thoroughly surprised Juana stood there, barefoot and dressed in a robe. She stared at him wide-eyed. “How did you get here so fast? I just sent the message?”

* * *

The next morning the two of them bathed, dressed, and went by carriage into Havana. They were exhausted as very little of their night in bed had been spent sleeping. Instead, they had reveled in the re-discovery of each other’s bodies.

If Juana was annoyed that James wanted to take time out from their liaison to see what had changed in Havana since his last visit, she stifled the feelings. She was just so happy to see him and it was clear that he felt the same way. After all, he hadn’t had to seek her out in the first place. It clearly meant that he cared for her.

Kendrick took the reins of the carriage and followed Juana’s directions. Again they visited one of the internment camps. There were even more prisoners jammed into it and Juana said there were still more in the others. Again the hatred in the inmate’s eyes bore holes in them. “Don’t they know you’re on their side?” asked Kendrick.

“I hope not. If they do, then I will be useless as a rebel and will be caught by the Spanish and thrown into a dungeon. There are cells in the Castillo de la Cabana that are centuries old and have known great filth and agony. Neither you nor I would do well in there.”

He shuddered at the thought of her being violated by brutal jailers and him being tortured for information he didn’t have. Once again he wondered at the wisdom of his coming to Havana.

Juana continued. “Some of us are stockpiling weapons for when the war comes here and we can liberate our own city. We have few guns, of course, so we must concentrate on giving our people machetes and spears. I just don’t want to be mistaken for a Spaniard when the day of reckoning occurs.”

“How will you prevent that?”

“I have no idea. When the day of reckoning arrives, I hope I will have enough time to get to the homes of rebel friends who will protect me. Certainly, one of the first targets of the rebels will be my husband and people like him and that includes the large number of American Confederates who came to Cuba after your Civil War concluded.”

Kendrick understood. He had done an article on the unrepentant Confederates who’d fled to Mexico and Cuba after the end of the Civil War and the death of the Confederacy. He’d thought it ironic that people in the South had once wanted to occupy Cuba and turn it into a slave state to counter-balance the spread of Free states in the Union. A further irony was Spain’s freeing of its slaves, however gradual. Where, he wondered, was someone who truly believed in the institution of slavery to go? Straight to hell seemed like a good idea.

They continued to where they could see the main part of the harbor off the Plaza de San Francisco. They stopped and Juana pointed. “There it is, the target of the American navy, the Spanish battleship Vitoria. The original idea was to have her repaired at the Arsenal on the other side of the harbor, but the ship is too large.”

Kendrick noted several men taking photographs of the Vitoria and the several smaller warships clustered protectively around her. “I wonder if I could get a print?

“Why not? The pictures are for sale. It’s not like the battleship’s presence is a secret.” She chuckled. “I will tell one of the photographers that I am a loyal Spaniard who wishes to immortalize the triumph of the Spanish navy and then I will buy it for you as a present.”

“You’re too kind,” he said with a grin.

Juana put her hand on his knee and drew it up his inner thigh. “We have been riding around in this head for long enough. The clothing I am wearing is beginning to chafe my body,” she said as she glared at him sternly. “I am feeling an almost overwhelming urge to get out of them and have my body massaged.”

Kendrick pretended to be shocked, “You too?”

* * *

Lang walked around the Gatling gun. It was one of two additional brought up to the top of the hill. Until joining up with Ryder, Lang had heard of them but hadn’t seen one. “What is it, fish or fowl?”

Ryder laughed softly and concurred. “I don’t think anybody quite knows. The Gatling doesn’t have the range of a cannon, but it’s on a carriage just like it was one. Placed too far back from the fighting, it’s useless. Move it too close to an enemy and their riflemen can kill the men operating the Gatling.”

“Yet you used them to kill hundreds of Sioux.”

Ryder rolled his eyes, “My how the legend has grown. It was nowhere near that many. Perhaps a couple of score both killed and wounded, but that’s it. If the Sioux had wanted to take down my little detachment they could easily have spread out and overwhelmed it. I think they left because they were confused and because they didn’t want to take too many casualties.”

Lang nodded. “And you would have had a hell of a time swiveling the guns to meet a moving target like a bunch of Sioux on horseback.”

“That’s a big weakness. I think the gun should either be mounted higher and on a swivel so it can turn without chopping down the carriage’s own wheels, or maybe the wheels should be smaller.”

Lang continued to examine the gun. It was the first time he’d really had a chance to do so since arriving and he found it fascinating. Along with his ranch, he owned a combination blacksmith and machine shop where he loved to tinker.

“My vote is for the smaller wheels, even though that would make it necessary to carry the gun on a wagon instead of behind pulled by horses,” Lang said. “It’s amazing that this damn thing has been around for twenty years and there’ve been no major improvements to it.”

“I wouldn’t say that. It’s a lot better than the half dozen that General Butler bought and paid for out of his own wallet during the closing days of the Civil War, and they are certainly more reliable than what I used at the Little Big Horn. Those had a tendency to jam at the drop of a hat. Thank God they didn’t or we wouldn’t be standing here. These won’t do that. The navy’s using them a lot because they work well on a warship, like I found out on the way here. But the army really doesn’t know what to do with them.”

“The army has a point. They are so damn big and clumsy.”

“So design one that isn’t. Look, I’ll even give you one to work with if I think your ideas have merit. If I were you I’d hurry. I’ve heard through the grapevine that people like Hiram Maxim and even some inventors in Europe are working on just such a thing-a more compact and mobile machine gun.”

Land thought for a second. “And if you let me work on it and I get it patented, maybe you and I can form a company and get ourselves rich. We could call it Lang and Martin Arms. What do you think?”

Sometimes Ryder thought that he wished the Texans paid more attention to military discipline. But the men from the Lone Star State had proven themselves to be excellent fighters. One old man bragged that he had ridden with Sam Houston at the battle of San Jacinto. Martin doubted it, but hell, the guy looked old enough.

“Great idea, captain, but first we have to defeat the damned Spaniards who are down there in plain sight. One of these days, either we or they are going to decide that we’re strong enough to take on the other. This status quo situation where we’re not quite at war with each other can’t go on forever.”

Martin took a periscope from a soldier and looked over the rampart. There was nothing to be seen. Maybe the damned Spanish snipers had taken the day off. Or maybe it was some saint’s feast day. Regardless, he thought it was a hell of a way to run a war.

* * *

Major General Nelson Miles was a vain and proud man. He’d risen to the rank of brevet general in the Civil War while still a very young man and had been awarded the Medal of Honor for heroism in battle. Since the end of the Civil War, he’d distinguished himself fighting the Indians and had even supported Custer with troops after the Little Big Horn. He’d married well. His bride was related to both Senator John Sherman and General William Tecumseh Sherman.

In his early forties, he was still a young and ambitious man. He saw the invasion of Cuba with him in command as a stepping stone to greatness. The White House would be in his sights. Unfortunately, he was now assailed by personal doubts. The war was not going as hoped and there had been no great American victories.

He hated councils of war but felt the need to call one. Such councils often indicated indecisiveness on the part of the man calling it.

It was a small group that gathered in the main dining room of the Palacio de Junco in Matanzas. Until the American invasion the del Junco family had lived there. They had fled to Havana and now it was the headquarters of Nelson Miles and the American army. The room was filled with smoke. The family had left behind a number of excellent cigars that the senior officers were enjoying immensely.

Miles had divided the army into three divisions. Their commanders were John Gibbon, Alfred Terry, and George Crook. All had performed well on the frontier but Miles wasn’t so sure that their successes against the Indians were transferring to success against the far more numerous and better armed Spanish. It also didn’t help that all three were also major generals and ambitious as well. While Miles’ orders said that he was in command of the force, he felt that the others were waiting for him to stumble.

Miles glared at them. “President Custer wants us to attack. He doesn’t seem to care that we are greatly outnumbered and that half our army still can’t tell one end of a rifle from another. It doesn’t seem to matter to him that our three divisions have never worked together, nor have the brigades and regiments within them. I predict that an attack before we are ready would result in disaster.”

Gibbon glared at him. “You’re sounding a lot like McClellan in the past war. He kept seeing Confederate shadows and believed that the rebels had twice as many men as we later found out that they did.”

Terry laughed harshly. “Are you saying those are phantoms and shadows camped around us? We have roughly twenty-five thousand men and it is clear that the Spanish have somewhere between fifty and seventy-five thousand with more dribbling down those miserable and muddy excuses for roads that lead here from Havana.”

Gibbon responded. “Oh, I agree that we are outnumbered but those are Spaniards and Cubans, gentlemen, not Confederates who were real men and real soldiers. The Spaniards are corrupt and poorly trained while the Cubans in their army want nothing to do with a war against us. Custer may be right. If we attack, they might just crumble.”

“Or they might not,” said a glum Crook. “If we attack what appear to be strong positions and fail, our army its morale will be seriously damaged and we might be forced to withdraw from this miserable island.”

“Custer would never allow it,” said Miles. “He would order us to fight to the last man, just like he almost did against the Sioux.“

“Too bad it didn’t work out that way,” said Terry to laughter.

“Which we just might have to,” said Gibbon. “We know that our navy was badly mauled by the Spanish. Admiral Bunce says the US fleet is in control and that the Spanish are bottled up in Havana. I’ll be blunt-I don’t totally believe him. Should it become necessary to evacuate us, who would do it? We cannot count on the navy to get us out of here. We might have to surrender,” he said with a shudder. They all recognized that such a calamity would spell an end to their careers as well as any political ambitions. That it would be a disaster for the United States was a given.

Miles stood and paced. He tugged at his uniform. He’d lost weight and it no longer fit properly. He would have to do something about that. Fortunately, there were some decent tailors in the force. He did not like appearing slovenly. It gave the men a bad impression. Maybe a Ulysses Grant could have gotten away with it, but not a Nelson Miles, he thought ruefully.

Miles continued. “Nor do we yet have enough ammunition, food, and other supplies to sustain a campaign. Even if we were to attack and somehow defeat the Spanish, what then? We would likely be too weak to move to Havana. No, we will stay here and demand supplies and reinforcements before we attack.”

“Perhaps Gordon will arrive,” Crook said with the hint of a sneer. Former Confederate General John Gordon was rumored to be forming a division of ex-rebels in Georgia. The men had mixed emotions about working with Gordon. Although a skilled general and a man who had been reconstructed after the war to the point where he had served in the U.S. Senate, John B. Gordon was still a rebel and old habits and hatreds died hard. Still, if he had a division, it would be well trained and equipped and ready to fight.

General Terry coughed harshly and stood up. Miles was annoyed by the interruption until he saw that Terry’s face had become pale, almost gray. Miles was suddenly concerned. “General, are you unwell?”

Terry raised his hand to say something, looked puzzled, tried to speak, and pitched forward onto the floor.