Free The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little Big Horn by Nathaniel Philbrick

almost instantly asleep. Yet another secret to his seemingly inexhaustible endurance was the fact that he had at his disposal two magnificent horses: Vic (for Victory) and Dandy. Since horses of any kind were in short supply in the Seventh Cavalry (seventy-eight unmounted troopers were forced to march on foot in their high-heeled cavalry boots), this gave Custer an obvious advantage, particularly since he routinely changed horses every three hours. Adding to his edge was the fact that while each trooper was required to carry close to seventy-five pounds of personal equipment, all of Custer’s baggage was normally transported by wagon. Fresh from an invigorating nap, astride an equally fresh, unburdened horse, it was no wonder Custer seemed tireless. His troopers had no illusions about their commander’s penchant for “hell-whooping over the prairie” and had dubbed him “Hard Ass.”

    D espite his promises to General Terry back at Fort Lincoln, Custer was proving to be anything but a dutiful and appreciative subordinate. Instead of hovering at his commander’s side, Custer had his own set of priorities. When not watching his three staghounds chase jackrabbits or hunting antelope with his Remington sporting rifle with an octagonal barrel, he was passing the time with his Arikara scouts, many of whom, such as Bloody Knife, he’d known now for more than three years.
    Custer greatly enjoyed talking to his scouts in sign language. He often ate with them, and Red Star later remembered how Custer had once told them that “he liked to see men eat meat by the fire; if they were full, they would be strong.” During these conversations by the fire, he appears to have felt free to indulge in the outrageous boasts and predictions that he usually reserved for his letters to Libbie. At one point, he repeated a claim he’d already made back at Fort Lincoln. If they won a victory against the Lakota, he and Bloody Knife would go to Washington, D.C., where Custer would become the Great Father, or president of the United States.
    Given his most recent experiences in Washington, it might be assumed—as countless scholars have insisted—that the scouts were somehow mistaken or, at the very least, received a garbled version of what Custer really expressed. While on the East Coast that spring, Custer had taken time out from testifying before Congress to hobnob with his Democrat friends in New York City. During those conversations he undoubtedly learned that New York governor Samuel Tilden had virtually locked up the Democratic nomination for president. But what if news of a thrilling Custer victory should arrive just as the convention opened on June 27? Might not a draft-Custer movement soon follow?
    It was an absurd political fantasy, to be sure, but it was precisely the kind of fantasy the Custer family had been indulging in for years. Custer’s father, Emanuel, was a staunch, even rabid, Democrat, and during the Civil War in the fall of 1864, he wrote his son an extraordinary letter, in which he berated him for the pro-Lincoln comments recently attributed to him in the press. The Democrats were about to win the presidential election, Emanuel claimed, and Custer must make his loyalty to the party clear. “The reputation that you have made for yourself is very flattering and your prospect for the white [house] some day as a democrat if you should live is as good today as many that has occupied it.” Custer was twenty-four years old.
    Custer had grown up in the little town of New Rumley, Ohio, where his father, besides being an outspoken Democrat, was a blacksmith and an inveterate practical joker. Practical jokers are jovial sadists. They require someone to mock and humiliate, and the Custers’ raucous household was full of a brawling, pugnacious love that thrived on combat. Emanuel liked to tell the story of how as a young child Custer, his mouth still bloody from a recent tooth extraction, looked up at him and said, “Father, you