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Merritt left Custer at Malon's crossing of Rowanty Creek to care for the trains containing our subsistence and the reserve ammunition, these being stuck in the mire at, intervals all the way back to the Jerusalem plank-road; and to make any headway at all with the trains, Custer's men often had to unload the wagons and lift them out of the boggy places.
No incident of the campaign was too trivial to find willing ears to listen when it was told. The operations of Kilpatrick's division seemed to be well known and there was much complimentary comment upon his energy and his dash. The name of Custer, "the boy general," was seemingly on every tongue and there was no disposition on our part to conceal the fact that we had been with them.
Custer, with surprising coolness, put his brigade into line, the Sixth on the right, the First, Fifth and Seventh to the left of the Sixth, the battery in the center, with backs to the river and faces to the enemy, and presented so bold a front that the infantry did not charge, but moved up slowly, maneuvering to get around and obtain possession of the ford in rear.
It was now near sunset, and the enemy's cavalry thinking the day was theirs, made a dash at Smith, but just as the assailants appeared in the open fields, Capehart's men opened so suddenly on their left flank as to cause it to recoil in astonishment, which permitted Smith to connect his brigade with Custer unmolested.
"I don't know about this, Custer," said Mr. Shrimplin, with a doubtful shake of the head, as he drew rein. "She's way up. I had no idea she was way up like this; I guess though we can't do no better than to chance it, catfish is a muddy-water fish, anyhow."
The Indians being in a very forlorn condition, Custer might have destroyed most of the tribe, and certainly all their villages, but in order to save two white women whom, it was discovered, they held as captives, he contented himself with the renewal of the Cheyennes' agreement to come in to Camp Supply.
To Custer he could brag of crimes he had never committed, but an unpaid butcher's bill would have robbed him of his sleep; also he wore a very tender heart in his narrow chest, though he did his best to hide it by assuming a bold and hardy air and by garnishing his conversation with what he counted the very flower of a brutal worldly cynicism.
Standing there in the dim light, with torn clothing, and tumbled red hair, and scratched face was the Irish boy, bruised, but not seriously hurt. "I climbed down and round and up and got back as soon as I come too," he said, with that happy-go-lucky smile of his. "Bedad! but you've been makin' some history, I see. Git up, you miserable cur, and we'll march ye down to General Custer.
In consequence their occasional slaughtering victories, including the most famous of all, the battle of the Rosebud, in which Custer fell, took the form of the overwhelming of a comparatively small number of whites by immense masses of mounted horsemen.
Crook was posted on the left of the Nineteenth Corps and east of the Valley pike, with Thoburn's division advanced to a round hill, which commanded the junction of Cedar Creek and the Shenandoah River, while Torbert retained both Merritt and Custer on the right of the Sixth Corps, and at the same time covered with Powell the roads toward Front Royal.
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