Custer by McMurtry Larry

Author:McMurtry, Larry [McMurtry, Larry]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2012-11-06T05:00:00+00:00

CUSTER WITH GRAND DUKE ALEXIS OF RUSSIA.

QUIET, SHADY ELIZABETHTOWN, KENTUCKY, MIGHT have seemed an ideal place for the Custers to settle down and repair their frayed relationship; but it didn’t work out that way. For couples deep in the marital stews no place is likely to prove ideal. Both Custers read a great deal; it was one way for couples to ignore one another.

Lexington, Kentucky, was home to America’s version of the sport of kings. Custer, of course, seized every opportunity to get out to the races. He was irked that his beloved 7th Cavalry was in the south, fighting the Ku Klux Klan and generally helping out with Reconstruction. It was to come back to him a little later on.

Libbie observed that a good many of her fellow army wives were beginning to eat too much and get fat—she took more care with her diet but eventually she grew plump anyway. By that time though she was the famous Widow Custer.

In Washington to seek a livelier post, Custer twice tried to see President Grant, but Grant, who had no patience with Custer, managed to elude him.

When relief finally came for Custer it was because the Northern Pacific Railroad was pushing into Indian country near the Yellowstone and was often under attack, the attackers mostly being the Sioux. Custer was finally summoned to the Dakotas, working out of Fort Abraham Lincoln, across the river from Bismarck.

To his chagrin, Custer was not put in charge of this caretaker expedition. This plum went to General David Stanley, who disliked Custer about as much as Custer disliked him. Custer’s innocent cookstove was the cause of many quarrels. Custer wouldn’t give it up and Stanley couldn’t stand it.

When the Custers arrived, in 1873, Custer immediately went hunting and killed an antelope whose blood unfortunately dripped on some doughnuts he had been saving for Libbie. Could this be an omen? Could the comet that showed up later in the year be an omen? Custer himself was not superstitious; the comet was probably just a comet.

Custer was aware, as was General Stanley, that the surveying party was treading pretty close to prohibited land: in particular the Black Hills, Paha Sapa, holy to the Sioux.

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