Seize the Sky: Son of the Plains-Volume 2 Read Online Free Page A

collection of trophies, each taken with a nonregulation sporting weapon. His reputation with a rifle had spread far and wide. Even Richard A. Roberts, civilian secretary assigned to General Alfred H. Terry for this summer’s Sioux campaign, had written, “Custer is the best shot with a Creedmore rifle.”
    Over the door to Custer’s study, where many of his most prized mementos were displayed, hung a hand-lettered sign reading:
    MY ROOM
Lasiate Ogni Speranza, Voi Ch’entrate

(All hope abandon, ye who enter here)
CAVE CANUM
    (Beware the Dog)
     
    In that study Custer had spent many hours toiling over his memoirs the last couple of years, insisting that Libbie be in the room with him while he wrote “Battling with the Sioux on the Yellowstone” and began his “War Memoirs” for
Galaxy
magazine readers back east. It seemed everyone on the other side of the Missouri River thirsted for his vivid tales of action and adventure, danger and bloodshed along the western frontier. So important was reading and writing to his own life, Custer even enjoyed teaching others toread. Many were the hours he would spend on idle winter afternoons with servants’ and enlisted men’s children gathered round his knee, a reader in one hand, a speller in the other. These scenes were a delight for Elizabeth Custer to watch, for Libbie and her darling Autie had long ago given up the hope of ever having children of their own.
    Custer ordered a huge garden planted behind his house, enclosed by a tall, stout fence to keep his numerous hunting dogs and staghounds out. The general preferred a lot of fresh vegetables to the usual army rations. Family cook Mary saw to it that the general and his lady were fed appetizing meals envied all along Officers’ Row.
    In the spring of 1875 a ballroom had been added to the house so that Custer and his lady Elizabeth could entertain in a much grander style. Libbie was fond of inviting young ladies from their hometown of Monroe, Michigan, or even new acquaintances from their visits to New York City, all to come spend their summers at the fort as guests of the regimental commander. That warm, exhilarating laughter of young women went a long way toward brightening the dull prairie duty of many a young officer himself far from home. Elizabeth had seen to it that a special chandelier was purchased and hung in the ballroom, along with a harp and a grand piano she had rented in St. Paul, Minnesota, and freighted all the way back to Fort Lincoln in an army wagon.
    Music and plays contributed to a livelier atmosphere than existed at most frontier posts of the time. The minuets, waltzes, and Virginia reels played in the Custer’s grand ballroom provided some diversion for an otherwise drab existence. One might hear some soldier plucking out tunes such as “La Paloma,” “Susan James,” or “Little Annie Roonie” on a banjo or guitar, or scratched on a fiddle. Whenever Libbie found any trooper to have even the slightest talent at anything musical, that ability was exploited for everyone’s amusement and entertainment.
    Even a Swiss cavalryman recently immigrated from his mountain homeland became a regular visitor to the Custer home. While the general lounged on a bearskin rug in hisparlor, the Swiss musician performed Tyrolean melodies on his zither. So fond of music itself and a bird’s cheerful songs, Custer had even brought a pet mockingbird all the way from Kentucky when his Seventh Cavalry had been transferred back to frontier duty.
    Still Custer had grown restless after a short time in Dakota. Even during the busy social season at Fort Abraham Lincoln, with the fames and the charades and those vignettes played before backdrops of painted canvas, Custer grew restive and bored. Those costume balls and plays were not enough to satisfy this commander of an isolated fortress on the far western edge of an immense frontier. There was something unnamed lacking in his life, and for so long now he had dared not admit