The Last Days of George Armstrong Custer by Thom Hatch Page B

would occasionally accompany patrols, but for the most part his summer was leisurely, with evenings spent enjoying horseback rides with Libbie.
    One famous neighbor of the fort was the notorious gambler and gunslinger James Butler “Wild Bill” Hickok. Wild Bill has been the subject of so many tall tales and dime-novel exaggerations that it is often difficult to separate fact from fiction. One of those colorful stories at issue concerns Tom Custer, Armstrong’s younger brother, while the Seventh Cavalry was stationed at Fort Hays, Kansas, in 1869 and Hickok was the marshal of nearby Hays City.
    Tom Custer was a wild and reckless young man, who frequently drank to excess. On one of those inebriated occasions, Tom was said to have ridden through Hays City shooting out lights and windows, then urging his horse into a crowded saloon, which caused considerable damage. This apparently had not been the first time Tom had sent the patrons of a saloon scrambling with his horse. Although Wild Bill was a friend of the elder Custer, enough was enough. Tom was promptly dragged off his mount by Wild Bill, hauled before a justice of the peace, and fined for his rash act. Tom was incensed with Hickok over the arrest and vowed revenge.
    On New Years’s Eve, Tom returned to Hays City with three burly soldiers and hung around the saloon to wait for Hickok. When Wild Bill strolled into the establishment, the soldiers cornered and disarmed him and it appeared that physical revenge for Tom’s arrest was about to be exacted. A friendly bartender, however, tossed a loaded pistol (or shotgun) to Wild Bill and he commenced firing. When the smoke had cleared, the three soldiers lay sprawled on the barroom floor, wounded but from all accounts still very much alive. Tom Custer lit out for Fort Hays to seek the assistance of his brother.
    George Armstrong Custer, however, had departed for Fort Leavenworth to spend the holiday. Tom then sought out General Phil Sheridan, who ordered the arrest of Hickok.
    Word of the impending arrest reached Wild Bill before the soldiers whom Sheridan had dispatched. Hickok thought it prudent to vanish for the time being and hopped a freight train headed for Ellsworth and Abilene until cooler heads prevailed.
    The impetuous Thomas Ward Custer was born on March 15, 1845, in New Rumley, Ohio, to Emanuel and Maria Custer, the third of five children. At the outbreak of the Civil War he attempted to enlist in the army from his home in Monroe, Michigan, but was thwarted when Emanuel notified the recruiter that his son was only sixteen and therefore too young for service. Tom, however, would not be denied. He crossed the border to the town of his birth, New Rumley, Ohio, and on September 2, 1861, was sworn in as a private in Company H of the Twenty-first Ohio Infantry. He fought as a common foot soldier for the next three years, participating in such battles as Shiloh, Stones River, Chickamauga, Missionary Ridge, Chattanooga, and the Atlanta Campaign. His distinguished service gained him duty as escort for various generals, and he was promoted to corporal on January 1, 1864.
    Tom, however, craved the excitement and notoriety that the cavalry had provided for his famous brother. On October 23, 1864, Tom accepted an appointment as second lieutenant, Company B, Sixth Michigan Cavalry, and he was soon detailed as an aide-de-camp to his older brother. Armstrong showed Tom no favoritism and often chose him for extra assignments—which evoked grumbling from the sibling, who swore it was not fair. Nevertheless, the hardened veterans of the unit were skeptical of their commanding officer’s sibling—until early April 1865. Tom, in the tradition of his brother, was about to make some history of his own.
    On April 3, 1865, General Robert E. Lee, with eighty thousand men, was retreating west through the Appomattox River Valley and happened to pass just north of General Custer’s campsite. Custer followed