Custer rides out toward the Platte River to rescue the Union Pacific's workers. Meanwhile, huge rains flood the country around Fort Hays, and to escape the floods Libbie and Anna flee east to Fort Harker, and then further east to Fort Riley. Custer reaches Fort McPherson, a post on the Platte now commanded by the Colonel Carrington who was blamed for the Fetterman massacre. Meeting with Carrington, Custer learns that Fetterman had disobeyed Carrington's orders and caused his own death. Out on the Platte, he meets Pawnee Killer and orders him to turn in to Fort McPherson. A bit later on, General Sherman comes out to Custer's camp on the Platte. Sherman berates Custer for letting Pawnee Killer go. He orders Custer to go on forced march to find the indian and bring him in. He will be resupplied at Fort Sedgwick. Sherman suggests he might bring Libbie to that fort. Again consumed with desire to see his wife, Custer decides it would be easier to get her to Fort Hays, south on the Smoky Hill, than to Fort Sedgwick, north on the Platte. Copyright 2007 Aram Schefrin To learn about the facts on which this book is based, go to www.glorioiusboy.blogspot.com.

Custer's men follow the fleeing Cheyenne, but lose their trail. Reaching the Smoky Hill River, they find the crew of the Lookout stage station murdered. Custer concludes the Indians he has been tracking had committed the killings. Later he realizes timing made that impossible, but by then General Hancock, on the initial word from Custer, has burned the Cheyenne village on Pawnee Fork. Out of food, Custer's column has to give up the chase and turn in to Fort Hays for supplies. They don't find the expected food and fodder at the fort, and desertions begin. Hancock appears at Fort Hays and castigates Custer for sitting there. Custer's depressed thoughts turn to Libbie and sex. When a sympathetic Colonel Smith agrees to bring Libbie to Fort Hays, Custer imposes strict punishment on the troops for minor infractions, intending to get them (and himself) in shape before Libbie appears. When Libbie arrives, she and Custer "go among the willows" until Colonel Smith insists Custer resume the search for the Cheyenne, because the Indians have been raiding parties working on the nearby Union Pacific tracks. Copyright 2007 Aram Schefrin

General Hancock orders the Cheyenne to parley at Fort Larned. But the Cheyenne don't appear, so Hancock moves out towards their village on the Pawnee Fork. Sioux and Cheyenne chiefs try to dissuade him from approaching the village; after Sand Creek, they were afraid for their women and children. A parley on middle ground is not conclusive, and, after waiting again for Cheyenne to come in, Hancock moves closer to the village. The Indians burn the prairie grass to deny forage to the cavalry horses, send their women and children fleeing, and four hundred Indians form a line, ready to charge. But one of them puts up a white flag, and Hancock and Custer meet Chief Roman Nose between the armies. Roman Nose tells Hancock the Indians don't want war. Hancock orders him to bring back the women and children and to meet with the soldiers again closer to the Cheyenne camp. Soon Hancock's scouts report that all the Cheyenne have abandoned the camp. Hancock determines to burn it, but Wynkoop insists that if he does, he will be responsible for starting a war. Hancock backs off, and sends Custer out to find the Cheyenne and bring them back. For more information on the facts on which this book is based, visit www.gloriousboy.blogspot.com Copyright 2007 Aram Schefrin

While Custer and Benteen languish at Fort Riley, Captain William Fetterman leads a contingent out of Fort Phil Kearny, a post built to protect the main road to the Montana gold fields, to respond to an Indian attack on a wood train out of the fort. Disobeying orders to confine himself to rescuing the wood train, Fetterman charges up Lodge Trail Ridge following taunting Indians. As he comes down the other side of the ridge, Sioux and Cheyenne spring a trap. Fetterman and all his men are wiped out and horribly mutilated. In response, General Sherman sends General Hancock after the southern Cheyenne (who were not involved in the attack on Fetterman.) Hancock meets Custer and lays out his plans. For more information on the facts on which this book is based, visit www.gloriousboy.blogspot.com Copyright 2007 Aram Schefrin

Colonel Smith, who commands at Fort Riley, explains what's happened out here up to now: The enemy is the Cheyenne Indians. The Cheyenne had lived in Minnesota until the Chippewa, armed by the British, had driven them out. Some Cheyenne had gathered with the Sioux in the Black Hills of Dakota; some had gone to Texas, where they discovered horses, and soon became fierce warriors. The Dog Soldiers, a Cheyenne warrior clan, lived between the two branches on the Smoky Hill River in Kansas. The discovery of gold in Colorado had led to demands that the Cheyenne be displaced from the plains east of the Rockies. At a parley at Fort Wise in 1861, the southern Cheyenne had agreed to give up their claim to their hunting lands and gather at a reservation at Sand Creek, in southern Colorado, on the banks of the Arkansas River. But the Cheyenne believed the treaty allowed them to hunt their old lands, and when they did they stole a few head of cattle from a ranch on the Smoky Hill. Colorado troops under Colonel John Chivington were sent out to punish them. The troops never found the rustlers, but took vengeance on Lean Bear's innocent Cheyenne camped on Ash Creek. Enraged, the Dog Soldiers repeatedly attacked whites, although Chief Black Kettle, the Cheyenne's great leader, tried to stop them. In response, Chivington struck, not the Dog Soldiers, but Black Kettle's encampment on Sand Creek. Catching these indians - who had done no raiding - asleep, the troopers killed, scalped and mutilated twenty-eight braves and 105 women and children. The Dog Soldiers and some Sand Creek survivors went north to join Red Cloud's Oglala Sioux on the Tongue River in what is now Wyoming and Montana. Black Kettle, though, went further south to the Washita River on the border of what are now Oklahoma and Texas. For more information on the facts on which this book is based, visit www.gloriousboy.blogspot.com Copyright 2007 Aram Schefrin

Sherman tells Custer how Indians fight. Custer's brother, Tom, joins the 7th. Custer throws a dinner for his officers, which ends in a poker game in which Benteen wipes Custer out. Benteen describes the hard life of the soldier on the plains. For more information on the facts on which this book is based, visit www.gloriousboy.blogspot.com Copyright 2007 Aram Schefrin

Custer is feted at the New York Broker's Board and in the salon of the financier Levi Morton. He meets the actress Maggie Mitchell, and sees the great singer Clara Kellogg. In his hotel lobby, he is accosted by Porfirio Diaz, who invites him to put together a cavalry unit and come to Mexico to fight the French-installed Emperor Maximilian and his Confederate supporters. But the President forbids it, afraid it might offend the French. With no other prospects, Custer goes to Kansas as a lieutenant colonel commanding the new Seventh Cavalry. For more information on the facts on which this book is based, visit www.gloriousboy.blogspot.com Copyright 2007 Aram Schefrin

Arriving the next day at Fort Riley, they are met by Major Alfred Gibbs, who commands the post. And waiting for Custer in Gibbs' dining room is General William Tecumseh Sherman. Sherman asks Custer if he misses the War. As Benteen tells it, Custer had hated to see it end. Beginning at Bull Run and ending with Lee's surrender at Appomattox, Custer had built a reputation for leading glorious charges and had been appointed the army's youngest volunteer brigadier general. But when the war ended, he had returned to his regular army rank of captain, and Libbie had insisted he find another career. He had gone to New York, where he'd met a general he had known in the war. The general cautioned him against leaving the army now. The transcontinental railroads were in the process of being built; they would run through Indian country, the army expected a fight, and there would be plenty for a cavalry soldier to do. For more information on the facts on which this book is based, visit www.gloriousboy.blogspot.com Copyright 2007 Aram Schefrin

Benteen blames Custer's wife Libbie for spreading the story that Benteen had set Custer up to die. Thus begins the story: After the end of the Civil War, General Custer is assigned to Fort Riley in Kansas. Libbie insists that her friend Anna come along to keep her company. On the way, in St. Louis, Custer, Libbie and Anna see a performance by Lawrence Barrett which reduces Custer to tears (something that happens to him often.) That night,after sex with Libbie (they have an extravagant physical relationship), Custer is not satisfied, and appears at Anna's door. For more information on the facts on which this book is based, visit www.gloriousboy.blogspot.com Copyright 2007 Aram Schefrin

At Fort Duchesne in Utah in 1887, Captain Frederick Benteen, an old man now, is finishing out his soldiering career fighting Mormons who are disobeying Federal Law. The Indian Wars are over, ended with the surrender of Geronimo in 1886. Benteen, now a drunk, picks fights with men he imagines are Mormons, and disrespects important women at Fort Duchesne. At his courtmartial, he tells the judges about his distinguished career in the Civil War. The prosecutor brings up the old charge that Benteen caused Custer's death at the Little Big Horn. Benteen retorts that it's Custer who has caused the death of Benteen. For more information on the facts on which this book is based, visit www.gloriousboy.blogspot.com.

On June 25th, 1876, General George Custer died at the Battle of Little Big Horn. Why did Custer rush into battle against the largest agglomeration of Indians ever seen in the West, without waiting for support from other cavalry contingents which were on their way to the scene? To answer that, you need to know what happened on June 27th. "The Glorious Boy," a podcast novel by Aram Schefrin, tells Custer's story from after the Civil War through the date of his massacre, in the voice of Captain Frederick Benteen, the soldier who hated Custer. This is Aram Schefrin's fourth podcast novel, following "Marwan: The Autobiography of a 9/11 Hijacker," "Consider the Elephant: The Life and Death of John Wilkes Booth as told by his brother Edwin," and "The Tenth Cow," the tale of a plot to speed the Messiah's arrival at the risk of nuclear war.