Few figures in American history are as arresting as George Armstrong Custer, America's Hostspur. His career ranged back and forth from depths of disgrace to heights of glory. If he was no classroom scholar, he was a magnetic battlefield commander. From dead last in his 1861 class at West Point, he rocketed to the rank of Brigadier General at the age of twenty-three. Along the way, every step of his career was dogged by controversy. Readers will be forever indebted to Elizabeth Bacon Custer for her trilogy of first-hand accounts of life with the General. In Following the Guidon, she covers that period when Custer's career was again in ascendancy. Custer was recalled to duty from ""exile,"" after being court-martialed, to help with the growing Indian wars. The first major engagement, recounted here, is the Battle of the Washita.