conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Provide the first four paragraphs for a book with the title 'Flashman and the Redskins'.. Start with the sentence 'Flashman and the Redskins
  He stiffened at that'.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Flashman and the Redskins
  He stiffened at that. "I'll not be made a cat's paw!" Then he frowned. "Is it true, d'you think, that Custer has...hopes of high office? I've heard rumours..."
  Between us we concocted an appeal to Grant—me suggesting the more abject and crawling phrases which I knew would drive Custer to apoplexy, and Terry striking them out. Then I took it to Custer for his signature; he tore his hair and swore he'd die before he'd "truckle to that miscreant Grant".
  Custer's behaviour after this was a revelation, even to me. I guess he remembered what an ass he'd made of himself to Terry, for he thanked him pretty curtly, and when we were on the train to Bismarck he confided to me that Terry would have been a fool to act otherwise. "There would have been mutiny in the 7th if I had not been restored," says he smugly. "Then where would Lawyer Terry have been? If he's done anyone a kindness, it is himself, not me." And he'd been weeping on the fellow's boot-laces, so help me. I was beginning to wonder if Custer wasn't perhaps some by-blow of the Flashman family.
  This suspicion was dispelled when we reached Fort Lincoln, about a week after leaving Washington, for I hadn't been at the place a day before I realised that Custer lacked one quality which I and my kindred have by the bucket: popularity. I don't know how much his troopers cared for him, but his officers clearly disliked him. I don't say it was on professional grounds; I believe most of them respected him as a soldier, but as a man they'd have had a hard job tolerating him. This was a new slant to me; you see, he'd toadied me on account of my fame and success, and ever since the Belknap business he'd been in such a high-flown state that his character couldn't be judged; now, in his own mess, I saw the fellow's bounce and arrogance in full flight, and knew that whatever else it might be, the 7th wasn't a happy ship.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Provide four more paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Walking Blanket Woman was beside me in an instant. We both stood staring over the trees. The bluffs were empty—and then on their crest there was a movement, and another a little behind, and then another, tiny objects just above the skyline, slowly coming into view—horsemen, and one of the foremost carrying a guidon, and then a file of troopers, and I could make out the shapes of fatigue hats—ten, twenty, thirty riders, and as they rode at the walk, the piping was clear now, and I found the words running through my head that the 8th Hussars had sung on the way to Alma:
  The piping stopped, and I heard the shout of command faint over the trees. They had halted, and in the little knot of men round the guidon I caught a glint—field-glasses, sweeping the valley. Custer had come to Little Bighorn.
  Perhaps I'm a better soldier than I care to think, for I know what I thought in that moment. My first concern should have been how the blazes to get across to them, but possibly because it was a long, steep way, and there was a young lady beside me at least toying with the notion of putting her knife-point to my ear and pushing, it seemed academic. And the instinctive order that I would have hollered across that river was: "Retire! And don't tarry on the way! Get out, you bloody fool, and get out fast while there's still time!"
  He'd not have listened, though. Even as I watched I saw a tiny figure with hand raised, and a moment later the faint call of "Forward-o!" and they were coming on along the bluffs, and wheeling down into the coulee, and beyond the bluffs to their left was a sputter of shooting, and down the steep came a handful of Sioux at the run, and after them a party of Ree scouts, little puffs of smoke jetting after the fugitives. There were yells of alarm from far up the river, closer than the distant popping of the first fight, which had faded into the distance.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Provide the last four paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: But then, it is difficult to grasp how suddenly western America happened. It is trite to say that in fifty years it was transformed from a wilderness into a settled countryside; consider rather that an infant could cross the plains by wagon train in the gold rush, and live to watch a programme about it on television; and somehow even that is not quite as sad as old Bronco Charlie Miller driving past filling-stations and movie theatres where once he had ridden for the Pony Express.
  In 1845 Texas was annexed, and in the following year Oregon became fully American by agreement with Britain. Following the Mexican War (1846–1848), Mexico ceded to the U.S. all territory north of the Rio Grande and Gila Rivers. This to all intents and purposes established the mainland frontiers of the U.S. as they are today; the only major change took place in 1853 when, by the Gadsden Purchase, the U.S. obtained the area between the Gila and the modern Mexican frontier. So in Flashman's time the Rio Grande and the Gila were the effective boundaries, for what this was worth; American administration of the ceded areas had barely begun, the frontiers were still uncertain, and it was not until the Boundary Commissions had completed their surveys in the early 1850s that the limits were determined. And, as he rightly says, New Mexico was still entirely Mexican in character.
  There is, fortunately, a happy ending to the tragic story of Bent's. Recently it has been rebuilt at the original site, and restored to its old glory in appearance at least. Every detail, down to the trade goods and tools in the stores and shops—even the early Victorian billiard table—has been painstakingly recreated; it is a reconstruction which no enthusiast for the old West should miss.
  Except for the buckskin shirt (and Two Moon admits that the soldiers were white with dust, which might easily have misled him) this description fits Flashman exactly, even to the sound effects. And historians have been at a loss to identify the black-moustached rider until now, since his appearance does not tally with that of any known officer of the 7th. One theory is that he was a scout, and De Land considers the possibility that it was Boyer, but dismisses it on the ground that Boyer was clean-shaven. It is also worth noting Two Moon's statement that the man "fought hard with a big knife", by which he probably meant a sabre (the chief Gall also confirmed that one of the white men definitely used a sabre). Since the 7th Cavalry carried no sabres in the battle, but we know that at least one Sioux warrior did (having captured it from Crook's forces on the Rosebud), and since Flashman describes how he took a sabre from a Sioux, it seems safe to say that the identity of the mysterious rider with the black moustache has at last been established. As to the only other inconsistency between the versions of Flashman and Two Moon—that the moustached rider was at the head of a bunch of fugitives—nothing in Flashman's writing has ever suggested that, in the heat of flight, he paid much attention to any other unfortunates behind him.