EASTON, Pa. (AP) - There's no time to mend a broken vertebrae when you're the leader of 10 men making a three-week journey on horseback in the Midwest.

George Armstrong Custer likely would have ignored the pain 130 years ago when he led his troops to the Battle of Little Bighorn.

And that's exactly what Upper Nazareth Township resident Don Keller did.

Keller spent 23 days in June riding the 440 miles from Fort Abraham Lincoln near Mandan, N.D., to the battlefield in Hardin, Mont., where Custer fought for the last time. Keller rode the whole trip with a broken vertebrae and didn't even know it.

"I figured it was a bruise," Keller, 52, said with a laugh. He injured himself while showing the men how not to ride a horse before they set off on their journey to commemorate the 130th anniversary of the Battle of Little Bighorn.

Planning for the trip started two years ago. Keller and the others decided where they would camp and feed and water the horses. As they rode through North Dakota and Montana, people stopped to clap, gave the men food, and some even sang and danced for them.

"People were absolutely hospitable," Keller said. He took time off from his Nazareth engineering firm and the Nazareth Area School Board to make the trip. Taking one look at his John Wayne-influenced basement, it's clear Keller made the right vacation decision.

"I started doing this with my son," Keller said of visiting the West and the battlefield. "We like going to Montana. I love the West, and I love John Wayne."

His son didn't make the trip with him this year. Instead, Keller went with men with whom he's done re-enactments before.

"I never belonged to a fraternity," Keller said. "This is like a fraternity. These guys are my brothers."

Keller was the youngest on the trip, and he said the men started to get bored riding for three weeks. He said they tried to imagine what it was like to be a soldier at that time, but when that didn't work, they thought of other things to pass the time.

"One day we sang show tunes," Keller said.

But when they got to the battlefield it was worth the trip, he said. The men were allowed to ride their horses onto the battlefield, which is very rare, Keller said.

"It's like going into the White House and being told it's OK to go into the Oval Office," he said.

Ken Woody, chief of interpretation for the National Park Service of the Little Bighorn Battlefield, said men come every year to be a part of re-enactments near the battlefield, but it's rare for them to ride 440 miles on horseback to do it.

"They all shook my hand as they went by," Woody said. "It was pretty neat."

Woody said visiting the battlefield is a significant experience for many people.

"It just touches people's emotions. It's hard to explain why," he said.

For Keller, it was about being in the place where a great military leader died.

Custer was a "brilliant strategist (who) just screwed up one time," Keller said.

Close to 5,000 people participated in the re-enactment or visited the park this year, said Dorothy Stenerson of the Hardin Area Chamber of Commerce and Agriculture. She said the re-enactments don't take place on the battlefield.