Buffalo Soldier by Tanya Landman

Author:Tanya Landman [Landman, Tanya]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
ISBN: 9781406354966
Publisher: Walker Books
Published: 2014-03-20T04:00:00+00:00

24.

When the weather warmed and the Indian trouble started up again, it come as a welcome distraction. We was able to get out in the field, away from that fort and leave General Michaels and his men behind.

Now, which particular tribe was causing the trouble or why they was doing it I didn’t know and I didn’t care. As far as I was concerned they was all savages: it was in their nature – they just couldn’t stop themselves. Word come in of attacks here, attacks there, ranches burned, women violated, children stolen. Seemed the whole of the plains was in uproar. The marks them chiefs made on them pieces of paper didn’t count for nothing. They was all liars. Cheats. Thieves. Wasn’t none of them to be trusted.

That whole summer them Indians kept us real busy. We lost sixteen men, one after the other in a dozen different fights. In between, there were the long days and weeks of boredom when we had to find our own ways and means of amusing ourselves. Sometimes Reuben would take a stick and stir up a pair of ants’ nests. He’d get the red ones fighting the black. We’d all be laying money on which side was gonna win.

Heck, we’d lay money on anything: whose horse would cast a shoe first; whose britches was gonna give out next; how long I could last without needing to relieve myself. The parlous state of my bowels been something of a joke in Company W ever since I gone running off the parade ground.

Towards the fall we was posted back to the same fort as General Michaels. There was a bunch of new recruits waiting for us there who’d come from out east so Company W was back to full strength. Mrs Smith had herself a new baby girl and Tiberius had grown some. Made me smile to see how tender that boy was with his baby sister. He’d carry her around like she was a doll, lift her up onto the back of Mighty Spotted Warrior, hold her there because she was too small to sit up by herself.

The days had been roasting hot, but then there come a sudden change. For a time the air was deathly still, hanging so heavy you could hardly breathe. Then a cold wind starts blowing from the east and big angry clouds gather on the horizon. It was plain to see one hell of a storm was on its way. I was off duty, so I figured I’d go talk to Abe because he didn’t care for thunder and lightning no more than I did.

I cross the parade ground but when I get to them stables I see there’s a white man in there giving his horse a rub-down. A stranger. Wearing a coat made out of buffalo hide and looking like he been in the saddle for weeks on end, he’s one of those frontiersmen who’s seen everything there is to see under the sun and don’t nothing surprise or scare him.

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