The Frontiersman by William W. Johnstone

Author:William W. Johnstone
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kensington
Published: 2017-01-10T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seventeen

For the next couple of weeks, Breckinridge traveled with the surveying party. He spent most of his time with Lieutenant Mallory, who seemed to enjoy trying to teach him about surveying and mapmaking. Most of what Mallory said didn’t make much sense to Breck, but he listened carefully and picked up a few things. He discovered that the best maps were the ones he drew inside his own head. Once he had been to a place, walked the ground, studied the landmarks, he knew somehow that he would never forget it.

Breckinridge also went on some scouting and hunting trips with Tom Lang. The guide remained gruff and not overly friendly, but Breck told himself that was just Tom’s way. And whether he liked Breck or not, Lang expressed his admiration when the young man made a difficult rifle shot and brought down an antelope a couple of hundred yards away.

“We’ll have antelope steaks tonight!” Lang said eagerly as the echoes of Breckinridge’s shot rolled away across the plains. Then he frowned a little and added, “I hope there ain’t nobody out there to hear that shot. We’re gettin’ into Osage country.”

“Are they hostile?” Breckinridge asked.

“Any Injun can be hostile if he takes it into his head to be. Best way is to figure that until one of ’em proves he’s friendly, you better assume that he ain’t.”

While they were skinning and butchering the antelope, Breckinridge said, “Have you seen any Indian sign?”

“Not yet.” Lang gazed off into the distance. “But it’s only a matter o’ time now before we run across ’em. They got bad redskins back where you come from?”

Breckinridge thought about his encounter with the Chickasaw renegades in the Blue Ridge foothills.

“A few,” he replied.

That evening while they were sitting by the campfire after supper, Breckinridge mentioned Tom Lang’s comments about the Osage to Lietenant Mallory.

“Tom seems to think you’re gonna be in for a fight sooner or later,” Breckinridge added.

Mallory sighed and nodded.

“I know, and I’m afraid he’s right. The Indians may not be educated as we think of the word, but they’re smart enough to look at the situation and see what’s happening. They’ve been living in certain ways for hundreds of years, and that’s about to change. Once civilization has swept all the way across the country from the Atlantic to the Pacific, there won’t be room for them anymore. They’ll have to live like white men . . . or not live at all.”

“That don’t hardly seem fair.”

“The politicians in Washington call it Manifest Destiny, and fairness has nothing to do with it.”

Breckinridge gazed off into the night and said, “As big as the country is, seems like there ought to be room here and there for folks like that to live the way they’ve always lived.”

“You’re an enlightened thinker, Breckinridge. Or at least you don’t think like a politician.”

Breckinridge snorted and replied, “I reckon that’s one of the best things anybody ever said about me.”

Mallory lowered his voice and said, “To be honest, I have a few misgivings myself about what we’re doing.

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