Words Heard In Silence by T. Novan & Taylor Rickard

Author:T. Novan & Taylor Rickard [Novan, T. & Rickard, Taylor]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2012-06-01T16:00:00+00:00

He laid the tack on top of the woolens. "The leather they send us for the horses is no better. Sometimes it comes in green with mildew. Of the last three batches of saddles that came in, almost half had broken trees." He pointed to the obviously unusable saddles. "But the best is the boots. We got an entire shipment of cavalry boots made out of rawhide. Do you know what happens when a rawhide boot gets wet? Let me tell you. They shrink and turn rock hard. We had to cut four of our men out of these. They were desperate; they had no boots so they tried to use what we had. It was very unpleasant, to say the least."

Charlie walked over to his gun cabinet and withdrew two carbines and a pair of pistols. He walked back to the table and held one of the pistols between two fingers by the grips. He gave the pistol a brisk shake. The pistol rattled and a small metal pin fell out. It was the only thing holding the trigger in place. He laid the other pistol beside its mate and opened the breeches of the two carbines. Neither of them had firing pins. "Of course, it does make it difficult to engage the enemy when we have no weapons that will fire."

Charlie looked at his General. "Sir, I contend that if we are to engage the enemy this spring, we will have to be properly supplied. The only resources that have been of the consistent quality needed to properly supply this force have been the horses provided by Cavalry Services. General Wilson’s efforts to organize our mounts were clearly successful; why can we not have the same quality effort from the Quartermaster General’s office?"

Sheridan looked to McCauley. "What have you found, Angus? Is this typical of what our troops are getting?"

"I am afraid so, sir. No one has presented such a…… forceful case before, but we have consistent problems with our suppliers."

Sheridan thought for a while then turned back to Charlie. "Well, General, I believe that your personal plans will require that you make a visit to the capitol in the not too far distant future. I will prepare some dispatches for you to deliver and suggest you take your little demonstration with you. I am sure General Meigs will be fascinated. I have known the man for a long time and find him to be honorable and well intentioned. I cannot say the same for some of the men in his command. In the mean time, I will do what I can to see to it that you get better quality supplies in the future. McCauley, please make a note that every single batch of materials for General Redmond be manually inspected before it is shipped. In fact, see to it that everything we get from the Quartermaster General be inspected. And feel absolutely no compunction about sending back anything that is substandard. Am I clear?"

"Yes, sir." The look on McCauley’s face would have been humorous if the situation had been any less grave.

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