in his body & very soul to the prospect of a bashing combat or dusty punch up & it is all the more to relish if you are ordered to do it.
In our blood lust I was not thinking of them 2 civilian ox drivers flayed out & butchered in the grazing grass back by the Ft. nor did I think of the 3 boys who got theirs on the woodtrain 2 days before our return from Ft. Smith & nor did I know that them deaths was the start of many more to come or that I would soon loathe battle & its sister Death & see her skulking in every shadow & behind every tree & keeping the very dark of night as her own. I did not know I would come to live in fear & that it would make my hands shake & dreams of Death would drive me dry mouthed from my bed the same as it did at the end of the War. I did not know any of this then but I know it now & wish I had the forethought to imagine it back when we had the chance to flee from this place to Virginia City as once we planned. But the blood does heat up in a chase & truth be told I could not think of anything but killing an Indian or 2 that day.
So we rode with our shadows stretching longer in the grass beside us & soon a scout with us (his name is Beckworth I learnt later & he has a whole flock of Crow women as wives & claims to be a Chief of mighty standing among them Crows) well this Beckworth came riding back to tell us he found the trail took by the savages & 1 of the rustled oxen was laying dead upon it. He told us it appeared the other 9 or 10 oxen were still in stampede with the Indians driving them & that we could catch them but the Indians would be game for a tussle if we wanted one.
Our horses were pulled up around him as he said this their heads bobbing at the reins the chase hot in their horse blood too. Says he, “You can make chase or bow out now but the going is hard in the hills & you got a pack of chances for a ambush on you.”
Well Mad Capt. Brown did not like this one bit. “Bow out?” says he. “Beckworth what kind of c____ s_______ coward are you? Did I hear you say bow out? Did I hear him say that boys?”
Our loonie Q.M. who by rights should be back with his woodtrain & his cut logs looked to Tom when he said this knowing well what Tom would think.
“You did Sir,” says Tom & his words was clear in his mouth but by this time Brown was no longer listening. He was already turning his horse for them steeper hills after the oxen thieving savages.
“You may bow out yourself Beckworth,” says Brown as he lay his spurs into his mount the mount that Tom roped & broke to the gun for him back in Nebraska. “You are not obliged to do the work of the Army of the United States but these boys are.”
Though I could not see Capt. Brown’s face I knew he was smiling & myself & Tom & all the boys were smiling ourselves too as all of us put the spurs to our mounts & followed with cries of Hup Hup & Heea Heea.
Of course Beckworth joined us as well for far from bowed out did he want to be when there was a chance for the taking of a Sioux or Cheyanne scalp or 2 for his wives who being Crows do hate the Sioux far worse & fierce longer than us & after some 10 or 15 minutes of hard riding Beckworth pointed & shouted & we all caught sight of Mr. Lo & our oxen being drove up a steep trail some 300 yds. ahead.
“Time to take our oxen back boys,” says Brown waving his wide brim sloucher hat like a cattle man might & we again lay in the spurs & the eyeballs of our horses went wide & their nostrils flaring with ears pegged back like they knew what lay ahead of them & were eager to join it.
So we lashed our mounts cross a wide meadow of wild hay to