The good Sgt. Nevin was with us for much of the journey & he would catch us up in the Powder River country once we arrived here in Ft. Phil Kearny some time after. He did last but 3 months here in this Valley. 4 years of the Great Rebellion & scarce 3 months of this smaller one. But you know well Sir both kinds can kill you if your number comes up.
II
WESTERING
For West is where we all plan to go some day. It is where you go when the land gives out and the old-field pines encroach. It is where you go when you get the letter saying: Flee, all is discovered. It is where you go when you look down at the blade in your hand and the blood on it. It is where you go when you are told that you are a bubble on the tide of empire.
—ROBERT PENN WARREN,
ALL THE KING’S MEN
11
December 7, 1866—Fort Phil Kearny, Dakota Territory
DECEMBER COLD. SLEET AND RAIN AND THAWING MUD. Daniel Kohn crosses Fort Phil Kearny’s parade ground. The flag lies heavy and limp against a towering flagpole. Rawson had woken Kohn. Told him the bastards were trying to steal their horses. Use them anyway. Like they belong to the ground-pounding, infantry sonsofbitches, he had said, Rawson forgetting he is just such an infantry soldier and no more than that himself; Rawson thinking perhaps that, like a pig among dogs, he has become a cavalryman. Still, Kohn is thankful for the kid calling the alarm.
The stables are dark and smell of freshly cut pine. The whole fort smells of pine sap, Kohn thinks. Go up like a powder keg, if you put a match to it.
“Get those saddles off our goddamn horses, Private,” Kohn says, turning to look for Rawson and finding him absent. Kohn forgives him this. Rawson has to bunk with these men most likely. Play cards, filch from them. He will not want enemies so soon into their stay.
The private halts, halfway to Molloy’s horse, a standard army saddle over his forearm. Another soldier stares at him in the gloom. Shavetails, Kohn notes. No roughness in them yet, just the lazy, hopeless stupidity that might drive a boy to join the regular army now that the war is over. He knows what they will say before they say it.
“We got orders to saddle all available. And these is available,” one of them says, his mate looking on, setting the saddle he lugs onto a rough barked rail, happy to do nothing until the conflict is resolved.
“Whose orders?”
“Cap’n Brown. The quartermaster. You got stink with the music, Corporal, speak to the organ grinder. We just monkeys here. No need to kick the poor goddamn monkeys.”
Fair enough, Kohn thinks. Not these boys’ fault. “Where will I find the quartermaster?”
“He’ll be taking his breakfast. You can talk to our first shirt, you want. He’s in barracks, putting his toes to the fire. He was sergeant of the guard and just in now.”
Kohn considers it. It is always easier dealing with another enlisted man. But a hungry one, just off picket, likely not aware of the order at all?
“I’d rather see the organ grinder, Bill,” Kohn says, calling the infantryman Bill, the name any private in the army will answer to, as if to show him there is no blame attached to his actions. “These are cavalry mounts and our own, personal horses, in need of a week’s rest easy. Not even the quartermaster can up and requisition the like of these.”
Kohn thinks this is true. He’s not certain. If Molloy were up and about there would be no question of it.
Private Bill shrugs. Not his problem. “Cap’n Brown ain’t gonna like it none, you innerupt his breakfast to tell him he got three less horses for the woodtrain guard.”
“It’s not a question of like or not like, Bill. They’re our horses.”
“You ain’t met the captain.”
Kohn finds the quartermaster tightening the saddle on his own mount in front of the log and daub quarters he shares with several other of the fort’s officers. Kohn notes that some of the quarters along the row are rough constructions of barked logs, earthen roofs and stovepipe chimneys, while others are clad with boards planed and washed white, roofed with wooden shingles. Must have rushed the construction as winter came on, Kohn thinks. He notes the headquarters barracks nearby, with its viewing platform and a fine, whitewashed