husband who did appear to be fierce fond of his wife himself) I was happy to let things roll on as they did for it made my life a sight easier altogether.
But I knew this could not go on for it was too good to be true by 1/2.
What could be wrong with her you ask Sir? More than you might think altogether for it came to be the strangest thing I did ever hear. You see not long after Tom begun to spark with her the poor girl fell down with the cholera that betimes does besiege a camp or town & in her sickness is how her secret was discovered.
Now the other women at Ft. Leavenworth (the officer’s wives even for she did help them birth their babbies & sew them up after so they did not tear easy the next time or so it was said round the Ft.) well the women of the camp did be fierce fond of the Mexican Gal & when she took ill with the cholera they nursed her & it being the cholera they minded to bath the poor girleen & what do you think they found? Forgive Me Sir but didn’t they find she was no darling girl at all but a fellow a proper born man like yourself or myself with the prick & balls of any bull you might see in a field?
Well there is some strange things in the world Sir & I am telling you I did look upon some of them but this? Surely it was stranger to me because my brother was sweet on her but I tell you she did make for a fine woman & though I sensed there was something off about her well this is the last thing I did reckon. I do not even think I had it in me to imagine it at all but there you are. God has wrought this mad world & all in it so He must have good reason for the things he does. I am no priest or scholar & so I do not question it. She was a kind girl after all & May She Sit With God Who Made Her.
But let me tell you Sir news of this did not take a long day to reach every ear in Leavenworth & so a fierce wild scandal was born in the camp & perhaps showing His mercy our Lord took her to Him later that night sparing the shame & banishment that was surely coming to her.
Now a fellow could ask did the women tending to her refuse her care that might of saved her once her secret was discovered? For as bad as the cholera was that spring it was worse other times before & there is now medicine for it I am told. If I remember rightly she was the only one to die that time at Leavenworth though many fell ill & were cast to the hells of puking fluxing sickness.
But a part of me also did wonder was it not a mercy her passing for maybe in the comfort of Heaven the Mexican Gal could not see how her loving husband did rise up from the depths of his wild mortification at the ragging & joking of his pals & one evening some days later did step out the livestock gates of the Ft. & into the long spring prairie grass for to put a Colt Navy to his head & spread his brains all over Kansas.
I can tell you them I Company boys took it hard & decided it must be a broken heart he died of for he took the ragging well like a man should do it being only fair in the circumstances that your pals might have a laugh at such a thing. But to all who would listen they would say that shame did not come into it. It was grief spurred him to take the life that God once gave him & not the shame of wedding a Molly & not knowing it. Them I Company boys told us it was his love for that Mexican Gal no matter what hung tween her legs that sent him away in the head so that he put a bullet in it May God Rest Him. For love can drive a man to all sorts Sir it can.
Of course I did not know the New Jersey Corporal himself & came to know him more