one wagon & a grass cutting machine of the like I never seen before & there was the contract timber men & their tools & oxen & drivers & sawyers. There was more than 200 civilians as well as near 500 head of cattle & their tenders if you can imagine for it feels fierce strange that less than a year ago we had all that beef while now we are set to starve for the winter but that is the nature of this forsaken place. The Sioux & Cheyanne have fed mightily on them cattle.
But it was a powerful procession that left Caldwell that day to come up here & build a Ft. going by the name of Phil Kearny after Philip Kearny a fine Irishman I am sure who was killed in the War at Chantilly though it does be something of an insult to his memory to name this cursed place after him. A powerful parade of man & beast all the same it was setting off to tunes from the 25 man regimental band that Carrington did insist on having with him the band being so instrumental (Begging your pardon!) in fighting Indians. Though they can play I will give them that & many of them are grand fellows & welcome company round a fire of an evening. 1 or 2 of them are even fighting men would you believe it?
Tom & myself were horse soldiers by then as I said before. As such we rode rear guard in the main eating the dust of 1000 men wagons & cattle but what of it? It was riding not marching at least & the odd time when someone somewhere did spy an Indian or did think he spied one we were sent forward to ride guard on the herd or the wagons in front of them & that was fine.
On the day Tom laid eyes upon his girl we were ordered forward riding at a slow walk at either wheel of a wagon loaded with crates & croaker sacks & clanking bottles & bumping barrels. But more inticing to us was to ride behind the next wagon back which was loaded to the rail with Indian & 1/2 breed women. They were goods of a different sort you might say though it is sad to say it.
Says I to Tom as we did clop a lazy pace behind them wagons, “There is nothing wrong with being a mounted soldier if you do not mind the dust Tom I tell you.”
“There is worse things in the world than riding picket on wagons full of whiskey one end & doxies the other,” he said back to me.
“Far worse brother,” says I.
But you know well Sir as an Officer & Veteran Fighting Man that in the War a wagonload of painted dolls privately owned would not of been given the privilege of a mounted guard such as us to protect it but there is so much different in this new Army of ours most of it not any good at all.
The driver of that queer vessel full of Indian doxies well that driver did look to my eye part Indian himself the other part something else & in truth he did not look to be any kind of proper muleteer at all but a whore skinner more like. We came to know him later as the boy to speak Indian to the whores & collect coin off them & keep their furrows running straight but as well to knock about the heads of soldier Bills who might chance a poke with no money in their purses or who got too full of lip when the Sutler’s wife lowered herself to come calling to her husband’s hog ranch off the post.
As you may of guessed Sir it was the very same blackleg Sutler Kinney from Columbus who was the owner of the doxie wagon we rode guard upon. Yes that same rum swindler who would sell a fool of a raw Depot recruit 2 cleaning kits when 1 does be plenty in connivance with the swindling training Sgts. of the Depot but more in truth with the connivance of the Generals & Politicians & other high hats. For to have a Sutler’s contract at a training Depot in a town where goods can be sold for a fair price outside the gates & thus drive down your own you must be the brother of some mere State Senator or Party Boss.