But to get your doxie wagon & wares latched onto Carrington’s 18th Infantry parade to the most faraway outpost in all Creation where you may charge very well what you f_____ like for anything from stockings to sourmash? Well it is said that you may be the brother to Christ the Lord himself but if you are not the brother to a Washington Senator at least well you will never sell your goods as a Sutler on a Western Army post. Holy Jesus & all His Disciples could not purchase you such a licence to print money but a brother or cousin in Congress could once his Party is in power. And you would think it would be enough for a man & his grasping bitch of a wife to have the sole licence to hock liquor & beer & tobacco to poor soldiers a fair million miles from his nearest rival at prices you would not charge a leper for a sup from your canteen. You would think it would be enough but not for him. Because I tell you Sir that filthy nuck did have the notion that alongside his peppermint sticks & breeches & bolts of cloth well what else would soldier Bills a million miles from home be in want of but a few whores on his off post hog ranch?
Mind you even Little White Chief Carrington (which is what the Indians call him) well even he might note a stew house within the walls of his blessed stockade & throw a conniption but outside of the Ft. belongs to nobody but the man or woman fool enough to brave the Indians without a wall of sharpened logs around them.
And so that b______ of a Sutler did transport his whore wagons in Carrington’s circus parade while we did mind them & the whiskey under orders from some Officer who along with every other man up the chain of command did be in that Sutler’s pocket. A blind eye here a blind eye there & a few bob in your purse for to see nothing & the Sutler’s Indian whores ride in the Col.’s parade with Uncle Sam’s horse soldiers to guard them from attack by their Indian brothers. I tell you it is a strange f______ world we live in all the same & I think my brother fits into it just grand for it is stranger he gets by the day since his eye caught a stray smile from that cutnose whore that is no word of a lie. And yet betimes I wonder am I the only one in the camp who notices it for all here are taken with a kind of madness a queer ticking strangeness that comes from living with the fear of death always on you.
BUT HOW DID HE meet her I did not tell you that did I? For we did hardly lay eyes on the whores at all mostly. They travelled the days under Murphy wagon canvas while our Company was most nights camped some distance away from them with our time upon stopping for bivouac much taken with picket duties & tending the horses.
Well it was a week or so into the march & a squad of us was detailed (yes proper detailed if you will believe it!) to ride guard on them wagons up along the East bank of the Platte River a worthless alkaline torrent that in spate as it is then in late May from a long & heavy winter in the mountains does rush like milk from a tipped churn. Even up front with the wagon we choked on dust from the troops & wagons before us & we wore kerchiefs over our faces against it like highway men & if our eyes were not so thick with dust 1 of us might of seen some yds. ahead of the doxie cart the sidewinding shape of a rattler crossing the trail between wagons at the feet of that cart’s lead mule.
Well I was a good way back & packing my pipe with tobacco when it happened so would not of seen the snake anyway but who would of thought a snake such a fool as to wind its way between the hoofs & wheels of 1000 odd beasts & wagons for it is said that snakes be fierce shy of any sound that comes as a drumbeat through the earth to them. Oh we are told stay clear of shadowy rocks or clumps