I will say that even as early as that night on the plain that bucko knew the ill that would come to us all in the end.
And maybe I am something like that 1/2 breed bucko too because though it did all seem fine & calm to the eye that prairie eve round the whore wagon’s campfire I thought to myself, “No good will come of this.” I cannot say why the feeling came on me & I cannot claim foreknowledge of later events the ones which sent you here to us Sir but that is how I felt.
I made that muleskinner one to watch I tell you & only a day later who did pay a visit to our bivouac at Mad Woman’s Creek (where we stopped for several days more while the wagon wheels were retreaded) but that buck whore tender himself. He came up behind me silent as the plague as I staked out our mounts for grazing nearly scaring the very piss from me when I turned to see him standing there like something cut from a tombstone.
Now I do not be an easy sort to get the jump on the War having done me some service there making me start to every crackle of branch or scuff of boot & nor do I shy from any other man though betimes I know when my hand needs be folded like any Bill with his wits about him. I know when to fight & I know when to flicker but this fellow well he put the skin of my back to crawling he did.
I swallowed before speaking so he would not hear the fear in my voice. “You are not to be among the horses by the Colonel’s orders,” says I.
At this the boy did show a smile his teeth very white in his gob against the tanned hide of his skin. He wore a muleskinner’s set of clothes & could pass for a Mex surely with the long plait of black hair that fell from his black stovepipe hat though he spoke like any American fellow you might pass in the road but slow & more carefully as if his mind did gander a peek at each word before they passed his lips. Again I did say to myself, “Watch this boy he is no more a common muleteer than you are.”
After some moments of silence says he, “You can tell your brother he ain’t to be among the whores anymore. When we gets where we going then he can pay up for a poke like any other soldier. Them is orders too.” He shown his white teeth in a smile again & though the fellow did be no older than me there appeared something ancient in it like it was 1000 years since any gentle feeling was in that smile.
I cast a look over my shoulder at the camp. The boys from my Company were there fixing up supper or gathering buffalo chips for a fire & they were but 50 yds. away though it did seem much further. I swallowed again & said to the b______, “You are giving orders to serving soldiers now are you?”
“Boss’s orders not mine,” says he.
“And who is the boss when he is at home?” I let my eyes drop for a second to the knife on his belt. 1 second I tell you but he caught it & again gave that grin with no warmth at all in it. The knife at his belt was bigger than Tom’s D Bar a fair cutlass it was & I could nearly smell the blood of past murders on it.
“You know rightly who is the Boss & who is the sonofabitch.” He set a hand on the butt of that knife.
I did know it but would not let on.
Says I, “My brother does not take kindly to being drove about by any old bucko walking into camp with a songbook full of orders. I would reckon on that if I was you.”
“It aint any old bucko doing the ordering. So you just tell him we are obliged for him hauling up the wagon when it got away but he aint to be buzzing about the whores til we all get where we going. You will tell him that if you are smart.”
Something in how he spoke made me think this was the most words he used at one time in a long while & that he was not much used to