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THE 2ND TIME WE MET THAT MAN (& HIS WIFE) ON ROUTE TO LEAVENWORTH

WELL BEFORE YOU GIVE YOURSELF OVER TO FITS OF fine humour at the very notion of two veteran Bills such as ourselves volunteering for any D___ thing in the Army (as if we would not know better!) you may well note that even in the Army there comes a time when stepping forward is better for a body than stepping back. And this was 1 such time though a fellow could argue it was the wrong thing to do knowing what would come next for us.

But sure only God could of known what was to follow that we would land here in the vast nowhere of a Valley where only bloody murder & lonely death waits for white men & God did stay shtum about it as the Dutchy boys say. Honestly a man might wonder what God gets on with all the days just watching over us but doing nothing to warn us from harm that He must surely know is coming? It can drive a man wild wondering on the things that lead a man to where he is come. It could make you a lunatic altogether recalling the notions that seemed grand at the time but were as far from grand as they could be.

Anyway it did suit us at the time to bid our leave to the Depot in Columbus & ship West this being our plan from the beginning. The 18th were in need of men & we were ready to roar Good Riddance! to that depot & its barking sergeants & parade drill & its pig fit vittles & calisthenics. I do not need tell you that in all them weeks of training to be soldiers we never fired 1 single musketball & nor did any other recruit. As you can see it would not be long til we would learn how remiss were our masters in leaving this ignorant scumtide of men with no means to fight or to die fighting at the very least. After all the Army is paying them as soldiers so that you might get to thinking the Army would instruct them in how to load & shoot like soldiers. But you know well Sir that would be too sensible by far for the Army. No word of a lie that Depot was more in the way of a workhouse than a place where a man might learn the first thing about proper soldiering.

Tom & myself knew already more than any man needed about parade drill & we were lucky enough to know even more us about musketry so out of there we did get & onto a troop train bound for Ft. Leavenworth in Kansas.

The less said of the journey the better for the air inside the train cars was as cold as a coffin & every inch of that train was stuffed full of men in every posture of ill repose with each car choked with tobacco smoke & steam & engine ash that coated the innards of a man’s nose like a whore powdering herself from the inside out no matter how tight we tried to shut them windows.

Tom & myself & a gentle Ohio boy some years younger in age to us did stay drunk for the duration on homestilled whiskey we bought at whistle stops & arrived in Kansas in no fit state to fight off so much as a head cold never mind your red savages but sure by then they were mostly peacified round Ft. Leavenworth anyway. But little did that matter for every other man on the train was drunk as well & there was a fine lot of fighting on the journey between some Dutch boys over bad cards & the way certain words be pronounced in their language. I am sad to write that one well juiced soldier God Keep Him did fall to his death trying to piss from between cars & more than one man ended that journey in the Leavenworth Guardhouse. The Provost squad on that train had its work cut out & well for them the b______.

But never mind because as is the way of things in the Army well when we did arrive what did we do but set up waiting there. It was cool the boots I tell you for most of that bitter flat Kansas winter.

Now I may as well say here (for it be of some importance to my story) that on that journey we met for a 2nd time the Sutler Mr. Kinney whose fate we now know but could never imagine then.

You see we never once returned to his Stores at the Depot though we did purchase the odd bobbin here & there by giving our money to other Bills for to get it so as to avoid his evil eye & ill will after rumbling his & Sgt. Nevin’s ruse. And though we never saw him on the train we came across him at a whistle stop somewhere West of Indiana outside the hired car (1 in front of the caboose) which he shared with his wife & all his goods & wares & which was guarded by 4 sentries with sidearms & Springfields.

We would bide time by strolling up & down the platform at whistle stops looking for a fellow with a bottle & some boiled eggs to sell as there did be more than 1 such lad at each junction. This was the 3 of us myself & Tom & the Ohio boy who had a fine way about him which endeared him to many. He was a kind & harmless thing who in the end did get a bottle stuck in his neck in a hog ranch outside Ft. Riley so I later heard tell & I always wondered who could of done such a thing. This country is chock full of terrible violent men. But that is by the by for as we did amble that snowy Indiana platform one of the days we came upon that dirty nuck of a Sutler there in his gleaming beaver coat & you will not believe it but he smiled when he saw us.

“You might of bought a 2nd cleaning kit after all boys the way you are looking now,” says he & I smiled back at him but the brother did not.

“The coal ash does get in even with the windees closed,” says I tipping my kepi to him but he only winked his eye & said no more turning to one of the soldiers minding him for a match for his cigar.

His fat wife gave us the onceover for a mere tick & then turned away with her hands tucked into a fox fur muff. For the like of us soldier filth did be of no interest to her but for what her bent Sutler husband could cull from us in coin. God Forgive Me for we know now what did befall the woman Lord Have Mercy On Her but that is how I felt. It is how I still feel. For I will tell you she had a black cruel heart bedded down under the fine fat tits of her & well what happened in the end she might of had it coming some would say.

But I only say this now after knowing her later & after that time on the wind roughed platform in Indiana we saw no more of them on the train. Nor did we see them that winter in Leavenworth & did not see that Sutler & his wife again until Ft. Caldwell in the Nebraska Territory when we set out from there on our journey to this place we call the Powder River Valley.

It is of no bearing on my testament at all but did you know Sir that this Valley is called Absaraka by the Indians who once lived here but lost these sweet lands to the terrible Savage Sioux? Absaraka means Home of the Crow. That is the tribe of Indians not the bird & that tribe might be fine allies in our fight with Red Cloud but they have no stomach for it at the moment. We do not see much of them.

I tell you it would make you laugh thinking on how the Crow got whipped by the Savage Sioux & run out rightly to the bad lands of dry grass & little game & now here are we the US Army trying to run them Sioux off just the same. It would crease you it would the joke of it. The 18th is made up nearly 1/2 of Irishmen & every Mick among us is doing to them Sioux what them Sioux did to the Crow & what the English (God Curse Them!) done to poor old Ireland. To hell or Connacht for the poor Indians only now it is us playing the b_______ Cromwell’s men. It is enough to make you laugh.

I did say it before & I will say it again but it is a fierce queer f_______ world we do live in.