Fort Clark, where we stopped for a week of rest, barely merited being called a fort, yet it seemed like Paris, France, to our saddle-sore company as we’d had naught but the stars overhead for a roof and the hard ground beneath our bones for a bed for weeks. The one characteristic that distinguished the ramshackle collection of weather-beat jacales and half-burned barracks was, unlike any other fort you’d ever ride into anywhere in the entire country, this one had no flag flapping above it.
The flagpole was nothing but a black stump poking up out of a weedy parade ground for it had been burned down by the Union commander when the Rebs overtook the fort in the first year of the war. Though that Yankee commander surrendered without a fight, he was bound that the Confederate Stars and Bars flag would never fly above Fort Clark. So he set the flagpole on fire. As well as the barracks and whatever else he could torch before clearing off.
Beyond putting the fires out, the Rebs didn’t do much with the fort and withdrew entirely a year later to march north as the Secesh intended to capture the Colorado gold mines and California ports for the Confederacy. These conquerors of the American West made it as far as Glorieta Pass, New Mexico, which is where their fancy plan went to smash.
It is not certain whether they were defeated on account of a commander who was a rum soak or because no one out West wanted them there to begin with. Either way, the Rebs vacated that country, headed south, back to the swamps and marshes that are more hospitable to their species, and Fort Clark sat deserted through the rest of the war. Union forces had barely moved back in by the time we arrived. The barracks were still charred and Old Glory was not yet flying.
The unburned parts of the near-empty barracks were already set aside for whites. The second lieutenant who met us flapped a weary hand in the direction of a moderately scorched building and allowed as how we could bunk there. It had been constructed of cedar stakes set vertically the way the Mexicans did to build their jacales. Daylight shone between the upright stakes as the long-ago builders had set them when they were green and they’d dried up and shrunk away from whatever chinking might once have separated what was indoors from what was out.
After batting away years of spiderwebs, we entered and encountered a lavish menagerie of critters. Swallows flew from one end of the large space to the other, escaping out through the large gaps in all four walls. The mice squeaked at us, protesting our intrusion. A loud rattling from a dark corner sent Vikers bolting from the place.
Allbright planted himself in the gloom. As he studied the interior, I was taken by the way the stripes of light peeking through the stakes glinted through the cloud of dust that whirled about him like handfuls of gold dust were being tossed his way. The light outlined his broad shoulders and shot out in rays, making a halo around his wide-brimmed hat. “Any of you men,” he said, “who’d rather camp outside are free to do so. Mulberry Springs is a quarter of a mile north, northwest. The water there is clear and abundant. That is all.”
As soon as I had Bunny groomed, and turned loose in the fort corral, I made for Mulberry Springs. It was a vision of paradise. The spring water bubbling up was clear as glass and cool as a slab of polished marble. It flowed for miles along a limestone bed. As far as I could see, the stream was overhung by thick stands of oak and pecan trees, making the blessed waterway into a tunnel of green cutting through that dry land.
I wasted no time in seeking out the most isolated, most private spot I could find for I hungered for one thing more than food or air at that moment: a bath. I followed the creek for so long that I couldn’t hear even the memory of a trooper hawking up trail dust. That was where I bivouacked. The cool water against my naked skin was almost more bliss than I could stand. The feel of it touching all the soft, round places brought tears to my eyes. I hugged myself the way I would a friend who’d been gone too long. One I missed more than I ever thought I would.
I lathered up with the bar of soap that had been handed out before we left Jefferson Barracks. Having done no shaving and very little bathing with my ration, I had near a full bar left and sudsed up aplenty. My drawers and britches, socks and kerchiefs, were next. Though I’d never have believed such a thing would happen in this hot, dry land, I was shivering by the time I stepped out and dressed quickly.
The sun set and dark came on fast. While I was spreading my wash out to dry, a voice came to me from some distance away, echoing down along that green tunnel. It was Allbright, and, wonder of wonders, the man was singing exactly the tune I had been earlier.
Oh, I’m going now to find her
For my heart is full of woe
And we’ll sing the songs together
That we sang so long ago
We’ll play the banjo gaily
And we’ll sing our sorrows o’er
And the yellow Rose of Texas
shall be mine forever more.
In a moment of silly, girlish dreaming, I lost all sense that his words were being sung or that they had ever been uttered before. That “sweetest girl of color” was me and I would be his forever more.
I made my way to his encampment, and stopped there in the shadows beyond the globe of light cast by his fire. I watched as he arranged his blanket by the fire. I noticed how his movements seemed lightened, now that he was freed from the weight of command, and realized that the Sergeant, too, was burdened by the necessity of putting on an act. He settled himself on the blanket next to a pile of pecans he had collected and started in cracking those plump nuts between a couple of rocks. Even now, all these years later, if I want to calm my spirit, this is the memory I call up. Him cracking and eating those nuts and humming all the while about his yellow rose.
The happiness must of deafened us both, otherwise the intruders never would of snuck up the way they did without either of us hearing the twig that must of snapped, the frogs that had stopped croaking, or the owl that hooted a warning about the invaders. But we didn’t and, all of an instant, they were there, five of them, strolling into the safe circle of the Sergeant’s campfire light.
One second I thought the intruders were Indians. The next, I was certain they were black men. A moment later, I knew them to be Mexican. Mostly, though, they were invaders who, sneaking up on the Sergeant in the dark, clearly meant him harm. I had not brought my carbine and the Sergeant’s was leaning up against a tree, out of reach.
Though I knew those black Mexican Indians would lay me out cold, I burst from the shadows and went for the rifle. The savages reacted to my jumping into their midst, then pulling a cocked rifle on them, with no more notice than they’d of given a tumblebug rolling a tidy dab of shit past their feet.
Their leader looked me up and down, gave a little grunt of dismissal, and said to the Sergeant, “I am John Horse. Are you hungry? We have antelope. Backstrap. The best part. Leave the nuts for the squirrels.”
He nodded at me, and added, “Your friend is also invited.” Then they all vanished back into the woods.