Page 32 of Head Room

He squinted toward the officer astride the rangy horse alongside the company.

This Major Brand wasn’t part of the regiment.Just rode up sudden a day before they reached Fort Leavenworth.Caught Ransom Fletcher’s attention right off.

He’d heard blue belly soldiers saying this Yankee major knew this godforsaken country better than most.Had spent time out here before the war.Had requested a transfer back here.

Had to wonder about a man’s judgment who’d come back to this country, having seen it once.

It didn’t make Ransom any easier that the Yankee major’s eyes were intent on that smoky spot on the horizon.

“Aw, c’mon, it’s better’n stayin’ in that prison camp.And it ain’t any colder.”

Peter’s cheerful response to the others’ complaints drew half-hearted razzing from the grumblers marching to either side of him, which faded when Peter’s cough cut across their words.

From the row behind the rawboned youth, Ransom Fletcher gauged his nephew’s cough.It hadn’t come as often these past two weeks.And not as harsh or as long as it had been back at Camp Douglas.Surely it had improved from that racking sound that seemed to pull at his own insides as hard as it had Peter’s.As Thomas’ once had.

“Company, halt!”

Though the order came from their captain, Ransom’s attention snapped back to Major Brand.That officer exchanged a few words with the captain, then pivoted his ugly horse and cantered him toward the rear.When the sergeant instructed them to maintain march order, but at-ease, Ransom turned from a consideration of the smoke barely visible on the horizon — it was smoke, wasn’t it?— to follow the major’s progress back along the train.

Ransom wasn’t much surprised to see the major sending cavalry riders, who’d been alongside the supply wagons, swinging out wide to either side of the line of march.It’s what he’d have done.

When they resumed marching west, with the cavalry as flankers, the major rode past his previous spot near Ransom, to the head of the column.

That’s something else Ransom would have done.

Captain Reigert, another Yankee like all the officers, had command of the company.Major Brand — brevet rank of Colonel in the war, Ransom’d heard — had stayed out of the way since they’d left Fort Leavenworth, but now he asserted his rank.

The activity started some marchers to looking around for the cause, and they spotted it soon enough.

A sort of hum of comments went through the line, followed by a silence broken only by the occasional, awkward attempt at joking by those most afraid and most afraid of showing it.

One of the cavalry troops galloped back toward them, still a quarter mile from what could now be seen as the remnants of a building.Log walls fallen in on themselves smoked, but could be seen to have once formed a building.A log corral had been smashed.

The horse-mounted soldier exchanged some words with Major Brand, then rode back to his cavalry brethren.Without hearing the words, Ransom knew the major had ordered the cavalry troops to fan out away from the ranch to see if danger still lurked beyond it.

Brand had a few words with Reigert and their company pulled out of the line of march, some watching the other companies move on, most looking at the smoking ruins they moved toward.

No order was called, but as the line of men reached a short, rutted path that led from the road to the building, they slowed to a stop.Silently regarding the scene.

“We...we should look for survivors, shouldn’t we, Major?”asked Captain Reigert.

“There won’t be any.But your men should look.If we can find the dead, we’ll bury them.These men might as well know what they’re up against.”

Reigert didn’t bother to translate that into an order.Every man of them had listened.At his nod, the men fell out, slowly moving across the ground of what looked to have once been a way station.

“My God, what sort of fiends would do this?”a bluebelly sergeant said.

“Fiends who had it done to them.”

Ransom looked up to Major Brand, the sun behind him and his hat’s brim shadowing his face.

“Back in November, Colorado cavalry overran a village of Cheyenne and Arapaho at Sand Creek.Heard from some who were there.Most killed were women and children.Mutilated.”

The way Brand said it, he could’ve been he heard from cavalry or from Indians.

A sound pulled Ransom’s attention around.

Luther, who’d been there at Fredericksburg and Gettysburg, was puking his hardtack by the smoking skeleton of a shed.Ransom looked from him to Peter, pale and shaky.