Wild Oats

The parade ground out front was for the public, but the stables at the rear of Fort Abraham Lincoln belonged to the damned.It was five in the morning on the seventeenth of May, and the fog rolling off the gray, sluggish waters of the Missouri River didn’t stop at the wooden slatted doors. It crept inside through every split in the pine planks, thick and greasy, smelling of stagnant river mud, wet straw, and the sharp, ammonia sting of horse urine. Out on the main garrison grass, the world was a dull, echoing blur—the distant, rhythmic thud-thud-thud of infantry boots marching into formation, the clatter of tin mess plates, and the occasional high, lonely note of a brass horn warming up in the damp chill. But back here, under the low-timbered rafters, there was no grand pageantry. There was only darkness, the heavy clinking of iron halter chains, and the terrified, rhythmic breathing of thirty-eight solid black horses.I spat a dark glob of tobacco juice into the stained straw by my boots and yanked the leather cinch strap of my McClellan saddle until the stirrup iron groaned and my knuckles went white. My old bay mount from the southern campaigns was gone, turned over to the depot; under Captain Keogh’s strict, aristocratic orders, Company I rode nothing but the blacks."Step over, you stubborn son of a bitch," I growled, my voice rough and raspy from the damp fog.The stallion flared its nostrils, blowing a hot, wet blast of steam against my neck. It showed the whites of its eyes, crowding its massive, muscled flank hard against the rough pine wall of the stall, trying to pin my left shoulder against the timber. I didn't argue with the beast. I jammed my elbow straight into its ribs, right where the skin was thin behind the shoulder, forcing the great black animal back a loose six inches."You'll learn the rules of the road today, or I’ll let the farrier use your black hide for an apron," I muttered, locking the buckle into place. "We've got a thousand miles of clay ahead of us, and I’m not losing my layout because you want to act like a green-broke colt.""He smells the river, Frank," a low voice called out from the dark alleyway behind me.Farrier Vincent Charley stepped into the yellow radius of my hanging tallow lantern. His face was a mask of gray fatigue, his eyes bloodshot, an iron shoeing hammer tucked neatly into the loop of his heavy leather apron. He looked like he’d been awake since midnight, his sleeves rolled up to the elbows to reveal thick, hair-mapped forearms crisscrossed with pale white scars from flying forge sparks and defensive horse kicks."Half these black mounts are barely green-broke, Sergeant Varden," Charley said, wiping a soot-stained sleeve across his sweating forehead. "The recruits from the Cincinnati depot can't even get the iron bits between their teeth this morning. Private McGinnis nearly had his thumb taken clean off by that big gelding in stall four ten minutes ago. The boy’s sitting on a grain sack right now, crying like a schoolgirl.""If McGinnis loses a thumb, he can use his teeth to pull his paper cartridges," I said, stepping out of the stall and letting the heavy wooden latch drop with a definitive, metallic clack. "I don't have time to nurse-maid depot replacements, Vincent. Check the near hind shoe on that stallion before we clear the doorway. The slate out on the trail is going to be sharper than a razor once the sun cooks the moisture out of the clay, and I’m not having half my troop walking their mounts by noon.""Aye, First Sergeant," Charley grunted, already dropping heavily to his knees in the wet straw to lift the heavy black hoof. "But if the horses founder before we hit the mouth of the Powder River, don't go blaming the blacksmith."I walked down the dark center aisle of the stable, my heavy riding boots sucking hard in the muck of the dirt floor. The "Wild Oats" troop didn't look like the flawless, pristine line General Custer wanted for the newspapers back east. In the flickering, greasy glare of the hanging candles, the men looked like corpses dug out of a fresh trench. They were exhausted before the first mile was even struck.Near the grain bins, Sergeants John Hiley and Michael Sharrow had cornered two raw privates—Thomas Connors and Edward Driscoll—shoving their white leather cross-belts into their chests and cursing with a low, rhythmic monotony that only twenty-year NCOs could master."Grip that carbine sling, Connors!" Sharrow barked, his face inches from the recruit's pale nose, his breath smelling of stale coffee and chicory. "You drop that Springfield in the mud today, and I’ll make you carry a green pine log behind the supply wagons until your legs turn to jelly. Do you take my meaning, boy?"Connors could only nod, his lips trembling, his hands shaking so violently he could barely thread the leather strap through his belt loops.Suddenly, the heavy stable doors at the far end groaned open on their iron hinges, letting in a blinding sheet of gray river fog and a tall, elegant figure wrapped tightly in a dark blue officer's cape.Captain Myles Keogh stepped into the gloom, his riding whip tapping against his highly polished leather boots with a steady, maddening slap... slap... slap. He was an Irishman who had fought for the Pope’s army in Italy before coming out to the American plains, and he carried himself with a reckless, aristocratic swagger that made the men hate him in the barracks and follow him blindly in the field. His eyes were bright, bloodshot from the previous night’s whiskey at the officers' club, but his jaw was set like a vice."First Sergeant Varden," Keogh called out, his Irish accent smooth but carrying a hard, aristocratic edge that cut straight through the shouting in the stalls."Sir," I said, coming to a straight-backed halt and bringing my right hand to the brim of my forage cap."Are the blacks ready to move? The General’s thoroughbred is already on the parade ground. He wants the regiment in columns of fours before the sun clears the timber line.""We’re cinching the last of the ammunition boxes now, Captain," I replied, keeping my voice flat. "The mounts are skittish. They don't like the fog, and they don't like the sound of the infantry band out on the grass."Keogh let out a short, dry laugh, reaching out a white-gloved hand to pat the neck of his own famous stallion, Comanche, who stood quietly in the premium front stall. "They’ll like the plains even less, Frank. The Arikara scouts say the Lakota have been burning the old grass along the Rosebud to starve our stock. The air out west already smells like charcoal." He turned his dark eyes toward the open stable doors, where the gray fog seemed to swallow the world whole. "Let’s get them out into the light. Move them out, Sergeant.""Company I! Form on your mounts!" I bellowed, the roar bouncing off the timber rafters like a black-powder blast. "Lead out by the left flank! Move!"The darkness of the stable erupted into a chaotic, screaming din of iron shoes striking stone, swearing veterans, and the heavy, terrified snorting of thirty-eight black stallions as they were dragged by their halters out into the freezing gray soup of the morning.As I swung my right leg over the dark leather of my McClellan saddle, settling into the damp seat, the first brassy, metallic notes of "Garryowen" came drifting over the roofs from the main garrison gate. It was supposed to be a song of victory, a grand send-off for the finest regiment on the frontier. But as I looked down the long line at the forty men of Company I—their faces pale as lard beneath their caps, their black horses shifting nervously in the cold mire, their sky-blue trousers already stained with stable filth—the music didn't feel like a parade.It felt like a heavy stone pressing down on the back of my neck, driving us—man and beast—straight down into the cold, waiting earth.