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the Oregon trail towards California. It was supposed to be weeks and weeks of riding and then turn left at some place I forget, otherwise you would find yourself in Oregon. It was supposed to be and it was. Lots of dilapidated Indians in Missouri as we rode through, they were even riding the rivers, moving about a great deal anyhows, some of them travelling to get their government annuities maybe, even as far as up Canada way. Sad, dirty-looking people. And plenty of New Englanders heading west, maybe a few Scandinavians, but mostly Americans, upping sticks and off they’d go. You kept away from the Mormons heading into Utah, you couldn’t trust those mad boys. They had the devil’s rep. If you fight them you got to kill them, our sergeant said, but I don’t know if he ever did. Then you had the desert that wasn’t really a desert. Lots of bones of pilgrims’ cattle though, and now and then along the way, a piano thrown out from a wagon, or a cupboard, as the oxen weakened at their task. Drought was the worst thing there. It was amighty queer thing to see a black piano in the half-true desert.
Hey, John Cole, what in the name of tarnation that piano doing there in the dust?
Must be looking for a saloon, he says.
Man, we were laughing. The sergeant gave us his black look, but the major ignored us, he was probably thinking about that desert. Where’s the water going to come from in a few days, when the water-bottles are empty? We were hoping he had a map, something marked there, we hoped he had. People had been coming through there for a few years now, they said the trail was widening all the time, a mile-wide dirty mark on the prairie, every time army came through they noticed. Half of our company were crusty older men, we wondered they could still ride, some of them. It’s hard on the bollocks, and the lower back, God damn it. But how else were they to live? You rode or you died. It was always a dangerous route. One of the young men like us, that was the aforementioned Watchorn, the last year had seen wagons spread out in their hundreds, and he saw a great herd of buffalo stampede right across them, hundreds of wagoners trampled and killed. That time we were passing, he reckoned the buffalo were keeping away, he didn’t know why. They didn’t like this class of humans maybe. Never seemed to mind the Indians much. White boys were noisy smelly sonsabitches maybe, Watchorn opined. And all their whiny, caterwauling, snot-nosed kids going out to California, or up to Oregon. But all the same, said Trooper Watchorn, yep, I do wants a parcel of kids myself someday. He reckoned he would like fourteen, like his ma. He was a Catholic man, rare in America outside theIrish, but then, he was Irish, or his pa had been, in the long ago. So he said. Watchorn had a fine face, a beautiful face, he looked like a president on a coin, but he was awful damn small, maybe five foot and one measly inch, on a horse it made no odds, he just rode on a short stirrup, that worked well. He was an exceptionally agreeable man, yes, indeed.
We were out there, on the longer grass then, nearer the mountains, just passing along. We were going into someplace to get our close orders. The major knew already though, John Cole said, because he had heard him talking in the night. As for night, we slept on the ground just as we were, our uniforms stinking, the pickets guarding the horses, the horses muttering all through the small hours, talking to God as John Cole said. He couldn’t make that lingo out. It was going to be a week of riding yet, us three hundred souls, and now our scouts came in, two Shawnee lads with their sign language as good as words, and told us they’d seen buffalo seven miles to the north-east, so we were going to choose a party tomorrow to go north and try and kill a few. If I was not the best shot of three hundred I was a liar. I don’t know why, I never shot a gun till training. You got a beady eye, said the drill sergeant. I could