Dances With Wolves Read Free Page A

begin.
     
    four
     
    Day broke eagerly for Lieutenant Dunbar. He was already thinking about Fort Sedgewick as he blinked himself awake, gazing half-focused at the wooden slats of the wagon a couple of feet above his head. He was wondering about Captain Cargill and the men and the lay of the place and what his first patrol would be like and a thousand other things that ran excitedly through his head.
    This was the day he would finally reach his post, thus realizing a long-standing dream of serving on the frontier.
    He tossed aside his bedding and rolled out from underneath the wagon. Shivering in the early light, he pulled on his boots and stomped around impatiently.
    “Timmons,” he whispered, bending under the wagon.
    The smelly driver was sleeping deeply. The lieutenant nudged him with the toe of a boot.
    “Timmons.”
    “Yeah, what?” the driver blubbered, sitting up in alarm.
    “Let’s get going.”
     
    five
     
    Captain Cargill’s column had made progress, just under ten miles by early afternoon.
    A certain progress of the spirit had been made as well. The men were singing, proud songs from buoyed hearts, as they straggled across the prairie. The sounds of this lifted Captain Cargill’s spirits as much as anyone’s. The singing gave him a great resolve. The army could put him in front of a firing squad if it wanted, and he would still smoke his last cigarette with a smile. He’d made the right decision. No one could dissuade him of that.
    And as he tramped across the open grassland, he felt a long-lost satisfaction rushing back to him. The satisfaction of command. He was thinking like a commander again. He wished for a real march, one with a mounted column of troops.
    I’d have flankers out right now, he mused. I’d have them out a solid mile to the north and south.
    He actually looked to the south as the thought of flankers passed through his mind.
    Then Cargill turned away, never knowing that if flankers had been probing a mile south at that very moment, they would have found something.
    They would have discovered two travelers who had paused in their trek to poke around a burned-out wreck of a wagon lying in a shallow gully. One would carry a foul odor about him, and the other, a severely handsome young man, would be in uniform.
    But there were no flankers, so none of this was discovered.
    Captain Cargill’s column marched resolutely on, singing their way east toward Fort Hays.
    And after their brief pause, the young lieutenant and the teamster were back on their wagon, pressing west for For Sedgewick.

CHAPTER II
    one
     
    On the second day out Captain Cargill’s men shot a fat buffalo cow from a small herd of about a dozen and laid over a few hours to feast Indian-style on the delicious meat. The men insisted on roasting a slab of hump for their captain, and the commander’s eyes welled with joy as he sank in his remaining teeth and let the heavenly meat melt in his mouth.
    The luck of the column held, and around noon on the fourth day out they bumped into a large army surveying party. The major in charge could see the full story of their ordeal in the condition of Cargill’s men, and his sympathy was instant.
    With the loan of half a dozen horses and a wagon for the sick, Captain Cargill’s column made excellent time, arriving at Fort Hays four days later.
     
    two
     
    It happens sometimes that those things we fear the most turn out to harm us the least, and so it was for Captain Cargill. He was not arrested for abandoning Fort Sedgewick, far from it. His men, who a few days before were dangerously close to overthrowing him, told the story of their privations at Fort Sedgewick, and not a single soldier failed to single out Captain Cargill as a leader in whom they had complete confidence. To a man, they testified that, without Captain Cargill, none of them would have made it through.
    The army of the frontier, its resources and morale frayed to the point of breaking, listened to all this