Sioux Slave

Sioux Slave Read Free

Book: Sioux Slave Read Free
Author: Georgina Gentry
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been unlucky enough to end up stationed at Fort Rice, Dakota Territory? This was no place for a Southern aristocrat! Swearing under his breath, Randolph Erikson shifted his weight in his saddle as the patrol rode across the bleak prairie.
    â€œBecause it was either volunteer to join the Union Army or die in that hellhole of a Yankee prison camp,” he drawled aloud as he took off his hat and brushed his blond hair back.
    â€œHuh? Lieutenant, did you say somethin’?” The rednecked lout riding next to him glanced over, startled.
    â€œI’m not a lieutenant anymore, soldier,” Rand drawled. “The damn Yankees wouldn’t let any of us Confederate officers keep our rank.”
    The other soldier guffawed good-naturedly and spat tobacco juice that dribbled down his chin and onto his saddle. “Now you’ve learned how poor white trash lives, I reckon, with not even one slave to polish your boots. If I’d had all that, I’d have fought to keep it, too. I’ll bet you was a purty sight in your fancy uniform at all the balls and soirées.”
    Rand didn’t answer, concentrating instead on the others of the patrol riding ahead of them across the endless prairie. “Reckon I’ve changed a little since being in Point Lookout. After that miserable trip here and all these months at Fort Rice, reckon we had it good in that Yankee prison and didn’t know it.”
    The other nodded in understanding. “Fort ‘Lice’ would be a better name.”
    Seven months in Dakota Territory. Maybe he had changed a little from the arrogant, spoiled plantation owner’s son he was. Rand blinked pale blue eyes against the afternoon sun, not wanting to think about his miserable existence since he’d been captured.
    Instead, he remembered olden, golden days before the war on his parent’s Kentucky estate. With money and social position, Randolph Erikson’s biggest worry was whether the fox hunt might be called off because of rain or if he might have to choose between a ball at the capitol or an elegant dinner at the nearby Carstairs’ estate.
    The other sneered. “What did a young dandy like you do in the war?”
    Rand flexed his wide shoulders. “I was a liaison for the colonel, carrying messages. I reckon I never did much real fighting.”
    The other spat tobacco juice again and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “I knowed you was quality the first time I laid eyes on you at the prison: hatin’ to have to mix with poor redneck trash, swaggerin’ when you walked. God, I don’t even know what I was doin’ in this war. I never had me no money to own no slaves.”
    â€œOh, we own slaves, I don’t even know how many,” Rand shrugged, “but you know Kentucky was a border state, didn’t go with the Confederacy, and Lincoln only freed the slaves in the rebelling states.”
    The other looked at him, scratched his mustache. “Then what the hell was you doin’ fightin’ anyways?”
    â€œI reckon my answer is about as foolish as yours,” Rand admitted as they rode through the late afternoon. “I thought it would be a grand adventure.”
    The other man snorted with laughter. “Reckon you found out different, didn’t you?”
    â€œYes, I surely did.” Rand cursed softly under his breath, remembering how he had expected this war to be a lark, an adventure to amuse the ladies with over drinks on Randolph Hall’s veranda. He had never thought any further than how dashing he would look in the gray uniform. Father had tried to talk him out of it, but Mother, with her deep Southern sympathies, and his fiancee, Lenore Carstairs, had secretly encouraged him. After all, it was going to be a short war that the Confederates would win out of sheer gallantry. Lenore had said he looked so handsome in the uniform, and she gave a ball in his honor.
    Instead the great adventure

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