To Dream Anew Read Free

complain that they were heading out on another wild goose chase, and just as the first thought didn’t ring true, Zane didn’t feel this to be an accurate statement either.
    Sweat dampened his skin and ran a stream down his face. He could feel it slip beneath his collar, leaving him sticky and uncomfortable. The temperatures were near the one hundred mark. Funny how that at the first of the month they had marched in snow. Most of it hadn’t lasted much longer than it had taken to fall from the sky and hit the ground, but in places the white powder had accumulated. Zane tried hard to remember how he’d hunkered down in his wool coat chilled to the bone, but it was no use. The heat of late June now threatened to bake him alive.
    He could see in the faces of his comrades that he wasn’t the only one to bear the harsh elements in discomfort. The dust and sweat made striping streaks on the faces of the soldiers, almost as if they had painted their faces Indian style, for war. Especially those in the infantry. They marched long hours in the dust. Day after day they walked in a cloud of their own making, then struggled at the end of the day to scrape the earth from their bodies.
    Zane knew their misery. Infantry life had never really agreed with him. Now, however, as a newly appointed lieutenant, he was at least given the choice of riding if he wanted. Some officers rode, others did not. Zane was known to be a good hand with a horse—his background on the Diamond V preceded his transfer into Colonel Gibbon’s forces. The ranch was a good provider for army horseflesh, and his superiors seemed bent on keeping Zane happy, lest the supply be cut off.
    The horses were acting strange, and that, coupled with the awful stench, made everyone uneasy. They would probably come up on a buffalo jump or some other place where a mass butchering had taken place. The smell of death always made the horses nervous. Zane tried to calm his mount, but the animal continued side-stepping, as if to avoid what was ahead.
    Without warning, a pale-faced rider came flying over the ridge. His horse was lathered from the strain, and the man appeared to barely keep his seat on the animal. Zane’s horse reared slightly and whinnied loudly as the rider came to a stop not far from where Colonel Gibbon sat atop his own mount.
    The man, really no more than a boy, leaned over the side of his horse and lost the contents of his stomach. The action took everyone by surprise. Without looking up, the man pointed behind him and shook his head. The words seemed stuck in his throat.
    “What is it? What did you find?” Gibbon asked impatiently.
    “They’re dead, sir. Custer. His men. Every last soldier—dead.”

CHAPTER 2
    A ND SO THEY WERE.
    Zane could only stare in dumbfounded silence at the bleached and bloated bodies of men who were once soldiers. Where was God when Custer and his men met this fate?
    Scenes from the Baker Massacre, where the slaughter of the Blackfoot tribe took place some six years earlier, came back to haunt him. Where was God then?
    Zane could scarcely draw a breath. The scene was unreal, too horrible to even allow the images to settle in his mind. Burial duties were all that was left them now. There was no great battle in which to prove their bravery or manhood. Bravery this day was shown by the ability to witness the massacre at the Little Big Horn and not give in to insanity.
    “Sir, how could this have happened?” the raspy voice of one of his newer recruits asked. The man paused in his construction of a litter for the wounded as Zane stepped closer.
    Zane looked to the man and shook his head. “I suppose it was bound to happen.”
    “Beggin’ the lieutenant’s pardon,” the man began, “but how can you say that? The U.S. Army should never have been caught by surprise like this. How could they have been ambushed without warning?”
    Zane heard the disbelief and horror in the man’s voice. He felt a certain degree of it himself. If