Far as the Eye Can See by Robert Bausch

led the train across the river and we swung to the right and started our journey west to Fort Wallace. I had the river on my right.
    I picked a man named General Cooney to ride with me. He was not a Swede, as it turned out, but most of the others was. Cooney was much older than me—probably in his forties. A great, drooping Confederate hat on his head shadowed his face and especially his eyes. He had a full head of dull brown hair that hung down both sides of his face, and a dark brown mustache under his nose. He was not as tall as Big Tree, but that part of his body above the waist seemed elongated and way too big for the short, bowed appendages he called legs. Riding a horse was painful to him. He complained a lot about his tailbone and he clutched the reins in one hand and held fast to the saddle horn with the other. He had a musket over his shoulder and wore a pistol on a belt around his waist.
    He was proud of the way he could shoot his pistol. He’d been with Braxton Bragg in Tennessee, then Joe Johnston; commanded a infantry brigade. For most of the war he’d been on foot. “I guess now I’m cavalry,” he said.
    “You a general?”
    “Not really. A brevetted brigadier general.”
    “Ain’t that a general?”
    “Only for a while,” he said. “When the war’s over, you go back to being a captain. But folks are kind enough to keep calling you ‘General.’ ”
    We rode along quietly for a while. It was a windy morning, but it come mostly from out of the east, so we had it at our backs. I don’t mind wind if it ain’t cold. This was pleasant and felt like it helped us along. The wagons squeaked and groaned, the horses and oxen rattled their bridles and clip-clopped along the flat ground like they was cobblestone streets, and the leather of my saddle creaked with every step.
    To be twenty-nine years old and leading a entire wagon train, including a former Confederate general, made me more proud than I thought possible. I don’t think I ever felt stronger in the big West. I resolved to let General Cooney do most of the talking and I would remain as quiet as I could until we got where we was going. One commands respect by their silent leadership is what I always say. And I intended to earn respect.
    But events conspired against me.
    The ground next to the river got to be marshy and too soft for horses, much less wagons. We had to veer south for what I hoped would be just a little while, until we could find solid ground. The marshland stretched a long way and it was almost dark by the time I figured we could turn the wagons back west. But now there was a different problem. The ground started rising, and the trees seemed to grow denser. We had the marsh on our right, and the angle of it seemed to bend more and more south, and further from the river.
    General Cooney said, “There’s no trail? Are you looking for a trail?”
    “We just have to stay west,” I said.
    He looked over his right shoulder at the sun. “We seem to be going away from the river.”
    “Right. We can’t take the wagons through that.” I pointed at the green, waterlogged marsh.
    He started to say something, but he stopped. His eyes fixed on something ahead of us. “Indians,” he said. He fairly gulped out the word. I turned and seen a party of braves on horses coming toward us. I halted the train and set there watching them. It was about twenty braves. Women and children walked behind them. There were lodgepoles strapped to mules and they even had a wagon with them. I wondered where they got the wagon.
    “What do we do?” General Cooney said.
    “I believe we’ll just wait a bit. But go back and tell each driver to be ready to put the wagons in a circle. Tell them to circle to the left, away from the marsh.” As I said this, I noticed the Indians was not really moving along with that wagon. It was stuck and they had been trying to get it out when we come on them. I watched as they finally managed to get it moving and now they