I've started number three in the Buffalo Soldier series. The working title is Incident at Cactus Junction. Following is chapter one. Reader comments are welcome.
1.
“I told you that cinch wasn’t tight
enough,” Ben Carter said to the corporal who was struggling to hold a reluctant
mule still while he put the bag of provisions across its back. The corporal, George Toussaint, Ben’s second
in command of the detachment, wasn’t amused.
“It seemed tight ‘nuff back at the fort;
musta worked loose during the trip. You
wanta give me a hand, or you just gone stand there and criticize?”
Ben walked over and picked up a small bag,
handing it to the corporal.
“Make sure it’s good and tight this time,”
he said. “It’s a day’s ride to Cactus
Junction, but if we have to keep stopping and picking up stuff your mule drops,
we’ll be another week getting there.”
“Yes, First Sergeant,” Toussaint said,
smiling wryly. “I swear, ever since they
done promoted you, Ben Carter, you been gettin’ bossier ever day.”
Ben looked down at the left sleeve of his
blue uniform jacket. The little diamond
sitting in the valley of the three stripes seemed strange. He’d been promoted just before his troop
commander informed him of their current mission.
“I’m still the same as I always was,” he
said. “You’ll be putting on an extra
stripe pretty soon yourself, so you got no call to be ragging on me.”
“Ain’t raggin’ you; just pointin’ out the
truth. You one bossy man, you know
that?”
They both laughed. Ben hadn’t gotten along with Toussaint when
they first met, but over time, they had become friends. He trusted the tall, dark-skinned man; had on
more than one occasion trusted him with his life. Their banter was merely a part of their
friendship.
The rest of the detachment waited for them
atop the slight rise. Ben had ordered
them to stand fast; no sense spooking the poor mule further. It had shied when a sidewinder had crossed
its path, throwing its load around; and was just beginning to calm down as
Toussaint alternated between knotting the rope around its middle and rubbing it
behind the ears. The man had a way with
animals.
“You just keep that danged mule under
control,” Ben said. “Folks in Cactus
Junction will be expecting us, and the colonel won’t like it if we show up
late.”
Cactus Junction was a little town in the
foothills of the plateau that the border town of El Paso was on, at the Mexican
border. The residents, mostly ranchers
with spreads on the arid plains, had sent a request to the cavalry at Fort
Davis for assistance to deal with a band of rustlers that had been raiding some
of the more remote ranches. The Ninth
Cavalry was the closest army unit that had troops available, so Ben and his
detachment were dispatched to provide security to the town. The colonel felt that a small gang of thieves;
and the request for aid had said that there was only about ten men in the gang;
would be no trouble for Ben and his men.
After Toussaint had the load secured, he
and Ben remounted their horses and joined the rest.
Ben had been in command of this small
special detachment ever since he’d been dispatched to take charge when the
white lieutenant and the sergeant in charge had fallen ill while they were on
patrol to locate a marauding band of Comanche warriors in Sandy Gulch. He’d had a rocky start at first, but during
the encounter with Scarred Nose and his warriors, he’d proven himself and they’d
grown as close as a group of men could.
They trusted his judgment and followed his commands without hesitation,
and he’d learned to trust them.
“Hey, George, you done got that mule to
cooperate?” Hezekiah Layton said with a laugh as they rode up.
Despite Ben’s best efforts, Layton still
managed to have something wrong with his uniform, just as he had when they
first met. Now, his tunic was partially
drooping over his belt.
“Hezekiah,” he said. “Why can’t you ever
keep your uniform on right? Tuck that
shirt in.”
Layton’s dark brown face flushed with
embarrassment as he hastily tucked the tunic into his trousers. It still looked rumpled, but Ben thought it
was the best he could expect.
“Hell, Hezekiah,” Toussaint said. “You one to be talkin’, you can’t even put yo
clothes on right less’n you got help.”
The men laughed; good natured banter that
was the mainstay of their time on patrol.
Layton wasn’t the sharpest dresser in the detachment, but he was
reliable in a fight.
They all were, Ben thought. There was Malachi Davis; just turned twenty,
he was the youngest; a shy kid from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, he had a tendency
to stutter, but in a fire fight, he was a crack shot. Lucas Hall, the oldest in the group, had been
a riverboat gambler before the war, working in the Creole gambling houses in
New Orleans until he’d stabbed a man in an argument over cards, and had joined
the cavalry to stay out of jail. Marcus
Scott, a corporal like Toussaint, had been a grocery store stock clerk in
Shreveport. Nat Tatum had worked gulf
shrimp boats. Charles Buckley had worked
on a ranch near Fort Worth, Texas.
Samuel Hightower had been born on a ranch in New Mexico; he and his
mother had been captured by Apaches and taken to the badlands of West Texas.
Tom Holman came from a family that had been owned by a German brewer who
operated a brewery near Austin.
Journeyman Kellum, the only northerner in the detachment, was originally
from Delaware. He’d come south after the
war because he’d heard that a man could get rich there.
Each of them had a different story, but in
many ways, were much the same; rootless after the Civil War, and shut out of
society in the north as well as the former rebel states, they’d joined the
army, seeing it as the only way a black man could hold his head up with pride –
not to mention get a regular salary – they were out here on the western
frontier, making it a safe place for people to live and prosper.
Ben got them into formation, taking the
lead himself, with Toussaint just behind him, and gave the signal to move out
at a canter. Cactus Junction had
problems, and it was up to them to sort them out.
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