This place was on the edge of everything we called civilization. West of here Indians hostile to our presence still roamed about, though we kept a sharp eye out for them on our trail,too. The fort seemed to be on constant alert and sentries watched around the clock for signs of an Indian attack. This was not a training exercise for the soldiers. Just the year before a company of men stationed at Fort Phil Kearney died in a battle when they rode to provide escort for a wood-chopping crew. Earlier their commander William Fetterman had said he could defeat the whole Indian nation with eighty men. Well, that is how many he led and that is how many died on the day known as the Fetterman Massacre. Then in August, just five months before we got here in Fort Ransom, Red Cloud's warriors again attacked a wood crew out of Fort Kearney. This time they and their escort of soldiers fared better when they arranged their wagon boxes to fight behind. New and fast-firing breech loading rifles evened out the odds, too, and they drove the Indians away. Now they are calling it the Wagon Box Fight.
More than a few of the teamsters were always on the lookout for a little fun, and when they mixed with the soldiers and blended in a little whiskey they grew raucous. A game of chance “Who is the best shot?” started up and almost ended with a dead man to bury. Tiring of shooting at targets set off a ways on the prairie and loosening up with more spirits someone suggested a more daring variation on the game, drawing straws to see who got to set a tin cup filled with whiskey on his head with the winner trying to shoot it off. The first few rounds turned out all right because no one could hit the cup, but the last time with a teamster doing the shooting he shot a little low and grazed the trooper's scalp causing blood to pour down his face. Neither group of men was without discipline; when the fort commander caught wind of the escapade he ordered the military men into the confines of the fort, and the wagon boss said if it did not stop he would withhold wages. So things settled down for the night.
At daybreak on the morning we started back such a commotion you never did hear as when those old bullwhackers' started cracking their whips and cussing at the beasts to get rolling. A grizzled old drover in St. Cloud taught me how to pop a whip that sounded like a gunshot over the oxen's ears, and with my skill and stock of swear words growing every day I added to the clamor. I thought of my mother back in Illinois who would have washed my mouth out with laundry soap if she could have caught me.
Men were bitching about their rheumatiz acting up and kept eyeing the sky and those thick, gray clouds that unrolled over us like a heavy rug. Even with the pulling of empty wagons ox teams travel slowly, so we had made only about twelve miles by mid-afternoon when the first snowflakes flurried down which made me wonder about the augury of aching joints. It did not take long for a snow storm to develop, it grew rapidly, and even with some remaining daylight on this short day of December, the fury of the wind and the growing drifts made us stop … here!
With little else to do, I arranged a nest for myself inside the windbreak of a wagon box. Lying there my thoughts wandered with no focus except that I kept thinking about finishing this journey and finding warm shelter and food. The oxen should be all right and would not suffer any more than the teamsters. So I lay all the night, shivering, stomach growling, and wishing to hell I was somewhere else besides in this predicament where the wind grew stronger each hour and howled like a banshee clawing fingernails into our wagon canvas.
Finally the blackness of the long night ended when the sky blanched to pale white, but the morning brought no rays of sunlight stabbing through the clouds or the blowing snow. Peering out from the wagon box was to be stung in the face with a hundred snowflakes, and the wind seemed to blow harder with each hour. Long drifts of snow formed in the lee of the wagons, and I began to worry about the oxen. Attempts to wander among the wagons and mingle with the other men in their shelters brought no relief from my distress; we all suffered from the bone-chilling wind and stayed alone in our blanketwrapped misery. My mind began to wander, lost on a battlefield amid the wreckage of armies littering the ground and hearing the heartrending screams of the wounded. I wanted to find solace in some quiet place where food and drink filled my belly.
By what measure could I judge the passing of time? The sun never revealed itself, I possessed no watch, my stomach persisted with its demands to be fed. Was time standing still? Only with intense darkness setting in would I know that this day had passed, and another long night loomed ahead. Mind games occupied me some; I tried recalling some of recent newspaper stories. Something called the Homestead Act, just think, free land! . . . If I ever get a couple of dollars ahead, I am going to buy one of those new Stetson hats . . . Jefferson Davis got himself caught, he and his crowd started the war that caused men like me to shoot other men . . . They say Negroes can now become citizens. Some of those poor devils I saw down south surely needed help. One from Georgia is with us on this train, a good man, I wonder how he, the southerner, is doing all wrapped up in his bedroll? Drowsiness finally overcame me. I slept some . . . but something made me jump with a start, I heard a baby crying in the distance, a mournful cry that sent chills down my spine. I tensed and wondered where it was, why is its mother not seeing to its need? Then, benumbed, I again grew aware of the howling wind.
