Brief description:
Major Phil Tyler hated war -- and Indian warfare was the worst of all.
CHAPTER I. NEW BATTLEFIELDS.
THE secretary to the governor of the State of Kansas smashed his heavy fist down upon the table. “Gentlemen,” he cried vehemently,“there’s blood all across Kansas! Even in the trying days when our fair state was known as ‘ bleeding Kansas,’ there was no such shedding of the blood ofinnocent victims! The Indians are on the war path. All summer and fall they have been murdering, pillaging. And the Cheyennes are the worst of the lot . . .
“Gentlemen,” he leaned forward earnestly, “ it must stop! Can't you see our poor citizens—your fellow men— stricken down beside the plow, their homesteads burned? Ranches destroyed—the screams of mothers and the wailing of little children.”
Silas Williams paused to regain his breath. He was a “stump” orator, and whenever he spoke on political matters, whether his listeners were one or a hundred, he was apt to speechify, making full use of the melodramatic, sentimental appeal that permeated the stage of the day.
The Army oflicers stared in astonishment and horror.
P. H. Sheridan, commanding general of the Military Division of the Missouri, sat at the head of the long table of unpainted boards. As the day was warm, he had thrown open his heavy coat of midnight blue broadcloth. Whenever he moved, the gold-plated buttons glinted in the late afternoon sunlight that poured through a small window beside him. The window was small because glass, like everything else in this barren country, was hard to obtain. His black felt hat, encircled by a cord of gold, and possessed of a wide brim, lay on the table beside his elbow. Behind him was his aide, leaning against the log wall.
Sheridan’s physical appearance gave the impression of bigness and solidity. His thick, powerful fingers thoughtfully caressed his long, dark mustache while his eyes glowed somberly upon the boyish face of General George Armstrong Custer, commanding the Seventh Cavalry. Custer sat farther along the table, at one side, wearing his usual plains uniform, the blouse of which was a double-breasted jacket of doeskin, fringed across the shoulders and sides and around the upper arms.
His fair hair hung to his shoulders.
Custer sat across from the speaker, Silas Williams. The governor’s secretary was dressed in the most advanced fashion of the day. His tight coat was checked with tiny brown and gray squares. Above his full, brown beard, which did not go quite low enough to hide his high collar and cravat, his piercing eyes were hot and angry as they turned from one general to the other.
At the foot of the table sat Major Phil Tyler, present at t.he conference
because he happened to be on Custer’s staff and had accompanied the general the ninety miles to Fort Hays from Bluff Creek. Bluff Creek was near Fort Dodge, on the Arkansas River, where the Seventh Cavalry, Custer’s command, was encamped after a summer’s unsuccessful chase of marauding Indians. Unlike Custer, Major Tyler was clad in the usual regulation blue uniform. His folded hands on the table were encased with gray gauntlets.
It was evident that Tyler was the youngest man in the room, several years younger than Custer, who himself was a major general at the almost unheard of age of twenty-nine. The army was full of young generals, colonels, and majors, brevet ranks of the Civil War. With the vast shrinkage of that service after Appomattox Court House, generals had found themselves commanding regiments, colonels headed battalions, and majors looked after' mere companies, with brevet captains as their lieutenants. Unusual for a day when practically all men wore a beard, or at least a generous mustache, Major Tyler was clean-shaven. His dark hair was carefully parted above his lean face, in which his eyes, contrasting with the tan of his skin, were like a pair of sapphires, hard, clear, and deep blue.
Tyler had not been long with the Seventh Cavalry, having been recently transferred from a station in the East. joining the regiment at Bluff Creek, he had seen little of Indians save the regiment’s own scouts. He had listened intently to Mr. Williams’s theatrical speech of a moment before. Although his eyes had remained hard and cold, Tyler had been afraid that his face had betrayed the sickish feeling in his breast. He had glanced furtively at Custer, Sheridan, and the aide, but apparently they had
noticed nothing wrong with him.
As he leveled his gaze once more upon Williams’s flushed, arrogant, and
not too intelligent face, Tyler thought bitterly that it was just such politicians as he who caused the wars and the bloodshed.-—War! Tyler shivered inside his uniform. Even now, three years after the peace of Appomattox, he sometimes awakened at night in a bath of perspiration, his ears ringing with the awful cries of the dying on the fields of Antietam, Gettysburg, and in the burning forests of the Wilderness. As long as he lived, the cries of those men and the sight of their blood would live with him.
It was a rotten thing, young Major Tyler reflected bitterly, to haul a kid out of West Point and thrust him so soon into the roaring inferno of arms, bayonets, and blood. Four years of it had ruined his life. Major Tyler knew that beyond doubt. Since then he had looked upon the world with a hard, cold, blue eye, which hid the weariness and the burned out embers of feeling inside him.
He had been an innocent, callow youth when he had picked soldiering for a profession and gone to West Point. How ignorant he had been of war’s frightful suffering and terror! Then he had seen only the uniforms and the flags, and had heard only the martial music. After the war, thoroughly disillusioned, quite changed even to himself, and tired of life, he had nevertheless kept on in the army. It was a living, and there would be no more wars. In his efforts to become human again, to be like the rest of the men who had gone to the war and returned, seeming ly unaffected, he had tried many things. He had buried himself in work, with the result that his leisure hours were only more horrible. He had tried to...
CHAPTER I. NEW BATTLEFIELDS.
THE secretary to the governor of the State of Kansas smashed his heavy fist down upon the table. “Gentlemen,” he cried vehemently,“there’s blood all across Kansas! Even in the trying days when our fair state was known as ‘ bleeding Kansas,’ there was no such shedding of the blood ofinnocent victims! The Indians are on the war path. All summer and fall they have been murdering, pillaging. And the Cheyennes are the worst of the lot . . .
“Gentlemen,” he leaned forward earnestly, “ it must stop! Can't you see our poor citizens—your fellow men— stricken down beside the plow, their homesteads burned? Ranches destroyed—the screams of mothers and the wailing of little children.”
Silas Williams paused to regain his breath. He was a “stump” orator, and whenever he spoke on political matters, whether his listeners were one or a hundred, he was apt to speechify, making full use of the melodramatic, sentimental appeal that permeated the stage of the day.
The Army oflicers stared in astonishment and horror.
P. H. Sheridan, commanding general of the Military Division of the Missouri, sat at the head of the long table of unpainted boards. As the day was warm, he had thrown open his heavy coat of midnight blue broadcloth. Whenever he moved, the gold-plated buttons glinted in the late afternoon sunlight that poured through a small window beside him. The window was small because glass, like everything else in this barren country, was hard to obtain. His black felt hat, encircled by a cord of gold, and possessed of a wide brim, lay on the table beside his elbow. Behind him was his aide, leaning against the log wall.
Sheridan’s physical appearance gave the impression of bigness and solidity. His thick, powerful fingers thoughtfully caressed his long, dark mustache while his eyes glowed somberly upon the boyish face of General George Armstrong Custer, commanding the Seventh Cavalry. Custer sat farther along the table, at one side, wearing his usual plains uniform, the blouse of which was a double-breasted jacket of doeskin, fringed across the shoulders and sides and around the upper arms.
His fair hair hung to his shoulders.
Custer sat across from the speaker, Silas Williams. The governor’s secretary was dressed in the most advanced fashion of the day. His tight coat was checked with tiny brown and gray squares. Above his full, brown beard, which did not go quite low enough to hide his high collar and cravat, his piercing eyes were hot and angry as they turned from one general to the other.
At the foot of the table sat Major Phil Tyler, present at t.he conference
because he happened to be on Custer’s staff and had accompanied the general the ninety miles to Fort Hays from Bluff Creek. Bluff Creek was near Fort Dodge, on the Arkansas River, where the Seventh Cavalry, Custer’s command, was encamped after a summer’s unsuccessful chase of marauding Indians. Unlike Custer, Major Tyler was clad in the usual regulation blue uniform. His folded hands on the table were encased with gray gauntlets.
It was evident that Tyler was the youngest man in the room, several years younger than Custer, who himself was a major general at the almost unheard of age of twenty-nine. The army was full of young generals, colonels, and majors, brevet ranks of the Civil War. With the vast shrinkage of that service after Appomattox Court House, generals had found themselves commanding regiments, colonels headed battalions, and majors looked after' mere companies, with brevet captains as their lieutenants. Unusual for a day when practically all men wore a beard, or at least a generous mustache, Major Tyler was clean-shaven. His dark hair was carefully parted above his lean face, in which his eyes, contrasting with the tan of his skin, were like a pair of sapphires, hard, clear, and deep blue.
Tyler had not been long with the Seventh Cavalry, having been recently transferred from a station in the East. joining the regiment at Bluff Creek, he had seen little of Indians save the regiment’s own scouts. He had listened intently to Mr. Williams’s theatrical speech of a moment before. Although his eyes had remained hard and cold, Tyler had been afraid that his face had betrayed the sickish feeling in his breast. He had glanced furtively at Custer, Sheridan, and the aide, but apparently they had
noticed nothing wrong with him.
As he leveled his gaze once more upon Williams’s flushed, arrogant, and
not too intelligent face, Tyler thought bitterly that it was just such politicians as he who caused the wars and the bloodshed.-—War! Tyler shivered inside his uniform. Even now, three years after the peace of Appomattox, he sometimes awakened at night in a bath of perspiration, his ears ringing with the awful cries of the dying on the fields of Antietam, Gettysburg, and in the burning forests of the Wilderness. As long as he lived, the cries of those men and the sight of their blood would live with him.
It was a rotten thing, young Major Tyler reflected bitterly, to haul a kid out of West Point and thrust him so soon into the roaring inferno of arms, bayonets, and blood. Four years of it had ruined his life. Major Tyler knew that beyond doubt. Since then he had looked upon the world with a hard, cold, blue eye, which hid the weariness and the burned out embers of feeling inside him.
He had been an innocent, callow youth when he had picked soldiering for a profession and gone to West Point. How ignorant he had been of war’s frightful suffering and terror! Then he had seen only the uniforms and the flags, and had heard only the martial music. After the war, thoroughly disillusioned, quite changed even to himself, and tired of life, he had nevertheless kept on in the army. It was a living, and there would be no more wars. In his efforts to become human again, to be like the rest of the men who had gone to the war and returned, seeming ly unaffected, he had tried many things. He had buried himself in work, with the result that his leisure hours were only more horrible. He had tried to...
Publication
Argosy Weekly Magazine, 1933-02-25