Sabers And... Snippet 11

The land of Not-Dakota was lovely.

A man could lose his soul just gazing at it.

The blue-gray of the distant mountains and odd black-green of the pine forests.

The seemingly endless waist-high grass... there must be an end, there's the mountains there after all.

It would seem a paradise if it weren't for the uncountable gulleys, streams and rivers.

Even if there was no water, there was still a steep walled eight to ten foot deep trench to cross.  Always just a bit too wide to jump.

Maybe if one was a farmer, this wouldn't matter.

But Major Beasley was moving troops and wagons.

The old hands grumbled about such things hiding entire tribes of murderous red-skins back before the treaty and the spookholes.

Then there was those giant long-horn buffalo...  You just wouldn't expect a bovine that large to be, well, sneaky.

You'd be minding your own business tending to getting a wagon over a ravine and suddenly there's fifty of the damnable things wandering right up to the pickets and being angry at human intrusion into their path.

The men were eating well, at least.

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