Jeremiah Springs

Previously:

The Traveler has tried his hand at The Pony Express and riding shotgun.

Chapter 12

I always marveled at how vast the country is. The west is a big empty place. A man has lots of time to think. Sometimes, I wished I was better at thinking. My daddy said to me, “Boy, no one will ever accuse you of being a thinker.”

But I did think about some things. Even an idiot does once in a while. I thought about the six years I rode in the cavalry with Captain Jeremiah Springs. Captain Springs had fought in the war. When that ended, it was all he knew how to do, so he went west and started fighting Indians. Indians were easier to fight, and he was good at it.

The Indians were in a fighting mood, now that the war was over. The Indians' opinion of the war was that white people went crazy and started killing each other. When they got tired, they stopped and rested. After they rested for a while, they would start up again. In the meantime, they would be too tired to fight, and they could be killed easily. That's why the Indians became more hostile.

I asked Captain Springs about the war one time, but he didn't want to talk about it. All he said was it was the worst time of his life. He never could figure out what it was about. I guessed the Indians were probably right.

One evening, after he had too much to drink, he told me that he rode with Grant and Sherman during the war. He said, “General Grant was a drunk, but it suited him. It kept him sane, so he was always easy to get along with.

“Sherman, on the other hand, was a teetotaler, but he had the disposition of a wild-eyed, mean drunk. When Sherman went through a town, it was like an Indian raid. He destroyed everything in his path.

“He had it in his head that Southern people should be made to suffer after the war was over, so he burned everything, and took the livestock.

“General Sherman was the meanest man who ever lived, and I expect to meet him in Hell someday. I imagine we will have a lot to talk about. Maybe Sherman can explain why he was so mean.”

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If ever a man was born to the army, it was Jeremiah Springs. He was a soldier through and through. He had the mindset that took to the endless, repetitive monotony that the army has an abundance of. I thought he was the finest man God ever put on earth.

“I won't have cowards in my division,” Captain Springs used to say. By cowards, he meant a man who would stop fighting just because he had one or two arrows in him. Captain Springs was tough but fair. That phrase gets thrown around a lot, but it fit Jeremiah. The soldiers that served under him loved him. The Indians feared him. They knew who he was and when they passed by, they gave wide berth.

In all the time, I rode with Captain Springs, we only fought in two battles and a few minor skirmishes. He had just the right mix of aggressiveness and caution. He kept the Indians at bay and his men safe. No easy task in the plains.

In my fourth year with the Captain, we were set upon by a band of Apache. I never took to the Apache. All Indians were bad, but I considered the Apache to be the worst. The Apache would pow-wow with you while the rest of their party was raiding a nearby farmhouse.

The Apache were fierce fighters. They could scream loud enough to turn your blood cold. I never knew a person could make such a racket. They would start screaming long before they attacked. It was a way to work themselves into a frenzy.

When they attacked, it was like the demons of Hell had been let loose. If it wasn't for Captain Springs urging us on, I believe half the division would have run away. They came at us like wild men, foaming at the mouth and biting when they got close enough.

If we hadn't fought back, I'm convinced they would have fought each other. You might say they fought like their lives depended on it. The only thing that made them stop was nightfall. Indians believed that if a man was killed at night, he couldn't find his way to The Great Spirit.

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The attack we faced happened before the Indians had rifles. Even so, they managed to kill thirteen of our men, and several more were wounded.

After the fight, Elijah Benson was walking around with an arrow in his eye. He seemed not to know it was there. We wrestled him to the ground and held him while the surgeon pulled the arrow out. The eye came with it. The doctor stepped on it with his booted foot, grinding it into the ground, and pulled the arrow out. He threw the arrow in the fire and buried the eye. He said it didn't seem right to throw it in the same fire as the arrow.

The doctor packed the eye socket with salt, but it was too late. Infection set in. Elijah developed a fever and chills. At night, he would sweat and say he was burning up. During the day, he would ask for a blanket and shiver from the chills.

Near the end, he hallucinated. He fought the battle over and over again. The battle would always end when he was hit by the arrow, and then it would start over again. I don't know why, but I counted the number of times he fought the Indians. Seventeen times he relived the battle before he died.

This was the west for Elijah Benson, a soldier with the Twelfth Calvary under the command of Captain Jeremiah Springs.

To be continued . . .