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Chapter One

When I woke up, I realized that I was in an ambulance with three other men.

“Where are we going?” I questioned.

“Atlanta,” the man across from me answered.

“What are we going to Atlanta for?”

“Difficult cases,” he stated.

My arm was all bandaged up and I asked, “What is so difficult about taking a bullet out?”

“They couldn’t operate on us at the hospital so the major sent us to Atlanta. They have surgeons there that can cut you up,” one of the other men commented.

“Why don’t you two shut up and let me think,” I countered.

“Think all you want, as soon as we arrive you’re going first. They are sharpening their knives waiting for you and the rest of us. They want to save our lives; at least that’s what the corporal up front was told. After 17 years in the calvary, they want to save my life? Then they are going to kick us out to be civilians again.”

“I only have one year in the calvary. I will just be a farmer again if they kick me out,” I stated.

The fellow above me said, “I have 14 years, most of it in Arizona. That’s where they send you if they want to get rid of you in the east.”

“Well, when they finish cutting on you, you can go back to your Indians. Nice weather down there.”

“Are those your horses in the back?”

“Yah they are my two and the colonel also has two.”

“You two are lucky, I don’t get a horse. A sergeant major doesn’t ride a horse. How about you young fellow, did you have a horse?”

“I did, but the captain said he was going to put a big U.S. brand on him. They need every horse they can get their hands on.”

I dozed off again; I was full of medicine. When I woke up we were going into town. I could hear all the different noises.

“Are we arriving?” I asked.

“You guessed it,” one of the fellow replied.

“I keep dozing off,” I stated.

“Just don’t doze off permanently, that’s not allowed.”

When we arrived, they moved the four horses to their stable and opened the door.

The corporal called, “Major Dorsey.”

“That’s me,” replied the major.

“You’re going into surgery first,” the corporal told him.

Two men took him out and the major called out, “Lieutenant Duly. Is it all right to have a sergeant major in the same with you?”

“I don’t mind, just as long as he is calvary,” I replied.

“Don’t you have a sergeant’s room?” the sergeant asked.

“It’s full, so you get to move in with the officers. You are going to be the senior sergeant,” the hospital sergeant stated.

They took him back in and then they took me back too. It was a room with six beds and two of them were taken. We got the two empty bunks. Both of us had a bag and they brought them in and put them under our bunks. I had two .44 Colts in my bag, along with some other personal things. At least I had my .44’s. The sergeant major had a big bag and he said, “At least I got my carbine. I will be able to shoot some rabbits to eat.”

A while later a doctor came in with a soldier wearing an apron.

He unwrapped my arm and said, “That arm has to come off, Lieutenant. The bone is shattered and it cannot heal. You will be able to keep your elbow and we will fix you up with a hook so you can pull your pants up.”

“Whoopy, you were right Sergeant. They’ve definitely been sharpening their knives,” I stated.

The doctor went over to the sergeant and unwrapped his leg and left. Ten minutes later, they came back and took me into the operating room. They gave me some powders and I passed out. While I was out, they cut my arm off. When I woke up, my left arm was gone; it didn’t seem real. I was still pretty out of it and so an orderly fed me some soup. The doctor came by and checked on me and said, “You are doing good, Lieutenant.” Then he went to the sergeant major and asked him how he felt.

“Terrible,” the sergeant answered.

“Have some soup, it will make you feel better,” the doctor encouraged.

The hospital sergeant came by and sat down on the bunk by next to the sergeant major and told him, “I had 12 years in the calvary. I got shot in the leg and they made a hospital sergeant out of me.”

“Those two big shots with the horses, did they make it?” the sergeant major asked.

“The colonel didn’t make it,” the hospital sergeant answered.

“What happens to his horses?”

“They get a big U.S. brand on their left shoulder and the quartermasters will give them to a calvary regiment.”

“How can I get me a horse when I get kicked out of the army?” the sergeant major asked.

“I can probably fix you up, but it will cost you 20 dollars gold. It will be more than just a horse; you will need a saddle and saddlebags, blankets, guns, ammo, beans, bacon, coffee, and a pot to cook in so you can travel.”

“What do you have?” the sergeant major asked him.

“I have two beautiful mares, they are bred mares. I’ve got some big Texas saddles and a canteen for water, along with some nosebags for the horses and some oats.”

“I come out of Ohio, but I have no place to go,” the sergeant major stated.

“What course would we take if we wanted to go back to Ohio?” I asked the sergeant major.

“You have to go west and then travel along the river. When you get to St. Louis, go east to Dayton and then you are home,” the sergeant major replied.

“I am going to Dayton, that’s my home. My brother and I have 280 acres, a home, and a barn. You can stay with us, Sergeant Major as long as you want. We have room for you and some hay for your horses.”

I then asked the hospital sergeant, “Any brands on those mares?”

“No, them are fine horses,” he replied.

“What are they bred to?”

“A thoroughbred, they are two months now so you would have nine months to get to where you’re going. Do you have a wagon?” the hospital sergeant asked.

“Sure, we have a wagon, a buckboard, and a team.”

“It would be safer to travel together because there are so many bandits that want to steal your horses. Every time you meet someone, have your guns handy. These bandits are killers, deserters from the armies.”

“Hold the two mares, we will need them. Can you get me ammunition for my Spencer?” the sergeant major asked the army sergeant.

“It will be hard, but I can try. I have two boxes, that’s all.”

“What do you have in guns, Lieutenant?” the sergeant major asked me.

“I have two Colt .44’s, but I also need some ammunition and some caps for them.”

“That’s easy. I can get you all the .44 ammo you need. Do you have a rifle?” the hospital sergeant stated.

“No, somebody stole my Kentucky rifle after I got shot,” I replied.

“Quartermaster corporal wants one dollar for a Kentucky rifle and five dollars for a Henry .44. Those two mares are fine horses,” the hospital sergeant stated.

“How long will we be here?” I asked.

“Maybe a month, I can’t be certain.”

“I’ve got five months of pay coming,” I stated.

“That will be six months of pay when you muster out.”

“When will you have a nice gelding?” I asked.

“I never know; they come in from the confederate forces. Our ambulance picks up wounded confederates and their horses. A lot of confederate officers don’t brand their horses.”

“Hold onto the mares. I want those colts,” I told him.

“That makes sense to you, but I don’t want that problem. They can foal on your farm. You can raise the colts and sell them for a good price or keep them to pull a wagon going west,” the hospital sergeant replied.

A man came around with slices of bread with butter on them and all three of us got a slice. It was fresh bread and it sure tasted good. Not long after, they brought the major back from the operating room and when he woke up an orderly asked him if he was ready for some soup, but the major refused.

After a bit, the major was fully awake and the hospital sergeant asked him how much he wanted for one of his geldings.

“One hundred and twenty dollars; that’s what the army is paying for geldings right now,” the major replied.

“That sounds like a good price,” the hospital sergeant agreed.

“Help me sell them and I will give you a couple bucks. All you need is an army buyer,” the major told the hospital sergeant.

After that, the hospital sergeant left and I got a little sleep. Later, I asked for some more soup. It was difficult to eat one handed but they helped me. After I finished, the sergeant major said, “Bring me some too.” At least he had two hands. I figured that it would be safer to ride with him instead of by myself. He would be able to chop wood for the fire so we could make coffee and cook beans for breakfast. We would need a pot to cook in so we wouldn’t have to use the coffee pot.

After three days, I could sit up. It was still difficult with only one arm. When the doctor came by to bandage my arm he said, “It looks good. You can walk around if you want.” So I went with the hospital sergeant and looked at the two mares. They were nice horses. A week later he got another mare. I went down to look at it; it was a nice mare. It must have been some confederate officer’s horse. The hospital sergeant put her in with a stud horse that one of the doctors had.

They fitted me with a hook once my arm was healed. I had a heck of a time managing it. It was definitely going to take some getting used to. A week later, the sergeant major got his peg leg. He still walked with a cane and couldn’t put too much weight on his stump. He went down and looked at the horses. I told the hospital sergeant that I wanted two mares and that he could sell the third mare to the sergeant major since we were going north together.

When they paid me off, I got six months’ pay and 50 dollars for my gelding. I had a little money. I still had to wait eight days for the sergeant major to be discharged from the hospital, so I stayed with the hospital sergeant’s girlfriend, about four miles from the hospital. The sergeant major came out there nightly. She had a nice barn and that is where I stayed with my two mares. The sergeant major’s mare was out there waiting for him. He still stumbled a lot but he wanted to get out and go.

We would have to go to Memphis and from there up to Kentucky and then head for Ohio. He was from the Dayton area but didn’t have family in the area anymore, so he would stay with me on my farm hunting and helping any way he could. My younger brother would be there, along with our other horses.

Chapter Two

My brother Jake just turned 17. He was a big boy. Our uncle passed away three years prior and Jake had been living by himself ever since. He didn’t tell me, but our neighbor, Baily, took our horses away from Jake and had been using them ever since he sold his horses to the army.

When the sergeant major got released from the hospital, we started out heading for Memphis. It took us almost three and a half weeks to get there. We stayed three days in a hotel while our horses were in a stable getting good feed. I went and brushed all three every day. I had Texas saddles on both of my horses and hauled a sack of oats on my second horse. I had two small sacks of food, one on one mare and another on the other mare. I also had some beans and potatoes, some bacon and some coffee.

We followed the stage roads and ate a lot of meals at the stage stations. Sometimes we stayed the night there too if they had clean straw. I bought a Henry from the hospital sergeant and I put it in a scabbard on my other horse. We had nosebags for the horses so we could feed them easily.

In Tennessee, we came in contact with four bandits. I told the sergeant major to be ready to shoot the minute they wanted us to stop. They were leading a packhorse and riding four nice geldings. I had my .44 in a saddle holster in front with a blanket covering it. They split into two groups to get us from both sides. The minute they waved for us to stop, the sergeant shot one off his horse and I shot one, then we shot the other two. I got off my horse and got the horse their leader was riding with the packhorse in the back. Once we got all of the horses rounded up, we went through their pockets and took their money and guns. Two of the horses were branded, one U.S. and the other a CSA horse. We took off the saddles on the two and turned them free. The other three we took with us. Now we had six horses. The small packhorse wasn’t much, so we took the pack off it and turned it loose and he went to graze.

We went on with five horses, all very nice horses, big, tall horses. I picked up a second Henry and some confederate pistols that I didn’t want. When we stopped to make camp, we went through everything we got from the bandits. Both of us ended up with 200 dollars and a bunch of confederate money. I gave all my .36 pistols to the sergeant. He said that he would sell them. I had my two .44 Colts and that was all I wanted.

Everywhere we stopped we were asked if we would sell some a horse team. We always declined. I told the sergeant that we would need a team for the buckboard and a team for the wagon once we got to Dayton.

We went through Tennessee in three weeks and got into Kentucky. It was all Yankee occupied. Practically all the men in Kentucky were in confederate uniforms and they told us that they didn’t need us in Kentucky. We told them that we weren’t planning on staying and were just passing through.

We were heading for Cincinnati. We stopped in a little town at a blacksmith shop to shoe one of the geldings. The smith took the old shoes off the gelding and told us we needed to get it done elsewhere, so we went on. The horse had no load and came along just fine.

It took us three weeks to go through Kentucky. When we finally got to Cincinnati we went to the hotel and got cleaned up. We weren’t far from home now. I was real excited to see my brother and to settle back into farm life. It was going to be an adjustment with me only having one arm though.

Chapter Three

We got into Dayton and went out to the Duly farm. Jake was happy to see us. He filled me in on everything that had gone on and told me about the neighbor taking our team. The sergeant and I washed up and got a good night’s rest. First thing the next morning we rode over to our neighbor’s place and picked up our horses. I told him to never set foot on our farm again.

Jake told me that we owed money on our taxes, so we hobbled our horses and I went into town and paid the taxes. We owed 31 dollars.

When I got back, I told jake to start plowing. We would harrow, get the seed and put all the acreage in wheat. The thrashing machine was a mile away so it would be no problem come harvest time.

We got the buckboard all ready to roll, but the wheels were all dried out and some had broken parts. We to town and got a new set of wheels and I also bought a set of harnesses. We went shopping for everything. We bought the seed for wheat, as well as all of the food items we needed. All we were missing now was a little lady to cook for clean for us.

“Our neighbor died in the war and left his wife and son on the place,” Jake informed me. I went over to visit her. I went in and talked to her a bit and she cried. She was real close to losing her farm. She 400 acres but was behind on the taxes and had no way to pay it. I asked how much she was behind and she told me 67 dollars. I then asked her how her son was.

“Young Ben just turned 12,” she answered.

“Well, he is old enough to work. Why don’t you come over and move in with me and we can farm both farms together,” I offered. “I can’t plow but the boys can.”

“We have no horses; my husband took them with him when he went to war.”

I told her that I had horses and said, “How about coming over and cooking for us?”

“Alright,” she agreed. “Come over and pick us up in the morning.”

She had an older sister who had lost her husband who was living with her too. I also told her sister she was welcome to come over to our place too.

Her sister and the sergeant got along real well and the two of them became an item. They had the room in the barn and she cleaned the place up and had it looking real nice in there.

My girlfriend, Elsie, had buckboard in her barn, so the sergeant hitched his horses to it and brought it over to our barn.

My sergeant friend made a big garden with Mary and planted corn, potatoes, peas, beans and all the other garden vegetables. He got a saw and we went after firewood several times. It didn’t take long before we had plenty enough firewood for the winter.

Once the girls moved in we started eating real well. The sergeant hunted and shot deer almost every week. We had plenty of meat and the girls had stew cooking all the time.

Cutting hay was not too good, only Jake could cut. I couldn’t. The sergeant tried but he couldn’t because of his peg leg. The two girls were happy that they had a man, and we worked both farms as one making the fields bigger. We got a milk cow and Elsie milked her every morning and the girls made butter. We bought a sow that was already bred and she had nine pigs. When they grew up, they had the run of the farm.

The news came that veterans and widows of veterans could receive 640 acres of free land out west. Between the four of us we could get 2,880 acres of land.

My mares had their colts and the sergeant’s mare had a colt too. We had plenty enough horses around. Elsie had an old wagon that needed a complete overhaul. The sergeant started to work on the wagon and if anything came up he said, “Let’s sell the two places and go west in two wagons so we can get 2,880 acres. We can run some cows on part of it and use the money from the cows to build two houses. If we need to, we can always hire a few men to help us work the place. We have the two boys and we can work the cows on horseback. We will make it work out. We can find buyers for the farms, but I’m sure they are going to want the horses with the place. There are not enough horses for the farmers to work their fields.”

We needed to get all four mares pregnant and raise up the cows and then we could leave two teams with the farm. It would mean three more years. The old team and a new team would stay. We bred the four mares to a Morgan stud and made big plans to put both places into crops and make some money. We planned to either go to Colorado, New Mexico, or Nebraska.

The war was over and the men came home. A lot of men west to homestead 640 acres and horses were needed to travel. We really had to watch our horses. There was a lot of horse stealing going on. We made sure that all of our horses were branded.

Before Christmas, we went to the mill to get some flour. The sergeant and I took three sacks of wheat. On the way, we met two men on tall horses and another riding a mule, pulling another mule with a packhorse. I didn’t like the looks of them, so I put my .44 in my lap. Two men were on my side and the mule rider was on the sergeant’s side. The sergeant looked at me and said, “I am ready.” As they came closer, the big guy in the front waved for us to stop but we kept going. He pulled his gun and I shot him off his horse. I also shot his partner and the sergeant shot the mule rider. He got off and tied the mule in the back and then went to the man and took all of his money and guns. I did the same. I tied up both horses in the back and I cleaned out both riders’ pockets. One had a money belt and a lot of cash.

We went to the mill and got the flour and a sack of cornmeal then went home. The pack on the mule was full of food items; four slabs of bacon, beans, potatoes, carrots, rice, and peas. We got a nice load. We gave all the food to the girls and the sergeant and I put the saddles in the barn. We went through the saddlebags and found all sorts of watches, gold chains and a box of rings. We both found more gold money too. These were bandits and robbers, that was for sure.

We picked up two teams and now had enough horses to sell the two farms with two teams; the old horse team and the mule team. We got a set of mule harnesses and put up the two homes, barns and farms for sale. We had several people interested. We had the mule team hitched up to the buckboard and everybody liked that. Some sharp negotiations went on. They wanted to pay less money for the place, so we told them if that was the case we would take the cook stoves and other stoves with us when we left, but they did not want that. Then they wanted the wagons. We just laughed and said, “That’s our wheels to go to Oregon.” Not that we wanted to go that far, we wanted to stay on this side of the Rocky Mountains.

We had a month to get the wagons ready, so we took them to a blacksmith in town and he fixed them up for us. Then we had to get some heavy canvas to cover our home on wheels. The sergeant and I told the girls that we would all have to stay single to be able to get the 640 acres for each of us, but then after we had the land we would get married and raise a family. They understood that a married couple could get 640 acres together, but a single veteran could get 640 acres and a widow of a fallen solider could also get 640 acres. We wanted as much land as we could get. We planned on raising cattle and horses.

We had planted a big garden, so we wanted to bring as many seeds with us as we could. We had the wheat that we could sell and we also had some potatoes and corn. We had to get everything ready. We were going to tow our buckboard with a plow on the buckboard, the one with the new wheels. It would be towed by the first wagon. The first wagon would be six-in-hand and the second four-in-hand. That would be ten horses pulling and we would have a gelding in the back for riding. The girls would need six dresses each for summer and four warm dresses for cold weather. The girls loved this. Each girl would get 100 dollars for everything else. Slips, bloomers, garter belts, and hose all had to be bought and taken with us. They had to find warm coats that would fit them and warm sweaters, shoes and boots or lace-up shoes for winter. We men and boys had to find sheep skin jackets and extra warm shirts and long johns. We needed blankets and pillows and a mattress for sleeping. The boys could sleep on the oats that we would take with us in each wagon. Elsie wanted one cook stove with an oven and we got a nice new one. The girls had to get the pots and pans ready to load in the two wagons. The boys had to get some firewood on the buckboard so we could have a fire. We had to have all the sacked food items bought and loaded. We had the big round canteens for drinking water and water bags hanging for coffee water. We got 10 pounds of coffee in each wagon. We also needed axle grease for the wagons. The girls had to make up packs of old newspapers and wood shavings for starting fires and these would go in the back of the wagons. We had a good supply of matches. We also had a lamp inside each wagon with some extra kerosine on the buckboard.

The sergeant was in charge and he demanded that everything be ready when we pulled out. We bought new harnesses for the teams and an extra single tree just in case we broke one.