The Big Burn Read Online Free Page A

NOTES
    They were called the buffalo soldiers. The name was a proud one, given to the black cavalrymen and foot soldiers who manned territorial forts and fought the Indian wars. One historian computed that if you met trouble in the days of the Wild West and the military rescued you, there was a one-in-five chance your rescuer would be black. He might have been one of the eighteen buffalo soldiers who would, before 1900, earn Medals of Honor. Once he was done saving you, he'd have gone back to a dusty adobe or log fort, where he'd likely have hauled water, chopped wood, pulled guard duty, or hoed a vegetable garden.
    With the Indian wars a memory, the buffalo soldiers moved on to other duty. In the early 1890s the black soldiers and white officers of the Twenty-fifth Infantry brought order to labor strikes in the Northwest. Some of them made newspaper headlines in 1897 when their experimental bicycle corps pedaled from Montana to St. Louis, drawing crowds and cheers.
    As the century closed, the Twenty-fifth's soldiers carried their flag—dark blue background, a fierce eagle—on campaigns in the Philippines and Cuba. Back home again they patrolled the borders between the United States and Mexico. They were jolted when racial strife escalated and a 1906 shooting incident in Texas ended in 167 of them being summarily discharged. They rallied for another stint in the Philippines.
    In 1909 the Twenty-fifth returned to take up garrison in Washington State, and in July 1910 the regiment's various companies left their barracks for maneuvers at summer training camp at American Lake, south of Seattle. By then citizens frightened by spreading forest fires were beginning to ask for the military's help.
    ***
    The buffalo soldiers varied in the skills and hopes they brought it to the army. Many couldn't read, but that was true across the enlisted ranks then. Some would learn, taught in army classrooms. Some would come to care deeply for the service and make long careers of it. Others would desert, although the desertion rate among black troops was substantially lower than in white units, and morale was often higher.
    The men of the Twenty-fifth came from many backgrounds, but most had been born in the rural South. The army offered a way out from lives of endless farmwork, often on fields they didn't own. The soldiers looked to the army for adventure, steady pay, and dignity.

Washington State
July 15, Morning
    "Burn, baby!" Abel said, moving a lighted match along heaped trash: He jabbed a rake into the pile and stirred it up.
    "Hey, careful!" Seth told him, as a gusty breeze carried off ashy bits of paper. Seth chased after a newspaper sheet, causing Abel to laugh. "What's so funny?"
    "Just you running your scrawny tail off for nothing."
    "But we just got done policing up, and now stuffs blowing all over."
    "Seth, buddy," Abel said, "no one's looking. It ain't blowing back to
our
company area, and that's all we got to see to. That and getting done here without taking all day."
    ***
    Abel was rig/it,
Seth thought, as they stood at attention. The corporal was happy because their squad had been the first lined up for inspection. Sarge, walking beside a lieutenant, appeared pleased, though no smile broke the military set of his charcoal-dark face.
    And when the inspection broke up, Sarge even mentioned how good the company area looked. "The new man's doing," the corporal said. "His and Brown's."
    "If they're a good team," Sarge said, "keep them together."
    ***
    "Cards later on?" Abel asked Seth, coming into their tent. "Some of the guys are getting up a game."
    "Prob'ly not. I'll still be getting ready for tomorrow." Seth was using the free minutes before lunch to clean his second pair of shoes.
    "Toss me one of those," Abel told him. "We can get you done."
    "Besides," Seth said, "that card game's been going on for weeks, and ain't anybody said anything to me about playing." He grew embarrassed under Abel's sharp gaze. "I ain't much good