They Came To Cordura Read Online Free

Hetherington had no grain and the officer offered to share the last of his corn so that both animals might have one more feed. Spreading a blanket he poured the grain on to it and showed the trooper how to pick out the little pebbles found in native corn, for once a horse bit a stone he would not eat. Forage for the Expedition was always in short supply; used to oats and hay, the animals took slowly to corn, which weakened them; on grass, which would be brittle and poor until the rains of spring commenced, they became so hungry that they chewed their halter shanks incessantly, rope or leather. After swabbing sand from the nostrils of the horses with damp rags the two men rubbed them down and put on the nose-bags. The Major’s personal mount, a pure-bred Morgan he had bought in garrison and learned to love, had died of colic during the second week of campaign, and he had been supplied with a remount at Dublán , a big chestnut eight years old, too high and loose of build for hard service. He watched it feed. He could not develop affection for it. Already it had lost much flesh and seemed twelve years old, appearing ‘roady’ about the knees and hocks; the cavities above the eyes had deepened and the head had an aged look. The tail was limp. He called the animal ‘Sheep’. He thought that a good name for it.
    Nose-bags were taken off and the horses hobbled with rawhide manejas removed from the necks, passed around one foreleg, twisted, buttoned around the other foreleg. Only then did the men attend to their own wants. Hetherington’s eyes were sore and inflamed from dust and the officer found some boric acid in his saddlebags and washed them out. They heated hard bread over the fire and made coffee. Hetherington’s cup, which was the new aluminium, had melted through, and since the officer’s was the old tin issue and thus intact, both drank from it. When they had finished, the Major suggested they clean their weapons, since they must be full of sand, so each found oil and patches and brought the Springfield rifle from his saddle boot. Blankets about their shoulders, their backs to the butte, they sat close to the small fire in position, as it were, to defend themselves against the still and limitless dark which closed in on them. Neither could now remember the wail of the afternoon wind.
    “It sure is cold,” Hetherington said. “It gets in your bones at night and stays there all day. The rest of you burns up but your bones stays cold.”
    He was a tall, gangling youth with knuckly hands, large feet, a high forehead with prominent frontal bones. His hair, was flax-colored and straight. The stubble on his cheeks and chin was sparse. The length of his head, the serious, almost aged expression about the eyes reminded the Major of his remount, Sheep. Hetherington was not in any way soldierly: the officer had noticed his awkward seat mounted, and noticed now that the sole of one large shoe was loose, exposing a torn sock and one bare, grimy toe. With the rifle his hands were clumsy.
    “It’s a funny thing, but it sure seems like a long way from home down here, from the States I mean, don’t it, Major?”
    “Yes, it does.”
    “Are you married and with a family, Major?”
    The youth was trying to make conversation, and the officer, wondering how to interview him, what questions to ask, how, above all, it had come to pass with such a one as this, he did not know what to talk about. Propping the rifle against the rock, he took his pistol from its flap-holster on his right leg and removing the magazine began to clean the weapon. Tending to jam when dirty, entirely dependent on the magazine which, damaged or lost, made the pistol inoperable, the .45 automatic had been found on the campaign to be unsatisfactory, a weapon of two parts, where the older Colt revolver had been one-part. Hetherington saw him clean his pistol and followed suit.
    “Sir, I haven’t talked to anybody yet who was at Columbus. We all heard it was