Essays

Moseying: History of the Southern Llano Estacado  

Dateline 1881 -- The railroad is coming to Midland
November 7, 2010  

"My gear got stolen," reported the private.  "My trunk's locking mechanism had broken.  I told the sergeant, but he did nothing to fix it or to procure me another trunk, and now my stuff is missing."  The private was nervous since it was the first time he had gone over the head of the sergeant to the second louey.

"If you knew it was broken, why did you put your stuff in it?"

"The men that make up a team, a platoon, should trust each other, sir. I did not expect it to get stolen, and besides, where else would I put my gear -- it is issued to me for that purpose when we were assigned the duty."

"Our detachment is posted here to protect the railroad tracks workers and surveyors, but at present, our camp is a day's ride from the railhead supply camp at the big spring. We know what a bunch of thieves hang around the railhead camp and its saloons and other dens of sin. Maybe some of them snuck in when we were on patrol and got past our guards left behind." The officer stared at the private. It was obvious he did not want to hear any more, or be bothered to do anything about it. The private continued to stand in front of him, waiting.

"We will have to order a new trunk...and it will take two weeks to get one, even with the telegraph and shipping it by rail. We might have some extra coats and boots and holsters and whatever else you need. Go over to the supply tent and get what you can. You will have to keep it with you at all times."

The private saluted and left.

The company clerk was called in and ordered to do the paper work for a new trunk, and an orderly was dispatched to fetch the sergeant.

"Why did you not report the private's trunk had been broken?"

"The company clerk told me that we had to wait until there was more material ordered before we could order it. The private is a malingerer -- he probably broke the trunk himself, anyway."  

The company clerk spoke up from his desk in the corner of the Sibley tent (the Sibley tent was standard issue during the late 1870s and 1880s). "He is correct. I have told him that, in times past, but not in reference to the private's trunk. This is the first I have heard of it being broken."  

Being the commanding officer in the field for the very first time, the young West Point graduate had to properly deal with the situation, but what more, if anything, should he do? He scratched his head. "This is what being a soldier is all about," he mused to himself. "It is not glory in battle, or acts of bravery, or even developing tactics against an attacking force, but it is this sort of attention to detail." He dismissed the  sergeant and left the tent himself. "I would rather be with Grierson," he muttered to himself. He fell into a reverie, imagining himself patrolling with the army at war.

Three hundred miles to the west, the Mimbreno Apache leader Victorio was engaged in a guessing game over a thousand square miles of landscape with Colonel Grierson.  Victorio was trying to get to the Guadalupe and Sacramento Mountains and then the Sierra Obscura, and maybe even home to the Black Range, but Grierson had patrols out at all of the water holes between Mexico and the Guadalupes. 

The young officer went to the picket line and swung up on his horse after untying the reins. From the back of his horse he could see the railroad's forward camp.  His orders were to camp at the water well being dug in front of the leading tracklayers. The next move would be to Badger wellsite, off of the edge of the Llano Estacado.  They would soon be leaving the Midway camp. East of the camp, a fellow with a wagon had begun staking out a townsite he had named Germania.  A barefoot hunter often appeared with fresh antelope at Midway, after the young man had bought enough meat to feed his men something fresh instead of the usual diet of dried beef, hardtack, and beans.

"There is not a dang thing I can do," he realized. "And if the private finds his gear on someone else...I will deal with that then, but only then."