The Seventh Thief - Chapter 3
"No Horse of Mine"
Sam was his name, or at least that’s what he told people. Not that many asked, not these days, not when they saw his eyes.
He had once worn gray and cheered the Confederacy as loudly as anyone, but victory was no closer now than it had ever been. The war was the war, all-encompassing, and the news was grim: Stonewall dead, Lee marching back downcast from Gettysburg, food riots in Richmond, niggers fleeing north by the thousands. If he was honest with himself – something that didn’t come naturally, not anymore – he had to admit that he really didn’t care much anymore.
He had seen things and done things that he wouldn’t even have been able to imagine before the war. Terrible things, and too many of them, yes. He was not proud of it. He was a young man by years, not even yet twenty-three, but had grown old, far too old, far too quickly after the deaths of his parents and sister. He had been away when it happened, on a now-forgotten errand to Somerset, and through his tears upon returning had found nothing to tie their murders and the ruination of their farm to those clad in either gray or in blue. Freebooters, deserters, ruffians and vagabonds of both sides came through the area regularly by then; it could just have easily been either. As a Southerner, of course, it suited him to blame the damyankees, but in his heart he could not be sure.
Sam had joined a cavalry regiment and been proud of his new uniform, determined to repay the Federals in blood and iron for what he had by then nearly convinced himself they had done, but four battles – each worse than the one before – had changed him; had dissuaded him from the virtues of patriotism and martial ardor. The incompetence of his officers, the wretched food and shoddy supplies, the filth and boredom of military life, and most importantly the horrors of the merciless battlefield had further set his thoughts adrift. It had all made him question his oath, and had finally led him to decide to go his own way.
And so he had. There came a night, on a two-man patrol with a corporal he’d long hated, not far beyond the Confederate lines near Ensworth, that he had shot the other man and ridden off into the darkness. From then on he would fight for himself and no other. From then on it was his war alone. All alone.
Upon due reflection, what he decided upon was a sustained practice of horse thievery. That, he figured, would do nicely.