A Soldiers Pilgrimage

The morning was a little chilly but bright, sunny and clear. As the major blew on his cup of real coffee courtesy of Miss Vann's tiny black slave cook, he thought of the softness of the occasion. Weeks, no months, of whirling around hills, splashing through creeks and rivers, slipping and sliding on mountainsides in all sorts of weather, cold and hungry and more scared than any self-respecting horse soldier admitted, and now here he sat in this quiet beautiful place with the loyal sun warming his fatigued body and wasting soul. Life was 'interesting', at least.

The major stretched his neck and twisted his head. He was so relaxed and away from the present and into his past, that he had lost all sense of his surroundings. Taking a deep breath and stretching his arm wide, he noted with his eyes, a bird two branches from the lowest limb on the old oak. It was singing as if it was the first day of creation. A clear sweet song weighed gently on the seasoned warrior's soul. The major had felt the darkness of his soul often. He knew the depth and breadth of a rage from hell. In a hot fight it came forth and occupied his soul and body. He called it the "wolf". Lots of blood and other men's souls were on the "wolf's" soul, on Stevenson's soul.

"Corporal, that's a mockingbird ain't it?" he spoke quietly to not scare the bird across the yard to three horse soldiers stretched around the trunk and roots of a larger live oak.