Lieutenant John Holbrook, Sergeant John Wheeler

by Laszlo Endrody

  One morning, the sergeant asked Kyle to help him with the horses.

  Maggy told the sergeant, “Please ask someone else, I need Kyle on the fence.”

  No one had ever questioned the sergeant about anything before. His word was always the last word. But after that, Kyle belonged to Maggy. Six months later Maggy and Kyle got married.

  By July, the fence was finished and I bought 50 heifers and we put them in the big pasture. Tex wanted a windmill pump for water. I got two new wells with big tanks. Then I got 50 more heifers. We branded and doctored the steers. We were now in the cattle business with Tex in charge of the cattle. Kyle and Maggy worked for Tex. Kyle taught Maggy how to rope and she was getting pretty good at it. She roped the head and Kyle or Tex would rope the hind legs. I did the branding. All the young colts went out in the pasture and they got branded too. The stud went out to the small pasture at Tex’s farm and in the fall, the mares went out there as well.

  I reflect often on the day the army doctor told me I didn’t have long to live. I remember not having much hope at that time. I am amazed at where my life is now and the path that led me here. Every time I play with little Johnny, I am overwhelmed with an enormous sense of gratitude and I remember just how far I have come. I consider myself to be an extremely rich man, rich with love, rich with friends, and rich with blessings.

  The End

  Sergeant John Wheeler

  By

  Laszlo Endrody

  Chapter One

  I was in a hospital in Jackson, Mississippi, in a room with non-commissioned officers. I had been shot in the left arm. The wound was so bad that they had to remove my arm below the elbow. After the wound healed some, they gave me a hook and showed me how to fasten it on.

  A friend of mine was curious and asked me how my hook worked. I showed it to him and then told him that I could pull my pants up with it. I then told my friend that the army wanted to discharge me and Corporal John Miller, who had a peg leg. I told the hospital sergeant that we needed a couple of horses and he said that he had two Confederate officer’s horses he’d be willing to part with. One was a mare and the other a gelding. He wanted 20 dollars gold for both, but that price also included a Texas saddle, a good rifle, and all the ammunition we wanted in the saddlebag. He also had some skillets and coffee pots and would give each of us a big bag of food items consisting of coffee, beans, bacon, bread, and even some potatoes and carrots if we wanted them.

  I went down to look at the two horses, but I didn’t like the gelding. I told the Sergeant that I wanted the mare with a saddle rifle scabbard. I told him, “Miller is a good rider, he can have the gelding.”

  We were going to Pennsylvania and it was going to be a long ride. Miller was happy to get the gelding and a Sharps rifle with a lot of ammunition. I got a Spencer .56 for an extra five gold, including ammo. We both had .44 hand guns and needed open holsters. The sergeant told we could buy them at the stage station store; they had gun belts, open holsters, and saddle holsters. He also told us, “Get ready to meet some bandits desperate for horses. These men are ruthless and will shoot you the first chance they get. Make sure you stay on the wagon roads and stay at stage stations where you might possibly be able to buy more supplies.”

  Miller and I both had some sick pay coming, as well as separation papers, and our discharge orders. I got myself a money belt and put my cash inside; Miller did the same. The sergeant gave me a big canteen so I could carry water for drinking, and coffee. Miller had one too.

  I was from Pennsylvania but I had no family. Miller was Amish, but they kicked him out of the church when he joined the army. He had family, but they wanted nothing to do with him. He was hoping to get some land and start his own family, and I wanted the same thing. We heard about homesteading and could get 640 acres in the West, but we wanted to go home to Pennsylvania first. Not that we had a home, it’s just that’s where we were from and we wanted to go back to visit.

  I figured it would take us two or three months to get home. We really needed a pack horse, but we couldn’t get one at the hospital. We were hoping later on we would be able to pick one up.

  We finally collected our money and said our goodbyes. We wished all of the men in our room good luck and then we headed out. On our say out, the sergeant wished us well and we rode out with our gear behind our blanket rolls. We decided to stay on the stage road because it was patrolled with Yankee troops, and was probably safer. There were thousands of deserters turned bandits and they were killers. Miller had a .44 in a saddle holster, and he kept his hand on it at all times whenever we saw somebody approaching us.

  At the first stage station we did some shopping. I got myself a Texas hat, a warm red shirt, and an open holster. I wanted a leather vest, but they did not have one. Miller went ahead and bought some things for himself as well. We ate some stew and got ready to travel. A stage came in and a sergeant major and a lieutenant colonel got off. Miller and I were getting ready to mount our horses, when the colonel ordered us to step away from the horses because he was confiscating them for the army.

  I told the colonel, “You can confiscate enemy horses, but not these two. They are our horses and we are traveling on them. If you know what’s best, you need to get the hell away from them or you’re gonna get hurt.”

  “Are you threatening me, mister?” the colonel questioned.

  “I am. And you will be kicked out of the army after I get through with you.”

  He went to grab my horse; I put a bullet in his left knee and he collapsed. He dug out his gun, but I stepped on his arm so he couldn’t do anything with it. When I let his arm go, I picked up his .44 and put it in my belt. His sergeant went over to him and helped him up. He then guided him to the stage and helped him in. Miller and I got on our horses and headed north.

  After a couple of hours, we stopped at a creek to let the horses get water and I reloaded my gun. There was not much grazing, so we went on. We had two nosebags of oats to give the horses a little later. We went through a small town with about 50 houses, and stayed the night at their stables. We paid a dollar and had clean straw to sleep on. We woke up early in the morning and made some coffee. When the stable man came to work, I asked if there were any restaurants in town. He said that there was a cantina across the street, two houses to the north.

  “That’s great,” I told him. I asked him if he would sell us two nosebags of oats so we could give our horses grain. He fixed us up and gave us two more nosebags, and charged us half a dollar. Now we had four nosebags. It was an easy way to carry grain.

  We went over to the cantina and had a big breakfast. Afterwards, we headed north. I figured we would be in Memphis in another three days.

  Two hours into our journey, we saw a wagon pulled over to the side of the road with gunmen holding guns on the people. All of a sudden, a pair of gunmen started shooting at us with their short guns; the shots not getting anywhere close. Miller shot a man off his horse and then reloaded. I handed Miller my Spencer and told him to get the third gunman, and was successfully in doing so.

  We rode up to the wagon and the people thanked us. I told them it was no problem. One of the three horses that the gunmen road was branded, so I tied him up in the back. The other two had no brands and they both had a nice Texas saddle. All three gunmen had a Sharps, a Spencer, and a Henry. I gave the Sharps to the man in the wagon and told him to get some ammo for it in town; but he had a saddle bag on his horse that could have already had some ammo inside. All three gunmen had money belts stuffed full of cash, as well as wallets crammed with money. We put everything in the saddlebags on our two new horses. Both horses were nice geldings.

  Miller and I dragged the three dead bodies off the road. A woman from the wagon was making some coffee and we waited for a cup. After we finished our coffee, we climbed aboard our horses and led one alongside the back of us. I had the Henry in the rifle scabbard on my new horse, and Miller had the new Spencer.

  We came to a sta
ge station late that afternoon, and I asked the woman inside what she was cooking. She told us it was lamb stew, which really meant it was rabbit stew. We paid her and we each had two bowls; it was very good. I asked the stableman if he had some clean straw in the stable, but he told us there was no overnighting. So we paid and rode on.

  We got to the town of Winona and looked for a hotel, but none was found. So we put our horses in the stable and paid to stay there all night. Our nosebags were empty, so we filled them and made some coffee. After the stable worker went home, we left another dollar on his desk and saddled up. When he came back in to work, I poured him a cup of coffee, along with another cup for Miller and myself. After we finished our coffee, we left and went to a big watertank to let our four horses drink. Then we went to the restaurant in town and had breakfast, and then later that afternoon we had lunch. We each finished off with a beer, paid, and hit the road. We stopped at a bakery and got 20 buns and then headed out north.

  That afternoon, we found a good fenced pasture. I found the farmer and asked him how much it would cost to let our four horses graze. He said it was one dollar. We stayed the night and left the following morning heading for Memphis.

  When we reached Memphis, we stopped to eat and then went to a saloon to get a bottle of good whiskey. We then went by a wheelwright. He had a wagon out on the sidewalk with four new wheels. The wagon had a canvas cover. It had barrels on the two sides and was rigged for four-in-hand.

  “How much for the wagon?” I asked the wheelwright.

  “Eighty-five gold,” he replied.

  “Where can I get a harness?”

  “Two doors that way,” he said, pointing north.

  I got a harness for four, for 38 dollars. The man who sold it to me said he would help me adjust it on the horses. We unsaddled all of the horses. We harnessed the mare and put her in the second row. Then we harnessed my gelding, and he got the spot next to the mare. Miller’s two horses would not take the harness, so the harness man told me that the store a block away had a mare and a gelding for sale. I went to the store and saw that they were selling two Morgans, so I bought them. Luckily they both took harness. I told Miller to try his two in the back, so the two Morgan’s could be up front. They cost me 130 dollars, and were very nice horses.

  We stopped in front of the store and got a sack of pinto beans, potatoes, ten pounds of sugar, coffee, and four slabs of bacon. We also bought a big pot for stew and beans. The grocer told me that he had some carrots, so I bought a big bundle. We could make stew and beans. After that, we went by the bakery and bought 50 rolls, fresh out of the oven.

  We left Memphis and went through another town heading north on the stage road. That night we stopped off the side of the road and made a fire. We fried up some bacon with a roll for supper. There was very little grazing, so Miller led his two horses around they cleaned up what little grazing there was. The creek had clean water, so we watered all of the horses.

  Afterwards, I took first watch and Miller went to sleep on the wagon. I gave my four horses some oats and unhooked their traces and had some coffee. While I was sipping my coffee, I dozed off a couple of times. Around 11:30 at night, I put the beans on to cook along with four pieces of bacon and an onion. Then I called Miller and told him to stir the beans and told him to call me as soon as it started getting light. I went to sleep. He called me around 5:00 in the morning. I checked the beans but they weren’t ready, so I built up the fire and went to feed my horses with the four nosebags. After I finished, Miller filled two nosebags to feed his horses. I was walking two at a time down to the water to let them drink. Then I started a mental shopping list: two buckets, five blankets, six sacks of oats, and a pound of butter. I told Miller we needed to get two nosebags whenever we could get to a store.

  While we were eating the beans, a sergeant rode up on a big gelding and stopped. I told him to get out his mess-bowl and have some beans with us. He came over and ate and told us his story.

  He said, “I ended up picking up a bullet and they took it out. I was in the hospital for two months. I bought my horse from the hospital sergeant. It is an ugly horse, but it has a lot of go.”

  “Where are you headed?” I asked him.

  “St. Louis and then east to Columbus.”

  “We are going that same way, you can come with us if you’d like.”

  “Thanks, I think I will,” he agreed.

  “The bandits will get you for sure if you are alone,” I warned him.

  We finished the beans, washed out the pot, and put everything away. We gave our new sergeant friend a nosebag of oats and he hung it on his horse. I took the coffee pot up front with me while I was driving so I could have some more while it was still warm.

  “Where should I put my saddle?” the sergeant asked me.

  “Leave it on the horse,” I told him.

  After his horse finished with the nosebag, we got started. We were really eating up the miles. When we stopped for lunch the corporal shot two rabbits, I shot one, and the sergeant shot two. That was enough for lamb stew. There was some grazing for the horses, so we walked them around. After that, I started cooking. I had Miller peel some potatoes and them up for the stew, then he cut up the carrots. The sergeant cut up the rabbits and I added the water; then we put the pot on the fire to cook. It took an hour before it was ready. It was a good stew. I figured that we needed a woman to cook for us. We went back to leading the horses around. The water was not very clean, so we put off the horses drinking and would stop at the next station to let them drink.

  When we got started again, the sergeant put his guns up front with me. Miller was in the back resting. About an hour later, four men on tall horses came from the north. I looked at them with my field glasses; they looked like real dirty men in Confederate rags. I told Miller to get his gun because bandits were coming. We put our .44s in our lap and were ready for a fight. I told both Miller and the sergeant that as soon as the bandits tell us to stop, I would start shooting. I said, “I will get the man who says to stop. Miller, you get the man next to him, and then we will all concentrate on the rest.” And that is exactly how it went down.

  A big fellow said to stop, I put a bullet in him, and then I shot to the right. The sergeant shot the man next to him, and before we knew it, all four men were down. The packsaddle on the right was on a U.S. horse. We tied up all the horses and went through the bandit’s belongings. They all had a money belt and a lot of paper money, Confederate and U.S. All of the gold in the money belts was U.S.

  I unsaddled my horse and put the saddle on the wagon. I tied my horse in the back so I could ride and lead the others. I told Miller he had better buy a buckboard so his horses could pull it and have room in the back for more. The sergeant told me that he wanted to hold on to all of the horses that he could get.

  “In Ohio there is a shortage of horses,” he explained. “Most of the farms sold their horses for over one hundred dollars apiece, but now they don’t have horses to work in the fields. They started to train oxen. Most of the farms have not paid taxes for four years and the states needed money. The war cost them too much.”

  When we got to the stage station, we watered all of the horses. I asked the lady there if they had food for cash customers. She said they had some deer stew. We all went in and sat down. I put a dollar by my plate and Miller put a half dollar on the table. The lady poured us coffee, picked up the silver and put it in her pocket. The sergeant put ten Confederate dollars down on the table, but she didn’t pick it up.

  “You men going west to homestead?” she asked.

  “Not right away,” I replied. “We might go later on.”

  “I can get six hundred and forty acres,” she told us. “I would sure like to go west. Actually, I’d go just about anywhere to get out of here.”

  “We need a cook, you can come with us. Just get on the wagon and we’ll go. Do you have to pack your things?”

  “All of my things can go in one carpe
tbag,” she stated.

  “Why don’t you go and pack up. Once you’ve finished packing your bag, set it over by us and I will take it out with me, then you come out and get in the wagon and we’ll get out of here.”

  “I can do that and be ready,” she said excitedly.

  “We have to work with the horses some, so there will be no hurry on our part. Once you are onboard, we will pull out of here and your boss can start cooking his own.”

  We all had a full bowl of stew and some coffee. She went out the back door to her room. Ten minutes she was back and looked around to see if her boss was in. He wasn’t, so she brought in her carpetbag and put it down next to me. I kept on eating, and when I was finished I put two Confederate dollars down by my plate and went out with her bag. I put the bag on the wagon and started hooking up the traces. After that, I got onboard the wagon and the others started to come out. The girl hurriedly climbed up in and looked around to see if anyone had seen her. A few minutes later, we pulled up out of there. I was going to feed the horses, but decided to feed them later. They all had a good drink before we went in, so they could wait a little while longer.

  When we stopped to feed the horses, I saw the man from the station riding behind us. I told the woman to stay in the wagon.

  He pulled up and said, “Where is that bitch?”

  “We don’t have any dogs with us,” I told him.