I never felt quite the same after the death of William Sharpe. The Army lost its flavour for me, like beef without salt. I had lost colleagues before, of course, especially during the great Civil War, when we could share a mug of coffee at sundown and find them stiff, twisted and dead of disease in the dawning. We learned to treat death as only another companion on the long trail to freedom and greet him as an invisible presence in the ranks. William was different. We had been more than just colleagues; we had been friends, brothers-in-arms, brothers in everything except blood. I missed him then, and I miss him all these long years later.
When we found William, the Kickapoos had left his pipe behind. They had decorated William’s body obscenely with his prized possession. I rescued that pi
