They had hardly begun to sort out the morning when the bugle blew again.

“What is it now?”

“Infantry drill,” Brewster said.

“Okay, how do you know these things?”

“I watch.”

“Then let’s all go out and watch.  I suppose we should have some idea of where we live.”  In a fort.  With soldiers.  How strange.

Sheltered under the wraparound portico that the sentries walked, Charlotte and her charges took in the drills.  Men in blue with rifles on their shoulders and packs on their backs marched here and there, back and forth.  They presented their rifles, then took them back.  Orders were barked.  Feet shuffled.  Voices shouted in unison.

The bugler trumpeted one more time.  “Good God, it never ends,” Charlotte said.  “What now?”

“Cavalry.”

“Horses,” Jeremy whispered and his eyes lit up.  True to Brewster’s word, the horse soldiers mounted, aligned themselves in formation and galloped out the open gate.

“Where are they going?”

“Out to reconnoiter.  At least that’s what someone told me, but I don’t know what that word means.”

“I have a dictionary somewhere.  We’ll look it up.”

<>

Charlotte was already finding the fort claustrophobic, the walls too high, all the activity too disconcerting.  She realized that she had become used to the silence of the plains and a bugle blowing every five minutes, being around so much ordered chaos, all of it was jarring.

A picnic seemed the perfect solution.  She put food in a basket and asked Brewster to roll up two of her blankets.

“Have you been outside the fort?” she said.

“Mrs. Bixby wouldn’t let us,” Ada said.  “She said we’d get kidnapped but I think that would’ve been what she was most hoping for.”

Charlotte’s eyebrows raised.  “You do not like this woman.”

“I guess I do have strong feelings.  Can we talk about something else?”

The river behind the fort ran clear and fast.  Upstream, the women from the wagon train were hard at work on their laundry, pounding piles of clothes into submission on the rocks.  The smell of bacon and warm bread wafted through the air.

The day welcomed them, wide blue sky overhead, pleasantly warm in the shade.  Crickets chirped in the grasses.  They sat in a circle on the blankets and passed the food around. Everyone was quiet, even Ada.

“So tell me all about the fort.”

“There’re horses,” Jeremy said helpfully.

“The soldiers think it’s monotonous,” Ada said.  “Joseph Beacham told me he’s never been so bored.  He thought they would go out to fight Indians every day but all they do is work at things he did back home, like cutting hay and chopping wood.  At least that’s what he said.”

“So Joseph Beacham comes and talks to you?  That’s nice, isn’t it?”

“He tripped during infantry drill and fell flat on his face.”

“We didn’t laugh,” Brewster said.