Tumbleweed Rain

Lightning flashed across the morning sky as Chance rolled up his bedroll. Still wearing his Confederate shell jacket although torn, it supplemented him with heat on cold nights. He was trying to make it back to Tennessee from the desert of New Mexico. His Confederates tried to hang on but all hope was lost.  After the surrender at Appomattox, the cause was over. He had joined the losing side and was on his own, just like all the other men who believed in the South.

He had a wife and mother back home but lost all contact with them. He sent letters but no correspondence was returned. He figured that the South was in such disarray that mail would not make it through such harsh lands. He saddled his horse and rode east, hoping to find his wife and settle into their modest cabin on a hill, waiting for him with open arms. It had been two months since the war was over and the North was on a rampage with Reconstruction. He wasn’t bitter but, they, the North headed by Sherman burned the plantations and fields that had yielded so much wealth for so long. He was sent to the West along with his company to attempt to rally the Indians to fight with them and to cut off all telegraph and rail line between California and Texas. The Indians would have no part in fighting in a white mans war and the North had more men to scatter across the country and secure all their assets into insuring that they would be victorious.