The Outcasts by Kathleen Kent

hands of the Unionists, and that dysentery, typhoid, and malaria raged through the soldiers’ ranks, regardless of anyone’s loyalties. It was also put about that if the Confederate officers in charge had been more attentive to the well-being of their men instead of to cotton speculation, Helena would not have fallen.
    In Hot Springs, McNally and Nate were attached to the Nineteenth Texas Cavalry, but many of the other Texans were quickly dismounted to serve in the infantry with other divisions. Some of the horseless riders, men deemed too young or too old to fight, were sent back to Texas.
    Nate was released from service, but dysentery laid him low for weeks before he could depart. McNally nursed him as best he could between his own training and foraging for food. He told Nate that he considered himself most fortunate to remain mounted, as the Texans afoot were to be sent farther east, to the meat grinder of the Southern battlefields.
    One night, McNally sat next to Nate as he lay on his hospital cot and told him that the Union had surrendered Little Rock; the Confederate army, along with the governor, would be reclaiming the capital. An order had gone out that three hundred army horses, the best of the herd being Steel Dust horses, had been requisitioned and would be driven up to Fort Smith and placed with the Confederate cavalry, who were determined to contain the boys in blue in Missouri.
    “Nate,” he said. “I’ve got some pull with the quartermaster and have put you forward for the job. You’re not officially enlisted anymore, so what I’m about to ask you to do isn’t actually treason. Our whole future is in the bloodline of those stallions. We send them north, and we’ll never see them again. I want you to drive all three hundred horses back to Texas.”
    He placed his hand on Nate’s shoulder. “Will you give me your word, as a son to a father?”
    Nate made his promise, and when he was well enough to ride, he left Hot Springs with a dozen Texas boys his own age and headed with the herd northward, as though he were following the ordered plan: to go along the Arkansas River Valley, between the Boston and Ouachita Mountains, to Fort Smith. But then he drove the horses instead across the Ouachita River and headed south on mountain trails toward the Caddo Narrows, through thick forests of pine and white oak.
    The herd was led by an old hammerheaded stallion with still enough fight in him to matter, and the line was sometimes strung out single file for miles. The drovers were mostly farm boys used to sleeping rough; they were decent enough in the saddle, but a few had only ever seen a horse from behind a plow. Unlike driven cattle, the herd was quiet, and Nate devised a series of whistle calls to signal trouble. For the first few days, there were signals only that all was well. On the third day, though, one stallion ran afoul of another in front and was kicked off a ledge. By the time Nate had worked himself against the line to see, the horse was dead in a ravine. He was glad he hadn’t had to try to shoot it through the tree line, but he thought it a poor start to the journey.
    They came to the narrows after four days and crossed the Caddo River at a mill. Almost every homestead they passed had been deserted, the fields abandoned, but as the first dozen horses forged the Caddo, a man came out onto his porch and called out, “Any horse that shits while crossing and fouls my stream is mine.” Nate rode forward to talk to him, but the man had seen that all the drovers were young, and he challenged Nate, accusing him of stealing the horses. Nate kept the line going even when the man brought out a shotgun.
    Nate told him, “All these boys can shoot. You kill me, you better go on and drown yourself in that river before they come after you.”
    After a time, the man went back into his house, but Nate followed at the rear of the herd, looking over his shoulder, for the rest of the day.
    They followed the Caddo