0525427368 by Sebastian Barry Page B

will bring that gun up, says Boethius, sir, never you fear. Just see that you go along quiet as a doe, you hear, Boethius? Yes, sir, and I will, he says. Goddamn, says the sergeant.
Just four or five hours later we begin to see a country whose beauty penetrates our bones. I say beauty and I mean beauty. Oftentimes in America you could go stark mad from the ugliness of things. Grass that goes for a thousand miles and never a hill to break it. I ain’t saying there ain’t beauty on the plains, well there is. But you ain’t long travelling on the plains when you begin to feel clear loco. You can rise up out of your saddle and sort of look down on yourself riding, it’s as if the stern and relentless monotony makes you die, come back to life, and die again. Your brain is molten in its bowl of bones and you just seeing atrocious wonders everywhere. The mosquitoes have your hide for supper and you are one hallucinating lunatic then.But now in the far distance we see a land begin to be suggested as if maybe a man was out there painting it with a huge brush. He is choosing a blue as bright as falling water for the hills and there is a green for the forests so green you think it might be used for to make ten million gems. Rivers burn through it with a enamelled blue. The huge fiery sun is working at burning off all this splendid colour and for ten thousand acres of the sky it is mighty successful. A stagger of black cliffs just nearby rise sheer and strange from the molten greens. Then a wide band of red striked across the sky and the red is the red of them trousers Zouave soldiers wear. Then a colossal band of the blue of bird eggs. God’s work! Silence so great it hurts your ears, colour so bright it hurts your staring eyes. A vicious ruined class of man could cry at such scenes because it seems to tell him that his life is not approved. The remnant of innocence burns in his breast like a ember of the very sun. Lige Magan looks at me, turning in his saddle. He’s laughing.
That’s a sweet country, he says.
I’ll say it is, I said.
Why don’t you say that to me? says Starling Carlton at his other side. I can apply an appreciation of a view just as good as Trooper McNulty.
Ain’t it just glorious though, Starling, ain’t it? says Lige, like he don’t know that Starling is coming at that one sideways. But he does know. Then Starling gives way and decides for the sake of friendship to follow Lige into that brand of easy talk.
Man, says Starling, it is. It just is.
Then Starling looks real happy. Then Lige does too.
Goddamn, says the sergeant, keep quiet back there, goddamn.
Yes, sir, says Starling.
It is approaching dusk and that same God is pulling a ragged black cloth slowly across his handiwork. The Crows return in a flurry of dust and haste, the village is only a quarter mile ahead, the sergeant bids us dismount and now we are in the awkward position of being clumsy-footed Europeans near a village of geniuses when it comes to tracking and vigilance. We got to be better men than we are for all that night, and the horses got to be quiet which ain’t always in the rulebook of horses, and what’s more we hope and pray that gun will come up in the darkness silent and not sound like the seven visions of Ezekiel. Cook parcels us out his dried provisions and we sit like a homeless people on our hunkers eating them not daring to light fires against the challenge of the night. No one says too much and what is said is only light-hearted and bantering because we want to preserve our advantage over fear. Fear like a bear in the cave of banter.
We’re two nights without sleeping and now as the dependable orb of the sun makes a show again on the horizon our bones are aching and our minds are strange to us and cold. About four in the night by the sergeant’s pocket watch the gun came creaking and crashing up behind us and the sergeant sent our full company back to carry it up into position. That was damnable crazy work. You got to