R.G.H.
September 14, 1885
Dear Elias,
I am writing this down because I cannot sleep and because the only other thing I have done since we came back is sit on the bunk and count things. I count the nails in the floor. I count the boards in the wall. I cannot tell you why. I could not stop counting when we were there either.
We rode out before light on the fifteenth. I did not know where we were going. They told us we were going to disperse a camp that was breaking treaty. Those were the exact words: disperse a camp. I wrote them down in my daybook because they sounded like something a man should be careful about.
When we got there the camp was quiet. There were cooking fires but they had died down to coals. The horses were tied at the east end of the draw and they were still as horses go in the early morning, heads down, not yet anxious. I remember the horses specifically because they seemed to know something was about to happen before any of us did.
The order we were given was to move the camp. There is a difference between moving a camp and what happened. I want you to know that I understood the order to mean the first thing. I am not sure what the men who gave it understood it to mean.
I was on the left when it started. I am not going to tell you what I did and did not do because I am not sure myself. I know I fired once at a figure that was running. I do not know if I hit it. I am going to tell you the thing I cannot stop seeing instead.
There was a child standing near the entrance of one of the dwellings. I do not know how old. Younger than you were when you came to visit after the harvest, smaller than that. This child was not running. This child was standing completely still and looking directly at me, and the look on its face was not fear. I have thought about it now for two weeks and what I keep coming back to is that the look was not fear. It was something else. Recognition, maybe. Like it already knew how this was going to go before it went that way.
I moved through the camp and I did not look for the child again. I am not going to tell you what I saw in the camp because most of it I do not have words for and the words I do have I do not want to put down on paper.
When it was over there were eleven of us still mounted. The sergeant counted us and did not count anything else. We left as the sun came fully up. Nobody talked much on the ride back. The man to my left, whose name I will not write here, sang a piece of a hymn to himself for about half a mile and then stopped.
I need you to not show this to Father. He would say I did the right thing because the order was legitimate and he would not be wrong about the order being legitimate. But I am not sure that is the same question as whether the right thing was done. I am not even sure what that question means anymore. I keep counting nails.
I am going to keep this letter because I do not think I should send it. But I wrote it down because I needed to write it down. I hope you are well. I hope the corn came in.
Your brother,
R.G.H.
The letter was never sent. It was found folded inside a Bible at an estate sale in Pueblo in 1962. The name of the writer has been partially redacted — only initials remain. The archive received it from the estate attorney with no further context.