It had seemed that just riding at a walk was difficult enough, but heading into the mountains meant slight drifts of fear at every incline, every pass. It was enough to make Lazarus realize that whatever little hillocks they'd encountered on their march from San Antonio to their headquarters at Fort Stockton were nothing. They tried to file two by two, but there were some places the scouts had led them where the men had to go through one at a time, and it was then that Lazarus feared that the horse in front of him would lose its footing and fall, smacking him with the might of an avalanche of horseflesh, or that Grey Bat, his own horse—who was a little too fond of leaping up or rushing down a slope—would miscalculate, and that would be the end of them both.

No one spoke. All that could be heard were the horses negotiating the passes with grunts and whinnies and the razor sharp zips of passing mosquitoes and horseflies, locusts bouncing at crazy angles as the horses crushed their hiding places. Lazarus had never heard the men so quiet, and still the scout Liege seemed quieter than the rest, separate from the other scouts, looking around occasionally as if he were the colonel himself, surveying his men.

They stood at the next pass, waiting—for what, Lazarus did not know. All he could think upon seeing the land was that it was somehow ugly and strangely beautiful at the same time. Then without so much as a word from Lieutenant Heyl, they were ascending again, and with each ascent, a shoulder of rock on his near side or far side would bring blessed shade and calm, so different from anything he'd seen in Mississippi or Louisiana that he sometimes forgot that it was home he wanted to be going towards.

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'Buffalo Soldiers' will be printed in full in Granta 97: Best of Young American Novelists 2. To subscribe to Granta and receive the entire issue free, or to buy a copy of Granta 97, click here.