Fort Whipple

(album: Eyes Like The Sky - 2013)

Chapter 3.
The Americans took the trussed up boy to a place called Fort Whipple, a fly blown group of tents surrounded by a stone and timber stockade. An American called Willis was the boss there and he glared at the man of God as he entered with his captives. He noticed the boy when he was brought in with a few Yavapai girls and he looked into the color of his eyes.

"What do you make of him?" he asked the God man. "He may be the young O'Brien boy who was lost here years ago or he could be from the Jebson party that never made it to New Mexico." said the God man back. They named the boy Jebson O'Brien but the natives and frontiersmen called him "Blue" because of his eyes, but also because of the awful and most sad expression he carried on his face, the expression of someone who kills with compassion but not mercy.

Although he was still a boy the men mostly kept away from him, all except for one; a trapper who understood his skills and in return fed him and taught him the white man's way. In a short while he could speak and read and write their language and he also added the calm, fast dignity of a gunman to his arsenal. He was so fast that men treated him with care, but he was slow to anger and when angry, swift and final in his reply. In the Arizona desert in the 1860's, he had every skill that you needed to survive, and he was just 17.