CHAPTER
3 
East of the Wichita Mountains the plains undulated and rolled off toward the forests and river valleys feeding the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers. The swells and valleys of the small hills did little to break up the monotony of traveling across featureless plains with buffalo grass so tall it grazed our horses’ bellies. The constant motion of the buffalo grass, as well as the searing heat of the midday sun and the dry, hot wind blowing from the west, brought on a severe case of nausea. I could hardly remember a time in the last three months when I hadn’t been stricken with either nausea or a headache. I pulled my hat down low on my forehead, drank from my canteen, and kept my complaints to myself. Kindle could do nothing; there wasn’t a tree to rest under in sight.
“What is that song?” Kindle asked.
“Hmm?”
“The song you are humming? What is it?”
“It’s a song Maureen used to sing to me when I was a child. An Irish song. My earliest memory of her was her teaching me the song.”
“She raised you?”
“From the time I was five. My mother had died the same year.”
“Do you remember her?”
“No. Just Maureen. The boat she came over on was struck with typhoid. My father went to help when it docked and found Maureen trying to nurse the entire third class by herself. She was barely sixteen. Lost her entire family.” I shook my head and laughed. “My father hoped she would become his nurse but she vowed to never do it again. So she became my nanny and our maid.” I held my hand out to Kindle and he took it. “She was sick for the entire voyage to Galveston. Her refusal to sail for California is what put us on the wagon train across Texas.”
“I suppose I should thank her for it.”
I thought of the mass grave Kindle’s Buffalo Soldiers dug for Maureen and the victims of the Kiowa massacre I survived. “I wish you could. She would love you.” I squeezed his hand and released it. “Tell me about your war after Antietam.”
I met Kindle for the first time outside a makeshift Union hospital on the edge of the Antietam battlefield. Posing as a male orderly because I had been refused as a nurse for being “too handsome,” I was throwing an amputated limb onto the shoulder-high pile outside the hospital when I saw Kindle sitting against a tree, drunk. Furious, I stalked over to him to get his name and report him for drunkenness. When I saw his face sliced open from temple to jaw, I took it upon myself to suture his wound. Helping Kindle was what convinced me to spend the next eight years fighting to become a doctor. I knew little of Kindle’s life in the ensuing eight years.
“I tried to find you,” Kindle said.
“My father was wounded by a Confederate soldier when he tried to help him on the battlefield,” I said. “He wasn’t going to be able to perform surgery for months so we moved him back to New York. The other doctors with our regiment wanted me to stay, but my father outed me as a woman so I wouldn’t be able to.”
“I can imagine how you reacted.”
I steered my palomino, which I’d named Piper, around a prairie-dog hole and chuckled. “Poorly, I grant you. But, at least I wasn’t there when you arrived.”
“Why’s that?”
“The letter we received in condemnation of my working on you was angry enough. I can’t imagine I would have lived through the ire in person.”
“The doctor I spoke to was impressed with the work. He hardly believed you had done it.”
“To him I was a baby-faced seventeen-year-old boy.”
“Instead you were a baby-faced twenty-three-year-old woman.” He glanced at me from the side of his eyes.
“I am not going to tell you how old I am.”
“Why not?”
“Because you are changing the subject. Where did you go after Antietam?”
“Why?”
“Look around. There’s nothing interesting to talk about, and I want to know more of you. We know little of each other’s background.”
Kindle flipped his eye patch up and rubbed his left eye. “I hate this thing.”
“Leave it up. We will see people from miles away. After Antietam.”
“I went to Boston to be with Victoria.”
A pang of jealousy shot through me, though Kindle’s wife was long dead. I knew almost nothing of her, save what Kindle’s brother had told me when he held me captive in Palo Duro Canyon, and I wasn’t sure how much of his perspective I should trust. The words were out of my mouth before I realized. “What was she like?”
“Nothing like you,” Kindle answered immediately. He pursed his lips. “I take it back. You are two of the most stubborn women I’ve ever known.”
“You say it as if it’s a character flaw.”
“It’s not the most attractive trait in a woman.”
“You seem to be attracted to it.”
Kindle’s mouth quirked up into a wry smile. “Point taken.”
“If I wasn’t stubborn, I wouldn’t have been at Antietam to sew up your face. You would have been maimed for life. I also wouldn’t have completed medical school and saved your life on the prairie, twice in one day.”
“Don’t look so smug.”
“I operated on you in the middle of the smoldering ruin of my wagon train with a storm on the horizon. And I operated on you at the fort with Sherman himself holding a lantern and glaring at me. I believe smugness is warranted.”
He raised his hands in surrender. “You’ve made your point. I love stubborn women. Happy?”
I grinned. “Immensely.” Our horses went down through a dry wash and up the other side. “When you returned, how long had it been since you’d seen her?”
“Almost a year. I didn’t stay long.”
“Why? I would think with such a severe wound they would have given you desk duty.”
“They tried. I wanted to be in the field leading my men.” He cleared his throat. “The day after Gettysburg, I received word she died.”
“William, I’m so sorry.”
His mouth tightened and he stared resolutely at the horizon. I was silent, waiting for him to say more about her, but he did not. “After, I was transferred west, to Fort Lyon in Colorado territory. The Indian problem hadn’t stopped because we were at war with the South.”
It was on the tip of my tongue to ask why a West Point graduate such as he would be transferred out of the fighting when we crested a hill and he stopped. “Go back.” Kindle turned his horse and galloped down the back of the hill. I followed.
When I caught up he’d dismounted, pulled a spyglass from his saddlebag, and gone back up the hill. I dismounted, tied our horses together, and quickly picketed mine. The last thing we needed to do was chase our string across the plains.
I crawled up next to Kindle and lay on my stomach. “The horses are tied down.” In the distance I saw a dust cloud spanning the northeast. Kindle handed me the spyglass.
I positioned the eyepiece. “What is it?”
“Army patrol.”
“Why didn’t Little Stick warn us?”
“I told him to follow and watch for bounty hunters.”
I handed the glass back to Kindle. “What are we going to do?”
He stared for a long time, letting the patrol come closer for a better view, I supposed. He let the spyglass fall from his face, took his hat off, and wiped his forehead with his sleeve.
“Is it Mackenzie?”
“No.”
He stared into the middle distance, considering our options. Showing the letter from Colonel Ranald Mackenzie in Kindle’s inside pocket would do us no good. Admitting who Kindle was would reveal my identity and put me on the first train to New York. Plus, chances were the letter had been forged by the colonel’s sister, Harriet Mackenzie, who helped us escape Jacksboro. It would need to be used hundreds of miles away, where confirming its veracity with the colonel would be too difficult. Last we heard, Mackenzie was patrolling Indian Territory. We’d been lucky not to come across him.
Kindle pulled Enloe’s eye patch down. “The officer looks young, too young to recognize me.”
“What about the soldiers?”
“Guess we will see how good of a disguise the beard and eye patch are.”
We mounted up and rode below the hill for a mile before dipping down into a dry wash and following it north. It leveled out onto the plains about a half a mile southeast of the supply train. My hope we were far enough away and behind to be ignored by the patrol was soon dashed when two outriders spun away from the wagons and galloped toward us. We pulled up and Kindle held up his rifle, to which he’d tied a white flag.
“It’s a sergeant and a lieutenant,” Kindle said. He bit off a hunk of tobacco looted from the third bounty hunter and quickly worked it into a large mass in his right cheek opposite his scar and eye patch.
“That’s good, isn’t it?”
“I hope so.” He spit a stream of tobacco on the ground. “I hope I don’t fall off my horse.”
“Why would you?”
“Chewing tobacco makes me sick. Always has.” Kindle continued to work the plug, turning paler by the second beneath a fresh sheen of perspiration. “Let me do the talking, Laura,” Kindle said, voice low. The sergeant reined his horse in about ten yards from us but the lieutenant rode practically up on us. I heard Kindle curse beneath his breath and knew he recognized the soldier.
“Lieutenant,” Kindle said, with a pronounced Texan accent.
The lieutenant and sergeant made an interesting pair. The officer was small, almost boyish, with a wispy red mustache and a sunburned face. The soldier was stout, with a barrel chest and a thick neck. Though covered with a wool uniform coat and leather gauntlets, it was easy to see his arms were powerful and muscular. The soldier looked off into the distance around us, searching for more travelers, while the lieutenant asked in a haughty voice, “What is your business here?”
“Traveling north.”
“Why?”
“Following the trail of the Murderess and the Major.”
“Who?”
“You ain’t heard of ’em?”
“No.”
“Some Yankee woman doctor on the run. They caught up with her at Richardson. She’s the only survivor of the wagon train massacre back in May.” Kindle spat some juice on the ground. “Where’d you come from to have not heard it? ’S all over the country.”
“I’ve heard of her. When we left Sill, she was under guard at Richardson.”
“Whatchew been doin’?” Kindle said.
“Searching for whisky traders. We hear they have a camp somewhere nearby. A base of operations where they cut the whisky, then break off in small groups to sell it. Have you seen anything like it?”
“No, sir. Came up from Sherman. Haven’t seen anyone.”
“You said the Murderess and the Major?”
“The woman convinced an Army major to help her evade the law. They left Jacksboro about a week ago. Bounty hunters all over the country looking for ’em. Pinkerton, too.”
“Kindle.”
“William Kindle?” The sergeant spoke up. “Ah, you’re messing with me.”
“Nope. He broke out of the brig, then sprung the murderess. No one realized they were gone for almost a day, what with Satanta and Big Tree in Jacksboro. You know Kindle?”
“Served with him. At Washita.”
Kindle spat on the ground and grunted. “Wouldn’t be bragging about it.”
“I ain’t.”
My horse shifted on his feet and threw his head, as if feeling my tension, and made the officer take notice of me. “Who’s this with you?”
“Brother. He don’t speak. Deaf and dumb.”
I held the lieutenant’s gaze, but he lost interest in me quickly. He turned his attention back to Kindle. “What’d you say your name is?”
“Didn’t. But, it’s Oscar Enloe.”
“What makes you think the fugitives went this way?”
“Gotta go through Indian Territory to get to the railroad, dontcha? Well, if there’s nothing else, we’re gonna be heading on.”
The lieutenant tipped his hat. “Be careful. We got some unhappy Indians around here. And, they’re drunk.”
My stomach twisted.
“I ain’t ever met a happy Indian. But, thanks for the tip all the same,” Kindle said.
The lieutenant reined his horse around and rode off to the column. The sergeant stayed put, watching us. Kindle and I reined our horses east and rode off at an easy walk. The wind buffeted us and almost blew my hat off. I grabbed it at the last minute and chanced to look over my shoulder at the retreating soldiers, but the sergeant sat his horse, watching us go.
When we were far enough away I said, “You think he recognized you?”
“Yes. His name is Jones.”
“Will he turn us in?”
“I don’t know.”
When we’d ridden slowly for a mile, we kicked our horses into an easy gallop. We alternated between a gallop and a walk, giving them time to recover before kicking them into a lope again. We didn’t stop until the setting sun was low on the horizon.