“Who brought this?” Waterman looked up from his work. I brandished the envelope with a shaking hand. “Who?” My voice cracked. I coughed to cover it.
Waterman shrugged. “A soldier. I’d never seen him before. He must be with one of the new regiments.”
“Tall? Bearded?”
“Yes. Why? What is it?”
I should have regained my composure before asking Waterman about the letter. Now, his curiosity was piqued. “Nothing.” I folded the envelope and tucked it in the waistband of my skirt. “Are the supplies for the aid kits in the north ward?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll get under way.”
I walked into the empty ward and around the private-room partition. I clutched my stomach and mouth against the nausea that overtook me, again. This Wanted poster would follow me for the rest of my life. Would I ever be free from it?
“Doctor?” A nurse called out.
I straightened and inhaled to compose myself. “Yes. Coming.”
For the next few hours the nurse and I created crates of medical supplies to be included on the supply wagons accompanying each patrol. It was repetitive, mind-numbing work but gave me the perfect opportunity to think.
Who had sent me the letter and why? Beau’s report implied Pope wasn’t in any condition to mail a letter, let alone address it in such a pristine hand. But, if not Pope, who? The man who had beat him? Cotter Black? Had Welch found the letter when attending Pope and seen the resemblance between the picture and me? I didn’t think so. It was a horrid picture and Welch had only met me once, when he was drunk.
I stopped what I was doing, went to the office, and opened the log to one of the last pages of Welch’s entries. I fumbled removing the envelope from my waistband. My hands shook as I compared the writing on the envelope to Welch’s log entries.
Welch’s entries ranged from barely discernible scribbles, made most like when he was drunk, to such precise writing it made me wonder if the same hand had written it at all. Neither clearly resembled the writing on the envelope, but neither were they discernibly different.
“Damn,” I muttered.
I stared at the envelope. Was this the only copy of the reward poster in Jacksboro? If so, what proof would Pope or whomever had sent this have of my identity? None. It would be my word against theirs. I stood and walked into the kitchen. Through the back window I saw Corporal Martin smoking and talking to the men detailed to build the death house. I opened the stove, tossed the envelope on the embers, and poked at it with a metal rod until the evidence of my past was nothing more than ashes. I closed the stove, replaced the poker, and dusted my hands off before returning to the office.
I gazed out the window of the office and onto the parade ground full of soldiers on dress parade. Kindle limped down the line with Foster, inspecting the troops. My eyes lingered on his hands. The memory of them cradling my face settled my nerves, until the knowledge they would never do so again shattered them anew.
The front door of the hospital flew open and banged against the wall. Waterman walked out of the dispensary, wiping his hands with a towel.
“Hello, Waterman! Where’s Dr. Welch? Had a bit of excitement near Fort Phantom Hill.” The officer was young, good-looking, and covered in dirt from the trail. The crude bandage on his right calf was stained with dried blood.
“Welch isn’t available, Lieutenant Strong,” Waterman said. “Dr. Elliston can see to your wound.”
“Well, find the man quick. I want to get this cleaned up before I see my wife. She’ll faint dead away at the sight of this bandage.”
The man limped into the north ward. I shared a conspiratorial smile with Waterman and followed.
The lieutenant was taking off his gun belt and coat when I entered. “Oh, hello,” he said. “Are you a new nurse? I don’t think I have seen you before.”
“I only arrived a few days ago.”
“Welcome to the end of the earth,” he said with a smile. “I’m Wallace Strong.”
“Dr. Elliston.”
His smile wavered a fraction. “Are you really?” He gave me the once-over and his smile returned. “I should have guessed you weren’t a nurse.”
“Let’s see what we have here.” I cut the bandage away to reveal a wound that went clear through his calf.
“How did you get this?”
“From an Indian. They had us pinned in a buffalo wallow. Circling around us,” he said, using his hands to illustrate. “I didn’t notice it until later.”
I turned away from the young man, remembering my own experience in a buffalo wallow, and busied myself with instruments lying on the table. My heart hammered and my breath came in short bursts. “They rode away?” I asked in as steady a voice as I could manage.
“Typical Indian. They got bored, I suppose. We held them off for two days. This morning, we woke and they were gone.”
“The good news is there is no bullet to remove. I need to clean the wound thoroughly, apply carbolic acid to the area, and wrap it in a clean bandage. You are not to remove the bandage for a few days, unless the wound bleeds. Then return to me and I will see to it.”
Lieutenant Strong looked at me in some confusion. “I only wanted a clean bandage.”
I was ready to frighten him with the possibility of gangrene when Beau Kindle bounded into the room.
“Strong, you son of a gun. I heard you were back. Already malingering, I see.”
“Kindle! How are you?”
“Better than you, it would appear. What happened?”
“It’s nothing,” Strong replied. “I didn’t know I was hit until one of my soldiers noticed the blood on my trousers. Forget about that. Tell me about traveling with Sherman.”
Waterman had discreetly entered the cubicle. I sent him to the kitchen for hot water. I stood in the background and pretended to be busy while I eavesdropped on their conversation.
Lieutenant Kindle pulled up a chair and sat next to the bed. “Obviously, I wasn’t in his inner circle, but I heard enough to know he was skeptical of the claims of Indian attacks. We didn’t see a bit of it, and he was sure the reports making their way to Saint Louis were a bunch of ex-Confederate politicians who wanted to switch our focus from Reconstruction to the Indians.”
“Surely he doesn’t think Mackenzie…”
“Like I said, I was not privy to specifics, but that was the general idea I gleaned from conversations I heard between him and the people he talked to on the trail.”
“What about the abandoned farms along the frontier? Did he think people gave up for no reason?”
Beau Kindle shrugged. “You should have seen the angry townsmen here in Jacksboro when Sherman met with them. He barely listened. He was more interested in getting back to the fort and having dinner with the officers and their wives.”
“I’m sorry I missed it.”
“Your Alice especially charmed him.”
Strong laughed. “My Alice?”
“You don’t give her enough credit, Strong.”
“I give credit where it is due. I’ve never seen Alice charm any man.”
“Doesn’t mean she is incapable of it,” Beau replied.
“Has she charmed you, Kindle?”
“I’m not so desperate I’ll flirt with a married woman.”
“Met the laundresses already, have you?”
“Been to Jacksboro.”
“Don’t tell me you’ve paid for it!” Strong laughed and slapped Beau on the shoulder. “I’ll introduce you to Ruth. A sweet little thing who’s great company when she keeps her mouth shut.”
I looked up and glared at Strong. So this was the father of Ruth’s bastard, and Alice’s husband. I could see how someone as ignorant as Ruth would be so easily taken in by the confident young officer. I could see, as well, how plain Alice would suffer the indignities of being married to a libertine rather than not be married at all.
“Enough about whores,” Strong said. “Tell me more about Sherman.”
“He was anxious to get on his way and would have, if not for the attack on the Warren wagon train.”
“The supply train bringing the cattle?”
Beau nodded. “We met them the previous day and camped with them. Five or six families had attached themselves to the train.” Beau paused. “The things they did to those people. Burned one alive and butchered this one woman’s face until she was almost unrecognizable as a…”
I dropped the instrument I held, recalling my presence to the two men. Lieutenant Kindle, when he saw who I was, stood and turned bright red. “Dr. Elliston, I didn’t realize…” He glanced to Lieutenant Strong for help, but Strong merely looked puzzled. “Strong, Dr. Elliston was the only survivor of the mas…attack. Captain Kindle’s regiment arrived before…He was injured, my uncle, and Dr. Elliston saved him. Performed surgery out there on the plains with a storm coming. You should have heard Kindle’s men sing her praises,” Beau said. “I took his men to retrieve the lost cattle, you see. We returned last night.”
Waterman returned with a pot of hot water. “Lieutenant Kindle, if you’ll excuse us,” I said.
He left, but not before telling Strong he would let Alice know where he was. He was out of the ward before Strong could keep him from alerting his wife.
Performing the mundane task of cleaning and binding Strong’s wound helped still my racing heart. Visions from the attack weren’t so easy to banish, nor was the realization my experience had become another atrocity to detail with a morbid fascination borne of relief—relief you and yours were safe—and the thrill of dread that one day you might not be.
“You lost your family in the attack?”
I nodded.
“I’m sorry.” After a moment he continued, his voice hard. “That’s why we have to do whatever we can to stop these savages! Eradicate every last one of them off the face of the earth. That’s the only way we are going to be safe.”
I thought of Maureen’s destroyed face for the hundredth time and hoped I would be there when the last Indian was killed; a small part of me hoped I would be the one holding the gun.
“How did you survive?” Strong asked.
I placed two squares of cloth soaked in carbolic acid on both wounds, wrapped a clean bandage around his leg, and tied it off.
“I was a coward and hid in a buffalo wallow. Like you.”