Wager, happy that we would not have to navigate by dead reckoning as he’d thought we would, shot the coordinates I gave him as soon as the sun rose and we rode and walked all the next day. Though Lem passed in and out of consciousness, he stayed in the saddle. We reached the spring as the moon was rising that night. Though considerably slowed, it still trickled clear and fresh from its granite bed inside the ravine.
Wager and I took turns drinking our fill and tending to Lem. Gradually, he came around enough to drink from the canteen we’d filled for him. But he didn’t come completely to his senses, just talked about “play pretties” with imaginary friends then passed out again.
Which is the condition he was in when Wager asked, “Has he made water?”
I shook my head.
“Keep an eye on him. Might mean his kidneys have failed. If that’s the case, we’re going to need to ride on. Take water back to the men without him.”
“Wager,” I asked. “You’re not serious about going back, are you?”
“Of course. Did you think that I’d abandon my men?”
“I’m not going back there.”
“We have to. Men will die if we don’t.”
“We’ll die if we do.”
“No. We might be court-martialed, but the truth will out.”
“Wager, we escaped,” I pleaded. “We’re free. We don’t have to go back.”
“Cathy, I can’t do that. You know I can’t.”
I didn’t answer, for all the noble ideas crowding his head would of blocked out my words.
“Cathy, they’re my men. A fair number of them signed on because of me.”
“I don’t care about them. I care about us. About the life we’re supposed to have together.”
“Would you want the man who could turn his back on the ones depend on him most?”
“Yes,” I answered. “I want that man alive any way I can have him.”
He stood with his hands on his hips and bit back the harsh words I knew he wanted to speak. Finally, walking away, he said in a flat voice, “I recall seeing a prickly pear patch down that way.”
The darkness swallowed him up, but I watched anyway. After a time, a rusty voice I barely recognized said, “That’s a good man.”
I helped Lem sit up. He gulped down several big swallows and I asked if he needed to pee.
He nodded and I helped him up onto his haunches, opened his fly, and fished out his pecker. His pee was thick and near as dark as coal oil. But he was sweating again and making sense.
Lem put his hand on mine and said, “I heard what you and the sergeant was saying. I see now that he is your all in all and you his. Bill, you been a good friend. Best friend a man could of ever had. I’m sorry I ever wished for more and let jealousy twist me up the way it did. Stupid of me to think a fine man like you would of ever choiced an old plow-pusher from Georgia.”
“Lem, no,” I said. “Don’t downrate yourself like that. Anyone would be proud to have you. I’d of been proud myself, but—”
“Don’t matter,” he said, his voice thick with hurt. “I hope you two’s happy together.”
“Lem, it’s not like that. I’d of been proud to have you, but I never could of. Not that way. Lem, I’m not a man.”
“You’re all the man I ever wanted,” Lem answered.
“Lem.” I unbuttoned my jacket and stretched the bindings apart until a raisin-dark nipple popped out into the moonlight.
“Oh,” Lem muttered and fell silent.
I closed my jacket.
“Have you always been…?” he asked.
“Female? Yep. Born female, enlisted female, served female.”
He considered my revelation for a much shorter time than I would of expected before smiling his beautiful, easy smile and saying, “So, Bill, you’re a girl. That makes sense. All my best friends always been girls.” He puzzled through all this a moment longer before asking, “And so, the sergeant? He’s not?” He wobbled his hand back and forth.
“No.”
Learning that Wager wasn’t a sodomite pleased Lem. “So he’d of never choiced me, either. All right, then.” He nodded, satisfied, until a final question furled his brow and he asked, “If you were born a baby girl, why’d they name you Bill?”
“There’s lots to explain, Lem, and we’ve got a long ride back to camp tomorrow to get it all done.” I had accepted that Wager was going back with water for his men because that is who he was and I was going with him because I couldn’t not go with him.
A short while later, Wager returned with his pockets full of prickly pear fruits.
“Look at those beauties,” I said, taking the fruits he handed me.
Wager glanced at me sharply, startled to hear me using my woman voice in front of Lem.
“I know,” Lem trilled.
Wager’s face clouded with anger.
“Don’t worry,” Lem hurried to assure him. “I ain’t never gonna blow.” He wagged his finger from me to Wager. “You two’s sort of made for each other. Ain’t a drop of backdown in either one of you.”
Even Wager twitched his lips in what passed for his smile. We filled our mouths with the sweet prickly pear meat, crunching down on the soft black seeds and letting the red juice run down off our chins. The happiness of being with the two men I loved best and, for the first time, not having to hide who I was made me so giddy that I did something I hadn’t since I was a young girl playing with Clemmie. I giggled. Lem, seeming to have done a right smart of giggling with girls in his time, joined in. Wager snorted something like a laugh and shook his head.
After we drank our fill of water, I helped Lem to his feet. With me steadying him, he was even able to climb out of the arroyo—“Don’t want to foul our drinking water”—and do his business.
Before we went back down into the ravine, he said, “I expect you and the Sergeant have plans for, you know, after your hitch.”
“Plan to make for California,” I answered. “Might set up a laundry. The Sergeant might ship out on a whaler.”
“Oh,” Lem said. “Y’all’ll be all right out there. Heard California’s pretty. Weather’s good. Never had no slavery. Yeah, you two will be happy. You’ll both have someone.” He stared out onto the prairie.
“Lem?” I asked. “You want to come with us?”
“Wouldn’t care to intrude.”
“You wouldn’t. You’re my best friend.”
“A livery,” he suggested, shyly. “I thought a time or two about maybe I could open a livery.”
“Hell, yes. A livery! What you don’t know about caring for horses ain’t worth knowing. Come to think of it, a livery’d suit me better than being a damn scrubwoman. I could do the books, help you however you need.”
Lem glowed and muttered, “I like that plan. Like it just fine.”
I started to help him back down into the arroyo, but he waved me away, saying, “Y’all probably want to be alone.”
I tried to persuade him, but he declined, nodding toward our horses that we’d picketed up top to graze. “Naw, think I’d rather just be up here with the hosses and the stars.” I took his bedroll to him, and Lem spread it there where he could see the stars and hear the horses.
After Wager filled all the extra canteens we’d brought, he hauled them up to the top of the arroyo, so that we would be ready to leave long before the sun rose.
Imagining the livery the three of us would open, I fell asleep with Wager’s arms wrapped around me. Late that night the sound of an animal strangling out its dying cry jolted me awake. I sat bolt upright, my body knowing before my mind could catch up that it wasn’t an animal cry. I grabbed my carbine and scrambled up the slope of the arroyo. At the top, by the light of a pale moon, I saw Lem being driven to his knees by an Indian who had my friend’s hair gathered in one hand and was about to slice his scalp off his head with the other.
I dropped the brave with one shot then fired on the other shadowed forms. Wager reached my side in time to see three braves leading our horses away. It was too dark to hit them, but we came close enough that two of them dropped the reins of the horses they were stealing and rode off into what was left of the night.
I tore off across the prairie after the two loose mounts. Only when sharp rocks and cactus thorns stabbed my bare feet did I realize that I was as naked as the day I was born and my feet were bare. It didn’t matter. If I couldn’t gather up the two horses the renegades had turned loose, Wager and I would die.
Luckily, the horses were old army plugs not given to wandering far from their nosebags. I grabbed their reins and tried to lead them back, but the pain in my feet stopped me dead and Wager had to carry me back.
Lem’s body had slid halfway down the side of the arroyo. He had five arrows in him. One had gone through the yellow kerchief around his neck.
“Put me down,” I asked Wager. “Next to him.”
I touched my friend’s face gently, curling my palm against his cheek, loving him the way he’d wanted to be loved. I took his broad hand in mine. It was gloved in calluses from his years of pounding out horseshoes. I lifted it to my lips, pressed it against my face and the tears ran over his knuckles.
I don’t know how much time passed with me kneeling beside my friend, clutching his hand, before Wager said, “We have to go now. They’ll be back.”
Wager buried Lem as best he could, marking the grave well so that we could return and give him a proper burial when it was safe. When Wager saw my feet, he winced and took the bindings that had flattened my breasts, soaked them, and tender as a Massachussetts nurse, wrapped my wounds. He set me atop the brown, then went to fetch the extra canteens.
He returned a few moments later having found only one canteen. “We can’t waste any more time. We’ll need to ride hard for a day or so. Keep the renegades off our trail. Can you do it?”
I nodded but said nothing as only sobs would of come from my mouth had I opened it. Wager spurred his mount and I followed. As we rode toward the light of dawn I saw what was left of the canteens, trampled and crushed by horse hooves in the attack, their spilled water already dried away.