Anita Mills (14 page)

Lowering his gaze to the dry, dusty prairie, he felt like he’d reached the end of the earth. He didn’t know how Laura Taylor could stay here, spending the harsh winter huddled in some hut, listening to the coyotes and wolves howling every night. Come spring, she’d be more than ready to take the first train going east, he expected—if she survived.

Looking at the row of officers’ houses, the low buildings behind it, the neat parade grounds in front, he thought about trying to persuade her to stay here. At least she’d have the post doctor around when her time to deliver came, and surely some of those officers had wives living in those whitewashed houses.

He pulled up at the corner of the parade ground and tied the traces to the wagon seat before he jumped down. “Seeing as how you’ve got everything you own back there, maybe you’d like to wait in the wagon.”

“Yes.”

“I won’t be long, but if you need to stretch your legs, you’d better do it here.”

“I’ll be fine.”

“Do you want me to check if there’s a privy handy?”

“No.”

Pushing his hat back from his brow, he approached a group of soldiers lounging on a weathered board porch. “Know where I can find the post doctor?”

“Hospital’s over back o’ the bachelor officers’ quarters, which is behind the officers’ houses,” one of them spoke up.

“You sick, mister?” another wondered. “He ain’t much good for anything but physickin’ a body—it don’t make any difference what ails you, that’s what he does—if you ain’t got the runs, he’ll give ‘em to you.”

“I’d just like to talk to him, that’s all.”

It didn’t take him long to find the place. As he entered the building, the smell of turpentine and camphor overpowered that of diarrhea. In two rows of cots lined up along the walls, more than a dozen men lay uncovered, their bodies curled around griping guts. Dysentery. It was the bane of every military camp he’d been in. At the end of the long room, a redheaded man with a darker auburn beard turned around.

“Don’t know you, do I?” he said, giving Spence the once-over.

“Hardin—Spencer Hardin.”

“Benjamin King. I’m supposed to be the surgeon around here, but I do a lot more dosing than cutting.” He cocked his head slightly, studying Spence’s face. “Didn’t waste any time signing you Rebs up to fight Indians, did they?”

Spence shook his head. “I’m through fighting for anything. I was just passing through, and I thought I’d ask about some sick folks who might’ve come in some months back—early to mid-April probably.”

“That’d be a little early—summer’s when we get travelers in. Oh, some stop in every now and then, but usually it’s for snakebite…wagon accidents…things like that. Most of the time I’m just treating the men here for dysentery,” King allowed, rubbing his beard. “Got enough of that around—so much I’m running out of Hope’s camphor, if you want the truth. I keep putting requisitions in, and they keep sending me out the damned blue mass.”

“I’d rather do nothing than give anybody blue mass,” Spence agreed. “It’s too corrosive on a gut that’s already sore. I’d mix half a grain of opium with a quarter grain of copper sulfate and add it to two ounces of whiskey. If they can keep a tablespoon of that down every two or three hours, they usually get better.”

“I’d as soon do my own dosing, if you don’t mind, the surgeon snapped. “Now—I’m a busy man, so let’s get down to brass. Just describe ‘em, and I’ll tell you if I’ve seen ‘em.”

He’d said it so often, he could rattle it off by rote. “A blond man in his late twenties, a pretty, dark-haired white woman, a heavyset Negro woman, and a little white kid that’d look about four, all Southerners.”

King thought for a minute, then nodded. “If he’s pretty enough to be a girl, and he thinks the whole world ought to be at his beck and call, then I’ve seen him.”

“What about the others?”

“The kid don’t look anything like him,” the surgeon said, nodding again. “Wife’s named Olivia or something like that, and if she wasn’t sick, she’d sure be a looker.”

“Lydia. She’s passing herself off as his wife, but she’s married to somebody else. The boy belongs to her husband, not Donnelly.”

“Yeah. When they stopped here, the old woman was dying, and the young one was downright delirious herself, but they wouldn’t even wait for the old woman to pass on. I think maybe they were scared, but I don’t know. All I know is they left as soon as the colored one died, and he didn’t even leave anything to bury her. Said her name was Fannie Jamison, but he didn’t want to say much else. Like I said, he was in one hell of a hurry to get out of here, and he wasn’t about to listen to anybody tryin’ to tell him he’d damned well better stay.”

“Did you tell him it was cholera?”

“I said it sure could be.”

“What did he say to that?”

“Not much. Just that they’d stop at McPherson if they had to.” King’s gaze met Spence’s. “I reckon they had to—if she made it that far. She couldn’t hold her head up. I gave her a good dose of Hope’s camphor, but I doubt it helped much. I figure if it didn’t, she’s long dead now.”

“What about the boy?”

“Well, he wasn’t showing signs of sickness, but he was exposed to it. I’m a physician, not a fortune-teller, but if I had to guess, I’d say Donnelly and the kid probably came down with it soon after they were here. Cholera’s damned catchin’, you know.”

“Yeah. I can’t believe Liddy would abandon Fan, though,” Spence murmured, shaking his head. “That old colored woman raised Liddy.”

“That so? Well, I couldn’t tell you what she was thinking, but I don’t think she had the strength to put up much of a fuss. Him I didn’t care for at all. He just left me with a mess of problems and went on his way.”

“Yeah?”

“There was a real hullaballoo over burying the old woman, seein’ as what she was. I had to tell ‘em to get her in the ground before we had an epidemic on our hands. They put her off to one side of the cemetery, but I couldn’t get a marker for her. The major didn’t want it known there was a colored woman in with white folks, as if anybody’d know by the name,” King noted with disgust.

Reaching under his coat, Spence pulled out a wad of banknotes. As he peeled off ten dollars, he said, “Everybody knew her as Auntie Fan. You don’t have to put that on it, but I’d like to know the place was marked some way—a cross maybe, or some flowers planted over her.”

“Sounds like you must’ve owned her before the war.”

“No. My wife did.”

He was halfway across the parade ground before King caught up to him. “Here, the surgeon said, pressing the ten dollars into Spence’s hand. “Come spring, it won’t cost anything to plant a wild rose bush there. We’ve got ‘em all over the place.”

“What about the cross?”

“I don’t know as I can do that, so you take your money. If I can, I will, but like I said, it’s a touchy matter.” The corners of Ben King’s mouth turned down for a moment. “I’m real sorry about your wife, mister.”

“Yeah. So am I.”

As Laura watched him come back across the parade ground, she knew something was terribly wrong. And as he swung up beside her, the haunted look in his eyes confirmed it. Without thinking, she laid a hand on his arm.

“Are you all right?”

For a time, he didn’t answer. He just sat still, staring across the grassy ground, seeing nothing. Finally, he untied the worn leather traces and slapped the ends across the mule’s flank. “Yeah,” he said heavily, “but I’ve got to get to McPherson.”

“It’s sure not much, is it?” Laura murmured, echoing his thoughts.

“No.”

He hadn’t said much in the nearly three days it had taken them to travel less than a hundred miles. Whatever he’d learned at Kearny was eating at him like a cancer, turning him from haunted to haggard. She didn’t think he’d gotten much sleep either—every time she’d had to take a quick trip to the bushes during the nights, his bedroll had been empty when she passed by it. And twice her lantern had caught him, leaning against a tree, staring into the darkness. She didn’t know why, but she was pretty sure he was hurting as much as she was.

“If you don’t mind, I’d like to walk with you,” she said quietly. “I’ve got a cramp in my leg from sitting.”

“No, he responded shortly. “I’d as soon not have company right now. If you need to stretch that leg, you’d better stay close to the parade ground.”

“Yes, of course.” Rebuffed, she remained on the seat while he climbed down from the wagon. “I hope you can find what you’re looking for, and it’ll give you some peace.”

He swung around. “What the hell’s that supposed to mean?” he snapped.

“Well, you need something, or you’re going to break like a spring that’s wound too tight. You’ve barely eaten, slept, or talked since Fort Kearny.”

“Maybe I don’t want to.”

Hunching his shoulders against an ominous wind, he looked for the post hospital. The cemetery ought to be close by it. Yeah, there it was. Pausing to suck in his breath, he let it out slowly, and he told himself he was prepared to find
Ross, Liddy, and Josh lying under tombstones in there. He had to force himself to walk between the graves. The burden lightened as he read each marker, finding only strangers in the first two rows. Maybe by some miracle, it hadn’t been cholera after all, and the three of them were still alive. Then, at a grassless mound on the third row, his heart paused.

The neat black letters printed on the white cross leapt out at him.
Lydia Jamison Hardin, 1841-1865.
He stared at the grave, too numb to feel anything. But he couldn’t help wondering if Ross had repudiated her at the end, or if it had been her wish to rest forever under her married name.

Taking his hat off, he knelt in the dirt and tried to pray, but every eloquent word Thad Bingham had taught him was gone. Finally, he said simply, “Father in Heaven, forgive her, for I cannot.” Rising, he stared at the barren ground, finding it hard to believe that anyone as young and full of life as the Liddy he’d known could be down there. Closing his eyes for one brief moment, he allowed himself to remember the night he’d seen the stars reflected in her dark eyes.

Spoiled and willful, her father had described her, Spence reflected somberly, but old Cullen had told him only half the truth. He should’ve added self-centered, faithless, and shameless to the warning, but it probably wouldn’t have mattered back then. All Spence had seen was the glittering, mesmerizing facade of her beauty, and he’d been utterly bedazzled by what he thought she was. While that explained his folly, he didn’t know what she’d ever seen in him. If she’d thrown herself at him out of pique with someone else, they’d both paid a terrible price for it.

“Oh,
no!
I’m so sorry—I had no idea—none at all,” Laura Taylor whispered behind him.

Before he could respond, she backed away, white-faced, then turned and fled from the little cemetery. As he watched her walk away, he realized he was even too numb for anger.

She felt like a fool for following him, but he’d been out there so long it’d worried her. When she dared to look back from the parade ground, she saw him dusting his pants with his hands. She understood now why he’d needed to be alone, but as she took her seat in the wagon, she had to wonder what on earth had brought his wife clear out here without him. It wasn’t her business, she reminded herself. Besides, she’d already discovered that grief was a solitary pain, and no matter what anybody said or did, it didn’t help the hurt much. It was something that didn’t let go for a long time. She knew, because after six long, miserable weeks, it still had a stranglehold on her own heart. Turning away, she wanted to cry for him.

The north wind was cold for September, but he scarcely noticed it. As much as he hated facing anyone right now, he knew he had to find someone to ask about Joshua. There had to be somebody who’d remember whether Ross or the boy had been sick when they left the fort. He needed to know whether he’d be looking for another grave.

And yet as the wind whipped his hair and coat, he stepped back from the clay mound to look at the clouding sky, and the numbness became a terrible, impotent rage. He’d befriended Ross Donnelly, and he’d pulled strings to send him home from the war, only to have the man betray him. Well, he couldn’t do anything to Liddy now, but unless Ross was dead, too, he was going to pay the highest price possible for stealing Liddy and Josh. And the end wasn’t going to come easy, Spence promised himself. No, Ross was going to know he was about to die, and he was going to squirm before Spence pulled the trigger and sent him to hell.

“You lost, mister?”

Pulling himself together, Spence managed to ask, “Where do I find somebody in charge around here?”

“Depends on what you want. He ain’t in the graveyard, that’s for sure. Not much goes on around here that I don’t know about it.”

“I want to know about the woman buried here,” Spence told him, pointing to the grave.

“The Hardin woman?”

“Yes.”

“Not much to tell about her, except that she was dead before she got here. Fella came in, said he had a body he wanted buried, that they’d been headed west when she took sick. Said she was a widow woman, that her husband was killed in the war, and he was taking her to stay with relations in California, but she didn’t make it.”

“Did you see a small boy with him?”

The soldier nodded. “No bigger’n a mite, probably three or four at the most. I sure felt sorry for him, too, ‘cause he was missing his ma. Funny thing was, all the time he was crying, he kept calling her Fanny. They was supposed to stay around long enough for the major to make a report on the body, but while we was getting her in the ground, they took off like the devil was after them.”

“It wasn’t the devil—it was cholera.”

“Cholera.” The soldier digested that for a moment, then said, “Well, if it was, he shoulda known he couldn’t outrun it. I mean, she died in that wagon, didn’t she? And I guess he had to know it, ‘cause he said the doc over at Kearny told ‘im she was bad off. He said he tried to leave her there, but she wouldn’t stay. She must’ve passed on right after, too, because by the time he got her here, she was pretty rank, L can tell you. I’d say that last day they was out, it must’ve been hell in that wagon.” He paused to spit tobacco juice. “Yessir, it was a shame—just a damned shame for her to die like that. And you know, that was a pretty little boy—man said he looked just like her.”