Merline Lovelace (9 page)

Julia hesitated, reluctant to divulge the more embarrassing details of her private life, but Mary had been too kind to simply beg off the question.

“No,” she admitted. “Philip isn’t wealthy. He was a naval officer when I met him, but he’d made his living as a riverboat gambler before the war. The cards are in his blood, I’m afraid. Since we’ve been married, he’s won and lost fortunes.”

Mostly lost, she reflected wryly, and mostly
her
fortune. What little of her inheritance had survived
the war and the collapse of the Robichaud Steamship Lines hadn’t long survived Philip’s runs of bad luck.

“Well, he can’t gamble this bit o’cash away,” Mary declared cheerfully. “Any more ’n my second husband, damn his soul, could drink it away. The bloody sod beat me black and blue, but I niver did tell him where I hid me stash. That handful of bills is yours, dearie, all yours.”

All hers. Satisfaction shot through Julia, swift and surprisingly sweet. Her little roll of bills suddenly made the hours of bending over a washtub worth the backbreaking agony.

Hard on the heels of her satisfaction came a fierce resolve. She could make her way. Whatever happened, she could make her own way. It was a heady realization, and a welcome one after the months of worry, penny watching and, finally, being reduced to depending on the kindness of strangers.

Convent educated, Julia had never questioned that her inheritance, as much as her person, became the property of her husband upon marriage. Like most of the women of her class, she’d been brought up to believe that her primary purpose in life was to provide a gracious, well-run home and a succession of healthy children. The sudden thought that she didn’t have to center her existence around an undependable husband was as shocking as it was exciting.

Mary’s knowing smile suggested she, too, understood the incredible freedom the little roll of bills represented.

“It’s yours,” she repeated. “You worked hard for it, and the Army paid you for your labors. Now take your daughter to the sutler’s store for her treat. Only do it quick,” she warned with a glance at the slanting afternoon sun. “The troopers’ pay will be burnin’ holes in their pockets, don’t y’know. The billiards parlor at the sutler’s will be jam-packed, and the saloons and hog ranches will be jumpin’.”

With a shake of her head, she issued a cheerful warning.

“You’d best stay home snug and safe tonight, missus. Wouldn’t hurt to bar your door, either. The boyos tend to get a bit rowdy on payday. I’m not sayin’ any man on this post would do you harm sober, but there’s some that get a mite ugly when they’ve downed more’n a drop or two of the creature.”

A little startled by the advice, Julia nevertheless took her at her word. Shoving her stash of bills into her skirt pocket, she hurried back to her quarters to collect Suzanne and Little Hen for the promised treat.

Mary’s prediction proved all too true. The buglers had hardly sounded recall from afternoon fatigue duties before the sounds of revelry began to drift from the sprawling tent city across the river. Singing, shouts and the occasional crack of a bull whip carried clearly to Julia and Suzanne, tucked snug within their quarters.

A constant rattle of wagon wheels also announced the arrival of the faro dealers, whiskey peddlers,
bawdy shows and prostitutes who followed the paymaster from post to post. Hoots and whistles greeted each new arrival, and more than one brawl erupted as the night progressed. With each passing hour, Julia understood Mary’s dry observation that the guardhouse and hospital would both be filled come morning.

Given the presence of the sentries who marched the watch on post and the many married men who resided with their wives and families in Suds Row, the sound of shuffling feet outside her door didn’t unduly alarm Julia at first.

Only when the footsteps turned and made a second pass, then a third, did she push herself up on one elbow. She peered through the darkness at the lighter square of window behind the green gingham curtains. Heart hammering, she watched a shadow pass by.

A sharp thud, followed by a muffled curse, brought a lump to her throat. Whoever had made that noise wasn’t going away. Easing out from under the coarse top sheet, she slid her legs over the side of the bed. The rope supports creaked under her weight as she grabbed her wrapper from the foot of the bed and pulled it on over her nightdress. Feet bare, she tiptoed across the plank floor.

Her pulse pounding, she lifted the gingham a mere inch and peered out. The sight of a fully armed and ferociously vigilant Private O’Shea marching guard back and forth in front of her door widened her eyes.

Letting the curtain flutter back into place, Julia
leaned against the wall. When her racing pulse slowed enough for her to catch her breath, she dipped a cup of water from the bucket she’d hauled in earlier and made her way to the door.

Private O’Shea spun around at the sound of the latch lifting and treated her to his habitual fierce glower. “Begging your pardon, missus, I didn’t mean to wake you by banging into the bench like that.”

“You didn’t wake me. Would you like some water?”

“I could use a sip or two,” he said gratefully.

The soft July night spilled over Julia as she stood waiting while he downed the water. Laughter and the sound of voices raised in bawdy song almost drowned out the croaking bullfrogs along the riverbanks.

Smiling, Julia took the empty cup he handed her. “I appreciate your standing guard for me tonight, but wouldn’t you rather be over across the river?”

“They’ll still be peddling their poison tomorrow. I wouldn’t feel right leaving you without anyone to watch over you tonight, you being the major’s lady and all.”

Although she knew by now it was hopeless, Julia made another attempt to explain her tangled relationship with Andrew Garrett.

“I’m not his lady, Private O’Shea. We were married once, but no longer.”

His careless shrug told her the past didn’t matter, but the major’s orders to keep an eye on her most certainly did.

Idly, Julia fingered the dented tin cup. She should go inside. The woman she used to be would never have dreamed of standing outside in her wrapper and bare feet, carrying on a conversation to the sounds of drunken revelry. Strangely, she didn’t miss that woman at all.

“Have you heard anything from him?”

“From the major? No, ma’am.”

Biting down on her lower lip, Julia gazed at the vast, shadowed plains beyond the post. Bathed in moonlight, the land seemed to dip and swell like a dark ocean. Andrew was out there. Somewhere.

“You don’t need to worry,” O’Shea told her confidently. “Major Garrett’s no shavetail. If anyone can bring his boys home right and tight, he can.”

“You’re very loyal,” she murmured.

“Loyalty’s got nothing to do with it. I’ve been with the major since Andersonville. I know him better than most.”

Startled, Julia swung back to him. “You were in Andersonville? Both of you?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I—I didn’t know.”

“It’s not something a man generally likes to talk about. I can tell you this, though. I wouldn’t have made it out of that hellhole if it weren’t for the major. He wouldn’t let me give up, wouldn’t let none of us give up, though there were times we wanted to.”

There was so much she didn’t know about Andrew
Garrett, Julia realized with a shock. He’d cloaked his life before New Orleans in lies. Afterward…

Afterward, she’d hated as much as she’d grieved for the spy her uncle had shot down in the street outside the mansion on LaFayette Street.

So much had happened to him since. To both of them. With a prickly sense of unease, Julia acknowledged that the glimpses she was getting into the man Andrew had become were blurring her memories of the man he’d been.

“How long were you at Andersonville?”

“I was marched down with the first batch of prisoners in February of ’64,” O’Shea said quietly, leaning on his rifle. “The major was brought in that summer. Me and my mates were old, dried skeletons by then. Sergeant Danny Kennedy from the 9th Ohio Cavalry used to say it took seven of us sticks standing together to make a shadow. We’d thought we’d had it rough, but we none of us took the beatings the major did.”

He reached up to scratch the back of his head. His forage cap tipped forward to shadow his eyes, but not before Julia caught a glimpse of the fierceness in their depths.

“Rumor went round the major was a spy who escaped the rebs down to New Orleans near the start of the war. Got shot in the hip in the process, they said. He claimed he’d taken a minié ball at Chickamauga. The guards never could break him of that story,
though they slammed their rifle butts into him often enough trying.”

“Dear God!”

“Busted his leg twice, they did. Second time, they near shattered his hipbone in the process. Them butchers they called surgeons wanted to lop his leg off to prevent gangrene from setting in, but the major wouldn’t let them.”

Julia lifted a trembling hand to her lips. Yesterday she’d felt the most ridiculous dart of jealousy at the thought that Andrew Garrett might have loved a Sioux princess. Tonight she wanted to weep at the knowledge of what he’d suffered. How in heaven’s name had she become so quick to emotion where he was concerned?

“He’s a good man,” O’Shea said, unknowingly echoing Mary Donovan’s words of a few days ago. “There isn’t a man here on the post who wouldn’t follow him straight into hell and back.”

A burst of raucous laughter from down at the end of the Suds Row housing brought an end to the private’s confidences. Straightening, he listened for a moment.

“Sounds like a few of the fellers might be coming to serenade Short-Legged Sal.”

One of the few unmarried laundresses, the recent immigrant with a clubbed foot and an unpronounceable Polish name was the object of intense rivalry among the men.

“You’d better go inside now, missus. I’ll just let
these boys know I’m here, so they don’t go bothering you and your girl.”

“I hate to think of you standing watch all night….”

“The major said to look out for you,” O’Shea replied with a shrug of his shoulders. “I’ll stand watch till he returns or hell freezes over, whichever comes first.”

In the face of such single-minded dedication, Julia could only murmur her thanks.

“And don’t be worrying about him,” the private advised as she reached for the door latch. “If anyone can find old Spotted Tail, Major Garrett can. He’ll deliver his message and bring his boys back all right and tight, you’ll see.”

Julia fell asleep praying that he was right.

“T
hey’s out there, major.”

Arizona Joe Pardee shifted in his saddle. The former fur-trapper-turned-scout spit a stream of tobacco juice through the blackened stumps of his teeth and surveyed the terrain ahead. Andrew eased the ache in his back by rising up in the stirrups. Lone Eagle sat motionless on his other side, his black eyes narrowed against the glare of the sun that blazed low on the far horizon.

With only a few hours left in the day, suffocating heat still rose in waves from the waving grass. July on the plains was hot enough to broil the troopers in their wool uniforms. Several had already fallen out due to sunstroke and been carted back to the ambulance wagon. Their only relief had been the occasional thunderstorms that boomed across the plains like cannons.

The rumpled foothills of the Black Hills rose in the distance, their slopes covered with the thick pon
derosa pine and blue spruce that gave them their name. Close on to fifty miles of undulating terrain lay between those hills and Andrew’s weary column. Somewhere among those fifty miles of dips and rises was Spotted Tail’s band of Brulé Sioux.

Shooting another stream of tobacco juice at a scurrying jackrabbit, Arizona Joe swiped the dribble from his chin with a buckskin-covered forearm. “Ole Spotted Tail’s led us a merry chase, but we’ll catch up with him tomorrow.”

“Or he will catch us,” Lone Eagle replied with a twist of his lips.

Andrew swept another glance around the site the two scouts had recommended for the night’s camp. The slight depression would provide the necessary cover to keep the men and animals from being silhouetted against the sky. A dry, cracked streambed meandered along the bottom of the depression. With luck, they’d find at least a sluggish trickle of water beneath the dried mud. Both men and mounts needed water as much as they needed rest.

They’d covered more than twenty miles today. By trudging along on foot every third hour to spare their horses’ backs and halting only during the worst heat of the day to turn the weary animals out to graze, the troopers had made the long, hot march with little more than the usual grumbling. If they were to cover that distance or more tomorrow, both men and mounts would have to recoup their strength.

Turning to the officer waiting just behind him, An
drew issued the necessary instructions. “My compliments to the company commanders, Lieutenant Stanton-Smith. Tell them we’ll camp here tonight.”

The bewhiskered young lieutenant whipped up a salute and wheeled his charger. Within moments, the trumpeters sounded dismount. The piercing bugle calls echoed across the plains, as Andrew had intended them to. If Spotted Tail was within listening distance, he wanted the chief to know they weren’t planning a stealthy attack.

The troops fell out wearily. After two weeks in the field, even the rawest recruit in the column knew the drill. The drivers brought the wagons up into the center of the column and picketed the mules around them. Under the company sergeants’ watchful eyes, the troopers unbridled their horses and performed the preliminary grooming so necessary while in the field. Sponging the mounts’ eyes and nostrils, the troopers whisped around their heads and down their necks to remove the sweat, picked their hooves and fed them a handful of hay.

Leaving the heated animals to cool off before unsaddling them, the troopers saw to their own needs. Some pitched the two-man tents. Others were detailed to dig sinks for latrines. Still others took canvas bags out to collect buffalo chips for cook fires.

As Andrew had hoped, bores dug in the cracked streambed yielded a trickle of muddy water. With the men’s canteens refilled, he didn’t have to order half water rations. Soon campfires crackled and the aroma
of fresh coffee drifted through the camp. Refreshed by cups of the strong, black brew, the men set about soaking hardtack in water to soften it before frying up their day’s rations of beans and salt pork.

Andrew and his officers messed outside the cone-shaped Sibley tent that served as his sleeping quarters. Although other commanders supplemented their mess with special rations or game brought down by the scouts, Andrew insisted his officers eat the same fare as the troopers while on the march. Otherwise, they couldn’t gauge their men’s strength or endurance.

“Pardee thinks we’ll catch up with Spotted Tail tomorrow,” he informed his subordinates.

One of his more seasoned captains stroked his bushy beard thoughtfully. “Shall we tell the sergeants to issue extra rounds of ammunition?”

“Twenty rounds per man,” Andrew concurred, “although I’m hoping we won’t need them. Remind your men this isn’t a punitive expedition. Our orders are to intercept and parlay with the Brulé, not fire on them.”

“Unless they fire first,” the captain drawled.

“No one returns any shots unless and until I give the signal.”

The officers eyed him speculatively. Most were aware of his friendship with Yellow Buckskin Girl, if not from firsthand observation during her many visits to Fort Laramie, then by word of mouth. At one point, the rumor around the post was that Spotted Tail might well become the major’s father-in-law.

Andrew could have squelched the rumors easily enough by revealing that he was already married, but he’d kept his past to himself…until Julia’s arrival. Now his past was providing even more fodder for the rumor mill than had his friendship with Yellow Buckskin Girl.

“Finish up,” he instructed his officers. “It’s time for stable call.”

With the horses cooled down and the men rested, the serious business of the evening commenced. A man’s life could—and often did—depend on his mount’s condition. Any trooper whose horse went lame or fell under him had to hitch a ride in the wagons, beg a buddy to take him up behind him, or walk. None of those alternatives held much appeal when a band of hostile Sioux were apt to come swooping down from the hills at any moment.

Although Andrew could have detailed one of the men to unsaddle and inspect his mount, he preferred to do it himself. No true horse soldier would delegate care of his horse to someone else.

The big chestnut nickered softly at Andrew’s approach. They’d ridden a lot of miles together, he and Jupiter. They knew each other’s moods as well as any old married couple. Better, he thought with a wry grimace, considering that his wife had disappeared from his life six years ago, only to reappear married to another man.

“Let’s take a look at your back, old fella, then we’ll get you watered and groomed.”

Breathing in the rich scent of the charger’s sweaty hide, he removed saddle and blanket and inspected his back for signs of galling. Only after a check of the pasterns, hooves, nose, ears and eyes did he go to work with currycomb and fresh straw.

With the sentries in place, he gave the order to extinguish lights at nine-thirty, after which the camp quieted down. Knowing reveille would sound at three-thirty, the men murmured among themselves for a while before the usual grunts, wheezes and whistling snores replaced their desultory talk.

Bone-tired but too edgy to sleep, Andrew kept his ear tuned to the familiar shuffle of horses on their picket lines and the snorts and sneezes of men settling into sleep. He should have been reviewing his plans for tomorrow’s march, but couldn’t seem to keep his mind on the familiar details. Folding his arms under his head, he stared through the tent flap.

Stars hung like crystals in an obsidian sky. For a fanciful moment, he compared them to the lights that glinted in Julia’s dark hair. That, of course, was a mistake. The mere memory of their wedding night, when her silken mass of hair had spilled over her naked shoulders, got him tight and hard as any trooper with a dollar in his pocket, hightailing it to Coffee’s Hog Ranch for a poke.

Dammit, how the devil had the woman slipped back into his head? And why in thunderation couldn’t he get her out? She’d taken up far more of his waking thoughts than she should have.

He still found it hard to believe the Belle of New Orleans had chosen to live on Suds Row. He hated the thought of Julia struggling to lift the wooden ladles piled high with boiling hot uniforms. Hated even more the desire that tightened his balls whenever he remembered how her hair had curled on her nape and her damp blouse had stuck to the curves of her breasts.

As tired as he was, fantasies of laying her back on the riverbank, peeling off her wet blouse and baring those soft mounds to his hands and mouth raised a hard bulge under the flap of his trousers. He could almost taste the tang of salty sweat on her skin. Hear her little pants of shock, surprise, excitement. Almost feel the…

“War party approaching!”

The distant cry sent Andrew into a fast roll. In a single, fluid movement, he twisted onto his side, snatched his Colt from its holster and sprang to his feet. With the possibility of hostiles nearby, he’d chosen to sleep with his boots on, as had most of his troops. Like Andrew, they poured out of their tents, clutching rifles and pistols and slinging ammunition belts over their shoulders.

“Form the perimeter defense,” he ordered the company commanders. “Set the men at ten yards apart and remind them to hold their fire unless and until I order otherwise.”

With Arizona Joe and Lone Eagle running beside him, Andrew raced up the grassy incline. His whis
kered young officer of the day panted along behind him, ready to relay any orders his commander might issue.

The sentry who’d sounded the alarm met them halfway. Skittering down the slope on his boot heels, he panted out a quick report. “It ain’t a war party, sir. We thought it was at first, but it’s only three braves. One’s a chief. He says he wants to parlay.”

“Did the chief identify himself?”

“Yes, sir. It’s Spotted Tail.”

Lone Eagle grunted. As he’d predicted, the wily old warrior had arranged the meeting on his own terms.

Andrew aimed a grin at the scout as they climbed to the crest of the slope. Lone Eagle’s personal history with his wife’s uncle had left him decidedly wary of the old man, but of all the northern Sioux chiefs, Spotted Tail was the most willing to listen. If he carried the latest peace offer to Red Cloud, Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull, maybe, just maybe, there was a chance to avoid another bloody year on the plains.

His pulse racing, Andrew topped the rise. Spotted Tail and the warriors who’d accompanied him sat on their ponies, waiting patiently. A renowned orator who’d frequented Fort Laramie as both child and adult, the chief was also a great warrior. He’d counted twenty-six coup in personal combat. In the Sioux culture, swooping in on horseback to touch a live enemy with a hand or quirt counted for as much coup as
killing him. Each coup earned a warrior status and an eagle feather.

To Andrew’s relief, Spotted Tail wasn’t wearing his war bonnet, nor was his pony painted with honor marks or spiritual symbols. The old warrior was here, as the sentry had reported, to parlay.

“My greetings to you, Sin-te Ga-les-ka,” Andrew said in fractured Sioux.

“And to you, Long-Knife-Who-Walks-With-A-Limp.”

“I’ve been tracking you for two weeks.”

A smile creased the old man’s face. “So I have observed.”

“Will you come into camp and talk?”

The smile faded. “The time for talk passed when the Great Father in Washington sent more long knives to reinforce the forts along the path you call the Bozeman Trail.”

“I have a message from General Sherman about these forts.”

“Unless his message promises their destruction, you bring nothing but wasted words.”

Andrew couldn’t lie. Nothing had been promised except more talk. “General Sherman will
discuss
the destruction of these forts if you and the other chiefs will meet with him. He’s been named to head a peace commission that will come to Fort Laramie and talk with you. Will you carry that message to Red Cloud and the others?”

His head dipped. “I will carry it.”

The cavalry troop that approached Fort Laramie five days later little resembled the one that had ridden out almost three weeks earlier. The riders slumped wearily in their saddles. Dust and mud covered their salt-caked uniforms. The wagons lumbering behind the column of fours carried a half-dozen sick and injured, one of whom had turned blue from snakebite.

In accordance with army procedures, Andrew sent Joe Pardee and Lone Eagle ahead to notify the post of their return. Even before the column of troops had crested the tawny slope above the fort, the bugles were announcing their imminent arrival.

By the time the column started down the incline that led to the flats, the regimental band had assembled and was filling the air with the lilting strains of “Fiddler’s Green.” One by one, the troopers sat up. Shoulders squared. Carbines were slung back. Troopers beat their hats against their legs, raising little clouds of dust all along the column.

Andrew shared the excitement that rippled through the ranks. Strange how this jumble of wood-and-adobe buildings tucked at the bend of the Laramie felt so much more like home to him than the town-house in Philadelphia where he’d spent his youth. Strange, too, how the thought that Julia might be among the crowd gathering on the parade ground had him dusting his shirtfront and tugging his hat to square it on his brow.

He didn’t see her at first among the women who
waved and called out greetings to their menfolk. Castigating himself for the keen disappointment that swept through him, he kept a light hand on the reins as he guided Jupiter toward the center of the parade ground. They were almost in position when a tumble of blue-black hair snagged his gaze. He glanced her way, his heart jumping at the smile of welcome on her face. Their eyes met above the heads of the crowd, and in that moment Andrew’s sense of home-coming surged into something deeper, something urgent.

He couldn’t deny the truth any longer. Whatever had happened in the past, whatever lies and half truths had shattered their lives, he still wanted this woman with an ache that almost doubled him over in the saddle.

Something of what he was feeling must have shown in his face. Julia’s smile faltered. Her lips parted. For an instant, the girl that she’d once been gazed at him through the eyes of the woman she now was.