Merline Lovelace (14 page)

For what? What did she want of Andrew Garrett
now? For the life of her, Julia couldn’t sort through the overwhelming needs that had driven her across the moonlit parade ground to his quarters.

She was still trying to understand what this stolen hour might mean to them when he returned. She was waiting as ordered, fully dressed and in the sitting room. One glance at his face told her any discussion between them would have to be postponed indefinitely.

His eyes grim, he crossed to where she stood. “I’m taking a column out at dawn. I’m sorry, but I’ll have to meet tonight with my company officers and lay out the marching orders.”

“What’s happened?”

“Some five-to six-hundred Cheyenne and Bad Face Ogalalla Sioux attacked a woodcutting party near Fort Phil Kearny earlier today. Our men routed them, but Colonel Cavanaugh thinks this may signal a new wave of attacks on the posts strung out along the Bozeman Trail. I’m escorting three companies of infantry up to reinforce the Forts Reno, Kearny and Smith.”

Her blood chilled. “Dear Lord!”

“It’s not as bad as it sounds,” he said in an obvious attempt to alleviate her fear. “Initial reports indicate Spotted Tail’s Brulé band didn’t participate in the attack, nor did Sitting Bull and his braves. My guess is that Red Cloud was returning from the summer dance ceremonies and stumbled across a target of opportunity.”

“Was anyone killed?”

“We lost three troopers and four civilians who’d been hired to help with the woodcutting. Captain Powell, commander of the detail, reports sixty hostiles killed and a hundred or more wounded. His men were just issued a new, breech-loading Springfield rifle,” Andrew explained, his brow furrowed. “No one, me included, had any idea of its effectiveness until this incident.”

It sounded like far more than an incident to Julia, but his next comment drove the thought from her mind.

“I’ve given Private O’Shea instructions to help you and Suzanne move into these quarters.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“There’s no need for you remain on Suds Row any longer. O’Shea will come for your things tomorrow.”

Astounded that he would order her life so arbitrarily, Julia gaped at him.

“I’ve got to go. The officers are gathering in the mess.”

He grabbed her arms and kissed her, as swift as before, but with his mind already clearly on the immediate tasks ahead of him.

“Andrew! Wait! I can’t just take up residence in your quarters.”

“Why not?” A slashing grin relieved the tightness around his mouth and eyes. “If you’re worried about appearances, there’s no need. Most of the people on the post think we’re still married. They don’t under
stand how our union was simply put aside. Neither do I, for that matter, but it’s a moot point now.”

“What do you mean?”

“I told you we’d contrive, Julia, and so we will. Very well, I’d say after tonight. We’ll take care of the formalities when I return. Wait here for O’Shea. He’ll take you back to your quarters.”

He was gone before Julia could gather her whirling thoughts enough to protest further.

Andrew and his troop rode out at dawn without the fanfare of flags and drums this time. Julia didn’t join the sleepy well-wishers who turned out to see them off. Her emotions were in too much turmoil, and Suzanne had awakened colicky and complaining of stomach cramps.

Julia kept the fretful girl in bed and sent a plea to Corporal Gottlieb to arrange for someone to cover classes for her that day. Suzanne’s indisposition also gave her a convenient excuse to turn Private O’Shea away when he came to move Julia and her daughter to Old Bedlam.

The striker muttered about the major having his hide if he failed to follow orders, but left.

He returned to Suds Row early the next morning. Julia froze when she opened the door and saw him standing outside, his expression grave beneath the bill of his forage cap.

“I’m afraid I’ve got worrisome news, missus.”

Her nails dug into the door frame. Andrew’s patrol!
They’d been attacked! Fear for him clogged her throat, and with it came a regret so deep and sharp she couldn’t breathe.

“Jules Escoffey asked to see Colonel Schnell this morning,” the private informed her.

Wetting her lips, Julia croaked out a query. “Who is Jules Escoffey?”

“He and his partner run the, uh, establishment three miles down river.”

It took her a moment to understand the reference. “Coffee’s Hog Ranch?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Did they have some news about the major and his column?”

“The major? No, ma’am. Jules came to report that Fat Sarah died.”

Totally bewildered, Julia stared at him. “Who’s Fat Sarah?”

“She’s one of his girls.”

“I’m sorry to hear she died, but what has her death to do with me?”

“Nothing directly, ma’am.” Worry dug deep creases in the New Yorker’s brow. “But the doc says what took her sounds like cholera, and seeing as how half the troopers on post have laid with Fat Sarah some time or another, the sickness might start going around. I thought I’d better tell you, missus, since the major instructed me to watch out for you while he was gone.”

Julia barely heard his last few sentences. The fear
she’d felt for Andrew a moment ago paled beside the terror that now poured into her. Her blood pounding in her ears, she turned.

Her daughter frowned from across the room, her brown eyes dark pools in a flushed, feverish face.

S
ix days later, Julia slumped against the center pole of the canvas tent, wondering what she or any of the others in this makeshift hospital ward had done to deserve this hell on earth.

She hadn’t slept for more than a few minutes at a time in almost a week. Couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten. The stench of vomit and the watery diarrhea that filled the buckets beside the rows of cots would clog her nostrils for the rest of her life.

Sweat poured down her neck. Her soiled blouse stuck to her skin. Suffocating heat filled the tents that had been thrown up to shelter the stricken. The August sun that beat down on the canvas coverings was bad enough without the cooking fires burning right outside the tent flaps adding to the suffering inside.

But the fires were a necessary evil. The only treatment that seemed to provide the moaning patients any hope of recovery at all was to force boiled saltwater down their throats until they purged their stomachs
and their bowels. That done, it was necessary to swaddle them in blankets and apply hot water bottles, bricks wrapped in blankets or even baked ears of corn to their feet to sweat out the sickness.

Some retched up the salt water immediately, broke into a sweat and recovered within a few hours. Others had died before they even made it to the tents, having displayed no symptoms at all. A few had lingered on for almost a week now, parched, lethargic, skin dry, eyes sunken in their sockets, discharging fluid as fast as their nurses could pour it into them.

Like Suzanne.

She lay on a cot in the center of the tent that had begun as a ward for women and children, but now sheltered whoever needed tending. Her coffee-brown hair lay lank and lusterless against the folded blanket that served as a pillow. Her eyes stared unseeing from the face of a near skeleton. By contrast, the cheeks of the porcelain doll tucked in the crook of her arm bloomed with obscene, painted health.

If Julia had thought about such matters at all, she would have supposed she’d become numb with the passage of so many desperate hours. Instead, her heart broke all over again each time she bathed her daughter’s emaciated body or emptied the bucket beside her cot.

No wonder the French called cholera
mort-dechien,
a dog’s death. The vomiting and diarrhea drained so much from the victims that they became shrunken caricatures of their former selves. The pain
that racked their joints drew screams from even the strongest men. No one, even the lowliest, flea-bitten cur, deserved to suffer like this.

“How’s the little one doing?”

With the slow, awkward movements of an old woman, Julia turned to greet Mary Donovan.

“She’s holding on.”

“I don’t know how. Poor little thing.”

The Irish laundress looked as ravaged as Julia felt. Her strawberry red hair hung in lank tendrils about her face. Grief had carved deep lines around her eyes and mouth. Her youngest, Molly, had been stricken and recovered, but she’d lost her boy Patrick three days ago. Now her husband was down.

“How about the sergeant major?”

“His eyes have gone glassy. I doubt he’ll make it through the night.”

Wordlessly, Julia held out her arms. Mary walked into them, too numb and weary to cry. The two women clung to each other. They’d shared so much in their brief acquaintance. Had so many roads yet to travel, Julia feared. Shuddering, she forced the thought from her mind. All they could do was take each hour, each day, as it came.

At the far end of the tent, the trooper pouring saltwater down a moaning private’s throat lifted his head. His glance flicked to the two women. Silently, he turned his attention back to his task. Death was too common an occurrence these days to borrow anyone else’s grief.

Mary pulled away, her blue eyes bright with unshed tears. “I have to get back. Walks In Moonlight is tendin’ to Sean now. We just wanted to know how Suzanne did.”

How sad that it had taken an epidemic to bring down the artificial social barriers separating the women on the post. Cholera held no respect for rank or skin color. Sleeves rolled up, skirts pinned out of the way, officers’ ladies, laundresses and native wives all toiled side by side with the troopers detailed to hospital duty.

Those ladies who hadn’t fled, that is, or barricaded themselves inside their homes and fought frantically to keep the sickness away by burning feathers dipped in sulfuric acid and dosing their families with calomel and tincture of opium. Julia didn’t blame Victoria McKinney and the handful of other women of all ranks who refused to come near the hospital tents. If Suzanne hadn’t been stricken, she wasn’t sure whether she would have risked carrying the disease back to her own child, either.

Luckily, Walks In Moonlight had sent Little Hen to her people at the first sign of illness. Suzanne’s playmate was safe, thank God.

Her arms still wrapped around her friend, Julia rested her cheek against Mary’s. “Can I do anything to help you with Sean?”

The laundress pulled back. Blowing out a weary sigh, she shook her head. “You’re doin’ enough. I
heard you sat with Mrs. Powers and the captain last night.”

Julia nodded, glancing toward the cot where the infantry officer had breathed his last just hours ago. His exhausted wife had stayed with him through his final, agonizing moments. She’d only left to tend to her frightened children when Julia promised to help the orderly wash the captain’s body and prepare it for the coffin makers.

“You’ve got to rest,” Mary reminded her. “You can’t tend to Suzanne and all the others, too.”

“I’m here,” Julia said simply. “I do what I can, just as you do.”

With another hug, Mary left to go back to the sergeant major. Wearily, Julia resumed the task she’d interrupted to check on her lethargic daughter. Moving from cot to cot, she gathered the wooden buckets that needed emptying. The fishy odor of the white, watery bowel discharge no longer gagged her, but the bluish tint to the nails and the terrified expressions of those who sensed the end approaching still wrung her heart.

“Tilda?”

A glassy-eyed young recruit grasped at her apron. His breath rasping and labored, he dragged at Julia.

“Ist du, Tilda?”

Wearily, she set down the buckets to ease him back onto his cot.

“Shhh. You must rest easy.”

He gabbled something in German and clung frantically to her apron.

Sighing, she sank down on the beaten grass and smoothed his hair back from his forehead. From somewhere she found the energy to hum the same lullaby to him she sang to Suzanne. It was all she could do for him at this point. For any of them.

She left the recruit a little more at peace, dreaming of his Tilda, she hoped. After another check on Suzanne, she resumed the backbreaking task of hauling the buckets down to the newly dug sinks. After dumping their noxious contents, she swilled them clean at the river.

She returned to find the young recruit dead and Victoria McKinney waiting for her. White-faced with fright, the lieutenant’s wife stumbled forward.

“He won’t wake, Julia! Dear God above, little William won’t wake. Please, help me!”

One glance at the baby clutched to her chest sent Julia’s stomach plunging to her boot tops. His lips were blue. The awful rictus of death was already contorting his tiny features into a mask.

Setting down the buckets, Julia scrubbed her hands down her apron front. “Let me take him.”

Whimpering with fright, the young mother handed over her child. “Colonel Schnell said to bring him to you. He said you’d know what to do.”

There was nothing she could do. Nothing anyone could do, except make the baby as comfortable as possible and hold the hand of a mother facing the loss
of her child. She hadn’t thought her heart could hurt any more, but it ached for the spoiled young wife stripped bare now of everything but a mother’s terror.

“Come, we’ll lay him on the cot next to Suzanne.”

“Thank you,” Victoria whispered raggedly. “Thank you!”

She followed on Julia’s heels, almost tripped over her in her pathetic eagerness to see her baby cared for.

“I’m sorry I was so hateful to you when you first arrived, Julia. I—I don’t mean to be, but…”

“Oh, Victoria, it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters now but little William. Here, I’ll show you how to dose him.”

William McKinney II died the next afternoon. Julia rocked the ravaged Victoria in her arms for what seemed like hours after the baby slipped away, murmuring the wordless noises women across time have offered to each other at such times. The young wife clung to her, racked by sobs, until a haggard Mary Donovan poked her head in and persuaded the lieutenant’s lady to go home and get some rest. She could make the necessary arrangements for his burial later.

Grasping brokenly at Julia’s promise to wash William’s tiny body, the weeping Victoria stumbled out of the tent with Mary. Heartsore, Julia performed the all too familiar ritual and carried the tiny bundle to the carpenters.

They’d set up a shop not far from the hospital tents.
A special detail had been dispatched to cut wood and haul it from the mountains forty miles away. Julia knew she would never again breathe in the tang of resin and green-cut wood without feeling her heart begin to weep inside her chest.

She left her tiny bundle with the red-faced, sweating carpenters and hurried back through the maze of tents set high on the bluffs above the fort. She hadn’t been away from Suzanne’s side for more than a few minutes at a time since she’d carried the limp, moaning girl into the sweltering tent.

Lifting the flap, she ducked inside to find an officer coated head to foot with trail dust standing beside her daughter’s cot.

“Andrew!”

Her ragged cry wrenched him around. His eyes met hers across Suzanne’s emaciated body. Julia read the shock in their silvery blue depths. She stumbled forward, unmindful of the fact she must look as wretched as her patients. She didn’t care, couldn’t spare a thought for anything except the need to lose herself in his strength.

Andrew rounded the end of the cot in three swift strides. He moved instinctively, driven by a primal need to comfort his woman. If the old lies and hurts that lay between them hadn’t already faded into insignificance in his mind, this glimpse of Julia would have killed them instantly. She looked so exhausted, so close to despair, that his first, his only thought was to spare her and her daughter more pain. Given the
chance, he would have gladly sacrificed his life in exchange for Suzanne’s.

She all but fell into his arms, digging her fingers into his sleeves, burrowing her cheek against his crossed cartridge belts.

Neither spoke. Amid the rustle and moan of patients, the shuffle of the orderly moving from cot to cot, Andrew felt her heart thud against his chest. Her whole body trembled, whether from fatigue or fear he couldn’t tell. The stench of vomit and urine permeated her hair, her blouse.

Finally, she drew her head back and looked up at him with eyes that would haunt him for the rest of his days.

“When did you get back?”

“A few moments ago.”

“Did you…?” She shook her head, as if trying to remember what had taken him away. “Did you get the reinforcements to Fort Reno?”

“Yes.” His jaw worked. “That’s where they gave us the news.”

As long as he lived, Andrew would remember the terror that had ripped through his gut when Fort Reno’s commander rode out to meet the weary relief column with the news that cholera had broken out back at Fort Laramie. Twenty dead so far, the grim-faced colonel had reported. Sixty or more down. The disease was sweeping across the plains. Forts Larned and Riley in Kansas had also been hit. A fourth of Custer’s Cavalry was stricken.

Andrew had known fear before. Any soldier who claimed his bowels didn’t turn to water before a battle lied through his teeth. Those who had survived hell-holes like Andersonville carried another special set of demons on their backs. But Andrew had never experienced anything like the fear that knifed into him on that high, windswept plain.

He hadn’t needed the news that Colonel Cavanaugh had ordered for his immediate return to galvanize him into action. Nor had his troop needed exhorting to slough off the weariness of six days’ march. The fear that their wives or children or barracks mates might be among the dead or dying had spurred them on relentlessly. They’d left the infantry at Fort Reno, hurriedly resupplied and set out within an hour to retrace their steps.

Sleeping and eating in the saddle, they’d dismounted only long enough to feed, water and walk their mounts. The grueling march had cost them three horses, one to laming, one to snakebite and one to the “thumps,” the sudden, palpitating heaves that could drop an overheated horse in its tracks without warning. Four men had had second thoughts and deserted rather than return to a camp swept by cholera. One had rejoined the column the next day.

The grim, silent troops had ridden past the post cemetery less than an hour ago. No regimental bands had turned out to welcome them when they reached the parade ground. Without fanfare they dismounted and dispersed to check on families and bunkmates.

The company commanders had been waiting for Andrew with their reports. His muscles as tight as bailing wire, he’d listened while they reeled off the losses. After approving on the spot extra pay for the troops who’d volunteered for hospital and burial duty, he put off all other matters until he’d consulted with the post surgeon.

Andrew hadn’t drawn a whole breath until an exhausted Henry Schnell confirmed that Julia wasn’t among the stricken. The surgeon had then proceeded to cut the ground out from under his feet with the news that Suzanne had been among the first to take ill.

Looking down at her small, wasted body, he couldn’t imagine how the girl had found the strength to cling to life. He’d seen so many seemingly strong men curl up and die after only a few weeks in Andersonville. On the other hand, walking skeletons had survived months of near starvation and repeated bouts of dysentery, himself among them. The incomprehensible vagaries of life and death were the only comfort he could offer Julia now. “She’s made it this long,” he murmured, stroking the dark head resting wearily against his shoulder. “Stronger men have succumbed, but she’s held on.”