blankets.
“No. Hays,” she said, pointing west again.
“Hays?”
“Soldiers.”
He swallowed hard. Fighting down the gall. “Yankee soldiers?”
“Go … Hays.”
He looked back at the face of his cousin and decided then and there. “All right, woman. You kept us all alive, you did. So I don’t suppose you’re about to steer us wrong now, are you?”
“Hays.”
“Yes,” he replied. “Let’s go to Hays.”
It was late afternoon by the time the little party limped past the outer pickets and entered the cluster of neatly arranged buildings that made up Fort Hays, Kansas. No walled fort this, much to his surprise.
“You’ve business here?” asked the sergeant of the guard.
“Got a real sick man is what I got,” Moser answered.
The sergeant waved a soldier over. “Take them to the infirmary. See what the surgeon can do.”
As Moser and the woman turned their horses from the sergeant to follow the soldier who strode off on foot, the sergeant called out again.
“That woman can’t go with you.”
“Why not?”
“What’s she?”
“Pawnee.”
The soldier shook his head. “No, what’s she to you anyway, Southerner?”
Moser drew himself up, his arms numb with ache and exhaustion from cradling his cousin within them. “She’s the one saved our lives, Sergeant.”
The soldier spat a brown stream onto the new snow. “All right. She’s yours to look after. I’ll have her gone from here in the blink of a gnat’s eye I have trouble from either one of you.”
“Thank you, Sergeant,” Artus replied, wishing he could have said something else as he urged the weary horse away to follow the trooper.
Hospital stewards placed Jonah on a cot in a small shanty extension off the main ward of the infirmary. They said the regimental surgeon gave orders stating he did not want to take any chances that this civilian had something contagious. At the same time he quarantined Moser and the squaw in the same small ward with the feverish patient.
“What’s his name?” the surgeon asked on his first visit to the canvas-roofed lean-to built against the west wall of the infirmary.
“Jonah Hook.”
In the spread of yellow lamplight, the surgeon eyed Moser with consideration, then went back to examining the patient. “You’re a Southerner?”
“Yes.”
“Him too?”
“My cousin.”
“Good lord!” the surgeon gasped, drawing back from Hook’s shoulder wound. “This man’s been shot!”
“I told the others—”
“Why didn’t somebody say something to
“Damn,” Moser muttered to the stewards as the surgeon whirled off into the infirmary. “During the war no doctor thought of washing his hands before he worked on a wounded soldier.”
“Doc Porter’s a different sort of animal,” said Private Nisley as he and Higgins yanked at Hook’s coat, shirt, and longhandles until they had their patient stripped to the waist.
The surgeon was a different sort at that. After sending Higgins to prepare a new bed in the main ward with the rest of the soldiers, Dr. Porter had Moser and Private Nisley pin the unconscious patient down before he placed a thin metal rod into the ugly, festering bullet wound.
“There it is,” Porter said quietly, glancing at Moser with his eyes smiling, then quickly looking the woman up and down. “Who’s she? She belong to him?”
“No. She just come with us after Jonah was shot. That woman’s the reason we both got through the last thirteen days.”
Porter raised his eyes, brow furrowing in a deep crease between the thick eyebrows. “He was shot two weeks ago?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“Abilene.”
Porter nodded to the woman. “Over the squaw?”
“Not really. Just some railroad fellas was setting on abusing her.”
Porter had a delicate scalpel in his left hand, spreading the pink-and-purple bullet wound between the fingers of his right hand. “You mean this man stopped them from raping the Indian woman?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You don’t have to ‘sir’ me. What part you play in this?”
“I …” Moser said, and stopped, swallowing, his eyes staring back at the others in the tight room. Afraid of his answer, afraid if he didn’t answer. “I likely killed one of ’em myself when the gunplay started.”
“By lord, man—I’ll buy you a drink when we’re done here.”
He didn’t know what to feel at that moment: relief, wonder, excitement. Mostly relief that no one was going to hold him accountable to the law.
Porter gently dragged the tip of the scalpel back and forth down into the puss-filled wound, wrinkling his nose as he did so until he made contact with the bullet itself.
“There. Nisley, bring that probe here and work it down to where I’ve got the blade against this goddamned piece of lead.”
The steward pushed the probe into the wound, carefully, as Hook mumbled and attempted to roll away from the pain.
“It’s getting to be a little too much for his brain to take,” Porter explained. “Hold him. Hold him now—we’re almost done.”
When he yanked the flattened piece of .44-caliber lead from the ugly hole, the surgeon plopped it into a small china cup on the tray beside the bed. It left a red streak down the inside of the cup.
“You don’t have to worry about a constable or peace officer out here, mister,” Porter said as he turned to Moser. “The only law west of Leavenworth is the army. And if the army isn’t looking for you because it has a warrant outstanding for your desertion or because you hijacked an army payroll … then your gunplay over a Pawnee squaw doesn’t mean anyone’s riding hard up on your backside.” He smiled at Moser, then turned to his stewards.
“Nisley, you show Higgins here how to get some sulfur worked down into that wound. It’s a nasty, smelly thing, so work it in good. Then tent it best you can so it’ll drain. I’ll see to him first thing in the morning.”
“He’s gonna make it, Doc?”
“He lasted thirteen days without my help—he’ll damn sure make it now,” Porter said. “Now, c’mon, mister. Tell the woman to stay here with your cousin while you and me go get that drink I was fixing on having before you rode in.”
“Whiskey? Is it really … good whiskey?”
Porter laughed in that way that made his Adam’s apple bob a bit. “You grown particular, Southerner?”
“No, sir.”
“Then come share a drink with me and regale me with your tales of the outside world. By lord, I’m starved for
