“Where are we?”
“We’re in Kansas.” Butler turned. “You took a turn for the worse again.”
“Last thing I remember is being in a hospital.” He made a face. “Or was that delirium?”
“You were in a hospital.”
“Where?”
“Fort Scott.”
“The Union military fort? What on earth possessed you to go there?”
“You were sick. Doing what you always accuse me of: raving.”
“And they just treated me?”
“Of course. I’m a captain in the Second Arkansas.”
“You were a captain in the Confederate Second Arkansas.”
“The men and I have noticed that Yankees confuse easily. Poor fellows.”
“What if they’d caught you impersonating a Federal officer? Butler, they might have shot you.”
“The men were keeping watch.”
“Oh, dear God.” Doc closed his eyes, wondering just how close they had come to disaster.
It took him a moment to muster the courage to ask, “Where are we now? I mean, where are we going?”
“We are on the Fort Scott cutoff to the Santa Fe Trail. We are headed to Colorado.”
“What? Why?”
“We discussed this. You agreed.”
“Agreed to what?”
“Traveling to Colorado. About the gold there. And getting a new start. The altitude and dry air will be good for your cough. At Fort Scott they weren’t sure if it was tuberculosis or not. And I remember Paw talking about how the damp air in Missouri killed John Colter. Remember him? The mountain man? You mumbled something about nothing left in the east, so why not?”
“And why don’t I remember?”
“I’m not sure you react well to opiates, Philip. When we left Fort Scott it was the middle of the night. They had filled you full of opium and a lot of other medicines. Jimmy Peterson reported to me that the hospital staff was growing suspicious about you being a regimental surgeon.”
“Peterson? He’s one of your phantoms, isn’t he?”
“I had detailed Private Peterson to keep an eye on you while we were behind enemy lines. After completing the raid, I decided it was prudent to extract you from the Yankees. It was all the men and I could do to get you to stand up. It took all of us to carry you out to the wagon.”
“And where was the surgeon and his staff during all this?”
“Corporal Pettigrew was distracting them. The corporal was on his best behavior. Earlier, his expertise in picking the quartermaster storehouse lock was less than exemplary. Could have got us caught by the Yankees.”
“Why don’t I remember any of this?”
“Because you were very collywobbled from the medicines. Most of the time you were talking to James Morton and Anne Marie, sometimes to Maw, and occasionally to me. But when I answered, you didn’t seem to hear me.” Butler glanced over the seat in reproach. “As dark and grim as your conversations are with people who aren’t here, the men and I wonder if your mind isn’t becoming unhinged.”
“My mind?”
“We’re not sure that what happened at the farm hasn’t delivered you into an irreversible state of melancholy.”
Doc looked around at the packed wagon, taking stock of barrels, kegs, a tent, folded wool blankets, sacks labeled as wheat and cornmeal, canvas-wrapped bacon, cookware, and various crates and boxes. A new Spencer rifle and several of the long cylindrical cartridge tubes lay just behind the seat. Additionally he could see an ax and shovel handle. He had no idea what the stacks of tins contained.
Peering into the sack beside him, Doc found it to be full of new shoes. Must have been at least fifty pairs.
“Butler? Where did we get all this stuff? It’s all marked as U.S. property.”
Butler vented an exasperated sigh. “While you were in the hospital, the men and I raided the Fort Scott quartermaster stores. With the exception of Corporal Pettigrew’s fumbling of the padlock, the entire raid was flawlessly executed. Private Vail successfully scouted the location, determining the patterns and movements of the nightly guard. Privates Templeton and Thompson were placed as pickets, and Sergeant Kershaw and I supervised the recovery and packing of both commissary and supply.”
Doc wilted, realizing the edge of a wooden crate was the culprit eating into his back. “You stole all this from under the Yankees’ very noses?”
“We have a long crossing of the plains ahead of us. It is the responsibility of the commanding officer to see to the supply of his troops. When others—even Tom Hindman—were in charge, there were too many shortages. It cost us the fight at Prairie Grove, you know.”
“Why do we have a sack of shoes?”
“I won’t see the men march to Colorado on bare feet. You heard Paw. The plains are filled with cactus.”
“Lord God, spare me.” Doc rubbed his face. “We have shoes for invisible men.” He glanced back over the wagon’s tailgate at the tracks they left in the soft soil of the road. “And a squad of Yankee cavalry is going to appear at any second to arrest us and haul us back to Fort Scott for trial and execution.”
“Oh no,” Butler called cheerily back from the wagon seat. “Corporal Pettigrew is watching the rear. He’ll give us ample warning if we need it.”
“Right.” Doc lasted out another coughing fit, and stared at the shoes, wondering how Butler’s men were going to put them on.
61
August 28, 1865
As the summer commenced, Sarah was a casual observer as troops continued to muster out of the Federal army at Fort Smith. Confederate generals and irregulars continued to hand in their arms and apply for parole. More and more units were disbanded, beginning with the Arkansas militias, then the First Arkansas Infantry, followed by the Eighteenth Iowa, the Second Kansas Battery, then the Fortieth Iowa. They came in a steady stream through Fort Smith.
She kept Bret Anderson’s camp, and he continued to play poker the entire time—forever careful to win just enough from the soldiers but
