“One white man is pretty much like another.” Oak Skin slipped off his horse, poking Doc in the chest. “Now, heseeotse ve’ho’e, heal our warrior.” He pointed to the travois being brought forward.
Doc walked ahead of Oak Skin. A wounded man lay in the webbing between the travois poles, his chest tightly bound. Even through the blood-soaked bandages, Doc could see that it was probably a bullet wound.
“How long?” he asked.
“Two days.”
“Butler. Get down here. I need your help.”
Oak Skin said softly, “Warrior dies. You die.”
“Bring him,” Doc said as he turned and started for the wagon. “I have a surgical kit in the wagon. Tell them not to shoot me.”
Oak Skin issued some kind of directive in Cheyenne.
Butler was slowly descending the slope, the canvas sack full of dried chips he’d been collecting, dragging along behind.
“Doesn’t matter, Sergeant,” Butler was saying. “We have a white flag. Just like when I went out between the lines at Prairie Grove. Looks like we’re tending the wounded.”
Just as Butler drew even with the still-mounted lead warrior, he turned, pointing, and crying, “Corporal Pettigrew! Reholster your pistol. We have a flag of truce.”
The Cheyenne warrior, expression anxious, backed up his horse, as if frantic to put distance between himself and Butler. Doc noticed that the warrior did everything he could to keep from looking at Butler, but seemed to keep him at the edge of his vision.
Meanwhile Butler turned to his right, saying, “Sergeant Kershaw, you will maintain order among the men.” He listened, nodding, “Of course, Sergeant.”
Oak Skin called something, the other warriors backing out of Butler’s way, expressions wary, avoiding his eyes and keeping their distance. Some were fingering the medicine bundles hanging from their throats and softly singing.
“What do you need, Philip?” Butler asked as he dropped his bag of chips.
“That medical case you stole from Fort Scott. The one that almost wore a hole in my back.”
“Coming.” Butler climbed up on the bed, hesitating long enough to order, “Sergeant Kershaw, you will maintain the watch.”
As Butler dragged the surgical case out, he added, “But you are not to attack unless you observe hostile intentions.”
Oak Skin kept speaking in Cheyenne, apparently translating what Butler was saying. The rest of the warriors kept shifting, flinching each time the breeze stirred the grass or a bird flew past.
Butler smiled at the Cheyenne warrior, who immediately averted his eyes. Then Butler told him in a commanding voice, “You and your warriors are outnumbered, surrounded, and tactically disadvantaged. Do not make me order an attack.”
Doc damned well knew he and Butler were about to die. He bent over the delirious warrior and began unwinding the bandage. “Butler? I need water to soak this free.”
“Do you need to move him?” Butler asked.
“Never operated on a travois before. First time for everything.”
He forgot the angry and ominous-looking warriors as he removed the bandage and studied the young warrior’s wound. The bullet had entered just below the ribs on the right side. With a damp cloth Doc sponged the dried blood away. Entrance wounds were always hard to judge, but it looked like a smaller caliber.
He sniffed, encouraged by the lack of sour smell that would have indicated a punctured gut. Nor was the abdomen hard and swollen as was normal after either a punctured bowel or excessive internal bleeding.
Doc raised his eyes to where Oak Skin had dismounted and now stood on the opposite side of the travois, his rifle in his hands. “Has he made water? Pissed? Was it black? Bloody?”
“His water is good.”
“Do you have a name?” Doc asked as he dripped ether onto a rag. He carefully shifted, holding the rag below the man’s nose. Taking up the wounded warrior’s wrist he could feel the pulse.
“Vehoc.” Oak Skin replied in Cheyenne, then he added, “It means Little White Man. My father called me Billy Hawkins. I do not like that name.”
“Vehoc,” Doc repeated as he sponged away new blood, noting it contained small bits of necrotic liver. “Who is the man I’m working on?”
“In white tongue, he is Red Legs.” Vehoc pointed to the leader, now watching from his horse. “He is Honi’a’haka, the Little Wolf. His wife and children were at Sand Creek. Only when the last white man is dead will he rest.”
Doc shot Little Wolf a quick glance. “Does he know about your father? I mean about him being white and all?”
Vehoc smiled grimly. “I am Tsi’tsi’ta, Cheyenne.” He pointed to puckered scars on his chest. “I have given my soul to my people.”
Doc turned away to cough, then picked up his scalpel, saying, “I’m going to open the wound a little so that I can remove the clotted blood and dead tissue. I have to do this carefully, so please have someone hold the horse. The animal must not move while I am inside, do you understand?”
Vehoc barked orders. Another of the warriors dismounted, taking up the horse’s lead rope and speaking soothingly to it. He looked in every direction except toward Butler, who was talking to Private Vail about the way the Cheyenne were dressed.
Doc began to carefully clean the clotted and dead tissue from below the diaphragm. With the slant of the sun, he wished for better light.
“Your brother is a powerful man. Our word for him is hohnokha,” Vehoc said cautiously. “You must be honored to travel with him.”
“Sometimes it’s scary.”
Vehoc grunted in what Doc took to be Cheyenne understanding. “Then you are a very wise man. I would not have the courage, even if he were my brother.” He paused. “These spirits he sees, are they good or bad?”
“A little of both, I suspect.”
“Are they in his head … how do you say, because they want to be?”
Doc sighed. “Maybe you’d better ask him.”
Vehoc pursed his lips, hesitated, and said, “Do you think I’m a fool? What if he takes control of my spirit, as well? Does he say what these spirits of the dead want?”
“He is taking them home,” Doc
