As James was removed from the litter and laid on the floor, Doc noticed a writhing white mass inhabited the damp pile of feces beneath the nearest bed. Maggots. Looking around, Doc realized, to his horror, they were everywhere.
“Doc?” Augustus Clyde asked, his hand over his mouth as he gazed at the suffering wretches in the beds. “God Almighty, is this place real?”
“I’m going to see who’s in charge.” He made a beeline for what looked like an orderly lingering on the steps outside. The man pointed Doc to the pesthouse, where another orderly gave him directions to the surgeon’s office.
“What would you have me do?” a bleary-eyed surgeon named Phineas Higbee asked when Doc finally ran him to ground in a small office behind the main hospital barracks. The man’s desk was piled with papers. Overweight as Higbee was, Doc wondered how he could stand food after the smell of his hospital. He wore a blue uniform with the prominent MS of the medical corps on his shoulder straps. A round face with jowls was partially hidden by a thick graying beard, in stark contrast to his shining bald pate.
“We don’t have the water,” the surgeon said, leaning back in his chair. “It comes in wagons every day, and it’s barely enough for the men’s basic consumption, let alone the frivolity of washing.”
“Good God, man! Even shovels would be an improvement. The floors could be scraped if nothing else!” Doc stood, fists clenched, his anger rising.
“Shovels?” Higbee chortled in amusement. “You want me to give prisoners of war shovels? And have Camp Douglas turned into a rabbit’s warren of escape tunnels?”
Doc paused, willing his temper under control. “Can you at least find me the materials to get some of those poor wretches off the floor and out of the miasma? Even a tent outside would be—”
“You needn’t worry, Dr. Hancock. In this heat, and at the rate diarrhea and complaint are disposing of the worst cases, your men shall have beds aplenty.” Higbee smiled. “Probably within the next day or two.”
Fury, hot and liquid, stirred at Doc’s core. “We’re talking about human beings, sir. Men. The worst besotted swineherd wouldn’t allow his hogs to inhabit such filth. Are you a physician or a—”
“They are Secesh, Doctor!” Higbee shot to his feet, slamming his palm on the desk. “Rebels. As are you! Maybe you all should have thought about the consequences before you went to war with your government.”
“That does not negate basic humanity!” Doc replied through gritted teeth.
Higbee bellowed, “I am doing the best that I can given the conditions! No one expected the war to go on this long, or that we’d take so many prisoners, so don’t call me inhumane. How dare you, you insolent … stinking…”
“My apologies, sir.” Doc tried to defuse the situation. “Is there any hope?”
Higbee was fuming, face red. “I’ve heard the government is working on an exchange system. We have more than eight thousand of you bastards stuffed into a camp made for six, and if your people keep losing battles, another couple of thousand could be packed in here like sardines in a tin by the end of the month.”
“Then allow me to at least offer my services in the surgery. They confiscated my surgical case at Shiloh. I was trained in Boston, at—”
“You’re a damned Rebel! A traitor! I will not be bullied about conditions. You wanted your war? Well, Secesh, you got it! Now, get the hell out of my office.”
A sense of desperation slowly replaced Doc’s rage. “Do you all hate us that much?”
“It’s your war. And the nerve of you, coming in here to snap at me like some mongrel dog. I’ll make you pay for that. Guard!”
The guard was there immediately, a dark-haired private with a flamboyant mustache that covered his mouth and flared out over his cheeks.
Higbee pointed. “Get him out of here.”
Doc raised his hands in a gesture of surrender, hearing Higbee mutter, “Call me inhumane? I’ll show him…”
As Doc stepped out into the yard, the mustachioed guard following warily, he said, “Well, at least he didn’t order you to shoot me.”
The man barely cracked a smile. “Oh, Surgeon Higbee? He’s a heap more devious than that. If’n you was shot, you’d be dead. He’ll figger some way to string it out for you, Reb.”
27
July 15, 1862
“I think I am the most hated man in Arkansas,” Tom Hindman noted as he and Butler rode their horses into Little Rock at the head of a small detachment of Texas cavalry.
The day had been dismal for Butler, despite the unseasonably cool midsummer weather. Just enough of a shower had blown over to settle the dust and drop the temperature. The smell of the damp ground, the flowering corn, and the diaphanous wings of the insects against the sunlight would have delighted him once. But not today.
The purpose of their excursion, however, had been the trial and execution of nine conscripted Arkansas men for desertion. The accused had consisted of three Searcy brothers, a father and his two sons from Prairie County, and three best friends from Arkadelphia. All had been rounded up by Texas cavalry in June pursuant to Hindman’s conscription order. Believing their rights had been trampled, they’d deserted with the intention of traveling to Helena, Arkansas, to join General Curtis and his Federal forces.
Not only did the notion of desertion sit poorly with Hindman, but General Curtis—after having been artfully dissuaded from attacking Little Rock—had marched cross-country to Helena. There, he’d moved into Tom Hindman’s newly built, and very imposing, brick house. The opulent dwelling now served as Curtis’s headquarters. That the Union general was sleeping in Hindman’s bed, eating off his table, and sending military communiqués from Tom’s parlor, had been like pouring coal oil in a cut.
“The most hated?” Butler
