This Scorched Earth

by William Gear

  She stood, heart beginning to pound. Not that his words surprised her, but she had anticipated a sense of panic were he ever to say it. Instead, she seemed paralyzed, standing stupidly, the wooden spoon in her hand.

  “Sarah?”

  “I’m … just a little confused, that’s all.”

  He smiled wistfully. “Part of loving someone, really loving them, is accepting them entirely on their terms. I meant what I said. I shall be honored to simply remain your friend. I just…” He made a face. “I had to tell you. Even at risk of driving you away. I couldn’t have forgiven myself if I’d never said it.”

  She took a deep breath, then blew it out, saying, “Dear me.” She laughed at the irony. “You don’t want to love me, Bret. It’s a bad idea. Find some woman who can dream and love and laugh. I’m nothing more than a walking ruin.”

  “You’re a pillar of steel, Sarah. And each day I marvel at your strength and resilience. Your courage inspires me.”

  “You’re an idiot, Bret Anderson.” She turned away, the hollow sensation of loss in her belly.

  “I know what happened to you. You cry out in your nightmares. And it’s the same nightmare over and over. If I prove nothing else to you, it will be that I am not like those men. That eventually, you won’t have to run anymore.”

  She stared down at the fire, swallowing hard. The demons down inside her tried to claw their way out.

  “I killed the leader,” she heard herself say, as if from a great distance. “Used Billy’s Bowie knife.”

  She felt herself sway.

  In her mind she relived those moments, perched on the steep trail. Dewley was staring at her in horror, his leg broken. He kept trying to reach the Colt where it had fallen among the rocks. His fingers kept slipping off the end of the barrel. The memory of Dewley’s screams, the blood jetting from his severed arteries. It had spattered on her skin, warm and viscous.

  “It was like Billy said. Not much different than butchering a hog.” She paused, gaze gone distant. “I was crazy, Bret. Like some mindless banshee. Possessed of the devil.” She hesitated, still feeling remote and separate from the world. “Maybe I still am.”

  “My nightmares are of the war,” he told her. “That boy. Or seeing ranks of men blown to red bits in front of my guns. We all have our devils. It’s what we do with them that matters.”

  She shrugged, bent down and stirred the chicken where it boiled with carrots she’d found outside of Fort Scott.

  “I think we should go to Colorado,” Bret told her, his voice dropping into its familiar and easygoing cadence. “Someplace new for both of us. A place where no one will be looking for me, either as a deserter or for killing that scoundrel Parmelee. In addition, we can set ourselves up in a better residence. People don’t ask as many questions in places like mining camps. And Sarah, there are fortunes to be made.”

  “Colorado is a long way from here, Bret. And winter’s coming.”

  “In Fort Scott I overheard that there’s a new stage line running across the plains from Atchison, Kansas. That’s a week or so north of us. I’ll be fit enough to sit up by then. And it will be fast.”

  “What about the wagon?”

  “Sell it. Like you said, it’s September. It would take us months to make the crossing on our own. We’d freeze out there in some blizzard. The stage will have us in Denver in weeks. And Jefferson can follow behind the coach on a lead.”

  Colorado? Did she want to go to Colorado?

  “Aren’t stagecoaches expensive?”

  “The fare is one hundred and seventy-five a person.”

  “Dear Lord God, where are we going to find three hundred and fifty—”

  “Here.” He reached over to pat his trunk. “In the lining, lower right side. We shall travel in style.”

  “You are a man of surprises tonight, Bretford Jerome Anderson.” The more she thought about it, the more intriguing the idea was. Colorado was such a long way from Benton County, Arkansas, and the ruins of her old life. For the first time since the start of the war, a flicker of hope began to burn inside her. It would be new. A place where some horrible memory didn’t lurk around the corner. Where no former acquaintance might meet her on the street and cry, “Why, aren’t you Sarah Hancock? James’s raped daughter?”

  She studied Bret thoughtfully, her gaze locked with his dark and anxious eyes. Was the fool really in love with her? Could a man really and truly love her, knowing what he did about her?

  He’s never so much as hinted that I sleep with him.

  And she knew he was interested, had seen the longing in his eyes. Had seen the quickening in him when she wore her red form-fitting dress and stood tall before him.

  Oddly, just thinking of it kindled a flicker of warmth inside her.

  “As to Colorado? I say we do it, Bret.”

  “You’re sure? Just like that?”

  “Paw always talked about the Shining Mountains. I never figured I’d see them. They were just kind of a dream, something for adventurous men.”

  Bret gave her a sparkling smile. “We’ll do it up right, Sarah. I promise. You shall never want for anything. Once we climb into that stage, we’ll leave the devil behind us and never look back.”

  “You’re a fool, Bret. You almost make me believe you.”

  64

  September 15, 1865

  The camp was situated a half mile north of the Santa Fe Trail. It lay in the protection of a grassy draw that emptied into the Arkansas River floodplain. Doc and Butler were three days west of Fort Zarah on the Great Bend of the Arkansas, headed for Fort Larned. Word was that a caravan of freight wagons was about to leave under military escort and make its passage across the western trail.

  Peace might have been declared in the east, but chaos reigned in the west where every Plains Indian tribe had taken the opportunity to declare war on the overland trails. In the south it was the Comanche, Kiowa, and Kiowa Apache. Move a little north and it was the Cheyenne, Arapaho, and Sioux.

  As the depredations had increased, atrocity led to greater atrocity. Colorado Volunteers under a Colonel John Chivington had surprised a Cheyenne and Arapaho winter camp in November of 1864 and murdered men, women, and children. They had paraded through the streets of Denver exhibiting bits of female genitals they’d cut from the dead bodies.

  Given the reactions of travelers Doc and Butler had met, the fighting on the Plains had degenerated into a war of mutual extermination.

  They came on Doc by surprise. Though exactly who surprised whom might be up for grabs. Indians on ponies traveled with much greater stealth than Yankee cavalry. The first Doc knew of their presence was the whispering of tall grass under the unshod hooves of the small party of Cheyenne riders.

  He looked up as they appeared from around a bend in the grassy drainage. The mule on its picket let out one of its screeching brays. Doc slowly stood from where he’d piled kindling inside a ring of stone left by previous travelers.

  The Indians made not a sound, the first four split, two to the left and two to the right, as they circled him and the wagon. A fifth, leading a horse pulling a travois, stopped short.

  One by one, Doc inspected them, seeing young men, perhaps in their twenties and early thirties. Thick black hair was greased, hanging long down their backs. Buffalo-hide shields were hung over their shoulders, along with bows and quivers. Their only clothing consisted of breechcloths and tall moccasins—though most had beaded and feathered arm and ankle bands. Their skin had been burned dark, the color of an old penny. All but the one to Doc’s right who looked seasoned-oak brown. In addition he had wavy brown-tinted hair and the kind of straight nose that hinted of a white father.

  They had fixed their unforgiving black eyes on his, no change of expressions on their faces. Each held a carbine at the ready, or propped on his leg. If the stories were true, no mercy was being given on either side.

  “Hello,” Doc greeted, glancing back to where the fifth rider had pulled up. The horse pulling the travoi
s had stopped and was cropping the grass, the long poles extended over the horse’s withers in an X.

  “I’m Dr. Philip Hancock. I’m just passing through and mean you no harm.”

  One of the Cheyenne said something in what sounded to Doc’s ignorant ear like chittering, and half-swallowed vowels.

  The others laughed.

  The tall young one kneed his horse forward and reached out with a quirt to slap Doc across the shoulders, then he yipped in triumph.

  “What the hell!” Doc cried. “I said I was no harm to you!”

  “Just the same, white man,” the oak-brown one said as he rode his horse forward, “you are in wrong place, wrong time.” Then he rattled off a quick smattering of Cheyenne to the others. They all laughed again—the sort of amused laugh an executioner gave to the condemned just before he cut off his head.

  “Attenshun!” Butler’s voice rang out from the top of the draw. He stood skylined above the drainage, calling out orders. “Company, form up. Sergeant Kershaw, order your men to cap their weapons. Private Johnson, advance at the oblique and prepare to engage. Corporal Pettigrew, by the right flank. Prepare to fire from the enfilade. Forward!” Butler raised his hand, signaling as if it held a sword.

  The Cheyenne were wheeling their horses, staring at him as if in disbelief. The oak-skinned warrior called out, pointing this way and that, as if looking for Butler’s soldiers and telling his companions where to anticipate attack. Each had his carbine raised, cocked, ready to fire.

  “No!” Doc cried. “They’re not real!” He ran in front of the oak-skinned warrior, raising his hands and shouting, “They are ghosts! Do you understand?” God, what was that word Paw used to tell at the dinner table when he was going on about Indians in the west? “Heyoka!” But he wasn’t sure that was the right word. “Do you understand? He’s crazy. Not right in the head.”

  The Cheyenne on their sidestepping horses were staring over the sights, two of them fixed on Butler. They looked anything but relaxed as Butler continued to call out orders, gesturing this way and that.

  “You know heyoka?” the oak-skinned warrior asked.

  “Crazy, yes. Uh … possessed of the spirits. He calls orders to dead soldiers. They live in his head. My brother doesn’t mean any harm. The soldiers he commands are … I mean, they’re ghosts! God, what are the words? Wakan? Is that right? Don’t hurt him!”

  The oak-skinned warrior called a soft order. The Cheyenne, wary and nervous, circled their horses, black eyes flicking this way and that.

  “I am a doctor. What you call a medicine man. I’m trying to heal my brother.”

  Oak Skin called to the apparent leader, the sharp-faced, slightly older man leading the travois. Seven eagle feathers—each cut in a different fashion—hung from his thick tangle of hair.

  Butler, meanwhile, called, “Hold your positions! At the ready!”

  The leader spoke to the oak-skinned warrior. The latter replied and stared down from his horse at Doc. “You are heseeotse?” He pointed at Butler. “He is Ma’hta’sooma Notakhe?”

  “I don’t know your words.”

  “You doctor. Him spirit warrior.”

  “Yes. That’s as good a description as any.”

  Oak Skin stared speculatively at the wagon, then called to the leader and pointed back at the travois. The leader said something in reply.

  “You tell Ma’hta’sooma Notakhe to call off his spirits and come down. Tell him to call back his spirits. Then you doctor our warrior, yes?”

  “Yes,” Doc agreed. He cupped hands to his mouth and called, “Butler? Tell the men to stand down. The Cheyenne don’t want to fight them. It’s all right here.”

  Butler stared uncertainly. “Are you sure? Philip, the stories we’ve heard from everyone we’ve passed on the trail are that Indians are at war after that Sand Creek massacre in Colorado.”

  “You know Sand Creek?” Oak Skin asked, his expression harder if anything.

  “We heard it was bad,” Doc said.

  There didn’t seem to be any give in the man’s hard eyes.

  “If it makes any difference, we, too, fought the Yankee cavalry.”

  “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?”