by Win Blevins
He tied his horse to a hitching post and Elaine’s alongside it. He couldn’t wander away from her, so he looked around. An old fellow lay propped against the front of Rath & Company General Store, passed out drunk. Smith took a few steps toward some men collected farther down, whittling and spitting, Texas cow-boys from the look of them. “Hey, mister,” he said softly.
A cow-boy with his hat brim pinned to the crown in front turned his head, noticed Smith, and gawked. He reeked of trail dust and chewing tobacco.
“Where’s the doctor, mister?”
The fellow’s mustaches twitched—they hung below his jaw—and his mouth showed a couple of beaver teeth. Seemed like maybe he thought everything in life was comical. He eyed Smith up and down and took his time running his gaze over Elaine and the pony drag as well.
“Right yonder around the corner,” the Texan drawled. “I’ll help you fetch her down there.”
Which goes to show, Smith told himself, that there are more things in heaven and earth, Dr. Redskin Maclean, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
Dr. Wockerley, M. T. Wockerley, initials but no names, put Elaine on a narrow bed on his back porch—clearly she would have to stay for a while, and couldn’t occupy his examining room.
He was a young man who constantly seemed about to speak and never got it out. He moved with self-conscious stiffness around his patient, who was mostly unconscious. He checked her eyes, felt her forehead, cut off the hide splint delicately, and examined her wound minutely—peered at them, felt them for warmth, sniffed at them. Smith knew Wockerley wouldn’t find any infection, at least not yet. But he treated the wound with yeast in combination with elm bark and charcoal, a familiar smell to Smith—he wished he’d had some yeast two nights ago. Wockerley also gave her yeast by mouth, in some whiskey—probably he didn’t have porter in the house.
Last, Wockerley studied with scrupulous care the shape of the shin that hid the setting of the bone. His thick glasses made his eyes look goggled. The man was thorough and proper, though, even if he did act like a clown. The torn flesh made it hard for him to tell the normal shape of the leg and surmise the fit of the bones underneath.
“Feels displaced to me,” said Smith. It was a guess on Smith’s part—you judged from the look of the skin and the feel of the bones under it. If the match of jagged ends wasn’t good, the broken bones would take a long time to heal, and Elaine might have a crooked leg. Ten years ago, amputation would have been automatic, because of the danger of infection. Now the better doctors knew about Lister and his work in antisepsis. Smith would insist on cleanliness and no amputation.
Wockerley pulled a thoughtful face and nodded. He seemed about to blubber something, but it didn’t come—maybe Smith made him nervous.
Smith supposed Wockerley caught on. Smith had told him where and how it happened and suggested that Elaine might need traction. That should let the man know why Smith couldn’t take care of her himself, on the move with the Human Beings.
Wockerley was acting peculiar. Though he was obviously intent on his patient, he kept not looking at Smith, seeming not to hear Smith, not asking questions of Smith, and conspicuously not turning his back to Smith. Wockerley would even align himself at bizarre angles, standing over Elaine with his shoulders strangely cocked so he could see Smith out of the corner of his eye. But he never looked right at his colleague. His only condescension to professional mannerliness was that he seemed embarrassed by his behavior.
Maybe Smith should cut his hair. Or be light-complexioned. Or half a foot shorter. It would have been funny had it not been maddening.
Smith used every trick he could think of. He described the break and the wounds and the way he’d treated them with all sorts of medical terms—filled his talk with tibia, antiseptic, open fracture, displaced, and comminuted. He spoke of his concern about infection. He told Wockerley where he took his training, Boston Medical College. He mentioned one staff member, Abraham Grantly, whom this Wockerley might know of because of his work on disinfectants.
Wockerley didn’t have anything to say but “Ahhh” and “Mmmm.” When Smith asked where Wockerley had been trained, the man didn’t even make one of those sounds. It was weird. It was rude.
Suddenly Wockerley stood erect, beamed awkwardly at Smith, and said, “Yes, well, certainly you wouldn’t scalp us all while I’m trying to help your wife, would you?”
Whoo-ee! There’s polite parlor conversation for you, thought Smith.
Then Wockerley rang a bell with self-conscious vigor. A pale young woman came in, so stooped and skinny she looked cadaverous. Wockerley addressed her formally as “Mrs. Wockerley,” which Smith found bizarre, failed to introduce Smith, and asked her to send for the sheriff.
When Mrs. Wockerley brought the officer with a badge out of the house, the doctor asked him where the sheriff was. “Mr. Masterson sends Dr. Wockerley greetings and salutations,” the man said with a twang, making an effort to get the words exactly right, “but he says to tell you he’s holding three kings at the moment and taking all his orders from them.” The man let it sit a moment. “Truth is, he ain’t even setting at poker right this moment, but that’s what he said to say.”
“I need him to send a man to fetch Dr. Richtarsch,” said Wockerley, trying to sound imperious. “This woman needs him.”
“The sheriff has authorized me to reply to further requests at my own discretion,” answered the man with a badge. “Since I’m the feller as would do the fetchin’, I can safely say that Sheriff Masterson has no one available for that duty at this time and suggests you do your own fetchin.” The man headed on across the porch and out the door without so much as a fare-thee-well. Smith admired his style.
“He’s at the fort,” Wockerley said to Smith as he handed Mrs. Wockerley a cotton swab to throw away. “I don’t suppose you could …” Wockerley pretended to be preoccupied with his examination for a moment. “Being in the military, Dr. Richtarsch has seen a good many affairs of this sort.” He cocked an eyebrow officiously at Smith. “It will take you a couple of hours to get out there and back with Dr. Richtarsch. At least two.” The man actually kept repeating Richtarsch’s title as though Smith should be awed by it.
At last Wockerley risked a joke. “Of course, the good doctor may regard this as aiding and abetting the enemy,” and tsk-tsked a dry little imitation of a laugh.
“I’ll fetch him,” said Smith. Being in the army, the fellow was probably an old hand with trauma. But before he left, Smith couldn’t resist having a little fun. “Mrs. Wockerley,” he said, “I’ll just sleep on the floor next to Elaine. I have my own bedroll.”
The poor woman could hardly keep man and wife apart, could she? But she certainly looked like she wanted to. And Wockerley gave Smith the biggest, phoniest smile he’d ever seen. They’d probably lock the porch door and sleep with the shotgun close by the bed. Smith went out chuckling maliciously.
Two hours later he was back in Dodge City alone—Richtarsch had been out hunting, but an orderly promised the doctor would come to town tomorrow morning. Meanwhile, Smith was ravenous.
The Dodge House Saloon and Restaurant stood right in front of him. Why not?
Why not was, Smith didn’t have any money. He’d given his savings to Little Wolf to buy horses and weapons for the Human Beings. He’d traded his revolver for the horse for Sings Wolf’s feast. So what was left? He’d better not try to sell Elaine’s jewelry—he’d probably get lynched for having killed a white woman. Nor could he sell his own pocket watch, a railroad watch made by Waltham and given to him by a Boston family for his college graduation. So he went to the livery to sell Elaine’s gelding. People knew Indians actually owned horses. Her sidesaddle and jewelry he’d leave with Wockerley to help pay for her care.
An hour later Smith drank his third cup of coffee filled half an inch deep with sugar, the way the Cheyennes like it, the way he’d never lost his taste for. He’d finished a platter of pork chops and eggs and buttered toast and potato
es, and he felt like a glutton, and that felt good, damned good. He still remembered fondly the first time he’d eaten a sunny-side-up egg, in St. Louis. It had made him think maybe the white doings weren’t so bad after all. Eggs and the thought of women for pay made him more willing to stay in the big town and go to school, but he never did get any of the women, not St. Louie women anyway.
It was pleasant to sit and eat a meal and not think about his situation. Smith never permitted himself to stew about anything while he ate. Eating was a time for enjoying something basic, so you didn’t fret while you ate. You gave your whole attention to tastes and smells and your feeling of satisfaction.
So while he ate, he was able to get his mind off his preoccupations of the ride to the fort and back: the awful idea of going off and leaving Elaine with strangers. The terrible arguments for and against. His notions that he was doing what was best for her, that he had to stick with his people or never go among them again, that she would want him to go. All put up against a single feeling as elemental as blood—you took this woman, you belong to her and she to you, you stay with her.
Stop it, Smith ordered himself. He pushed away from the table and walked irritably into the gaming room. It was crowded, bustling with a kind of sleazy energy. Cow-boys up from Texas were jammed at tables with games of poker, faro, and monte. Professional gamblers sat there coolly in their black-and-white getups and took the boys’ money in tense silence. At big tables dice games went on, chuck-a-luck and hazard, and once in a while a rousing shout would go up when someone won some money. The whole operation was arranged to take a cow-boy’s money in a genteel way and with a wicked smile that let him know that broke was what he was born to be, and rich was what the proprietor was born to be.
In a corner a man played a hurdy-gurdy, and several bar girls and cow-boys danced to its raucous, lively tunes. The cow-boys danced with a peculiar zest. They cocked their big hats back to forty-five degrees. Their huge spurs jingled at every clop. Their revolvers flapped up and down ridiculously in their holsters. Their sails full of liquor and lust, they hoed it down with a whore, more colorfully known as a soiled dove, sporting woman, frail sister, calico queen, painted cat, or nymph de la prairie. A cow-boy had little finesse but great endiusiasm—sometimes he whirled his partner for a whole circle in the air and saluted his feat with an earsplitting whoop.
Before long the cow-boy would get sufficiently full of himself to follow his nymph to the back rooms and invest some of his trail-driving money in a good time. It would be a strange transaction between a blustery lad and a cynical lass, both probably teenagers, one with too little experience and the other with too much. As both a come-on and a guard against intimacy, the girl wouldn’t tell the cow-boy her real name, but would give him a nom de guerre. Girls working in Dodge City at that time were called the likes of Timberline, Hambone Jane, Dutch Jake, Wicked Alice, Peg-Leg Annie, Roaring Gimlet, Tit Bit, or Lady Jane Gray.
Lust, thought Smith, good, healthy lust. Something white folks always spoke ill of—they didn’t even have a word for it that didn’t sound disapproving.
Lust, something Smith was full of and hadn’t been able to let out with his wife. Two and a half weeks of marriage but not two and a half weeks of loving. She’d been passionate once, but there was something desperate about that. That was the night she’d spoken of wanting to run away.
What a honeymoon he’d given his wife. If her family knew, they’d have called out the army to get her back, and get Smith hanged. Well, she was out of it now, well out of it.
Came a mocking inner voice, Out of what, redskin?
Smith kicked himself toward the bar. He got whiskey from a black bartender with droopy, all-knowing eyes. He went to the dice table where they played chuck-a-luck and waited until the point was four, a magical number to the Cheyenne, and bet a dollar on it. Four won. He got more whiskey. He bet on four again, and again, every time he saw it come up. He got more whiskey, and bet on four some more. Toward midnight by the railroad watch he had no use for, he kicked himself out the door toward the porch where he would sleep. He’d bet on four seven times (another magical number) at one table and won five times, and seven times at another table and won six times. He’d come out ahead two ten-dollar gold pieces.
Walking down the middle of the street, not entirely sober, he muttered, “Hoorah for the Cheyennes.” He nearly stumbled into a rut. He reconsidered his mutter. This time he raised a mock toast to the sky and bellowed, “Hurrah for the goddamn Cheyennes.” And repeated it in Cheyenne for the sake of any Cheyenne gods who might be listening.
Then he thought of one more toast. He lifted an imaginary shot glass to the heavens and roared, “Here’s to the gods, goddamn them!”
Chuckling, and weaving a little, he angled toward Wockerley’s house, which was half a block off the main drag, Front Street. Smith was sober enough not to stumble, or make any noises that would offend the good doctor and his wife. Rather, the objectionable doctor and his wife the cadaver.
The good doctor had a good house, Smith thought, looking it over. A two-story affair in proper Victorian style, respectable and good-looking. Since doctoring hardly paid, he must be profiting in patent medicines. House was plenty big enough for a home and office both, even a back porch to take care of convalescents. With a separate porch entrance in case the convalescent’s husband was a man of color. Right for a respectable but officious doctor and his corpse of a wife.
Smith went up the path toward the porch, thinking of Elaine there in her drugged sleep. Then something scuffed in the road behind him.
He jumped instantly to one side with his knife ready. It felt good to be fast. It felt lousy not to see anything in the street.
It hit him in the back and head and knocked him facedown, hard.
Smith made out that it was a human body on him. He tried to roll, but he was pinned flat. A hand grabbed his hair. Then he felt the sharp tip of the knife at his throat. He decided to lie quiet.
“Very good, veho,” whispered a voice in his ear. In Cheyenne. He recognized the voice but couldn’t place it. The bastard had waited on the porch roof and tricked Smith with a rock thrown into the street.
“I see you are where you belong now,” rasped the voice. “You eat the white man’s food, gamble for his gold. Did you take one of his women-for-pay? Mmm?”
Smith kept his mouth shut and waited.
“While you gamble, veho, who watches your veho wife? Who but me?”
Smith quivered with fear, and his enemy tightened his grip on Smith’s hair. Smith ordered himself to put the fear away.
“You should stay in this town, veho. The white people would pay you their money to make their bodies well while their spirits rot. You are good at that. You could get lots of gold. See what a fine, big house this doctor has, the one who takes care of your wife. Your wife could work as a woman-for-pay and get lots of gold, too. You could be rich. That’s what you vehos want—rich.”
Smith just waited. It would come.
“Turn your head, veho, and see who has your life to take or give back. Turn!”
Smith rotated his head slowly, away from the knife point.
It was Twist, his face full of triumph and malice.
Twist switched to his bad English, except for the one word he kept repeating. “Do you wants your life, veho? I gives it to you. Is no honor in kill a veho.”
Twist took the knife point away, but ground Smith’s head into the earth with one arm. “Now Twist gives you your life, he tells you where spend it.
“Stays in Dodge City, veho. Stays away from the Human Beings. Your veho spirit corrupts the people. Your wife tries turn them into white men. Stays away. If you comes back, Twist cuts your guts out. Then, during you die, he fucks your wife in front of you and cut her head off while he fucks her.
“Thinks of that, veho.”
Smith flinched when the knife point touched the socket of his right eye.
“Now Little Wolf will give you something to help
you remember,” the warror said in Cheyenne.
Pain jerked hot through him, and something else felt incredible—Smith couldn’t believe it. The knife point ground against bone. It circled the outside of his eye socket—it felt to Smith like it was screeching soundlessly. He felt hot blood run into his eye.
Then Twist’s weight lifted off him, and the muzzle of a pistol pressed against the top of his spine.
“Lie still, veho,” growled Twist. “If you get up while I can see you, I will shoot you.” He cackled hideously, but Smith thought it was a stagy cackle, thought out in advance. The pressure of the muzzle disappeared.
So why didn’t you kill me, Twist? Smith asked himself. If you really think I’m a veho?
“I would enjoy killing you,” Twist said softly from a few steps away. “Why don’t you move?”
It’s because I’m a Cheyenne, Smith thought triumphantly. You don’t want to kill me because I’m a Cheyenne. You’re afraid of being banished for wasting the blood of one of the Human Beings.
Smith wanted to holler out gladly, and mockingly. But he lay still. Twist was crazy, and a crazy man might do anything.
You’re afraid to kill me, Twist, Smith thought gleefully. He rubbed the blood out of his eye.
After a long while, maybe five minutes, Smith got cautiously to his hands and knees. Nothing happened. He stood up. Still nothing. He ran to the porch where his wife lay sleeping.
He lit a candle. Elaine seemed to be asleep, and at peace. He felt for the artery in her neck—she had a steady pulse. She looked very beautiful in sleep, he thought. She lay on her back, her head angled to one side revealing a classic New England profile, the sort of profile that idealists like abolitionists and suffragists showed in magazine pictures. Smith like that. He felt tender toward her, and admired her. But, he noticed, his feelings were as though from afar. He shook his head—how odd.
