by Gordon Ryan
“You could leave, Sergeant. But I might get out alive, and if I do, I will certainly report your desertion in the face of the enemy. Do you understand me?”
The old sergeant spat once more, looked at Anders and grinned, his teeth stained brown and his gums discolored. “Give ya fifteen minutes, Cap’n Hansen.”
“You’ll wait one hour, Sergeant.” Anders turned to the trooper who had helped him carry the first injured man to the wagon. “Will you help me, Jed?”
The trooper nodded. He picked up an extra cartridge belt from the wounded trooper in the wagon and the two men started off into the brush while the other troopers began to load more wounded men into the wagon.
“Fifteen minutes, Cap’n!” the old sergeant shouted after them.
Anders and Jed made their way through the brush, stopping as they heard an occasional single shot ring through the trees. “Got ’em pinned down all right,” Jed said. “That’s their style. They like to let you know you’re in their sights when they got it up on ya,” he said.
The sound of infrequent rifle fire grew louder as they approached the area. Jed guided them around the woods, away from the shots, then brought them to the edge of a clearing, roughly circular in shape and about a hundred yards across. It was covered in short saw grass, one to two feet tall. Anders could see that about halfway across the clearing the ground dipped into a gully that looked like a small streambed, but the water had dried up in the heat of the summer.
Anders crept next to Jed as they watched through an opening in the bushes to see what was in the clearing. Another shot rang out and dust rose from the ground about fifty yards out. Anders saw an arm briefly raise up out of the saw grass as if someone were turning over, trying to avoid the shots coming from the far side of the clearing.
“Jed, you got any ideas? Someone’s alive out there.”
Jed nodded and grunted. “Be a sittin’ duck goin’ out there, Captain.”
“Jed,” Anders voiced, “he, or they, are helpless unless we try. Suppose I crawl out and see what I can do while you put a couple of shots into those woods on the other side, just to let ’em know we’re here too.”
Again Jed nodded. “Sounds good, Captain. Try to keep down below the grass if you can. Take a sight from here on some landmark, a tall tree or somethin’, and crawl toward it lookin’ through the grass to keep your guide mark in sight. You can get lost on your belly in that grass if you ain’t careful. And the last thing you’d be wantin’ to do is go poking your head up to have a look around,” he grinned.
“Okay,” Anders replied. He crawled to the edge of the clearing, then looked back at Jed, giving a thumbs up, which Jed returned. Jed then fired two quick shots into the far side of the clearing, where a rustling of brush indicated that Spanish troops were still there.
Anders crawled forward through the grass, with flying insects buzzing about his face and the razorlike grass actually slicing the skin on his forearms as he crawled on his elbows. Another shot from Jed rang out, followed by two shots from the far side, this time directed at the woods where Jed was hiding, rather than at the wounded man or men pinned down in the clearing. Ten minutes into his crawl, Anders pushed aside a clump of saw grass and came face to face with the heel of a boot. Inching up alongside the man, Anders could tell from the trousers that it was Stitch. When he had reached his friend’s upper body, Stitch rolled his head toward Anders and smiled weakly.
“Been thinkin’ ’bout General Custer and my pappy,” he mumbled, sounding delirious. Stitch had previously told Anders that in ’76, when he was about fourteen, he’d been an assistant to the cook in the Seventh Cavalry and his daddy had been with Custer as a Ute Indian scout on that fateful morning at Little Bighorn.
Anders smiled at Stitch. “Not today, Stitch. We’re gonna get out of here together. Where are you hit?”
“In the thigh. Got a compress on it and stopped the bleeding I think.”
“Can you crawl?”
“Dunno. Them Spanish been throwing lead around every time the grass moves, so’s I ain’t tried yet.”
Anders nodded and looked back down toward his feet in the direction he had come. A path of bent grass was clearly visible where he had crawled through the field. A small pebble bounced off Anders’s shoulder and he looked off to one side, toward the direction he thought the pebble had come from. Not seeing anything, he looked back at Stitch, questioning.
“Got two more troopers over in that gully, Andy. I brought a couple out before the Spanish started shootin’, but when I came back I ...”
“I understand, Stitch. Apparently at least one of ’em is still alive.”
“Crawl forward about five feet, Andy, and you can see ’em. I’ll try to turn around while you do.”
“Okay, Stitch. Stay low. I’ll be right back.”
Anders shifted his position and pulled himself through the grass a few feet until he could see through a cluster of saw grass clumps. Another shot rang out from Jed’s side of the clearing, with no response from the Spaniards. Peering through the grass, Anders could make out the blue jacket of a U.S. trooper uniform, lying in the depressed area of the streambed. It was nothing more than a two-foot-deep depression in the clearing, but it afforded cover from direct gunfire of the enemy. Anders waved his fingers slightly and received a quick acknowledgment from the trooper.
“How many,” Anders whispered loudly enough for the man to hear.
“Just two,” came the answer.
“Right. Be back shortly,” Anders replied.
“We ain’t goin’ nowhere,” the man said.
“Hold on, I’ll get you when I come back,” Anders said, slithering backward toward Stitch, who had turned around and was facing Jed’s position. Passing Stitch, Anders spoke softly. “Try to crawl as best you can, Stitch. I’ll keep ahead and to the side. I’ll pull you when I can. It’s only about forty yards.”
Stitch nodded and began to crawl. His labored grunting assured Anders that the wound was painful as Stitch dragged his body over the uneven ground. It took almost twenty minutes to reach the cover of the bushes with Jed reaching out for them the final few feet and pulling them behind cover.
“Got any water?” Stitch mumbled.
“Sure ’nuff,” Jed replied.
While Stitch drank and lay silently in the cover of the trees, Anders filled Jed in on the remaining troopers.
“Maybe we ought to go back and get t’others,” Jed offered.
“Not enough time, Jed. Besides, the sergeant may not still be there. You help Stitch back to the ambulance and come back to this spot for me. Bring another trooper if you can so we can carry these men if we have to.”
Jed nodded.
“Jed, if I’m not back here when you return ...”
“You’ll be here.”
Anders smiled and nodded. “If I’m not, get back to the wagon and take those wounded to the field hospital. You’ll know where to find me in the morning.”
Jed just nodded his acknowledgment. He lined up his rifle again and fired another shot toward the Spanish troops. He then leaned his rifle against a tree and slung Stitch over his shoulder. Picking up his rifle, he shifted Stitch’s weight for balance. “Be back,” he said, grunting as he began to haul Stitch through the woods toward the ambulance wagon.
Anders drank deeply from his canteen, strapped another to his waist, and slowly began to retrace his route through the saw grass toward the two troopers in the gully. Less than five feet from the depression in the ground, Anders raised up slightly and caught sight of the trooper who had spoken to him a few minutes earlier.
A single shot from the far woods came unexpectedly, but Anders immediately felt the impact as the bullet tore completely through his left arm, halfway between the shoulder and his elbow, tearing the flesh and shattering the bone. Blood instantly began to spurt onto the ground and his trousers. Horrified by the wound, he had the presence of mind to retain his prone position, out of sight of the enemy troops, and he rolled ov
er on his back. The sun was setting, but was still high enough in the sky to glare down on his face. Closing his eyes, he rested for a moment, gripping his arm, as yet unsure how injured he was and unable to make a thorough examination.
Just how long it was before the trooper arrived, Anders wasn’t sure, but he felt the tourniquet being applied to his arm above the wound. Anders turned his face toward the man, who smiled gently at him. “Got my belt around your arm. That should stop the bleeding. If I pass out again, you’ve got to release the pressure every fifteen or twenty minutes to let the blood back into your lower arm,” the trooper said.
“Sounds like you know your business,” Anders said, handing him a canteen of water.
“I was studying to be a doctor in Utah before I joined up with Captain Young’s battalion.”
“I’m from Salt Lake, too,” Anders grimaced as they both lay, face up in the saw grass, the sun beating down on their bodies and insects swarming around their heads. “Came down with the hospital group from Holy Cross.”
“Of course,” he said. “Blessed Sister Mary’s nurses.”
“You know her?”
“Only by reputation,” the trooper said. “I’m Lieutenant Anthony Richards. Friends call me Tony,” he smiled, laying his head over toward Anders. “Are you Catholic, uh …”
“Anders Hansen. Andy,” he said. “No, I’m LDS, uh, well, sort of,” he wheezed, grimacing at the pain.
Lieutenant Richards let out a small, gurgling laugh. The front of his uniform was soaked in a patch of dark red blood. “No sort of to it, Andy. You are or you aren’t. Doesn’t depend on how often you go to church.”
Anders began to cough, turning on his side away from the wound, but facing Tony. “I know. That’s what my sister always told me. But how’s all that gonna get us out of here?”
“I’ve been here about six hours, Andy. Got shot in the stomach early this morning. I saw the other fellow—the one you pulled out—rescue three of our troopers before he got shot. Glad you pulled him out. He was one brave trooper.”
“He’s a retired trooper, Tony. He came down with the hospital like I did.”
“Umm.”
“How many more in the ditch?” Anders asked.
“No more ... now,” he said. “The other man died just after you left with your friend.”
“I’m sorry. Did you know him well?”
“He was my brother, Fletcher.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
How long Anders had been unconscious he didn’t know, but he woke to find two troopers reaching down under his arms to lift him up. The pain in his shattered arm was excruciating. Shaky from the loss of blood and feeling faint, Anders vaguely recognized Tony and smiled weakly at him. The sun had dropped below the treetops and clear vision of the far tree line was obscured by a low-hanging evening mist. The two troopers got Anders to his feet, and together they walked slowly toward the woods where Anders had entered the clearing. Reaching the road, Anders saw in the gathering darkness that the wagon was gone. He grimaced as Tony shifted Anders’s weight and the three men began the long walk to the field hospital, with Anders being supported by one trooper on either side.
Semiconscious most of the way, Anders opened his eyes as they crested the hill above the field hospital.
“Almost there, Tony,” Anders rasped.
“Andy, we’ll be leaving you now. When you get back to Salt Lake, would you please give a message to my parents and my sister, Sarah?”
“Well, you’ll give it yourself,” Anders mumbled, his tongue thick in his mouth.
Tony continued. “Tell them that Fletch and I are just fine and that Grandma Richards is going to take good care of us, just as she’s always done. Will you do that for me, Andy?”
“Sure, Tony, but ...”
“Just a few more yards now, Andy.”
Sister Mary Theophane stood sick with worry outside the recovery tent, drinking from a small cup of water dipped from a barrel alongside the tent. Stitch had just been taken from surgery into the recovery tent, but had been unable to tell Sister Mary anything concerning Anders Hansen. The troopers with Stitch and the older sergeant told her that Anders had probably been killed along with the other troopers who were pinned down in the far clearing. Jed had promised her that he’d go back at first light to see what he could find.
Looking up the road toward the top of the hill, Sister Mary caught a glimpse of movement and strained to make out the shape silhouetted against the twilight sky. It was a man, descending the hill, stumbling as he came on.
She turned and lifted the tent flap, calling for one of the orderlies to come and assist her. She then started trotting toward the approaching man. As she got closer she recognized Anders Hansen. She looked back toward the hospital clearing, motioning for the orderly to hurry, and then she hiked up her habit and broke into a run. The orderly carried a stretcher, and as he ran past the center of the hospital clearing, he called for one of the security troopers to help him. When they reached Sister Mary, she was already kneeling on the ground next to Anders, who had collapsed. The men quickly lifted Anders onto the stretcher, and Sister Mary walked alongside him as they started toward the hospital tent.
“Mr. Hansen, I thought you... . How did you get here?” she asked.
Restricted by his position on the stretcher, Anders turned his head far enough to look back over his shoulder, trying to see past the orderly carrying the stretcher. “These two troopers carried me out,” he mumbled. “They’re wounded too. Hey, Tony, you there?” he called out.
Sister Mary looked back over her shoulder as they continued their descent to the hospital. “Anders, I saw no one with you,” she said.
“Sure there was, two of ’em. Carried me out,” he protested, his speech slurred and his voice weak.
Sister Mary stopped on the road, allowing the two stretcher-bearers to continue toward the surgery. Trained in the practicalities of hospital care and the healing art of medicine, she remained, first and foremost, a Catholic nun. She crossed herself and uttered a brief prayer of thanks—thanks for the safe return of Anders Hansen, and thanks for the miracle she had been privileged to witness.
In the morning, Trooper Jed Hastings, along with a squad of Captain Young’s men from the Utah Battalion, returned to the clearing, where they found the bodies of Lieutenant Anthony Richards and Trooper Fletcher Richards, lying side by side in the dry creek bed.
Retrieving their remains and returning to the hospital, Jed found Sister Mary sitting with Anders, whose color was beginning to return. His left arm, the wound tightly bandaged and resting on pillows, had been amputated six inches below the shoulder.
“Jed,” Anders said as he saw his comrade from the day before. “Where did Lieutenant Richards go?”
Jed looked at Sister Mary and back at Anders. “He’s in the wagon, Andy. We found him in the clearing with his brother. I’m sorry, Andy. They was both dead.”
“That can’t be,” Anders said. “They lifted me and they carried me here last night.”
Jed lowered his head and stepped closer to Anders’s bedside. “They been dead all night, Andy. I’m sorry.”
“But, Sister, they carried me ...” Anders pleaded, his eyes locking with hers, “ ... I know they did.”
Sister Mary nodded and reached for Anders’s hand. “I know they did, my son. By God’s grace, I know they did.”
Chapter 6
Come, come, ye Saints, no toil nor labor fear …
Tom Callahan leaned forward, resting his arms on the polished wooden handrail, trying to find a comfortable place for his knees, which were jammed up against the balcony railing. The front row of seats in the balcony of the Tabernacle on Temple Square in Salt Lake City, with their narrow confines, had not been built for a man Tom’s size. Maybe, he thought, in the old days the children had sat here as their parents watched from the rear.
From his seat overlooking the multitude on the main floor, Tom listened with awe as the Mormon Tabernac
le Choir offered the music to close the final session of general conference.
Though hard to you this journey may appear …
Thursday, October 6, 1898, was a celebratory occasion for the Callahans. Tom admitted privately that his pride in Katrina had enhanced his enjoyment of this final session of general conference.5 He smiled to himself. It was her first official outing as a member of the Tabernacle Choir, and he knew that behind Katrina’s humble exterior, her heart was near bursting with pride. Since being accepted as a member of the prestigious choir, she had hardly been able to contain her excitement.
Adding to their joy on this bright fall day was the fact that today was their first wedding anniversary. They had been married in San Francisco in a civil ceremony at City Hall on their return from Mexico, and Tom had not yet gotten over the thrill of having young Katrina Hansen for his bride. He was enormously proud of her, and as he sat watching her sing, it seemed impossible to him that it had been a year already. And could their firstborn son be six weeks old as well?
Born August 24, 1898, Patrick James Callahan had quickly been dubbed “PJ,” named in honor of the first man in America to take an interest in young Tom Callahan, the late Father Patrick James O’Leary. The charitable Catholic priest in New York City had in many ways saved Tom’s life, and now, in little PJ, Father O’Leary’s memory was to be preserved.
’Tis better far for us to strive …
Only moments earlier, President Lorenzo Snow had concluded his address to this semiannual gathering of adherents of the Mormon faith. The little, white-haired, bearded man had been sustained during this session of the conference as the Prophet and President of The church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, succeeding Wilford Woodruff who had died a few weeks previously. Four years earlier, Tom had not even heard of the Mormon church. A Catholic, now living in a predominantly Mormon community, Tom had come to appreciate the strength and hard work of the Latter-day Saints. They had performed a monumental task in transforming the barren Utah landscape into an oasis. He admired the Mormons and counted many of them as friends. Indeed, he was married to a devout Mormon. Yet, he remained a Catholic. Upon fleeing Ireland and his abusive father, Tom had made his mother a promise—that Tom would not forsake their Catholic faith. Though he seldom attended mass and only occasionally, at the prodding of Father Scanlan, attended confession, Tom was in his mind a thoroughgoing Catholic. Abandoning his Catholic roots would be tantamount to denying his Irish heritage and dishonoring his saintly mother’s memory. It was something he could not and would not do.
