Fight for Glory (My Wounded Soldier #1)

by Diane Munier

  I went in the house first, tore around, found a blanket, took my knife and cut and ripped it in strips, none too neat. Gaylin yelled, but I couldn’t look at him. Jimmy took all my mind.

  I took those strips out there, and dropped on my knees by him.

  “You remember,” he whispered, cause he’d be talking the whole way to Hades, “that time we was laying out in that field at Belmont?”

  I didn’t answer, I moved him to get a good tight wrap around him and he broke in a sweat. I did this three times.

  “We rousted those Rebs, we was whooping, but here they come again. We fought that day…God…and after we was so tired, looking up…and those two doves white in the sky, all that smoke clearing…you remember? Garrett said, looka there. It’s a sign. Peace will come.”

  I wondered when that would be? For now, I had to keep moving. I pulled the blanket tight as I could and tied over it with a thinner piece. It would have to do.

  Gaylin was still yelling up a fuss. I went to him now, knife out and cut through the convoluted ropes they tied him with. He was frantic, ripped them off, and the tie around his mouth. I wished we could keep that one in place.

  “Whiskey?” I said. He only cringed a second before he stood, nearly fell, and half crawled to the old man’s body and moved it aside and pulled the bottle from beneath it.

  I snatched it from him and went out. I knew he followed me. “Look around for the money,” I said to him.

  He was rubbing his wrists and staring at Jimmy.

  “Get in there!” I yelled. Reminded me of Johnny…that day. But he listened to me.

  “Any loot…go get it. We can’t stay round here,” I called.

  Where were Michael and William? Where were they? I couldn’t keep Jimmy in the open. I hated to take him in the house with all the filth. I kicked the door off its hinges and took it into the yard and called for Gaylin. He came back out and helped me get Jimmy on that fractured door and then we carried him onto the porch at least.

  “Get to that loot,” I said. I lifted Jimmy’s head a bit and held that bottle to his lips. “You want Boyle Monroe? Well here’s his backwash.”

  He laughed, then he coughed, and I like to never got him to take a swallow.

  Gaylin came out carrying a couple of heavy bags. “They brought this in today,” he said, his throat sounding raw.

  “That’s good. Take one of Jimmy’s revolvers and stand a guard over him. Don’t shoot Michael or William. Anyone else, have at it, and I mean don’t hesitate.”

  I went for the horses then.

  “Where you goin’?” Gaylin called, but I ignored him. I’d already given him his orders. I ran to the horses, hoping I’d cross paths with Michael and William. I did not. I found the animals tethered where William had staked them, and I rode mine and led theirs in. At the house, Michael was kneeling one side of Jimmy, William the other. “Where you been?” I said to William.

  He held his arm. “Had me holed up, but I got him.”

  I’d hear that tale later. My relief at finding him alive was tremendous.

  I told Michael to get in there and check under the floor for loot. I loosened Jimmy’s role from the back of the saddle and tossed it to William to spread over him. “You shot?” I asked.

  “Knife. Go on, it’s not deep.”

  I ordered Gaylin to help me clear that hay wagon, but leave a bed. I went to their shed and found some close to rotten harness. I set Gaylin to hitch two of their horses to it. They were wore out as ours, but I’d sooner theirs dropped.

  I would drive this myself, as we’d keep to the high road now, and I would take what came, and they’d best know what they were doing or we’d leave a trail of bodies from here to Springfield. I’d put Gaylin facing rear in the bed with Jimmy and the wrapped up stinking remains of Monroe.

  Michael found some money. We’d turn that in.

  The four of us then laid the bodies in the yard in a straight line. If there was a price and they weren’t snatched away the marshals could come and get their picture and maybe we’d get more pay. Now none of it mattered as I had a wounded man in need of a healer.

  Tom Tanner

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  We traveled all night and came on her place in gray morning. This was ramshackle, like so many round here, porch sagging, the roofline bowed, like it had coughed dust and never got its wind back.

  From beneath the porch a dog charged, hackles and growls, a hellhound foaming.

  A shot rang out. Dog stopped so fast his hinders lifted before he fell.

  That be William’s quick shooting.

  The door opened and a big gal filled it, petticoat as gray as the earth, and hanging like some curtains I’d seen, all crooked and bedraggled.

  She chewed her pipe and I asked myself—this be a man in a woman’s dress and bonnet?

  But no, she said, “I’m called Iris. Who you be?”

  “Men in need of a healer. They say it’s you, and we got good money and no time to waste,” I said.

  She wanted more though. “Who you be? Yanks it sounds like.”

  “You be a Yank yourself,” said I, playing Jimmy’s part now as he had finally succumbed to a stillness I never hoped to witness.

  “Well, that dog had me trapped for three days. He was a good ‘un ‘til he went mad.” She walked to the wagon. “The smell of death is with you.” She covered her mouth and nose with her apron as she looked in the bed. “The one is past healing,” she said meaning the one wrapped, bloated and stinking—Monroe, as Gaylin had confirmed. “Gunshot?” said she looking at the live one now, though by his color, he was low on blood.

  “Yes,” said I, already fixing to move him in with everyone’s help. “You know what you’re doing?”

  “Do you? Why not put this one in the ground? Cemetery up the hill from the old war. Put him there.”

  “Can you help us with our wounded?” I said, and she would help us, one way or another.

  “Bring him inside,” she said. “And plant the other.”

  Gaylin was in the wagon’s bed, along with Michael who had no trouble standing on Monroe so he could get a good grip on Cap, while William and me stood on the ground and reached over. We lifted him then, and his groan was like music to me, though we felt his sick heat. All night as we journeyed I had called to Gaylin to know if Jimmy lived. His moaning was all we had to go on.

  We were still in Monroe’s country, but hoped the money and hope of such would be a bigger draw than following us. Michael had stuck a few dollars through the puncheon floor in Monroe’s house in the hopes they would spend time digging there. I thought it a fool’s hope, but then this whole journey was.

  In Iris’s house it smelled to high heaven, but she’d been trapped in there. Why she hadn’t shot that animal is anyone’s guess. Maybe she was not armed. “I got buckets to empty,” said she.

  “No. Gaylin will do that. You see to this one,” I said as we lowered Jimmy to her bed.

  He was a fierce sight, bandages red through, him smelling from soil, but not outstanding here, and we’d had Monroe’s ripeness all the night through. She had no pull-back in her about letting Jimmy lie where she did herself, for he was foul. We had been so busy churning miles, we had not been able to see to him beyond moving him from the worst of the peril. Yet death stalked him, rode with us all, and we could not get shod of it not matter how hard we drove.

  William joined Michael outside. I laughed to think how this place and its smells must have hit him like a fist. Him and Michael would see what was around and set up a guard. Gaylin had yet to protest that I put him on shit duty. He was so worried over Jimmy he stood there watching. “Will he live?” he asked, like this old woman would know.

  “Get to the buckets,” I said. “What else Ma’am?”

  “Fetch me water,” she said. “Boil some. Get me broth from the stove. Milk my cow for she has been wailing. And my roof needs patch.”

  “He will see to it,” said I, looking at him like he needed to
move, but I did not know about the roof.

  “And bury the dog, but careful of the madness,” she said, cutting off the foulness of Jimmy’s shirt.

  I nodded to Gaylin, his ire building now, and I took that as a good sign for he had been too quiet. I was a finger’s pinch from having him put Monroe in with the dog, but if Jimmy lived he would never forgive me for costing him his reward. Truth be told I wouldn’t mind that money myself, but that stink was hard to abide, and when the real rot started in, how I hated that smell and us without a cheroot among us. Yet he served a good purpose for all the loot we’d taken was stashed beneath him. If someone had the pluck to plumage his bloat, then they had the pluck to win the prize I reckoned.

  Soon as we got near the railroad we could ship him to Springfield if they had an undertaker and if someone was fixing to die and by chance they had a coffin. So many ifs.

  “Get a fire started under my wash pot,” she said.

  “Hear that?” I called to Gaylin as he went for the buckets.

  “Yes sir,” he yelled back, and I smiled.

  But my smile fell as she hissed over the wound. Seeing that red tunnel of suffering marring Jimmy was not easy. She went for soap, and called for the water, and I went to the spring for some. I quickly dumped a bucket over my own greasy head, and shook it off like a dog would do, and I was back in quick. She had me pour some in the pot, and I quick built the fire, but not too quick for I had to go out for wood. She had only two logs cut, so I called to Gaylin who was returning with the buckets, “She needs wood. And kindling, and get those buckets washed fore you bring them in.”

  Mayhap God had sent us to her as he had surely put her in our path.

  Inside she had Jimmy naked now, and she was not frail about such. She told me to take out the clothes and burn them, save the boots. I picked them up and took them out. It fell to the ground then, the knot of blood soaked bandana. I threw everything on the fire, but this I put in the wash pot. I was hopeful it could be saved. But we’d have to find Jimmy some pants, that was the thing.

  Inside, she had begun washing Jimmy with the cold water because the fever was on him. She told me to rub his feet.

  “What?” I said.

  She did not repeat, but gave me a look reminded me of Ma, or Pa I should say, so resolute was she. So I laid down my pride, and rubbed the stinkingest feet God ever put on a man. She showed me places to press as she moved down and washed first one foot, then the other. She said to rub and press those places, so I did. We had teased him about these toes before, fore they were as long as some men’s fingers, and I’d seen him strike a match with them. We couldn’t take away his pluck no matter what we said. Hit him with a hammer, he’d rise up and shoot you with a cannon. I laughed at that, and she ignored me, but he seemed to pull out for a minute and looked at me, and I know I saw him smile when he realized it was me doing all that rubbing. “You ain’t in heaven, boy, not yet,” I said, but he did not respond.

  Well she gave me some grease to rub on his feet then. I didn’t know this could ease his suffering. She gave him laudanum, but not too much. She used the hot water and soap on that wound, and oh if I’d slapped his revolver in his hand he’d of used it on her I think. He called her dirty whore so many times, and that did make her laugh. I knew then he was out of his head, and she was no lily.

  I asked her about the whiskey for the wound and she said it wouldn’t go deep enough, but she had things, teas and herbs that would work from the inside.

  Well I decided to trust her and pray and hope she knew something. I had no more faith in doctors since the war. I found the healers to sometimes have less pride and more patience. But I did not wish such a fate on Tusaint, and I pushed it away.

  When Gaylin next came in I reminded him about the horses, not that I needed to. He said Michael had returned and was working on it. William would go further and see more, so that was good as I had feet to rub.

  She watched over that wound. She used her own brews, and went back and forth from bedside to stove a number of times, dried weeds hanging overhead, things in bottles and salves she smeared it with. She worked and she ordered us, and she kept the sweat off him.

  She let her broth cool, not a speck of meat in it, mostly carrots seemed like. I asked her what she had for store, and she said she mostly lived off her garden and what folks brought, and she had the cow for milk, and berries grew, and the neighbor brought her the hog’s head in the fall. If a plant could be eaten, she knew it, she said. Knowledge came through her ma and on back.

  When Gaylin brought the milk in, she fed some to Jimmy. The laudanum kept him under pretty much now, and I hoped he dreamed good things.

  That wound began to draw. She changed the bandages. I had seen to the horses as we’d pushed them hard. I had also tried to clean up some. I was starving. Michael went down the road and got us chickens and eggs. He shouldn’t of done it, exposed us, but they already knew as they’d seen us moving. So he and Gaylin plucked those birds off and cooked them outside. They made two dozen eggs and with salt and the healer’s biscuit. We ate like kings.

  She couldn’t imagine roasting meat and wasting all the juice. But we put eggs in broth for Jimmy, and she got him to take a few spoonfuls before she sent him back to glory with the medicine. But the fever was fierce, and she tended him without let up. I spelled her so she could eat and clean herself.

  Gaylin did the washing. I found him asleep while it boiled. “These about done you reckon?” I said, lifting some with the paddle. I saw the bandana right off, it already red, so who could tell, though the white parts were pink. I picked this out of the lump. Them clothes and such were hot to the touch, but we hung them about, and I sent him in the house, and he came out with more. We put them through. I threw in my shirt as it was full of dried blood. He did the same. We stood there looking at our boiling clothes, me wearing that wet rag tied over my dirty hair, and I swear my thoughts eased.

  I put my hand on the back of his neck then. We kept staring into the wash. “We’ll get on okay,” I said. “I been in worse.”

  He nodded then, his hands on his hips, but one arm faltered and he nearly threw it around me I think, but he let it drop.

  “I’m proud of you,” I said, and he stared at the ground and nodded again. But I couldn’t say too much, for we were not yet home and we must stay strong, and I could feel the storm in him that must not yet break him.

  Iris sewed William’s arm and bandaged it good. So we slept and William and Michael took turns on the line. And until the next day, our greatest battle was keeping Jimmy alive.

  They came the second day. William warned us they were coming, riders, he’d said, armed. We were about and waiting, weapons primed and ready to kill need be.

  “Let me go out,” Iris said, livid that they would take such a stand on her property. “I will meet them with you and demand peace.”

  “No,” I said, loud and close to her face.

  She slapped me then, hard enough my ear did ring.

  I rubbed my jaw. “Guess you use violence when it suits you.”

  Oh, she did not like that. Took to muttering as she went back to Jimmy.

  I took his nickel badge. That and my Enfield. I had become him now. On the porch I stood. Them on six mules, fanning in the yard, two had dismounted, and held weapons.

  I held that badge high for them to see. “We are the law,” I said. “State your business.”

  “Why are you here?” one in the lead said, a heavy man, thick with some age, and eyes I did not trust for they sat irregular, one up, one lower and turned in.

  “Who is asking?” I said.

  “What outfit you ride with?”

  Well he knew the rifle. “Twenty-seventh,” I said.

  “Was with you at Belmont,” he said.

  “We were on the same side,” I said like we were puppies in a basket I guess.

  He laughed. “I reckon.” He spit.

  I spit.

  “You an officer?” Him.

/>   “I am if it will help our cause.” Me.

  “What cause that be?”

  “My cause. State your business.”

  “Healing,” he said, leg over the saddle and on the ground swift. “They call me Sonny.”

  I did not move. He wanted to test my mettle, I had me some and that he knew from the line of bodies we’d left at Monroe’s camp.

  “Halt there.”

  He did, but he smiled and spat again. “A bit touchy.”

  William and Michael had showed from around the house. They held their rifles at the ready. His eyes went there.

  “Your business,” I yelled.

  “There’s money due me.”

  “Outlaw’s money?”

  “You three alone?” he said.

  “Four,” his man called out, for Gaylin was in the treeline, standing in sight now.

  “You fight us the twenty-seventh will ride up your butthole and out your throat,” I said.

  They had a confab then. It wasn’t talk, but looks at each other.

  He got on his mount, as did the two. He glared at me and I guess I was supposed to piss myself, but I felt my finger twitch I was so in the mind to shoot him. I knew they’d be the ones to snipe us soon we hit the road.

  “We wasn’t on the same side at Belmont or no time,” he said.

  I walked quick off the porch and held my rifle on him cocked and ready. “You boys drop your weapons or I’ll drop him.” When they hesitated I said, “Now.”

  He wanted to grab that piece in his britches, but I told him, “I’ll take that revolver.” He went for it slow and I shouted, “Two fingers, butt first,” and he pinched the butt and pulled it free and handed it to me, barrel to the ground.

  I took it and stuck it round my waist. “Get off,” I said, my rifle steady.

  It might have looked like I had me a plan, but I did not. I just knew that I couldn’t let these rascals go or me and mine would soon be back-shot in the fields of Monroe-land.

  I stood back enough he couldn’t kick me when he dismounted cause he had legs longer than Abraham Lincoln’s.