by Anita Mills
Annie closed her burning eyes for a moment, then shook her head. "No, if it takes me all day and night, I'm going to try to save as much as I can. Ethan loved my hair," she recalled painfully. "He said it reminded him of angels."
"Your Ethan loved you, my dear," Cora responded softly. Moving behind Annie, she looked at the mess for a moment, then decided, "If you can stand the pain of a comb going through it, I'll work with you to save it. And if that takes us all night, I don't mind in the least. I expect Will's going to be busy with Captain Walker for a while, anyway. When we are done, we can visit. If you want to, you can tell me all about your little girl."
"I can't—at least not now," Annie whispered. "Not yet."
CHAPTER 4
Major Wilson Sprenger's first assessment was that Hap Walker was too sick for surgery. His second was that without it, the man might die from a rampant infection. He decided to operate.
"You've got yourself in one hell of a fix, Hap," the surgeon told the semiconscious man. "Take it easy, boys. Get him on the table without moving that leg if you can."
It was a futile order. Walker's body went rigid as his knee bent and his foot caught on the edge of the table, twisting his leg underneath him and pulling the muscle in his thigh. Before the two soldiers who'd carried him could straighten it out, he'd rolled onto his side and vomited. Sprenger noted with relief that he hadn't eaten much. While a third attendant cleaned up the mess, the surgeon kept talking, repeating Walker's name at every opportunity, trying to focus his patient on what he had to do.
"That the same leg where you took the Comanchero bullet, Hap?" Sprenger asked him. When Walker didn't answer, he spoke directly into his ear. "I'm going to take a look at it," he said loudly. "I'm going to see what's the matter with your leg."
Walker's eyes opened. "Clay—?"
"Boy's in Texas. You don't know where you are, do you, Hap?"
"Tell him, got to get word to him..."
"Tell him what? What do you want me to tell him? That you're sick? I expect we'll try to get word out as soon as the storm's over."
"Sanchez-Torres coming... New Mexico..."
"Sanchez-Torres is dead. Your boy McAlester took care of him last summer."
"He's dead? Clay—?"
"Way I heard it, McAlester blew him up, plumb to smithereens."
"Good." Hap closed his eyes.
Sprenger took out a straight-edged razor and stropped it. "I'm going to have to cut off your pants for a look-see, Hap."
"No," Walker croaked.
"Not your leg, your pants." The surgeon looked up at Nash. "Hold him real still, trooper. If he thrashes around, there's no telling what I'm liable to cut."
"Yes, sir."
"Walsh, get on the other side and hold that foot, but don't turn it. Yeah, that's it."
As cold as it was in the infirmary, Sprenger wiped his brow with his sleeve, then made a light stroke, slicing the weathered buckskin several inches below Hap's groin. Working carefully, he cut a flap that extended down to the knee. He laid the razor aside and lifted it back, exposing the leg beneath. About mid-thigh, he found a puckered scar. At a cursory glance, it appeared to be almost healed, but the flesh around it told a different story. It was hot and swollen with red streaks extending both upward and downward from it.
"Looks like it's going septic," he muttered. "Parker, get me the chloroform, will you? Soak the rag with a good capful," he ordered over his shoulder.
"Need the capital saw?" Nash asked.
Sprenger shook his head. "Not yet. I'd like to see what's down there first." Turning to the basin nearby, he washed his hands thoroughly with strong-smelling lye soap, then toweled them dry. "It's an old wound, so there's got to be a reason it's infected. And one way or another, I'm going to have to clean it out, or it's going to kill him."
"Looks like it should have been an amputation in the first place," Parker observed. "The bullet had to have hit the bone."
"Looks that way, doesn't it?" Returning his attention to Hap, the surgeon asked him, "Boydston over at Griffin fix this, or was it Abbott down at Stockton? I'd say one of 'em botched the business, and I'd sure as hell tell 'em about it if I were you."
Hap opened his eyes again, saw the surgeon's operating case, and for a moment he thought he was at Shiloh. "No," he gasped, grasping the surgeon's left hand. "Don't cut. Too many limbs out there already."
Sprenger pulled free. "If I don't have to, I won't," he promised. "Chloroform ready?"
"Yes, sir. Here it is, sir," the corporal responded promptly. "Right at your elbow."
Reaching back, the older man took the cloth, checked it, then leaned forward, pressing it over Hap Walker's nose. "Take a good whiff, and you'll be out cold before I get to the good part."
Instead, Hap began struggling, clutching Sprenger's arms, trying to rise from the table. But the two soldiers on either side held him down until he was still.
"Don't know why they always fight it, but they do," the doctor muttered. He lifted the cloth for a quick look, then nodded. "He's out. Parker, keep your finger on his pulse and stand ready with liquor of ammonia if it weakens."
"Yes, sir."
Sprenger surveyed the thigh again. "Another inch, and it would have hit the artery. Then he'd have bled to death," he murmured. "Nash—?"
"Yes, sir?"
"Put your thumb on the femoral artery in his groin and slow the blood through it."
"Yes, sir."
Turning to his case, the surgeon selected a scalpel. "After I make the incision, I'm going to dissect the muscle around the wound." As he spoke, he cut straight across the scar tissue, opening it, then stroked through the inflamed muscle beneath. He wiped his brow again and studied the exposed tissue. "Looks like the bullet went this way," he murmured, taking the dissection forceps to pull back the muscle. "Here, hold this, will you?" he told Walsh. "Keep it out of my way."
"Yes, sir."
He picked up the scalpel again. "Must be a piece of lead in here somewhere," he mumbled to himself as he cut deeply, taking the incision all the way to the bone. The knife punctured a pocket of pus, and the foul-smelling green exudate spurted. While both Nash and Walsh gagged, Sprenger began whistling softly. After placing the scalpel on a tray, he dipped his finger into an iodine solution and probed the path of the bullet, feeling around the bone.
"Rough as a cob," he murmured. "Bone slivers everywhere—damned thing was in pieces. And there's lead in there, a lot of it." Hooking his finger, he pulled it up, bringing a bit of bone with it. "No wonder it didn't heal inside. There's constant irritation there. Must've hurt like the devil all the time. Give me the sequestrum," he ordered.
Parker produced the probe, then leaned over to watch as Sprenger used it to dig where his finger had been. One by one the surgeon pulled out several bone splinters, then the first lead fragment, and laid them on the tray. Within minutes, he'd added six more bits of bullet to the collection.
"Ever see anything like this, son?" he asked Parker. "No, sir."
"Well, when I was with the 9th Massachusetts, I saw a lot of 'em. It was hell, son. I was cutting off limbs at four to the hour some days. Wasn't much else we could do in the field. No time so save 'em if I could've done it. Had a fifty-two percent fatality rate, which was about two percent better than the average, so I guess I did about as well as most of my colleagues."
"You going to have to take this one?" Nash wanted to know.
"If it doesn't heal. But I'm going to try to save it first. Parker, how's the pulse?"
"Even, sir."
"If he so much as blinks or looks like he's coming around, give him another snort of the chloroform. Aha, yeah." This time Sprenger managed to pull out a large part of the bullet. "Doesn't look like anybody even tried to get it out, does it?" he muttered. "Makes you wonder what they teach in medical college anymore. Not much about lead poisoning, by the looks of it. Remind me to mention this to Boydston, will you? If he did this, he ought to be told about it, and if he didn't, he shou
ldn't have left the bullet in, anyway." He pulled the last piece out, then looked up triumphantly. "I'll bet if I put all of this together, I'd have about a .50—what do you think, soldier?"
"I couldn't say, sir. They just look like lead fragments to me."
"Yes, indeed. I'd say that Comanchero had himself a buffalo gun," Sprenger decided. "I'll have to show that to Hap when he wakes up." Wiping his face with his other sleeve, he returned to the wound. "Too late to do too much with the bone other than clean it up a bit, I guess." Looking up, he addressed Walsh. "You can put away the dissecting forceps, son, and make up about a cup of ten percent iodine solution. I'm going to flush this before I stitch it up. And I'm going to leave a little bit of the incision open—why is that, soldier?"
"You're asking me, sir?"
" 'Course I am. How's a man to learn anything if he doesn't think about it? Now, why would I want it to keep draining?"
"So the abscess won't form again, I expect."
"Damned right."
Whistling a peppy tune now, the surgeon quickly wiped the pus away with a cloth, then squirted the antiseptic into the area with a trocar several times. Finally, he patted the area as dry as he could and started stitching deftly. When he looked up, the three men were exchanging glances.
"Something the matter?" he demanded.
"No, sir." Caught out, Parker suppressed a smile.
"Then what's so damned funny, soldier?"
"Nothing, sir."
"Actually, sir," Nash answered, "we were just being grateful that this wasn't an autopsy."
"Oh? How's that?"
"Some of them get pretty rank, especially in the summer, sir. It's hard to follow a lecture when your stomach's in your throat."
"Think I talk too much, eh? Well, let me tell you, soldier, a man can't learn too much in this business. We've got too many people depending on us to keep 'em going."
As they fell silent, he finished with the leg. "Nash, give him a whiff of the ammonia, will you? Then fan him as he comes around. Walsh, I want a half grain of morphine in four drops of water drawn into the syringe."
The ammonia burned Hap's nose, making him cough. "That's enough," Sprenger ordered. Leaning over his patient, he said loudly, "Well, it's done, Hap, and if the infection goes down, you're going to be damned lucky, you know that?"
Walker's eyes fluttered but did not open. "My leg—?" he whispered hoarsely.
"You've still got it, but the next time you decide to carry pieces of lead in the bone, don't come to me. And for God's sake, stay off it awhile and give it time to heal, you hear?"
Hap's mouth was so dry he could scarcely form words. "What—?"
"A deep abscess. You nearly bought your ticket to the great beyond with a damned abscess." Straightening up, Sprenger took the syringe from Nash. "I'm going to make you real happy here, Hap," he murmured. "In a minute you won't give a damn about anything." As he spoke, he slide the needle under the skin and squeezed the morphine in. "They say a man can dream in color with this," he murmured, withdrawing the needle.
"You want me to clean up for you, Doc?" Parker asked.
"Yeah. You'd better boil those ten minutes instead of five." Looking at the others, he ordered, "Get him to bed, boys, and cut the rest of those pants off. It's time he bought himself another pair, anyway."
"Yes, sir. What do you want to put him in? A hospital shirt?" Nash asked.
"You'll have to. We'll draw off any pus that forms with the trocar tonight and again in the morning. Maybe if we keep that abscess empty, it'll try to heal. Otherwise, there's not a chance of saving the leg. Fever's a good thing—up to a point. If it goes over a hundred, give him three grains of quinine. You can repeat that in four to five hours." The surgeon paused, mentally reviewing his orders, then nodded. "Well, that's about all I can think of right now. I'm going to wash up, then I'll be seeing how Mrs. Sprenger's managing with the job I gave her. I ought to be back in a hour or so."
But after he'd washed and changed into one of the clean shirts Cora kept in his surgery for him, he had to take one last look at Hap Walker. The man was lying with his leg propped on a rolled blanket, and he was asleep. It'd be touch and go, but if the blood wasn't actually infected, and if that abscess cleared up, Hap just might walk out of Fort Sill on both feet. He turned to leave, thinking he'd compliment the boys for elevating the leg— they'd done it without being reminded.
"It wasn't the great beyond, Doc," Walker whispered behind him. "I was going to hell."
"How do you know? You never got there," Sprenger countered without turning around. "Don't move it off that roll, whatever you do, and I'll be back after a while. I've got to take a look at the woman you brought in."
"Her name's Bryce—she's from Texas."
"If you can remember that, you were in better shape than I thought."
"No. I just heard her say it before I passed out."
Sprenger was almost out the door before Hap spoke again, and his voice was so low the surgeon wasn't sure he heard the words right.
"I tried to go after her, but I was too late—too damned late."
CHAPTER 5
Still dressed in the blue cotton dress Cora Sprenger had provided her, Annie sat in the slat-back chair, rocking absently. She hadn't taken the laudanum—she didn't want to sleep yet. Everything was still too new to her, and all day long her mood had swung between the relief of freedom and the pain of loss.
She couldn't bring herself to go to bed. Her gaze strayed there, taking in the pretty handmade quilt turned neatly back, the starched ruffle beneath, the snowy sheets. The last time she'd slept in a real bed, she'd been under her own quilt, lying beside her husband.
That night she and Ethan had loved each other almost to exhaustion, then lain awake long after, dreaming of a trip to New Orleans. They'd planned to visit his younger brother's family, and Ethan had been looking forward to showing off her and Susannah and Jody. Now she could only wonder if anybody had notified Matthew that Ethan had died, if Matt had come to take care of their affairs.
As she looked around the room, seeing all the homey touches Cora had put in the Sprenger quarters, she felt her own loss now more than any time since those days after they took Susannah. She had no husband to hold her, no baby to tug at her skirts, no inquisitive little daughter to follow her about.
But she was free, she reminded herself, and she had to be grateful for that. Now she could look for Susannah. She could pester the authorities until they joined in her search. She could go home and regain her strength; then she could help in the search for her daughter.
The only sound in the house was the loud ticking of the big clock in the front parlor. Annie sat listening to it, hearing it strike the three-quarter hour, then the hour. It was ten o'clock. Ten o'clock, and all's well Or if it isn't, you have to make it that way. You have survived for a reason.
She couldn't stand the loneliness of that ticking. Rising, she went to the window and looked outside. The wind had died down, and the storm had passed, leaving behind a thick, pristine layer of snow on the ground. By moonlight a single sentinel made his rounds, crossing between buildings, then disappearing. It was a lonely night out there also.
She thought of Hap Walker lying in the infirmary, clinging to leg and life. Major Sprenger had talked a great deal about him at supper, reminding her where she'd heard the name before. Hap Walker, the Texas Ranger. She'd read his name in the Austin paper some years back, before the war even, when he'd made a daring rescue of two little girls taken by a Kiowa war party. As she recalled, he'd crawled into the camp, stampeded the Indians' horses, then grabbed both children in the confusion. Everybody had talked about it at the time.
According to the major, Walker had lived an incredible life. A Texas Ranger at eighteen. Captain of a ranger battalion by twenty-four. A Texas volunteer in the Confederate Army who'd risen to the rank of captain there also. Twice wounded in the war, once at Atlanta, once at Sharpsburg, and yet he'd not come home until it was over. Recommissione
d in the rangers just last year, he'd been forced out by the wound that still threatened his life. But people still called him Captain Walker.
"Hap Walker," Sprenger declared, "was the best Indian fighter in Texas, bar none—and a damned fine lawman, too," adding, "Folks could count on Hap. He'd die before he'd let 'em down. They don't come any better than Hap."
But when Cora had asked how he was recovering now, the surgeon's expression had sobered. "I'm worried—real worried," he admitted. "Maybe I should have just gone ahead and amputated. If that fever doesn't come down some by tomorrow, I'll have to do it, anyway, and hope to God I didn't make a mistake by waiting."
"But you said you'd found the source of infection earlier," his wife reminded him. "You said he had a good chance."
"That was before the fever shot up. It was one hundred three at six o'clock, and that's mighty high for a grown man. I told Nash to add sassafras to the quinine if it goes up any more, but I hate to make a man sweat when his body's short on water."
And so it had gone. The surgeon had just come from there a short while before he went to bed, but Annie'd been in her room and hadn't heard if Walker was any better. Now she wondered. She found it mattered a great deal to her. By what had to be divine intervention, Captain Walker had strayed into that small Comanche encampment, ending three years of despair for her. As sick as he had been, it was a miracle either of them had made it to the safety of the Indian agency. She wished she'd thanked him for getting her almost there. For what he'd done for those two little girls so long ago, saving them from being lost like Susannah.
As she turned away from the window, she saw the shawl Cora had given her earlier, saying she ought to wear it as long as the wind was in the north. But after three hard winters on the Staked Plains, even a drafty house seemed hot. Annie stared at it for a moment, then made up her mind. Whether he knew she had come to see him or not, she was going to thank him. She might not get the chance tomorrow.
Throwing the wool shawl over her shoulders, she pulled it close, then slipped out of her room. It was as though the house were empty except for the clock, and her heart kept rhythm with the ticking as she opened the outside door. Clutching her skirt to lift the hem out of the snow with one hand, holding the shawl closed with the other, she gingerly made her way down the steps and across the yard toward the hospital building.
