Frontier

by Salzer, S. K.

  Harry was relieved to see his mother and Sallie Horton hurrying toward them, moving slowly over the broken ground. “What’s happening here?” Margaret said, out of breath. She looked from Bridger to Reynolds to Harry. “Is there some trouble?”

  “No trouble, Mrs. Carrington.” Reynolds spoke with an easy smile. “Major Bridger and I were just discussing my military experience, which he finds lacking. That and my Missouri heritage. Actually, Bridger, you’re wrong about that too. I’m from Michigan.”

  Margaret looked skeptical. “Well, Sallie and I have all we need. We’re ready to go back.” She gave Harry a feed sack heavy with stones.

  They walked back to camp, Bridger leading the way on his mule. More than once Harry paused to look over his shoulder, thinking he heard running, moccasin-clad feet close behind him.

  That night the soldiers sang around their fires, mostly sentimental songs of home. Soon the wolves joined in with their own mournful cacophony, a frightening sound Harry could not get used to. The soldiers stopped at nine but the wolves were still howling at midnight when the sentries called, “All’s well.”

  The next day the column arrived at Bridger’s Ferry, a ranch and river crossing Bridger had built and sold for a modest profit ten years before. Here they would cross to the north side of the North Platte River, leaving the heavily traveled Oregon Road to follow John Bozeman’s route to the Powder River and beyond.

  Ferry owner Ben Mills met Carrington with news that Indians had raided his beef herd the previous morning.

  “They was Sioux. I seen ’em, they was some of my wife’s own relatives. That ain’t never happened before, not in all the years I been out here. Don’t know what to make of it.”

  Carrington frowned. “We must assume the raid was a hostile act,” he said, “and proceed accordingly.” That night he drafted, in great detail, five pages of directives outlining new security procedures. Watching him scratch away with his quill pen, Harry wondered if his father truly believed he could impose order on chaos with mere words on paper.

  Chapter Ten

  French Pete squealed with delight when he saw Bridger dismounting his mule and ran over to embrace him.

  “Lemme go, you old frog!” Bridger said as he struggled to free himself. “I thought I’d run into you out here. I see you still got your hair on. Guess you got your squaw and red babies to thank for that.”

  The diminutive trader beamed up at his friend. “Yes, yes. Life is good for French Pete. Me, I do not complain.” Harry had never seen anyone like the little Frenchman. Pete Cazeau looked like a cannonball, small and round with black hair that gleamed with pomade. He had the smallest feet Harry had ever seen on a grown man.

  French Pete and his partner, Henry Arrison, both from St. Louis, were the first white merchants to work the Bozeman Road, selling not only to miners and emigrants but to Indians as well. Their store was a rough, pine-plank shed that was easily taken apart and moved to wherever business beckoned. On this June afternoon Cazeau and Arrison were set up along Sage Creek, at the spot where the road split in two. One fork, the Mormon Road, took those pilgrims westward to their land of Zion. Carrington’s column would take the other, which led to Fort Reno on the Powder River.

  Cazeau had an Oglala wife and five half-breed children. The oldest daughter, Jane, was a sixteen-year-old beauty, with black shining hair and delicate shell earrings dangling from her ears. Harry was not her only admirer. Every male eye in the regiment was turned her way. Jane helped her father and Arrison in the store, filling orders for cans of fruit and oysters, cornmeal and clothespins, catsup and soap. Ordinarily, Harry tried to get out of helping his mother with her shopping, but today he volunteered. Once, Jane caught him watching her and he quickly turned his head, feeling his face burn. When he dared look at her again she was selling a box of cigars to Mark Reynolds. Harry saw he had the same effect on Indian females as white ones. When Reynolds smiled at her, Jane blushed under her lovely copper skin.

  Jimmy Carrington and French Pete’s youngest son sat on the ground outside the store, petting the Indian boy’s pet antelope. “My uncle found her on the prairie,” the Indian boy said. His face was round as an Eskimo’s and his black, uncombed hair fell in his eyes. “Her leg was broken. See?” He pointed to a tumor-like bulb on the fawn’s slender foreleg. “My uncle made a splint. That’s where it healed.”

  “Her ears are soft,” Jimmy said. “Like velvet.”

  The Cazeau boy nodded. “I know it. Her name is Manishee and she comes when I call her. Watch.” As he prepared to demonstrate, his older brother appeared. He pulled the younger boy roughly to his feet and led him away. The little antelope followed.

  The column camped that night beside Cazeau’s trading post. In his dreams Harry was visited by a beautiful woman who was partly Jane and partly Rose Reynolds. He woke in the moony darkness with his mind still full of the woman, so much so that when he walked to the river to relieve himself he was sure he heard her soft laughter coming from the darkness of the cottonwood trees.

  In the morning as the train prepared to move out, Cazeau came forward carrying the little antelope. He stopped at the ambulance of Sallie Horton and lifted the animal to her. She had admired the fawn the night before.

  “Here, doctor’s wife, I make you the present,” Cazeau said, beaming. “She give you good company in your wagon.”

  Cooing with pleasure, Mrs. Horton took the little animal in her arms and nuzzled it as if it were a child. Her inability to produce a baby was a grief to her. This was widely known.

  “You can’t take her!” Jimmy jumped out of their ambulance and ran to Mrs. Horton. “She belongs to him!” He pointed to Cazeau’s young son, who stood in the door of his lodge, his round face wet with tears. “Her name is Manishee and she’s his!” Jimmy said.

  Mrs. Horton looked at Cazeau but the Frenchman waved his hand dismissively, as if shooing away an insect. “No matter,” he said. “The prairie has many antelopes. We will find him another.”

  “Well, at least let me pay you for it,” she said. “Let me give your boy some money. It’s only fair.”

  Cazeau refused. “No, no. I do not accept. She is my gift.”

  As the column moved out, Harry saw Reynolds turn in the saddle and lift his hat in a parting gesture. Jane responded with a small wave of her hand. There was something intimate in the exchange, and Harry remembered the laughter from the cottonwoods the night before. Maybe he had not imagined it after all. This was a bad thought and he put it out of his head.

  He opened his book to read when something drew his eye to Cazeau’s lodge. The older son was talking to his father, his younger brother still crying at his side. Casually, as if it were something he had done many times before, Cazeau lashed out with his open hand, striking the older boy hard across the mouth. Harry looked away. He felt he had seen something ugly and indecent, the way he felt the night he saw a famous Union general fall drunkenly to his hands and knees to vomit in the snow.

  Chapter Eleven

  “If I’d known you Yankees would send me to a place like this, I’d have stayed at Rock Island. Even prison was better than this hellhole.” The thin man lowered himself carefully into a chair, letting his crutch fall to the ground. The left leg of his trousers was empty, pinned at the hip. “Sergeant Simon Trover,” he said, leaning forward to shake hands with Anderson and his officers. “Company C, Fifth Volunteers. Welcome to Reno Redoubt.”

  In a slow Southern drawl Trover told them his troop was one of captured Confederates who were released from prison in exchange for fighting for Uncle Sam on the western frontier. “I’ve been a recipient of Yankee hospitality since my capture at Pittsburg Landing on the seventh of April, eighteen hundred and sixty-two, although I’m happy to say our long association will soon be coming to an end.”

  Rose listened as she unpacked the mess chest. She liked the aristocratic sound of his voice, and his hands, she noticed, were large and beautifully formed with long, slender fingers and clean n
ails. It was easy to imagine them moving deftly over ivory piano keys or holding a cut glass tumbler of Kentucky bourbon.

  “This country takes top prize when it comes to sheer desolation,” he said, squinting into the sun. “Why don’t you Yankees save everyone a lot of trouble and just let the natives keep it?”

  They sat in the shade of a ten-foot wall of sand-filled gunnysacks. This was the north bulwark of Reno Redoubt, a small fortress of sand and adobe on Antelope Creek that served as a way station for mail teams traveling between Fort Reno on the Powder River, 41 miles to the north, and Fort Laramie, 130 miles to the south. A low adobe stockade outside the walls enclosed a small hay yard and a rickety stable for mules and horses.

  “How many men have you got here?” Ranald Henry said, eyeing Trover’s troops as they went about their evening work, lashing down wagon covers, tending to hungry mules, struggling to start cook fires in the dry, sundown wind.

  “There are twenty of us,” Trover said, “including myself.”

  “Indians give you much trouble?” Gregory said.

  “Not that much until lately,” Trover said. “They’ve raided our mule herd twice in the past week. Two days ago they killed a man.” He pointed to a rock-covered mound of earth on the far side of Antelope Creek. A grave, barely visible in the dying light. “I say man but really he was a boy, seventeen or eighteen, if that. Italian, barely spoke English. We called him Joe.”

  “What happened to him?” Anderson said.

  Trover shrugged. “It was just before dawn—you’ll learn that’s when things tend to happen out here. Joe went off to answer a call of nature and wasn’t missed till the detail was starting. We found him in that draw over there with his pants down around his ankles and a hatchet lodged in his spinal column. No one saw or heard a thing.”

  Rose shuddered.

  “Sioux?” Gregory said.

  “I can’t say. One of my boys kept the weapon—you’re welcome to examine it if you like.”

  Rose wanted to hear more but Clara Anderson was calling from her ambulance. She and Rollo had fallen ill that morning and Rose had looked in on them a few times that day, though not for several hours. As she climbed into their wagon, Rose nearly gagged on the stench.

  “I’m sorry,” Clara said, “but Rollo’s napkin needs changing and I simply cannot manage it. Would you, please? His clean ones are there, in the pile by the chair.”

  Rose was disturbed by the change in Clara. In just a short time her skin had taken on a yellowish cast and her eyes were sunken. Rollo, asleep in his champagne basket, was flushed and breathing fast. “I’m going for Doctor Dixon,” Rose said.

  “No.” Clara’s voice was firm. “Do not bring him. That would worry Frank and he’s got enough of that. We’ll be better soon. I’m sure of it.”

  Rose hesitated, remembering her own illness at Sedgwick and understanding Clara’s desire not to be a burden to her husband. But what about Rollo? As she looked down at him a fly crawled across his cheek toward his open mouth. Rose waved it away.

  “Please, just bring us some water,” Clara said. “And extra blankets. It’s gotten cold.” The ambulance was an oven.

  Rose filled Clara’s bucket from the water barrel strapped to a platform on the side of the wagon. When she returned Clara was asleep but Rollo was fussing. Rose damped a cloth, gently lifted the baby from his basket and removed his sodden pant. His stool was foul and curd-like. She cleaned his hot little body, pinned on a fresh napkin, and gave him a bottle of water which he sucked down greedily. He immediately soiled himself again.

  “Poor baby,” she whispered. “Poor little man.” He needs a doctor, she thought, and soon. She changed him once more, returned him to his basket, and went in search of Dixon. She found him eating a plate of beans with Trover at his fireside. The surgeon stood when she approached and Trover moved to do the same, wincing in pain.

  “Stay as you are,” she said.

  “That leg still bothers you,” Dixon said. “When did you lose it?”

  “I did not lose it, sir. You Yankees took it from me.”

  “Let me take a look,” Dixon said.

  “Here?” Trover glanced at Rose. “Now?”

  “I’ve seen my share of war’s work, Mr. Trover,” she said but in fact, Rose had seen very little. She had joined the St. Louis Ladies’ Aid Society, against her uncle’s wishes, because she wanted to do something useful. She was inspired by newspaper accounts of “Mother” Mary Ann Bickerdyke, the Illinois widow and botanic physician who traveled with the Union army, venturing onto blood-soaked battlefields in her Shaker bonnet and calico dress to care for the dying and wounded. But when Rose presented herself to the Reverend Charles Peabody at the Soldier’s Home, he sent her away.

  “I told them to send me plain women,” he said. “The men must maintain a Christian outlook and avoid all excitement. Their healing depends on it.” When Rose insisted, he gave her light work folding bandages and linens in the aviary.

  Trover unpinned his folded trouser leg and rolled back the cloth to reveal an ugly knob of puckered flesh where his knee used to be. A bit of bone, like the stamen of a poisonous flower, protruded from the angry red center. “The worst of it is I can no longer ride,” he said. “I used to be an excellent horseman, the best in all of Alcorn County, Mississippi. Now they have to cart me about like an overgrown melon.”

  Dixon examined the stump. The flaps of flesh were swollen and brown in places, with blebs of yellow serum dotting the surface. Even from a distance Rose detected an odor, ripe and corrupt.

  “This is infected,” Dixon said. “You must know that. It should be treated.”

  Trover neatly repinned his trouser before reaching for his crutch. “No disrespect to you, Dixon,” he said, getting to his feet, “but I’ve had my fill of Yankee doctoring.” He turned to Rose and smiled. “Mrs. Reynolds, I’d like to offer you and Jerusha my cabin for the evening.” He pointed to a rough, one-room shack in the corner of the redoubt, the only fixed dwelling among the rows of small canvas tents. “Maybe Mrs. Anderson and her son would be more comfortable there as well?”

  “Yes, I’m sure they would,” Rose said. “Thank you. Dr. Dixon, would you look in on them after I get them settled? I’m worried.”

  “Of course.” He and Trover watched her walk to Clara’s wagon, where an anxious-looking Lieutenant Anderson met her at the door.

  “Mrs. Reynolds is a fine-looking woman,” Trover said, “and all the more attractive because she doesn’t seem to realize it.” When Dixon said nothing Trover continued. “Her husband was through here with Carrington’s regiment several weeks ago. He left a letter for her. Why would a man leave a woman like that alone out here?”

  “I’ve wondered about that myself.”

  “I’m sure you have.” They were silent for a moment, then Trover said, “I suggested to Lieutenant Anderson that he wait until our replacements arrive before moving on. That way, my men and I could accompany you as far as Fort Reno. It would be safer for all involved but he refused, said he must adhere to schedule. Do you have influence with him?”

  “Not much,” Dixon said. They watched Anderson carry his wife to Trover’s cabin, Rose following with Rollo’s basket.

  “Well, ask him to reconsider,” Trover said. “Tell him it’s unwise to ignore advice from a man with one foot in the grave.”

  Dixon got to his feet. “I’ll do it,” he said, “but if his wife’s illness is what I think it is, she may settle the question for us. She won’t be able to travel for a while.” He got his medical bag and went to the cabin where Clara lay on a narrow bed, Rollo cradled at her side. There was a smell in the room, one he knew well. It was the calling card of an old adversary. “What are your symptoms, Mrs. Anderson?” he said, pulling a chair to her bedside.

  “Fever, diarrhea.” Her voice was barely audible. “Baby too.”

  “How long has this been going on?”

  “Since this morning.”

  Dixon measured her
pulse, then pinched the flesh on her upper arm. It remained peaked when he released his fingers. He unbuttoned the top of her shirtwaist to reveal rose-colored patches on her neck and chest. When Dixon was done examining the child, Anderson pulled him aside.

  “What’s wrong with them?”

  “I’m afraid it’s typhoid.”

  The blood drained from Anderson’s face. “No, it can’t be. My God, man, do something! Give them calomel or an emetic. That’s what our surgeons did during the war.”

  “Yes, and a good many men died because of it,” Dixon said. “Your wife and child are dry as chips, the both of them. A purgative is the last thing they need. They’ve got to take water and keep it down. Tonight is critical.”

  Anderson went to his wife’s bed and took her hand. “I’ll stay. Of course I’ll stay.”

  “I will too,” Rose said. “Jerusha also.”

  “Good,” Dixon said. “Clara will need at least a cupful of water every half hour and the boy as much as he will take. Let me know right away if anything changes or if they start having abdominal pain. And, Rose, be extremely careful with any fluids they pass, when you change Rollo’s napkin, for example. Wash your hands with soap afterward. This is very important.”

  “I understand.”

  “Would you like me to stay?” Dixon said. “I could do that.”

  Rose shook her head. “No, we’d be crowded. I’ll take care of them. Don’t worry.”

  She had first vigil. Only when the others were asleep did she open Mark’s letter. Dated June 26, it was four weeks old and obviously written in a hurry:

  Dearest Rose,

  We march in an hour so this will be brief. Fort Reno is only two days’ travel from here and the scouts say we will look upon the Bighorn Mountains within the day.

  I haven’t had a letter from you in some time but I put this to the errant nature of the mails and not to fickleness on your part. I think of you often, my darling, and with great pride. Not every woman would have the steel to come on alone, as you have. You are a true soldier’s wife.