Frontier

by Salzer, S. K.

  It was fully dark when the lights of the fort came into view. It looked like a walled city from medieval times, Dixon thought, a village lost in time. Patches of snow dotted the ground and clung to trees on the sloping hillsides. As they neared the post he breathed in the familiar smells of cut pine, woodsmoke, and manure.

  A crowd met them at the quartermaster’s gate. Gregory was welcomed as a hero by the men who had been at Reno Redoubt. No one mentioned his alleged crime. Dixon searched for Rose but she was not there. Just as well, he thought, rubbing his jaw, rough with four days’ growth of beard. He’d have time to wash up and shave before seeing her.

  “Dixon!” Sam Horton came toward him, carefully picking his way through muck and animal droppings. “Am I glad to see you.” He had lost a lot of weight, something Dixon hadn’t noticed when he saw Horton every day. “What have you brought us?” Horton said.

  “Everything on the list,” Dixon said, “minus a few items I left at Fort Smith. How goes it here?”

  Horton shook his head. “Not well. We have ten men in the hospital, three with scurvy and the rest wounded in that trouble on the sixth. I guess you heard about Bingham and Bowers?”

  “I heard.”

  “Most of the wounded aren’t too bad, except for Reynolds. I want you to look in on him right away.”

  Dixon climbed down and started untying the tarpaulin covering the wagon bed.

  “He was shot in the arm,” Horton said, “fracture of the left humerus. Hines got the bullet out, but the wound mortified. I was forced to amputate at the junction of the middle and superior third.” He touched his arm to demonstrate the place. “The operation was uncomplicated, the usual double flap with no excessive bleeding. I thought he was recovering well but this morning he started hemorrhaging. He doesn’t look good. Please go look at him.”

  Mark Reynolds was the last person Dixon wanted to see. His back ached, his legs were stiff, his eyelids felt as if they were lined with sand. All he wanted was a razor and a hot bath. “All right,” he said. “I’ll wash up first, meet you at the hospital.”

  “He’s not there,” Horton said. “He insisted we take him to his cabin. His wife is with him.”

  Christ, Dixon thought, this would not be the reunion he’d been looking forward to. “Can Reynolds be moved?” he said.

  “I should think so.”

  “Then get him to the hospital—I don’t care what he says. I can’t operate in that cabin. I’ll be along in a few minutes.” He walked to his cold quarters, lit the lamp, and got a fire going in the stove. After putting on a kettle of water, he lay down on his cot and covered his eyes with his forearm. A thought slid through his brain like a snake down a prairie dog hole. He would have to operate on Reynolds. He’d seen enough of Horton’s handiwork to know that. It would be easy to let the knife slip, to sever an artery. He could leave something behind. No one would know if he overlooked a sliver of diseased bone, a tiny bit that would poison Reynolds from within until first the limb and then the entire body began to rot. Yes, he could do that. Who was to stop him?

  The kettle whistled. Dixon rose slowly and poured the steaming water into a basin on his shaving stand, then tempered it with cold water from the barrel by the door. He lathered his hands, face, and neck with strong brown soap. As he shaved, the face looking back at him from the mirror was that of an aged stranger, with hollows under the eyes and cheekbones. In his mind’s eye, he saw himself as he had been before, sitting in a rocker by an open window on a warm summer evening, baby Mary asleep in the crook of his arm, then later, lying beside the child’s sleeping mother in the moony darkness and thanking heaven for his happiness. Gone now, all of it, the woman and child, because of something he did.

  He dried his face with a coarse muslin towel. He had one thing left. Through it all, the war and Smallpox Island, the deaths of Laura and Mary, through all of that horror he had remained true to his calling. “First, do no harm,” he said. He had not betrayed that.

  He changed into clean clothes, picked up his bag, and put out the lamp. He left a low fire burning in the stove so the cabin would be warm when he returned. As he crossed the yard he saw yellow lights burning in the surgery window although the back room that served as the inpatient ward was still unfinished. He shook his head. With only a canvas roof and newspapers covering the windows, it would be miserably cold in there, even with a stove going full blast. The hospital should be finished by now—Carrington should have seen to that.

  When he entered the surgery he saw Hines in a linen apron. Good, he thought. If he had to operate tonight Hines would assist. With his sharp features and pronounced overbite, Hines looked like a rat, but he was a fine surgeon. Better than Horton or Reid.

  Rose was standing by the window. “It’s good to see you,” she said. “You were gone a long time, we were worried. And you didn’t even say good-bye. You should’ve told your friends you were leaving.”

  Dixon thought he had never seen her so beautiful. Not trusting his voice, he turned to hang up his coat.

  “I knew they’d try to talk me out of it,” he said. “It wouldn’t have been hard.”

  “It’s a good thing they didn’t,” Sam Horton said, appearing at the door to the inpatient ward. “I just gave our scurvy patients a tisane of barley and vinegar. It works wonders, and quickly too.”

  A hoarse voice said, “Let’s hope the good doctor can work wonders for me.” Mark Reynolds sat in a chair, wrapped in a woolen blanket. His face was gaunt and his eyes glittered with fever.

  “Let me see your arm,” Dixon said.

  Reynolds dropped the blanket. He was shirtless and Dixon was shocked by the change in him. His ribs looked as if they would pierce his skin. “Funny how things work out, isn’t it?” he said as Dixon unwound the bloody bandages.

  “Funny?”

  “Well,” Reynolds said, “what would you call it when a man’s surgeon is the one who most wants him dead?”

  “Mark!” Rose covered her face with her hands as Dixon removed the last of the bandages. The stump was red and covered with blebs of gray pus. It smelled of infection.

  “This needs to be opened,” Dixon said. “Maybe you’d rather someone else took care of it.”

  Reynolds shrugged, wincing at the pain that even simple movement caused. “What the hell,” he said. “You’re the best we’ve got, or so they say. Anyhow, you won’t kill me. You haven’t got the sand for that. But I bet you’ve thought about it. Haven’t you, Dixon?” Their eyes met and Reynolds grinned. “I thought so.”

  Dixon turned to Hines and said, “I want you to assist me. Everyone else must leave.”

  Horton took Rose by the arm. “Come, dear,” he said. “Come wait in our cabin. Sallie will fix a pot of tea.”

  Rose walked to Mark and kissed him lightly on the lips. Then she stood, brushed her hair from her face, and looked at Dixon. “Do your best for him,” she said.

  “I will.” The snake stirred in its hole. Their eyes held for a moment and she left on Horton’s arm.

  Blood dripped from Reynolds’s arm as Hines helped him from the chair onto the operating table. Dixon heard each drop hit the floor, distinctly as a heartbeat, as he unlocked the medicine cabinet and removed a brown glass bottle.

  “I don’t blame you, Dixon,” Reynolds said. “She’s not the most beautiful woman, but there’s something about her. But then, maybe you already know that. Maybe you already know things only a husband should know.”

  “Reynolds, shut the fuck up.” Dixon gave the bottle to Hines, who uncorked it and wet a handkerchief with its contents. The room filled with the scent of ripe apples.

  Reynolds smiled, his eyes on Dixon standing at the foot of the operating table. His gaze did not waver, even as Hines stepped in and covered his nose with the chloroform-soaked cloth. Within seconds, Reynolds’s eyes closed and he was still.

  Horton had amputated the left arm just below the elbow. Instead of signs of healing, Dixon found three sinuses boring through the
soft tissue of the stump, each draining a foul yellow fluid. He picked up the knife and cut into the red flesh, opening the flaps. Membranes that should have been smooth, thin, and tough were a soft, gelatinous mass. The wound was filled with pus and large abscesses separated the muscles. No wonder Reynolds looked so bad, Dixon thought. The pain must be tremendous.

  As he suspected, a fragment of dead bone about an inch long protruded like a bit of broken pottery from the ulcerated cartilage. He removed it with a gouge, then probed for more with his finger, finding three more slivers and pulling them out with tweezers. The ends of the long bones were eroded and covered with a dark, fleshy growth. Dixon removed the diseased tissue, sawing at a beveled angle till he reached healthy bone. Blood leaked from the brachial artery, which was improperly secured by ligature—more of Horton’s handiwork. Hines applied finger pressure to stanch the bleeding as Dixon drew out the artery with a hooked tenaculum, a long-handled device with a claw like a witch’s grasping fingers at the business end, and quickly retied it. He irrigated and disinfected the wound with a solution of soda chlorinate, closed the flaps with widely spaced sutures to permit drainage, and washed the stump with soap and cold water. The last step was to paint the skin with a surgeon’s brush soaked in ferric persulfate, a styptic, to check the oozing.

  The operation lasted for about forty-five minutes. Hines bandaged the arm while Dixon washed his hands and instruments in a porcelain basin, watching the water turn red with Reynolds’s blood. Now that it was over, Dixon felt dead on his feet.

  “Hines, I’m going to get some sleep,” he said. “When he wakes up give him morphine sulfate, one-half dram, then laudanum and beef tea, every two hours.”

  “There is no laudanum,” Hines said. “The little we had left disappeared during your absence. I suspect Ten Eyck and so informed Doctor Horton.”

  Dixon thought Hines probably was right. Ten Eyck was a heavy drinker who suffered chronic health problems, including the loss of an eye, following two years in a Rebel prison camp. Often he sought analgesics from members of the medical staff. Still, Dixon thought him one of Carrington’s best officers. “Then alternate the beef tea with porter or champagne,” he said. “Keep him still and comfortable. You know what to do.”

  “Is he going to make it?” Hines said. Reynolds’s breathing was fast and shallow and his rapid pulse was visible in his neck.

  Dixon shook his head. “Infection is the greatest danger. We’ll know soon enough.”

  Hines cleared his throat. “Uh, Dixon, those things he said about you and Mrs. Reynolds, you know . . . no one could have done a better job tonight. I’ll vouch for you, if it comes to that.”

  “Thank you, Hines.” Dixon shrugged his shoulders into his coat. “Let’s hope that won’t be necessary.”

  “Oh, I almost forgot. Colonel Carrington wants to see you in his office, soon as you’re finished here.”

  Dixon took an envelope from his coat pocket and gave it to Hines. “Will you see that he gets this? It’s from Jim Bridger, it’s important. As for me, I need sleep. There’s only one thing in this world that would stop me and Colonel Carrington doesn’t have it.” He left the surgery, letting the door slam behind him.

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Rose sipped tea as Sallie Horton described the latest Butterick patterns from Godey’s Ladies Book. It seemed she had been talking for hours. She looked at Sam, sipping a glass of whiskey, and wished she could have one too. Why couldn’t a woman have a glass of whiskey now and then without causing a scandal? she wondered. She turned to the window to see bright lights burning in the surgery. What was going on in there? More important, what result did she hope for?

  She realized the room had gone quiet. Sallie had asked her a question. “I’m sorry,” Rose said. “I’m afraid my thoughts were elsewhere.”

  “Mark will be fine, dear,” Sam said, with a smile. “Daniel Dixon is the best surgeon I’ve ever known.”

  Rose returned his smile, wondering what Sam Horton would think if he knew her true feelings. What would Sam say if he knew how she longed to be free of Mark and why?

  Rose had come to accept the knowledge she was not what she was supposed to be. Back in St. Louis, she tried to be a proper woman, but the truth was she was not pious, not devoted, she did not often put her needs second to those of everyone else. Maybe she should have pretended to enjoy needlework, maybe she should have spent more time painting flowers on glass vases and jars. Maybe then things would have turned out differently. But at the same time she thought she was exactly what she was meant to be. For whatever reason, whether it was growing up with three brothers, or without a mother’s example, a woman’s life had never appealed to her. Always she had longed for something different, for a life as big as a man’s. In Mark she thought she had found a partner who would help her achieve that dream, but she was wrong. Should she pay for that mistake all her life? How bleak, to be stuck in the worst kind of prison, to be chained for life to a man she no longer loved or respected.

  She looked out the window to see Dixon leaving the hospital. “I’m sorry,” she said, jumping to her feet. “I left something in my cabin. I’ll just be a minute.”

  She grabbed her shawl and was out the door before Sam could offer to come with her. The night air was very cold and the sky was brilliant with stars. Gravel crunched beneath her feet as she ran to Dixon. They met on the walk in front of her cabin. He was smoking a cigarette.

  “He came through the operation pretty well,” he said, before she asked. “That’s all I can tell you at this point.”

  He smelled of tobacco and soap. She wanted to touch him but instead pulled her plaid shawl more tightly around her shoulders. “Should I go to him?” she said.

  Dixon shook his head and dropped his cigarette, grinding the glowing ember into the gravel with his boot. “He won’t know you’re there. Hines is with him. It’ll be a few hours before he comes around.”

  Laughter and cheers drifted across the parade. They turned to see Fetterman, Grummond, and Brown walking into Judge Fitch’s store, where men gathered to drink and play cards. The three officers spent most evenings there.

  “I’m recommending Reynolds be sent east to recover,” Dixon said, “soon as he’s fit to travel, if all goes well maybe in a week or so. You’ll have to go with him.” She started to object but he was right. She would have to go, if for no other reason than to take care of Mark. “This place is about to explode. Since my trip north I’m more convinced of that than ever. The Crows have tried to warn us, but no one’s listening.”

  “Surely it’s not bad as all that,” Rose said. “Omaha would’ve sent reinforcements if it were.”

  Dixon shook his head. “Rose, are you really so naïve? No one in Omaha gives a damn about what happens here. Carrington—all of us—we’re sacrificial lambs. We were sent here to distract the Indians, so the railroads can be built through Kansas and Nebraska. That’s what Washington and Omaha care about, the regiment’s great friend General William Sherman most of all.”

  This was not the conversation Rose wanted or expected. “You saw Major Bridger at Fort Smith,” she said. “What does he say?”

  “The same thing I’m saying. He wrote a letter to the colonel telling him thousands of warriors are gathering in the Tongue Valley, waiting for Red Cloud to lead them against the soldier forts. It is going to happen, Rose, and soon.”

  A blast of arctic wind blew her hair across her face. Dixon raised his hand and pushed it away. He traced the curve of her cheek with his finger. “I’ve almost forgotten what a woman’s skin feels like,” he said.

  Lamplight from the windows of officers’ row lit her face, softened her features. He thought she’d never looked lovelier.

  “I don’t want to leave you,” she said, putting her hand on top of his.

  He smiled. “I want you so much it hurts just to look at you,” he said. “We’ll work this out somehow, in a way we can both live with. Meantime, I’m going to convince Carrington to
free up a train to Fort Reno. And if Mark won’t—or can’t—leave, promise me you’ll go without him.”

  “I can’t promise now. I have to think—I need time.”

  “That’s one thing I can’t give you,” he said.

  Chapter Forty

  Harry leaned against the porch rail and lifted his face to the warm morning sun. It felt more like spring than Christmastime. The wind ruffled the pages of the six-week-old New York Times spread across his knees. President Johnson’s report to Congress called the Fort Laramie treaty an unqualified success. The Indians, Johnson said, “have unconditionally submitted to our authority and manifested an earnest desire for a renewal of friendly relations.”

  A previous reader had underlined this section and in the margin drawn Johnson’s head with an arrow through it. Did the president really believe the Indians have submitted, Harry wondered? Did none of his father’s reports reach Washington? He shook his head and turned the page. Crime and Punishment, a new novel by Russian author Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevsky, was drawing great reviews. On another page, Harry found accounts of society balls in Washington and Philadelphia, advertisements for hair and liver tonics, headache powders, kid gloves, and toboggans. The paper may as well describe events on the silvery moon for all the relevance they had to his life.

  “It’s hard to believe that world still exists, isn’t it?”

  Margaret stood before him on the steps, her hand resting on the rail. Harry noticed how thin and old-looking she was. Wearily, she sank into a chair.

  “They’ve forgotten us it seems,” she said, nodding at the newspaper. “Did you see where twelve companies of regulars have been posted to Fort Laramie, where there is no trouble, while here, with trouble all around us, we get only four?” She coughed, covering her mouth with a handkerchief.

  “Are you sick?” Harry said.

  She waved her hand. “Nothing a decent meal wouldn’t cure. Oh, how I long for a crisp, cold apple or a baked potato, smothered in fresh, sweet butter. I’ll never take those things for granted again.”