These Violent Times

by C. Courtney Joyner

  A crooked smile broke the stubbled jowls of the man. He stepped back, motioning to Dent, who followed. The explosives expert stopped.

  “Good evening, sir. And good luck.”

  But Weiber-Krauss was already dipping his pen in the inkwell and thinking about his words. He raised two fingers of his left hand without looking over, then motioned with those same fingers for the door to be shut.

  * * *

  Weiber-Krauss was neither surprised nor particularly saddened by the turn of events. It would change nothing in the end—but only if John Bishop were removed. There was a part of the German that had always been troubled by the proxy war he was waging against the surgeon. For half a millennium, the family did not hang to the rear of battle or strife. He had done so now only because it was expedient. He was not a family of educated noblemen, all of whom had a military background. He was one Weiber-Krauss set on a chessboard of pawns. Damaged, mentally incomplete, and often unruly pawns. It had been necessary for him to delegate.

  But, of course, the risk of that was the result he had now. The pawns had fallen before the Bishop. Now he had to take to the field.

  “But not without this,” he said as he began to write. He affixed the date. The place. His full title as it appeared in the ancient grants and deeds: The Count Anton Weiber-Krauss III of the Landgrafschaft Hessen-Kassel, Ruler of the Jurisdiction of the Imperial Immediacy. He wrote with a welling of pride, and with a fierce hope flaming in his breastbone. The hope that this document would never be seen and that the title he had inscribed would soon be amended to include, after Hessen-Kassel, “. . . and the landgraviate of the Central North American Continent . . .”

  * * *

  Riding side by side through the dark, Firecrow felt a special bond with the man to his left.

  The Cheyenne had watched with a mixture of curiosity and admiration as the one-armed warrior slipped on his mechanism-arm. The white man had defeated him, one-armed, an impressive enough feat. With this attachment, he was in some respects a creature of legend, like Nonoma—the Spirit of the Thunder—or the great horned serpent Mehne. Firecrow sensed, very strongly, a change in the man when the gun-arm came on. Nothing having to do with stature or balance, though it added both. It was not the transformation of a powerful warrior to a mightier one, though that was true. It had to do with óe’e’ohe. The tree that is chopped down. What results is not just a canoe or tepee supports or fences. There is also new growth. The one fallen creates many new things, all great and essential.

  Bishop was the living form of that idea. It was as if the spirit of all things had come to abide in this one man. The constable was not ashamed that he had challenged him. Or that he had doubted him. To the contrary. He was proud to have learned from the encounter. He had grown as a human being, the goal of all Cheyenne.

  The flame bounced. The light on the ground shifted. To Firecrow, the shadows around them were like ghost-lives living apart from their own. Yet all were they. The two men who rode were an army. The fight was not yet known, but whatever it was they would be ready.

  Bishop spoke, quietly. It did not sound like him. Perhaps it was one of the ghost forms.

  “I wanted to ask you something, Firecrow,” he said. “Earlier, when we fought—right before that, actually—you did not merely want to take me to trial. You were angry?”

  Firecrow did not like the question. It took him to a ghost-self. A Firecrow that no longer existed. When a time was passed, it was passed. But this man’s way was not the way of the Cheyenne.

  “I was mad,” he admitted.

  “Because of White Fox?” Bishop pressed.

  “Because of she.”

  “It’s important that you understand, Firecrow. White Fox is her own woman. She and I are like family. We are so close. Yet not in every way close. Who she chooses to be with—that has nothing to do with me.”

  “You are the better warrior,” Firecrow said.

  “That is not true. And it has nothing to do with White Fox. Do you understand what I am saying? To win her love and respect takes more than a badge of office or a headdress of many feathers. It takes more than a strong arm. Or a great horse. Or a wall of scalps. She . . .” Bishop sought for an explanation. He settled on: “She reads. She thinks.”

  “She is different,” Firecrow agreed.

  “Very,” Bishop concurred. “It is not by my actions that she turns to or from any man. You and I can be brothers.”

  “I understand,” Firecrow said, although he wasn’t sure he did. Bishop had an arm that was a gun. Any woman would be won by such as that. Even a woman who possessed books. The Cheyenne would consider what Bishop had said, though. And he would embrace the idea that they were brothers. At the moment, that was more important than the thoughts or feelings of a strange warrior woman and her spirit guide Poe.

  There was a hint of ruddiness on the horizon. Torchlight in the fort. The wind was blowing toward them.

  “Whoa.” Bishop stopped to sniff.

  “What is it?”

  “Only smoke,” the doctor replied. “I wanted to make sure they weren’t burning anything else.”

  Firecrow did not understand but he respected the man’s caution. They continued at a trot, a little faster than before. Bishop looked ahead but the Cheyenne watched the ground, mindful of gullies and rattlesnakes and other dangers of the open prairie.

  As the contours of the fort came in view, the new arrivals noticed that there were more men on the wall than usual.

  “For you?” Firecrow asked.

  “I wouldn’t think so,” Bishop said. “Most of them are not at attention.”

  “Ah. I see now.”

  “I think they are up there to put distance between themselves and whatever they are trying to get away from.”

  “Like the Cheyenne settlements?” Firecrow asked.

  “I would guess there is disease, yes,” Bishop replied. “Though the settlements were polluted by water. Though that does not explain how White Fox got sick.”

  Firecrow thought for a moment. He rubbed a hand on his forehead. “Water. I watch as White Fox put her lips on girl.”

  “Kissed her. On the forehead?”

  The Cheyenne nodded.

  “Right. That could do it.”

  A shot kicked up a clod of grass several yards in front of the riders. Both men stopped. The doctor locked his legs around the horse, held up both hands. “Lift your torch and bring it closer so they can see me,” he instructed.

  “This is John Bishop!” he shouted. “I wish to speak to your commander! We are coming closer to talk. Do not fire.”

  The two started ahead at a canter. Bishop’s eyes never left the speared tops of the fort. There was movement on the barricade. Muted voices that were probably shouts into the compound. And then a wait that seemed like a very long time. More movement on the wall.

  “This is Major Burton Terry,” a voice shouted back, strong and clear. Not ill. “Stop where you are.”

  Bishop and Firecrow did so, just a hundred yards or so from the gate.

  “Who is that with you?” Terry asked.

  “I am with Constable Firecrow,” Bishop yelled back.

  Terry considered that. “Are you his prisoner? Have you come to surrender?”

  “I have nothing to surrender for. We have come from the Cheyenne settlements where we just treated a pox. I am a doctor. I can help.”

  Terry said, “You are a felon. You will surrender or you will be shot where you are.”

  “I am nothing of the kind. Major, a question. What happened to Marshal Duffin?”

  “Maybe you can tell me,” Terry challenged.

  “I don’t understand. I left him with a Confederate. A prisoner, in handcuffs.”

  “He came back in a buckboard, sick and near death, his nose torn away. He was brought here by a man whose skull had been partly caved in.”

  “Is he alive?”

  “Barely.”

  “Major, he knows of my innocence. Tell
me, do you have illness there?”

  Terry’s silence was confirmation. And Bishop understood. The operational status of the fort was privileged military information that he would not share—if it were compromised.

  Bishop went on. “If the disease—if there is a disease—did not come from water, it was airborne. You recognized that or you wouldn’t have your men up there. Please. Let us in. If nothing else, we must figure out who is truly behind this.”

  Terry was silent.

  “At least let me try to help Marshal Duffin. He may have essential information.”

  Terry was no longer silent. “You hitch off that cannon,” he ordered.

  Bishop obliged, removing the straps and taking the gun under his good arm, barrel pointed backward.

  “I can help you,” Firecrow offered.

  “You are. With the torch.”

  “Open the gate,” Terry said. “Rifle squad, assemble outside the mess.”

  “He does not trust,” Firecrow observed.

  “More than you know,” Bishop replied, urging the horse forward. “He could have covered us from the wall. Those men in the compound? They will be stock-to-shoulder, aimed and ready to fire.”

  The gates opened, spilling orange torchlight on the open field. The entire fort was lit up like the Fourth of July. That was probably so that Terry or his second- and third-in-command could immediately see if anyone dropped. A quick headcount as they entered suggested that unless the off-duty troops were in the barracks, anywhere from ten to fifteen men were sick. That was the bed capacity of the average infirmary, and there was no one outside.

  Major Terry came down the wooden steps to meet them beside the rifle squad. As Bishop had expected, each of the four men had a Springfield pointed in his direction. Like a firing squad. Hungry.

  The officer came forward, his eyes on the gun first, then on the man.

  “I’d like to go to the infirmary,” Bishop said. No preamble.

  “Where I’m taking you,” Terry replied as he continued walking. He was well to the right of Bishop in case it was necessary for the rifle squad to shut the famed Shotgun down. The men on the wall looked down, even those who were supposed to be lookouts. It was not every day that a person of celebrity walked among them. Senators and even the Vice President of the United States had drawn less attention.

  Bishop stepped onto the wooden walk and entered the open door, followed by Firecrow and Terry. The rifle squad, at a signal from the major, stood down but stayed where they were, just outside. The new arrivals all donned surgical masks that were hanging from a peg inside the door. They were not introduced to the medic, who was writing in a medical log at his desk. He looked over, not bothering to speak through his own mask, which had a damp oval where the mouth was. Exhalation. He was breathing in from his nose.

  The infirmary had an antiseptic smell. Alcohol, mostly. The two hanging lanterns added their own touch of kerosene. But they did something more important than that. They illuminated a face that Bishop did not expect to see.

  “Avery!” Bishop exclaimed.

  Terry spun at the newcomer. “Who is he?”

  Bishop’s mind was trying to connect pieces that did not logically fit. “Joseph Daniel Avery, mayor and sheriff of Good Fortune,” Bishop said. “Marshal Duffin would have known him—but how the hell they got together . . . ?”

  Bishop took a quick look at the other men in the room. All of them were wearing masks, a sensible precaution by Dr. Gibson. The others were five in number. One was an exceptionally large man wearing sergeant’s stripes. The other four were privates.

  “Stretcher detail,” Bishop said.

  “That’s right,” Terry answered, with an edge of being impressed.

  “They were the only ones who were close to Duffin and Avery, correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “This is an experiment, Major,” Bishop said. “Water-carried, then airborne. Someone is testing biological tools for war. Or extermination.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The Many Ways of Healing

  “I must go to work here,” Bishop announced.

  Now he handed the gun-arm to Firecrow. Before anyone had answered or given permission, he was at Avery’s side in the nearest of the cots.

  “What medicines do you have here?” Bishop asked the doctor.

  “Everything the same as the trading post,” the medic replied. Without revealing too much, he added, “I am familiar with some of your experimental thinking. Very impressive.”

  “Thank you, Doctor—?”

  “Gibson,” he said. “Lester.”

  Gibson was a young man, not long in the military or out of medical school.

  “You examined the bodies for marks—Avery and Duffin?”

  Gibson nodded. “There was a puncture wound on the marshal,” he said. “Right arm. Venous.”

  “Living disease,” Bishop said.

  “That was my conclusion. From the blood to the respiratory system, then exhaled.”

  “What have you given these men?”

  “The quinine,” he replied, “mixed with mustard seed and stramonium leaves. The yellow bottles.”

  “I want the blue,” Bishop said.

  Dr. Gibson went to the medicine cabinet beside the desk. “Poke and prickly ash in rye whiskey.”

  “Right.” Carefully assuming the tone of a colleague, not master-to-student, he said, “It reduces inflammation, induces blood flow. Breathing is the best curative. Let the body heal itself.” He cocked his head toward the back of the room. “And open the windows, Major. Ventilate.”

  Bishop took the bottle from which Dr. Gibson had thoughtfully removed the stopper. Bishop knelt beside Avery, who was wheezing thickly—more than his usual rale. Gibson used a finger to hook the mask back slightly. Bishop poured the same amount of medicine as he had given White Fox. The same way.

  “I’d like my sergeant back, too,” Terry said.

  “You’ll have him. We must know how this man got here. Doctor? I’d also like spirits. If anything will bring him back, even briefly, scotch or whiskey?”

  “Rum?”

  “Fine.”

  The doctor got a bottle from his desk. Having finished dosing the mayor-sheriff with the cure, and once again with Gibson’s help, Bishop poured two capfuls of the rum over his tongue. He rose and looked down, listened to his breathing. Avery’s big chest seemed to ease slightly, almost at once. That would be the rum. The medicine would take a little longer.

  “Give this to the others, the rum, too, if you haven’t already,” Bishop told the doctor, handing him the bottle. Realizing he had no standing here, he added, “It was what we used in the war.”

  “The true medical school,” Gibson said, understanding.

  Bishop pulled over the wooden chair from the doctor’s desk and sat beside Avery. The newest jagged crack in his skull was another assault. If someone had wanted information about Bishop, all they would have had to do was offer him money. Or threaten to hit him. This was something else, possibly the prelude to an abduction.

  “What about the marshal?” Terry asked.

  “He has been ill the longest,” Bishop answered. “If he can be saved, it will not be before the others.”

  The major walked over. He took a cigar from his vest pocket, replaced it when he realized his mouth was covered. “Dr. Bishop,” he said, for the first time showing empathy or respect. “Why would someone want to frame you for these crimes? Convince me that they would have to.”

  “I don’t know the answer to that,” Bishop said. “As for convincing you, pitting a man’s word against suspicion against that man is a hollow exercise. Fact is needed, or corroboration. I am not guilty of the crimes here or against the Cheyenne. I can say no more.”

  “But you have killed.”

  “Those who sought to kill me, no one else.” He turned to Gibson. “That is not the oath we took.”

  Gibson nodded, pleased, again, to be considered a colleague of this eminent and
possibly infamous figure.

  Sergeant Manat was the first to regain consciousness. The medicine plus an iron physique proved to be the perfect combination. The other four soldiers recovered more slowly, but they started to come around. Avery and Duffin were still stubbornly comatose.

  “If you don’t mind,” Bishop said to Gibson, “I would like to remain here. Accommodations for the constable?”

  “You’ve both been in the Cheyenne camps. You can stay in the jailhouse. I think that will be safer.”

  That wasn’t the reason, but Firecrow did not protest. The only Indians who slept with the regulars were regulars themselves. Mostly scouts. It didn’t matter to the brave. The others were not worthy of him.

  “If you’re going to stay, Doctor,” Gibson said, “would you mind if I shut my eyes? Been at this problem since it first broke among the Cheyennes.”

  “Please rest,” Bishop replied. He did not bother mentioning that he had been up since before dawn himself.

  Major Terry went out with Firecrow, leaving behind a look that was not sympathetic but neutral. At least it wasn’t hostile.

  Bishop thumbed through the patient records in a book on Gibson’s desk. There was no new information; it was the same he had seen with White Fox. A disease that caused high fever and blotches if left unchecked. A measles variant, caused by an infectious agent in a patient’s blood. But more potent, virulent. If not occurring naturally, it would have to have been created, like Gregor Mendel’s recent experiments with peapods in Austria, by someone with scientific skill. Most likely a doctor, if it was injected in Marshal Duffin.

  And they call me a monster, he thought.

  Bishop returned to the chair and sat just by Avery’s head, thinking of all the cots he had been beside—and in. And the one critical time when a bed would have been welcome. It was one of the moments that made him and White Fox what they were.

  It was about the rig. There had been shotgun fire outside Huckie’s Saloon in the mountains and they had been forced to run, fast and hard. The gun-arm complained; loudly and painfully. Its obtuseness, its unfamiliarity, had caused it to start to bleed around the leather cup that was fitted to Bishop’s left arm just below the elbow joint. It was a standard prosthetic that boys of both the North and the South wore as a kind of battle prize. There was not a one of them who would not have preferred the return of his limb. But for the ability to get compassion from the ladies and to scare rude little children into a running fit, it had merit. The benighted blacksmith had modified Bishop’s prosthetic to allow the short stock of a Greener .12-gauge shotgun to fit where a metal hook would have replaced the amputee’s hand. The stock was secured in the cup with small metal bands that joined the shotgun and prosthetic together as one.