These Violent Times

by C. Courtney Joyner

  White Fox said, “Hetómem.”

  Bishop spoke through the bloody handkerchief, “He remembered me.”

  White Fox pointed to the nearest mountains with the club, and broke ahead. Bishop heeled the bay.

  The cave was a huge, yawning smile beneath a jagged slope of blue rock, sheeted by snow and protected by daggers of ice formed by the water flowing from up-mountain. Bishop followed the barely-there trail for more than a mile, guided by a small fire White Fox had left burning inside the cave’s mouth, its drifting heat melting hanging icicles. Bishop felt comforted by the distant, flickering orange, even as a raw burning raced across his face and down his right half-arm.

  The painted was tied to a Rocky Mountain birch, eating fresh snow, when Bishop reached the cave. White Fox stood just inside, waiting to see if he could get down from the bay by himself. He did, a scream jamming the back of his throat. Fresh blood specked Bishop’s sleeve and the shotgun barrels. She took a step toward him that he stopped with a raised hand. He nodded that he could beat it, allowing himself a moment to let the throbbing from his arm and face ease with deep, cold breathing. It didn’t.

  White Fox slipped herself under his shoulder and helped him to the fire. “Bi-shop.”

  Bishop smiled at the way she said his name, breaking it gently in two, as if each syllable had a spiritual meaning. She eased him onto a blanket on the cave floor, where he stretched out, propping himself on his right elbow, the shotgun rig resting on his knees.

  White Fox pulled off the blood-flecked duster and folded it carefully, before putting more wood on the fire, sparking the flames. She then opened one of the redware jars she’d arranged around the cave, along with bedrolls, a cook pan, a coffeepot, a lot of ammunition, and a small leather satchel that had Bishop’s initials stamped on it in gold.

  Bishop said, “You’re nesting—Jesus!”

  He cried out raw as she peeled the pink handkerchief from the drying blood caking his cheek. White Fox tossed the rag, and dabbed the wound with a soft cloth she’d wetted with melted snow. It was cool, and felt good against the damage.

  Bishop said, “Stitches. You know how.”

  White Fox ran her fingers along the inside of the jar, gathering yellow salve. She smeared the mixture on the wound, then cut a piece of yucca in half, opened it flat, and pressed it against Bishop’s face.

  She took Bishop’s left hand to hold the plant in place and he said, “This won’t be enough. Ma’heo’o Ôhvó’komaestse.”

  Bishop got the words out, but White Fox didn’t hear them. Her jaw was set, which meant that she would take care of him in her own way; she didn’t need white medicine.

  She unbuttoned his shirt, and he automatically leaned forward so she could pull the right sleeve free, gathering the rest around the shotgun rig, then slipping it off. The shirt caught on the hammers, and White Fox yanked it.

  Bishop swore in Cheyenne, and White Fox gave the back of his head a gentle slap before allowing him a swallow of mescal.

  Bare-chested, he leaned to one side, his back toward her, so she could unhook the canvas strap that was tight across his shoulders and connected to the two triggers of the Greener twelve gauge. The strap dug into him, leaving marks like the bite of a whip, and was connected to a looped piece of fabric that ran down his right arm and anchored to the triggers, so that the action of bringing the shotgun up to waist level would pull on the strap, firing either or both barrels.

  The bleeding started around the leather cup that was fit to Bishop’s right arm just below the elbow joint. It was a standard prosthetic that rebel and union boys now wore as a battle prize, but had been modified to allow the short stock of the Greener to fit where a metal hook would replace the patient’s hand. The stock was secured in the cup with small metal bands that joined the shotgun and prosthetic together as one.

  White Fox loosened the ties that held the cup tight to Bishop’s arm, and pulled the entire rig away, revealing a bleeding stump. More mescal from the heel of the bottle, and Bishop’s head lolled back, his hand still holding the yucca against his cheek as she checked the arm for fresh wounds.

  He said, “Nothing’s opened up?”

  She examined the corrupted skin and muscle that was a knot around the bone, and saw that none of the crude surgical scars lacing it together had ruptured. The blood was smeared from small wounds around the elbow, where the amputation point met the healthy rest of the arm. White Fox swabbed away the streaks of wet red.

  Bishop said, “It’s not setting right, rubbing raw. I know you don’t understand everything, but you did a fine job. I’m the doc, but you’re the surgeon.”

  White Fox dressed the wound with salve and wrapped it, saying, “I still am, Bi-shop.”

  “Not always, not always.”

  White Fox allowed the corners of her mouth to turn up, as she settled Bishop down on the blanket. A last bit of mescal and he closed his eyes at her touch treating his wounds.

  “Where’s my medical bag?”

  “Close.”

  Bishop barely opened his eyes to see the small, black leather bag, age-cracked, with LT. BISHOP embossed in flaked gold on one side. It was Bishop’s field kit, bloodstained and heavy with instruments. White Fox had arranged it among the other supplies, but knowing that piece of himself hadn’t been lost eased Bishop, and he closed his eyes again.

  Bishop said, “You take care of me.”

  White Fox rested the shotgun rig between the medical bag and the stacks of ammunition, all the time watching Bishop as he drifted, his words folding into each other.

  “When your husband stabbed you, I sewed you up. And when he broke your arm? You were a good patient.”

  White Fox treated the slice on Bishop’s face with the last of the yucca pulp. His eyes were heavy with sleep coming, but his thoughts were fighting the peace.

  “Pardee had never seen anything like me. Nobody had.”

  Bishop lifted what remained of his right arm to reach out to White Fox, but he couldn’t. She touched the side of his face, lightly tapping the pulp onto the wound so it would dry in place.

  Bishop said, “I’ve watched a lot of men die, but I never killed one. Not even in the conflict.”

  White Fox lay next to Bishop, pulling a blanket over them both, keeping one hand on his chest.

  Bishop said, “It felt different than I thought it would.”

  White Fox understood but didn’t react; she just lay next to Bishop, feeling the still-excited, rapid beat of his heart and quietly murmuring his name until his body eased, and he fell, peacefully, asleep.