It was Caferro who took pity on me. “No, ma’am. He isn’t dead.
I went limp with relief. “Oh, thank God.
“Shut up, Caferro,” Major Page said. “I’ll do the talking—and the questioning. You—” He gestured at Walsh. “—get these people moving. We’ve got a war to fight. Dig in about three hundred yards farther on, corporal, before you get to that little ridge.”
Smartly, Walsh began rounding up his troops, the majority of the men gone within minutes.
“Blackhorse,” Page called out. At first I thought he was talking about one of the animals, until the man with the mules stepped forward. “I want the mortar positioned over there.” His arm waved the direction. “See that burned out tree? Set the Stokes up under it.”
Blackhorse’s team also moved off. Major Page continued ordering his troops, sending the artillery gunners off to either side of the Stokes, each squad with a machine gun and instructions to guard the platoon’s flanks. Then he turned back to where Caferro and I awaited his pleasure. I found his action ominous.
“Now, young woman,” he said. “I need some answers out of you.
I can’t say as I looked forward to the grilling, but in his place I’d have been asking questions, too. “Of course,” I said. “Ask me anything.”
As might be imagined, my mind was racing. I didn’t think he’d be amused were I to spout off about supernatural powers and magic. So far he hadn’t thought to search my handbag. He’d really be upset if he found, not only my Reeboks and jeans, but the same.45 Colt automatic he had given Caleb—Ned. How would I ever explain that?
The major had a narrow mustache decorating his upper lip, which he stroked with his index finger, smoothing the hairs flat.
“Let’s begin with your name,” he said. “And it had better not be Schultz.”
If he only knew! Hitler would have been a whole lot worse.
I took a deep breath. “My name is Boothenay Irons,” I said, somewhat surprised when the earth neglected to open or the sky to fall. Evidently it was safe for me to be me in this time. “Maybe Ned has mentioned me?”
“Not in my hearing.
Caferro simply shook his head
“I’m from the same town as Ned,” I said. “He and I are . . . are going to be married. When he left for the service, I found I couldn’t bear for us to be parted, so I followed him.”
“Some little town in Washington State,” Caferro said helpfully.
“Yes, Spokane.” Spokane had been small then, comparatively. It still was, comparatively.
Page might well have not been listening to this exchange, which I thought established my bonafides very well. “How did you get here?”
This was the question I wished he hadn’t asked. “In a boat,” I said, hoping he would drop it there. “A ship actually.”
He didn’t.
“What ship?” he demanded.
Frantic thoughts chased through my mind. There was no possible way he could identify every single arriving ship’s name, was there?
Besides, if there is anything I’ve learned in my years of flitting about in this distorted universe, it is that, if you tell your whoppers with enough confidence, most people aren’t going to doubt you.
“The Stockholm.” Well, it sounded plausible to me, especially since my quickie research had revealed the Scandinavian countries had remained neutral in this war. “They were supposed to let me off at Dunkirk, but something happened and they didn’t stop until we got to Ostend.”
“Ostend! That’s in German hands.” Page’s suspicion, in case it had abated any, was back.
“Tell me about it!” I said. “But I didn’t know that at the time. Someone put me on a train and told me to go southeast, toward Metz, so that’s what I did. Then I found out I wasn’t on my way to France after all. That somehow I’d ended up in German territory, and by the time I discovered this, I’d already changed trains a couple of times. I don’t mind saying I was hopelessly lost. I didn’t know what to do, as I don’t speak the language, and when I saw a sign in one of the train depots showing Metz as being in the other direction now, I thought I’d flat-out die.”
“But you survived,” Major Page said dryly.
“As you say,” I replied, just as dry. “So. far. There was another train. Lickety-split, I hopped aboard this one, unaware it was a troop train carrying soldiers released from hospital leave back to the front.”
“I’m not going to ask how you determined this.” Page sounded tired. His horse, head hanging over the man’s shoulder, blew softly. The man stroked the animal’s velvety nose.
“It’s easy enough to tell a man who’s been wounded,” I said. “He needs good food, something for the pain, and enough rest. These men aren’t getting any of those things. They’re being returned to duty only half-healed.”
“Is that right? This is good news, ma’am.
“I’m glad you think so, Major Page. I suggest you don’t forget they’re still capable of firing a rifle. Anyway, the train we were on was bombed, everyone got off, including me, and then I just kind of tagged along behind the rest. And here I am.”
“Yes.” He sighed. “And here you are.” He paused, sniffing the air. With the coming of daylight, an early morning fog had begun to rise from the rain-soaked ground, hiding the closest of the American posts from our sight. Page didn’t like it, his head moving nervously as though he wished for infrared glasses or radar to see through the mist.
Sorry, buddy, I thought. Not yet. Maybe if you live long enough.
As though to punctuate that drear uncertainty, there came the rattle of small arms fire from Page’s forward positions. Muffled by the fog, we heard yelling.
Major Page swung into the saddle. “Damn! I knew this advance was too easy. The Huns were bound to counterattack.”
The horse, made nervous by the sound of gunfire, chewed at the bit in its mouth. Page soothed the animal, staring down at me from his perch. “I’m not through with you, ma’am. I’ll want to talk with you when I get back to headquarters.
“Caferro, take her in. I can’t spare a man to guard her, so put her in with the Red Cross nurses. Maybe they can put her to work. Have Doc Hurry keep his eye on her.”
The fusillade of shots grew. I ducked involuntarily as I felt bullets whipsawing close around us. From our left, the American machine gun stuttered leaden death. The never-to-be-forgotten shriek of a wounded horse penetrated the fog like a siren and I cried out myself.
“Damn it all to hell!” Page drew his own.45 Colt, a perfect match for the one I had in my bag, and checked his clip. “Have Smith send more mules, or horses—whatever he’s got. Get going, Caferro. Now! And don’t forget to come back yourself.”
With this, he disappeared into the fog, his horse crowhopping all the way. Page was an accomplished horseman I noted, controlling the animal with only his knees. I felt more sympathy with the major now, regardless of whether he bought my story or not. We were two of a kind. I’d seen how the wounded horse’s cries had affected him. He hated the slaughter—and so did I.
“Come on.” Caferro took my upper arm in a firm grasp and, taking up a queer, crouched stance, tugged me with him into a stumbling run. I didn’t need a lot of urging, as I was as anxious to get out of bullet range as he, and impatient as all get out to find Caleb.
We ran and ran, for miles, it seemed to me. Yet I knew we hadn’t possibly come so far. Within minutes Caferro was towing me around huge, freshly gouged shell holes in the ground, past bloody bundles of men—or parts of men—who’d been alive only minutes before, and around the end of a woven, barbed wire fence where corpses hung like so much dirty laundry.
“Our lines,” Caferro said, drawing air into his laboring lungs. He dragged harder at my arm. “Hurry.”
All the running and exercising I did must keep me in fairly good shape, I discovered. I had plenty of air. My problem arose from a case of retching beyond my control. My stomach, let alone my heart and brain, couldn’t seem to deal
with what I was seeing—and smelling. We slowed.
Sound spiraled from the field we’d left behind. One sound grew in momentum until I screamed aloud as, nostrils flaring, eyes rolling, Major Page’s bay horse streaked past. Steam rose off the animal, and though he moved like a racehorse, the blood sheeting the empty saddle was plain to see.
“Son-of-a-bitch!” Caferro yelled, thick-voiced. He yanked me along as though hoping to take up flying.
Staying with him took all my attention. I think the only thing that kept me on my feet was the promise of finding Caleb at the end. Major Page had mentioned Caleb—Ned Smith—by name. Maybe August had known what he was doing after all when he put me on a train due to be bombed. He must have known this would happen, and used his knowledge to put me within range of my heart’s desire.
Whatever. I was close now. Close enough to actually feel Caleb near. The only fear I had was, with the possibility of blood flowing so freely all around, a premature withdrawal might be precipitated. This case had been weird from start to⏤well, not quite the finish, as yet. But it had been strange in that blood hadn’t called the spell, and blood had not ended it either.
Wrong blood, something kept telling me
I didn’t want to know
Within a few steps on the other side of the barbed wire, Caferro took a whistle out of his pocket and started blowing. A code, I soon discovered. Three shorts, two long, a short and a long. Giving us passage through the front, I guessed, since no one took a shot at us. There were sentries on the prowl, made extra alert by the noise of battle arising from the direction we had come. They asked Caferro for news as we went through the lines. He never stopped, merely telling them to get ready to move up, though I never saw an officer or heard an order.
We came to a rise in the land and, to my great relief, here there was no fog. Down in the flat, I saw a herd of horses and mules gathered in makeshift corrals. Caferro took a moment to point out a village in the distance, a broken stub of a bell tower marking the church.
“St. Mihiel,” he said. “We liberated it yesterday.”
But that was the only note of cheer and we continued running, our strides growing more uneven and shambling in sheer weariness, until at last we came to the barn where, as Caferro informed me, Caleb had his quarters. We’d stop there first.
CHAPTER 21
Caferro demanded I stay outside the barn while he went in and summoned Caleb, or Ned, I mean..
“No!” I protested. “I’ve come all this way. One more minute is too long. I’ve got to see Ned right now.” In truth, I almost burst out laughing. Caleb was going to be so glad to see me. He’d never envision how difficult finding my way here had been. I imagined I might have some pretty hard explaining to do. But knowing him, he’d understand. He hadn’t been able to make his own way home after all.
Caferro barred my entry with an arm across the door. “Sometimes men are in there,” he said, turning red. “And they ain’t always dressed. Besides, I wasn’t supposed to bring you here. Major Page told me to take you to the hospital.”
He would not be dissuaded and arguing only took more time. I unhooked my purse from off my shoulder and dropped it at my feet, looking around, and resigning myself to a few moments’ delay. I could stand a few more seconds, since I had no choice.
The structure wasn’t quite a tent, I saw, yet it wasn’t quite a building either. The top half was made of strong, gamey smelling canvas, while the bottom was of rough sawn boards. It must have been awfully drafty when the wind blew. No wonder influenza had run rife through these camps, I reflected, thinking Caleb must be having a fit over the conditions. Viral infection would spread like wildfire here...almost as easily as the odor of horse, which was very strong.
I wrinkled my nose against the reek of ammonia. By some strange quirk, the sun began shining while I waited, raising steam from the quagmire the whole camp seemed built on.
“Ma’am.” Caferro had returned and was motioning me inside. “Come on in.”
I retrieved my purse and pushed past him, but the moment I entered, I knew Caleb wasn’t here. Not now. Oh, he had been, and not so very long ago. I felt his presence in the same way one is able to see the ghost on a television screen after the electricity has been turned off. I almost wailed with frustration.
“Where is he?” I turned to Caferro with a desperation I couldn’t hide.
“Well, ma’am, ah, well, you see, ah . . .” He waffled, and finally stuttered to a halt.
The tent was lit with a kerosene lantern, for although daylight had come, there were no windows in the sidewalls and it remained dark inside. Glancing around, I saw a center post with a shirt—one of Caleb’s shirts—hanging from a nail. There was a board, fixed between a couple of two-by-four sawhorses, where a mug with a brush stuck in it and a straight-edge razor completed his toiletries area. His things, but no Caleb.
I heard a sound behind me and spun around expectantly, peering into the shadows. A man, young and sandy haired, loomed out of the dark. With a thrill, I saw the man was Will Mueller.
“Ned went into the town last night,” he said, eyeing me like I was a bug smashed on a microscope slide. His voice was deeper than when I’d last heard him speak. He sounded exactly like his brother Frank, when I’d seen all the cousins at the swimming hole. “He hasn’t come back yet.”
I tried to tell myself I was hearing things, but there seemed to me hidden depths in those few words.
“Did you expect him back last night?” I asked, with a blaze of fear at the unpredictability of a war zone. “Why did he go to town?
I know I wasn’t exactly looking my best. I had, after all, been up and if not actively running, at least on the move for the last twenty-four hours. Much of that time had been spent outdoors in the drizzling rain, in a state of unparalleled anxiety, not to mention the spurts of real terror. Still, I couldn’t see why Will seemed to think that gave him reason to look down his nose at me.
I set my bag down with a decisive thunk and started tapping my toe. “Come on, Will. I need some answers right now.
He frowned. “How do you know my name?
“I’ve been told about you,” I said impatiently. Then I remembered who it was who’d done the telling—and the showing. This boy would soon be dead, I recalled. Killed by his own cousin, and there was nothing I could do to prevent it. My impatience siphoned away. I felt totally used up, depleted of all resources.
“Can’t you please help me? You’ll be helping Ned, too, I promise.” My voice softened as I entreated, rather than threatened.
Will, I know, surmised Caleb had told me his name, perhaps in a letter. Reassured, he looked to Caferro, who shrugged as if to say, “You’re on your own, buddy.”
“What is your name, ma’am?” Will asked.
I sighed. He was coming around.
“I’m Boothenay Irons. Hasn’t Ned mentioned me?” To cuss me out if nothing else, I could have added. My greatest worry was the chance Caleb might know himself only as Ned Smith. If he’d been robbed of his real identity, if he was no longer Caleb Deane, we all had a problem. A big problem.
Couldn’ t be, I told myself. I knew that, but I still held my breath for Will’s answer.
“Well, you’re a little late,” he said, as disgruntled as if I’d stood him up for the prom. “Ned expected you long before this. He waited and waited for you, until he got shot. Then I think he gave up.”
“What?” The question whistled through my benumbed lips. My midsection hurt like something had sliced me in half. Relief went in one direction, fear in the other. “Shot? Is he . . . is he . . .” Yet I knew he wasn’t dead. I knew that. “How badly is he hurt?”
Will didn’t ask me to sit down, but I fumbled across the dark tent until I found Caleb’s cot, where I collapsed onto his scratchy woolen blankets.
“He’s better now,” Will said. “He spent a night in the field hospital while they fixed him up. The thing is, while he was there, he met a girl—a Red Cross nurse—and
now he’s sweet on her. That’s where he went last night. To see his girl, only he hasn’t come back.”
Shock coursed through me, stinging behind my eyes, piercing my heart as with electrified arrowheads. Of all the things Will could have told me, this was the one I’d had no thought to prepare for.
“That can’t be true,” I said, knowing I sounded harsh. “He wouldn’t do that—just pick up another woman at the drop of a hat. He wouldn’t.” He wouldn’t, at least, if he had any hope of ever getting out of this hellhole.
Hope bounded again. “Are you sure we’re talking about the same man? Thirty years old, not too tall, not too short. Slim. He’s got dark curly hair and green, green eyes.”
“Yes,” Will assented sourly. “I know. That’s Sergeant Smith all right.”
Something inside of me seemed to come undone, as though my bones were turning to rubber and my organs to liquid. Why hadn’t he waited for me? I didn’t know exactly how much time had passed in 1918, but in our time, he’d been gone for only three days. He loved me—I know he did—so how could he let himself fall for another woman?
She was bound to be prettier than me—no great feat. She was a nurse, so they probably had a lot in common. They could talk about saving lives and discuss the highest ideals of mankind. Maybe she had saved his life—and he was grateful. I was only a gunsmith with scarred hands, and a greater knowledge of the means of taking a life than the saving of one.
Did they look into each other’s eyes and feel an emotional chemistry so strong it was like a hot fire kindling beneath their skin? Did their bodies want to come together, drawn as though by a magnetic force? Did he call her sugar in his soft, southern drawl?
Dear God, I couldn’t bear the pain. I know I was panting as if my lungs were starved for air. I glanced at Will, who was worrying at the inside of his cheek.
Caferro, who had some idea of what I’d been through in trying to reach Caleb, had a horrified expression on his face. He nudged Will in the ribs as though to warn him to say no more. They both were probably afraid I’d cry, or have hysterics, or something.
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