Coming Home for Christmas

by Carla Kelly

  So Ed Hunsaker had written to him from Camp Robinson, where his infantry regiment remained to keep the peace at the Red Cloud and Spotted Tail Agencies. Will had sighed over the high moral tone of Ed’s letter. He had experience enough in watching Sioux and their families forced onto reservations. No one was ever happy.

  Will had served nearly eight years on the frontier now, but he had never seen a white woman returning from captivity, as Nora Powell was. Thirteen years a captive of the Ogalala Sioux, she had been found at the Spotted Tail Agency on a tip from the local Indian agent, who thought he had noticed a blue-eyed woman among the Indian women waiting for rations.

  When she’d been finally separated from her children— “everyone screaming and crying at once,” Ed had written—she had admitted to being Nora Powell, captured near Julesburg, Colorado, on an Indian raid in 1864. Beyond that, she wouldn’t talk, but sat in silence, rocking back and forth and grieving for her children, who had been whisked away from her.

  Even now, waiting for Captain Hunsaker and his ‘prisoner’ to arrive, Will owned to some uneasiness. Ed’s letter, so righteously indignant, had offended him in some strange way he couldn’t understand. Obviously there were saddened families who longed to know what had happened to women captured on the trail, and no one would argue with the belief that Nora Powell belonged with her own kind.

  He couldn’t help his uneasiness, remembering Ed Hunsaker’s description of the shrieking and mourning when Nora’s children had been pulled from her arms. Hunsaker had almost sounded smug about the whole situation, as though he knew best. Did he? Will had his doubts.

  They must have showed on his face. “It bothers you, too?” Frannie asked.

  Will glanced at her in surprise. How on earth did Frannie know what he was thinking? “You mean Nora Powell and her children?” he asked, keeping his voice low.

  She nodded. Her face reddened. She moved a little closer. “Captain, if it were me, I don’t know if I could bear to part with my children, no matter how they had been conceived.”

  He nodded, somehow not surprised that Frannie would feel that way. Paddy Coughlin had told him how attached Frannie became to her little pupils in the enlisted men’s school. Maybe women were just naturally that way. He smiled to himself. And stupidly sensitive post surgeons, too, he thought. I think I agree with her.

  “I don’t think anyone offered her a choice,” he said. “I doubt it ever occurred to them.” That’s a radical statement, he told himself. What must Frannie think of me?

  He glanced at her and saw nothing but sympathy on her expressive face. She sighed and looked away. He thought she said, “I’m glad it wasn’t my decision,” but she spoke softly and he could have been wrong.

  Still no train. Will thought of all the complications the Union Pacific was prone to: buffalo on the tracks, hot boxes when the axle overheated, road agents or marauding Indians came to mind first, but seemed the most unlikely. Thanks to bone hunters, the buffalo herds were already shrinking. Pinkerton’s had been particularly effective lately against road agents, so that seemed unlikely. And every soldier at Fort Laramie had commented on a definite slowdown to Indian troubles, since Sitting Bull’s people were in Canada, and Chief Joseph’s Nez Perce had been escorted to Indian Territory.

  It’s going to be long trip to Philly, Will thought, as he looked down the track again. All I want to do is read.

  Chapter Two

  Four hours later, the eastbound train arrived at precisely the same time as Captain Hunsaker with Nora Powell, her face bleak and her wrists bound. Shocked, Will glanced at Frannie, whose expression mirrored his.

  It wasn’t lost on Captain Hunsaker, who yanked off his winter cap and slapped his thigh. “Damn it, Captain Wharton, let’s see you keep her in a wagon against her will!” he shouted, then looked around. Luckily, all the waiting passengers were inside and missed his little scene.

  Trust Hunsaker to have no tact at all, Will decided. As senior medical officer at Fort Laramie with some clout over medical events at Camp Robinson, Will had heard plenty from others about Captain Hunsaker’s poor bedside manner.

  Hunsaker looked to be at the end of his noticeably short tether. “She tried to kill me on the way here! Nora Powell!” He spit the name out like a curse. “She’s as savage as those wild Indians at the Spotted Tail Agency!”

  Will gave his subordinate the patented frosty stare he had learned from a former commanding officer and which he had further cultivated to great effect in his years on the frontier. “Captain, remember yourself!” he snapped. “You have only a few minutes to get your luggage on the train with Miss Powell.”

  “Not I,” Hunsaker protested.

  “Oh, wait a minute,” Will started. “I know you have orders to accompany her to…to…”

  “To Utley-damn-Iowa! But I won’t. It’s going to be your job, Wharton.” Hunsaker reached inside his overcoat. “Here. From my commanding officer.” He stepped back with a triumphant look on his beet-red face.

  Will read the official document with a sinking heart. “There is a measles outbreak at Camp Robinson?”

  Ed Hunsaker nodded. He knew he had won and began to calm down. “I have to return immediately. She’s all yours, Captain.” He glanced at Frannie. “And your wife’s.”

  “This is Miss Coughlin. I’m escorting her part way home as a favor to her father, Fort Laramie’s hospital steward.” Will knew he didn’t need to blush over that; it was a common mistake. The post adjutant at nearby Fort Russell had made the same mistake earlier. Did they look like a married couple? Will wondered.

  Captain Hunsaker glowered at Nora Powell, who glared back. “Just keep her hands tied and turn her over to her relatives,” he said. “Good riddance to her and good luck to you!” Without another glance at his bound patient, he climbed back in the wagon, tossed out a bedroll and told the amused private at the reins to spring ’em.

  Through it all, Nora Powell had stood quietly beside Frannie Coughlin, probably sensing some protection there, even though Frannie had done nothing more than stand between the captive woman and Captain Hunsaker, who possessed all the social skills of a radish.

  Will turned to regard his new burden. “We will make the best of this, Nora,” he said. He looked at her bound hands. The rope was tight and her hands bare in the cold. He came a little closer, but not too close, remembering that Indians never liked to feel crowded. She was a white woman, but from the file he had read earlier at Fort Laramie, back when Hunsaker had forwarded the details of her recapture from the Sioux, he knew she had been a captive since 1864. One issue could make this trip better or worse.

  “Nora, do you remember English?” he asked. Unlike Hunsaker, he kept his voice low and quiet, because he knew how Indians talked to each other. “Do you?”

  After a long moment, which he did not rush, the woman raised her blue eyes to his. She nodded, but was silent.

  “Good.”

  She had small hands. Will took off his fur-lined gloves and gently placed one of them over her bound hands. “I’m going to leave the bonds on you for now,” he told her. “Let’s get you on the train.”

  He glanced at Frannie, who smiled at him. It was a peaceful, relieved smile, one he was used to getting from patients—the kind of smile that always made him gulp inside and wonder if they had any idea how little he really knew about anything. His professors at Harvard had never discussed feelings of inadequacy; maybe Harvard yard birds never felt inadequate. Truth to tell, most of his training in compassion had come much earlier from his dear Grandpa Wilkie, a former Royal Navy surgeon and the best man in his young world until Mama had remarried. Of many medical lessons, compassion remained the one he seemed to have learned the best.

  He touched Frannie’s arm. “See if you can get her seated. Put her by the window. I’ll retrieve the bedroll our thoughtful friend from Camp Robinson tossed out.”

  Frannie nodded and put her hand lightly on Nora Powell’s back. Will watched them, reminded all over agai
n how Frannie seemed to have learned the same lessons his grandfather had taught him in Scotland. Something told him that the capable Miss Coughlin hadn’t really needed an escort home to New York. Something else told him he was glad to have her along, even if people did think she was his wife.

  He watched Frannie help Nora onto the train. Maybe she was susceptible to thought waves, because Frannie looked back at him. She winked at him, which made him smile at her, all the while thinking that his fiancée would walk down a street naked before she would wink at a man.

  “Frannie, you’re all right,” he murmured, before picking up Nora Powell’s pitiful bedroll from the slush. He stared down at the little bundle—all of Nora’s possessions, except for two children. For one small moment, he thought his heart would break.

  Chapter Three

  Will handed his government travel documents to a highly dubious conductor. The man frowned at Nora Powell, who was making herself small against the window. Frannie sat next to her, a frown on her own face as she glared back at the conductor.

  “She’s not an exhibit in a zoo,” Frannie whispered to Will as the conductor moved on.

  Will seated himself across from the women. Without a word, he removed his glove from Nora’s bound hands, then gently rubbed her cold hands with his warmer ones. He remembered when his mother used to put hot potatoes in his pockets and wished he could do something similar for this poor woman.

  She started when he touched her, her eyes opening wide and then narrowing into slits. She’s going to bite me, Will thought, but he kept rubbing her hands. “I’m not here to hurt you, Nora,” he told her. “This nice lady is Mary Frances Coughlin, but we call her Frannie.”

  Frannie nudged her shoulder. “May we call you Nora?” she asked.

  Nora nodded and relaxed noticeably, which meant Will could relax, too, and not fear for his fingers. When her hands were warmer, he sat back.

  “Nora, I’m a surgeon. I’m on my way home to Philadelphia to get married. Frannie’s going to New York. We’re…we’re going to take you home first.”

  He watched Nora’s eyes as they filled with tears that spilled on to her cheeks. With her bound hands, she grabbed for him. “I want to go home now!” she said.

  “That’s what we’re doing,” Will repeated, relieved that she understood.

  She had hold of his hand with both of hers. She shook her head. “Home!” she said again, louder. “Home! Not Iowa!”

  Will felt the breath go out of him as he understood what she was trying to tell him. “Nora, I have my orders,” he said, and it sounded lame and stupid to him. “You’re to be returned to your Iowa relatives.” He almost added, It’s the best thing, but another look at her ravaged face told him the folly of that.

  As the train left the depot, Nora Powell’s soft weeping was drowned out by the hiss of the engine gathering steam and the clatter of the rails. Tears running down her face, she stared out of the window at the snow, the rabbit brush and sage scoured by the wind and the tracks that were taking her farther and farther from the family left behind at the Spotted Tail Agency.

  Will was a competent surgeon, well trained and scientific in the best way he knew. As he listened to Nora’s tears and watched the concern in Frannie Coughlin’s eyes, he knew he was being measured and found woefully scant by some cosmic tribunal that he hoped wasn’t the mind of God.

  I have worries of my own, he told himself, thinking about Maddy and her boring letters, each more shallow than the last, as she went over every tiny detail of their upcoming nuptials. Did she honestly think he was interested in how many rosettes there would be on each bridesmaid’s bodice? It was easy enough to read her silly letters and laugh them off, as he remembered her lovely face and breathy way of talking. Sitting across from real pain, he wondered at his own shallow character.

  “I wish it were different,” he murmured to Frannie.

  “So do I,” she whispered back.

  He stared at Nora’s bound hands, knowing what his mother would do, she who had worked for years to smooth the way for immigrants and the poor. She often spoke to him about her work, but he knew this had never involved Indians, and most assuredly not Indian captives who wanted to stay with their half-Indian children. He still knew what she would do.

  “Nora, look at me,” he said, in what he called his surgeon’s voice, the one he relied on to get attention when he needed it.

  She raised her eyes to his and he steeled himself against so much pain on one face. “Nora, I want to cut the bonds on your hands, but you have to promise me you won’t try to escape.”

  She just stared at him, her face as impassive now as though she truly were Sioux.

  “I mean it, Nora. If I cut the bonds and you escape, you won’t get far.”

  A stubborn light came into her eyes, one he had seen before, mostly on the face of mothers, who surely were the most tenacious creatures on earth. He swallowed, remembering a mother who had leaped through fire to snatch her child from a burning wagon when the regiment was set upon by Apaches in Arizona Territory. Neither had survived, but Will had never thought survival was on her mind when she plunged into the flames.

  Maybe he could do better this time. “You might escape me, but look out of the window. It’s snowing again and it’s cold and you won’t make it alive to Spotted Tail Agency. You’re too far away.”

  He let her digest that fact, gazing out of the window, too, as dusk settled in. “Promise me, Nora,” he said, a few minutes later. “I don’t want to leave you bound because you’re not a criminal. You’re a mother who wants to go home. Let’s find a better way.”

  Why he said that, he had no idea. “Maybe your relatives can help,” he suggested, wishing it didn’t sound so feeble. He continued his idiocy. “There are lawyers in Nebraska and Iowa.”

  Heavens! You’re an imbecile, to talk about lawyers! he thought, disgusted with himself. He stopped, remembering other cases he had heard, where captive women had been returned to their families. He had heard tales and none of them had happy endings. And here he was, babbling about lawyers. He didn’t even know if Nora Powell’s relatives would show up to reclaim a tainted woman, much less advance one penny toward reclaiming her children.

  “Or maybe they won’t help you,” he heard himself saying next. “I won’t lie to you, Nora.”

  More silence.

  “I just don’t want you to run away, because you won’t get where you want to be,” he said simply. “That’s what it comes down to. I don’t want you to freeze to death. I’m trained to help people, but I can’t if you escape.”

  After a long moment, Nora edged closer to the front of the seat and held out her bound wrists. “I won’t escape,” she said. “At least not now.”

  A glance at her face told him that was the best promise he was going to get today. “Very well.” He took out his pocketknife and cut the cords.

  Before he drew another breath, Nora had yanked the pocketknife from his hand. He watched, mouth open, as she looked at the knife, at him, then folded the knife and handed it back. “You should be more careful,” she said simply. She sat back, leaned against the window and closed her eyes.

  Will stared at her and then at Frannie, whose eyes were wide. Without a word, she moved away from Nora and sat next to him. Equally silent, Will put his arm around her, drawing her close for no discernible reason that filtered through his brain, except that he suddenly felt cold and she looked warm.

  “I’m a fool,” he said finally. “She could have killed me.”

  Frannie moved a little in his embrace and he let go of her, his face red. In another moment, Frannie had resumed her seat next to Nora. “You’re no fool, Captain Wharton,” she said, her voice quiet. “I think she trusts you to help her.”

  How am I going to do that? he thought, more miserable than before. “Frannie, all I’m trying to do is get home for Christmas and get married.” Disgusted with himself again, he wondered if he had ever uttered a more imbecilic sentence in his life. H
e shook his head. “What a whiner I am,” he admitted.

  Frannie merely smiled. “Your secret is safe with me. Hopefully, your fiancée will marry you anyway.”

  Chapter Four

  As the car grew darker, Will thought about Frannie’s words, meant in jest, he was certain, but striking closer to the bone than Paddy Coughlin’s daughter knew. He closed his eyes, thinking, not for the first time, that he was having trouble remembering what Madeline Radnor looked like. I’m a beast, he thought, but he knew he wasn’t. True, he had a bad habit of leaving his dirty laundry on convenient doorknobs and apple cores here and there, but he never got so drunk that he couldn’t remember where he was, or who was president of the United States.

  He opened his eyes and looked at Frannie Coughlin, who was watching Nora Powell. He observed her carefully, seeing the concern in those lovely green eyes. He observed her reaching into her large and shabby carpetbag and pulling out a lap blanket. She draped it over Nora’s slight frame. When the woman started, Frannie touched her shoulder and soothed her back to sleep.

  Will asked himself if this scene would be different if Maddy were on the train and was suddenly pitchforked into caring for an Indian captive with two half-Indian children left behind somewhere on a reservation. He might wish his future wife would show compassion for a poor soul so decidedly beneath her, but he couldn’t help doubting that Maddy Wharton would be any different from Maddy Radnor, Main Line debutante.

  He probably wasn’t being fair to his fiancée, considering that he hadn’t seen her in two years, and there was every possibility that she had matured into someone who would embrace his decidedly unaristocratic life in the U.S. Army. In reality, though, her recent letters had more than hinted how nice it would be if he would resign his commission and set up a practice in a better part of Philadelphia, or in one of the affluent towns along the Main Line.

  She wants me to specialize in diseases of the rich, Will had even written to his father in the last letter. Maybe he and Papa would have a moment to talk about the matter before the wedding and laugh it off as the stuff of cold feet.