Sawbones

by Melissa Lenhardt

  The shadow of his hat made the anger in Kindle’s eyes terrifying. But the anger of men always brought out my defiance. I raised my chin and met his narrowed gaze.

  “Suh.”

  Sergeant Washington was a few feet away, holding out a wide-brimmed hat toward Captain Kindle. I recognized it immediately as the hat of one of the abducted boys. Kindle took the hat and thanked Washington, who with a quick glance at me, walked away.

  Kindle lowered his voice to a terrifying level. “I will be forever in your debt for saving my life but do not ever speak of my men in that way again. Your people are past caring what happens to their possessions. If my men can find an item or two they may use to barter for something else, or maybe something they will keep to make their lives better, they will do so, and with my blessing.”

  He grimaced and touched his bandaged shoulder.

  “Is your shoulder bothering you?”

  “No.” He dropped his hand. “When soldiers from the fort arrive it will make what my men are doing seem quaint. If there is anything you want for yourself from your fellow travelers, I recommend you put it in your wagon immediately.”

  “I suppose I should stand guard over my own possessions.”

  “Nonsense. They would not dare touch your possessions.” Kindle looked away and nodded his head. The soldiers around me resumed their search. He held the hat out to me. “You will need this for the journey to the fort.”

  “No, thank you, I will not.”

  I tried to stomp off dramatically but the deep mud and rain hindered my progress. I climbed into my wagon and sat on a crate. Water dripped into my eyes and off the tip of my nose and streamed off the hem of my skirt onto the wagon floor. I was furious at the looting, furious at myself for implying such a wretched thing about his men, and furious with Kindle for being so maddeningly logical.

  I was soaked through, freezing, and my dress smelled of vomit and urine. I closed the canvas flaps of the wagon to give myself a modicum of privacy and shed my wet clothes. I wrapped myself in a quilt and indulged in a bout of self-pity and silent crying.

  I wiped my eyes with the corner of the blanket and took a deep breath. The soldiers from the fort would be arriving any minute. It would not do for them to find me a blubbering, naked mess.

  My fingers were clumsy with cold, making everything more difficult than it should have been: the latches on my traveling trunk and the small buttons down the front of my dress. I decided to switch to a different dress with fewer, larger buttons when someone knocked on the outside of the wagon.

  “How are you feeling?” Kindle said.

  Horrid. What a stupid question.

  I gave up the idea of changing into a different dress and continued on with the small, pearl buttons. When finished, I smoothed the navy cotton and took a deep breath. I peeked through the back of the schooner and tried to smile.

  “Fine, thank you.”

  Guilt overcame me at the sight of Kindle. Standing in the rain, water pouring off his hat and onto his shoulders, his scar a vivid red gash down his pale face, he looked as bad as I felt. I opened the flap. “You need to get out of the rain. Can you climb in?”

  I helped as much as possible as he struggled in. He stood, hunched under the cover of my wagon, dripping water, trying not to shiver. I removed his hat and threw it aside before removing his cloak. I grabbed my quilt, still warm, and wrapped it around his shoulders. He leaned heavily on his stick, shaking. “Can you stand for a moment more?” He nodded. I quickly arranged blankets to cover a crate and helped him sit down.

  “I would suggest you lie on the floor but doubt you would do it.” I made sure the quilt was tight around his shoulders and sat across from him.

  “Thank you, this is fine.”

  I put my hand on his forehead and discovered he was burning up. “You shouldn’t have gotten out in this weather, Captain.” I removed my hand to retrieve laudanum to at least make him more comfortable and to dull his pain.

  “No. The coolness of your hand is comforting.”

  I placed one hand on his forehead, the other on his cheek. He closed his eyes and murmured his thanks. I sat there for a while, moving my hands to cool different part of his face and watched as he relaxed and his shivering abated. Leaning his head back against the wet canvas of the wagon, he slept.

  I removed my now-warmed hands and reached for the laudanum, pouring out a small amount in a tin cup and topping it with whisky. I set the cup beside Kindle and stood, gently walking around him to peer out the back of the wagon.

  Would the rain ever stop? The soldiers’ eagerness for loot appeared to have been dampened by the relentless downpour, and they had disappeared, to where I didn’t know. The overturned wagons were righted but still harnessed to their dead oxen, whose staring eyes, lolling tongues, and terrified expressions told the tale as well as the arrows sticking out of their flanks could. Through the wreckage and rain I could see the mass grave. Maureen’s grave. To mark the grave the soldiers had fashioned a crude cross from the spokes of the burned wheel and a piece of rope. Using the charred wood was macabre, offensive, and brought back images and smells from the day before I would sooner forget, but I understood why the soldiers had chosen them.

  The grave was necessarily shallow, the storm coming upon us the night before in such haste as to preclude anything deeper than a few feet. I wasn’t sure there was enough earth covering the bodies to stand the rain for too many days.

  I grasped the rope lashing the canvas to the schooner and let the tears come. The sound of the storm, the thunder, and the constant patter of rain on the roof of the schooner masked the sounds of my sobs. I was exhausted, spent emotionally and physically. I wished I had died with Maureen; Death’s eternal sleep was more inviting at that moment than at any other. What lay before me I knew not. I only knew I did not have the will to move forward and find out. I couldn’t imagine a time in my future when I would be happy again.

  So absorbed in my own misery and bleak future was I that I did not hear Kindle rise and move to stand behind me. Sound around me shifted and I understood for the first time what it was to sense someone’s presence without seeing them.

  I gathered my emotions as best I could but did not bother to hide the tears pooling in my eyes nor the stains that marked my cheeks. When I faced him I found such empathy and understanding in his expression I almost lost myself to crying again. I fought valiantly, and successfully, against the urge to throw myself in his arms. At that moment, I wanted to be comforted, for another’s strength to course through me and give me courage. The last time I had been comforted in that way was at the death of my father. Maureen, so slight of build and full of devastating grief of her own, showed the depths of her natural tenderness and empathy.

  Empathy I never repaid.

  “Did they say words over the grave?”

  “Yes. Sergeant Washington did. If you would like to pay your respects…”

  I nodded. “I should have gone before.” Instead of berating your soldiers for looting, I thought. I sniffed and wiped the tears from my cheeks with the sleeve of my dress and apologized. “I fear my emotional state is confirming your nephew’s opinion of my fitness as your physician”

  “On the contrary, Doctor. I would question the character of anyone unaffected by the events you’ve been through.”

  Unlike most men of the age, he did not look away from my discomfort, but rather took my hand and said in a weak voice, “I am truly sorry for your loss.”

  His hand was too warm. I stepped forward and touched his forehead. “You should stay sitting down, Captain. You have a fever and look ready to collapse.” I moved my hand to his cheek as I said this. “I have portioned a dose of laudanum for you.”

  “No, thank you. Not yet.”

  I stared at the gray-flecked stubble on his chin. He studied me in his silent, steady, unnerving way. The schooner, never large, shrunk until the urge to escape from Kindle’s presence overpowered me. I dropped my hand and turned my face
away.

  “You should stay off your leg as much as possible.”

  I helped settle him again. He stretched his injured leg in front of him and leaned his head back against the canvas.

  To take my mind off my lingering nausea and the beginnings of what promised to be a raging headache, and to distract Kindle from his pain, I turned the conversation to him.

  “Why do you carry a knife in your boot?”

  “You don’t want your opponent to know every tool you have.”

  “Do you get into a lot of fights?”

  “Not anymore. Old habit.”

  I nodded. “How long have you been at Fort Richardson?”

  “A little over a year. My regiment was sent here to help build the fort.”

  “Is that common? For the Negros to be given menial tasks?”

  “You’ll see soon enough everyone at a fort are given menial tasks, regardless of race.” Kindle winced as he adjusted his leg. “I confess I volunteer my men for fort-bound duties more than other regimental officers.”

  “Why?”

  He closed his eyes and did not answer for a while. “I’m not eager to lead more men to their deaths,” he finally said.

  “Why do you remain in the Army?”

  He smiled slightly. “I have asked myself that question many times.” He paused. “I thought of retiring back in sixty-eight but the thought of returning to my family’s plantation did not appeal to me.”

  “Plantation?”

  “Yes. In Maryland. I haven’t been there since right after the war. I’m sure it’s gone to ruin. I always hated farming. It’s why I went into the Army.”

  “Did your family have slaves?”

  Kindle nodded. “We did. I tried to help a slave escape once, when I was twelve.”

  “What happened?”

  Kindle’s smile was thin. “My brother caught wind of what I was doing. Instead of stopping me, he let me go on so the punishment would be severe. The slave was caught five miles away.”

  “And were you punished?”

  “We both were.”

  When he did not seem eager to elaborate, I changed the subject and quizzed him about the fort.

  “In Texas, there is a line of forts on the Western frontier.” With his forefinger he drew a slight arc in the air. “From the Rio Grande in the south to the Red River in the north. Fort Richardson is the northernmost fort.”

  “Whom is it named for?”

  “Fighting Dick Richardson. A War hero. Union, naturally. Our primary purpose is to protect the settlers and cattle drives from Indian aggression.”

  “Are you always as successful as you were yesterday?” I could not keep the anger out of my voice.

  “Forgive me if I don’t have the strength to detail why our task is nigh impossible to complete.”

  “Forgive me for my rudeness. Rest.”

  He shook his head. “Tell me how you happened to be here.”

  “Oh!” I said, taken aback. “It isn’t an interesting story. I saw an advertisement in the paper about a new town in Colorado and decided to see the West.”

  “What town?”

  “Timberline.”

  Kindle’s eyes lost their faraway aspect and narrowed. “Timberline?”

  “Yes. It was a new venture. I have the flyer here somewhere,” I said, and halfheartedly looked for it.

  Kindle waved his hand. “Interesting you traveled through Texas with the railroad available.”

  “I have always been more of an adventurer than was good for me. Obviously.”

  Kindle might have been in pain but I could tell he was an intuitive person and bought none of my story.

  “What will happen to the captives?”

  Of course he noticed my abrupt change in subject but he moved on without comment. After hearing what he said, I would have rather he not.

  “The children will be adopted into the tribe and treated well.”

  I could barely get the words out. “What about Anna?”

  “How old was she again?”

  “Seventeen.”

  Kindle grimaced and said nothing.

  “Don’t think you will offend my sensibilities. Tell me plainly.”

  “They will abuse her. Savagely. Repeatedly. Every one. If she survives, the squaws will beat her before one of them takes her as a slave. If one of the raiders takes a liking to her she will become his wife. Chances are she will be sold to another tribe where the abuse will start again. She could be eventually ransomed to the Quakers.”

  I swallowed the bitter taste in my throat. “She will live?”

  “If you call that living.”

  Anger welled inside me, anger at the folly of traveling through such dangerous country. For what? Would any of our lives have been better amid the hardships on the frontier? I wondered for the first time why I hadn’t sailed for England. Or San Francisco. Why had I so quickly agreed to Camille’s suggestion of finding refuge in Texas? If I had stopped for a moment and considered, weighed every option, I was confident a better solution would have come to me, one that would not have led to Maureen’s brutal death.

  “You should pray for her death. If she survives and is rescued or ransomed to the Quakers, she will be shunned, by men and women alike.”

  “I would never shun her.”

  “No. I don’t suppose you would.” He studied me for a long while. He took a deep breath, shifted in his seat, and said, “I should prepare you for fort life.”

  “Please.” I grasped at this conversational life raft, although I had little intention of staying at Fort Richardson long enough to adjust to its hardships. I forced down my latest wave of nausea, an ailment I had never suffered from but hadn’t been able to rid myself of since the night before, and ignored the throbbing in my head. I longed to drink Kindle’s dose of laudanum.

  “It isn’t glamorous. It’s dirty, remote, shabby—the buildings not erected by my men, naturally—and we’re chronically short on supplies.”

  “You’re quite the salesman, Captain Kindle. I can hardly wait to arrive.”

  “Fort Richardson does have one redeeming feature you’ll find intriguing, and quite possibly, difficult to leave.”

  “Forgive me if I am skeptical, Captain. Any romanticism this adventure could boast has been completely erased over the last twenty-four hours. I cannot imagine a primitive Western fort is going to have anything to entice me to stay a moment longer than absolutely necessary.”

  “Not even the most modern building between Fort Worth and El Paso?”

  “I have never been to Fort Worth or El Paso, but if they resemble the Texas towns I have seen, then they are dirty, remote, and full of drunken cowboys. Boasting you have the most modern building on the Texas frontier is, I fear, faint praise.”

  “What if I told you this building was a hospital?”

  I smiled. “I’ve worked in many types of hospitals: a barn, a tent, a field in the middle of a battle, a church, a modern structure in New York City, a dirty room in a Lambeth workhouse, even a ship. I look forward to adding meanly constructed Western forts to the list.”

  Curtains of rain fell from the sky, closing the schooner from the barren plains outside. The gray light of the storm diffused the air around us, softening edges, muffling the rest of the world. Kindle’s pain was apparent by his clenched jaw and hooded eyes, which were too focused on me for my comfort.

  “Please take a sip of the laudanum.”

  “No.”

  “Are you hungry?”

  “No.”

  I stared outside, trying to avoid his probing gaze.

  “Have we met before?” he asked.

  “Captain! They’re coming!”

  The voice outside the tent saved me from answering with a lie.

  “You need a better sling.” I found a shawl of Maureen’s, tied two corners together, and placed it around Kindle’s neck, keeping as much distance between us as the small space allowed. I adjusted the sling and gently nestled his arm in the
soft folds of the well-worn cloth, trying to hide the border of embroidered flowers and leaves as best as I could. “Your cloak will cover the rest.” I put his hat on his head and fastened his cloak around his neck. “Wait. I’ll help you down.”

  I retrieved my father’s cloak from my trunk, turned it inside out, and fastened it around my shoulders.

  “Clever,” Kindle said, admiring the brown oilcloth that now covered my shoulders and dress.

  “Yes, isn’t it?” I said. “My father struck upon this idea when he was caught in a storm after visiting a patient. Two cloaks in one.” I smiled, remembering how excited Father had been when he showed me the cloak Maureen had fashioned from his idea and the look of pride on Maureen’s face as he praised her work.

  “Didn’t he have an umbrella?” Kindle asked.

  I laughed. “He hated umbrellas. They always turned inside out on him.”

  Kindle held out the boy’s hat. “You’ll need this.”

  I looked at the juvenile, flat-billed hat and could not bring myself to take it. The thought of the little boy who had worn the hat only the day before extinguished the short burst of joy the memory of my father and Maureen had given me. My throat thickened as my loss—the loss of those children and what could be happening to Anna at the moment—reasserted their place at the forefront of my mind. Kindle, as if understanding my every thought and emotion, placed the hat on my head. “Until you can buy another.”

  I stepped out of the schooner and with Sergeant Washington’s assistance helped the captain disembark. Kindle stood at attention and awaited the arrival of his commander, the model of the battle-hardened soldier ignoring his pain and suffering to perform his duty.

  A regiment of cavalry rode up at an impressive clip, throwing mud onto the chests and legs of the horses and men behind. At the front of the column was an erect young man with a bushy mustache that barely concealed the scowl underneath. Kindle’s men miraculously appeared from nowhere and were lined up in perfect formation, staring ahead into the near distance at nothing. Not one eye of Kindle’s regiment flickered to the column. Kindle limped forward a few steps and waited, leaning heavily on the stick in his right hand.