Sawbones

by Melissa Lenhardt

  My death would matter only to Kindle, Ezra, and James. The others—Alice, Ruth and Mary, the Carters, Harriet, and Foster—would move on until I was a footnote in the history of the plains. Over time, my footnote would become smaller and smaller until finally eradicated from the written word, replaced by more important people, more important events.

  Was God so cruel to let me taste happiness, to love for the first time only to take it away? Were my sins so great I deserved this punishment?

  The Indians never said a word, nor did they pay attention to me. We rode at a consistent trot through darkness so complete I couldn’t see my horse’s ears. I became accustomed to my mount’s gait and closed my eyes. I imagined the darkness surrounding me into ever smaller cocoons until I dissolved into nothingness, my being snuffed from existence, releasing the burden of life with a contented sigh.

  I woke up when I hit the ground. I rolled over onto my back, choking on mud, unaware of where I was or what was going on. Men were laughing and whooping in the distance. I lay on the muddy bank of a rushing river. Everything on my body ached. My injured shoulder screamed in pain matched by the pain between my legs. The right side of my head was warm and tight. I touched dried blood on my temple. Too late I realized I was untied, free. I never saw the hand that grabbed my hair and dragged me away from the river, nor did I hear the scream that tore from my mouth.

  * * *

  I dipped my shaking hands into the cool water and lifted them to drink. Water splashed out, ran between my fingers. When I looked into them, all that was left was dirt and blood. I tried again with the same result. And again. Anything to block out the heat, the mud, the sun, and the blood.

  The pain.

  The memory.

  They beat me while the Indian whose leg I shattered sat on the creek bank and watched. Blows came from all around me, legs kicking me, fists pounding me. When I tried to curl into a ball, I was kicked in the face. Blood filled my mouth. I coughed and sprayed blood over the legs of the largest Indian. He yelled and the other two stopped. They panted from the exertion of the beating; their eyes gleamed with excitement. I turned my head away when one fumbled with his loincloth.

  I knew what was coming. There was no escape. No way to save myself. Even if I had the strength to provoke them into killing me, I knew they would wait until they had sated themselves. I represented every man, woman, and child who had ever crossed their land, every broken treaty, every dead buffalo left on the plains to rot while its skin traveled east to lay on the floor of a Manhattan mansion. They could not make everyone pay for the wrongs done to them, but they could make me suffer.

  I wish I could say I met it with pride, that I was able to master my emotions and deny them the satisfaction of my misery. I couldn’t. I could hardly move, though I tried. My punches were ineffectual, a nuisance instead of a deterrent. They held my arms and feet down until I stopped fighting. I sobbed and screamed because I could not fight. After the third Indian mounted me I lost the energy to resist, or cry. I stared at the river and listened to the sound of rushing water. The blanket of darkness from the night before returned. I pulled it around me, and I remembered no more.

  PART THREE

  PALO DURO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  “Laura? Laura?”

  Diffused light filtered through the tent, throwing the face of the woman standing over me into shadow.

  “You must get up.”

  The voice sounded familiar, as if part of a long-forgotten past.

  “They’re breaking camp. If you can’t walk you’ll be killed.” She pulled on my arm and I screamed in pain.

  “I’m sorry,” the stranger said. “At least you’re awake. You must get up now. Yahne Muea will be back soon.”

  Sounds of activity accompanied her as she moved around the tent. I could not focus my eyes to see or my mind to understand. “Who?”

  “Yahne Muea. The cruelest woman I have ever known. Get up, Laura. I didn’t nurse you for five days to watch her kill you like a dog. Believe me, she wants to.”

  I was puzzling out why I would need to be nursed when the flap of the tent was thrown back and light flooded in.

  First I realized I was not in a tent at all. It was a tepee. An Indian woman stood glowering at me with hard, black eyes, willing the fog of forgetfulness to lift from my addled brain. As the weight of despair and humiliation descended on me the Indian’s mouth softened into a triumphant smile, but her eyes remained hard.

  She yelled at the woman in the tent and gestured at me before leaving. Though I didn’t understand her I knew what she wanted. I stood through the excruciating pain. Two arms wrapped around me and lifted. “I know it hurts,” the girl whispered. “The pain will pass.”

  I saw her face for the first time. “Anna?”

  “Yes. There’s no time. Stand here and if she comes back, pretend to do something.”

  In wonder, I watched Anna continue her work. She was dressed like an Indian in a leather tunic and soft moccasins. Her blond hair was flattened on her head and contained so much grease it looked brown. The skin beneath her left eye was a mottled yellow, the telltale sign of a healing bruise. Her face held none of the youthful bloom it had before and her eyes were wary, constantly darting to the open door. I moved whenever she passed to allow her room and to avoid the smell that followed her around. Despite these changes, it was undoubtedly Anna. She was alive and strong. It was a miracle.

  “Beau will be so glad you are alive.”

  She stopped. “Who?”

  “Beau Kindle.” There was no recognition in her eyes. “The young lieutenant you met…before.”

  She stared blankly at me and returned to her task of wrapping the cooking implements, a mixture of crude wooden and stone bowls, Army-issued tin cups, and fine silver forks, knives, and spoons. Anna folded the animal skin around the pile and tied it with a leather string. She lifted it, grimaced as it settled on her shoulder, and walked outside.

  Camp activity ceased when I walked out of the tepee. The men stared at me with expressions ranging from resentment to lust to disgust. Curious children edged toward me until Yahne Muea scared them away while screaming and brandishing a large stick. She turned to me with hatred burning from every pore of her round, flat face, lifted the stick, and struck me across the cheek before I thought to defend myself. She did not stop there, hitting me with the stick until her arm tired. Anna stood to the side, watching, her eyes dead. Yahne Muea threw the stick at me, spat on me, and walked off.

  I fell to my hands and knees, sobbing. Blood ran down my cheek and dropped from my chin onto the flattened grass below. A grasshopper landed in the pooling blood and was doused with a drop of my blood before jumping away.

  “Come on,” Anna said. She lifted me roughly from the ground.

  “You’re hurting me,” I sobbed. “What’s going on? Why didn’t you help me?”

  “And be beaten for my efforts? No, thank you.” She turned my chin and inspected my face. “We don’t have time to clean it. We have to take this down and get ready for travel.” I followed her gaze to the other tepees that had been miraculously disassembled during my beating.

  Inspecting her in the morning light, it was evident Anna’s soul was wounded but that physically she was in much better shape than I. “Did they beat you like this?”

  “There will be time to talk on the trail. Help me and don’t complain. It won’t change anything.”

  * * *

  We traveled across a landscape as desolate as the moon. There were no natural features to act as signposts, no creeks to water stock. No wonder the soldiers laughed at my naiveté.

  I struggled to keep pace with the tribe lest I be beaten and left for dead. I passed the time wondering how I got there and internally catalogued and diagnosed my injuries: three broken ribs, making it difficult to breathe; a broken orbital bone above my right eye, making it difficult to see; a gash across my left cheek that would disfigure me, though I would not know the extent until
I saw a mirror; three broken fingers on my right hand that would end my career as a surgeon if I didn’t see to them soon. The pain between my legs made walking difficult. I didn’t know how I received it and avoided probing too deeply to remember. To do so might awaken memories that had retreated into deep folds of my brain, content to masquerade as a nightmare that vanishes upon waking.

  Anna walked on the other side of the travois. She stared straight ahead and made no effort to talk to me. Was she afraid showing interest in the new captive would anger the Indians? That they would think together we would try to escape? I looked around me. The Indians ignored us, confident in the security borne of three hundred guards and a desolate landscape offering nowhere to hide. Besides the children whose curiosity could not be beaten out of them, though Yahne Muea tried, the only Indians who acknowledged our existence were Yahne Muea, who would turn and glare at me, and a young warrior on a gray horse who walked beside Anna for extended periods of time. When he trotted off to the other men, who rode while the women and children walked, I spoke to Anna for the first time.

  “Are we the only two captives?”

  “The only women.”

  “I didn’t think Indians took male captives.”

  “Men, they don’t. Boys, they do. There is one who’s a brave.” She jerked her head toward the front of the line. “Two children—a boy and a girl—who have been adopted as well. They’ve been captive since they were young. They don’t realize they are white, nor do they remember their Christian names.”

  I looked around the tribe for the children she spoke of.

  “You won’t recognize them,” she said. “They’re Mexican. They blend in.”

  She said everything in a voice devoid of emotion while staring straight ahead. Only physically did she resemble the girl I knew. Her demeanor toward me was puzzling. She seemed not to care fate had brought us together, nor did she care for my well-being. I, on the other hand, saw in her hope I might survive.

  I moved around the back of the travois to walk beside her. “I’ve thought of you so often during these past weeks,” I said. “I was sure you were dead or being horribly abused. I’m glad to see you looking so well.”

  She turned to me with such anger in her expression it took my breath away. “Am I looking well? I’m happy to hear it.”

  Her reaction nettled me and sparked my natural combativeness. I was not dead yet. “You don’t look like you have been beaten to within an inch of your life, at any rate. Tell me, how have you survived?”

  “I haven’t survived. I’ve endured.” She looked toward the young warrior on the gray horse who was riding back to her side again. Realization dawned.

  “He took you as his wife.”

  The smile was bitter. “Yes. After the Kiowa sold me to his tribe, he claimed me immediately. It spared me the humiliation of being raped by the Comanche, though not the Kiowa. Nor did it save me from Yahne Muea and the other women. They didn’t beat me for long. When I fought back I earned their respect. They do everything possible to make my life difficult, but not openly. He wouldn’t stand for it.”

  He was a large man, with a broad face and chiseled features, with an aura of leadership about him. I could understand why he might be considered handsome among his people, but all I saw was a savage who abducted and raped innocent women.

  “Why haven’t they killed me?” I asked. I knew I was too old to be taken as a bride.

  “I don’t know. I don’t understand enough of the language, but there was a reason they abducted you.”

  “Me? Specifically me?”

  Yahne Muea ran toward me, shaking her fist and yelling. Not wanting to meet the end of another stick, I returned to the opposite side of the travois. Anna’s Indian interceded, yelling at the woman and gesturing for her to move away, up the line. She did, but not without unleashing a string of words so harsh their meaning was clear, despite the language barrier. The Indian kicked his horse into a canter to the front of the line.

  “He’s protecting you.”

  I laughed despite the pain shooting through my jaw and pointed at my beaten face. “This is his idea of protection?”

  “If it wasn’t for him, you would be dead. We have moved three times since you were brought to us. Any other white woman in your condition would have been killed.”

  Three times? I thought. “How long was I unconscious?”

  “Five days.”

  I looked down at my swollen and deformed fingers. Five days? I didn’t think I would ever be able to set them well enough for them to heal. My career was over.

  “I tried to straighten them but was afraid I would make them worse,” Anna said. She sounded for the first time as if she cared about me. It did little to soothe my shock.

  Medicine, which defined my choices, my life, and myself since I was twelve years old, was gone. I walked on in a daze, wondering what I would do with my life now that it had been taken away.

  Now that Kindle was lost to me forever.

  We walked for hours in silence. My mind was numb, vacant. Thinking of the past was painful, the future offered me no consolation in hope, and the present was as desolate as the landscape around me. It was easy to erase thought from my mind, to ignore my physical pain and focus on putting one foot in front of the other.

  I blurted the one thought that managed to cut through the fog without thinking of what I said or how I said it. “You never asked about your father.”

  “He’s dead.”

  “I wasn’t sure if you knew.”

  Anna didn’t reply for a while. “I saw everything.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I saw the Indians first, you know. No. How would you? I was walking alongside our wagon when I saw them. They were already upon us before I could yell a warning. Father was one of the first to die. Then Maureen. I have never heard anyone scream like that. She was silenced with one blow, but he kept doing it, over and over and—”

  I interrupted her. I could not bear it. “I hear her screaming my name every night in my dreams.”

  Anna’s cold, hard eyes settled on me. “Maureen wasn’t the one screaming to you for help. I was.”

  I didn’t know what to say. What could I say? These weeks, my guilt was centered on failing Maureen. Knowing I had failed Anna brought even more embarrassment and shame. I knew, deep down, that if I would not leave the protection of the buffalo wallow for Maureen, a person near and dear to my heart, I would not have left for Anna.

  “When I saw the Indians the first person I thought of was you,” Anna said. “I was thinking of you quite a bit. I admired you, what you have accomplished despite society telling you it wasn’t appropriate. I was so looking forward to getting to know you better, working with you, hearing about your London scandal.” Her face softened with the memory, but was still closed from emotion. “Do you remember?”

  “Yes.”

  She focused on the horizon. “I knew you wandered off, like you always did, and I was afraid they had already killed you. I saw you, standing in the long grass, staring at us. I was so relieved you were safe I almost cried. I saw the horror written on your face before you vanished.”

  My face burned with humiliation under Anna’s fixed regard.

  “The first time I screamed for you because I thought you were dead. The second time was for help. I was captured by then. You lifted your head above the grass. Like that.” She pointed to a small animal whose head was stuck partially out of a hole, its big eyes warily watching us pass. Anna flinched toward the animal and it shot back into its hole.

  “I couldn’t have done anything,” I said, ashamed at the plaintive note in my voice.

  “I know,” Anna said with surprise. “You would have been surely killed, like the other women. You survived, though. That’s what matters.”

  * * *

  The plains dropped off suddenly into the largest canyon I had ever seen. Sheer walls of brightly colored red rock protected the verdant trees and grasses covering the valley. A f
ast-flowing muddy river, the progenitor of this wonder, snaked along the canyon floor. Compared to the landscape we had left, it was a paradise.

  I helped Anna make our camp, despite my broken fingers. I refused to complain, determined to do what was asked of me, and try to stay alive.

  I walked to the river to get water. I knelt by on the riverbank and stared at my hands. The broken fingers were swollen with fluid, tender and bruised. If I lived, I would have to rebreak them once the swelling went down if I wanted to ever have use of them again. I dunked them in the water. At the touch of the cool water, memories threatened to wake. I jerked my hands from the river and stood.

  Children played while the women made repeated trips for water. A group of naked young men—too old to be children but too young to be warriors—jumped off a large rock into the water. Girls watched from the other side of the bank and laughed at the boys, devoid of embarrassment at their nakedness.

  I lifted my skirt and removed my petticoat. It was a pointless garment, even more so when living with a band of Indians clothed in animal skins. Besides, I needed the cloth to bind my injured fingers.

  I was searching for the easiest place to start a tear when I saw the bloodstain. Bloodstain is too simple a word. It looked like an artist’s paint board, blots of blood smeared around and together. Some areas were lighter than others, the material stiff and unyielding. I stood next to the river, puzzling it over. My mind refused to comprehend what I saw. A young Indian whooped and splashed into the river, unleashing a torrent of memories I would spend the rest of my life trying to banish.

  A muddy riverbank.

  Cool water lapping rhythmically against my side.

  The grunts of the Indians as they raped me.