West Of The War

by L. J. Martin

  I can’t get back on board until we clear the sand bar and get the gangplank back in place to reload the cargo. But in moments Johanson is shouting for everyone to go back to work, and I see Pearl working over her brother.

  As many as we have on board, I don’t remember seeing or meeting one claiming to be a doctor.

  I’m sure there are many soldiers heading west, more from the South than the North, and many of them, like me, have had their stomach turned by seeing men have limbs removed.

  Still, I may have seen as many or more than most.

  I take a deep breath, dive in the water, and swim twenty yards to the Eagle. With almost every stroke I’m yelling at a couple of fellows to help me aboard as there’s three feet of freeboard. They do and I run dripping to where Pearl is tending to her brother.

  Kneeling beside her, I turn to the growing crowd. “Is there a doctor aboard?” I ask, and get no reply, only passengers or deck hands looking from one to another. “Damn it,” I yell out, “a doctor?”

  Captain Johanson strides up and glares at Ray, who’s on his back and taken to a semi-conscious state due to his injury.

  “What the hell happened here?” Johanson demands.

  “Your cable parted and took his leg?” I admit my tone is condemning, but I want to blame someone.

  His tone’s not sympathetic. “Well, get him out of the way. We’ve got a boat to move.”

  Had I not been taken with the emergency, had he not intervened when the purser wanted to arrest Ian and me, I would have risen and tried to knock him overboard. But rather I see Madam Allenthorpe approach and beseech her. “Can we use your stateroom for a hospital…until we get him best we can get him?”

  She looks down at Ray and I think she’s going to be sick. With a hand covering her mouth, I hear, “He’s bleeding badly. He’ll need to be cauterized. Take him below to the engine deck.”

  And I realize she’s right. There are tools below I’ll need if we’re to save the leg and to try and close the terrible wound.

  Sam, Wheezy, and Alabama, who work with me on the night crew, are among those sightseeing Ray’s misfortune, and I yell at Sam, “Y’all give me a hand. We’re taking him below.”

  “Don’t hurt him more,” Pearl begs as we pick him up.

  The men’s smoking room bartender is also watching, and I yell to him as we carry Ray past, “Bring me down a bottle of whiskey or rum, a full bottle.”

  “Who’s paying?” he yells back.

  I grit my teeth, then snap, “You, you’ll pay with your damn teeth you don’t beat us to the engine deck.”

  He pales, turns, and has gone. I yell at Pearl, “Go on ahead and fetch my bedroll and get it rolled out near one of the fireboxes.”

  And she runs ahead.

  The bartender has beaten us below and stands with a full quart of rum in hand.

  We get Ray placed on his back, on the deck, near a firebox. I hear him mumbling something and bend to get my ear near. He’s saying the Lord’s prayer, and I’m glad, as we can use all the help we can muster.

  On a nearby wall of the engine shed hang a number of tools. I glance over then ask Sam, “Get me an adze and get it in the fire and hot as you can without burning the handle. Red hot if you can.”

  A few of the sightseers have followed us down, and as I use my folding knife to cut away another few inches of Rays pants, I again yell. “Anybody find a doctor?”

  I get nothing but them looking back and forth between themselves, and shrugs.

  Waving the bartender over, I pop the cork on the rum, then turn to Pearl who’s nearby, chewing on a knuckle. “Get him propped up, Pearly. We need to get a half bottle of this rotgut down him.”

  She goes to her knees, as Sam and Alabama raise his upper body, then she slips behind him and holds him upright at a forty-five-degree angle.

  “Ray,” I yell at him, “get this down.” And I feed the bottle to him, it’s running out the corners of his mouth, and he goes wide eyed. But he’s swallowing, then coughing and spitting, then swallowing again. The bottle is three quarters gone, a good portion spilled, by the time Sam comes my way. Again I look at the growing crowd. “Still no damn doc?” I ask, and again get no answer.

  As I’ve seen done many times, I take my pocket knife and run it about the stub of remaining bone, which is about six inches below Ray’s knee. He screams, and Pearl follows suit.

  “Get him something to bite down on,” I tell Sam, who is beside Ray with a piece of limb he’s broken off a log that’s ready to feed the fire.

  Ray clamps down on the piece of limb and glares at me, the whites of his eyes showing.

  He spits out the limb, and manages to yell at me, “You sona’bitch, you rotten…” But Sam jambs the limb back in his mouth.

  “I need a saw,” I again beseech Sam, who quickly hands me a small crosscut. “Hold him down,” I instruct Sam, Alabama and Wheezy, who move Pearl back and put their full weight on Ray, one on each shoulder, one on his legs.

  “Bring me a log,” I yell at a bystander and in seconds have one to prop the leg up on. “Hold him,” I yell and they do. I’ve got to shorten the bone so flesh will close over it.

  It doesn’t take too many strokes of the saw to trim the bone back an inch and a half, so I can pull back the remaining meat and skin to cover it.

  “Give me that hot adze,” I instruct the helper from the crowd, and he does. It’s glowing hot and I press it to the bone end. Ray screams again, then goes silent. Thank God, he’s passed out.

  I fold the meat and skin over the bone, then instruct Sam, who’s now able to let go of the unconscious man. “Rip your shirt in strips, Sam. About two inches wide.” And he does. Again I bring the iron to the stump and it sears meat. The odor is not pleasant, and half the crowd fades away, but the bleeding is reduced to weeping. I catch a glance of Pearl out of the corner of my eye as she runs for the rail and retches overboard. The smell would gag a maggot, but I’ve smelled it often and was prepared for the assault on my olfactory.

  But I can’t let her suffer for long, and yell, “Pearl, get your sewing basket. We need to close this stump.”

  She looks sick but hurries to the ladder and in moments is back. I’ve asked Sam to fetch some heavy thread used to close broken bags among the cargo, and tell Pearl to dig out her needle with the largest eye, and soon she’s at work. A curved needle as is used on sails on the river boats that utilize them would be better, but there is none, so we make do.

  I wrap the stump, running long pieces of Sam’s shirt over it and up the sides of his legs, then when I have a half dozen in place, wrap more around and around holding those in place.

  To my surprise, Madam Allenthorpe is leaning over my shoulder. “I’ve arranged a cabin for him…for Pearl’s brother…only two down from my stateroom.”

  I know all the cabins are full of passengers, so I ask, “How did you manage?”

  “I paid a couple of young men to double up. Pearl can stay with him until he’s well.”

  Or dead, I think, but don’t say. I’ve seen way too many of these wounds go green and the man die hot, hard, and praying for salvation. “Kind of you, Madam,” I say. Then I turn to my helpers. “Let’s get him up there." And in five minutes Ray is in a bed wide enough for two and Pearl is in a chair at his side.

  I walk out to the deck, suddenly my own stomach roils and I feel like losing my breakfast, but don’t. I walk to the rail and take several deep breaths of cold air.

  Turning back, I’m face to face with Captain Johanson, who snaps at me. “Get back to those damn critters of yours. We still have to get over this sand bar.”

  I clamp my jaw and make a promise to beat this man to a pulp as soon as I’m ashore and when he no longer is lord and master.

  But now I head to the rail, dive overboard, and swim back to shore and my mules and horses. As the deck crew again begins grasshopping the boat, we whip up the critters and the boat inches forward.

  In another few hours we’re free of
the bar, afloat, and able to get the boat close enough to shore to tie her down and get the gangplank in place.

  The horses and mules are stabled just in time for me to have to report for work. Of course, I’ve missed my supper. So I beseech Ian, “Please go check on Ray and Pearl and see if she needs anything? And bring me a chunk of something to gnaw on.”

  “You got it,” he says, and disappears.

  We’re two days from Yankton to Fort Randal, where Johanson puts in to load wood. While there, Pearl and Madam Allenthorpe go ashore as the fort has a sutler who has goods for sale. The Madam insists Pearl go, as she has not left Ray’s side since the accident.

  Ian and I take the opportunity to take the horse and mules up a creek bed until we find a meadow full of grass and spend a few hours there until the Captain blows three shorts on the steam whistle, signaling that he’s casting off in a half hour.

  Ian and I are stalling the horses when Pearl runs up. “He’s gone,” she screams.

  “Whose gone?” I ask.

  “Ray, he done left.”

  I have to smile. “Ray is a long ways from walking. He’s not gone.”

  The tears begin flowing down her cheeks, and I suddenly wonder if she means Ray died. “What do you mean, gone?”

  “The captain, he done put Ray on a keelboat, headed down river. He said he wouldn’t be responsible for him. He give Ray eighteen dollars he had coming and paid his fare back to Kansas City on some damn ol’ keelboat.”

  I take a deep breath. “Did Ray want that?” I ask.

  “How would I know. This all was while I was at the fort.”

  “Well, Pearl, maybe the captain is right. Maybe Ray is better off with a real doctor. They’ve got a hospital in Kansas City—”

  “He done had a fever. He’ll never make it all that way without me to care for him.”

  “They’ll go down the river five times as fast as they came up.” Again I sigh. “Pray he does make it. He’s better off in the hos—”

  She yells again, only this time at me, not because of her missing brother. “Damn you, Braden McTavish, he be my brother, and I should care for him. That damn captain just wanted to be rid of Ray.”

  “I’ll pay your fare if you want to catch the next boat we come across going down.”

  “I got my own money now. I don’t need nothing from you. You probably kilt my brother with that hot iron and damn saw.” She spins on her heel and stomps away, leaving me with my mouth hanging open.

  No good deed goes unpunished.

  Pearl has regressed back to the farm, in both speech and demeanor.

  To hell with her and her damn brother. I hope I’m shed of both of them till eternity rolls around, until hell freezes over, until…hell, I don’t know until what.

  I don’t see Pearl or Madam Allenthorpe for the next four days, except at a distance. We pass Fort Thompson, Fort Pierre—where we again take on wood—and Fort Sully. Now it’s a long four-day stretch almost due north to Fort Rice, then another day to Fort Abraham Lincoln which is across the river from Bismarck.

  Not far north of Bismarck we’ll turn west again and it’s westerly, ten or more days, west almost all the way to Fort Benton, or Benton City, whichever you prefer.

  And we’ll get there, God willing and this damn boat doesn’t ground so it becomes an island…

  Chapter 15

  We’re on the river two days before the captain pulls to the east shore and we tie up just as the noon whistle blows. I hear from a deck hand that there’s another sand bar just ahead, and we’re going to set up to grasshopper; this time before we ground. And it means offloading cargo again, most likely. The gangplanks are soon down and Ian and I offload the animals, including the damn obstinate Brutus. We’ve not seen so much as a soddy since we left Fort Randle, just wide open grass country with a few cuts full of timber.

  We have however, seen more than one Indian village and several bands of mounted redskins, one group of which fired on us indiscriminately from the shore, until a few of us began to return fire. I put my Sharps to work for the first time and know I dropped at least one of the savage’s pony out from under him.

  The captain has indicated it will take until mid-afternoon to be ready to attack the sand bar and I convince him the stock will need to be well grazed before they set to work. He’s indicated he’ll try the bar without offloading cargo, which is fine by all of us.

  I’m not the only one eager to get some solid ground under foot, and both Sam and my merchant friend, Alex, have offered to lead a pair of horses or mules, and Madam Allenthorpe and Pearl begged to accompany us to get some exercise. Sam seems to get along with the bull, so the huge animal becomes his task. I don’t complain about the ladies, as how can one complain about two beautiful woman following along. Pearl, it seems, has somewhat reconsidered my being at fault for her brother’s retreat down river.

  So, with savages about, and both the stock and women to watch over, I’ve strapped on my Colt and am carrying my Sharps as we lead the stock up a long ravine until it tops out on a wide grassy plain. Alex has a Colt Root that’s been on his side, and Sam has shouldered a .56-56 Spencer that I had no idea he owned. A fine rifle only introduced at the beginning of the war. I’m comforted by their presence.

  But our walk to the top of the ravine is uneventful, so we find a spot under the topmost cottonwood and all sit back and relax while the animals graze contentedly. My oldest percheron, Sadie, is sort of the herd matriarch so we keep her on a lead rope and turn the rest of them out to graze on their own. So long as we have Sadie, they won’t go far. I have a line long enough to picket them, but see no need.

  We’re there an hour and a half before we hear three short bursts of the steam whistle and begin to round up the stock to return the quarter mile to the boat, to harness up the horses and mules to help broach the bar. I decide to have Pearl lead Sadie, and let the rest follow along. The bull is an independent cuss—thank God for the ring in his nose—and so long as there’s graze and water he seems content to ignore the rest of us.

  We only move a hundred yards down the bottom of the ravine, when a roar is heard followed closely by another ten times as loud, and a flaming blast that sends fire and rubble a hundred yards into the sky, then a blast of air that almost takes me off my feet. I scramble upright then up the wall of the ravine so I can see to the river, and am shocked to see planks and timbers and God only knows what descending from the heavens. I move higher and see the remnants of the Eagle, a portion of the forward hull and a portion of the aft, aflame. In less than a half minute, as I watch, steam replaces smoke as the forward hull sinks into the river, and in a minute or only slightly longer, the aft section follows.

  Sam, Alex, and Ian have joined me to watch the final throes of the death of a great boat. All of us anxiously watch as debris falls around us, some floating gently, some smashing into the earth. The explosion has spread the boat for a half mile in every direction.

  Only one iron chimney is still standing, rising above the surface, and it is canting slightly down stream, until it falls like a great barren pine tree and disappears in another billow of steam.

  “Damn dat Johanson,” Sam mutters. “He been pushing for more steam, and getting ready to try that bar, I bet he had her at twice de red line. The boilers went, then in seconds that three tons of gunpowder. We’re lucky we wasn’t kilt way up here.”

  “Let’s get down there and see to survivors,” Alex yells, and we run back to see the stock as all disappeared up the ravine, except for the bull, who still grazes as if a volcano erupting nearby is an everyday occurrence. I glance up to see the last of my stock, Sadie, my mare and two mules, as their butts disappear over the ridge.

  Pearl is sobbing. “Couldn’t hold her, Brad. I jus couldn’t.”

  “There was no holding her, she was crazed,” Madam says.

  “Let’s get down there and see if we can help the others,” I say, and start to move at a trot.

  We only move another fifty yard
s before we come upon the first body, then more and more wreckage and several more steamed, blistered, and ripped torsos and limbs. It’s as bad as any battlefield I witnessed during my time with Mosby.

  We’re fifty yards from the shoreline when I see a man moving and run to his side. It’s Lucas Eckland, one of the two Swedes I’ve befriended. He’s burned, his left cheek and arm scorched and blackened, but he’s alive and moaning. Ten yards more and his friend Elton Borg is sitting upright with legs outstretched, dazed, a cut on his head bleeding badly, but his eyes are open and he seems alert.

  “Hello, Brad,” he says, as if we’d just met while strolling in the park.

  “Lay down, Elton.”

  “What happened?” he asks.

  “The boat blew. Lay down until the ladies can check your injuries.”

  “I feel fine,” he says, and starts to rise, but I gently shove him back.

  “Let the ladies check you. I’ve got to go see about the others.”

  “I’ll just rest here a moment,” he says, and lays back down.

  Then as I turn, I get a strange rush up my backbone and turn back. He’s flat on his back, his eyes open, but his pupils are unmoving. I step up and wave my hand over his eyes and he doesn’t flinch, and only then notice the back of his head is caved in.

  I poke him. “Elton?”

  Nothing. Elton said he felt fine, then died. The Lord works in mysterious ways.

  I cannot begin to describe the emptiness that seems a void in the center of my very being. I move on, but don’t come across another living soul.

  Lucas Eckland is the only among the nearly two hundred passengers and crew we find alive. I ask the women to tend to him.

  “What now,” Alex asks after we split up and search the shore for two hundred yards in each direction, and have joined back up. I’m happy to see he’s carrying a shovel and has an ax slung over his shoulder. Sam, too, has an ax and a crosscut saw, six feet in length.

  “What else did you find in your wandering?” I ask.

  “Cords of cut wood, scattered everywhere, planks, fittings, lots of lines and cordage, furniture but hardly any in one piece, and bodies. Not a live soul. What now,” Alex repeats.