by Shirl Henke
Clint blinked again, certain he was losing his mind. But no, there she lay up to the tips of her lush breasts in a tub of bubbles, her hair pinned on her head, which lay against the back of the big copper bathtub. Deelie was sound asleep. He had watched her on deck with the wounded men, working herself to exhaustion every day. Small wonder she slept so soundly. His mouth went dry as he studied her beautiful face in the faint golden glow from the lantern.
Every fiber of his being urged him to kneel by the side of that tub and beg her to forgive him, to let him make love to her …to take him back into her heart once more. His jaw clenched when he gritted his teeth in denial. He could not be that selfish. She deserved better. After allowing himself one lingering, painful last look, he slipped silently from the room. Clint knew the image he carried of her so innocently sleeping would remain with him for the rest of his life. If it was all he had left of his time with Delilah Raymond, he would treasure this memory.
“No! Please, no! Don’t do it. I’d rather die…please…” The voice of the sobbing man on the table faded, as did his desperate thrashing. The poison of his wound robbed him of strength for the moment.
Delilah trembled, almost biting through her lip as she examined the red streaks starting to snake up the young corporal’s lower leg toward his knee. She had seen firsthand what happened after the streaks reached the large arteries at the top of a man’s thigh. Blood poisoning…and certain death. She turned to Luellen, who stood across from her. The two women walked out of earshot, leaving the moaning man with two soldiers standing beside the table they’d placed him on after Delilah had checked the dressing on his shattered leg that morning and discovered his critical condition.
“Yew know whut’s gotta be done,” was all the older woman said.
“Yes.” Delilah’s voice was a harsh whisper. “I’ve assisted doctors in military hospitals when they performed amputations a few times, but I’ve never done one! And we have so little ether—what if he awakens during the cutting?” She shuddered, recalling one time when soldiers had been ordered to hold down their comrade while the surgeon sawed without anesthetic because they had run out. “I…I don’t know how fast I can get through this—or even if I’ll know how to stop the bleeding once I do.”
“But he’ll die fer sure if’n yew don’t take the lag.” It was not a question. Luellen had seen enough blood poisoning to know what the red streaks meant.
“If only one of the forts we’ve passed had a surgeon,” Delilah said. But the campaign mounted in retaliation for Custer’s death had sent every doctor along their route out into the field with the army. “And Yankton’s another day away.” She’d been monitoring the soldier’s injury since he was brought aboard.
Corporal Pierce wouldn’t last another day.
Delilah headed toward the wheelhouse. When she explained the situation to Captain Dubois, he sounded the shrill whistle signaling that they were pulling to shore for an emergency. As the rumbling steam engines quieted in the lapping water, she returned to the main deck for the ordeal ahead.
Swallowing for courage, she explained to Luellen aboutsterilizing the instruments she would need. But when she told Sergeant Finn what had to be done, he and the two men behind him turned distinctly green and looked away.
“I niver watched ’em cut on one of me boys, ma’am. But I’ve heard their screamin’, that I have.” He paused, as if gathering courage. “I’ll help…if ye can’t find another to volunteer. I could order one of me men—”
“No, I can’t have someone pass out in the middle of the operation. Actually, it would be best to have two strong men to hold him steady while Mrs. Colter administers the ether and I…” she swallowed, “I do the surgery.” Delilah was grateful the wound was below the knee. She was not sure she possessed enough physical strength to use a bone saw on a femur. At least this would be the smaller tibia and fibula bones in the lower leg. But the procedures to stop the bleeding during and after blurred in her mind.
Please don’t let me kill him! “I need another man to assist us.” She looked past the sergeant to the privates, both of whom backed up as if she were thrusting a live rattler at them. “Please,” she entreated as Pierce moaned. She swept the crowd, soldiers, passengers and crew, searching desperately for a volunteer. Heads shook and men looked away, unable to meet her eyes.
“Aw, hell, I’ll do it.” Clint emerged from the side of the boiler, where he’d been silently watching the scene play out.
“He’s a damned Reb. Why’d he help one of us live?” a private said from the back of the crowd.
“If I don’t, ’pears to me he’ll die for sure,” Daniels drawled, then looked at the grizzled sergeant. “Well, Finn, looks as if we’ll be on the same side this time ’round.”
The two men took each other’s measure. Sergeant Finn nodded. “If ye’ll be standin’ it, so will I.”
They looked at Delilah, who nodded. “I’m grateful to both of you.” She turned to Luellen. “Have Beth and Sadie bring the kettles of boiling water with the instruments. Then I’ll show you how to use the ether.”
“How much of that do you have?” Clint asked her in a quiet voice when the cook walked away.
“Not as much as I’d like. That’s why I need strong men to hold him steady…just in case…”
His hands gripped her arms and he gave her a tiny smile of encouragement. “You can do this, Deelie. I know you can. We’ll back you. Just dose him up good with laudanum before we start. It might make the ether last longer.”
“I’ve already given him quite a bit….” She hesitated, knowing they would need it for him later—and for other patients who were also in terrible pain.
“We’ll be in Yankton tomorrow. There’s a doc there named Morrow. I know he’ll have laudanum for sale.”
She looked up into his eyes, gathering strength from his touch. “All right. Then let us begin.”
Clint watched her walk resolutely over to the corporal and speak soothingly to him, giving him another dose of the narcotic. After Luellen’s kitchen helpers brought the pots of boiled water filled with instruments, both girls fled, as had most of the others in the crowd. Delilah laid out a clean white cloth and extracted the tools she would use, lining them up as she watched Corporal Pierce’s eyelids close.
Daniels was certain when she paused and closed her eyes that she was trying desperately to envision the surgeries she’d seen during the war. He’d seen a few himself. Not something anyone wanted to recall voluntarily. He studied Finn and found the sergeant looking steadier than he had a few moments earlier. The tough Irishman would do all right. He had to admit to a grudging admiration for the bluebelly’s grit—and decency. After Finn and his men had subdued him in that bar in Fort Benton, the sergeant could’ve let the soldiers bust him up, but he hadn’t.
When everything was ready, Delilah examined Pierce, who was dozing from the effects of the laudanum. But when she began bathing the area above his smashed leg with alcohol, he awakened and began sobbing incoherently. She nodded to Luellen, who stood at Pierce’s head.
“Jest yew lay back now, n’ everthin’ll be right as rain,” she crooned, stroking his soft brown hair as she let a few drops ofthe clear liquid fall through the folded thicknesses of gauze. Then she laid it gently over his nostrils and cupped his jaw. When he tried to move, the sergeant leaned over his upper body while Clint secured his uninjured leg to the table, then held the one to be cut for Delilah.
“You can do it, Deelie. Get it done, now,” he whispered with conviction.
He watched as she worked, amazed at her steady hands and deft fingers. Those same smooth, white hands that had flipped cards with such skill now held a man’s life in their grip. Gory with blood, she worked as swiftly as she could, plying the crude instruments the doctor at Fort Abraham Lincoln had given her. Old and well used, they had doubtless been replaced for the campaign ahead. Of course, the army wouldn’t be wasting any healing arts on the savages they pursued.
Just a
s she was cauterizing the bleeding stump, Pierce suddenly jerked to consciousness and began to moan and thrash.
“I run out ’o ether,” Luellen said, cradling the boy’s head in her hands. Both Finn and Daniels increased their hold on him, steadying his body.
“Dose him with more laudanum,” Delilah ordered the cook, then hurried on with her awful task.
When it was finally complete, she inspected her work, noting the amount of blood lost—more than she would have liked—but far less than she’d seen men lose and still survive. “I’ll give him more laudanum in an hour,” she said, dropping her tools back into the pot, whose water was now pink from blood. “Sergeant, please dispose of that,” she said. Without a word he wrapped what was left of the ruined lower leg in some bloody cloth and carried it to the starboard side of the boat. He tossed it into the rushing brown water, where it quickly vanished.
She stepped back and swayed on her feet, then forced herself to stand upright. “As soon as he’s still, tie him securely to the table so he can’t move much. It could start the bleeding again,” she said to Luellen. Clint continued to hold the semiconscious Pierce while she covered his lower body with a clean white sheet.
Clint released the corporal’s leg when he felt the muscles go slack as the drug did its work. Finn returned, watching Luellen complete the task she’d been given. The sergeant looked across at Delilah. “Ma’am, did ye ever consider be-comin’ a doc? ’Tis that fine ye’d be at it.”
She shook her head. “God, no. I’ve seen enough already to last a dozen lifetimes, but I do thank you for your help.”
“Corporal Pierce is me own soldier. Me own responsibility. ’Tis the Reb here we both should be thankin’.”
But when they turned to where Daniels had been standing, he was no longer there.
“Where in the divil?” Finn muttered.
Delilah thought of Clint swimming across the river and vanishing into the brush along the riverbanks, but Luellen said calmly, “He jest hightailed it up the steps ta the hurricane deck. If yew hurry, yew kin catch up ta him.” She looked at Delilah.
Without a word, Delilah peeled off her bloody apron and dashed toward the stairs. None of the soldiers was paying attention. Everyone had returned to look in on Pierce now that the worst was over.
Clint wouldn’t run away now…would he?
Chapter Twenty
Delilah found him standing on the hurricane deck, staring out at the landscape of distant purple hills and rocky ground covered with dense sage. She had never seen another human being look so alone. Hesitantly, she stepped to the railing and looked up at his face. In profile it appeared chiseled from granite, so striking and bold, yet desolate. “Thank you for what you did down there,” she said, aching to touch him but not quite daring.
“Someone had to help.” He shrugged, still not looking at her.
She smiled softly and touched his arm. “Even if it meant working with a ‘bluebelly’?”
He turned then, and bestowed one of his old grins on her. “Finn isn’t a bad sort…for a bluebelly. And that kid… I saw too many like him in the war, on both sides. Left to die by their so-called leaders, who don’t give a damn what happens to them.”
“Yes, so did I,” she replied quietly.
Clint could read a wealth of suffering in her eyes. “You know, Reb and Yank aside, we’re kinda alike in some ways.”
“We both hate war,” she said hopefully.
He nodded. “That’s the truth. A man oughta have the right to pick his day to die, not have some idiot general do it for him.”
“And you want to die?”
He resumed gazing out at the vast, rolling hills beyond the river. “Sometimes.” Then he looked back at her. “Other times, I’m not so sure.”
She studied him for a moment, knowing her heart must appear in her eyes. “Dare I ask if I have anything to dowith that?”
He placed two fingers beneath her stubborn little chin and tipped it up, giving her a lopsided smile. “Cat Eyes, you’ve given me nothing but trouble from the first time I met you…but—”
A shrill whistle from the wheelhouse drowned them out as the captain gave the order to pull out into the current and resume their trip downriver. The spell was broken. Clint lowered his hand and stepped back. “I promised Zeke Ha-gadorn a chance to win back some matchsticks before he goes on duty.”
She stood and watched him saunter down the stairs. Delilah would’ve given anything to hear what he was going to say after that pregnant but…
Perhaps because of that interrupted conversation, Clint avoided Delilah, keeping busy overseeing the crew on wood stops and breaking up fights between bored roustabouts. She, too, was consumed by nursing duties. Corporal Pierce rested fretfully, but no further signs of blood poisoning or other infection appeared on his leg. They lost another half day when a badly gutshot man died and had to be turned over to the army at Fort Randall for burial.
As soon as they pulled into Yankton, Delilah rushed to the telegraph office and wired Fort Benton. Horace had left her an incredible message. He’d sold their cargo for a good deal more than they’d anticipated and taken a packet for St. Louis. He promised to greet his niece at the levee with a bank deposit note for over forty thousand dollars—and that did not include the profit from the whiskey sale! She rushed back to the boat and found Clint with the first engineer, inspecting one of the boilers after two crewmen had shoveled out the river muck.
Giddy with excitement, she threw herself into his arms as he turned toward the sound of her running footsteps and cry. “Clint! We did it! We did it—forty-two-thousand-dollarsprofit on the cargo!” She did not mention the substantial sum the whiskey had brought.
His eyes crinkled at the corners and he grinned broadly as he swung her around in a circle. “Your uncle missed his callin’. Horace Mathers should’ve been a drummer. That’s more than I figured we’d make, Deelie.”
Laughing and yelling with joy, they kissed without consciously intending it. When she would have kissed him again, he gently pulled back and released her. As she slid slowly down his body with her eyes gleaming bright green in the sunlight, everyone on deck watched them, some with a mixture of chuckles and cheers, others with knowing smirks. They all could see the owners had feelings for each other.
Clint cursed to himself as she backed away a step. Damnation, she wanted to be a respectable businesswoman in the city. The passengers and crew would spread gossip as soon as their feet hit the St. Louis levee. Now she looked hurt, her bubbling joy turned to resigned sadness. “You’re rich now, Mrs. Raymond,” he said softly. “An independent woman, free to make her own way in life. Let society be damned.”
With that puzzling pronouncement, he walked away as crewmen and passengers slapped him on the back and offered congratulations to both of them. Delilah smiled determinedly and accepted good wishes from everyone crowding around her. I’m rich. I’m independent. I’m free. She had everything she had ever wanted since the war took it all away. Then why was she so blessed miserable?
Damn Clinton Daniels to perdition. She would find a way to win him back once they were home…
When the St. Louis levee came into view, the men on deck began to cheer, but the rows of side-wheelers and stern-wheelers lining the waterfront, backed by big brick warehouses stretching up the hill, were not their first destination. Everyone knew the Nymph had to discharge its precious cargo of wounded cavalrymen at Jefferson Barracks, where some of the army’s finest doctors waited to treat them in preparationfor a trip to Washington, D.C. The old army post was situated several miles south of the city on a scenic bluff of gold sandstone surrounded by trees and rolling hills.
Sergeant Finn watched the shoreline as the fort came into view. “It’s a debt we’ll niver be able to repay ye…the kindness of a woman’s touch for these wounded men, ma’am,” he said to Delilah and Luellen, giving each an awkward but gallant bow and kissing their hands with proper formality.
“The army will pay
us, but the most important thing is that these men make as full a recovery as possible,” Delilah said as soldiers filed past her with litters to carry off their comrades.
“We only done whut any good Christian would’a done,” Luellen averred, her cheeks a bit pink when the grizzled Irishman took her work-roughened hand and kissed the back of it.
Delilah had seen the two of them speaking together often during the voyage and smiled to herself. “Will you be stationed here in St. Louis now, Sergeant?” she asked for her friend.
“That I won’t be knowin’ ’til the army gives me orders. But if there be a way on the Lord’s green earth to make it back to St. Louis, I’ll visit ye. Th’ barracks has a rail line straight to the city, don’t ye know?”
Delilah noted with satisfaction that he directed his reply to the Widow Colter, whose address he must already have. As he strutted down the gangplank and saluted the commander, she said to Luellen, “A fine figure of a man, is himself.”
Luellen snorted. “Yer Irish accent ain’t thet good, but I reckon I agree with ye though.” She smiled broadly now.
The commandant of the barracks sent his aide aboard with more paperwork for Delilah and Clint to sign. “The army is greatly in your debt,” he said with a brisk salute.
“Just so the debt’s repaid in Yankee dollars, then we’ll be square,” Clint drawled.
Delilah could see the tension between the young lieutenant and Clint. “Please forgive my business partner, sir. Every time he sees a blue uniform, I fear it brings out thevery worst in him.” She gave the sandy-haired young man a blinding smile.
Clint watched the shave-tail melt under her charm. The woman’s a witch. She could make a blind man see, just listenin’ to her voice. While Deelie and the bluebelly talked, he slipped quietly up the stairs.
When the men Delilah and Luellen had nursed for several weeks were carried down the gangplank, the two women bade each one farewell and wished him good fortune in the future. Corporal Pierce, looking considerably better than he had immediately after his ordeal, clutched Delilah’s hand with both of his own.