by Ron Schwab
“Yes, but we’re still talking thousands of acres of very rugged terrain.”
We mounted our horses and rode upstream until shortly before sundown. Darkness would render any further effort hopeless, so we found a little clearing among clusters of aspen and birch trees to set up camp. A scattering of bur oak nearby offered dead branches for a good fire. Then I had second thoughts. Did we want a fire that might send a signal of our presence to Kate’s jailers?
Gramps was stripping the mare packhorse of her load, and I noticed he kept tossing his head toward the mountains as if he saw something there.
“Do you see something up there, Gramps?”
“No. Just looking. We need to keep our eye out for a campfire up there.”
“They might have their eyes open for the same thing. I suppose we’d better forget about a fire tonight and settle for cold beans.”
“Unless we want them to see us.”
“Why would we want them to see us?”
“They would have no reason to suspect anyone would be looking for them up this way. They wouldn’t suspect the law had talked to anyone who could lead them to the chick coop. And, if their hideout location were known, why would anybody come in from this direction? But they might be curious enough to send somebody down to take a gander. He’d just see a couple of cowboys out hunting or trapping. Of course, that pea shooter you’ve got holstered on your belt isn’t anything a self-respecting cowboy would carry.”
I nodded at the Army Colt Gramps had probably been carrying since the 1870s. “I guarantee my pistol shoots. I’ll bet that antique would blow up in your face if you squeezed the trigger.”
“I hope I don’t have to win that bet, grandson.”
We built a shimmering, hot oak fire that was big to enough to accommodate an Army troop. I was delighted to learn I had brought along a personal chef. I grained and staked out the horses in a blanket of grass that appeared untouched by deer, and when I returned Gramps was simmering beans mixed with chopped smoked sausage in the iron skillet. Coffee brewed in a pot on a nest of coals that had been raked off from the fire, and a small Dutch oven, the lid covered with more coals, perched nearby and sent forth a redolence that pushed me to the brink of starvation.
“Is it polite to ask the cook what’s baking?” I asked.
“No. But your grandma always struggled with your manners. Since we’re not exactly in polite society, I’ll answer the question. Apple cobbler. My specialty. I prefer fresh apples, but I had to make do with the canned variety.”
“We’re eating a little high on the hog for men on a life and death search, aren’t we?”
“And how much further along would we be on this search if we were sharing a can of cold beans and stale crackers tonight?”
“Not complaining. I probably would have ridden out with no more than a Butterfinger candy bar in my saddle bags.” In fact, I did have a few Butterfingers secreted with my personal belongings, and the verdict was out yet on whether they were subject to sharing. I was addicted to the bar produced by the Curtiss Company that had been put on the market a few years earlier. Second place was the company’s Baby Ruth, named for former President Grover Cleveland’s daughter, not the New York Yankee slugger, Babe, as most folks thought. I am a trivia aficionado and am always digging up such nuggets of worthless information.
Gramps said, “I’ve missed some meals in my day but never on purpose. We need fuel to do our job, just like the old Model T. I always travel prepared for my next meal. The Boy Scouts stole their ‘be prepared’ motto from me.”
I had to admit that so far Gramps had seemed to anticipate everything we might need, and I was enjoying his company in a way I had not since Dad was killed. If it had not been for the gravity of our mission, we might have been sharing a fishing or hunting trip together.
Supper tasted as good as it smelled, and I ate the hot apple chunks lying in a lightly browned biscuit bed until I was stuffed. We didn’t have any leftovers to carry with us or bury. I handled the clean-up, figuring that was the least I could do, while Gramps fashioned a lean-to shelter from a canvas tarp that he had brought with him. The two wool sleeping bags he tossed under the tarp would be welcome tonight because, despite the warm July day, a chill was settling on the mountains. I hoped Kate was warm wherever she was. Most of all, I hoped she was alive. She had to be.
Gramps built up the fire, and we sat near the dancing flames facing each other. I shifted from time to time, trying to dodge the smoke that seemed uncanny in following my movements. We were silent for some minutes. A chorus of cicadas provided background music, a prelude to the solo that suddenly burst forth from the cliffs upstream. A coyote’s mournful howl. A few barks and then another series of howling before the barking and yipping of what sounded like a pack drowned out the soloist.
Gramps spoke softly. “If your Grandma Skye were here, she would say the coyotes are sending a message.”
“You don’t buy into that?”
“Call me agnostic. I believe in provable facts. But I don’t think anything’s impossible. That coyote could be telling us that Kate is fine and just keep following the trail, and we’ll find her and bring her home safe. Or he could be warning us there is danger ahead and to get the hell out of here. Whether it’s a good ending or a bad ending, the coyote gets credit for his clairvoyance either way.”
I decided this was a chance to scratch an itch. How did Gramps end up here in the middle of the mountains with me? What was he doing here anyway? “Gramps, President Coolidge told me you were coming to the Black Hills to talk to me about something.”
“Well, that’s true enough, but I didn’t know about Kate when I left home. I don’t think this is a good time.”
I flared. “Gramps, I don’t like being toyed with. If it was important enough to bring you all this way, I think it’s time for you to spit it out. Otherwise, tomorrow morning, I’d just as soon you saddled up and headed back to the lodge and caught your train back to Wyoming.”
He looked at me, tilted his head to one side and squinted an eye. “Damn, it’s good to see you get pissed enough to speak your mind. You’ve been holding too much in for too many years. You are right. It appears like I’m teasing you with something, but I didn’t intend it that way.”
He took the coffee pot from the red-hot coals and filled his tin cup. “I never thought I’d need to talk to you about this. There was no point. Then you meet this young woman. Even then, I didn’t see any reason. But your Grandma says there’s something between the two of you . . . or will be. Damn coyote told her that, I guess, when we came to visit. Anyway, she said you need to know.”
“Gramps, get to it. Know what?”
“It has to do with Deuce and the day he died.”
Chapter 35
TREY
“So, this is about Dad?” I asked.
“And a lady by the name of Coleen Connolly.”
“Kate’s mom? She and Dad died the same day in France.”
“Yes, they did. They also died at the same place and likely within minutes of each other.”
“This is an unbelievable coincidence. How do you know all this?”
”As you know, I served some months as interim U.S. Senator for Wyoming. This was in the early days of the Harding-Coolidge administration. I had never been satisfied with the reports we received about your father’s death. No details about how he died or exactly where. Killed in action. That was the extent of it. I’m certain I’m not the only father . . . or mother . . . who finds himself dissatisfied with the information furnished by the Army. I became obsessed by it, and my appointment to the Senate opened the opportunity for me to get the information I wanted.”
“You twisted arms?”
“Yes, with the assistance of then Vice-President Coolidge. That’s when our friendship was formed. And several years later when he lost his younger son, also named Calvin, our shared losses seemed to tighten the bonds. But I digress. The War Department released your father’s complet
e file, which included the names of some persons I was able to interview to procure more information. I finally reconstructed the story of your father’s last days.”
I struggled to contain myself. Gramps was telling his story with a lawyer’s deliberation. I would have settled for a two-minute summary, or I thought so at the time anyway.
Gramps continued. “As near as I can determine, your father met Coleen Connolly in a makeshift army hospital in Paris, where she served as a captain in the Army Nurse Corps. He had been admitted there with a shrapnel wound on his forehead. It was not serious, but it earned him a second Purple Heart and a week’s medical leave in Paris. I do not know the details and would not care to know, but during this time Deuce and Coleen, according to several friends and comrades of each, fell into a torrid and intimate affair. It was not casual. They were in love.”
My stomach churned, threatening to toss up my cobbler. “But Dad was married. He had me. And Kate’s mother was, too.” I was, of course, stating the obvious.
“This was in mid-June, and Deuce’s 1st Division did not see any action for the next month, and the division was encamped near Paris. It appears Deuce and Coleen were together whenever they both had passes at the same time. Coleen had even rented a room where they could rendezvous.”
“The bastard. The sick bastard. Did Mom ever learn about this?”
“I think not. Not from me. What purpose would it serve? I guess now you will have to decide if she ever knows.”
I felt the weight of a burden I did not want to carry. “I don’t know if I want to hear any more of this.”
“But you must. Pandora’s box has been opened. But there is something I have reminded myself of many times. Yes, there is right, and there is wrong, but there is a good amount of gray in between. We cannot know what private hells any person endures. I loved my son not one iota less for what, on its face, seemed to be a rather tawdry segment of his life in Paris.”
“You are excusing him.”
“No. Excusing and accepting are very different things. Your father would have been the last man to excuse his actions.”
“Gramps, I don’t need more philosophy to ponder. Tell me the rest.”
“The 1st Division, under French command of all things, joined the 2nd Division and a French Moroccan Division and five French divisions in what was called the Aisne-Marne offensive to halt the Germans on their march to occupy Paris. It was successful, if you do not count ten thousand American casualties. On the third day of August, Major Deuce Ramsey and several hundred soldiers occupied a trench that blocked an unlikely access through rough terrain east of Paris. The Germans massed troops to assault that point for that reason, and your father’s forces were quickly cut-off from reinforcements.”
Gramps paused and poured another cup of coffee. He blew on it and took a sip. “A man my age shouldn’t drink this stuff after supper. I’ll have to get up to piss five times tonight.”
“You were talking about the German attack.”
“Yes. Your father was wounded the first day . . . a nasty bullet wound under his ribs, according to the reports. They lost half their troops that day, as they warded off one surge after another. The dead were starting to fill the trenches, and Deuce, as the senior officer, stumbled back and forth through the trench, shoring up the soldiers. A courier evidently got a message back to Paris, and somehow word of Deuce’s injury got to Coleen. A friend said Coleen disappeared and went AWOL within minutes. It was learned soon after she had confiscated a wounded medic’s uniform. Somehow, late on the afternoon of the fourth, Coleen, attired as an Army medic and lugging packs of medical supplies, showed up in the trench, identifying herself as Corporal Colin Connolly according to the account of a first sergeant who survived. She patched Deuce’s wound as best she could and then went to work tending to the other wounded in the trenches.”
“She must have been an incredible woman,” I said, grudgingly.
“The next day, the Germans seemed to be wearing down, but Deuce’s troops were outnumbered five to one by this time. The sergeant reported that the major did not want to die in a trench like some kind of a rat. As the German army mustered for another attack, Deuce rallied his remaining troops out of the trenches and, leading the charge, raced toward the enemy, his new medic only a step behind. The attack caught the Germans unaware and they took dozens of casualties before they regrouped and swarmed the American attackers. Your father took bullets in the chest and head that day, either of which could have killed him. His body was found beneath that of Coleen’s, who had evidently taken innumerable bayonet stabs trying to shield him. An hour later, reinforcements arrived and routed the Hun. The next day the Aisne-Marne offensive ended.”
I suddenly realized tears were streaming down my cheeks. Gramps had stunned me speechless with his tale. This was all too much to sort out in my mind.
Gramps must have sensed my discomfiture and continued. “Your father was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross posthumously for his valor. He was nominated for the Medal of Honor, but it appears that the other circumstances surrounding his death offered potential embarrassment to the military. Coleen’s actions, for similar reasons, were swept under the rug, for officially no member of the Women’s Nurse Corps ever served in a combat role. Major Ethan James Ramsey II and Captain Coleen Rose Connolly are buried in adjacent graves in the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery in France. I have no idea how that came to be. A silent tribute by a minor military bureaucrat, who somehow knew their story and saw this as a small way to bring justice to the dishonored? A friend with influence? We will never know. I am glad they are together.”
“I’m glad you told me, Gramps. I just don’t know what to make of it. I wonder what Kate knows?”
“From her conversation with Skye, I suspect she knows no more than you did.”
“Her father dislikes me beyond reason. I’m guessing he knows something.”
“The records are not public, but I arranged for them to be made available to family members who might request the information. He could have obtained access. I spoke with two of the nurses listed in the report. As I mentioned, one was a friend of Coleen’s. The other, a younger woman, had previously been reprimanded by Coleen for repeated tardiness and disliked her superior officer intensely . . . referred to Coleen as a whore for her relationship with your father. If Owen Connolly spoke with her, it would not have enhanced his late wife’s standing in his eyes.”
“Well, I’m putting this all aside for now, Gramps. I may have more questions. All I want to do is find Kate.”
I got up and crawled into my sleeping bag. I was certain after what Gramps had told me, I would not sleep, but I wasn’t up to talking anymore. I didn’t hear Gramps come to bed, though, and the next thing I knew I was blinded by shards of light from a brilliant sunrise creeping over the hills to the east. I sat up and saw that Gramps had the fire going, and I could smell biscuits baking in his Dutch oven and bacon cooking as it crackled in his skillet. The old man was starting to embarrass me just a bit with his ambition, but not so much so that I would not show up for breakfast.
After I stumbled into the trees and relieved my bladder, to put it delicately, I joined Gramps at the fire, which was more than welcome this brisk mountain morning. It was July for God’s sake, and I could see my breath in the frosty air. I sat down, and Gramps handed me a steaming cup of coffee.
“I could get spoiled by this kind of service, Gramps.”
“Can’t spoil you more than you already are. Breakfast is about ready.” Then he spoke in a near whisper. “Just keep staring at the fire, Trey. But be alert. Someone is watching us from the trees upstream, no more than a hundred feet away.”
Chapter 36
KATE
Kate woke, confused and dizzy, her head throbbing with pain. She found herself wrapped in a filthy wool blanket. Her nakedness surprised her at first, and then she started to remember. Her eyes had opened to pitch blackness, but, as they adjusted she saw a starlit sky at the mout
h of the cave, and she began to make out shadowy figures scattered around her, silent and watching.
She guessed it was up to her to start a conversation with her fellow residents of the chick coop. She lifted herself up on her elbow and slowly scooted into a sitting position, tugging the blanket about her shoulders. Tentatively, she traced her fingers over her face. The left side of her face was tender and puffy, and her eye was nearly swollen shut. There was a knot on the side of her forehead, which she decided must be the result of a collision with the stone floor when she was catapulted through the gate. She could not tell how much time had passed since then, but she could hear the murmur of men’s voices beyond the entrance so she concluded she had not been unconscious too long, perhaps only minutes.
“My name is Kate. Thank you for the blanket.”
A young woman, her body also shielded by a blanket, stepped forward and lowered herself to her knees in front of Kate. “I am Marta. I feared you might die, but I didn’t know what to do. They gave us many blankets. They are dirty and have been used many times by others before us, but they are ample when the night chill arrives. We huddle together in the back of the tunnel to escape the winds, and at least we do not freeze. A blanket was all I could offer.”
Kate guessed the young woman to be only a few years younger than herself. Slender and quite pretty. Intelligent, piercing eyes. She did not see surrender or defeat there, and Kate immediately tagged her as a potential ally. “How many are here?”
“Eight of us. I have heard the men talking of moving us soon, perhaps in two or three days. It doesn’t seem they plan to kill us, but I feel we have not seen the worst. These are evil men from the place Christians call hell.”
“We must escape before they move us. I heard them talking before they brought me here. They plan to capture two more young women and bring them here. I know something about what they do. You will all be taken to Chicago, where you will be sold to become prostitutes in bordellos.”