And One Wore Gray

by Heather Graham

  He took her hand. He was about to shake it, but he squeezed it instead.

  “Good-bye, Mrs. Michaelson. Take care of yourself.”

  “God go with you, sir. God go with you.”

  He saluted to her and rode away. Turning back, he saw that she was still standing there, tall, beautiful, both proud and ethereal in the moonlight.

  Daniel, you son of a gun, he thought. Now if I could just be sure that they could keep you in prison until the war ends!

  He doubted it. He wondered if he’d even return soon enough to find Daniel in Old Capitol Prison if he rode straight through tonight.

  He quickened his pace.

  It was exactly what he was going to do.

  Prison was sometimes an interesting place to be, Daniel thought. He leaned back on his straw, lazily chewing on a piece of it.

  But his eyes were moving. Not that there was much to see right now. Four of the men were engaged in a game of cards, gambling little bits of tobacco and flasks of whiskey. Some were just sitting back, as he was himself. Old Rufus MacKenzie, the one real graybeard in their midst, was reading his Bible. They were all grouped together, twenty-four men, in the one big room. They had themselves one “necessary” pot built against the wall, and the stench could get pretty bad. Billy Boudain told him that you forgot about the smell after a while.

  There were no cots, just beds of straw and whatever else the men could lump together. It wasn’t so bad. It was just bleak. As bleak as the decaying color of the walls, as bleak as the cry of the rats that became daring and loud at night.

  At least, he thought wryly, he was in the company of friends.

  And he watched. Daniel watched everything. Over the past few days, he had watched all that took place. He’d watched the coming and going of food and supplies, and he’d watched the way that the prison worked.

  The guards, most of them, were easy to bribe. Captain Harrison Farrow from Tupelo, Mississippi, had a sister married to someone in the Yank Congress, and she saw to it that he received all manner of goodies from home, from baked pies to blankets and extremely fine cigars. Some of the fellows didn’t do so well. Private Davie Smith, a small-time farm boy from the Shenandoah Valley, didn’t know a soul in the North. But like Daniel, he had been shoeless. Prison had a way of drawing out the best and the worst in men. Captain Farrow couldn’t acquire enough from his sister to keep them all in the lap of luxury, but he had been careful to get Private Smith a pair of shoes. And Private Smith was one good-looking Southern lad who liked to flirt with the girls through the window bars as the young ladies passed by.

  Every once in a while, Private Davie Smith managed to get one of those giggling young ladies—young ladies who’s mamas would have them strung up if they knew their girls were fraternizing with the enemy—to give him an important piece of information.

  It was through Private Smith that Daniel learned a lot. The Rebel troops—who had done such a daring and spectacular job of taking the Union garrison—had abandoned Harpers Ferry. Jackson was moving back into the valley again. Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation was stirring up public sentiment just the way Daniel had assumed it would.

  The Yankees were feeling mighty proud of themselves at the moment. They were claiming Sharpsburg a victory.

  But so was the South.

  Hell, anyone who had been there would just call it a disaster, Daniel thought, but he never said it aloud. He was the ranking officer among the prisoners, and it was up to him to watch out for morale.

  As long as he stayed.

  There were ways out of here. He had watched the supply wagons come and go, and he had watched the coffins come and go, and reflected on that as a means to escape.

  A lot of coffins came and went. Daniel didn’t think their warders were exceptionally cruel—except for one or two of the men. When those guards jeered the prisoners, the Rebs jeered them right back, usually asking what able-bodied men were doing watching over tattered and injured Rebs. “Afraid to be out on the battlefield, eh, Yanks?” they taunted back.

  The food wasn’t so bad. At least, it wasn’t any worse than what Daniel was accustomed to eating in the field. A few more years, and he’d be able to convince himself that worms were the best part of meat and that “hardtack” was just that—so hard that the challenge for a man was not in managing to eat enough, but in managing to keep his teeth.

  Old Capitol Prison was survivable, he determined, because he meant to survive. Every night, when he felt the cold dankness of the surrounding walls, when he heard his fellow prisoners hacking away with the coughs they acquired here, he thought about Callie.

  He thought about her when he felt his straw crawling with all the bugs that were alive and thriving in it, and he thought about her every time one of the coffins came and went.

  I will get out, he promised himself. But he meant to be careful. He didn’t mean to get caught again, he didn’t want to do anything rash or stupid. If he were caught again up here in plain breeches and white cotton shirt, he just might be considered a spy. If he was caught, he would likely soon be a dead man.

  As he idly chewed his grass, he watched Billy Boudain and handsome young Davie Smith at the window. Billy was favoring his right arm, Daniel noted with a frown. He couldn’t see anything wrong with it, since Billy was wearing a gray coat with red artillery trim.

  “Hey, Billy!” he called, sitting up straight on the straw and beckoning to the young man. “Come here.”

  Billy crawled down from his post at the window, eyeing Daniel apprehensively.

  “What is it, Colonel?”

  “What’s the matter with your arm?”

  Billy shook his head. “Just a little piece of shrapnel I picked up at Sharpsburg, Colonel Cameron.”

  He said it lightly, as if the injury were nothing. “Let me see it,” Daniel said.

  “Colonel, it ain’t nothing at all.”

  “Billy, that’s an order. Take off your jacket and roll up your sleeve. Let me see your shrapnel.”

  Bland-faced, Billy did so. He tried damned hard not to wince when the jacket fell over his arm as he removed it. He kept trying not to wince as he rolled up the dingy white cotton sleeve of his shirt.

  Daniel bit his lip so as not to cry out when he saw the wound. Billy was doing one hell of a job not to make a sound.

  The wound was not just a little shrapnel scratch. Daniel was certain that something—some piece of metal or grapeshot—remained in the wound. All around it, the flesh was turning unnatural colors. It was mottled and oozing.

  With a sinking heart, Daniel thought that Billy was going to lose his arm. If he wanted to live, he was going to have to lose it soon.

  “Hell, boy!” Daniel muttered softly. “We can’t just ignore this one!”

  “We got to ignore this one, Colonel,” Captain Farrow said, stepping up beside Billy.

  “Ain’t nothin’ else we can do,” Davie said.

  Daniel shook his head. “Something has to be done, Billy,” he told the boy bluntly. “You’re going to die if you don’t let them take off your arm.”

  Billy blanched, looking to Harrison Farrow for help. Farrow shifted from one foot to another. “Colonel, I imagine that Billy would just as soon die right here as under the knife with one of them Yankee sawbones.”

  Daniel looked back and forth between the two, then glanced at Davie. Davie looked away.

  “They’re not all murderers,” Daniel said. He paused, looking at faces that politely hid their disbelief. “Billy, isn’t your life worth a chance?”

  No one answered. Apparently, they didn’t think that Billy had any chance.

  “Billy—” he began.

  “Colonel, there ain’t no hope that I could keep the arm?” Billy said.

  Daniel hesitated. He wasn’t the doctor, Jesse was. But he’d been around Jesse enough, and he’d been around enough maimed limbs. Maybe it could be saved, but he only knew one man who could do it, and that man wasn’t around.

  “I don’t
think so,” he told Billy frankly.

  Billy looked a little white around the gills. “Maybe I oughta just die a whole man then, sir.”

  “Damn it, Billy! You don’t want to die! Hell, you’re just a kid—”

  “Then this war is being fought by a bunch of kids,” Captain Farrow interrupted softly. Daniel stared at him. “Meaning no disrespect, sir.”

  “None taken,” Daniel said. “But Billy, we’ve got to call the Yanks in on that arm.”

  “Ain’t no way I’m going off with the Yanks—”

  “Yes, there is. You’ll go, because I’ll go with you.”

  “What if they say no?” Billy demanded.

  Daniel shook his head. “They aren’t going to say no. Not unless they’re planning on putting a gun right to my head.”

  “What the hell you mean by that, Colonel?”

  “As it happens, I have a brother who happens to be a Union sawbones. He’ll know soon enough where I am, and he’ll have to come here. Every man jack out there knows it. So as far as playing fair with me, they’re in a bit of a knot.”

  “You’ve got a brother who’s a Yankee sawbones?” Billy said incredulously.

  Daniel smiled slowly. “Yeah.”

  “And you’re still speaking to him?” Billy said.

  “Yeah,” Daniel repeated. He lifted his shoulders. “He’s my brother.”

  Billy still looked dubious. “That lieutenant colonel fellow in charge of the place when I came in didn’t seem so bad,” Daniel said.

  “You mean Lieutenant Colonel Wadsworth P. Dodson,” Captain Farrow said with a broad grin. “Our boy colonel.”

  “He does look a little wet behind the ears,” Daniel agreed. “But sometimes that’s good Sometimes a young man is a good man. He hasn’t had time to find out just how worthless it is to be good sometimes.”

  Farrow shrugged. The little group looked from one to another. “Billy, I’m going to call for him,” Daniel said. “That arm is bad. You can’t wait any longer.”

  At last, Billy nodded, biting down hard on his lower lip.

  “But if you call, will they come?” Farrow demanded.

  “You just have to be nice to them,” Daniel assured him. He stood up and went to the door with its small barred window. “I need some help in here. This is Colonel Daniel Cameron, and I want a meeting with Colonel Dodson.”

  “Ah, take a nap in there!” one of the guards called out.

  “I want Dodson!” Daniel demanded.

  The guard came to the door. “I told you—”

  Daniel slipped a hand through the bars, catching the man’s collar and jerking him hard and flat against the bars. He twisted on the fabric, and the guard’s face began to turn a mottled red. “Í said, I want Dodson. Please. And if I don’t get him, soldier, you’d best hope we never meet outside these walls!”

  Daniel smiled complacently as he allowed the guard to break free from his grasp.

  “See? You just have to be nice.”

  The guards eyes appeared between the bars. “I’ll bring him along just as soon as I can. You stay quiet in there while you’re waiting.”

  “Quiet as a church mouse,” Daniel agreed pleasantly.

  It wasn’t long before Dodson appeared. Daniel noted with a certain amusement and a certain respect that the young man wasn’t afraid of him—or the others. He walked right into their dank prison room, into the midst of his enemies. Dodson had treated them all well enough. He had nothing to fear.

  Other men in the prison systems, North and South, might not feel so safe.

  Dodson might have gotten his military rank and appointment at his young age because of who he knew, but he was sincere in his determination to be a fair warden.

  “What is it that I can do for you, Colonel?”

  “One of my men has a severe injury. He needs to see a doctor. I don’t doubt Yankee physicians myself, but my young friend is afraid of them. I want to accompany Billy here to see a doc.”

  One of the guards snickered outside.

  Young Dodson peered anxiously at Billy. “We ask every morning in the prison yard if any of the men needs to see a doctor.”

  “Colonel Dodson, we both know that there have been rumors out—on both sides—that the physicians claim they can kill more of the enemy than the generals in the field. But Billy is going to die if something isn’t done about that arm. It’s my order that he do something. And I want your guarantee that I can be with him to assure that he’s going to be all right.”

  “This is highly irregular—” began one of the guards in the hallway. But Daniel fixed a cool blue gaze on him, and his voice died away.

  Dodson watched Daniel. He looked to his guards. “Irregular or not, I can’t see any harm in it.”

  “Cameron is trying to escape!” a guard said.

  Dodson looked at Daniel. “Are you trying to escape, sir?”

  Was he trying to escape? Hell, yes, he’d spent days watching for a way to escape. But this wasn’t it. Not with Billy as a possible sacrifice.

  “Sir, you have my word of honor that I will not escape when I’m in Private Boudain’s company.”

  “A Reb word of honor—” the same guard began.

  “The colonel’s word is enough for me,” Dodson said flatly. He looked to two of the guards, the one Daniel had threatened, and the older man who had been making the bitter comments.

  “Palacio, Cheswick, you’ll accompany these men to the hospital. Tell Captain Renard that I’ve given Colonel Cameron permission to sit in and”—he paused, looking at Daniel—“ässist in whatever surgery is necessary. Is there anything else, Colonel?”

  Daniel shook his head and smiled broadly to Dodson. “No. That about covers it. Thank you, Lieutenant Colonel Dodson.”

  Dodson nodded and left the room. Daniel slipped his hand beneath Billy’s elbow. “Come on. Let’s go.”

  “Hey, Billy, it’s going to be all right!” Captain Farrow called out.

  “Yeah, it’s going to be just fine!” Davie agreed. “The girls will be waiting, Billy!”

  “For a one-armed man?” Billy asked.

  “Sure!” Davie said with a grin. “They like to be tender and sympathetic.”

  A sound started in the prison room. Low, and then growing. Billy was being sent off with a Rebel yell.

  “Stop that caterwauling!” the guard Dodson had called Cheswick yelled. The sound just increased. Muttering beneath his breath, Cheswick led the way and Palacio followed behind.

  They were brought to an anteroom and told to wait. Dr. Renard, a staid man with iron-gray hair and a rigid countenance, appeared shortly.

  “Let me see the arm,” he told Billy.

  Billy looked at Daniel, and Daniel nodded. Billy showed the doctor his arm. Renard didn’t even blink. “Yes, it will have to come off. You’re going to be a lucky young man if the poison isn’t already moving through your system.” Renard looked at Daniel. “I hear, Colonel, that you want to clutter up my surgery. You’ve assisted before, I assume.”

  “Often enough,” Daniel told him. He was certain that Renard knew Jesse.

  Renard looked at Billy. “You’re not going to suffer as you might have on the battlefield, soldier. I’ve got morphine, and a syringe to inject it with. Colonel, you’re still going to have to hold him tight. Are we understood?”

  Daniel nodded. They walked in to Renard’s surgery. There was an operating table in the center and Billy was set up on it and given the morphine. His eyes met Daniel’s all the while. The look in them was so trusting that Daniel was surprised to feel a chill sweep along his spine. This had to work out.

  He smiled encouragingly. Billy’s eyes began to close, and Renard began to assemble his instruments.

  Renard took out a sponge to soak up the blood. Daniel’s eyes narrowed. There were traces of his last patient’s blood on that sponge.

  “Wait a minute, Doctor Renard,” Daniel said.

  “What is it?”

  “You can’t use that spon
ge on Billy.”

  “And why not, Colonel? It’s the same type sponge I use on every man, Yank or Rebel.”

  “I’m not accusing you of being prejudiced against a Reb, Doc,” Daniel said. “But you can’t use that sponge.” Renard was still staring at him blankly. Daniel sighed, gritting his teeth. He didn’t want to aggravate Renard, but he didn’t want Billy dying in the next couple of weeks either.

  “You need linen, sir,” Daniel said. “Clean linen. And a new square for each man.”

  “So you think you’re a doctor now, eh, Colonel? Well, I tell you, I spent my years in medical school—”

  “Sir, I’m not questioning that. I imagine that this is fairly new. My brother told me he’d learned from a Rebel surgeon that the survival rate was much higher when clean linen was used every time.”

  “Well, Colonel, I’m not a Rebel surgeon!”

  “But, Doctor Renard—”

  “And I’m operating my way!”

  “Then you’re not operating on Billy!”

  “This boy is going to die if I don’t!”

  “I’ll let him die whole.”

  Determined, Daniel reached for Billy, ready to lift him over his shoulder.

  “Put that man down, Colonel!” Renard demanded.

  When Daniel failed to oblige him, Renard suddenly called out. “Guards! Get in here!”

  Palacio and Cheswick were quickly inside the operating room. Daniel swiftly laid Billy back down. Cheswick came for Daniel first. Daniel ducked and swung, and flattened the man in a second. Palacio intended to be more careful. He circled around Daniel, looking to Renard. “Better get help!”

  But two other guards were already rushing in. “He’s trying to escape!” someone shouted.

  Daniel barely heard him. Men were coming at him one after the other and he had to move like lightning to keep up with them. He watched his space carefully, managing to get a wall to his back so that he could put all his defense efforts forward. A fist connected with his jaw. He tasted blood, but he fought the sensation of dizziness. He kicked, and he swung, and he managed to avoid further blows while connecting his own fist nicely with the guts and chins of a number of his opponents. He was good, he reckoned, but he’d have been taken by now if the soldiers hadn’t been so cautious.