Ashes in the Wind

by Kathleen E. Woodiwiss

  “W-a-a-a-l-l,” he drawled even longer than before. “Hit be Yankee money, and it’s good all right. ‘Course, it ain’t near enough.”

  The man eyed the pair as Alaina tugged at Saul’s sleeve. When he leaned down to her, she whispered in his ear and held out her hand as if to show him something. The huge black turned to him and, with wide eyes and a doubtful tone, worried aloud.

  “We’uns only got two more o’ dem. De ol’ massah didn’t have too much, an’ de undertaker man, he give us all de big white ones and keep only de little yeller ones fo’ hisself.”

  “Hain’t near enough fer me ter risk my good health with a fever victim,” the man whined. “Yo’ sure the man didn’t leave you a couple o’ dem in yeller ones?”

  “No, suh!” Saul shook his head vigorously. “But de massah, he doan pass away ob no fever. De massah, he done got hisself kilt in dat fight wide de Yankees way up river. De undertaker man, he say de lil’ yeller kerchiefs on de dead wagon keep de Yankees from pokin’ ’round.”

  “W-a-a-l-l, in that case, an’ cause ah is a loyal Confederate man, ah’s gonna take y’all across fer only three dollars.”

  Saul grinned from ear to ear, despite the fact they both knew the usual fare for such a service was closer to a quarter. After testing the additional coins, the man sauntered along a narrow path that ran beside the bayou, and he was gone for so long they began to fear that they had been further cheated. Then an ancient wooden barge came floating into view. The flat-bottom hull had been planked over to form a deck and a rickety railing of poles surrounded the whole of it which looked barely big enough to accommodate the long hearse and the horses too. Saul ran to catch the rope the thin man tossed ashore and hauled the barge snugly against the bank. The boatman reached up and pulled down a stout hemp cable that stretched across the bayou, slipping it beneath iron guides at the front and rear of the craft, then lowered the rear rail and slid wide planks out to form a bridge to land.

  The barge dipped precariously as the weight of the horses came upon it, then lurched heavily in the opposite way as the heavy hearse was drawn aboard. Saul coughed loudly to cover the explosive curse that came from the coffin, then hastened to kick chunks of wood beneath the wheels to block them in place as the boatman eyed him closely.

  “You oughta do somep’n ’bout that there cough, boy,” he commented. “Sounds like.you might have a touch of the ague.” He patted the jug which he had wedged securely against the post. “Got a sure cure for it right here. If’n y’all had ‘nother dollar, I’d sell you some for a dosage.”

  Saul stared at him blankly, blinking his eyes, and made no comment, much to the man’s disappointment.

  “Here, boy! Ah’m gonna need some help ifn y’all ‘spect ter get across with this load. Y’all jes’ grab that rope up front and walk toward the back. Like this!”

  When the barge entered the main current, the eddies in the flood-swollen waterway took the ferry against the guiding cable and tipped it from one side to the other as Saul labored to haul them across and the thin man struggled to keep the top-heavy craft at least generally upright with the large sweep oar. The ferry dipped and plunged precariously, and Alaina clung to the high seat of the hearse, fearing for their safety, while the blindfolded horses stood stock-still and trembled when the motion was unusually severe.

  Boxed in the dark interior of the coffin, Cole could only wonder at what his end might be. The incessant heaving and rolling rapidly affected his equilibrium. His stomach knotted as his black, cramped, hot, and airless world seemed to turn itself end for end. It was too much! If he was going to drown, it would not be trapped inside a coffin. He pried the lid up with his elbow until he could get a hand out through the crack and grasp the edge. Gaining some leverage, he braced a shoulder and lifted the heavy lid enough to pull away the black crepe that covered the casket.

  As Cole shoved the lid free of the box, a strange warbling half-scream, half-moan caterwauled through the air. The boatman, staggering back with horrified countenance, could only gape as Cole sat upright in the coffin. Then the man whirled and before anyone could stop him plunged into the water. A frothing, splashing geyser of water marked his rapid approach to shore, leaving Alaina and Saul howling and slapping their legs in glee as they watched his flight. Once the boatman gained solid ground, he set his feet to widening his margin of safety from whatever creature it was he left behind him. Without so much as a single backward glance, he streaked into the thick growth of brush and trees and disappeared from sight.

  Saul came to help Cole from the hearse, but the two had no time to exchange banter for the current swung the unsteered barge against the restraining cable and began to drag the upstream rail slowly downward. Alaina shouted and pointed above them, and as their eyes followed her direction, the two men saw an entire uprooted live oak being swept down upon them by the rampaging water. If it struck the barge, they would be taken under and hard pressed to escape swirling murky destruction. There was no alternative but to slip the cable and drift with the current.

  The cords of Saul’s neck stood out like heavy ropes as he brought the cable down and out of the iron guide. The sluggish craft swung, lurched, and bucked. The frightened horses stamped and snorted nervously at the motion. Saul slipped the front guide, and thus freed, the barge righted and ceased its plunging battle as it rode easily with the current.

  The ferry landing fell back behind a curve in the bayou as Saul manned the sweep and kept them in the mainstream, away from the stumps and dead trunks that filled the shallows near the banks. It was a tiresome task as they wound endlessly through the black-water swamps.

  An hour’s passing of the sun brought them out of the bayou into the muddy ocher flow of a broad river. They were on the Red River, somewhere above Simsport. The stronger currents made the unwieldy barge sway, dip, and turn until Saul was dripping wet with sweat from the effort of keeping it straight.

  The bow of the barge began to ride low in the water, lifting the stem until steerage was even more difficult. Alaina opened a small trap door in the deck by its iron ring and found the forward hull over half full of water. The hull was divided into several compartments by bulkheads, but it was a simply constructed craft and was not meant to bear the stress of a weighty load in a forceful current. Cole found a length of rope and tied it to a handle of a bucket, while Alaina lowered herself into the hole. She began to bale with vigor, and bracing himself against the flimsy rail, Cole hoisted the full pail up and dumped it over the side. They soon brought the barge back to an even keel, but at intervals had to repeat the process in order to keep it so.

  The sun lowered in the sky as the laboring craft was swept along by the river. They were going in the right direction, but staying afloat was their main worry. No relief appeared in sight as the fiery, heavenly sphere sank below the treetops.

  Suddenly the scream of a steam whistle tore the evening’s hush asunder, and the tall form of a paddlewheeler came snorting around the bend behind them. At sight of the strange craft that lay in its path, the steamer repeated its whistle. The white-winged curl of wake beneath the prow faded as the huge wheels slowed, and the small, bale-protected cannon atop the promenade deck was quickly manned. The ship closed cautiously, the barest of ripples showing in her wake.

  Cole snatched off his blue jacket and waved it above his head. Any ship this far south on the river had to be Union. A man left the pilothouse and, raising a long telescope toward them, scanned the tiny craft carefully. Cole slipped the blouse back on as he bade Alaina and Saul to quickly pull the yellow flags from the hearse. The packet gave up its caution and was soon nudging against the barge.

  The exertion of battling the sinking craft and signaling the steamer had cost Cole much of his strength. He leaned weakly against the railing until he was helped aboard the larger vessel. The horses were hoisted over, but the sinking ferry with its black hearse was cut free and left to meet its end in whatever manner fate decreed.

  The packet was bearing
wounded to the New Orleans hospital, and after a brief examination of his injury, Cole was established in a vacant cabin. None of the officers aboard could see any reason not to grant his request and allow his companions to join him since the steamer would be docking in the morning. After all, the officers were told, the pair had saved his life.

  Throughout the night, Cole dozed only fitfully as the pain gave him no ease. Saul snored, sprawled out on the floor, while Alaina curled in a chair beside the bed to nap. Dawn was lightening the sky when Cole roused from a half slumber to see Alaina standing at the window, gazing pensively out at the new day. He called her name softly, and she came to the side of his bed. As she faced him with a gentle, tired smile, he could not remember what it was that he had meant to say. A thousand inanities filled his head as he sought to find some way to express his gratitude. He selected one with all the adroit idiocy of a besotted wooer.

  “Alaina—you may keep the money,” he whispered unwisely. “I will see that Saul is also rewarded.”

  The smile faded and was replaced by an expression of pained sadness. “You may know the body, Doctor Latimer, but you have much to learn about the person.” Her voice was tiny and oddly strained. “The money is in your bullet pouch where it was before. I don’t think you could buy Saul or me for a hundred times as much.”

  Solemnly she turned and went out of the cabin, leaving him to stare at the closed portal. In the silence that followed, the steamboat whistle shrieked twice, signaling the sighting of New Orleans.

  Chapter 22

  BY the time the influx of wounded arrived at the hospital, the place was a frenzy of activity. Sergeant Grissom had stationed himself by the door and directed the litter bearers as they carried the wounded in. Alaina was in no mood to cool her heels outside and, towing a reluctant Saul behind her, pushed her way in immediately after Cole. The sergeant’s eyes passed briefly over her without a hint of recognition, went to rest on the towering black, then returned with an abruptness that left his jaw aslack.

  “What the hell—?” He peered closer. “Al? Is that you?”

  “Yassuh.” Alaina slipped into the swaggering role of youth with a practiced ease. “I had to put some darkening on so’s the two of us”—she jerked a grimy thumb over her shoulder at Saul—“could get the cap’n back here. Some of dem rebs ain’t too ‘ticular about how young a soldier is.”

  “You men bring the captain along.” Sergeant Grissom gestured to the bearers, then leaned out the door to call outside. “Just leave the rest of the men on the litters in the hallway.” He paced alongside Cole’s stretcher. “Doctor Brooks is busy with the wounded, but I’ll see if Major Magruder can’t have a look at your leg.”

  Cole made no comment as the man left him outside the operating room, but a look of apprehension came onto his face at the mention of the major’s name.

  “You gonna let ol’ meat-ax Magruder cut on your leg?” Alaina questioned none too gently.

  Before Cole could reply, there was a heavy tread of boots in the hall, and a red-faced Magruder glared angrily at the slim snipe.

  “Meat-ax, is it? You little twirp, I’ll have you courtmartialed for desertion.”

  “I ain’t one of yer bluebelly sojers,” Alaina snapped defiantly. “And I didn’t desert neither. I jest went home for a spell.”

  “Leave the boy alone, Major.” With some effort Cole propped himself up on an elbow. “If Al hadn’t gone home, I’d probably be in some stinking rebel prison right now.

  Magruder’s countenance showed some surprise. “Well! Captain Latimer! Speak of the devil! We just got word you were missing in action. It seems you’ve managed to become something of a hero. Let’s see now, how did it go? The old sergeant was most glowing in his report you stayed behind to cover the retreat of the wounded, he said. Single-handed against a regiment of cavalry and a battery of artillery.”

  “Actually it was just a small patrol and a gun they had captured,” Cole responded laconically.

  “Hm, it must give you a sense of accomplishment to know that out of the nearly four hundred wounded left behind at Pleasant Hill, those from your hospital camp were the only ones who made it back.”

  “I was not even aware of it, major.”

  “Whatever.” Magruder shrugged and wiped his bloody hands on a towel. “I’m sure a board of inquiry will be interested in learning just how you turned up here while the rest of the army is still in Alexandria.”

  “I’m not sure I can explain all of that myself,” Cole muttered. “I spent a good deal of the time wrapped up in a coffin. But thanks to Al and his friends, I am here to tell whatever I can about it. And I did bring a bit of souvenir with me.”

  “Ah, yes—your wound, of course. We’ll have to take a look at that.” Magruder knelt beside the litter and, taking a pair of scissors from his pocket, snipped away the bandage, then peeling it free, he probed the wound with the point of the scissors and pulled the ragged edges apart. He callously ignored the grinding of Cole’s teeth and the sudden beads of perspiration that broke out on the patient’s brow. Alaina cringed, biting her lip and, with a strange sound, turned her face to the wall, shaken by the fresh flow of blood.

  Saul’s gaze fixed on the major, and he made several accurate conclusions on the man’s character in those brief moments. This was one Yankee to avoid if a body was hurting.

  Magruder rose from his examination. “A rebel shell, you say. That means it will be brass with a good deal of lead in it. Matter of weeks your blood will be poisoned. No doubt about it. That leg will have to come off.”

  Cole managed a hoarse question though his lips were white and stiff with pain. “Can’t you get the fragment out? I’ve had the leg with me for some time, and I’ve grown quite attached to it, and I would be most loath to lose it.”

  The major shrugged. “I’ve seen it before. The metal is wedged tightly against the bone. Probably have to break the leg to get it out. Too many arteries—vessels close by. Nick one of those, and it will be gangrene. Again, just a matter of time.”

  “I don’t think so,” Cole managed. “The gun was a Wilkinson—breechloader with saboted steel shot, not brass. If you can’t get the piece out, just close the leg up and leave it.”

  “I disagree, Captain.” Magruder was arrogant. “But whatever I do, it will be up to me. You will hardly be in a position to argue, now will you?”

  Cole stared at the smirking man and laid back on the litter. “Perhaps not, Major, but I can arrange a pair who will.” He reached back to the roll he used as a pillow and withdrew the Remington .44. “Al?”

  The one called turned.

  “You still have your pistol?”

  “Right chere, Cap’n.” She patted the heavy pouch slung over her shoulder.

  “Loaded?”

  “Yessuh,” she replied with a firm nod of the head.

  “Saul, you know how to use one of these?”

  “Well, Cap’n,” the big man said, grinning. “Ah ain’t so fast on the loadin’, but ah sho’ knows how to unload it right enuff.”

  “Here!” Cole handed over the pistol. “You both come into that room with me, and if anybody touches anything that looks like a saw, you just start blazing away.”

  Magruder spluttered as the bearers lifted Cole. “Do you really expect me to operate with a stripling boy and an ignorant nigger holding guns on me?”

  “You’ll figure out something, doctor,” Cole replied dryly. “Just be gentle, and be careful that you don’t pick up a saw.”

  The orderlies placed Cole on the operating table, and he relaxed a bit as Alaina and Saul took up stations in a corner of the room. Sergeant Grissom lowered a gauze pad over Cole’s mouth and nose, then, lifting a small, brown bottle, let drops fall on the cloth.

  The room grew quiet. Magruder labored, pulling, testing, tugging at the piece of metal firmly buried in the heavy bone. He even forgot the pair of pistols that followed his every movement until he reached out a hand and fumbled at the tool tray beside him.
A loud double click echoed in the room, and the doctor froze, slowly raising his eyes to find Al’s heavy Colt centered squarely on his chest. He looked to his outstretched hand and began to sweat as he saw that it hovered over a narrow bone saw. Carefully and deliberately he moved the erring hand and lifted a pair of forceps he had been searching for.

  The piece of metal was solidly stuck, and in the deep, lacerated wound, there was no place to gain a hold for leverage. A shadow moved over Magruder’s hands, and he glanced up to find that Doctor Brooks had joined him.

  “You’ll never get that out,” the elder doctor observed. “There’s not really enough to grasp.”

  “Hm, yes,” Magruder agreed, then enlarged upon his statement. “It is steel, though, and not rebel lead, or brass. I could just close it up and hope.”

  “The only thing to do.” Doctor Brooks rubbed his chin. “It’s either that, or lop the leg off.”

  Magruder stared at the old man for a long moment, then shook his head as he pointed at Al and Saul with his forceps. “I wouldn’t even think of it, Doctor Brooks.”

  Saul was extremely uneasy with all the blue uniforms about, and he took himself off to the Craighughs’, while Alaina chose to stay behind, just until Cole came around, and then she would perhaps see if Mrs. Hawthorne would put her up for a night or two. She repeated her story of Cole’s rescue to appease the curiosity of the hospital staff, and was finally admitted to the small, narrow room where Cole had been taken, on the excuse that she had to see that the captain got his gun back. Her eyes lingered on his lean profile. She had never seen him so still before, and it brought all her fears into focus. What if he took a turn for the worse—like Bobby Johnson?

  She shook her head vehemently, rejecting that morbid bend of mind. He would be all right. He just had to be.