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“With a vengeance,” he assured her. “One day it’s like this, then everything starts to drip and thaw.”
They stared down at the stream, where Susanna thought she could see the shadows of fish. She pointed to them. Major Walters nodded. “Everything’s just waiting for better days.”
So am I, she thought.
Major Walters seemed in no hurry to turn back. Hesitant, she said, “Major, I have to ask …. Why did Major Randolph seem so intent on that blanket and the stove? It wasn’t close.”
“No, but that doesn’t matter to Joe,” the major said, starting back now. “As you might have noticed from his accent, Joe is from Virginia.”
She nodded.
“He was part of the Medical Corps before the war, and stayed in when others went to the Confederacy. Good surgeon, from all accounts.” Walters sighed. “A pity he couldn’t save the one person he loved.”
The major stopped, even though the other officers had left the roadhouse and were looking in their direction.
“He met Melissa Rhoades in Washington—her father was a congressman from Ohio—and they married after the war. He continued in federal service.” They started walking again. “On the regiment’s march to Fort McKavett in Texas, Melissa’s skirt brushed too close to a cooking fire.”
“God,” Susanna whispered.
Major Walters lowered his voice. “She suffered agonies for nearly a day, and there wasn’t a thing he could do to help her.” The major gave her a wry smile. “That’s why he gets concerned when any woman is close to a fire.”
Susanna nodded. “He hasn’t remarried?”
“No. Perhaps ten years hasn’t been enough to erase that sight from his mind.” Walters shook his head. “I shouldn’t dredge up sad memories of the war for you, Mrs. Hopkins. My apologies.”
Aghast that her cousin’s lie was sinking her deeper into falsehood, Susanna held her breath, then let it out slowly. To her shame and confusion, her kind escort took her silence as agreement.
Major Randolph stood by the ambulance, looking at her with a frown. He knows I am a liar, she thought miserably. She looked at the roadhouse, and back down the snowy track that led to Cheyenne. There was nowhere to run.
Joe stared at his book for much of the afternoon as the ambulance trundled forward, reading and then rereading each page until it made no sense. What he really wanted to do was reassure Mrs. Hopkins.
He hadn’t mistaken the fright in her pretty eyes. She seemed to sense that he knew more than the others. He had to assure her that her secret was safe with him.
He watched the clouds over the bluffs, threatening snow but going nowhere, much like his own life. He dutifully returned to his book, but his mind was on Susanna Hopkins.
She was pretty—maybe some seven or eight years younger than he was. What intrigued him the most were her eyes, large and brown behind her spectacles. He wanted to look closer out of professional interest, because one eye appeared slightly sunken, as though the occipital bone was damaged.
He knew he needed to put her mind at ease. His opportunity came when they stopped at Lodgepole Creek stage station. He reached for his medical saddlebag as the other men left the ambulance.
“Mrs. Hopkins, come along with me. I delivered a premature baby four weeks ago, on our way to Cheyenne.”
Before he allowed her time to consider the matter, he closed the door after the others, and the private in the wagon box clucked to the horses. She sat there in silence. It made him sad to think how hard she worked to keep her composure.
“We’re only going a short way. Jonathan is the mixed-blood son of the man who runs the stage station, and Betty is Cheyenne.”
A month ago, he had been yanked away from supper at the stage station when the owner recognized him as a surgeon. A few hurried words, a grab for his medical bags and they were on horse-back to the cabin. He owed the successful outcome more to Betty’s persistence than any skill of his.
When the ambulance stopped, Joe helped Mrs. Hopkins out. The door to the cabin was already open, with the young father motioning to him, all smiles. Inside, Joe sighed with relief to see the baby in a padded apple crate, warm as it rested by the open oven door. Mrs. Hopkins went to the woodstove to watch the infant. She held out one finger and the baby latched on to it.
“Since he was so small, I told them to keep him warm,” Joe said. “He appears to be thriving. What did you name him, Betty?”
Her husband put his hand on Betty’s shoulder. “We were waiting for you to come back. What’s your name?”
“Joseph,” he said, touched.
“Joseph, then,” Jonathan said. “What about a middle name? Does this kind lady have a favorite name?”
“Thomas,” Mrs. Hopkins said.
The Cheyenne woman nodded and handed the baby to Mrs. Hopkins, who took him in her arms. Joe watched in appreciation as she put the baby to her shoulder with practiced ease. She moved until the infant’s head was cradled in that comfortable space in the hollow of her shoulder that all mothers seemed to know about.
Mrs. Hopkins rubbed her cheek against the baby’s dark hair, then handed him over when Joe nodded. He ran practiced hands over the small body, then held him up to listen to the steady rhythm of his heart.
Joe’s prescription was simple. “Keep Joey warm by the oven for a little longer, maybe until it warms up or until he gains another pound or two.” He nodded to the parents. “You’re doing fine.”
The father put his son back in the apple crate. Joe ushered Mrs. Hopkins out the door. He looked at the ambulance and then at the stage station in the near distance.
“Private, go ahead. We’ll walk.”
He didn’t dare look at Mrs. Hopkins, but he could feel her tension. There was that feeling she was weighing her options and finding none.
“It’s not far.”
He started walking, hoping she would come along, but knowing she had no choice. After walking a few feet, he heard her footsteps and he let out the breath he had been holding, and wondered why it mattered to him.
He eased casually into what he had to say. “Mrs. Hopkins, who is Thomas?”
He heard the tears in her voice.
“My son.”
Chapter Three
Somehow, Susanna hadn’t expected that question. Better to forge ahead, even if her teaching career at Fort Laramie ended in the next five minutes.
“Major Randolph, I think my cousin told you that I am divorced. I have a son, name of Tommy, who is in the custody of my former husband. There was nothing I could do. And when Captain Dunklin assumed that …”
“Wait.” The major took her arm, and she needed all her resolve not to draw back from him in fright. “Just sit down on this stump a minute.”
He increased the pressure on her arm, then he stopped suddenly and released her. Susanna remained upright, unsure.
“I’m not going to force you to sit if you don’t want to,” Major Randolph said.
She heard the apology in his voice, which also baffled her. No one in recent memory had apologized to her. She wasn’t even sure she liked it.
“I couldn’t help noticing that look you gave me when I agreed with Captain Dunklin that I was a widow,” she said. “It was a lie and you know it. Please believe me. I did not start that lie.”
“I know you didn’t. I heard the beginning of that pernicious fable, and I thought it was a foolish idea. The fault lies with your cousin.”
Susanna sat down. “Why would Emily do that? All I ever said in my letter to Colonel Bradley is that I was Mrs. Susanna Hopkins, and available to teach.”
The cold from the stump defeated her and she stood up. She looked toward the roadhouse, wanting the warmth, but not wanting more questions from Captain Dunklin.
“If we walk slowly, we won’t freeze,” the major joked. “Why would she do that?” he repeated. “Let me tell you something about army society. It is close-knit, snobbish and feeds on gossip. There is an unhealthy tendency to hold grudges.”
“That sounds as bad as Unity Methodist Church back home,” Susanna murmured.
The major threw back his head and laughed. “It’s this way—the army unit is a regiment, which travels together when it can, but generally finds itself spread over a large geographic area. Many a promising career has withered and died on a two-company post. I could include my own career, I suppose, but I like what I do.”
She didn’t know how it happened, but the major had tucked her arm through his as they strolled along.
“I was a state regimental surgeon during the late war, on loan from the regulars,” he said. “The Medical Department has placed me in the Department of the Platte. There are three companies of the Second Cavalry at Fort Laramie, plus more companies of the Ninth Infantry.”
“You are everyone’s surgeon?”
“I am. The number of surgeons varies. One surgeon, the estimable Captain Hartsuff, is on detached duty at Fort Fetterman, and the contract surgeon—he’s a civilian—is hoping for furlough as soon as I return to Fort Laramie. He’ll be lucky to get it. Contract surgeons have less seniority than earthworms.”
Susanna smiled at that.
“I tend to anyone’s needs—from the garrison, to teamsters, to sporting ladies at the nearest cathouse, to any Indian brave enough to try white man’s medicine.”
He peered at her, and she saw nothing but kindness in his expression.
“But this surgeon is digressing,” he said. “Fort Laramie—a run-down old post—is full of social climbers, backbiters and talebearers. That’s what happens when people live in close quarters and know each other’s virtues and defects.”
She couldn’t help her sigh.
“Yes, it’s daunting. They are a censorious bunch.” He glanced at her again. “If you just do your job, you should brush through this awkwardness with Captain Dunklin.”
“I’m an expert at keeping my head down,” she assured her escort. “But the captain worries me.”
“Dunklin is a tedious bore,” the post surgeon told her. “Let me engage him in conversation so you can escape to your room, which I doubt will be anything fancier than a blanket serving as a sort of amateur wall. A warning—we all snore.”
Major Randolph was as good as his word. She took a bowl of stew from the kitchen to her blanketed-off corner of the sleeping room, while Major Randolph, an efficient decoy, chatted with Captain Dunklin.
Her tiny corner was frigid, the small window opaque with ice, the logs rimed with frost. Huddled on the bed, she drank her soup, which cooled off quickly.
She debated about removing her clothes, then decided against anything beyond her shoes and dress. She drew herself into a ball, her arms wrapped around her knees, wishing for warmth.
There was a gap in the blanket wall and she looked into the main room at Major Randolph’s profile. He was reading now, looking up occasionally to add his mite to the conversation between the other officers. He had an elegant mustache, which he tugged on as he read. She could see no obvious military bearing there; he looked like a man built more for comfort than warfare. He looked like someone she could talk to.
They observed rank even in bed on the men’s side of the curtain: two majors in one bed, and Captain Dunklin in the smaller bed. The two privates who took turns driving the ambulance rolled in their blankets and lay down in front of the cookstove, which looked to Joe like the warmest place in the roadhouse. He hoped Dunklin was cold, sleeping by himself.
John Walters was soon asleep beside him. Joe closed his eyes and did what he always did before sleep came. Starting with South Mountain in 1862, when he had been a new surgeon, he performed a mental inventory of his hardest cases. If he was tired, he never got much beyond South Mountain, because it had been the worst, for reasons that continued to plague him.
The cases that stood out were the ones where he still questioned his decisions. For years, he had wondered if he was the only surgeon who did that. Just last year, he had asked Al Hartsuff if he ever rethought his Civil War cases. Al nodded, drank a little deeper and replied, “All the livelong day, Joe.”
On a bad night, he rethought the whole war. On the worst nights, he relived the death of his wife, as her skirts caught fire on a windy evening by a campfire, and she blazed like a torch. No amount of rethinking ever changed that outcome. Her screams had echoed in his head for years.
He didn’t get that far tonight; he had Susanna Hopkins to thank. After all his companions started snoring, she must have felt secure enough to cry, knowing she would not be heard.
He was on the side of the bed closest to her flimsy partition. First he heard deep gulps, as though she tried to subdue her tears. As he listened, he heard muffled weeping.
All he knew of Susanna Hopkins was that she was divorced and her son taken from her. He knew she was a lady looking for a second chance. He listened to her, wondering how to best alleviate her suffering. Medically, he had no reason to throw back his covers, pick up his greatcoat and tiptoe around the partition, but he did it anyway.
“You’re probably cold,” he whispered as he lowered the overcoat on her bed. She had gathered herself into a tight little ball—whether from fear or cold, he had no idea.
“Go to sleep,” he whispered. “I’m of the opinion that most things generally turn out for the best.”
Joe tiptoed back to his side of the partition and lay down again. He was warm enough, because Walters radiated body heat. Joe closed his eyes, listening. Soon he heard a small sigh from the other side of the blanket, which told him she was warmer now. He remembered that Melissa used to sigh like that, when she was tucked close to him and content.
For a change, the memory of Melissa soothed him to sleep. I miss you, M’liss, he thought.
Two more days and they arrived at Fort Laramie, not a minute too soon for Dr. Randolph. Ignoring the startled expression from Major Walters, Joe had kept up a running commentary with Captain Dunklin any time the man had so much as looked in Susanna Hopkins’s direction to make a comment.
Joe knew Major Walters was puzzled. He said as much during a break, when they stood next to each other and created circles of steaming yellow snow.
“Joe, I like conversation as well as the next man, but with Dunklin?” Walters commented.
Joe finished his business and buttoned up. He spoke cautiously, not wanting to expose the real reason. “Dunklin is a busybody.”
“The whole Ninth Infantry knows that,” Walters replied, amused.
“I think Mrs. Hopkins would rather keep her late husband to herself,” Joe said, cringing inside as he continued the lie begun so stupidly by Emily Reese.
“I think you deserve a medal,” Walters teased.
Joe’s heart warmed to watch Susanna Hopkins, who quickly discerned what he was doing and why. She still sat too close to the ambulance’s stove for his total comfort, but she kept her nose in her book, giving Dunklin no reason to speak to her.
Joe’s head well and truly ached by the time the ambulance stopped at the fork where Major Walters’s escort from Fort Fetterman waited, walking their remounts to keep them warm. Joe helped Mrs. Hopkins from the vehicle.
The three of them walked toward the patrol and Major Walters took Mrs. Hopkins by the hand. Joe noticed her slight hesitation, followed by a deep, careful breath, and he wondered how hard it was for her, in this world of men. He was beginning to understand her wariness.
“Mrs. Hopkins, so pleased to have made your acquaintance,” Walters said.
He turned to Joe. “Do you figure you’ll take part in the spring campaign, probably being planned in Washington as we speak?”
“It’s unlikely,” Joe replied, as his face grew hot. “You’ll recall who heads the Department of the Platte. General Crook has no use for me.”
“Maybe someday he’ll change his mind.”
“When pigs fly,” Joe said, wishing now for the conversation to end, as much as he liked Walters.
Walters mounted the horse waiting for him, and the patrol loped away to the north and west. Mrs. Hopkins seemed in no more hurry to return to the ambulance than Joe was. He wondered if she would ask him what the major had meant.
What she said surprised him. “You have a headache.”
“I do, indeed,” he told her, touched at her discernment.
