Anita Mills (2 page)

“I see,”

“Please—he’s all she’s got.”

Attempts to save a limb which in civil life could be saved cannot be made. Gunshot fractures of the thigh, bullet wounds to the knee, and similar injuries to the leg, which at first sight may make amputation seem unnecessary, must always in the field require the sacrifice of the limb. Primary amputation done within the first twenty-four hours is critical, reducing the high rate of infection and ultimately saving more lives.
The directive wasn’t open to interpretation, and Spence knew it.

“I’m not in any shape to do anybody any good right now. I’m sorry.”

“She never had anything, you know. Our folks both died while we was little. Laurie wasn’t even twelve yet, but she raised me. I can’t let her down, Doc.”

He liked Danny. The kid had never shirked his gruesome duty of picking through the dead to find the living, which was more than could be said of men older than he was. “All right,” he decided. “I’ll take a look, but—”

“You hear that, Jess? He’s gonna fix it!” the kid crowed as he climbed into the ambulance wagon.

Holding the canvas for Spence, he said low, “Jesse’s a mite tetchy now. I kinda had to land him one upside his head to get him in.”

The smells of straw, sweat, and blood hit Spence as he crawled inside. Before his eyes adjusted to the dimness, he heard the unmistakable click of a gun hammer being cocked, and he felt the cold steel barrel against his neck.

“Don’t move, mister,” Taylor warned him.

“Don’t, Jess—it’s the doc!”

“Nobody’s touching my leg, Danny. I came into this world with two of ‘em, and I’ll be leaving it the same way.”

“Jess, he ain’t like most of ‘em, I swear to God he ain’t. Just let him have a look, that’s all I’m asking,” Danny pleaded.

“He touches it, I pull this trigger.”

Not giving up, Danny looked to Spence. “Tell ‘im, Doc—tell ‘im he don’t want blood poisonin’. Jess, look—he don’t even have a saw with him.”

“If he knows what’s good for him, he’ll back out real easy.”

“He ain’t armed, Jess. It’d be murder—just plain murder. You ain’t no murderer, and you know it,” the kid argued. “You wouldn’t hurt a fly less’n it was a Yankee. All I’m asking is for you to let him look.”

“I’m not on duty,” Spence said quietly. “If there’s any cutting, it’d be Winters doing it.”

“I’ve got no faith in an army quack,” the man growled.

“I was trained at the Medical College of South Carolina as a surgeon,” Spence told him evenly. “And if you don’t put the gun down now, you can take your leg to hell for all I care.”

There was a strained pause, then Jesse Taylor slowly uncocked the revolver and lay back, closing his eyes. “Well, you’re either a brave man or a damned fool, so look it over, tell him there’s nothing to do but cut it off, then get the hell out of here.”

“I can’t tell until I see it. Danny, my field kit’s in my tent, under my cot. And just in case, maybe you’d better round up a pair of leg splints. Tell Winters I’ve got a broken leg to treat.”

“Yessir!”

Spence went to work, carefully loosening the blood-soaked cloth around the wound. “I’ll have to probe it first.”

“Bone’s broke,” Taylor managed through clenched teeth. “Bullet went clean through it, taking a hunk of the leg in back.”

“I see that. If the lead and bone fragments aren’t cleaned out, there’s a risk of gangrene.”

“Just don’t get out the saw—I’ll stand damned near anything but that.”

“I got the kit, and the splints is coming,” Danny declared over Spence’s shoulder. “It’s gonna be all right, ain’t it?”

“I don’t know
yet.”

Forgetting his fatigue, Spence cut the pant leg, exposing the wound. Feeling underneath, he could tell there was considerable damage. Nonetheless, he probed the entry hole, finding bits of bone embedded in the soft tissue. He’d have to section the muscle to see how much of the femur had been lost. “You’d better hold on,” he warned Jesse Taylor. Nodding to Danny, he added, “Light that lantern and hold it close—off to the right a little, but close.”

As he cut, probed, and picked around the broken femur, the man never made a sound. Spence worked meticulously, finding each sliver, exchanging the probe for needle-nosed forceps, retrieving every bit he could. The air was chilly, but he was sweating when he sat back and reached for the stoppered bottle.

“Soon as I get a little of this in there, I’ll force the bone together, and splint it. You’d better sit on his shins, Danny.”

“Jesus God!” Taylor gasped, bucking when the permanganate hit the open wound.

As he left the ambulance, Spence felt pretty good about Taylor’s chances. Barring infection, the man would be limping home with both legs, but one was going to be a little shorter than the other.

In his tent, he hung his coat over the chair, washed his hands in the water bucket, then sat to remove his boots. His gaze strayed to Lydia’s picture, taking in the incredibly beautiful woman and the small boy on her lap. God, it had been so long since he’d been home to see them. Every time he looked at that picture, the yearning he felt was nearly unbearable.

Poor Liddy. Nothing in her twenty-two years had prepared her for this. Born rich and beautiful, she’d been Cullen Jamison’s little princess, and he’d brought her up to believe she could have anything she wanted. Incredibly, she’d wanted a young doctor barely out of medical college.

Reaching behind the photograph, he retrieved her last letter. Sighing, he lit the kerosene lantern, pulled it closer, and forced himself to read the painful words again.

Refolding the pages, he sighed. Why couldn’t she understand what she was putting him through with letters like these? No matter how much he wanted to go home, he couldn’t. As long as men still fought and died for the Confederacy, he had to stay. But, whether she liked him or not, Ross Donnelly just might be the answer to his dilemma.

Taking out pen, ink, and paper from the box beneath his bed, he thought for a long moment, then he began to write.

He reread his letter, feeling it lacked something, but he just couldn’t think anymore. Setting it aside, he lay down and pulled the blanket up over his clothes. As his eyes closed, he whispered the Lord’s Prayer, drifting off to sleep before he could finish it.

S
melling smoke and hearing gunshots, Laura Taylor ran to her door, where she could see the dark column rising to meet lighter clouds in the sky. As nearly as she could tell, the Baker place three miles to the north was on fire. Yankee raiders were moving south along the railroad line toward Charlotte.

Her heart seemed to pause, and for a moment, she felt an awful hollow beneath her breastbone, then dread rushed to fill the void. When they’d stolen what they could and destroyed everything the Bakers owned, the blue-bellied locusts would be descending on her.

At least Jesse wasn’t home, and surely the smoke would warn him to stay away until they passed. With that comfort came the realization that keeping what little they had depended on her. Her mind raced as she considered the only home she’d ever known. Those weathered walls would burn like tinder at the touch of a torch. And she knew better than to expect any mercy—the Yankee devils had been burning out wives, widows, and children as they cut a path of destruction through the heart of the South.

Scorched earth, it was called, this war they waged on women, children, and old men.

Well, they weren’t getting her house, not while she still had any breath left in her body. She might not be able to save the old barn or the chicken coop, and they’d probably set fire to the roof of the stone smokehouse out back, but she wasn’t leaving this house. They’d have to burn her with it.

Dry as a tinderbox, she decided, looking around at things most people wouldn’t think worth fighting for. But between that leaky ceiling and the worn planks of a sagging floor, she’d spent all twenty-three years of her life here. All the memories, good and bad, echoed off these veined plaster walls. The doors had to be secured first, or they’d just come in after her, and there wasn’t much time. Working feverishly, she dragged the faded sofa her mother had so insistently called a davenport across the front room to block the door, then she piled books, cast iron pots, every heavy thing she could lift, onto it. Standing back, she realized it wasn’t enough to keep them out. She had to have more. Tugging and pushing and walking battered chests, both bedsteads, and the oak table and chairs, she reinforced that sofa with the rest of her furniture.

Stopping to mop the sweat from her face, she looked around her, thinking if the Yankees tried to get in that way, they’d have a job of it. But there was still the back door, and she’d run
out of everything that might stop them. Walking through the four small, bare rooms, she realized she’d have to make her stand in the kitchen.

Taking Jesse’s heavy Sharps rifle down from the rack on the wall, she loaded it. One shot could drop a charging buffalo, he’d said, but once it was fired, the gun was empty. The double-barreled shotgun held two loads, but when either trigger was pulled, it kicked hard enough to send her sprawling. Her father’s old cap-lock Colt was hard to load, but at least it held six shots, and she knew how to use it. As she took the pouch of powder from its place on the rack, the big black stove caught her eye, and she knew if she could move it, it was heavy enough to slow them down, giving her time to pick them off before they could get through that door.

She pulled a chair from the pile, and using a ramrod and carpenter’s hammer, she knocked the flue loose, widening the crack in the plaster wall. It had taken two men to carry the stove in, she realized, but two men weren’t here right now. Using a crowbar and a slat from the bedstead for levers, she managed to budge it a couple of inches. Moving from corner to corner, she worked the stove over the uneven floor all the way to the kitchen door. Her arms and legs felt like jelly, and sweat soaked her dress and her hair, but they weren’t getting in there without a fight now.

She heard them coming down the hard clay road, and with her heart pounding in her ears, she loaded all six chambers of the Colt, getting powder, balls, caps, and sealing grease into them. Looking out the window, she saw half a dozen mounted Union soldiers in her yard, and she heard one of them yell, “Whoever’s in there, come out! We’ve orders to torch the house!” And the acrid smell of burning pitch reinforced his words.

With the shotgun tucked under one arm, the revolver in her other hand, she edged to her front-room window and broke out the glass with the Colt’s barrel. “You all get off my property, or I’ll shoot!” she shouted.