Murder at Medicine Lodge (21 page)

“Thank you,” I smiled. William and I sat down and I asked another question. “When we were all out on the prairie, I did not detect any hard feelings between you and Little Jonas. Not until the final moments when we were preparing to leave. I saw the two of you argue, but then when you came into the camp with the horses, the two of you acted as if there was no argument. Your friendly natures caused me to doubt my own eyes.”

William laughed an easy laugh. “That's an old slave trick. No matter what, outside our own kind, we never let on what we're thinking or feeling. We especially don't complain about each other to officers.”

“But you complained about your uniform to Captain Mac.”

“Well, I had to do that!” he cried. “If I didn't report about my missing pants, next inspection would see my pay packet docked.”

As I opened my mouth, preparing to ask Billy what that meant, William raised a silencing hand and spoke to him directly. In turn, the matter was fully explained.

“When there is an inspection, all of our things have to be laid out just so. We have to have one complete uniform on our bodies, another in good repair folded up with our blankets, towels, and socks. If anything is missing, the sergeants get mad. They can't get mad if we have reported anything lost to a senior officer. I tried to talk to Lieutenant Danny but I couldn't find him. That's why I went to Captain Mac.”

“Your sergeants are Hicks and Cullen?”

“That's right. We report to them. They're the ones who do the regular inspecting.”

“Why didn't you report the loss to either of them?”

William shrugged. “Couldn't find them, either.”

I thanked William for both the conversation and the pie, and then Billy and I left. As I walked I noticed with a smile that the hot soapy water had left me smelling almost like William. Raising my arm, I sniffed at myself and laughed.

“Where are we going now?” Billy wanted to know.

“I want to find Lieutenant Danny. I have something of his.”

THIRTEEN

It was a guess, but then everything in life, especially decisions, are nothing more than best guesses. My guess was the watch remaining in my carry pouch belonged to Lieutenant Danny. My second guess was that he would want that watch back even more badly than Sergeant Hicks had wanted his.

Billy and I walked all through the camp without finding Lieutenant Danny, but we did find Hawwy and Stanley. They were seated at a little table that had been set up in the shade of the medical-tent awning, and were playing a game of cards. When I told Hawwy I was looking for the lieutenant he said, “Oh, you just missed him. He was just here telling me that he felt ill. I've confined him to his tent until he feels better.”

“He needed permission to be sick?”

“Yes. Otherwise he'd have to stand his duty.”

“What's wrong with him?”

Hawwy shrugged, removed a card out of the fan of cards in his right hand, placed that card on the top of the small table. Seeing the marks on the card, Stanley let go a howl. Hawwy laughed. I pushed Hawwy's shoulder to regain his attention.

“It isn't anything serious,” he said. “He's just not feeling well. I told him to stay in bed for a while.”

“Which tent is his?”

Seemingly anxious for me to go away so they could go on enjoying their game, Hawwy threw his arm in the general direction of the ailing lieutenant.

After some searching and being told to “Get out!” by disgruntled officers not pleased at all by the sudden appearance of my face through their flap doors, I found Lieutenant Danny. He was not in his bed. Dressed in uniform trousers and a very nice white shirt—the nicest I'd ever seen worn by an officer—he sat at his desk, writing a letter, the long black pen pausing as Billy and I entered.

Lieutenant Danny looked frail and shaky, and given this state, it was understandable why Hawwy had mistakenly believed him to be ill. Had his attention not been diverted by the cloying Stanley, he would have seen that the lieutenant was a mental wreck, that what he needed more than bed rest was the relief of talking through his problems with someone he could trust. He had turned to Hawwy, but had been sent away. Hoping to persuade him that I was a man he could trust, I took out the watch, opened it, and held it out to him.

“I believe this is yours.”

What little color remained in his face, effectively drained. His gaze intent on the small portrait, his jawline twitched rapidly. After lengthy consideration, he said to Billy in a flat, gravelly tone, “What are your demands.”

This was not a question. It was a statement of hopeless resignation. Utter defeat. What a sad miserable thing, for a young man William had described as being fearless, bold, full of laughter.

“Nothing,” I said softly.

His hand was unnaturally cold as I lifted it, placed the watch in his palm. Emotions battled across his too-white face as he sat back in the chair, held the watch, and gazed silently at the portrait. Billy and I used this quiet moment to ease ourselves down on the nearby cot. We waited a considerable amount of time, at the end of which, Lieutenant Danny snapped the watch lid closed, set it down on the small desktop.

Turning in the chair, he spoke with a gentle, apologetic tone. “I'm afraid you've caught me during my preparations to leave.”

While this was being translated I stared at the revolver resting on the desk, just above the pay-paa, pen, and inkwell, and knew just how Lieutenant Danny had meant to leave.

For a moment, I didn't know what to say, so I simply listened as a playful breeze bumped at the canvas walls of the tent. Then, my tone just as somber as the moment, I managed to say, “Then I'm very glad to have found you before … your departure.”

His manner became brusque. “Yes, well, if you've come to pick my bones, I'm afraid there's nothing left.”

“I am a healer, not a vulture.”

His lips turned up in what would have to pass for a smile. In a voice we both had to strain to hear, he said, “Mercy from a savage, none from my own.”

“Tell me about your troubles,” I urged.

He readjusted himself in the chair. “I don't suppose any of that matters now, does it?” His eyes slid toward the desk, the letter he'd been writing. He took a deep breath, expelled it slowly, then, in carefully measured tones, this is what he said.

“I was born in Connecticut. I have visited the South exactly ten times. When I was a small child, I was first taken there by my mother who was Southern born, and desiring her son to know her side of the family. All I remember of that time is the astonishment I felt, that my mother's people lived so very differently than the world I knew. I did not see any of her relatives again until I was an adolescent, and then only because my mother's father was dying and his last wish was to see all of his children and grandchildren. It was during this sad time that I met my fourth cousin. She was not actually considered to be a member of the family, but as a distant relative she and her parents did attend my grandfather's subsequent funeral.

“She was not a pretty girl, but she had such a shining goodness that I wanted to see her again under happier circumstances. We corresponded, and after a time, I returned to the South and called on her.” He looked earnestly at me now, wanting me to understand. “We each were barely fifteen years old, much too young to be thought of as a courting couple. War was spoken of more and more and with each visit I made to my southern grandmother's home, I found myself less graciously received. By this time, my darling girl and I were desperately in love, but because of our age and the times, we only dared meet in secret.

“Each of us now sixteen, we were of a passionate condition and despite the ever-present threat of war, we simply had to have one another. So, as secretly as we courted, we married. Then the war happened and we were torn from each other. She remained in the South and I was in a boarding school in the North. I was nineteen when I finally entered the war, quite glad that it was still going on when I reached majority. I loathed slavery, despised the very idea of it. Then, too, I was determined to battle my way toward my wife.”

Tipping back his head, he sounded a humorless laugh. “Oh, I was a capable officer, and I did cut quite a dash, but I got nowhere near my endangered wife. And then I began hearing tales of a scourge by the name of John Singleton Mosbey.” He went quiet, allowing me a moment to appreciate this new gravity.

I'm afraid I couldn't.

Little Bluff, our principal chief then, had intentionally kept the Kiowa Nation out of the war between the Blue Jackets and the Gray Jackets. It was the wisest thing that man ever did. Many Nations entered the war on one side or the other, and following that war, those Indians were punished, the degree of punishment dependent on which side the Indians had been on. The Gray Jacket Indians lost everything—homes, even reserved lands—and were made to suffer grinding poverty. The Blue Jacket Indians were hustled back to their reservations and treated like caged prisoners, needing authorization passes simply to travel from their homes to the trade stores. It needn't be said they were no longer allowed to own rifles.

Because the Kiowas were a separate people, had gone their own way (though admittedly there was considerable raiding against both white armies), Washington was now “handling” us differently. All that aside, Lieutenant Danny's mention of a specific war chief belonging to the Gray army, other than to explain Hawwy's angry reaction to that name when Stanley had read the found love letter, meant not one thing to me.

Trying to make me understand, Lieutenant Danny became a bit more lively. “John Singleton Mosbey,” he said, measuring each word carefully, “is my mother's brother. He was a general and a great hero to the South, but because of his battle tactics, we from the North called him something else.”

“What?”

“The Gray Ghost.”

That perked me right up. I instantly remembered that Skywalker had said something about a gray, ghostlike man looming over one of the Blue Jackets. He'd been right. This gray ghost was looming over Lieutenant Danny.

Licking my lips, I said excitedly, “Your being closely related to him was a bad thing.”

“Yes,” he smiled. “It was a very, very bad thing. I was afraid for anyone to find out.”

“Why didn't you leave the Blue Jackets after the war?”

“Because I'm still trying to get to my wife. Where she lives is under military law. No one but the army or the reconstructionists are allowed in. I was promised that, after this duty at Medicine Lodge, I would be reassigned to the place where she is.”

“Did the army men making this promise know about your wife?”

“No. No one knew. Not even my mother who forwarded on what few letters I've received from my wife.”

“Your mother didn't read the letters?”

Lieutenant Danny's eyebrows lifted, then settled as he said in a sigh, “No, she did not. As far as my mother is concerned, my wife and I are nothing more than childhood friends. And as my mother is still a southern woman in her heart, she felt that her sending on any letters from the South was her patriotic duty. It was her mistaken faith that, if enough entreating letters were read by Union officers, we would cease further destruction of her girlhood homeland.”

“And you were careful to hide your wife's letters?”

“Careful enough,” he grunted. “Until one day our late and thoroughly unlamented bugler was assigned to mail duty.” He looked at me, hatred blazing from his eyes. “I soon discovered that he read any and all letters before passing them on. And before I knew it, there he was, demanding to be paid for his silence. When I ran out of money, he came after anything else I had of worth.”

“Your watch.”

“Yes. That and a ring my wife had sent to me as a token of her continuing affections.”

I fished the ring out of my carry pouch, held it up. Lieutenant Danny's eyes began to shine as brightly as the odd stone. “This is your wife's ring?”

“Yes!” he cried.

I gave it to him and he held it lovingly, turning it so that the strange stone could catch the light filtering in through the seams of the tent. The stone began to glow with its strange tiny lights.

“It's an opal,” he said, tears sounding in his raspy voice. “The stone my wife was named for.” He looked at me, swallowed hard. “Her name is Opal-Marie.”

I stood, went to his desk. He was still gazing at the ring. Not willing to be a witness to this young man's murder of himself I picked up his revolver, turned the cylinder, and removed the cartridges. When he looked up at me I said solemnly, “You cannot go away. That ring must be returned to your good wife.” I placed the emptied gun on the desk and tucked the bullets into my carry pouch. Then I said, “You need food.”

*   *   *

The one thing William had said he'd wanted was the return of the Lieutenant Danny he'd known. The young man walking slowly beside me was a long way from the officer of William's memory, but he was closer now than he had been during the time spent quietly enduring Buug-lah's tyranny. Even so, when William, seated on that same three-legged stool—this time a white cloth over his lap as he peeled potatoes—looked up and saw our approach and the lieutenant waved to him, William's dark eyes lit up and a broad smile spread across his face.

“Mr. Danny!” William cried, jumping up, spilling curly potato peelings from apron to ground. Then he quickly corrected himself. “Lieutenant Danny, sir.” While saying this he brought his hand to his forehead in a salute, then threw it sharply down.

Shyly, Lieutenant Danny's limp hand came up to his own forehead, then dropped. Billy asked if there was any food the lieutenant might have, and this question sent William running for the large cook tent. Knowing he was going for the food, and ever hopeful that there might be more of that delicious apple pie inside the big cook tent, I followed him.