And One Wore Gray (26 page)

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 sponge 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.

“Get him!” someone called.

“You get him!” came the reply.

Suddenly, in the midst of the melee, a gunshot exploded.
The room went still. Daniel, tasting blood on his lip, leaned back against the wall.

Two men were coming into the surgery. The first was Lieutenant Colonel Dodson.

The second man stood in shadow for a minute. Then the light touched his face.

It was Jesse.

Daniel closed his eyes, leaning back.

“What the hell is going on here?” Dodson demanded.

“He was trying to escape!” Cheswick excused himself.

“Renard needed us!” Palacio said.

“Were you trying to escape, Colonel?” Dodson asked.

“No, sir, I wasn’t,” Daniel said. He crossed his arms over his chest and tried not to grin. “Hello, Jesse.”

Jesse, grinning, leaned against the doorway. “Hello, Daniel. In trouble again, I take it. Were you trying to escape?”

It was good to see Jesse. It had been several months since he had seen his brother. He never knew when they parted if he would ever see him again. Blue eyes so like his own met his. Jesse was aging with the war. Tiny lines of gray entwined with his ebony hair at his temples. Those were new. But his brother looked good. Damned good. It was almost worth having been taken prisoner to see him again.

“I gave Dodson my word that I wouldn’t try to escape,” Daniel said.

Jesse, the ranking officer among the Yanks, shrugged and looked to Dodson. “If he gave you his word, Colonel, then he was not trying to escape.”

“Then what was going on?” Dodson asked.

Jesse looked back to Daniel. “What was going on?”

“Doctor Renard wanted to operate with a sponge. I asked him to use clean linen.”

Jesse looked at Renard. “Since it seems to mean so much to the Rebs, couldn’t you possibly oblige them, sir?”

Jesse was so pleasant. There was just the slightest edge of steel to his voice.

And Renard heard it. He answered just as pleasantly, with just a bit of an audible grate to his teeth.

“Perhaps, Colonel Cameron, you’d like to take on this particular operation yourself, since you are with us.”

Jesse glanced to Daniel and cocked his head. “Why, Doctor Renard, thank you. I’d very much like to take this one on.”

“Is that all right with you, Colonel?” Dodson asked.

Daniel grinned. “Yes, sir, it is.” Billy didn’t know just how lucky he was, Daniel thought.

Thank God. Jesse was here.

“Davie’s been here a long, long time. Why, he was here all the time they kept Mrs. Rose Greenhow here.” The last words slushed together, but Billy didn’t seem to mind or even notice. “She was quite a lady, Davie said. The Yanks brought her here because of the Allan Pinkerton fellow. He suspected her of spying for the South, and of course, that’s exactly what she was doing. She’s the one that got the message to our General Beauregard about the Yankee troop movements before the first battle at Manassas. ’Course, Pinkerton’s a damned fool, always telling the Yanks that we have twice as many men as we do. But he brought Mrs. Greenhow here, separated her from her daughter, and threatened to kill her, so Davie told me. She was incredible throughout her long ordeal, sir. The men here were gracious and supportive, giving her their full respect. I hear now she’s in the South, far away from harm’s touch.”

Billy rambled on and on.

“Jeff Davis has sent her over to Europe to see what support she could drum up for us over there,” Daniel told Billy with a touch of amusement. The operation was long over, but Jesse had warned that there would
still be pain, and Billy was hugging a flask of whiskey as if it were a long-lost brother.

“Now, that cute little hussy, Belle Boyd—the one spilling all the information to old Stonewall—she kind of comes and goes here all the time. All the time, so it seems.”

“Billy, she ain’t no hussy!” Davie called over. He was seated against the wall. They’d all been listening to Billy ramble on for some time. Mostly, they just let him talk. Every once in a while, one of his comments brought a rise out of someone.

“Davie’s in love with her!” Billy said, and he started laughing. “Davie’s in love with Belle!”

“Colonel, make him stop that, won’t you?” Davie demanded. “Order him to quit. Belle Boyd is a beautiful young woman, and a heroine to the Confederacy.”

Daniel grinned, leaving Billy’s side at last to rise and stretch. “He’s got so much drugs and alcohol in him right now that about the only thing I could order him to do and expect a response on would be to smile.”

Billy was smiling right then. A crooked smile that had reached his red-rimmed eyes. “She’s a heroine all right, Colonel. A heroine with two of the biggest, ripest, juiciest tomato—”

“Colonel, make him stop!” Davie pleaded.

“—like cheeks I’ve ever seen. She’s got the cutest little round face.”

“Well, there’s a little more respect,” Davie said.

“And what a great pair of breasts!” Billy sighed.

“Colonel!”

Daniel laughed. “I don’t think he means any disrespect with that one either, Davie. We all salute our sisters of the South, eh, gentlemen?”

A cheer rose up, and as it did so, Daniel had to fight to keep his own smile in place. To the women, yes, dear Lord, to the women. Of the North and South. Rose Greenhow had made fools of many men. She had been
more valuable to the Confederacy than many a practiced general. Belle Boyd had proven herself a priceless gem to Stonewall Jackson. There were more.

But the North was not to be undone, Daniel thought bitterly. Maybe Callie Michaelson hadn’t turned the tide of any battle, but she had surely done him in. Maybe she would move on to bigger things now.

He almost groaned aloud. It wasn’t so much that she had betrayed him. It was that he had been such a damned fool to have fallen for her every step of the way.

But I’ll get back! He promised himself.

“Someone’s coming, Colonel,” Captain Farrow warned. Daniel left Billy’s side, walking across the room. He could already hear the key twisting in the lock. The door opened, and Jesse stepped inside.