Merline Lovelace (22 page)

He wanted to kiss her. The need ripped at Andrew with the sharp, savage claws of a hawk. He ached to take her in his arms, to savor the taste of her that would have to last him for the long months and years ahead.

He wouldn’t do that to her. Not here, in the bright sunshine, where anyone strolling by might see them and carry tales back to her husband. His smile tight and strained now, he tucked a silky strand behind her ear.

“Take care of yourself, sweetheart, and of the little soldier girl.”

“I will.”

Choking back tears, she whirled and hurried away.

C
olonel Cavanaugh dragged his tongue across dry, cracked lips and glared at his subordinate.

“I won’t release the prisoners.”

Andrew stood in front of the colonel’s desk, hands fisted inside his gauntlets. He’d tried his damnedest the day before to make his seperior see the justice in Spotted Tail’s demand. He’d hoped the old man might be more willing to listen to reason after a night’s reflection.

God knew, Andrew himself hadn’t closed his eyes throughout the endless hours of darkness. The fact that Julia was leaving Fort Laramie that morning had kept him awake and staring into the darkness. He was in no mood to pander to his superior’s bull-headedness.

“Walks In Moonlight was Sioux,” he reminded the colonel bluntly. “The treaty of ’51 states explicitly that a person or persons committing crimes against
the Sioux in their own territories are subject to tribal justice.”

“Tribal justice be damned!” Cavanaugh’s red-rimmed eyes flamed with anger. “The woman was murdered on post. The Army has jurisdiction.”

“What difference in hell does it make who hangs Kinkaid, as long as he pays for what he did?”

“I’m not turning a white man over for those savages.”

Gritting his teeth at his superior’s intransigence, Andrew tried another tack. “General Sheridan and the other commissioners will be setting out for Fort Laramie any day now. We’ll jeopardize the entire peace effort if we deliberately antagonize Spotted Tail.”

A sly look entered Cavanaugh’s eyes. Hooking his thumbs in his belt, he swayed back on his boot heels.

“We’re not going to try Kinkaid at Fort Laramie. I’ve already given the order to prepare him and the other prisoner for transport to Cheyenne this morning with the quartermaster’s detachment.”

“What!”

“From there, guards will take them by train to Omaha Barracks.” His mouth twisted in the travesty of a smile. “Those pantywaists at departmental headquarters are so anxious to pander to the Sioux. I’ll let
them
assume responsibility for these murderers.”

His pulse skittering in alarm, Andrew abandoned military protocol. He leaned forward, both fists planted on the colonel’s desk.

“You can’t send Kinkaid across a hundred miles of open plains with only a twenty-man detachment as escort. That’s tantamount to waving a red flag in front of Spotted Tail and inviting them to attack!”

“He’ll be in for a surprise if he does. Our men will be equipped with the new breech-loading Spring-fields. We all saw how effective they were in the Wagon Box Fight. Twenty men are more than sufficient for this detail.”

Cavanaugh’s intent became clear to Andrew in a sudden, shattering rush. Stunned, he stared at his superior.

“You
want
him to attack! You’re dangling Kinkaid like bait, hoping to goad him into a rash act, like Red Cloud’s attack on the woodcutting party last December.”

“I won’t dignify that with an answer.”

“The Wagon Box Fight didn’t derail the peace process, but another savage battle might just do the trick.”

Andrew didn’t want to believe his superior capable of such malice, but the hate glittering in the man’s eyes told its own tale.

“You can’t do it,” he said flatly. “I won’t let you.”

“You forget yourself, major.”

He raked his superior with a glance of withering scorn. “I’m going to find George Beauvais. His charter as a member of the peace commission supersedes your authority in this matter.”

“I’m in command here,” Cavanaugh raged. “You’ll keep your mouth shut, soldier.”

“The hell I will.”

“That’s a direct order.”

“One I refuse to obey.”

His mind racing, Andrew started for the door. He had to get hold of Beauvais, convince him to override the colonel’s orders. If necessary, he’d counter them himself. There’d be hell to pay afterward, but a court-martial was the least of his worries at the moment.

“Garret!”

The unmistakable snick of a pistol being cocked swung him around. His belly hollowed at the sight of the Colt leveled straight at his gut. From the drug-hazed glitter in Cavanaugh’s eyes, it was obvious the resentment that had been building between them for months had now spilled into hate.

“I’m placing you under arrest for insubordination and refusal to obey a lawful order. You’ll report to your quarters immediately and remain there.”

“I’ll report to my quarters after I talk to Beauvais.”

“Damn you!”

The colonel’s enraged bellow cannonaded off the walls. The hand gripping the Colt began to shake. Cursing, he whipped up his other hand to steady the first.

“I’ll shoot you where you stand! I won’t allow a mutiny in my command.”

“You’d better think about this,” Andrew said softly. “Even a decorated hero of the Cumberland
campaign might have trouble explaining why he shot one of his own officers and incited another bloody war on the plains, all in the same twenty-four hours.”

Enraged, the colonel thumbed back the hammer. The Colt wove a wild pattern.

“Orderly!” he bellowed. “Sergeant at arms!”

Andrew gathered his muscles, waiting for the barrel to veer another inch or two. One lunge, one fist to the jaw, and the old man would drop like a half full sack of feed.

A sharp rap on the door drew Cavanaugh’s attention and provided the half second of distraction Andrew needed.

Laudanum might have dulled the senses of the decorated veteran, but it hadn’t slowed his instincts. Cavanaugh whipped his head around just as his subordinate launched his attack.

The Colt barked. The force of the bullet spun Andrew sideways. He stumbled and went down, hitting the edge of the colonel’s desk. Pain exploded in his temple, fire in his side. Through a dark haze he heard the orderly’s astonished exclamation and Cavanaugh’s terse reply.

“This man was resisting arrest.”

“Major—Major Garrett, sir?”

“Major Garrett, damn you. Summon the sergeant at arms, then fetch the surgeon.”

Grunting, Andrew fought the blackness. “Wait! Get—”

“Now, corporal!”

Slack-jawed with astonishment, the trooper gaped at the colonel. His goggle-eyed stare was the last thing Andrew saw before darkness claimed him.

Bright October sunlight beamed down on Philip as he paced the beaten dirt outside the shanty his wife and daughter had called home for four months now. Julia and Suzanne were almost ready to leave. They’d packed their few belongings in a single humped-back trunk, and were now making a last check of the quarters. Philip had dragged the trunk outside and hefted it onto the handcart that would convey it to the parade ground where the convoy was assembling.

Reproach and regret gripped him in a vicious vise whenever he eyed the innocuous piece of luggage. The wife he’d promised to drape in silks and jewels, the daughter he wanted to shower with every lavish toy and trinket, had packed everything they owned in one small trunk. It shamed him to his core that he had brought them to such a point, shamed him even more that he possessed barely enough funds to get them back East.

His luck had been so damnable these past months and years. It would change. It had to change. He’d find a game on the trip home, win enough to buy Julia another airy, spacious home and replace the furniture and jewelry she’d been forced to sell. He’d erase the lines of strain on her face. Erase, too, all memories of the man she was leaving at Fort Laramie.

Philip’s hands clenched at his sides. The churning
resentment he’d battled every hour since Garrett had taken him aside heated his veins. As much as he fought to subdue his jealousy, he hated the thought of another man assuming responsibility for his wife and child. Hated even more the knowledge that Julia had shed her clothes and tumbled into Garrett’s bed.

God knew Philip himself was no saint. Life in the gold fields was unremitting drudgery at best, and precariously brief for so many. A man snatched what relief he could with the whores who traded a sweaty, grunting slap and tickle for a few ounces of gold dust.

But Julia… Dear God, Julia was his bright, shining star. His lodestone. His conscience. Thoughts of her had kept him digging until he couldn’t stand the mud and filth and icy water any longer, and traded his pick and pan for the slick, familiar feel of a deck of cards.

“Philip?”

The sound of her voice spun him around. She stood bathed in sunlight. Her silky black hair was braided and woven into a neat coronet atop her head, showing to perfection the clean line of her jaw and long, slender neck.

“We’re ready.”

She held Suzanne’s hand in hers, and a sudden, fierce rush of emotion overrode the jealousy that ate at Philip’s insides. This woman bore his name. Had born his child. She’d never complained once in all the years of their marriage, although he’d given her plenty of reason to.

He ached to reestablish himself in her affection, to
tease her into laughter, to see happiness instead of resignation shining in her lavender eyes. His chest tight, Philip smiled at his daughter.

“Suzanne, my pretty, I need to speak with your mama. Will you walk a little way along the river so we can talk for a moment?”

Clutching her precious doll to her chest, Suzanne looked at her father with wide, forlorn eyes. “I’ll go say goodbye to Daisy.”

Guilt stabbed into Philip once again.

“You can stay, Julia. You know that, don’t you?”

Her throat worked. “Yes.”

“I’d rather see you happy than hold you in a marriage against your will.”

“We’ve talked about this,” she whispered. “Suzanne loves you. Now that she has her father back, I couldn’t take her away from you a second time.”

He buried his hurt that she came with him only for their daughter’s sake and caressed her cheek, trying to recapture what they’d once shared in the remembered feel of her soft skin.

“Perhaps we can start again?”

She swallowed, not pretending to misunderstand his meaning. They hadn’t slept together since he’d arrived at Fort Laramie. Suzanne’s presence in the bed she shared with her mother had provided a convenient excuse.

Her eyes held dark shadows when she raised them to his. The smile she forced to her lips ripped at his heart.

“Perhaps.”

T
he bugles announced the assembly and imminent departure of the quartermaster’s detachment. Like any event that broke the daily routine, the departure drew a crowd of spectators to the parade ground.

Julia climbed into the rear of the ambulance wagon and took one of the side-facing seats. A sniffling Suzanne took the other. Her woeful face and drooping shoulders earned her a sympathetic glance from her father.

“I’ll buy you another pony, pet.”

Her lower lip thrust forward. “I want Daisy.”

Philip flicked a glance at his wife. He still hadn’t quite accepted the fact that the delicate, adoring child he’d kissed goodbye two years ago had developed a will of her own. Spurring the horse he’d borrowed from army surplus stock for the march south, Philip rode forward to confer with the detachment commander, a doughty captain from Company A.

Sighing, Julia passed her daughter a clean hand
kerchief and leaned against the seat back. The wagon’s canvas sides were rolled up to allow the morning breeze to circulate. The air was so clear it seemed to crackle, the sunshine so bright it hurt her eyes. Squinting, she searched the crowd for a glimpse of Andrew’s tall, lean figure. They’d said their farewells beside the river yesterday, but she had thought…had hoped he’d come to see Suzanne off.

It was best that he hadn’t, she told herself, swallowing the lump that threatened to choke her. She couldn’t look back, wouldn’t allow herself to dwell on what might have been. She’d take the years ahead one day at a time, she swore bleakly. One week at a time. She’d find some way to start over again with Philip, as he had suggested. Find some way, too, to make it through her final moments at Fort Laramie without breaking down into tears.

But that became impossible when Maria Schnell hurried up to the wagon. Breathless, she passed Julia a basket covered with a napkin. The tantalizing scent of fresh-baked bread rose from beneath the cloth.

“I put some cactus pear jelly in there,” the surgeon’s wife huffed. Her bright black eyes darted to the sniffling Suzanne. “And a can of peaches to cheer up the little one.”

Julia bit down so hard on her lip she tasted blood. As if it were yesterday, she could hear Augusta Hottenfelder screeching at her husband, berating him for purchasing a tin of peaches at the sutler’s store for Julia and Suzanne. How ironic, how achingly ironic,
that she and her daughter would find themselves stranded at Fort Laramie because of a tin of fruit, and were now leaving with a gift of the same, precious commodity.

Fighting the tears that stung her eyelids, she pressed Maria’s hand. “Thank you.”

Mary rushed up just moments later. The two women had said their goodbyes earlier, but the laundress wasn’t about to let her leave without a last word of advice.

“I’ve traveled from Arizona to the Dakotas and back in one o’these wagons,” she announced, thrusting a down-filled comforter at Julia. “You and Suzanne will need this to pad your bottoms during the day, and keep off the chill come night.”

Julia tried to refuse the hand-stitched quilt. “I can’t take this. You told me it was a wedding gift.”

“Oooch, I’ve had so many weddings, I don’t even remember who gifted me with this or when. You take it,” she insisted. “The major wouldn’t want you to set off across the plains without something to keep you warm at night. And speaking ’o the major…”

“He’s not here,” Julia said quietly.

“Mulvaney says there was some doin’s over at Old Bedlam a while ago. A shot went off or something. The major must be sortin’ the business out.”

“A shot! Whatever happened?”

“No one knows for sure, but Mulvaney’s guessin’ it has to do with those rotten bits of crow bait.” With
a nod of her orangey-red head, Mary pointed out the carrion she referred to.

To her horror, Julia saw two men shuffling toward the lead supply wagon. Both wore heavy leg and wrist irons despite their bandaged wounds. Troopers with bayoneted rifles marched on either side of them, but the mere sight of their bruised and dirty faces made Julia’s skin crawl.

One of the guards lowered the backboard on the canvas-topped wagon. The other prodded the prisoners inside. When the backboard had been latched in place again, the detachment commander called out an order.

“Bugler, sound to horse.”

“Mary!” Her heart pounding, Julia twisted around to face her friend. “Why are those men being transported with us?”

“I don’t know, unless it’s because they’re George Beauvais’s men and he convinced the colonel to send them back to the States for trial.”

It made no sense to Julia. Surely Colonel Cavanaugh could have exercised his jurisdiction over the criminals right here. The idea of traveling in the same convoy with the men who’d attacked her and murdered Walks In Moonlight made Julia feel nauseous. She was biting back the bitter taste of bile when the trumpeter’s sharp, clear notes cut through the air.

“For-warrrrd,
harch!
”

With a slap of the reins and a few well-chosen in
sults, the ambulance driver urged the mules into motion.

Mary stepped back, her blue eyes misting. “Have a safe journey.”

Others in the crowd shouted a chorus of final farewells.

“Good luck to you, missus!”

“Keep a straight back and a light hand on the reins, little soldier girl!”

Stunned by the turn of events, Julia barely heard their calls. A thousand thoughts whirled in her head, but only one emerged with crystal clarity.

She had to get to Andrew. He couldn’t know of the order to send the prisoners south. He wouldn’t allow it to happen.

She pushed off her seat, intending to grab the driver’s coat or sleeve and demand he halt the wagon.

If the wheel hadn’t hit a hard-dried mud rut, she might well have done just that. The sudden bounce caught her off balance. She went down to the wagon bed, hitting her knee with a vicious crack of bone on wood, and her boot heel caught in the hem of her cherry striped skirt.

By time she untangled herself and pushed back up again, the little cavalcade had started up the sloping incline that led to the bluffs beyond the post.

“Hold him steady.”

“I have him, sir.”

Andrew heard the voices through a thick, gray fog.
Fighting the haze, he tried to open his eyes. Sharp still lanced into his forehead. Instinctively, he flinched.

“Hold him still, dammit.”

He forced his eyes open, saw only more gray. A pale blur swam into his field of vision, then disappeared. Sharp steel stabbed into his temple once again.

“There, that’s the last stitch.”

The blur returned and resolved into a scowling face framed by bushy gray muttonchop whiskers.

“Henry.”

“You’re back with us, are you?”

Andrew frowned at the surgeon and fought his way through the pain hammering in his head. Slowly, the gray fog receded. Images came back to him, hazy at first, then swift and sharp. Cavanaugh. A burst of gunfire. The orderly’s shocked face.

He jerked upright, cursing when needles of fire lanced into his side.

“You’d best sit still,” the surgeon advised. “The bullet glanced off your ribs. It didn’t do any serious damage, but you came close to putting a permanent crease in your head. I had to set some stitches to close the gash.”

Gritting his teeth, Andrew struggled to sit up. The clanking that accompanied his move drew another savage oath. He needed only a single glance at his wrists and ankles to identify its source.

The bastard had put him in irons.

Blinking to clear the pain splintering through his skull, he swept a quick look around. Apparently the colonel had realized he couldn’t rely on house arrest alone to keep the major in line. He’d ordered Andrew confined to one of the dank, subterranean cells of the guardhouse.

“Be still while I bandage this.”

Rinsing his hands in a bowl of bloody water, Henry pressed a folded pad to Andrew’s temple. His chief hospital steward assisted by wrapping a gauze bandage around Andrew’s head. That done, the surgeon turned a fulminating eye on his patient.

“Now suppose you tell me why in thunderation Cavanaugh put a bullet in your side, then clamped you in irons before he’d even let me tend you.”

“I’ll tell you later.” Grunting, Andrew hunched one shoulder to test the wound in his side. It burned like hell, but wouldn’t keep him down. “First I have to talk to George Beauvais.”

“Beauvais? Why?”

“I don’t have time to explain now. Just find him, Henry. Tell him it’s imperative I speak to him before the quartermaster’s detachment departs the post.”

“You’ve been out cold, man. The wagons and their escort rolled out over an hour ago.”

“Dammit!”

With a clatter of chains, he got his legs under him. Henry made a grab for his arm as Andrew pushed to his feet. The gray stone walls blurred. Grimly, he fought his way through the dimness.

“Did the two civilian prisoners we were holding go with the wagons?”

The surgeon shot a questioning glance at the sergeant at arms standing just outside the cell. The grizzled veteran nodded.

“Yes, sir. They was taken out just before we brung the major— Just before the colonel ordered—”

He stumbled to a halt, misery writ clearly on his weathered face. “I’m real sorry about them leg irons, Major. The colonel, he was all lathered up and insisted we put them on soon as we hauled you down here.”

Andrew shrugged aside the abject apology. Muldoon had only followed Cavanaugh’s orders, and those weren’t the orders that consumed him right now.

“Find Beauvais, Henry. I’ve got to convince him to overrule the old man and bring the wagons back.”

The surgeon’s bushy brows shot straight up. “Beauvais is a civilian! He can’t issue orders regarding military troop movements.”

“He can if those movements directly affect his peace mission as dictated by the Congress and the President.”

His jaw tight, Andrew relayed his suspicions regarding Cavanaugh’s motives for sending Kinkaid and his cohort south with the quartermaster’s detachment.

Schnell opened his mouth on a shocked protest, then snapped it shut. Like the major, he’d observed
the deterioration in their supervisor over the past months.

“Find Beauvais,” Andrew repeated. “Quickly.”

Henry Schnell returned less than twenty minutes later—without the bearded fur trapper-turned-peace ambassador.

“Beauvais isn’t here,” the surgeon reported. “He got word that the agent for the Ogalalla was skimming profits off the supplies intended for the Sioux and left yesterday to check on him.”

Andrew’s stomach clenched. The Ogalalla agency was two days’ ride from Fort Laramie. In the dim light of the cell, Henry’s grim gaze met his.

“I sent a courier after him.”

“If Cavanaugh hears of it, he’ll have you in irons, too.”

“I’ll take my chances.”

Morning crawled toward afternoon. Evening faded into night. Strung too tight to eat, Andrew let the rats have his supper of moldy salt pork and beans. The other prisoners—one a drunk still bleary-eyed from the effects of a wild night at Coffee’s Hog Ranch, the other a deserter brought back and sentenced to five months of hard labor—huddled in their cells and left Andrew to his thoughts. They didn’t quite know what to make of the fact that their commanding officer now shared their dark, dank quarters.

Andrew paid scant attention to them or his sur
roundings. He’d learned to shut down his mind in Andersonville, to close his ears to the moans and restless mutterings of his fellow prisoners. After the first few months, he’d even taught himself to wipe Julia’s image from his consciousness to keep from going mad. None of his hard-learned discipline gave him any relief from the tension that had crawled up his neck and knotted his muscles.

For the second night in a row, he lay sleepless, staring at the sliver of the moonlight that penetrated the narrow, barred windows, feeling the dampness seep through his blanket into his skin, willing George Beauvais to return.

When the bugles sounded first call for guard mount the next morning, he was as red-eyed as Cavanaugh at his worst. Grunting at the pull in his side, he rolled to his feet and relieved himself in the bucket provided for that purpose.

Footsteps overhead signaled the start of the new twenty-four-hour shift. Some moments later, the sergeant of the guard appeared.

“Stand back, if you would, sir.”

The cell door clanked open. A hulking trooper ducked his head and carried in the morning’s ration of coffee, cold beans and bread.

“So you’ve got guard duty, Mulvaney?”

“Yes, sir.” The hulking young Irishman aimed a glance over his shoulder at the noncommissioned officer behind him. “I asked Sergeant Muldoon to put me on detail, sir. Or rather, me wife did.”

“Mary?”

He might have known the laundress would decide to get right to the bottom of things.

“We been hearin’ rumors, sir. The whole camp’s buzzin’ with them.”

He didn’t doubt it.

“And there’s news.”

“What news?” Andrew asked sharply.

“The telegraph operator down to Cheyenne sent word one of the railroad crews spotted a large war party. They were all painted up and wearing their war bonnets. Two, maybe three hundred, heading north. They came whoopin’ down on the track, but the railroaders beat the hell out of there and got away with all their hair intact.”

“Sioux or Cheyenne?”

“Some of both, sir.”

Andrew’s gut clenched. “Any word from our detachment?”

“No, sir, but…”

“But what, man!”

“But Mary’s thinkin’ you should go after your lady, sir. Her and the little girl.”

Andrew’s glance cut to Muldoon. Without batting an eye, the grizzled noncom stepped inside the cell and drew a key from inside his uniform blouse.

“I’m thinkin’ the same as Private Mulvaney, sir.”

Kneeling down, he went to work on Andrew’s leg irons. They fell away, followed by the wrist irons a moment later.

The sergeant would lose his stripes for this. And earn some time in the guardhouse himself. Neither possibility appeared to worry him as he unbuckled his gun belt and passed the holstered Colt to Andrew.