The Powder River (10 page)

Sings Wolf nodded. “The people need and your wife needs you.” He rubbed the side of his nose the way he did when he was considering. “No one will blame you,” he repeated.

That was true, Smith reflected. They would not exactly blame him. They might not even think he was a coward. They would just think he was a white man and acting like a white man.

Truth was, he didn’t have any idea what he wanted to do.

He stopped beside Elaine. Her face was still drawn, but she managed a little smile now, a vague, lotusland smile that meant she appreciated what he was doing even through her drug haze. She had stayed in that lotusland for two days, and would need it this morning.

And what do you want, Elaine Cummings Maclean? he thought. What do you want, my love? Would you like to give up this noble experiment in red-white relations? What did you mean when you said you feel like running away?

He looked at her splinted leg. He felt guilty for letting her start on this damned trip. How could he have let her get shot at? She’d almost gotten killed. He was confident now that she wouldn’t die of internal bleeding—she’d already be dead. At least she wouldn’t have to risk her life getting shot at anymore. He was glad of that. Now they only had to worry about whether her leg would heal or mend short and crooked or would get infected and have to be amputated. No worries at all, he told himself mockingly.

Meanwhile should he stay with her? Or should he go back to his people and see if he needed to throw away his life to help them?

He touched her hairline gently. He thought, If I disappeared from your life, would you secretly be relieved?

But she couldn’t answer. Not really. She wouldn’t be able to give a real answer for days or weeks, and he might not be around to hear it.

“Give me a little more time,” Smith said to Sings Wolf, his eyes still on Elaine. “Until first light.”

“Until first light.” His grandfather said it with that glint of smile that meant, “Isn’t it fine, having to decide what it is to be a man?”

Chapter 13

Dodge City lay three or four miles closer than Fort Dodge. It sat west of the fort, perched right on the river. Smith got all the way to the outskirts of town without trouble. There he got some queer looks from two men on a wagon. Fer Chrissakes, he could almost hear them mutter, a fancy-decked-out man who looks to be a long-haired half-breed dragging a hurt white woman on an Injun travois. Smith smiled to himself as the wagon men rolled by. Life is full of strange doings, fellows.

What he noticed first about Dodge City was the stink, the pungent, acrid smell of manure. He remembered the stockyards at Kansas City smelled like that. He didn’t see the cattle pens, so they must be east of town—the wind blew from that way. White people amazed him. They complained about the odor of an Indian village, which was vivid enough in its way, and then lived kissing-cousin close to knee-deep cow shit.

He knew about Dodge City. In 1864 he and his brother Thomas had come south with their grandfather Strikes Foot to visit the southern Cheyennes. Then the Indians had gone to see the way station the soldiers built on the Santa Fe Trail, but it was just some dugouts. The Human Beings couldn’t imagine why anyone would live in a dark, dank hole in the ground when he could live in a light, mobile tipi. But white people are crazy, they said, and surely will act like white people.

Later, some whites built a store close to the Fort Dodge property to trade with the buffalo hunters. Pretty quick the Atchison, Topeka & the Santa Fe arrived, and a little town sprang up and called itself the hide capital of the plains. You could see buffalo hides stacked wide as a river, the Cheyennes said, and tall as a tree.

Soon the buffalo were gone, and a new business came rollicking in—Texans drove their cattle to Dodge City for shipment east. That meant a town full of men who had just got paid and wanted to eat, drink, gamble, and whore. Some even got haircuts, or stayed in hotels. That was why the citizens of Dodge didn’t mind the stink of manure—it smelled to them like money. Besides, Dodge City was the talk of the Nations. Wide open was what the white men called it, with a wild and wayward roll of their eyes. Sin for sale, they said, drawing a line under each word. The way they told it, the mayor, Dog Kelley, instead of enforcing the laws against prostitution, had a lady of convenience for his own mate when she wasn’t working. And the county sheriff, named Bat Masterson, was overfond of card games.

Smith smiled to himself. Time was, he liked such girls himself. He recalled the first one he’d ever used, Chinese girl up in Virginia City. The thought still tickled him. But the time for that was past.

He got off and checked Elaine, as he did every mile or so. She looked comfortable enough, as comfortable as you could be lashed to a travois. In her half-conscious state, she didn’t care.

Smith rode right down the middle of the main street, and no one offered to lend a hand or even said howdeedoo. Damn right they noticed. A pony drag carrying an injured white woman was scarce as ice in August, and not one of them would ever have seen a half-breed spiffed up like a banker. Plus, they could see he was looking for a doctor and could use help carrying Elaine. But they ignored him. He wasn’t a human being. Even Elaine wasn’t, now now.

Smith had seen plenty of this treatment when he went to school in St. Louis. His father and his mothers had gotten it in spades from the gold-rushers who came to the Yellowstone country. He had learned to put up with it, but never stopped hating it.

He saw lots of signs, but no shingles advertising doctors. The town surely led the nation in saloons per square block. The Saratoga must be a fancy one—the sign bragged of a full orchestra for your entertainment. Other watering establishments appeared to be the Alamo, Beatty and Kelley’s Alhambra, Mueller and Straeter’s Old House, the Opera House Saloon, and the Long Branch. But since whiskey couldn’t kill all the germs, there must be a doctor somewhere.

He tied his horse to a hitching post and Elaine’s alongside it. He couldn’t wander away from her, so he looked around. An old fellow lay propped against the front of Rath & Company General Store, passed out drunk. Smith took a few steps toward some men collected farther down, whittling and spitting, Texas cow-boys from the look of them. “Hey, mister,” he said softly.

A cow-boy with his hat brim pinned to the crown in front turned his head, noticed Smith, and gawked. He reeked of trail dust and chewing tobacco.

“Where’s the doctor, mister?”

The fellow’s mustaches twitched—they hung below his jaw—and his mouth showed a couple of beaver teeth. Seemed like maybe he thought everything in life was comical. He eyed Smith up and down and took his time running his gaze over Elaine and the pony drag as well.

“Right yonder around the corner,” the Texan drawled. “I’ll help you fetch her down there.”

Which goes to show, Smith told himself, that there are more things in heaven and earth, Dr. Redskin Maclean, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

Dr. Wockerley, M. T. Wockerley, initials but no names, put Elaine on a narrow bed on his back porch—clearly she would have to stay for a while, and couldn’t occupy his examining room.

He was a young man who constantly seemed about to speak and never got it out. He moved with self-conscious stiffness around his patient, who was mostly unconscious. He checked her eyes, felt her forehead, cut off the hide splint delicately, and examined her wound minutely—peered at them, felt them for warmth, sniffed at them. Smith knew Wockerley wouldn’t find any infection, at least not yet. But he treated the wound with yeast in combination with elm bark and charcoal, a familiar smell to Smith—he wished he’d had some yeast two nights ago. Wockerley also gave her yeast by mouth, in some whiskey—probably he didn’t have porter in the house.

Last, Wockerley studied with scrupulous care the shape of the shin that hid the setting of the bone. His thick glasses made his eyes look goggled. The man was thorough and proper, though, even if he did act like a clown. The torn flesh made it hard for him to tell the normal shape of the leg and surmise the fit of the bones underneath.

“Feels displaced to me,” said Smith. It was a guess on Smith’s part—you judged from the look of the skin and the feel of the bones under it. If the match of jagged ends wasn’t good, the broken bones would take a long time to heal, and Elaine might have a crooked leg. Ten years ago, amputation would have been automatic, because of the danger of infection. Now the better doctors knew about Lister and his work in antisepsis. Smith would insist on cleanliness and no amputation.

Wockerley pulled a thoughtful face and nodded. He seemed about to blubber something, but it didn’t come—maybe Smith made him nervous.

Smith supposed Wockerley caught on. Smith had told him where and how it happened and suggested that Elaine might need traction. That should let the man know why Smith couldn’t take care of her himself, on the move with the Human Beings.

Wockerley was acting peculiar. Though he was obviously intent on his patient, he kept
not
looking at Smith, seeming not to hear Smith, not asking questions of Smith, and conspicuously not turning his back to Smith. Wockerley would even align himself at bizarre angles, standing over Elaine with his shoulders strangely cocked so he could see Smith out of the corner of his eye. But he never looked right at his colleague. His only condescension to professional mannerliness was that he seemed embarrassed by his behavior.

Maybe Smith should cut his hair. Or be light-complexioned. Or half a foot shorter. It would have been funny had it not been maddening.

Smith used every trick he could think of. He described the break and the wounds and the way he’d treated them with all sorts of medical terms—filled his talk with
tibia
,
antiseptic
,
open fracture
,
displaced
, and
comminuted
. He spoke of his concern about infection. He told Wockerley where he took his training, Boston Medical College. He mentioned one staff member, Abraham Grantly, whom this Wockerley might know of because of his work on disinfectants.

Wockerley didn’t have anything to say but “Ahhh” and “Mmmm.” When Smith asked where Wockerley had been trained, the man didn’t even make one of those sounds. It was weird. It was rude.

Suddenly Wockerley stood erect, beamed awkwardly at Smith, and said, “Yes, well, certainly you wouldn’t scalp us all while I’m trying to help your wife, would you?”

Whoo-ee! There’s polite parlor conversation for you, thought Smith.

Then Wockerley rang a bell with self-conscious vigor. A pale young woman came in, so stooped and skinny she looked cadaverous. Wockerley addressed her formally as “Mrs. Wockerley,” which Smith found bizarre, failed to introduce Smith, and asked her to send for the sheriff.

When Mrs. Wockerley brought the officer with a badge out of the house, the doctor asked him where the sheriff was. “Mr. Masterson sends Dr. Wockerley greetings and salutations,” the man said with a twang, making an effort to get the words exactly right, “but he says to tell you he’s holding three kings at the moment and taking all his orders from them.” The man let it sit a moment. “Truth is, he ain’t even setting at poker right this moment, but that’s what he said to say.”

“I need him to send a man to fetch Dr. Richtarsch,” said Wockerley, trying to sound imperious. “This woman needs him.”

“The sheriff has authorized me to reply to further requests at my own discretion,” answered the man with a badge. “Since I’m the feller as would do the fetchin’, I can safely say that Sheriff Masterson has no one available for that duty at this time and suggests you do your own fetchin.” The man headed on across the porch and out the door without so much as a fare-thee-well. Smith admired his style.

“He’s at the fort,” Wockerley said to Smith as he handed Mrs. Wockerley a cotton swab to throw away. “I don’t suppose you could …” Wockerley pretended to be preoccupied with his examination for a moment. “Being in the military, Dr. Richtarsch has seen a good many affairs of this sort.” He cocked an eyebrow officiously at Smith. “It will take you a couple of hours to get out there and back with Dr. Richtarsch. At least two.” The man actually kept repeating Richtarsch’s title as though Smith should be awed by it.

At last Wockerley risked a joke. “Of course, the good doctor may regard this as aiding and abetting the enemy,” and tsk-tsked a dry little imitation of a laugh.

“I’ll fetch him,” said Smith. Being in the army, the fellow was probably an old hand with trauma. But before he left, Smith couldn’t resist having a little fun. “Mrs. Wockerley,” he said, “I’ll just sleep on the floor next to Elaine. I have my own bedroll.”

The poor woman could hardly keep man and wife apart, could she? But she certainly looked like she wanted to. And Wockerley gave Smith the biggest, phoniest smile he’d ever seen. They’d probably lock the porch door and sleep with the shotgun close by the bed. Smith went out chuckling maliciously.

Two hours later he was back in Dodge City alone—Richtarsch had been out hunting, but an orderly promised the doctor would come to town tomorrow morning. Meanwhile, Smith was ravenous.

The Dodge House Saloon and Restaurant stood right in front of him. Why not?

Why not was, Smith didn’t have any money. He’d given his savings to Little Wolf to buy horses and weapons for the Human Beings. He’d traded his revolver for the horse for Sings Wolf’s feast. So what was left? He’d better not try to sell Elaine’s jewelry—he’d probably get lynched for having killed a white woman. Nor could he sell his own pocket watch, a railroad watch made by Waltham and given to him by a Boston family for his college graduation. So he went to the livery to sell Elaine’s gelding. People knew Indians actually owned horses. Her sidesaddle and jewelry he’d leave with Wockerley to help pay for her care.

An hour later Smith drank his third cup of coffee filled half an inch deep with sugar, the way the Cheyennes like it, the way he’d never lost his taste for. He’d finished a platter of pork chops and eggs and buttered toast and potatoes, and he felt like a glutton, and that felt good, damned good. He still remembered fondly the first time he’d eaten a sunny-side-up egg, in St. Louis. It had made him think maybe the white doings weren’t so bad after all. Eggs and the thought of women for pay made him more willing to stay in the big town and go to school, but he never did get any of the women, not St. Louie women anyway.

It was pleasant to sit and eat a meal and not think about his situation. Smith never permitted himself to stew about anything while he ate. Eating was a time for enjoying something basic, so you didn’t fret while you ate. You gave your whole attention to tastes and smells and your feeling of satisfaction.

So while he ate, he was able to get his mind off his preoccupations of the ride to the fort and back: the awful idea of going off and leaving Elaine with strangers. The terrible arguments for and against. His notions that he was doing what was best for her, that he had to stick with his people or never go among them again, that she would want him to go. All put up against a single feeling as elemental as blood—you took this woman, you belong to her and she to you, you stay with her.

Stop it, Smith ordered himself. He pushed away from the table and walked irritably into the gaming room. It was crowded, bustling with a kind of sleazy energy. Cow-boys up from Texas were jammed at tables with games of poker, faro, and monte. Professional gamblers sat there coolly in their black-and-white getups and took the boys’ money in tense silence. At big tables dice games went on, chuck-a-luck and hazard, and once in a while a rousing shout would go up when someone won some money. The whole operation was arranged to take a cow-boy’s money in a genteel way and with a wicked smile that let him know that broke was what he was born to be, and rich was what the proprietor was born to be.

In a corner a man played a hurdy-gurdy, and several bar girls and cow-boys danced to its raucous, lively tunes. The cow-boys danced with a peculiar zest. They cocked their big hats back to forty-five degrees. Their huge spurs jingled at every clop. Their revolvers flapped up and down ridiculously in their holsters. Their sails full of liquor and lust, they hoed it down with a whore, more colorfully known as a soiled dove, sporting woman, frail sister, calico queen, painted cat, or
nymph de la prairie
. A cow-boy had little finesse but great endiusiasm—sometimes he whirled his partner for a whole circle in the air and saluted his feat with an earsplitting whoop.