The Shadow Man (25 page)

More than a quarter of a mile distant, an animal came into view, moving up from a swale between two hills. Spradling thought the beast a buffalo, for there seemed to be a hump on its back. It limped as if its hindquarters were badly injured.

The animal moved northeasterly, a course that converged with Spradling's route. Soon he could tell that it was a gray horse with a pack on its back. Or was that a man lying far forward and clinging to the neck of the horse? Spradling spurred his mount to a run to intercept the strange horse.

The gray mare heard the thudding hoofbeats rushing toward it and started to turn and run. Its wounded right rear leg gave way, and it almost fell. It looked back over its shoulder and whinnied in alarm.

Spradling reined his steed down to a walk and came up slowly. The person on the back of the mare made no movement and seemed either dead or unconscious.

Spradling spoke in a low, soothing voice to the horse. “Easy there, old girl. Who are you carrying?”

He saw the blood on the person's side. And then the long black hair and the smooth, beardless face. “A woman, by God!”

The captain sprang down from his horse and hurried to the woman. Her arms were locked around her mount's neck. A rope was fastened around her waist and tied to the pommel. She must have secured herself to the horse, knowing that to fall and be left behind was surely to die.

Spradling lifted her head and felt for the pulse in her throat. The heart throbbed, low but firm. He saw the scar on the side of her face. You've been badly hurt before, and still you lived through it, he thought. He parted her bloody shirt. The wound on her ribs had mostly stopped bleeding but still oozed a pinkish lymph fluid. Her injury was not so bad that its treatment couldn't wait until he reached his operating wagon.

He pulled the bridle reins from off the saddle horn and led the horse to his mount. He swung astride and briskly started off, towing the limping mare.

* * *

In noisy, ordered confusion the American army made camp on the east side of the Rio Pecos at the base of El Barro Mountain. The wagons were halted and the teams of mules unhitched, hobbled, and turned loose to graze on the lush grass along the river's edge. Under heavy guard the cattle and oxen were herded to a large meadow on a bend of the river below the encampment.

The tents of the enlisted men blossomed in patterns of dirty gray squares, each company separated from the next. The officers' area was established on a rise of ground on the north border of the bivouac.

Captain Spradling entered the camp and immediately spotted the red flags on the fifteen-foot staffs attached to the infirmary wagons. He nodded his approval at the location of the mobile hospital. Sergeant Atkinson had chosen a site just below the officers' area and near the river. The water would be purest there, and the noise least. An excellent place for the ill men to rest.

The busy soldiers halted their work and stepped aside to allow the captain to pass. They stared at the woman lying over the neck of the limping mare.

“Is she dead, Captain?” a man called.

“She's alive,” Spradling replied without slowing.

“Got yourself a female patient this time, eh, Captain?” another soldier said in a jovial tone. A chuckle ran through the men.

Sergeant Atkinson saw his captain break free of the crowd of soldiers and start up the slight grade toward the hospital wagons. He spoke to the two medical orderlies helping sick and injured men from the wagons and onto blanket pallets inside the newly erected tents.

“Stanbro, Cordell, Captain Spradling's coming and he's got a patient. Stanbro, go to the river and bring back two buckets of water. Cordell, help me get the operating table and surgical instruments set up. Move fast now.”

The sergeant began to take the segments of a long, narrow folding table from the bed of a wagon. Cordell hurried to help. Soon a sturdy table was assembled and leveled.

An assortment of probes, needles, and sharp steel cutting instruments were arrayed on a smaller table close by. A pan of water and a bowl of soft soap were placed beside them.

“Good work, Sergeant,” said Spradling as he reined in his horse and viewed the preparation for surgery. “You guessed correctly. We have some work to do. Come help me get the woman down.”

“Sir, will you need one of the other surgeons?” asked the sergeant. “They are just up there in the officers' tents.”

“No. I can handle this without their help.”

The captain sprang to the ground and swiftly untied the rope holding the unconscious Petra in the saddle. The fingers of her clasped hands were pried loose, and her arms removed from around the horse's neck. Gently she was laid on the table.

“God!” exclaimed Atkinson. “She sure is a scarred-up woman. She'd be pretty except for that.”

Spradling had given the old wound little attention in his first quick examination of the woman. Now he bent and felt the thickness and width of the mass of scar tissue on the side of her face. A thoughtful expression came to his eyes.

“Do you want her strapped down, Captain?” asked Atkinson.

“No. You and Stanbro wash up. Then hold her on her side so I can work.”

With soap and water the surgeon scrubbed Petra's wound until the gaping flesh was raw and bleeding. He inserted a thin thread into a curved needle. “Hold her tightly,” he ordered.

Petra flinched and moaned at the punch of the needle. Her eyelids fluttered. Her hands tried to come up to protect her ribs.

“Hold her still,” the surgeon snapped at Atkinson and Stanbro. “Cordell, mix a dose of laudanum in water.”

With neat, precise stitches the captain sewed the red lips of the gunshot injury together. Finishing, he evaluated his handiwork. In a year only a slight scar would remain. He applied a generous covering of salve and fastened a bandage over it all.

For a long moment he stared down at Petra's face. He leaned and again felt the coarseness of the scar on the mutilated cheek.

“Cordell, bring me the laudanum,” said the surgeon. “What we are about to do will be damn awful painful and will take a long time.” Cautiously, so as not to strangle the woman, the surgeon got a heavy dose of pain-deadening narcotic down her throat.

“Turn her on her back and strap her down,” he directed. “Strap arms and legs and head. Then I also want Atkinson and Stanbro to hold her. Cordell, you stand by close in case you, too, are needed. Though she's unconscious and the laudanum will soon take effect, she'll feel hellish pain.”

The captain picked up a gleaming scalpel. “She must not jerk while I am operating. This is going to take delicate cutting, so pay attention to what you're doing. And hurry. The sun is almost down and I've got to have strong light to see by.”

The orderlies inserted leather straps through slots cut in the wooden top of the table. Petra's arms and legs were encircled and cinched firmly down.

“Put a soft pad of cloth beneath her head first,” said the surgeon as Atkinson placed a strap across Petra's forehead.

“Yes, sir,” said the sergeant. He completed his task and nodded at the surgeon.

The captain tested the tightness of the bindings. “Good. We start now.”

Petra twitched and cried out as the scalpel entered her flesh. Her body strained at the leather fastenings. The strong hands of the orderlies pushed down hard upon her.

The surgeon worked swiftly, skillfully, cutting away the scar tissue. The edges of the freshly severed flesh were white for an instant, before the blood welled up to fill the new wound and overflow down Petra's face and run in a tiny red rivulet across the boards of the table top.

“She's bleeding badly, sir,” said the sergeant.

“Dammit, Atkinson, I can see that,” the captain's voice crackled. “Hold her mouth shut and her jaws clamped together. Stop her head from moving. Use more force! More force!”

The opening widened as Spradling peeled away the damaged skin and carved the tissue beneath, sculpting and shaping the contour of the cheek. The operation was much more extensive then he had thought it would be. The sharp object that had caused the injury had struck the face at an angle, then skidded along the bone of the skull, tearing and mangling the full thickness of the flesh of the cheek.

The woman's body arched upward and trembled violently. It was forced down by the weight of the two orderlies. Cordell stepped forward and added his strength to hold Petra motionless.

Spradling hastily felt for the pulse of the patient. The heart had a speeding, ragged beat. His hands shook for an instant before he brought them under control. He had removed men's arms and legs, and sometimes had even seen them die from the shock of his cutting knife and saw. Still, this woman's agony affected him more deeply than any other patient he'd ever had. Had he been right in trying this operation? He went back to the delicate task.

At last the shape of the cheek satisfied the surgeon. He replaced the skin across the raw, bleeding flesh. The finest thread was passed through the eye of a slender needle. With the greatest care the captain began to sew. When he had finished stretching and stitching the skin together, there still remained an area broader than his thumb between the edges in the center of the wound.

A shadow fell over the woman's face. Spradling looked up.

“The sun's going down, sir,” said Atkinson.

Spradling wiped at the sweat running down his forehead. He did not want to try to complete the operation in the dimness of lantern light. Quickly he measured the open section of the wound. Then, above the woman's breast on the left shoulder, he made an incision and stripped away a section of skin.

With fine, even stitches Spradling sewed the skin patch into place to complete the covering of the cheek. On the shoulder, the soft, pliable skin was pulled closed over the exposed flesh, and the needle again did its work.

“I've never seen skin removed from one place and put in another,” said the sergeant.

“Neither have I,” said the captain. “Let's hope it will grow there.”

“She looks prettier already,” commented Atkinson.

“Really quite lovely,” said Spradling. He reached to check her pulse. The laudanum was coursing through Petra's veins, and her heart throbbed slowly and steadily beneath his fingertips. “She's a strong woman. She should heal if infection doesn't set in.”

He applied salve and carefully bandaged both sites. He breathed a sigh of relief, letting it out slowly so that the orderlies could not hear it. For the first time he allowed himself to wonder where she had come from. How many miles had she traveled? Who had wounded her so cruelly?

“Put her in a tent by herself. Be sure she's not bothered by anyone. I'll look at her in a couple of hours.”

“Yes, sir,” said the sergeant. “Will she be able to travel with us tomorrow?”

“She must be. The general will wait on no one.”

Petra came back to life slowly, floating up layer by layer out of her drugged stupor. The rise was full of ever-increasing pain. She almost surfaced to full consciousness, but the laudanum in her blood held her just short of complete wakefulness.

Her mind began to function in her narcotic, twilight world, reaching out to test the hurt body. The soreness of her ribs—she remembered the cause of that. The bandits had shot her during the attack on the hacienda. But the terrible ache in the side of her face and the lesser one on the front of her shoulder—those she could not explain. Had she been wounded again?

A frightening thought more important than her own wounds came surging forward. Where was Jacob? She recalled only that he had ridden away as she called to him. He must be somewhere searching for her. Or perhaps the
banditos
had found and killed him.

That first night after crawling out of the rocks, she had wandered, weak and frightened, through the corridors and rooms of the big hacienda calling out for members of the household. The spaces echoed back ghostlike and empty. She had found a loaded rifle and carried it with her. Finally she had slept, alone and clutching the weapon in her hands.

In the morning dusk Petra had found the two dead men in the courtyard. The mare had been at the gate but would not enter because of the smell of death.

Petra had mounted the faithful mare and started up the Rio Pecos to the Bautista hacienda to find someone to tend her wounds. She'd found the hacienda deserted. Nearing unconsciousness, she had tied herself to the horse and continued north toward Las Vegas.

Where was she now? Was she safe?

Not uttering a sound, Petra opened her eyes. Directly overhead were ceiling poles supporting an earthen roof. The diagonal pattern of the poles was somehow familiar. She rotated her eyes downward and saw a crucifix gilded with gold. Below that, a statue of the Holy Mother rested in a small alcove in the wall. Her view darted about at the rocking chair near the window, a picture on the wall, the washbasin on a stand. In startled amazement she realized she was in her own bedroom in the Solis house in Santa Fe.

“Aunt Teofila,” Petra called. Her voice was cracked and dry and came as a coarse whisper. She swallowed and called again. “Aunt Teofila.”

The quick patter of footsteps sounded in the hall, and the door burst open. A tiny woman, very old, swept inside. The web of wrinkles in her worried face crinkled and rearranged themselves into a happy smile at the sight of Petra.

“Oh, Petra, it is so good to see you awake,” Teofila cried.

“I'm home! I am home!” Petra wanted to laugh, but it hurt too much.

“You certainly are.”

“How did that happen?”

“The American, Dr. Spradling, brought you.”

“What do you mean? I know no Dr. Spradling.”

“He is a surgeon with the American army. You were in one of the army wagons when they came to Santa Fe. Dr. Spradling told everyone in the city that he had found a woman with a scar on her face, riding a gray mare near the Rio Pecos. When I heard the story, I went to see the doctor. Even with all your bandages I knew you. The doctor helped me bring you home. He gave you laudanum and left. He said he had many other ill people to care for, but he would be back.”