Coming Home for Christmas (15 page)

C
aptain Wilkie Wharton, Third Cavalry regimental surgeon, wasn't surprised when Mary Frances Coughlin refused his best efforts to carry her carpetbag. She did it in her usual good-humored way, though, which left him smiling.

“Captain, you know how my father feels about baggage,” Frannie reminded him as she sat beside him on the Union Pacific platform in Cheyenne. “You've been six years, off and on, at Fort Laramie, so you
should
know.”

Will grinned at her. “I know too well— ‘Never pack more than you can carry yourself.' But that doesn't mean I cannot be a gentleman and offer.”

“You have offered and that will do,” Frannie assured him with that easy nature he had come to appreciate. During the past year, she had taught the enlisted men's children at the fort. Now she was returning home to Brooklyn, New York. Because her father was probably the fort's best hospital steward ever, Will had no qualms
about leaving his green-as-grass assistant surgeon to doctor alone for six weeks, since he knew Paddy Coughlin was there to ward off ruin.

Mary Frances Coughlin was as sensible as she was pretty. He had long relied on her to read to patients in the hospital, or write letters for the illiterate. She never flinched from illness. He had commented on that once to Paddy, during one of their late-night efforts, when diphtheria was taking its toll on the fort's young ones. Paddy had merely raised his tired eyes to Will's tired eyes and commented, “She hasn't a flinching bone in her body, sir.”

Although Will never mentioned the fact to anyone, Frannie's best skill in his hospital on the hill was probably her fine looks. Amazing what a sweet-faced woman could do to brighten a glum group of invalids. He couldn't call her a true beauty—his own fiancée, Madeline Radnor, took the palm there—but there was something so unfettered about Frannie's curly red hair that never seemed to remain subdued into a bun. Or maybe it was her snapping green eyes that could appear so interested in whatever sad story a soldier might choose to unravel. He couldn't have called her figure trim—again, Maddy won that contest. Will had decided Frannie's shape was what should appropriately be called generous.

Frannie Coughlin had always been so willing to listen to his patients that, in a weak moment, he had almost—but not quite—confided in her about Maddy and something that troubled him. Reason had triumphed at the eleventh hour and Will had kept his doubts to himself. Still, he had
considered
talking to Frannie.

Will checked his timepiece. The Union Pacific train
from the west was late, but he wasn't too surprised, considering recent snowfalls. He had allowed himself plenty of time to get home to Philadelphia for Christmas, and then his wedding midway between Christmas and New Year's Day. He had brought along plenty of reading matter—medical journals and even a novel—and he intended to do nothing more than read and eat and watch the boredom of the Nebraska plains go clickety-clack past the window.

That had been the original plan, but he hadn't objected when Paddy Coughlin had asked him to keep half an eye on Frannie, who was sensible and good company, and would give him no grief. There would still be time to read and maybe reflect on his upcoming wedding, which was still troubling him in certain respects.

Will had begun feeling a bit ill-used when he'd received a letter from Lieutenant Ed Hunsaker, acting post surgeon at nearby Camp Robinson, with the news that he would be traveling east, too, with Nora Powell, a captive white woman being returned to relatives in Iowa. Ed's letter had seemed a bit testy to Will, as he complained about having to travel in the company of Nora Powell.
Well, who do you
think
would get that duty, the adjutant?
Will had asked himself, at the time.

Still, Ed would be in charge of Nora Powell, poor woman. Will remembered how talkative the man was and predicted this would cut into Will's reading and leisure time on the journey. Knowing Frannie as he did, Will thought she might just distract Ed and keep him company, to spare “her Captain Wharton,” as her father had once called Will in her presence. He had made her
blush; Will thought the camaraderie between father and daughter was charming.

He glanced over at Frannie, smiling to himself because she always looked so fresh: eyes lively and a smile on her face. Will blushed a little, remembering a dislocated shoulder—also known as Private Jewkes, the Third Cav's worst malingerer—who had once made the cheeky observation that if Captain Wharton, with his downturned mouth, had ever married Miss Coughlin, with her perpetually upturned mouth, their children could be happy and sad at the same time. He had laughed about it later, but not in Jewkes's presence. The private was incorrigible, but observant, Will had to admit.

“Do you think he's coming, Captain?” Frannie asked.

“I don't know. If they come, it'll have to be on the double-quick.”

Man of medicine, he never would have admitted to Frannie that he almost hoped Ed Hunsaker
didn't
arrive with his patient. Not that Nora Powell was a patient, not really. She was more a prisoner, but even that wasn't accurate. Victim? Possibly, except that a true victim wouldn't have fought like a mother tiger to remain precisely where she was, in an Indian camp, with her little half-Indian children, assumed to be the product of rape.

So Ed Hunsaker had written to him from Camp Robinson, where his infantry regiment remained to keep the peace at the Red Cloud and Spotted Tail Agencies. Will had sighed over the high moral tone of Ed's letter. He had experience enough in watching Sioux and their families forced onto reservations. No one was ever happy.

Will had served nearly eight years on the frontier
now, but he had never seen a white woman returning from captivity, as Nora Powell was. Thirteen years a captive of the Ogalala Sioux, she had been found at the Spotted Tail Agency on a tip from the local Indian agent, who thought he had noticed a blue-eyed woman among the Indian women waiting for rations.

When she'd been finally separated from her children— “everyone screaming and crying at once,” Ed had written—she had admitted to being Nora Powell, captured near Julesburg, Colorado, on an Indian raid in 1864. Beyond that, she wouldn't talk, but sat in silence, rocking back and forth and grieving for her children, who had been whisked away from her.

Even now, waiting for Captain Hunsaker and his ‘prisoner' to arrive, Will owned to some uneasiness. Ed's letter, so righteously indignant, had offended him in some strange way he couldn't understand. Obviously there were saddened families who longed to know what had happened to women captured on the trail, and no one would argue with the belief that Nora Powell belonged with her own kind.

He couldn't help his uneasiness, remembering Ed Hunsaker's description of the shrieking and mourning when Nora's children had been pulled from her arms. Hunsaker had almost sounded smug about the whole situation, as though he knew best. Did he? Will had his doubts.

They must have showed on his face. “It bothers you, too?” Frannie asked.

Will glanced at her in surprise. How on earth did Frannie know what he was thinking? “You mean Nora Powell and her children?” he asked, keeping his voice low.

She nodded. Her face reddened. She moved a little
closer. “Captain, if it were me, I don't know if I could bear to part with my children, no matter how they had been conceived.”

He nodded, somehow not surprised that Frannie would feel that way. Paddy Coughlin had told him how attached Frannie became to her little pupils in the enlisted men's school. Maybe women were just naturally that way. He smiled to himself.
And stupidly sensitive post surgeons, too,
he thought.
I think I agree with her.

“I don't think anyone offered her a choice,” he said. “I doubt it ever occurred to them.”
That's a radical statement,
he told himself.
What must Frannie think of me?

He glanced at her and saw nothing but sympathy on her expressive face. She sighed and looked away. He thought she said, “I'm glad it wasn't my decision,” but she spoke softly and he could have been wrong.

Still no train. Will thought of all the complications the Union Pacific was prone to: buffalo on the tracks, hot boxes when the axle overheated, road agents or marauding Indians came to mind first, but seemed the most unlikely. Thanks to bone hunters, the buffalo herds were already shrinking. Pinkerton's had been particularly effective lately against road agents, so that seemed unlikely. And every soldier at Fort Laramie had commented on a definite slowdown to Indian troubles, since Sitting Bull's people were in Canada, and Chief Joseph's Nez Perce had been escorted to Indian Territory.

It's going to be long trip to Philly,
Will thought, as he looked down the track again.
All I want to do is read.

F
our hours later, the eastbound train arrived at precisely the same time as Captain Hunsaker with Nora Powell, her face bleak and her wrists bound. Shocked, Will glanced at Frannie, whose expression mirrored his.

It wasn't lost on Captain Hunsaker, who yanked off his winter cap and slapped his thigh. “Damn it, Captain Wharton, let's see
you
keep her in a wagon against her will!” he shouted, then looked around. Luckily, all the waiting passengers were inside and missed his little scene.

Trust Hunsaker to have no tact at all, Will decided. As senior medical officer at Fort Laramie with some clout over medical events at Camp Robinson, Will had heard plenty from others about Captain Hunsaker's poor bedside manner.

Hunsaker looked to be at the end of his noticeably short tether. “She tried to kill me on the way here! Nora Powell!” He spit the name out like a curse. “She's
as savage as those wild Indians at the Spotted Tail Agency!”

Will gave his subordinate the patented frosty stare he had learned from a former commanding officer and which he had further cultivated to great effect in his years on the frontier. “Captain, remember yourself!” he snapped. “You have only a few minutes to get your luggage on the train with Miss Powell.”

“Not I,” Hunsaker protested.

“Oh, wait a minute,” Will started. “I know you have orders to accompany her to…to…”

“To Utley-damn-Iowa! But I won't. It's going to be your job, Wharton.” Hunsaker reached inside his overcoat. “Here. From my commanding officer.” He stepped back with a triumphant look on his beet-red face.

Will read the official document with a sinking heart. “There is a measles outbreak at Camp Robinson?”

Ed Hunsaker nodded. He knew he had won and began to calm down. “I have to return immediately. She's all yours, Captain.” He glanced at Frannie. “And your wife's.”

“This is Miss Coughlin. I'm escorting her part way home as a favor to her father, Fort Laramie's hospital steward.” Will knew he didn't need to blush over that; it was a common mistake. The post adjutant at nearby Fort Russell had made the same mistake earlier. Did they
look
like a married couple? Will wondered.

Captain Hunsaker glowered at Nora Powell, who glared back. “Just keep her hands tied and turn her over to her relatives,” he said. “Good riddance to her and good luck to you!” Without another glance at his bound patient, he climbed back in the wagon, tossed
out a bedroll and told the amused private at the reins to spring 'em.

Through it all, Nora Powell had stood quietly beside Frannie Coughlin, probably sensing some protection there, even though Frannie had done nothing more than stand between the captive woman and Captain Hunsaker, who possessed all the social skills of a radish.

Will turned to regard his new burden. “We will make the best of this, Nora,” he said. He looked at her bound hands. The rope was tight and her hands bare in the cold. He came a little closer, but not too close, remembering that Indians never liked to feel crowded. She was a white woman, but from the file he had read earlier at Fort Laramie, back when Hunsaker had forwarded the details of her recapture from the Sioux, he knew she had been a captive since 1864. One issue could make this trip better or worse.

“Nora, do you remember English?” he asked. Unlike Hunsaker, he kept his voice low and quiet, because he knew how Indians talked to each other. “Do you?”

After a long moment, which he did not rush, the woman raised her blue eyes to his. She nodded, but was silent.

“Good.”

She had small hands. Will took off his fur-lined gloves and gently placed one of them over her bound hands. “I'm going to leave the bonds on you for now,” he told her. “Let's get you on the train.”

He glanced at Frannie, who smiled at him. It was a peaceful, relieved smile, one he was used to getting from patients—the kind of smile that always made him gulp inside and wonder if they had any idea how little he really knew about anything. His professors at Har
vard had never discussed feelings of inadequacy; maybe Harvard yard birds never felt inadequate. Truth to tell, most of his training in compassion had come much earlier from his dear Grandpa Wilkie, a former Royal Navy surgeon and the best man in his young world until Mama had remarried. Of many medical lessons, compassion remained the one he seemed to have learned the best.

He touched Frannie's arm. “See if you can get her seated. Put her by the window. I'll retrieve the bedroll our thoughtful friend from Camp Robinson tossed out.”

Frannie nodded and put her hand lightly on Nora Powell's back. Will watched them, reminded all over again how Frannie seemed to have learned the same lessons his grandfather had taught him in Scotland. Something told him that the capable Miss Coughlin hadn't really needed an escort home to New York. Something else told him he was glad to have her along, even if people did think she was his wife.

He watched Frannie help Nora onto the train. Maybe she was susceptible to thought waves, because Frannie looked back at him. She winked at him, which made him smile at her, all the while thinking that his fiancée would walk down a street naked before she would wink at a man.

“Frannie, you're all right,” he murmured, before picking up Nora Powell's pitiful bedroll from the slush. He stared down at the little bundle—all of Nora's possessions, except for two children. For one small moment, he thought his heart would break.