Free Sawbones by Melissa Lenhardt

baby-smooth skin. His clear, callow eyes lingered on Anna Warren, obviously pleased at the sight of a beautiful young girl near his own age. Anna’s face was flushed, whether from the fire or the lieutenant’s gaze I did not know. Since she studiously avoided looking in his direction, I had my suspicions.
    “What is your name, Lieutenant?” I asked.
    He was well bred enough to shift his focus from Anna to me with a polite smile. No doubt he considered his duty as an officer and a gentleman to humor the middle-aged spinster. I suppressed a smile. “Lieutenant Beau Kindle, ma’am.”
    “Lieutenant Kindle is readying to see his uncle for the first time,” Sherman interjected. “How long has it been, Lieutenant?”
    “Eight years, sir.”
    “Long time,” Sherman said. “Most like he won’t be as you remember him, Kindle.”
    “Where is your uncle, Lieutenant Kindle?” I asked.
    “He is stationed at Fort Richardson, ma’am. Captain William Kindle,” he said, as if I would recognize the name.
    “Fought with him at Antietam. He got a bad wound there, if I remember correctly.”
    “Yes, sir, he did.”
    I pulled my shawl closer against the chill the name gave me. Antietam. The worst—and best—day of my life. It was the day my father received the wound that would eventually kill him, the last day of my masquerade as a male orderly, and the day I realized my true calling as a doctor. As Sherman took control of the campfire conversation, I wondered if I helped treat Lieutenant Kindle’s uncle.
    Sherman spent the next hour talking to us, asking where we came from, where we were going, and sharing more than a few stories of his time in California. He was an amiable fireside companion while he was on the subject of the joys of the West and the bright future for the emigrants. When conversation turned to his journey in Texas and what he saw of the Indian problem, the aspect of his personality that expected to be deferred to on every subject and had been polished to a bright shine by years of Army command emerged. I watched Amos while Sherman railed against politicians so concerned with ridding their state of “lying, cheating Yankees” that they would fabricate stories of massacres and raids to divert soldiers from the important task of Reconstruction. Pike, at last, could take no more.
    “Fabricate stories? Are you blind, man?”
    “Blind? I have seen nothing to indicate Indians are raiding up and down the line of settlements.”
    “What do you make of the abandoned homesteads you’ve passed since San Antone? You think those people just up and left? These same salt-of-the-earth immigrants you think are going to make the West great? Somehow the lily-livered ones just happened to settle in a line out here? Those that weren’t killed in their homes and in their fields were scared east. And why? Because your precious Army don’t know how to fight them and because Yankee politicians are more concerned with taking their pound of flesh from us than helping us!”
    Sherman’s face resembled so many New York granite statues. “My army knows how to fight. Have you forgotten the lesson the Army taught you rebels six years ago?”
    “I haven’t forgotten the swath of wasteland you left through Georgia, nor has any other right-minded Southerner. Maybe the reason you don’t see anything alarming out here is because it coincides with your idea of warfare.”
    “From what I hear, it’s as likely to be white men as Indians.” When Pike didn’t immediately answer, Sherman pressed his point. “White men paid by ex-Confederates to murder innocent people to draw us away from Reconstruction.”
    “Reconstruction ended here a year ago,” Cornelius said.
    “Indeed. So why are Rebel gangs still raiding?” Sherman asked. “Because the settlers are easy pickings? Or because there is money in it?”
    “They could be carpetbaggers as easy as Rebels,” Amos said. “And don’t you worry. Those white men will swing for