FIND A WAY
Arte couldn't be dying. Not here. Not now, when the war was almost over.
"Hold on, hold on," Captain James West urged, though the unconscious man couldn't possibly hear him. It was an instruction for West himself also as he struggled to hold his badly wounded friend steady while the army wagon found every rut and pothole on its trundling way to the Petersburg military hospital. Captain West had never been a praying man before, but he found himself thinking a prayer now. Please don't let my friend die . . . . West did his best to cushion Captain Gordon as the wagon's wheels went over yet another vicious bump. His eyes looked down at the bloody patch of fabric covering Arte's side and his heart sank. A limb, if injured, could be sawn off to save a man's life. But you couldn't saw off a torso. If the bullet had pierced a vital organ, Captain Artemus Gordon would be just one more corpse among so many . . . .
Jim West had already lost three of his childhood friends to this bloodiest of conflicts. He didn't have many more friends left to lose.
Not Arte, please . . . . Not him too . . . .
After what seemed like an eternity, the wagon trundled into a city of tents, outposts and makeshift shacks, and pulled up to one particular tent larger and sturdier-looking than the others, set slightly apart from the rest of the encampment. Nurses, a few doctors, soldiers and unidentified civilians bustled around this center of activity. They had arrived at the hospital unit at last. West and the wagon's driver shouted for assistance above the lesser din and got it. A pair of men accompanied by a hatchet-faced nurse rushed over with a stretcher. Jim helped lift his wounded friend onto the stretcher. He recognized the nurse and some of the doctors here too. He'd done all that he could; he knew he was putting Arte in good hands. It would have to be enough.
"Oh! Oh, Artemus!"
Jim's heart sank again as he heard the pained cry behind him, one that sounded like the voice of an elderly woman. Someone else had recognized the injured officer he'd just brought in. It's not as if Captain Gordon's first name was a common one.
Jim turned around and saw a group of elderly women all wearing the somber black dresses standard among the Union's older camp volunteers, many of them widows or mourners. It was obvious which of this group had cried out. One woman, paler, grayer and more withered than the rest had stepped forward and was reaching out toward the stretcher, held back by her companions.
"Artemus!" she called again, heedless of the fact that Captain Gordon couldn't hear her. Her eyes glistened as the stretcher was borne away into the hospital tent. She seemed on the verge of collapse.
Must be family, Jim thought grimly. Relatives of soldiers often volunteered as a chance to visit their loved ones. But in such a circumstance as this! For his friend's sake, Jim felt the need to offer this woman what aid and reassurance he could.
"You know Captain Gordon, Ma'am?" he asked, trying to figure out who she could be. He knew that both of Artemus' parents were still living, but this lady looked so old; too old to be his mother, Jim would have thought. Dear god, a grandparent maybe?
"Captain?" she asked tremulously, gaze still following the vanishing stretcher. One of the other ladies pressed a handkerchief into her hands, but she wrung it in them rather than raising it to her face. "Surely it is my nephew Artemus Gordon!"
"You didn't tell us he was an officer, dear," the woman who'd handed her the handkerchief said, sounding impressed. As if that could be any consolation at a time like this. "Oh dear," she said, realizing it herself.
The old woman paid her no attention but kept staring in the direction of the hospital tent, transfixed in a terrible way. Jim wished he knew what to do or say in this situation. He felt as helpless as the old lady right now, and wasn't prepared when that watery but razor-sharp gaze turned to him.
"Will he live, Captain?" she asked, knowing his rank at a glance.
I sure hope so!
He hesitated for several seconds, trying to find the right words. He couldn't give her an answer he didn't have yet himself, and a lie right now might prove crueler than any truth.
"I don't know," he admitted. "I'm hoping he will." He nodded toward the hospital tent. "We've got the finest medical staff in the whole Union Army in there. If anyone can get the job done right, they can." And you damn well better live, buddy, after what I just went through to bring you back! He was trying to think what else he could tell the old lady when the hatchet-faced nurse came back out of the tent and made a beeline for him.
"All right," the nurse said. "We've got Gordon in with the surgeons. Now it's your turn, Captain West."
"Me?" The young captain had forgotten about the slight grazing injury he'd taken. Most of the blood on his uniform had belonged to his friend. Most, but not all. "This is just a scratch!"
"And it's my job to make certain it remains that way!" the nurse snapped, taking him by one arm and threatening to yank him along into the tent if she had to. "Untreated small wounds become untreatable large wounds given time – not on my watch, thank you!"
Recalling that this particular nurse – Janet, he remembered was her name – wasn't a good one to cross, he gave in, but not without a backward glance at the distressed elderly aunt of his friend and a polite nod to her. He saw she was looking at him in a curious way, as if trying to remember him from somewhere, though he knew he had never met her before. But he didn't have time to wonder about it long before the medical tent and its nursing staff enveloped him to deal with his 'scratch.'
An hour, two pills, a dozen or so stitches and approximately three lectures later, Jim emerged from the tent into the open, if not more pleasant, air of the Petersburg military encampment. He didn't have to wonder where Artemus Gordon's aunt had gotten to, because she was still there, waiting outside the tent in anxious anticipation of any crumb of news she could find out about her loved one.
Poor old woman. You'd think someone would have at least brought her a chair in all this time. Then he looked and saw someone had brought her a camp chair. She just wasn't using it. She'd either gotten up the moment she recognized him coming out of the tent or she'd been standing, maybe pacing, all this time and wasn't as frail as she looked – not physically, anyway. Knowing she'd be expecting some word from him, he decided to save her the trouble and walked over to her.
"I haven't heard anything yet," he said. But he had made darn sure that if there was any information it would be brought to him straightaway – and first. "Ma'am, if you'd like, there's a tent for visitors not far from here that'd be a lot more comfortable." And less in the way of medical staff, he thought. "I promise you, as soon as they let me know, I'll let you know. Would that be all right?"
The old woman glanced around at their surroundings as if reading his thoughts and sighed.
"I suppose I'd better," she said. "It's very kind of you to be so considerate of an old biddy like me. You're his friend, aren't you? I heard that nurse call you Captain West."
"James West, Ma'am. Your nephew calls me Jim. You can call me that too if you like."
"Thank you, Jim." She smiled a bit sadly as she allowed him to show her the way to the visitor's tent. "He's written about you to us in letters. He didn't tell us you were a captain." She shook her head. "He didn't tell us he was a captain either."
"He probably didn't want to worry you," Jim said. It had become common knowledge, even among the public, that captaincy wasn't the safest rank to hold. When Jim first had earned that exalted status at age twenty, he'd been so full of pride he practically wanted to paint it as an announcement on store walls. He'd also been relieved to regain the rank after a brief demotion. But he had aged in more than mere time since then and understood. Artemus wouldn't have been the only officer not to tell his family everything. Given that Arte worked for military intelligence, he probably wasn't telling them much of anything. This old lady's hair appeared to be naturally curly, but if it hadn't been, the stories Arte could've told her would be enough to curl it all right. Jim had cause to know.
Funny, he thought. Or not so funny, but strange. He and Artemus Gordon had spent this war serving in entirely separate units, yet their various adventures had caused them to cross paths time and again. They'd saved one another so many times it could practically be accounted a hobby. It was an odd basis for a friendship, but Jim had come to regard Arte as more of a brother than his real flesh-and-blood brother. A kindred spirit, that's what he was.
"Goodness!" the elderly woman at his side broke through Jim's silent reverie as they reached the visitor tent. "I didn't even properly introduce myself!" If she was embarrassed, it wasn't showing though. "I am Maude Gordon. I'm Artemus' great aunt, really. His father's father's sister."
A spinster great aunt from the sound of it. Well, that explained her age. Years weren't all that set her apart from the other volunteer women in appearance. Her clothing was almost identical to theirs, if a little more careworn, but now he noticed the large obsidian necklace that she wore around her neck, with a not-quite-matching silver locket attached. One of the larger stones had a chip in one corner, and the locket had a trace of tarnish, aged like their owner but dramatic. Maybe that was a family trait? Arte was always dramatic.
Inside the tent, some of the rest of Great Aunt Maude's flock was already gathered, seated at a table exchanging gossip and drinking tea. They hailed her over as soon as she and her escort came in. To Jim's embarrassment, instead of her sitting down to join in, she insisted on them clearing a place for him while she went and fetched Jim some tea and cookies!
"Captain West has been wounded as well," she told them.
Immediately, before Jim could make his escape, he was surrounded by black-dressed biddies clucking over him with concern and trying to wait upon the 'poor, brave young man' while other Union soldiers – some of them his own – looked on with amusement. Even if unrelated, soldiers in the camp often spent time with such volunteers to be reminded of the mothers, aunts and grandmothers they'd left back home.
"It's just a scratch!" Jim insisted, blushing hot enough to make some of the flock fret aloud that he might be flushed with fever.
"A scratch, Cap'n?" Corporal Tobin mock-grimaced. "Last time you fetched a scratch we had to carry you in like poor Cap'n Gordon! I reckon this can't be above a paper cut."
Thank you so much, Charlie!
The corporal ought to know, though, since he'd been part of the rescue party retrieving Captain Gordon from the Confederates, hopefully in time.
Don't you let us down now, Arte!
Artemus Gordon hadn't let Jim or his small company down when they'd been the ones facing capture and imprisonment and possible death. That made his survival all the more important to all of them now as victory seemed nearly at hand. As the horror stories filtering out about Susquehanna and Andersonville did too.
With effort, Jim managed to extricate himself from the attention of Great Aunt Maude's friends before he could be all but drowned in tea and sympathy. He was exhausted, achy and feeling every fraction of his 'scratch' as Charlie Tobin, all mockery gone, assisted him back to his tent.
"Captain West?" another voice hailed him as they were nearly back at the tent. The two men turned around and saw a medic from the hospital section jogging toward them. Jim saw right away that the man was grinning a bit rather than wearing a mournful expression, thank heavens.
"Good news?"
The medic nodded.
"Nurse Janet said I was to find you and tell you straightaway. Captain Gordon came through his operation and the doc says the bullet didn't do no real damage inside." The man paused to catch his breath for a few seconds. "Says if he doesn't get an infection, he'll pull through okay."
"Thanks," Jim murmured, though the medic waited barely long enough to hear it. Message delivered, messenger was already trotting back to where more medical duties awaited. Jim and Charlie exchanged cautious glances. This was good news, but that was also a mighty big 'if' and both men knew it.
"Charlie . . . ."
"Say no more, Cap'n," Tobin held up a hand. "I'll go tell the Cap'n's auntie. You stay here and rest up that scratch of yours so we don't have both of you in the infirmary at once. The docs and nurses'd never be able to handle that much trouble!"
"Thanks, Charlie," Jim grinned with weary relief. Knowing he could trust Corporal Tobin with the assignment – as well as Tobin cadging himself some extra tea and cookies in the process – the bone-weary Captain West stumbled his way into the tent and collapsed onto his bed.
[WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW]
Jim didn't know how many hours he'd slept. He hadn't paid attention to what time it was when he'd finally been able to drift off to sleep, but it was full daylight now and no bugler or other troublemaker had come to awaken him. Some more thoughtful party had left a tray with bread, cheese and only slightly burnt bacon on a bedside table for him. He didn't know whether he owed such a leisurely waking to lax discipline or his own ferocious reputation. He didn't care. He wolfed down the food, tried to make himself semi-presentable without bothering to shave and left his tent in search of some coffee. He found the coffee – and a grimmer looking Corporal Tobin outside the nearest mess tent. It looked a mess too.
"Morning, Charlie," he said, reaching for a mug of the coffee, which he knew would be almost as dreadful as if he'd made it. "Trouble?"
The corporal nodded and frowned.
"Bit of bad action a couple of miles away last night. Their loss, not ours, but a couple dozen more wounded just brought in. And . . . Cap'n's taken a turn for the worse."
Jim's heart sank. He didn't need to be told which captain.
"Fever?"
Charlie answered with another silent nod.
"Damn. Oh, damn . . . ."
That was it then. Once a fever set in, there was one way it almost always went.
"You did everything you could, Cap'n," the corporal told him. "We all did."
Jim knew that, but it didn't make him feel any better right now.
"Has his aunt been told?"
Corporal Tobin nodded.
"She's with him now."
"Damn." That poor, poor old woman! They'd come so close to saving Artemus and now . . . . Jim downed the alleged coffee in two gulps, but even that couldn't warm up the cold pit in his stomach at a time like this. He dropped the tin mug into a bin with others of its kind and took off at a brisk jog for the infirmary, doing his best to keep one hand clamped over his stitches as he ignored the slight pulling pain his hasty pace caused.
The infirmary tent was vast – vaster even than the main hospital tent, but then, it had to be. The war created casualties too numerous to count, usually in places where regular buildings to house them all were insufficient or nonexistent. Charlie Tobin hadn't been exaggerating about the dozens of new wounded men either. The infirmary was a hive of activity with overworked nurses bustling about tending to patients with the aid of volunteers and whatever low-ranking soldiers could be spared to assist. In the semi-organized chaos, it would have been hard to find Artemus Gordon's bedside if Jim hadn't already had a pretty good idea where to look. The war had been long enough and terrible enough that even a chaotic military had learned how to organize so many casualties. There was an isolated quarantine tent for the coughing, hacking and pox-stricken patients who posed a serious danger to others, segregated from the rest of the wounded. Few visitors or volunteers went there. The main of the infirmary was sorted by heaviness of the wound. The lightly wounded, expected to return to duty soon, got the most casual company and needed the least nursing in spite of the occasional flare for melodrama. The more tender-hearted and squeamish volunteers spent most of their time among those. The more heavily wounded but responsive, many of them amputees, were ranked together. The remainder of the volunteers and most of the nurses and spiritual counselors were there.
Arte was not among those patients.
Jim steeled his stomach for where he was headed – the section containing the most seriously wounded – the soldiers least expected to live and often the most maimed and disfigured. Very few visitors came here. Fewer still stayed for more than minutes – or seconds. Here were the greatest of horrors of combat. The men with jaws or whole faces shot off. The burn victims. The infected, gangrenous and putrid. The gurgles, the sights, the smells.
Jim had been in such ward sections only twice before – once for a dying childhood friend, once for one of his men. He could hardly bear to think of Artemus dying in such a place too, among such company, but bear Jim would now. If only yesterday's optimistic report had held, if not for that fever . . . .
James West was the bravest of men, but grateful he didn't have to look around too much at the surroundings as he made his way to the bed marked out by one lone old woman in a black dress. Artemus Gordon was in that bed all right, pale as the sheets and moaning softly. One of his arms was in a cast as was one of his legs – Jim had known there was more wrong with him than just the bullet wound. In spite of the groaning noise he was making, he did not appear conscious as his great aunt lovingly mopped a cool, damp cloth across his fevered brow.
"Hello, Captain West," Maude Gordon said softly, almost making Jim start. He'd thought she hadn't seen or heard him coming, so intent on the patient, but obviously she had.
"G-" No, it wasn't a good morning, was it? Jim decided to greet her in the same way. "Hello. Miss Gordon, how is he?"
"As you see," she sighed, dipping and wringing the cloth in a bowl of cold water. She spared Jim a glance only briefly before turning her gaze back to her beloved patient. "I came because his poor mother had a vision of some ill befalling him, which it has. George would not allow her to leave, so I promised her I would check on Artemus myself. George wasn't happy about that either, but he cannot order me as he does Sarah."
Something in her tone gave Jim the impression that no one could order Maude Gordon where she did not want to be ordered. There was something of a cross between a General and a school marm about the old woman.
"It's as well the bullet didn't do more harm," she sighed again. "The nurses and I will have enough trouble pulling him through this fever and the rest as it is."
Pull him through? Did she really think she could do that? Maybe she did. Poor old woman hadn't been in the camp long. Obviously she didn't know just how grim the prognosis was when such wounds became infected and fever set in. Someone would have to tell her. Jim swallowed hard.
"Ma'am . . . ."
Abruptly, Miss Gordon whipped one hand up to silence Jim with a gesture. In the other, she continued to hold the cloth to her nephew's forehead, but with a flexibility that belied her age, she turned around to fix Jim with a stare that came straight out of her school-marmish side.
"If you are about to tell me that I do not understand the severity of Artemus' wounds, or worse, that there is no hope for him, Captain, then I would ask you to hold your tongue! I have already heard this information from others, and I will have no more of it!" she snapped. On the bed, the patient moaned again, and she turned her attention fully back to the task at hand. "Artemus will live, Captain West," she insisted. "He is a Gordon through and through. Moreover, I have ordered him to survive, and mischief-maker he may be, but he knows better than to disobey his dear old auntie. Don't you, my dear?" She smiled down at the wounded man affectionately.
Artemus couldn't have heard his great aunt's words, yet something in his unconscious moaning sounded almost like a mumble of assent. Great Aunt Maude clearly took it as such.
"Of course you do, young scamp. And we will get you all better again, won't we?"
Again, Arte seemed to mumble an agreement.
"There, Captain, do you see?" the old woman nodded. "Artemus is not giving up on Artemus. I am not giving up on him either. And I firmly expect you to remain in his camp as well."
Jim knew the sound of an order when he heard one and stood up a little straighter before answering.
"Yes, Ma'am."
"Good. That's settled then." She seemed satisfied with that answer, then shook her head. "And here I am forgetting my manners again! For shame! I did not inquire how you were feeling today, Captain West."
"Uh . . . better," Jim stammered. Oddly, he was feeling better for this brief conversation in this horrendous ward. He shouldn't. He knew the odds were still stacked against his friend. But if anyone had enough force of will to move mountains, or to help Arte recover from such deadly injuries, it seemed as if this not-so-frail, elderly woman might just be the one to do it. "Better."
"Good! I am very glad to hear it, Captain."
"Jim," he reminded her, feeling slightly like a guilty schoolboy for doing so.
"Jim," she repeated. She turned toward him again with a softer expression this time. "I do hope you will forgive my rudeness, Jim. It's just that when I hear people dismissing my nephew's chances or those of our other fine boys at the very time we most need to be giving them encouragement and hope, it makes me boil! And you don't want to simmer a Gordon, young man – especially this Gordon." She pointed to herself. "I've a good streak of my mother's Maitland stock in me as well, so if my nephew's fever thinks it can out-stubborn me, I'll learn it better!"
Jim wanted to believe she could. Maybe he should be hoping instead of mentally sizing up a shroud while his friend was still among the living. He'd never been one to give up in the heat of battle. This was a different sort of battle, with despair as well as infection for an enemy. It was mostly going to be Arte's fight, but he shouldn't have to fight it alone.
"Is there anything I can do to help?" he asked.
She nodded.
"Talk to him, Jim. Positive talk. Cheerful talk, for him and these other lads as well." She waved her free arm about the ward where the other seriously wounded patients, some of them terrible to look at, appeared to be listening. "Tell others to do the same. These men are injured, not dead or deaf. We must give them hope!"
One of the other patients, a burn victim, moved slightly and garbled a "hear, hear!" in response. Jim gave that patient an acknowledging nod and grinned.
"Miss Gordon, you've missed your calling," Jim said. "You should have been a preacher, or a General."
"As I find both of those professions horrid, I'll settle for being a retired schoolteacher, thank you," she answered, fingering her obsidian necklace.
So that's how she has eyes in the back of her head, Jim thought. It seemed to be a trait several of his own schoolteachers had possessed as well.
"Not a bad calling either," he admitted.
She smiled and turned back toward her nephew, mopping his hot forehead again.
"My best student," she told Jim. "Also the greatest rascal. Smarter than a whip and all full of ginger. A good heart though, and brave. He reminds me very much of my youngest brother."
"Would that be his grandfather?"
She shook her head and gently ruffled Artemus' hair.
"No. George's father was my oldest brother, also a George. My youngest brother was called Jack – Jacob, really – after my mother's father. Artemus is the very image of him, his Uncle Jack. Jack was a mischief-maker with a good heart too. I miss him greatly." She smiled down at her nephew. "All the more reason to make sure you live, my dear Artemus. So you can go on making mischief and making people smile, just like your Uncle Jack."
Whether Artemus agreed or not, he appeared to settle into an easier sleep. Jim didn't know exactly how long Aunt Maude had been by his bedside, but he could see the fatigue in the old woman's face and knew that she needed a break. He offered to take her place while she got some fresh air and refreshment – and some rest, he hoped. He was grateful when her practical side once again took him up on his suggestion. Then he settled into the chair she'd been occupying and took over the duty of cooling down his friend's forehead. Jim also did just as Aunt Maude suggested, speaking optimistically as if Arte could hear every word, and found himself thinking more optimistically in the process. After all the dreadful things he'd seen in this war, he'd almost become afraid to let himself have hope. But they should have it now, shouldn't they? The Union was winning at long last. The end of the war, of the Confederacy and slavery was in sight.
The country reunited and no more slavery. Think of that.
Jim reminisced out loud about past adventures only a little. Mostly he talked about the bright future he saw coming – a future worth living for. And just in case Arte needed any further inducements to survive, Jim raised some topics Aunt Maude definitely wouldn't have approved of, he thought. Like the farmer Jim and Charlie Tobin had met who had these really beautiful daughters . . . and a few more delightful dating prospects, as well as dining and drinking ones too.
Was it just Jim's imagination or did he have the unconscious man's attention somehow? Feeling he was on the right track, he began telling Arte about these saloon girls up in St. Paul who could . . . .
"That sounds anatomically improbable, Captain West, as well as inadvisable for the patient," a doctor commented from behind, startling Jim. "However, do give me the address of that saloon when the war's over."
Jim made way so the doctor could examine his patient, but hung back wanting to know the results. The physician didn't seem to mind the audience but went straight to work, carefully undoing the dressing over the bullet wound and examining the handiwork of the previous day before covering it over again with a fresh dressing.
"Doesn't appear infected," the physician frowned. "Too soon to tell, of course."
"Why does he have a fever then?" Jim asked.
The doctor shook his head.
"Also too soon to tell. Could be any number of things. This man has multiple injuries, and the human frame can bear just so much." He turned to face Jim. "I understand that you fought quite a battle getting this man back after he fell in the field, Captain."
Jim nodded.
"Care to tell me about it?"
"No," Jim answered. He didn't want to think about that right now. He wanted to go back to giving Arte descriptions of the pretty saloon girls up in St. Paul. Anything was better to talk about than combat. Why did other people always want to pry about the gruesome details he couldn't escape even in his sleep?
Fortunately, this doctor didn't try too hard. He stepped aside to let the young captain resume taking the seat by the patient's bedside and asked no more questions. Jim didn't ask the doctor that most crucial question about whether his friend would live or not. Like Aunt Maude, he'd decided he wasn't going to accept any answer but yes.