6
When Adam woke, he was sitting upright. His hands were tied in front of him and a blanket had been thrown over his legs and chest. He felt hardwood under him and could smell a wood fire burning nearby. The room was comfortable and the sounds of a town waking up were filtering to him through the walls. Adam's first attempt at opening his eyes was half-successful. Most of his left side felt stiff and swollen from his head to his belt. His hands had been tied so tightly that he couldn't feel them, and he was sure they would be an unpleasant shade of crimson.
"He's comin' around.." A voice said.
"He was ugly before, but he's pure disgustin' now." Another voice said.
A hand reached out and tapped at his right cheek and Adam tried to open the eye on that side.
"That's it, cowboy. Wake up."
Adam found himself once more in the presence of the three men that had attacked him the night before. Now they were dressed in their uniforms and he could see that one of them was a corporal. The big man that had done most of the hitting was a private, though the group seemed to take his lead most of the time.
"Well good mornin', Mister. We sure are glad you made it through the night." The big man said, standing back as if to admire his handiwork. The thinnest of the three, who was also the NCO, stood at the other end of the room by the door, occasionally looking out to the landing. The other sat at the end of one of the beds, grinning at Adam. "We figure we should have a conversation with you, before we turn you loose. Make sure we understand each other."
When Adam tried to open his mouth it hurt, when he tried to clear his throat he coughed, and that hurt. The big man turned to the bed nearest him and picked up a canteen. Adam was helped to drink and the canteen was taken away.
The big man got down on his haunches close to Adam and smiled. "Let's start with who you are, Mister."
"Why don't..you ask Bobby?" Adam said. Half his words were slurred because of the swelling around his lips, but the big man didn't appear to have a problem understanding him.
"Bobby ain't here." The private said.
"Go get her." Adam said.
"He...is sleepin'." The private said, his fingers reaching out to straighten the collar of Adam's coat before the man lightly patted his bruised ribs. The light tap elicited a sharp gasp that pleased the big man a little too much.
"What's your name, cowboy?"
"Cartwright."
"Yeah? Where ya from?"
"Virginia City."
"Why'd you come all the way up here for?"
"Answers."
The big man scratched the side of his nose. "You couldn't've wrote a telegram? Sent a letter?"
Adam closed his eyes and rolled his head back and forth against the wall.
"No, huh? Had to come all the way up here just to pester little ol' Bobby."
"Didn't come for her-" Adam said, and the big man slapped the swollen side of his face with his fingers. It was nothing more than a love tap but it woke discomforts that had been lying dormant and the pain rolled like a wildfire through his head.
"Bobby Miller is a man, Mr. Cartwright. You need to get that through your thick skull. He served honorably in the Union Army, First Ohio, Battery C, and was wounded at the battle of Gettysburg. He was discharged honorably after being transferred to Fort Ruby after the war." The big man put his hand out, grabbed Adam's chin and twisted his fingers, pointing Adam's one good eye toward his own two. "That's in the record books, son. A person could be shot or hung for lying about these things. Understand?"
Adam's eyes trailed toward the corporal at the back of the room, then to the private on the bed, and he saw fierce agreement in their eyes.
It wasn't that the men didn't know that Bobby was a girl, or that they were in denial. They knew, and they'd been hiding it from the U.S. Army and the world for some time.
The big man let his chin go and stood up pacing back away from him.
"Why did you come up here?" The man on the bed asked.
"Ruth Halverson." Adam said, and when the men looked cluelessly at one another he said, "Jane."
That name they recognized, and the big man was quick to ask. "What about her?"
"She was found...dead. She'd had a baby. I wanted to find the father."
"Why?"
Adam swallowed, tired of explaining himself. Tired of recounting the story over and over to have nothing but more hurt come of it. When he didn't answer, the big man came at him again with a boot, kicking his hip and demanding, "Why?"
"Murph...he's had enough." The corporal said from the door.
"He ain't had enough, til I'm done givin' it to him." Murphy said through gritted teeth. He grabbed a handful of hair and dragged Adam's face toward his. "What were you gonna do with that baby?"
"Find her...a home." Adam said.
"A baby don't belong at an army fort, stupid." Murphy said, slapping his face again before he dug his fingers into the bruises on Adam's cheeks.
Enter Thomas Freeman. He came in like a tornado, knocking the corporal off his feet and into the wall, crossing the floor in three long strides and stomping down on the foot of the man on the bed before laying him out with a single punch. Murphy had barely made it to his feet when Thomas punched his big belly, then brought both hands down hard on his head. Adam heard Murphy's teeth clack together before the man went boneless and hit the floor.
"Can you walk?"
Adam shook his head and Thomas pulled him up and over his shoulder. The move dug into bruises and weakened ribs, but Adam knew there wasn't time to be gentle. He clung to the big man as they stormed down the steps and down the alley.
"You best be able to ride." Thomas said, putting Adam down long enough for the eldest Cartwright to put a boot in the stirrup, then shoving him up into the saddle. Adam hooked the rope that was around his wrists under the pommel of the saddle, knowing his fingers wouldn't be any help. Thomas mounted his own horse, took Sport's reins along with the reins of the pack mule, and they took off, heading west.
Adam clung hard to the saddle but it was all he could do. Staying conscious wasn't a guarantee. Staying upright was a luxury. He did what he could to minimize the bouncing and tried to find little pleasures. The distance between himself and Murphy, that was a pleasure. The cold air on his face, another pleasure. The sun, even though it's piercing rays gave him a headache, that was a pleasure. He clung to the good things and tried to make them bigger and more important than the bad things.
They traveled west until noon, then headed south. The snow they had encountered on the way north had since melted, the ground was cold but hard and as night fell it only got colder. Adam had almost slipped from the saddle twice by the time Thomas stopped the animals. He pulled Adam gently off his horse and set him up against the supply bags with a few blankets thrown over him, then took care of the rest of their camp. Adam passed out shivering, then woke to a fire warming his right side, an ice cold cloth, molding to the left side of his face.
Thomas sat on the other side of the fire and moved around to where Adam lay, lifting his head up and helping him drink from a cup. Adam tasted broth and drank eagerly, despite the sting of the salt on his lips.
"Where are we?"
"Northside of Mount Callaghan, twenty miles north of Austin." Thomas helped Adam empty the cup then reached toward the kettle that sat on rocks close to the fire. "You still got all your teeth?"
Adam reflexively felt along his gums with his tongue then glared at the smile Thomas gave him. "I got 'em." He said.
"I shot us a rabbit. Think you can eat some of his meat?"
Adam tried to pull his hands out from under the blanket, and Thomas put the cup and spoon down, helping Adam with the confusion of cloth. There were red, angry lines around his wrists, and his fingers looked bruised at the tips and felt numb in places. But he could close his hands into fists. He held his hands out for the cup and once it was filled with the simple stew Thomas had put together, Adam focused on the mechanics of eating with numb fingers and a swollen face.
Thomas watched until he was sure Adam wouldn't dump the food on himself, then dished a second helping and sat eating.
They were quiet for a bit until a wolf howled, the sound echoing eerily and spooking the horses. Thomas stood and petted the horses until they were calm, made sure the rifle was close at hand, then sat down to finish his food.
"What time is it?" Adam asked, resting between bites.
"Late. Eleven o'clock, maybe."
"Thanks."
Thomas looked at him for a moment then said, "I don't think they would'a killed you. But they didn't like you."
Adam leaned back against the sack propping him up, the warm soup in his belly making him feel a hundred times stronger. "What I know could get them court marshalled, hung, shot, or all three."
"I thought I told you to watch yourself."
"I give the orders, you work for me, remember?"
"Doesn't mean I don't give good advice."
Adam closed his eyes, flexing his hands over and over.
"They break anything important." Thomas asked.
"You mean other than my face?"
"You got all that Cartwright charm, your face ain't important."
"You find out anything?" Adam asked.
"I found rocks and dirt. I turned back and talked to the Shoshone after dark. They told me some interesting things about the town and the soldiers. But most of 'em try to keep their heads down, stay out of the white man's way."
"Anybody say anything about a woman named Suzie Willow."
"Yeah. Said she was dead." Thomas said.
"They say why?"
"She went up against the colonel on one of his forays into the teepee village."
It took Adam a few minutes to put the pieces together.
"Say that again."
"Suzie Willow, she looked after the young squaws in the teepee village. Kept the braves away if the girls didn't want to be pestered. If any soldiers came calling she would drive them off, too. One time she tried to drive off the colonel. The natives say she disappeared after that."
"They sure it was the colonel?"
"Big blue chief of white war palace, sure sounds like a colonel to me."
"How did she die?" Adam asked.
Thomas shrugged. "She was an old woman. She tried to stop the colonel and he probably fought back. They get old and frail, it doesn't take much."
The statement was said with so much candor, Adam watched the big man's face for a moment. When nothing about Thomas' demeanor changed, Adam reminded himself of who Thomas had been before he started working on the Ponderosa.
"I think I know what happened. To Ruth, and Bobby. And Mooney."
"Who's Bobby?"
Adam groaned softly, no longer possessing the energy it would take to explain that one. "There are some pieces missing, but I think I know who Wi-Jah's father is. And I don't think we should tell him, either."
"If I can guess in one, give me ten dollars?"
Adam gently raised a brow, then dug into his coat pocket, remembering belatedly that the soldiers had stolen his cash.
"I'll owe it to ya." He said instead.
"Yeah, along with my wages." Thomas said, waving off the idea. "I'll just have the satisfaction of being right."
Adam looked at him and waited.
"The colonel?" Thomas asked.
"I think so. Bobby said the only name she could give me was Suzie Willow. She said Suzie Willow was dead because she tried to stop 'it'. The way she talked…'it' had happened to her, and to Jane..Ruth..it's complicated."
"Who is Bobby?" Thomas asked again.
Adam plunked the empty cup down on the ground and groaned, pulling the blanket back up over his shoulders. "Ask me in the morning."
He heard Thomas chuckle softly and heard the cup scrape on the ground. As his eyes closed the throbbing in his head came back with a vengeance and Adam struggled to drop off.
He'd known a fellow student at college that had an incredibly detailed memory. He could look at a page of text, or a painting, or scan a restaurant full of people for only a second or two, and then blindfolded, he could tell you every detail you wanted to know. From the tooth missing from the mouth of the woman sitting three tables away, to which heel was more worn on the man that had walked out of the restaurant before he closed his eyes. It had bothered Adam to no end that his friend used his talent mostly for winning bets and playing tricks to catch the eye of the ladies in their circle. He could have studied any discipline and graduated at the top of his class.
Adam had graduated before his friend did, and they had lost touch when Adam returned west, but he had always envied his friend's talent. With his mind as fuzzy as it was and the pain interjecting into every coherent thought, Adam wished he could run his memories back like flipping backwards through a book and view them again for all the details he was missing.
There were so many veiled threats and warnings, and the more he thought about the new information Thomas had given him, the more it made sense that the colonel was at the center of it all. It seemed that this...whatever it was, had been going on long before Ruth had arrived at Fort Ruby, but it seemed she had been the final straw. Her escape back south, to country that she knew and considered home, made more sense, but choosing to go on her own into the high mountains, knowing a baby was on the way…
Maybe he had misjudged her need for solitude. Maybe her leaving him hadn't just been about saving his life, and helping the Shoshone, but about maintaining her independence.
Maybe that need had been all the greater after the white man had betrayed her.
Adam heard Thomas settling down into his blankets with a few satisfied grunts, before he said, "If you aren't going to sleep, I will. You can take that rifle, and keep watch."
Adam wedged an eye open and asked, "How'd you know I was awake?"
"You snore. That busted nose of yours makes it even louder."
"I ought'a fire you."
Thomas laughed, lowered his hat over his eyes, pulled his outsized blanket up over his chest and went to sleep.
Adam grit his teeth and pulled the gun into reach. He fought with the ground and the blankets until he could sit up, and gingerly felt around the damage to his face. Part of him wanted a mirror and part of him figured he was better off without it. His ribs made it hard to do anything without thinking twice about it, and his head wasn't going to stop pounding, but he was alive, and he wasn't at the mercy of Private Murphy.
The way Murphy's anger had built in the room above the mercantile, Adam suspected that Murphy had been fond of Ruth. He wondered if Murphy had ever loved Bobby, or if they looked after her as a sister, or a comrade in arms. Her male "impression" had been believable enough when she was dressed in pants and trousers, and when Adam had no reason to believe that she was anything but what she appeared to be. But hearing her scream, and feeling what he'd felt under the sleeping gown when he'd kept her from escaping through the window, he knew her to be what she was.
With the war over. With her service over, Adam wondered why she would keep up the farce. The clothes in the bottom of her trunk seemed to suggest that she planned to dress and act as a female at sometime. A minute later Adam remembered the payments he'd read about in the news. Money that went from the federal government to veterans that had been wounded in action. Murphy had told him Bobby had been wounded at Gettysburg. Bobby couldn't collect money if it was revealed that she wasn't the soldier that had fought with the 1st Ohio Battery.
Adam turned it over in his head until he couldn't keep awake anymore. He tapped Thomas' shoulder and handed the gun over before he passed out.
When he woke the following morning, ate breakfast and tried getting on his horse on his own, he decided it wasn't his business. He had a decent idea of who Wi'Jah's father was. He had no intention of giving her to the colonel. And he had no intention of ever returning to Fort Ruby.
Hands washed of the whole mess, Adam thought, and for a fleeting 2 hours of painful riding, he believed it.
Ten minutes after they rode into Austin they were under arrest.
"Wire came in from Fort Ruby. Went to all the towns around here, sometime yesterday. Said to be on the lookout for two men matchin' your descriptions exactly. Said you'd tried to murder somebody up at the fort…" The sheriff told them from the freer side of the bars. "Looks more like you was the one that almost got murdered, though."
Thomas chuckled at Adam and Adam sneered back.
The sheriff shrugged. "Anywho, the order was to hold you fellers til someone from the fort could come down and identify ya. I sent a wire just now and we should hear back before too long."
"While you're waiting do you think you could send a wire for us?" Adam asked, barely holding on to civility.
"I suppose. What'd you have in mind?"
Adam wrote out the wire and told the sheriff who to send it to and the man took his time moseying out of the jail and down the street. Adam had little hope that by the time Sheriff Coffey received his wire, and was able to do something about it, he would still be in the jail in Austin, but it was a small start.
The night spent in the jail was only a few degrees more comfortable than the night spent on the hard ground. Before Adam could get around to complaining, however, Thomas pointed out that since they only had two dollars between them, the accommodations of the jail were the best they could have expected that evening anyway.
Grumpy as he was, Adam accepted that that was true, and kept his peace.
By morning Coffey had wired back.
WILL LOOK INTO IT STOP BEN DOING WELL STOP BABY HEALTHY STOP SHERIFF OF AUSTIN TRUSTWORTHY STOP ROY STOP
The sheriff, a man named Gill Henry, was understandably curious about the response to the wire and Adam spent an hour leaning against the cell bars explaining everything that had happened since his father came down off the mountain with a baby in his arms.
Sheriff Henry asked questions every now and then, especially when Adam got to the part about a girl masquerading as a boy. "And you can't...really prove any of this?"
"Not from here, no. Roy is looking into the record of the fort commander, and that Bobby Miller. If there's been any kind of report of misconduct, from the men in the fort, from the civilians in the town of Ruby, even from the natives camped around there...you can bet he's waylaid it, destroyed it somehow. If you could get enough of his victims, or the men serving under him, to testify against him it might convince a jury...the problem is that he's made a habit of covering his tracks by killing people."
"Now.." Henry raised his hand to stall Adam. "How do you expect to prove that?"
Adam sighed and rubbed gingerly at his temple, fighting a pounding ache that wouldn't quit.
"Woodman said Mooney transferred west. You could check that with the army assignments west of Fort Ruby." Thomas said, from under his hat.
"We could but it would take weeks, and all it would prove was that Woodman either lied, or never checked up on Mooney. Besides it wasn't Woodman that told us about Mooney, it was Sgt. Loam."
"Something you oughta know about the army, son. They protect their own." Henry said, his arms crossing over his chest.
Thomas chuckled again, a response that Adam was quickly growing irritated with.
"What I mean is, it might not matter which fort or commander you speak to. They'll be liable to defend this Colonel Woodman to their last breath."
"I've seen that, and I've seen men held accountable by their superiors. The goal is to find the right man." Adam said. "In the meantime, if you let the army take us back to that fort, we won't make it back out again."
"May not even make it back to Fort Ruby." Thomas rumbled from where he was stretched out on his cot.
"I can't go against the army." Sheriff Henry said.
Adam sighed, well aware of the position the sheriff was in. "You could help me develop an insurance policy."
"Insurance?" Henry said, his lips wrinkling in disgust.
"I need a lot of paper, a pen and ink. I'll need to send a letter to Carson City, and you have to promise me that you'll mail it right away."
The sheriff was already rising out of his seat, even as he told Adam he wasn't sure what he had in mind.
"Thomas, I'll dictate while I write, and both of us can work on a copy at the same time."
"You thinking blackmail?"
"More like a safety rope. We'll send one copy to the governor and one copy to a Colonel Wilcox at Fort Buchannan."
"Fort Buchannan is in-"
"Arizona, I know. Still, he'd know who to trust for this sort of thing."
Pen, ink and paper were handed through the bars and for the first time in a long time, Adam worked feverishly to defend his and Thomas' life with the written word.