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The infirmary smelled like death pickled in rubbing alcohol. Charles stepped around the screen and saw the examination tables laden with four shrouded corpses. He glanced over his shoulder at the two sick privates occupying beds on the other side of the room, discomfited at being forced to share their room with the dead.
Sergeant Weatherly hovered just behind him.
Charles pulled back the linen shroud on the nearest of the bodies, revealing a face with a gaping bullet hole just under the left eye. The rear of the skull was collapsed, pulpy wreckage. This wound did not look particularly accidental.
“All like this?”
“Uncanny.” Sergeant Weatherly shifted uncomfortably.
Charles bared the faces of the other three corpses, peeling back just enough sheet to expose their faces. All but one of them with bullet holes in the face. The one with the face still intact, the third corpse he examined, sent a chill up Charles’ neck. Even amid all the death and visceral agony he had witnessed in his profession, especially in recent months, he had never seen such a look of horror, much less one frozen like a sculpture into the face of a dead man.
The last of them had two bullet holes, forehead and eye socket. With the shots fired at such short range, little remained of the rest of the man’s skull.
Charles turned to Weatherly. “How does a single weapon discharge, accidentally, and strike four officers? Did the bullet make some left turns?”
“Can’t say, sir.”
“Who can?”
“They were dead by the time my men arrived.”
Charles pulled back the last man’s shroud fully, revealing an officer’s uniform so crusted with dried blood and pocked by bullet holes that only the rank insignia were recognizable. He counted. “This man was shot ten times! Did the weapon reload itself?”
“Will there be anything else, sir?”
“Only if you intend to tell me the truth, Sergeant.”
Sergeant Weatherly snapped his heels and left, his hard leather heels punctuating each footfall on the rough wooden floor.
After Weatherly had departed, one of the two sick soldiers cleared his throat and said, “How does it look, Doc? Think they’ll pull through?” He grinned awkwardly.
Charles said, “I highly doubt it, Soldier …”
“Private Aaron Spalding, sir,” said the first.
The other began to laugh quietly, the laughter slowly gaining strength and speed like a loose wagon wheel rolling downhill, until the laughter dissolved into a fit of coughing.
Charles crossed the room. “Well, Private Spalding, were you here in the infirmary last night?”
“I was,” Spalding said.
Charles checked Spalding’s pulse. The warmth of the man’s skin indicated a low-grade fever. “Care to tell me what really happened?”
“Woke me up from a dead sleep. I heard this yelling and screaming. A bunch of voices.”
“Saying what, Private?”
“I don’t rightly remember, sir. Sounded like nonsense to me, gibberish you might say. Sounded almost like one of them fiery tent preachers, but no language I ever heard before.”
“It wasn’t the Lakota tongue?”
“No, sir, I hear plenty of that. Even picked up a few words.”
The other man voice was ragged as torn linen. “Yeah. Then the fun started.” Dark circles ringed his bloodshot eyes, and the desolation in them somehow seeped in and turned Charles’ stomach to lead.
Charles tried to shake the feeling away, pouring some water into a tin cup and offering to the second man. “What’s your name, soldier?”
“Garrett, sir.” He took the cup and slurped at it, then winced.
Charles felt Garrett’s pulse. The soldier’s wrist felt like a stick left too long near a campfire. “Take it easy, Mr. Garrett. Mr. Spalding, tell me about the shooting.”
Spalding slid up to sit higher in bed. “I heard three shots. One. Two. Three. Slow, like he was taking his time, you know. Then it got quiet for a bit until I heard a bunch of the boys going to see what happened. I heard Sergeant Weatherly’s voice. Then things got all strange. Sounded like Lieutenant Cox’s voice, but strange, like he weren’t himself. Then a bunch more yelling, and then more shooting, like a goddamn firing squad. What I don’t understand is why they took Captain Lawson’s arm off last night after they brought ’em all in here.”
“Took his arm off?”
“Cut it right off with a hacksaw. I think they went to bury it somewhere.”
Charles returned to the bodies for closer scrutiny. Lawson was the man with the frozen, contorted face. Charles peeled back the shroud fully and found that Lawson’s right sleeve was missing. The arm had been severed at the shoulder. Ivory-yellow bone peeked out, half-buried in dried blood and crusted flesh.
“What on earth?”
The door of the infirmary burst open.
Two blood-spattered apparitions filled the doorway, along with a soldier supporting the shoulder of a badly wounded man.
An instant later, Charles recognized his father. Their eyes met for a long moment. “What’s this?” he said.
His father’s face was always haggard, but now he looked taxed beyond his limits, a manifestation of violence, his blood-spattered face fringed by sweat-stained salt-and-pepper hair, leathery face flushed under days of gray stubble. “Oliver McCoy. Found him wandering a few miles south of here. Gutshot.” Hank’s voice was a hoarse rasp.
“What the hell happened to you?” Charles said.
“That’s a story for later. This boy needs help.”
There were no surgery tables left, all occupied by the dead. “Get him on a bed. How long?”
“Can’t say. Maybe last night.”
Hank and the private hefted the wounded man onto the nearest bed, and Charles hurried around the infirmary gathering instruments.
Charles set his tray of instruments and supplies beside the bed. “Fetch some fresh water, soldier.” The soldier took up a bucket and went away to the well outside. Charles used a scissors to cut away the stiff, blood-crusted shirt.
Oliver lay on his back, stirring faintly, his torso naked, while Charles sponged the dried blood away from the wound. Hank stood nearby, watching.
“At least you’ll help a white man,” Charles said, without looking at Hank.
“Well, that didn’t take long. My back will have me laid up for a week. Now mind your tongue and do your job.”
Oliver convulsed in agony, squeezing out an anguished moan.
Charles pressed Oliver’s shoulders back down. “You just going to stand there, or are you going to lend a hand?”
Hank’s face tightened, but he stepped forward.
Charles said, “Hold him down. Put something between his teeth.” He picked up a pair of forceps and examined the bullet hole. The smell of the dirty wound escaped when Charles pressed open the flesh.
Oliver’s eyes snapped into focus. “What? What are you doing? You can’t! You can’t take it out of me!”
Charles did his best to keep his voice calm and dispassionate, but that smell was still in the air. “Hold still, Mr. McCoy. I need to get the bullet out.” He turned to Hank. “Are you going to hold him down or not?”
“No. No! You can’t cut into me!” Panic turned Oliver’s eyes into empty teacups.
Charles said to Hank, “You’ve been around this sort of thing before. Why are you—?”
“Don’t remind me.” Hank leaned over Oliver, placed two hands like gnarled leather over the young man’s shoulders. “I’m surprised he’s still alive. This runt can’t be more than a hundred-fifty pounds with pockets full of rocks. He’s been wandering around out there in a daze for the good part of half a day. Blood coming out both ends.” He tried to place a strip of leather in Oliver’s mouth, but had to pry it between clamped teeth. “Damnit, boy, open up! We’re trying to help you!” Finally, he managed to wedge the leather in place.
“You look like you shot him yourself.” Charles’ gaze traveled over the plentitude of smeared and splattered gore covering Hank’s face and clothing.
“We had a run-in with some coyotes.”
A question rose in Charles’ mouth, but Oliver lurched under him. “Hold still, son,” Charles said. He took a deep breath and probed the bullet hole with the forceps. Oliver convulsed with a sharp cry. Black and red blood seeped from the wound.
Charles dug the forceps deeper into the dark wound. “Come on. Damnit.” Blood and something not blood seeped to the surface, hiding the tips of the forceps. What was this black fluid? He had never seen blood or bodily fluid take on that color or viscosity. He had treated gunshot wounds before; some of those patients had survived. This one, however—the wound was likely in the liver. With the tip of the forceps, he felt for the hard irregularity of the bullet.
Oliver screamed and lurched, teeth clamping hard into the leather, forcing Charles to withdraw the forceps.
Charles snapped at his father, “You’re not helping!”
Hank shoved Oliver’s shoulders down, teeth gritted.
The leather strap turned Oliver’s words into gibberish.
“Dad! Please! Hold him down!”
Charles dug deeper with the forceps. The bullet had gone deep, deeper than he expected. Maybe deeper than he could reach. He was an adequate doctor—or so he had once believed—but he felt like a clumsy blacksmith pulling hot screws from a raging forge.
Moments stretched on forever. Charles became vaguely aware of Oliver’s continuing screams, but his entire attention was focused on feeling for the hard rasp of lead against the tip of his forceps, the forceps disappearing little by little into Oliver’s abdominal cavity. Oliver screamed and screamed, until, finally, mercifully, he fell silent and still.
In that instant when Oliver’s body went limp, Charles gave one last deep probe.
There it was.
Moments later, he withdrew the lead ball, and dropped it into onto the pan with a .44-caliber clank.
Charles slouched and released his breath.
Hank released Oliver’s shoulders. “Like shoeing a mean stud.”
Charles sagged back, exhausted.
Oliver stirred and spat the strap from his mouth, blood trickling down his cheek and into his ear. “Ferrell. Ferrell shot me. That son of a bitch. He was crazy. I think he tried to bite—god—I don’t even know. I think he’s dead. I think I killed him. Oh, god! Oh, g—” His head lolled to the side again, eyes rolling back.
A moment of calm fell. Charles put down the forceps and massaged his cramped hands. The silence stretched like a hanging rope between him and his father.
Finally Charles said, “What happened to his arm?”
“Bitten by coyotes. Like I said, we had a little scuffle.”
Charles examined the wound. “I may as well put in a couple of stitches while he’s out.” The strangeness in Hank’s voice, the unusual reticence, the ensanguined, exhausted specter that his father looked right now, stirred the unease in Charles’ belly. He took the needle and thread again and quickly sutured the lacerations on Oliver’s forearm. “Were you bitten?”
“No. The kid got the worst of it.”
Sergeant Weatherly strode in, glowering, Private Anderson at his side. “Doctor. A word, please.”
“A word, indeed.” Charles wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his forearm and felt his resolve harden.
Sergeant Weatherly motioned for Charles to follow and the two walked outside. Weatherly thumbed over his shoulder. “Who is that man?”
Hank stepped into the doorway and leaned against the jamb with one hand, the other on his pistol. “His name is Oliver McCoy. His pa owns the Bar-M. I found him walking a few miles south of here, gutshot and mostly dead.”
Weatherly glared. “What’s his condition now?”
Charles growled through his lips. “Still gutshot and mostly dead.” How much callousness could he withstand in one day? “He might make it. He might not. He’s going to need a soft bed for a few days.”
Weatherly looked back and forth from Charles to Hank. “Major Wilson might have a problem with that.”
Charles kept his voice as even as he could. “Major Wilson might.”
Weatherly’s mouth tightened. “If the Major says he goes, he goes.”
“Like the Indian woman?” Charles said.
Sergeant Weatherly and Charles locked eyes. Charles hated blind submission to authority, hated it especially when the authority was just as blind and stupid. Weatherly chewed on a plug of tobacco.
Charles stepped closer. “Before you run off to tattle, perhaps you can explain to me why Captain Lawson is missing an arm?”
Weatherly’s eyes widened, and he stepped back. “I don’t—”
“Someone removed it last night. Post mortem.”
“You really need to ask—”
“Nonsense, Sergeant. I know you’re under orders, but don’t lie to me.” Charles felt the anger brewing like black coffee. The idea that they wanted his help, but would still lie to him, galled him to the verge of rage.
Weatherly chewed and swallowed. “I—”
Hank said, “You had better tell him, boy. He’s stubborn that way.”
Charles stepped closer again, sensing that Weatherly’s resolve was weakening. “If I’m to help you, I need to know everything.”