Page 27 of For This We Are Soldiers
Ted made his own entries in the day’s record book, wondering if Millie Drummond would be interested in civilian life. During a glorious afternoon of free time recently in Bismarck after picking up the upriver mail at Fort Lincoln, he had wandered to Gilhooly’s Photography. He had spent several hours watching the man work, and even assisted in the darkroom. The Irishman assured Ted he had a knack for developing and told him to stop by when he was next downriver, and try the actual camera.
“I could use a dependable assistant with a sure eye and temperate ways,” Martin Gilhooly told him when they shook hands and parted. “Too many drunks in Bismarck.”
“I never really thought about a career besides the army,” he had said to Mr. Gilhooly.
“Maybe you should, boyo,” had been the Irishman’s reply.
That “maybe you should” followed him around for the rest of the afternoon in Bismarck. Floating a few feet off the ground, Ted Sheppard had even stopped at Larsen’s Jewelry and Fine Goods and looked at wedding rings, the delicate kind that would appear to good advantage on the finger of a lass with red hair. He found just the ring, because he had that sure eye, but those temperate ways kept him from buying it.
He closed the record book and wondered if Millie Drummond preferred the moveable life of a sergeant’s wife to something more settled in a place like say, Bismarck, married to a civilian with ambitions to open his own photographic studio someday. Ted knew he would make sergeant if he re-upped in two years for another five-year enlistment, but the idea of a future other than the army intrigued him. Would it intrigue Millie Drummond? And how would he really know if she cared for him? A man couldn’t just ask, after all, or could he?
So he stewed and fretted, and did his duty when called upon that afternoon. Not until shadows were lengthening across the buildings did the matter of the hospital cows come to Corporal Sheppard’s attention again.
He was filling in at the guardhouse next door while the sergeant of the guard hurried to some unnamed crisis in K Troop’s barrack. The prisoners sent to clean up the parade ground after the hospital cows’ indiscretions had returned to their cells. At ease, Corporal Sheppard stood in the doorway, watching another messenger from the general vicinity of Major Brotherton’s quarters head his way, his stride purposeful and no smile on his face this time.
After a salute, Ted opened the latest memo, where the words, “Report to me at once!” fairly leaped off the pale blue paper.
“The hospital?” Ted asked the orderly, who nodded, and finally permitted himself a smile.
“What a bumble broth this has become,” the orderly said. “Less than an hour ago, the hospital steward showed up here with three dollars. Major Brotherton had me release the cows from debtors prison—”
“Which should have ended everything,” Ted finished, ever hopeful.
“Only beginning! Captain Crampton had sent along his assistant steward to milk the ex-convicts right there.” He gave an empty-handed gesture. “Only one quart for the three of them.”
“Someone else milked the cows,” Ted filled in.
“Captain Crampton is practically jumping up and down on his desk. He fired off a memo to the CO, and here I am,” the orderly said. “The major wants you on the double, and I am to stay here and fill your position until you return.”
Ted didn’t feel the matter demanded a dead run, but he did hurry the long distance to the field officer’s quarters. He was met at the door by Major Brotherton, looking as cold-eyed as Ted had ever seen the man.
The major nearly threw the dispatch at the corporal of the guard. “Take this to that … that quack who calls himself a surgeon!” Brotherton fairly shouted. “You are excused from retreat ceremony!”
“Sir?” Ted asked, startled at this hiccup in the day’s order of business.
“I am ordering you to go from company mess hall to company mess hall. Check every pot and see if you can figure out who milked the surgeon’s cows.” The major gestured to the dispatch in Ted’s hand. “I’ve told Captain Crampton to prefer a charge of falsehood against his steward and send the man to the guardhouse. On your way, Corporal.”
The headache began before Ted covered half the distance to the hospital. It grew quickly worse when the post surgeon read the latest memo, cursed and swore and summoned his steward, a circumspect fellow and a bit of a priss.
As Corporal Sheppard tried to make himself small in the corner of the surgeon’s office, Captain Crampton demanded to know exactly when the steward had seen the cows behind the hospital and not on the parade ground, as Major Brotherton claimed and all signs pointed.
Corporal Roach stammered, hemmed and hawed, and admitted he might have been wrong about his assertion.
“I’d prefer not to satisfy the major by charging you with anything, Roach,” the post surgeon said finally, his voice more calm. “Might you have been mistaken about the time you claim to have seen the cows behind the hospital?”
“Quite likely, sir,” Roach replied, not a man to press a highly charged issue, whatever the truth. “I must have been wrong.”
“Dismissed,” Captain Crampton said. “Go … go empty a bed pan.”
Roach left with a salute and showed a clean pair of heels in his rapid retreat. The post surgeon scribbled another dispatch, looked at it, and printed a return message. “If he can’t read my writing, tell the man my steward was mistaken,” he said, leaning heavily on the desk and looking much older than he had looked only this morning. “I still want to know who milked those cows and where the milk is.”
“Major Brotherton has ordered me to check every company mess kitchen and see what I can learn, sir,” Ted assured him. “I’ll find your culprit.”
Captain Crampton gave him a wan smile and sent him packing too. After a swift return to a seething commanding officer, and an even quicker report to the sergeant of the guard, who had returned to the guardhouse, Ted Sheppard began his search for the criminal who had milked three hospital cows. He also wondered when the army had gone from a fearsome arm of the government’s will to a carnival sideshow, at least at Fort Buford.
Word has a way of silently circulating around a typical garrison. Ted was met at each mess hall by a smiling company sergeant and the weekly cook, who showed him every pot and let him peer into every pan and cookstove oven. Fort Buford was a six-company post. By the time he completed his search and each company had finished supper—and who knows, eaten or drunk the evidence—Ted Sheppard found himself back at Major Brotherton’s door after Retreat, unable to claim success.
If he had been bamboozled by an entire company, one of whose inmates had scavenged hospital milk from hospital cows, the bamboozlers won that day. Ted found nothing suspicious anywhere, beyond K Troop’s larger-than-normal pile of raisins, which suggested someone had dipped into the commissary supplies unannounced. As he had not been sent to confiscate raisins, Ted overlooked it.
