Page 35 of For This We Are Soldiers
“You just rest, Captain Perkins,” the woman said. “You’ll be at Fort Laramie before you know it.”
She turned to Sergeant Chandler and made a washing motion with her hands as though she were Mrs. Pontius Pilate. “You get him out of here,” she whispered to Hiram. “All he did was complain last night! Over dinner he informed me that anyone who would eat reconstituted apricots would probably drink his own bath water.”
“He didn’t, ma’am!” Hiram exclaimed in amazement. He had to turn away, hoping that the paymaster wasn’t peering through some break in the canvas.
“He did, and right to my face! I thought Ed was going to choke on his string beans! The water was too alkaline, the bed too hard, our children too ill-mannered, the coyotes too noisy. You name it, he disliked it.” She moved closer to the sergeant. “My husband told me to get rid of him. Just make sure I get the bedding back.”
With that, she flounced back across the parade ground, followed by her servants.
“Give that lady a medal,” Lieutenant Shaw said to the universe at large. “Now the big baby is ours. Sergeant, lead out.”
Captain Perkins was theirs, but Mrs. Coates’s influence continued to be felt throughout the day, as the little escort and the ambulance trailed beside the Platte River. When they halted for lunch and Hiram looked in the ambulance, he saw the paymaster clutching a half-empty bottle of Kentucky sipping whiskey that Lieutenant Shaw swore he had seen on the Coateses’ sideboard.
“I have to hand it to the ladies,” Shaw said as he quietly closed the ambulance door on the snoring, sodden mess within. “I wonder, Chandler, do you think Miss Hinchcliffe would handle such a matter so cleverly?”
Hiram thought Birdie O’Grady would, but he had his doubts about the lieutenant’s light-o’-love, and hesitated.
“I rather doubt it too,” Shaw said quietly, which gave the sergeant food for thought through the afternoon, as the escort moved along with all deliberate speed, even when June snow—the wet, heavy kind—began to fall.
Looking no better than probably ninety percent of Fort Fetterman’s recently paid garrison, Captain Perkins emerged from the ambulance when they made a muddy evening camp along the Platte River. He blinked like a mole three years’ underground, and retreated to the ambulance again, which the driver swore was beginning to stink of vomit and other unfortunate leavings.
“Just two more days,” Hiram told him. “He’ll be someone else’s problem then. At least the snow has stopped.”
Lieutenant Shaw glared at him, no more communicative than the paymaster.
I am surrounded by idiots,Hiram thought, and not for the first time. He spent the rest of the evening chatting with his corporal and privates, enjoying the soldiers he thought of as his. He had trained them, fought with them, and knew their value. He saw his own value in their eyes, and it warmed him as a fire never could.
A
The paymaster was destined to be their problem for longer than anticipated, which even gave Sergeant Chandler—a man of duty—reason to pause and swear softly.
They were two hours into the next morning’s travel when a courier rode up on a lathered horse. The courier, also from C Company, saluted smartly and handed Lieutenant Shaw a folded note. Shaw motioned Hiram closer so he could read the message too.
Hiram finished, gave himself a mental shake, and read it again, even as he saw his own dreams dribble away. Lieutenant Shaw turned a shade of red not found in nature and seemed to have trouble breathing.
“What do we do?” he managed to choke out finally.
“We follow orders,” Sergeant Chandler said without hesitation, even though his heart hit rock bottom, somewhere down near his toenails.
There it was, spread out on Lieutenant Shaw’s lap, a memo from Captain Coates, Commanding, that five idiots from A Company, infantry, had decided to take their greenbacks and five good horses and desert Fort Fetterman. A bunkie who hadn’t gone along offered the information that these lame-brained pea shooters were going south through the Laramie Mountains to catch the westbound Union Pacific. Find them, clap them in the Fort Laramie guardhouse and get Captain Perkins on the Shy-Dead stage, then bring those lunatics back, the memo read.
This ruined everything, but the lieutenant resisted, to Hiram’s discontent, but probably not his surprise. “We’ll get Captain Perkins on the stage, then hunt for the deserters,” Lieutenant Shaw said, louder than necessary, and pocketed the memo.
“Sir, with all respect, that’s not what Captain Coates ordered,” Hiram reminded his superior officer.
Thunder all over his face, the lieutenant jerked a thumb behind him and swung his horse around. Miserable, Hiram followed.
“If you think I’m going to show up too late to propose to Miss Hinchcliffe, you’re sadly mistaken, Sergeant,” Shaw hissed at him.
“It’s an order, sir,” Hiram stated.
This was precisely what Captain Harvey had warned him about, when C Company’s captain left on furlough.Guide him, sergeant. He might be a good officer someday,sounded in Hiram’s head as he stared down his superior officer, knowing that without rank, he had nothing behind him but the force of his own battle-earned experience and character. If Shaw commanded the escort to continue on to Fort Laramie, Hiram could lodge an official protest, but follow he must.
“We’re discussing my future happiness,” Shaw said, and Hiram let out a little of his held-back breath. Was his lieutenant weakening?
“Mine too, sir,” Hiram said. He took a deep breath. “I was going to propose to Birdie O’Grady. I love her.”
The two men stared at each other. For the first time, Hiram saw the potential in his lieutenant, a spoiled man from a wealthy family, who might, just might become the officer C Company deserved. It could go either way. Certainly the escort would grouse, but they would chase after five of their number who thought to escape the army. They would also follow their lieutenant’s orders and go to Laramie first, if that was the decision. Hiram knew the troops had heard the first exchange between him and the lieutenant. He also knew that if Shaw disobeyed his commanding officer’s order, the men would talk about it to other men. In a matter of days back at Fetterman, everyone would know they could not count on Lieutenant Shaw, not in small matters as this one probably was, and certainly not in larger matters of survival on a harsh frontier. Shaw would be finished, Hiram knew. Did Shaw know?
