Her Hesitant Heart (2 page)

S
usanna waited in the lobby the following morning. Breakfast had been amazingly cheap: a bowl of porridge and coffee for a dime.

The major arrived before the sun rose, wide-awake this time. “You’re a prompt one, Mrs. Hopkins,” he told her.

A glance from the major sent the desk clerk hurrying to carry her luggage to the ambulance. Susanna let the major help her into the vehicle, which was already warm. Bundled in overcoats, two other officers nodded to her.

There was space next to one of the men, but someone had left a book there. The only other seat was a rocking chair—close to the little stove—that had been anchored to the wagon floor and covered with a blanket.

“That’s for you,” the major said.

“But …”

“For you,” he repeated. “Let us come to a right understanding. We take good care of the ladies in the army.”

The other men nodded. “They’re scarce,” said one about Major Randolph’s age.

Susanna seated herself on the rocking chair, grateful for the warmth.

“Let me introduce you, Mrs. Hopkins,” Major Randolph said. “Major Walters, who understands the scarcity of ladies, is from Fort Fetterman.”

The officer tipped his hat to her. The surgeon indicated the other man. “Captain Dunklin is from Fort Laramie. This is Mrs. Hopkins, gentlemen.”

“For God’s sake, close the door,” Captain Dunklin demanded.

Major Randolph closed the door behind him and latched it. He picked up his book and took his seat, and she heard the driver chirrup to the mules.

Susanna pulled the blanket close around her. She glanced at Major Randolph, who was staring at her with a frown. She looked at him, then realized he was staring at the blanket. She stared at it, too, wondering.

“Mrs. Hopkins?”

She looked at Major Walters. “Your blanket is too close to that stove,” he whispered.

She looked. The blanket was not close to the stove, but she pulled it to her anyway. “Better?”

“Perfect.”

She glanced again at Major Randolph, who sat back with a relieved expression on his face.
I
don’t understand what just happened
, she thought.
I should say something
. “Captain, uh … excuse me
…
.”

“Dunklin,” he offered, as if relieved to break the charged silence.

“Captain Dunklin, you have children who will be attending school?” She glanced at Major Randolph, who stared straight ahead, as if seeing something no one else saw. In another moment, he settled back with a sigh.

“I have one son, aged nine. High time he went to school.”

She couldn’t hide her surprise. “My cousin wrote that there is a school already.”

“Yes, one run by the private.”

Susanna heard the disdain in his voice.

“The army requires that children of enlisted men must be educated, but officers’ children are merely invited,” Major Randolph explained.

“Not required?”

“No, ma’am,” he said. “Strange to you?”

“A little. Surely an officer’s child could learn
something
from a private.”

“We try not to mingle,” Dunklin said. “Joe, you’d understand if you had children.”

Susanna could tell from the post surgeon’s expression that he understood no such thing.
I should think any school would be better than no school
, she thought. Captain Dunklin was already reminding her of Frederick, because he seemed so
certain
that he was right. “Probably the private does his best,” she said, defending her profession.

“He does,” the surgeon said. “Private Benedict has eleven pupils now, all ages.” He must have noticed her expression of interest. “I head the post administrative council, and one of my responsibilities is the school.”

“Is there a schoolhouse?”

“No. They meet in a room in the commissary storehouse.”

“Between the salt pork and the hardtack,” Dunklin interjected. He laughed, but no one joined him.

From the look the post surgeon exchanged with Major Walters, Susanna suspected Dunklin was not a universal favorite.

The silence felt heavy again, but Dunklin filled it. “Where are you from, Mrs. Hopkins? Your cousin mentioned Pennsylvania.”

“Shippensburg, originally,” she said, afraid again. Major Randolph glanced at her. It was the smallest glance, but some sixth sense, honed to sharpness by years of fear, told her he knew more.

“My wife is from Carlisle!” Dunklin exclaimed. “She won’t waste a moment in making your acquaintance.”

Please, no
, Susanna thought in a panic. “I … I didn’t get out much in society,” she stammered.

Dunklin nodded, his expression serious. “Your cousin told us of your loss. Too many ladies are war widows.”

Her heart plummeted into her stomach. She
wondered what story her cousin had started, in an attempt to make her more palatable to the people of Fort Laramie. Suddenly the twenty miles between Shippensburg and Carlisle seemed no longer than a block.

“Mrs. Hopkins?” Major Walters asked, concerned.

“I shouldn’t have brought it up,” Dunklin said.

“No, it’s just …” She stopped.
Do I explain myself to these men?
she thought in desperation.
Do I say nothing?
She sat there in misery, trapped. “Don’t worry, Captain Dunklin,” she said, becoming an unwilling party to a lie. “I am resigned to my lot.”

Dunklin nodded. He placed a board on his knees, took out a deck of cards and was soon deep in solitaire.

Major Randolph regarded her, and she realized with a shock that he knew she lied. What had Emily done?
I must explain to him at the first opportunity
, Susanna told herself. Drat Captain Dunklin for having a wife from Carlisle.

They stopped midmorning, which felt like an answer to prayer. For the past hour she had been wondering how she could delicately phrase the suggestion that they stop for personal purposes. And if they did stop, what then? A glance through the canvas flap revealed no shielding trees or even shrubs.

Without a word, the men left the ambulance. A shift of weight told her that the driver had followed
them. Major Randolph was the last man out. Without a word, he lifted the seat where Captain Dunklin had been sitting, nodded to her and left. Speechless with embarrassment, she stood up and looked down at a hole and the snowy ground beneath. “That’s clever,” she murmured.

She peeked out the canvas flap to make sure no one stood nearby. There they were, standing off the road, their backs to her. By the time they returned to the ambulance, the seat was down again, and she had returned to her chair.

“We’re stopping tonight at Lodgepole Creek stage station,” Major Randolph informed her as they started again. “I have a little errand of mercy, a small patient.”

They stopped at a roadhouse for luncheon, which turned out to be a bowl of greasy stew and a roll amazing in its magnitude and excellence.

“This joint is famous for the rolls, but you don’t get one unless you suffer the penance of the stew,” Major Randolph joked.

Susanna ate quickly and excused herself, wishing for solitude, even if solitude meant cold. She was scarcely out the door when she heard someone behind her. She turned around, dreading to see the post surgeon, but it was Major Walters.

“It’s too warm in there,” she said.

The major extended his arm, so she had no choice but to tuck her arm in his. “Let’s walk.”

She let him lead her away from the roadhouse toward a line of trees, stopping by a frozen stream.

“Does it ever warm up?” she asked.

“With a vengeance,” he assured her. “One day it’s like this, then everything starts to drip and thaw.”

They stared down at the stream, where Susanna thought she could see the shadows of fish. She pointed to them. Major Walters nodded. “Everything’s just waiting for better days.”

So am I
, she thought.

Major Walters seemed in no hurry to turn back. Hesitant, she said, “Major, I have to ask …. Why did Major Randolph seem so intent on that blanket and the stove? It wasn’t close.”

“No, but that doesn’t matter to Joe,” the major said, starting back now. “As you might have noticed from his accent, Joe is from Virginia.”

She nodded.

“He was part of the Medical Corps before the war, and stayed in when others went to the Confederacy. Good surgeon, from all accounts.” Walters sighed. “A pity he couldn’t save the one person he loved.”

The major stopped, even though the other officers had left the roadhouse and were looking in their direction.

“He met Melissa Rhoades in Washington—her father was a congressman from Ohio—and they married after the war. He continued in federal service.” They started walking again. “On the regiment’s
march to Fort McKavett in Texas, Melissa’s skirt brushed too close to a cooking fire.”

“God,” Susanna whispered.

Major Walters lowered his voice. “She suffered agonies for nearly a day, and there wasn’t a thing he could do to help her.” The major gave her a wry smile. “That’s why he gets concerned when any woman is close to a fire.”

Susanna nodded. “He hasn’t remarried?”

“No. Perhaps ten years hasn’t been enough to erase that sight from his mind.” Walters shook his head. “I shouldn’t dredge up sad memories of the war for you, Mrs. Hopkins. My apologies.”

Aghast that her cousin’s lie was sinking her deeper into falsehood, Susanna held her breath, then let it out slowly. To her shame and confusion, her kind escort took her silence as agreement.

Major Randolph stood by the ambulance, looking at her with a frown.
He knows I am a liar
, she thought miserably. She looked at the roadhouse, and back down the snowy track that led to Cheyenne. There was nowhere to run.

Joe stared at his book for much of the afternoon as the ambulance trundled forward, reading and then rereading each page until it made no sense. What he really wanted to do was reassure Mrs. Hopkins.

He hadn’t mistaken the fright in her pretty eyes. She seemed to sense that he knew more than the
others. He had to assure her that her secret was safe with him.

He watched the clouds over the bluffs, threatening snow but going nowhere, much like his own life. He dutifully returned to his book, but his mind was on Susanna Hopkins.

She was pretty—maybe some seven or eight years younger than he was. What intrigued him the most were her eyes, large and brown behind her spectacles. He wanted to look closer out of professional interest, because one eye appeared slightly sunken, as though the occipital bone was damaged.

He knew he needed to put her mind at ease. His opportunity came when they stopped at Lodgepole Creek stage station. He reached for his medical saddlebag as the other men left the ambulance.

“Mrs. Hopkins, come along with me. I delivered a premature baby four weeks ago, on our way to Cheyenne.”

Before he allowed her time to consider the matter, he closed the door after the others, and the private in the wagon box clucked to the horses. She sat there in silence. It made him sad to think how hard she worked to keep her composure.

“We’re only going a short way. Jonathan is the mixed-blood son of the man who runs the stage station, and Betty is Cheyenne.”

A month ago, he had been yanked away from supper at the stage station when the owner recognized him as a surgeon. A few hurried words, a grab for his medical bags and they were on horse-back
to the cabin. He owed the successful outcome more to Betty’s persistence than any skill of his.

When the ambulance stopped, Joe helped Mrs. Hopkins out. The door to the cabin was already open, with the young father motioning to him, all smiles. Inside, Joe sighed with relief to see the baby in a padded apple crate, warm as it rested by the open oven door. Mrs. Hopkins went to the woodstove to watch the infant. She held out one finger and the baby latched on to it.

“Since he was so small, I told them to keep him warm,” Joe said. “He appears to be thriving. What did you name him, Betty?”

Her husband put his hand on Betty’s shoulder. “We were waiting for you to come back. What’s
your
name?”

“Joseph,” he said, touched.

“Joseph, then,” Jonathan said. “What about a middle name? Does this kind lady have a favorite name?”

“Thomas,” Mrs. Hopkins said.

The Cheyenne woman nodded and handed the baby to Mrs. Hopkins, who took him in her arms. Joe watched in appreciation as she put the baby to her shoulder with practiced ease. She moved until the infant’s head was cradled in that comfortable space in the hollow of her shoulder that all mothers seemed to know about.

Mrs. Hopkins rubbed her cheek against the baby’s dark hair, then handed him over when Joe nodded. He ran practiced hands over the small body,
then held him up to listen to the steady rhythm of his heart.

Joe’s prescription was simple. “Keep Joey warm by the oven for a little longer, maybe until it warms up or until he gains another pound or two.” He nodded to the parents. “You’re doing fine.”

The father put his son back in the apple crate. Joe ushered Mrs. Hopkins out the door. He looked at the ambulance and then at the stage station in the near distance.

“Private, go ahead. We’ll walk.”

He didn’t dare look at Mrs. Hopkins, but he could feel her tension. There was that feeling she was weighing her options and finding none.

“It’s not far.”

He started walking, hoping she would come along, but knowing she had no choice. After walking a few feet, he heard her footsteps and he let out the breath he had been holding, and wondered why it mattered to him.

He eased casually into what he had to say. “Mrs. Hopkins, who is Thomas?”

He heard the tears in her voice.

“My son.”

S
omehow, Susanna hadn’t expected that question. Better to forge ahead, even if her teaching career at Fort Laramie ended in the next five minutes.

“Major Randolph, I think my cousin told you that I am divorced. I have a son, name of Tommy, who is in the custody of my former husband. There was nothing I could do. And when Captain Dunklin assumed that …”

“Wait.” The major took her arm, and she needed all her resolve not to draw back from him in fright. “Just sit down on this stump a minute.”

He increased the pressure on her arm, then he stopped suddenly and released her. Susanna remained upright, unsure.

“I’m not going to force you to sit if you don’t want to,” Major Randolph said.

She heard the apology in his voice, which also
baffled her. No one in recent memory had apologized to her. She wasn’t even sure she liked it.

“I couldn’t help noticing that look you gave me when I agreed with Captain Dunklin that I was a widow,” she said. “It was a lie and you know it. Please believe me. I did not start that lie.”

“I know you didn’t.
I
heard the beginning of that pernicious fable, and I thought it was a foolish idea. The fault lies with your cousin.”

Susanna sat down. “Why would Emily do that? All I ever said in my letter to Colonel Bradley is that I was Mrs. Susanna Hopkins, and available to teach.”

The cold from the stump defeated her and she stood up. She looked toward the roadhouse, wanting the warmth, but not wanting more questions from Captain Dunklin.

“If we walk slowly, we won’t freeze,” the major joked. “Why would she do that?” he repeated. “Let me tell you something about army society. It is close-knit, snobbish and feeds on gossip. There is an unhealthy tendency to hold grudges.”

“That sounds as bad as Unity Methodist Church back home,” Susanna murmured.

The major threw back his head and laughed. “It’s this way—the army unit is a regiment, which travels together when it can, but generally finds itself spread over a large geographic area. Many a promising career has withered and died on a two-company post. I could include my own career, I suppose, but I like what I do.”

She didn’t know how it happened, but the major had tucked her arm through his as they strolled along.

“I was a state regimental surgeon during the late war, on loan from the regulars,” he said. “The Medical Department has placed me in the Department of the Platte. There are three companies of the Second Cavalry at Fort Laramie, plus more companies of the Ninth Infantry.”

“You are everyone’s surgeon?”

“I am. The number of surgeons varies. One surgeon, the estimable Captain Hartsuff, is on detached duty at Fort Fetterman, and the contract surgeon—he’s a civilian—is hoping for furlough as soon as I return to Fort Laramie. He’ll be lucky to get it. Contract surgeons have less seniority than earthworms.”

Susanna smiled at that.

“I tend to anyone’s needs—from the garrison, to teamsters, to sporting ladies at the nearest cathouse, to any Indian brave enough to try white man’s medicine.”

He peered at her, and she saw nothing but kindness in his expression.

“But this surgeon is digressing,” he said. “Fort Laramie—a run-down old post—is full of social climbers, backbiters and talebearers. That’s what happens when people live in close quarters and know each other’s virtues and defects.”

She couldn’t help her sigh.

“Yes, it’s daunting. They are a censorious
bunch.” He glanced at her again. “If you just do your job, you should brush through this awkwardness with Captain Dunklin.”

“I’m an expert at keeping my head down,” she assured her escort. “But the captain worries me.”

“Dunklin is a tedious bore,” the post surgeon told her. “Let me engage him in conversation so you can escape to your room, which I doubt will be anything fancier than a blanket serving as a sort of amateur wall. A warning—we all snore.”

Major Randolph was as good as his word. She took a bowl of stew from the kitchen to her blanketed-off corner of the sleeping room, while Major Randolph, an efficient decoy, chatted with Captain Dunklin.

Her tiny corner was frigid, the small window opaque with ice, the logs rimed with frost. Huddled on the bed, she drank her soup, which cooled off quickly.

She debated about removing her clothes, then decided against anything beyond her shoes and dress. She drew herself into a ball, her arms wrapped around her knees, wishing for warmth.

There was a gap in the blanket wall and she looked into the main room at Major Randolph’s profile. He was reading now, looking up occasionally to add his mite to the conversation between the other officers. He had an elegant mustache, which he tugged on as he read. She could see no obvious military bearing there; he looked like a man
built more for comfort than warfare. He looked like someone she could talk to.

They observed rank even in bed on the men’s side of the curtain: two majors in one bed, and Captain Dunklin in the smaller bed. The two privates who took turns driving the ambulance rolled in their blankets and lay down in front of the cookstove, which looked to Joe like the warmest place in the roadhouse. He hoped Dunklin was cold, sleeping by himself.

John Walters was soon asleep beside him. Joe closed his eyes and did what he always did before sleep came. Starting with South Mountain in 1862, when he had been a new surgeon, he performed a mental inventory of his hardest cases. If he was tired, he never got much beyond South Mountain, because it had been the worst, for reasons that continued to plague him.

The cases that stood out were the ones where he still questioned his decisions. For years, he had wondered if he was the only surgeon who did that. Just last year, he had asked Al Hartsuff if he ever rethought his Civil War cases. Al nodded, drank a little deeper and replied, “All the livelong day, Joe.”

On a bad night, he rethought the whole war. On the worst nights, he relived the death of his wife, as her skirts caught fire on a windy evening by a campfire, and she blazed like a torch. No amount of rethinking ever changed that outcome. Her screams had echoed in his head for years.

He didn’t get that far tonight; he had Susanna Hopkins to thank. After all his companions started snoring, she must have felt secure enough to cry, knowing she would not be heard.

He was on the side of the bed closest to her flimsy partition. First he heard deep gulps, as though she tried to subdue her tears. As he listened, he heard muffled weeping.

All he knew of Susanna Hopkins was that she was divorced and her son taken from her. He knew she was a lady looking for a second chance. He listened to her, wondering how to best alleviate her suffering. Medically, he had no reason to throw back his covers, pick up his greatcoat and tiptoe around the partition, but he did it anyway.

“You’re probably cold,” he whispered as he lowered the overcoat on her bed. She had gathered herself into a tight little ball—whether from fear or cold, he had no idea.

“Go to sleep,” he whispered. “I’m of the opinion that most things generally turn out for the best.”

Joe tiptoed back to his side of the partition and lay down again. He was warm enough, because Walters radiated body heat. Joe closed his eyes, listening. Soon he heard a small sigh from the other side of the blanket, which told him she was warmer now. He remembered that Melissa used to sigh like that, when she was tucked close to him and content.

For a change, the memory of Melissa soothed him to sleep.
I miss you, M’liss
, he thought.

Two more days and they arrived at Fort Laramie, not a minute too soon for Dr. Randolph. Ignoring the startled expression from Major Walters, Joe had kept up a running commentary with Captain Dunklin any time the man had so much as looked in Susanna Hopkins’s direction to make a comment.

Joe knew Major Walters was puzzled. He said as much during a break, when they stood next to each other and created circles of steaming yellow snow.

“Joe, I like conversation as well as the next man, but with
Dunklin?
” Walters commented.

Joe finished his business and buttoned up. He spoke cautiously, not wanting to expose the real reason. “Dunklin is a busybody.”

“The whole Ninth Infantry knows that,” Walters replied, amused.

“I think Mrs. Hopkins would rather keep her late husband to herself,” Joe said, cringing inside as he continued the lie begun so stupidly by Emily Reese.

“I think you deserve a medal,” Walters teased.

Joe’s heart warmed to watch Susanna Hopkins, who quickly discerned what he was doing and why. She still sat too close to the ambulance’s stove for his total comfort, but she kept her nose in her book, giving Dunklin no reason to speak to her.

Joe’s head well and truly ached by the time the ambulance stopped at the fork where Major Walters’s escort from Fort Fetterman waited, walking
their remounts to keep them warm. Joe helped Mrs. Hopkins from the vehicle.

The three of them walked toward the patrol and Major Walters took Mrs. Hopkins by the hand. Joe noticed her slight hesitation, followed by a deep, careful breath, and he wondered how hard it was for her, in this world of men. He was beginning to understand her wariness.

“Mrs. Hopkins, so pleased to have made your acquaintance,” Walters said.

He turned to Joe. “Do you figure you’ll take part in the spring campaign, probably being planned in Washington as we speak?”

“It’s unlikely,” Joe replied, as his face grew hot. “You’ll recall who heads the Department of the Platte. General Crook has no use for me.”

“Maybe someday he’ll change his mind.”

“When pigs fly,” Joe said, wishing now for the conversation to end, as much as he liked Walters.

Walters mounted the horse waiting for him, and the patrol loped away to the north and west. Mrs. Hopkins seemed in no more hurry to return to the ambulance than Joe was. He wondered if she would ask him what the major had meant.

What she said surprised him. “You have a headache.”

“I do, indeed,” he told her, touched at her discernment.

“All in the service of distracting Captain Dunklin,” she said. “That’s not written anywhere in Hippocrates’s oath.”

Her concern touched him, she who had bigger problems than he did. Perhaps she wouldn’t mind a tease, since she seemed brave enough to voice her own.

“I’m certain Hippocrates intended it,” he told her. “The gist was perhaps lost in translation.”

To his pleasure, she smiled at his feeble wit. “Would it help if I feigned sleep this afternoon? That way, he won’t try to talk to me, and your headache will abate.”

She did precisely that as the ambulance bumped and rolled toward Fort Laramie, feigning sleep so expertly he wondered if she really did doze off. If she wasn’t actually asleep, then she knew precisely how to pretend.

He thought suddenly of his late wife, who had never feigned sleep because he never gave her reason to. He recalled Melissa’s pleasure at waiting up for him in the tent on that fatal march to Texas. Not for Melissa the hope that he would think she slept, and not trouble her with marital demands. She’d waited up for him, and showed him how quiet she could be as they made love in a tent. He couldn’t help smiling at a memory that used to sadden him.

They spent the last night out from Fort Laramie at James Hunton’s ranch, a more commodious place with actual rooms for travelers. Joe gratefully turned the entertainment of Captain Dunklin over to James, a gregarious fellow who had close ties
to Fort Laramie. After dinner, neither man even noticed when Joe and Mrs. Hopkins quietly left.

“Is your headache gone?” she asked, speaking to him first, which made him hope she was beginning to trust him. It was a small thing, but Joe Randolph noticed small things.

“Yes, thank you.”

He only glanced at her, but it pleased him to see her smile.
I can’t be certain—God knows she hasn’t said—but why would any man dare beat a woman like this?
he asked himself. He could imagine no other way for her occipital bone to have a dimple in it. He knew it was not something he could ever bring up. He glanced again, and she looked as though she wanted to say something.

“Yes?”

“What is this spring campaign Major Walters mentioned?”

They had reached the edge of the ranch yard. Mrs. Hopkins turned around and he offered her his arm again. This time, she took it.

“I will give you a short course in the dubious business of treaty making, Mrs. Hopkins. If it is so boring that your eyes roll back in your head and you feel faint, let me know.”

“I am made of stern stuff,” she assured him.

“According to the Treaty of 1868, the Sioux and Cheyenne have been assigned reservations on the Missouri River, but also given a large tract of western land over which to roam, in search of buffalo.”

“That sounds fair enough.”

“Treaties always
sound
fair,” he said. “Included in that land, never actually surveyed, is the Black Hills. It’s sacred to the Sioux, and wouldn’t you know, someone has discovered gold there.”

“Oh, dear,” she murmured. “Prospectors want it, and the Indians are not happy.”

“They are not. President Grant offered to buy it, but Lo the Indian is not interested.”

She stopped. “Ah! I have heard that before. ‘Lo! The poor Indian, whose untutored mind, sees God in clouds or hears him in the wind.’” She grinned at him. “Alexander Pope, who probably never saw an Indian. I ask you, shouldn’t poets write about what they
know?
”

“They should, but don’t. ‘Lo’ is our nickname for hostiles.” Joe stopped, certain that her feet must be cold, but unwilling to continue this conversation inside, where Captain Dunklin would interrupt. “The plan now is to insist that Lo, Mrs. Lo and the Lo kiddies who traipse about in the unceded area—we call them Northern Roamers—be forced onto the reservations. Then Uncle Sam will turn that land and the Black Hills into one large For Sale sign.”

“If they won’t?”

“They have until the end of January, but I ask you, how easy is it to move a village in this cold? Very few Roamers have come to the reservations.” He sighed. “That is precisely what General Sherman wants—he’s general of the army. By February, I am certain a campaign will begin, to round
up the Northern Roamers. You will see troops on the move this summer. Sherman is hoping for a fight.”