Page 18 of For This We Are Soldiers
When she thought she could look at him, she gave her attention to the actor, wanting to hate him, because he had told Colm Callahan what she had said. She had bared her soul to an actor, of all people, telling him her real name, of the letters from her mother, of her dreams about a clothing shop in Cheyenne.
But she was too generous of heart to be angry with the old busybody. All she saw when she looked at him was a shabby man down on his luck, heading to what couldn’t be a good venue for Shakespeare in Deadwood. He was at the end of his career, and it didn’t look sanguine. She realized with a tug at her heart that she was looking at herself in thirty years, and probably Colm Callahan too. Alone.
“Mr. Locke, why have you never married?” she asked. “It’s the man who does the asking, so you have the advantage. Was there never a pretty actress?”
“Plenty of those,” he said, reminiscence in his eyes. “My dear, I gave all for the theatre, and the theatre is a jealous mistress.”
“Will you be lonely later?”
He looked her in the eyes. “No lonelier than you, Miss Audra Washington.”
They sat together through the afternoon, Audra knitting a pair of socks for the actor because she feared he had no others. Her dusty heart began to heal a bit as, using different voices, he readA Midsummer Night’s Dreamto her and Private Jones. It was a lovely performance, something to treasure in her heart from Fort Laramie. She wondered how much longer the Grand Old Dame near the junction of the Platte and the Laramie would be around, because the frontier was closing. Everything was changing, and she was helpless before circumstance. She even tucked away the dream of her own dress shop in Cheyenne, because she was too tired to make any more effort.
She prepared more flapjacks and eggs for supper and was finishing the dishes when she heard the door to Captain Dilworth’s office open. She thought Colm might come into the kitchen, but she heard his footsteps on the stairs. When he came down, he looked in the kitchen.
“I saved some for you.”
“You are a peach, Audra,” he told her. “I’ll eat after I give these crutches to our actor to practice with. I can’t do anything else for him, and there is a stage leaving for Deadwood tomorrow morning.”
“I’m worried about him,” she said.And about me. Oh, yes, me, she wanted to add.
“I needn’t do any more for him here. He’s ready to go.” He brightened up. “And now, my dear Miss Washington, you have earned a good night’s rest.”
A
Colm did not see Audra in the morning. Still complaining loudly, the hospital matron puffed her way up the hill and reestablished ownership of the kitchen. Private Jones had been a total stoic as Colm tweezed away bits of burned skin, dabbed saline solution, and wrapped the burn in damp gauze. He knew his handiwork was equal to or better than anything Captain Dilworth could do. From a determined drummer boy in a burning aid station at Gettysburg to a competent hospital steward had been the education of nearly twenty years. He knew he could pass the state medical examination in Wyoming Territory, and he liked the high plains.
It’s time, he thought.No more reenlistments. Mine company doctor, Indian agency doctor, railroad doctor, small-town doctor—he could choose.
After sick call, Colm sent Private Jones on his way, aided by the other baker’s assistant and bolstered by Colm’s promise to visit twice a day to change his dressing.
Quietly competent in all things, he arranged for a horse and buggy to take Lysander Locke, Shakespeare tragedian of Drury Lane, Broadway, Denver, and Deadwood, to the Rustic Hotel down on the flats. He needed no urging to accompany the old toot.
They hadn’t long to wait. They sat together in companionable silence, both of them with their faces raised to the morning sun. Soon August would become September, and all bets would be off as winter peered around the corner. By cold weather, the Fourth would be shivering in drafty barracks at Fort Assinniboine.
Maybe I’ll set up practice in Green River, Colm thought.It’s an ugly town, but even ugly towns need physicians.
He glanced at Lysander Locke, worried for him. “I owe you such a debt,” he said, as the Shy-Dead stage came into view. “Could I … could I loan you some money? I’m worried that Deadwood won’t—”
“Stuff and nonsense,” Lysander Locke interrupted. “Actors always land on their feet.” He chuckled as he looked down at his plaster cast, new that morning and whittled down to walking size. “Shake my hand, boy, and do what you promised.”
Colm took his time writing the perfect letter to Audra Washington. Maybe there was enough of the Irish rascal inherited from his scamp of a father to make it easy to declare himself to the loveliest, best woman he knew. He hadn’t enough courage to ask her in person, but he surely wasn’t the first man in the universe who ever proposed via the US mail.
The hospital was blissfully empty, tidied just so, with every bed sheet squared away, pillowcases creaseless, and floors swept. After the matron left, he bathed in the fort’s only actual bathing room, soaking and thinking. That night, he slept like a virtuous man in his lumpy bed.
In the morning, he put on his best uniform and left a note on Captain Dilworth’s desk, informing him that he was not planning to reenlist in September. He had done his duty well enough.
He ambled down to the Rustic Hotel when the stage came in, thinking that Captain and Mrs. Dilworth might need some help with their luggage. They did. He smiled to see that Mrs. Dilworth had two hatboxes she hadn’t left with, and she wore a smart new traveling coat.
They hitched a ride with the mail cart, which let them off in front of the surgeon’s quarters.
“I suppose the Fourth is packed and ready,” Captain Dilworth said.
“Leaving tomorrow, sir.”
Since he had been so helpful, Captain Dilworth invited Colm inside. Over malt whiskey that made Mrs. Dilworth frown, Colm described his patients, saving the best for last.
“We even had an old, run-down actor on his way to Deadwood. Broke a leg, but we didn’t shoot him.”
