For This We Are Soldiers: Tales of the Frontier Army Page 10

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.

  “I have nothing to report, sir,” he told the major who was pouring himself something amber out of a crystal decanter.

  Ted straightened his shoulders, ready to take the blistering scold he expected, deserved or not. To his surprise, Major Brotherton poured another drink and handed it to him without a word. Ted drank, saluted smartly, and left.

  A

  Ted’s officer of the guard duties ended the next morning at Guard Mount when another lieutenant, sergeant, and corporal received their sashes for the twenty-four hour period and took over the guardroom at the edge of Fort Buford, ready to do the will of their commanding officer. He returned to his usual duties in E Company, drilling new recruits and supervising fatigue details.

  Those naughty cows remained behind the hospital, more carefully watched by the assistant steward now. Ted thought briefly about accidentally running a bayonet through his arm, just for an excuse to go to the hospital and see Millie, but dismissed that notion with the laugh it deserved. Maybe he would get up enough courage—he who had held off a whole cluster of irate Apaches when the Seventh Infantry served in the Southwest—to just knock on Sergeant Drummond’s door and ask if he could sit with the man’s lovely daughter.

  Two days after the cow incident, Millie Drummond solved his problem.

  After Recall from Fatigue, Millie joined him as he walked alone from the commissary storehouse to his barrack. One moment he walked by himself, and the next moment she walked beside him. He shortened his stride immediately, which brought at little pink to her cheeks, at least as much pink as showed in a lass with some Ojibwe ancestors.

  “I didn’t hear you,” he said, which made her laugh and remind him that she had quiet ancestors on one side of her family tree.

  She cleared her throat. “Mama said I could invite you to supper tonight,” she said, looking straight ahead.

  Dear heart, you are as shy as I am, but so much braver, he thought. “I would like that, Miss Drummond.”

  “Remember, it’s Millie,” she said, and turned back toward Suds Row. “See you at six, Corporal Sheppard.”

  “And I am Ted,” he said softly to the empty air.

  Ever punctual, Corporal Theodore Sheppard knocked on the Drummonds’ door at precisely six of the clock, his lid tucked under his arm. Millie opened the door with a smile and ushered him in.

  Sergeant Drummond had always intimidated Ted with his remarkable posture and his steely-eyed stare that suffered not a single fool gladly. This Sergeant Drummond in a checkered shirt, wool pants, and moccasins looked like a fellow who might enjoy a game of checkers or an evening’s conversation. Ted felt himself relax.

  Millie’s smiling mother ushered them right to the table in the corner of the front room. He remembered in time to pull out Millie’s chair for her, then seated himself beside her. It was a tight fit because the table was small, but he enjoyed every moment, breathing in the lavender fragrance in Millie’s hair.

  Sergeant Drummond asked a spartan Presbyterian blessing, then took the lid off the soup tureen. He ladled soup into a big bowl and handed it to Millie, who passed it to Ted, who stared down in shocked disbelief.

  It was cream of oyster soup, milky and thick. The sutler sold canned oysters, and Ted knew how costly those tins were, because he had eyed them a time or two. But the cream?

  “Some bread, Corporal?” Millie asked, as she handed him a plate with slabs of white bread baked by some angel from a celestial realm far from Dakota Territory. “Butter?”

  He took the bread and stared at the butter, which bore no resemblance to the rancid stuff found in tins in the commissary storehouse. This was freshly made butter, the kind from contented, pampered cows who had just cost Captain Crampton three dollars. In mystified silence, he sliced off a hunk and buttered his bread.

  In further silence, he filled his spoon with glorious soup and downed it, marveling at the exquisite mingling of cream with milk that had never been condensed and stuffed in a can to languish for years. He closed his eyes with the wonder of it, even as he had an entire series of questions that needed asking.

  The sergeant cleared his throat and Ted put down his spoon.

  “Millie, what do you have to say?” her father asked his lovely daughter, but in a tone most fatherly, and if Ted was listening right, singularly proud.

  Millie looked at Ted, gazed deep into his eyes, and said so softly he had to lean closer to her, no hardship. “I’m the guilty party.”

  Those same eyes filled with tears, and one slid down beside her nose. Without even thinking, Ted took his napkin and dabbed at it gently.

  “Tell him why, dear,” Mrs. Drummond said.

  “Corporal Petty’s wife has a baby that just isn’t thriving,” she said in a whisper. “I thought maybe if she had some fortified milk, it would help. All I could think of was that wee one. I waited until the soldiers left after Recall from Fatigue and milked all three cows.”

  “No one saw you?” Ted asked.

  She shook her head. “I can be so quiet. I took the milk to Mrs. Petty, and more milk to some of the children here on Suds Row. It was such a hard winter for children, and several still need feeding up. Have you ever noticed the Indian women who hang around the slaughterhouse, hoping for scraps? They don’t actually beg, but their eyes follow you …” Her voice trailed away.

  Ted nodded. He had seen them too, and felt hot shame that proud people had come to that, thanks to the government whose will he enforced.

  “I thought they could use some too.”

  She was crying in earnest now. Ted didn’t hesitate to put his arm around her. She turned her face into his side and he felt her shake. He handed her his handkerchief this time and she blew her nose.

  “I brought the rest back here because I … I … Corporal, I wanted to fix you something good for supper,” she finished in a rush. “Your face looks thin.”

  “It always has,” he said, thinking of meals skipped and rough half-rations on campaign, and even poorer meals years earlier on a hardscrabble farm. The fact that she had been observing him touched Ted in a place so deep he knew he could never find it, even with a compass. “That’s not new.”

  “Maybe not,” she told him, and he heard firmness in her voice now, a resolve that told him he might someday be in capable hands, if he played his cards right with this kind woman. “I was too impulsive, Corporal, and I should apologize for what I did.” She sat up, but didn’t move too far from his orbit, to his relief. “Since you were corporal of the guard, I felt I owed you the explanation. Should I pay three dollars to the post surgeon? I could slip it on his desk and he would never know.”

  “I think he can stand the strain, Millie,” Ted replied, trying out her name and finding it much to his liking. “Let’s just call the whole matter a mystery.”

  Sergeant Drummond nodded. “She won’t do it again, corporal.”

  “I wish she could,” he said frankly. “What say you that I talk to the post surgeon and ask if there is anything we can do for those Indian women who beg for scraps? I helped inventory the commissary warehouse today and we have an amazing amount of rations.” He chuckled. “And barrels of surplus raisins.”

  “Could you do that?” she
asked, eager now, tears forgotten.

  “If you call me Ted,” he said, then amended it. “Or even if you don’t. I may not succeed, but I can try.”

  He looked into her eyes again, those deep brown pools of kindness and compassion and concern for others, and decided right then to be a better man than he had been only minutes ago, when he was just a pretty good fellow. He thought if he spent more time around Millie Drummond, he would become better still. He knew he loved her.

  “Your wonderful soup is getting cold, corporal,” Sergeant Drummond said.

  Ted gave Millie a slow wink and turned back to his cream of oyster soup, with its buttery sheen and little oyster crackers bobbing about as he stirred. He savored every mouthful, and then ate his bread and butter with relish. Her own dark eyes smiling, Mrs. Drummond brought out vanilla cream pudding, which made Corporal Sheppard laugh out loud.

  When everything was devoured and Mrs. Drummond busied herself in the kitchen, Ted reached down into his growing vault of courage and asked Sergeant Drummond if he could sit for a while in the front room with his daughter.

  “You may, corporal,” replied the sergeant he had once feared. “I’m headed back to my barrack to check on my boys. I trust you’ll dismiss yourself when the bugler sounds Tattoo.” He smiled. “But come back anytime, eh, Millie?”

  His stomach full, his heart more full, Ted Sheppard sat on the family sofa, made from a packing crate, and cuddled Millie Drummond. He had a million things to say to her, but they could all wait. He held her close and inclined his head toward hers. Maybe in a few more visits he could ask her opinion of Bismarck and photography, or her views on women’s rights, or if she preferred dogs to cats, or any of those stupid little things that matter only to lovers.

  It was enough now to hold her. He gave a discreet belch from all that rich food, and Millie laughed, but softly, so as not to alert her mother in the kitchen.

  “I made butter cookies too,” she whispered in his ear.

  Mary Murphy

  I met Mary Murphy on a train heading west to Fort Laramie. But I can’t really say that I met her, because no one introduced us then, and no one ever did later, either.

  I was just out of the academy. It was August, and after graduation in June, I had rushed through a furlough at Newport Beach with my folks, and then received my orders to Company K, Second Cavalry, garrisoned at Fort Laramie, Wyoming Territory. According to my orders, I was to stop at Omaha Barracks long enough to attach myself to ten new recruits for Company K and escort them West.

  I remember even now the feeling I had as I stood in the middle of the parade ground at Omaha Barracks and watched the heat shimmer off the quarters on Officers Row. I wondered what I was supposed to do. I had been assigned to the cavalry arm of the US Army, and Omaha Barracks was my first look at a cavalry post.

  I eventually found my ten recruits. Some of them had served in the recent War of the Rebellion and reenlisted after busting out in civilian life. The others spoke German or Irish-accented English that I could barely understand. Most of them were older than I was. Luckily for all of us, a Sergeant O’Brien from Fort Laramie showed up before we departed. He piloted us West.

  Mary’s name was on the company roster the sergeant handed me before we pulled out— “Mary Murphy, twenty, white, single, laundress.” The army hired females as laundresses to wash the company clothes. Each company of fifty to eighty men employed two or three laundresses, who received rations like the men and were paid one dollar per month by each soldier for doing his laundry. By 1877, most of the laundresses were replaced by wives of the soldiers, but this was 1875, and Mary was our laundress.

  I noticed her when she got on the train, clutching a knotted bundle of clothing, a baby crooked in one arm, and a toddler dragging behind her. She was sweating like the rest of us, with half-moons of perspiration under her arms and a streak of sweat soaking through the back of her shirtwaist. That surprised me. I never really thought about women sweating. My mother never did nor any of the women I had even known.

  The baby in her arms wasn’t more than a few months old. It had her dark hair and a placid expression that seemed out of place on the hot, crowded train. The toddler had the bored look of a child who has been on the move constantly. He ran ahead of his mother, found an empty seat, and crawled up on it. He smiled when the soldier across the aisle handed him a sugar candy.

  Mary came down the aisle, swaying a little to keep her balance as the train started to move. She saw me, paused, and smiled. It wasn’t the usual ingratiating smile of an inferior but a relieved, patient kind of smile, as if I could help her.

  The train lurched down the track, gathering speed, and the sudden motion threw Mary against the back of the seat in front of me. She stumbled and dropped her bundle but hung onto the baby, who started to cry. The soldier behind her put a hand on her waist for balance, and she blushed as the other men in the car nudged each other and snickered.

  She sat down next to her boy, across the aisle from me. To quiet the baby, she opened her shirtwaist and began to nurse. I had never seen anything like that before. Mother had wet nurses for all of us, and the door to the nursery was always closed during feedings. Mary covered herself as best she could with her shirtwaist, and most of us looked away—including me.

  The men who didn’t turn their heads divided their time between staring at Mary, making low comments to their bunkies, and laughing at me. I knew that my face was red. I could feel it.

  Mary’s children were quiet most of that long, hot trip. The older boy (his name was Flynn) whimpered a bit in the heat as we chugged across Nebraska. I have never enjoyed crossing Nebraska, either by train or on horseback. It is either hot and flat or cold and flat. Anyway, Flynn was passed from soldier to soldier, and by the time we reached Cheyenne Depot, he had accumulated two revolvers carved out of soap, a wooden horse, and some jelly beans which melted and got all over my new boots.

  It did take time to reach Cheyenne Depot. We were delayed by buffalo on the tracks and more often by hotboxes, when the axle-bearing joints heated up. The train had to stop and cool down before proceeding.

  Mary’s baby began to fret as we neared Cheyenne. Adele has told me since that Mary’s milk was probably drying up, and the baby wasn’t getting enough, but I didn’t know anything then. Mary spent most of her time walking up and down the aisle, rocking the baby (I never did learn its name), and making crooning sounds. The baby developed a thin cry, and I noticed that whenever it started to wail, some of the older soldiers would look at each other. Sergeant O’Brien crossed himself a couple of times.

  At Cheyenne Depot, the horses were unloaded, and there was a Dougherty wagon from the fort to meet us. It filled up quickly. There were two captains’ wives and children from first class to fit in, plus some of their luggage. There wasn’t any room for Mary and her children in the wagon, so the tailgate was lowered, and they perched on that.

  The other women stayed as far away from Mary as they could, and I heard one of the wives commanding her children not to play with Flynn. I’m sure Mary heard too, but her face was peaceful. She hugged her crying baby and sang to it.

  The baby cried more and more, with a gasping sound that made me wish the surgeon was along. I found myself riding back by the Dougherty to check on the baby. They were eating dust back there. Flynn choked and sputtered until a private swung him up in his saddle and rode back toward the front of the column.

  We camped that night at Lodgepole Creek, and Mary’s baby kept me awake. Not because it was crying, because by then, it wasn’t crying. It struggled and fought for breath in the heat that refused to leave us, even after the sun went down.

  I found myself breathing along with the baby. I heard Mary whispering Hail Mary over and over, and my lips moved along with hers in the dark on the other side of the Dougherty.

  I will never forget the second night out when we halted just before dusk at Chug Station. Mary jumped off the wagon before it rolled to a complete stop and hurri
ed to the sergeant. She gestured to the baby, and I couldn’t hear what she said, but O’Brien dismounted as if his saddle were on fire and bent over the infant. He called to me.

  “Lieutenant, this baby’s dead.”

  Heads poked out of the Dougherty wagon and then were pulled in again.

  The baby was dead. It was even getting a little stiff.

  “How long, Mary?” the sergeant asked.

  “Since before the last rest stop.” Mary’s voice quavered, and she looked at me. “I just couldn’t say anything.”

  That was the first time I had ever seen anyone dead before. That dead baby touched me more than I care to remember, and I have seen much death here on the plains in the twenty years since. The baby’s eyes were closed, and the dark hair was curly and damp from Mary’s perspiration. Except for a china-doll appearance that made my knees weak, the baby looked asleep.

  The sergeant detailed a couple of privates to dig a little grave under a cottonwood by the river. Mary wrapped her shawl around the body and handed it to me.

  “Here, please,” she begged. “I can’t do it.”

  I knelt by the hole and put the baby in. Mary covered her face with her hands, and I saw tears running through her fingers. The other women stayed near the wagon. I knew why. They had been taught, same as I, to avoid women like Mary, those bits of flotsam without husbands and with a string of children who followed the army from post to post. Mary needed comfort, but none of us gave her any.

  Mary clung to Flynn the rest of the journey, her face wearing a white, transfigured look that I could see even under the road dust that covered all of us. She clutched her little boy to her and hung onto the chains that held the tailgate.

  The remainder of the trip is still a painful memory. I was the ranking officer. With the death of that baby, responsibility for the lives of others descended on me and has been a burden ever since. And when Mary looked at me with her patient expression, I knew I was ill equipped.

  Once we arrived at Fort Laramie, I forgot about Mary. Well, I did think about her every time my laundry was returned washed, ironed, and folded neatly on top of my campaign trunk. She did a good job with shirts. There were none of the little scorch marks and wrinkles I later came to associate with army life. I almost slipped a note in with my dirty clothes one day to let her know that I appreciated the good job, but I reconsidered. I didn’t even know if she could read.