Her Hesitant Heart

chapter Fourteen



Susanna fell into the rhythm of work, fitting her mind to the never-changing routine of an army garrison. The regularity of bugle calls and order was a balm to her soul. Now that she had made her personal peace with her cousin, she discovered how little it mattered to her what anyone else felt.

She called it victory the morning Elizabeth Burt brought her younger son to the garrison school. “You’d have my other two, as well, except they are back East with my sister for their education,” Mrs. Burt told her.

The woman also had the courage to apologize for signing that letter. “I shouldn’t have done that,” she said quietly. “Forgive me.” She opened her mouth, closed it, then spoke. “Major Randolph told us what had happened to you. I have passed on what he said to some others. What will be the result, I cannot say, but please believe me when I say Andy and I are sorry.”

No other families unbent enough to send their children to the warehouse, but Susanna was not one to search for grand success. Life had taught her how unlikely that was. Her heart warmed to know that Joe had her interests at heart.

The pattern of each day moved into the next with soothing regularity: breakfast with Emily in the kitchen; stopping to pick up Rooney O’Leary; a brisk walk across the lower parade ground with Nick Martin, her self-appointed guardian; the bliss of school; lunch and ideas with Anthony Benedict; a walk back to Emily’s or to Maeve Rattigan’s, depending on the day; night school with two Irishwomen, a German lady and one Polish woman, all eager to read; French lessons one evening a week with Major Joe Randolph. Once a week she wrote to her son, telling him about her pupils, and enclosing some of their drawings and small attempts at writing. Once a week she gave the letter to Nick Martin, who carried it to the post office. She had no hopes that Tommy received her letters, but she persisted.

French lessons were the most unpredictable part of her week, mainly because illness or injury always trumped parlez-vous francais. On those nights when there was a note tacked to his office door—”Diarrhea” or “Bone to set” or the everlasting “Catarrh”—she went to the ward, supervised by Theodore Brown, and read to the patients. At first she wondered why the post surgeon did not tack such a note to the Reeses’ door, and save her the effort to go to the hospital. Then she realized he wanted her there, visiting his patients.

She had dredged up volume one of Little Women for herself in the fort’s library, but none of the men objected, especially since it was all she had with her that first night, except for Joe’s French textbook. When she was well into Little Women, with no volume two in sight, she had suggested they read something else, since there was no way to know the ending. The storm of manly protest surprised her, so she kept reading and overlooking, to her private amusement, the sniffles and nose blowing that had nothing to do with illness.

“Your patients are a bunch of softies,” she told Joe one night when he was actually in his office for a French lesson. “Do you realize that even the men you have discharged keep returning to hear the story? I confess we all cried when Beth took a turn for the worse. I tell you, Joe, that these men can read, but they keep returning! We’ve run out of chairs, so they sit on the floor.”

“Aren’t you aware how much fun it is to be read to?” the post surgeon had asked. “I’d sit in there, too, but you’d probably frog-march me back to my office to conjugate another verb. I know you would!”

She had laughed long at that. What did bring tears to her eyes in February was the evening one of the discharged patients, a former tough from New York’s notorious Five Points, presented her with volume two. He had been on detached duty at Fort Russell, and confessed to “lifting” the copy from that garrison’s library. She made him promise to return it, but not until they finished the book. He assured her it would go back on the shelf as quietly as it left, and no one would know. “I’m good at that,” he confided.

“I am aiding and abetting criminals,” she told the surgeon, and he only grinned.

She noted that he had nothing to smile about as the end of February brought troops from other forts to Laramie, preparing for the Powder River winter campaign, and then General George Crook from Omaha arrived, not so much to lead the expedition, but to watch Colonel J. J. Reynolds lead it.

“What will he do, ride along and peer over Colonel Reynolds’s shoulder?” she had asked Joe one night, when she’d returned a much-corrected French essay to the surgeon.

“Basically, that’s as good a description as any. Georgie does like to be in charge,” Joe said, wincing at the red marks on his essay, and changing what was obviously an unpleasant subject. “Susanna, is there any hope for me? Will I have to take you with me to the lycée to sit in class and translate in my ear?”

“I’m a woman. They would never let me near Monsieur Pasteur’s classroom!” had been her retort, even though the idea of being in Paris with Major Joseph Randolph gave her something to think about that evening as Nick Martin escorted her back to Officers Row.

The arrival of more troops and companies to Fort Laramie meant that the flats by Suds Row suddenly blossomed with tents, even in the cold days and still-longer Wyoming nights of late winter. Inadequate housing meant cases of frostbite and more catarrh, so she was not surprised when Joe suspended his French lessons.

“I haven’t time,” he told her. “Do keep coming to read to the men, though. I have it on good authority from my steward that some of my patients and former patients are placing bets on whether Laurie will marry Jo, or whether Professor Bhaer will carry off the palm there.” In a surprising bit of spontaneity that charmed her, he nudged her shoulder. “No one wants to think what will happen to Beth!”

She did as he said, suffering through Beth’s illness and death, overlooking everyone’s sniffs by keeping her eyes on the blurry page, and promising the men that their next book would be a comedy.

She wanted to laugh, until she looked in Joe’s office one night. She had finished reading and wanted to say good-night. She was going to knock on the door, but it was open a fraction, so she merely opened it wider, to see the major slumped forward, his hands over his eyes.

Her first instinct was to tiptoe away. But then her face grew hot with shame as she thought of what might have happened to her if this man, sitting there so sadly, had ignored his instincts after that disastrous encounter at the Dunklins. She opened the door wider and walked in quietly, determined to help if she could. She put her hand lightly on his shoulder.

He started, then looked up at her. She couldn’t help her sigh; she knew what that kind of misery felt like. She pulled a chair up beside him and just sat there, her hands in her lap now.

With a great effort, he sat up straight. She silently handed him her handkerchief and he blew his nose. He looked at her again.

“Susanna, I treat his men for frostbite, I patch and stitch where needed, but George Crook can never overlook that moment when I turned my attention from a dying soldier in blue to a living one in gray, no matter that fourteen years have come and gone. Hippocrates himself could argue with him, and it would make no difference.” He smiled faintly. “Crook will punish me forever, but you know how that feels, don’t you?”

Susanna nodded, not trusting herself to speak, until she had taken several deep breaths. “You told me that living well is the best revenge. Is that a lie?”

He shook his head, and his expression went from sorrowful to rueful. “I have it on good authority that Crook is still trying to get me cashiered from the army.”

“No!”

“Yes. Luckily, no one listens to him on this matter, and I practice good medicine, no matter what he thinks.” His smile was no smile. “I suppose I have stayed in the army mainly because I do not want General Crook to think he drove me out.” Joe grasped Susanna’s arm. “A good gambler knows when to fold a bad hand, but I don’t gamble any better than I cook.”

“All the more reason for you to improve your French,” she said, covering his hand with her own briefly. “When the letter comes from Pasteur himself, admitting you to his lycée, you can walk away with no regret.”

“I can,” he said, after a moment’s reflection. “I had better study my French.”

“Mais oui, monsieur.”

To her relief, Colonel Reynolds and General Crook led four troops of horses north to Fort Fetterman in early March, including Dan Reese’s and Jim O’Leary’s cavalry companies. Susanna listened to both wives crying through the walls, silently took her cousin by the hand and walked her next door. Her eyes red, Kate O’Leary opened the door. She swallowed her amazement and opened her arms wider, folding her difficult neighbor into her generous embrace.

“Good!” Susanna exclaimed, and closed the door on them, clutching each other and crying. She went back to the Reeses’ quarters, cooked Stanley a toasted cheese sandwich and spent the evening, shoes off, reading to him in his bed. By morning, all was serene.

“I’m glad you’re infantry, Private Benedict,” Susanna said that morning, as they stood at their classroom door—set apart from the rest of the warehouse by flour sacks—and ushered in their students, some of them uncharacteristically sober because their fathers had ridden away.

“If the summer expedition goes as planned, you’ll have the whole classroom, because even the infantry will go, which means yours truly,” he told her. “I think that’s why the army favors school terms that end in May, when summer campaigning starts.”

“Could I keep the school going this summer?” she asked him.

“If the administrative council says yea, why not?”

What am I thinking? she asked herself later, as her little ones concentrated on simple addition and subtraction. I’m going to be gone from here by June. Where, I do not know yet. It would keep, she decided, returning her attention to her pupils.

Not long before recall from fatigue, Susanna looked up to see Majors Townsend and Randolph in the flour-sack doorway. Standing behind them, hat in hand, was a man she did not know.

“Oh, please, no,” she said, suddenly terrified, thinking of Tommy and Frederick.

Joe crossed the room in a few steps and put his arm around her shoulder, holding her close to him. Major Townsend raised his eyebrows but said nothing.

“It’s not bad news,” Joe told her.

Townsend nodded to Private Benedict, who quietly dismissed the students. Susanna couldn’t help both her pride and relief when they marched out like little angels. Private Benedict saluted smartly and Susanna brushed the chalk dust from her dress, even as Joe continued to hold her close.

When Major Townsend and the strange man came into the classroom, Susanna exchanged an “Are we in trouble?” look with her fellow teacher. He gave her the slightest shrug.

“I’m all right now,” she told Joe, not wanting him to let go, but not willing to give Major Townsend any fodder for gossip. “Just for a moment … You know what I thought.”

Major Townsend turned to the civilian. “Private Benedict and Mrs. Hopkins, this is Jules Ecoffey. He, uh, owns the Three Mile Ranch with Adolf Cuny.”

Susanna could not help noticing the look that Private Benedict exchanged with Joe.

Anthony Benedict cleared his throat. “Major Townsend, I know I’m the lowest man on the totem pole in this room, but should Mrs. Hopkins be party to a conversation involving Three Mile Ranch?”

Silence. Susanna looked from man to man, mystified. Her gaze lingered longest on the post surgeon, not a man slow with cues.

“Private, the matter concerns Mrs. Hopkins most of all, because there is a potential pupil at Three Mile.” Joe glanced at Jules Ecoffey. “Jules, better explain Three Mile Ranch, if you can, or should I?”

“You do it.”

“Mrs. Hopkins, let me put this as plainly as I can, even though the matter is offensive. Among other more legitimate enterprises, Ecoffey and Cuny run a hog ranch.” He smiled, because he seemed to be reading her mind. “It’s not what you think. It’s a whorehouse, located three miles from the fort.”

“Oh,” she said, and felt her face grow warm.

“I occasionally have the unenviable duty of treating prostitutes and soldiers for venereal diseases, although I am not certain that mercury does the slightest good. Apparently one of the, uh, practitioners of the art of Venus has a daughter, age six, that Mr. Ecoffey would like to see in school.”

“She should be in school,” Susanna said. She looked at Major Townsend. “Sir, I have no objection, and I doubt Private Benedict has, either.”

“Not one, sir,” Anthony said. “We have room and Mrs. Hopkins is an exemplary teacher. But how …”

“How will I get her to you?” Ecoffey asked. He glanced at Major Townsend, too. “I propose to deliver her to this classroom every morning. Afternoons are more difficult, but if someone can see her to the Rustic Hotel, I can pick her up from there.”

“The Rustic …” Susanna looked at Ecoffey.

“It is the hotel John Collins is constructing, a quarter mile from here,” Joe explained, when Ecoffey said nothing. “Is it open?”

Ecoffey nodded. “Just barely. If I can retrieve Maddie from there, it would give me time to get back to the ranch for …” He paused, his face red now. “… the evening’s activity.”

“Heavens, where does the child go in the evening?” Susanna asked.

“She sits in my office until … until it quiets down,” the man said.

I am appalled, Susanna thought, unconsciously edging closer to her fellow teacher. “Such a place! Couldn’t we just keep her here?” She hadn’t meant to blurt it out, but the idea of a child at Three Mile Ranch made her blood run in chunks.

The look Jules Ecoffey gave her was a kindly one. “I know what you are thinking, but Maddie has a mother who loves her. Perhaps if you have children, you understand.”

She did, with a clarity that sliced right through her shock and disgust. “We will do the best we can, if … if … Major Townsend and Major Randolph allow it.”

“I can think of a hundred objections,” the post commander said. “There might be a huge outcry from the parents of these students, or from the officers’ families. Major Randolph?”

“I can’t think of a single objection,” he said firmly. “Would you be willing to pay some tuition?”

“I would,” Ecoffey said promptly. “Only name it.”

“Might I ask why you are doing this?” Susanna asked. “How long has …”

“Maddie Wilby,” Ecoffey said.

“… been there? And why?”

“She came with her mother from Denver before Christmas.” Ecoffey shrugged. “I did not know of the child until Claudine Wilby arrived. Why am I doing this?” He shrugged again. “Perhaps I care.” He glanced at the post surgeon. “There is more. We will talk.” He bowed to Susanna. “Madam, she is a charming child.”

“Is she your daughter?” Susanna asked, her voice soft.

Apparently not surprised by her question, even though Major Townsend stared in amazement, Ecoffey shrugged again. “I knew Claudine briefly in Denver. Who can tell? Good day, Mrs. Hopkins.”

The three men left. Susanna stared at Private Benedict. “I used to teach at an exclusive girls’ school in Carlisle, Pennsylvania,” she said.

“And I clerked in a store in Hartford, Connecticut,” Anthony said, his voice equally mystified. “Who knew the army would be so interesting? How much do you think Major Randolph will charge for tuition?”

“I rather hate to think where the money is coming from.”

She thought about Maddie Wilby while her night class members sounded out words to each other. When they left, she stayed in Maeve’s warm parlor, telling the sergeant’s wife what had happened that afternoon.

“Do you think the other families here on Suds Row will have objections?” Susanna asked.

Maeve shook her head. “What business is it of theirs? Poor child.”

My own child has no mother, Susanna thought. “Maybe not so poor. Maybe we should remind ourselves that she has a mother who loves her.” It was food for thought.

She was glad Joe Randolph came to escort her home by himself, without Nick.

“I put Saint Paul in charge of counting sheets in the linen closet,” Joe said as they started across the parade ground. “I wanted to talk to you.”

“What else did Ecoffey tell you?”

“He wants me to visit Claudine Wilby. Apparently she is ill. Will you come with me?”

“Me? Now?”

“You. Now.”

“I’m afraid.”

“You’re Maddie Wilby’s teacher. Let’s meet her.”

God knows he didn’t want to keep bullying Susanna Hopkins, but there was no overlooking her fright as they sat in the ambulance, bumping over the bad road between Fort Laramie and Three Mile Ranch. Maybe if he kept up some informative chatter she would be less intimidated.

“I hardly need to tell you that Three Mile Ranch is off-limits to all military personnel, but the boys have a way of sneaking off.”

Her faint smile encouraged him. “I’m surprised you could dredge up enough iron-willed soldiers to accompany this ambulance,” she said in a faint approximation of a joke.

“Ah, that is the beauty of having our cavalry troops gone north to fight Northern Roamers. Those men riding alongside are mounted infantry, and they are doing their dead level best to stay in the saddle. I also showed them several textbook pages of diseased organs before I got into the ambulance. I anticipate no trouble.”

“Major Randolph, you are amazing,” she said.

“Merely desperate,” he assured her. “Let me tell you about this place. Jules Ecoffey, an enterprising Swiss, runs it with his partner Adolf Cuny, another enterprising Swiss. They also operate Six Mile Ranch about …”

“Six miles from here in another direction,” Susanna said.

“My dear, you are wise beyond your years,” Joe teased. “Precisely. Both establishments have a legitimate purpose of supplying miners headed for the Black Hills. Prostitution is a side venture, apparently started a few years back when business was slow. I visit both places to stitch up bar fight wounds and treat the clap. I hope you are not too disappointed in me to know that post surgeons are the only persons at Fort Laramie officially allowed here. Al Hartsuff takes his turn, when he is here. Our contract surgeon, long gone, was too squeamish.”

“Have you visited Claudine before?” Susanna asked, then put her hands to her face. “Oh, you know what I mean!”

“Of course,” he replied with a chuckle. “No. Jules said she has been here only a month or two. I do not know what I will find.” But I suspect, he thought.

The ambulance driver took them directly to the large adobe building that Joe knew housed the saloon, restaurant and office. He held out his hand to help Susanna from the vehicle, and did not let go of it as he led her into the building.

It was early evening, and the saloon was nearly deserted. Joe had his own private chuckle to note how quickly the two men at the bar left the building. Those were two cases of drunkenness he would probably not have to treat tomorrow at sick call.

Jules Ecoffey appeared through a door beside the bar and gestured to them after a courtly bow so out of place in a hog ranch. Joe glanced at the woman who clung to his hand with a death grip. She was pale, but her eyes were filled with resolution. Would I be this brave, were our situations reversed? he asked himself. He doubted it supremely.

Jules ushered them into a tiny office, the desk overflowing with papers. In the corner sat a little girl with a doll in her lap. Joe smiled to see her, a child with big brown eyes, auburn hair neatly arranged and that look of patience he was familiar with from children in fraught situations. He had seen that look many times during the Civil War.

Susanna went to the child immediately, kneeling beside her chair, exercising those fine instincts of woman, mother and teacher he already appreciated, perhaps never with the intensity he did now.

“You’re Maddie Wilby?” she asked. “What a lovely doll. I am Mrs. Hopkins and I will be your teacher.”

He left the office quietly with Jules. They went to the adobe building next door that housed six prostitutes.

“I put her and Maddie out here because each crib has two rooms.”

Big of you, Joe wanted to say, but knew better.

Ecoffey knocked and then opened the door.

Only a blind man wouldn’t have seen the woman’s resemblance to the lovely child in the office. Only a blind man couldn’t have diagnosed her immediately. Joe didn’t even need to put his hand on her forehead. One look at her pale skin and exquisite frailty told him everything. He silently gave her a month and not one day more.

He sat beside her anyway, calling “Mrs. Wilby,” until her eyes fluttered open in surprise, perhaps that he knew she had a last name. “I am Major Randolph, Fort Laramie’s senior post surgeon. I brought a Mrs. Hopkins with me. She will be Maddie’s teacher. They are together in Mr. Ecoffey’s office right now.”

He should have been prepared for the tears that filled Claudine Wilby’s brown eyes, but he was not, compelling him to admit to his own prejudices and judgments around prostitutes. She loves her child, you idiot, he reminded himself, as he dabbed at the woman’s tears. He doubted she was much beyond her middle twenties, aged prematurely by the hard life he wouldn’t even have wished on so vile a woman as Mrs. Dunklin.

He took his patient’s hand and squeezed it. She tried to return the gesture, but could do no more than curl her delicate fingers around his for a brief moment. Her eyes closed again, signaling that minuscule effort had exhausted her. He revised his estimate and gave her two weeks, no more.

“Maddie will be in good hands in Mrs. Hopkins’s class,” he said, his lips close to her ear now. “You needn’t worry about her. Save your strength. I’m going to prescribe some powders for you.”

She nodded, then opened her mouth to say something. Nothing came out except a sigh, which relieved him of telling her that his puny powders would be monumentally ineffective against last stage consumption. Not that he would have; he could lie with the best of physicians, when confronted with death. He knew from experience that she might even rally a bit, thinking the medicine was doing some good.

She did not open her eyes again while he handed a packet to Ecoffey and instructed him in its use. To his credit, Ecoffey didn’t even blink when Joe insisted that the poor woman see no more clients.

“Can your other girls take turns sitting with her?” he asked, after pulling the coverlet higher on wasted shoulders.

“They already do,” Ecoffey replied, with considerable dignity. “And no, Major, she has seen no clients since the middle of January. We are not entirely devoid of feeling here.”

Joe accepted his quiet words as a well-deserved rebuke, and said nothing. As they walked back to the main building, Joe turned around when another door opened and a woman walked into Claudine’s crib. Look out for her, he thought, and for heaven’s sake, leave this deadly profession when you can.

He returned to the office to see Susanna sitting in Ecoffey’s swivel chair, reading to Maddie, who was snuggled on her lap. When she saw him and Ecoffey, she kissed the top of the child’s head and closed the book.

“We’ll have time for more reading tomorrow,” she whispered. Susanna spoke to Ecoffey. “Send her with a lunch, and a slate with chalk, if you have such things here. We’ll give her a good place to learn.”

Susanna waited until the ambulance door had shut behind her before giving Joe her spectacles and covering her face with her hands. She shivered and shook, beyond tears, as he held her close. He told her what he had seen in the crib, and his diagnosis and prognosis. By the time they arrived at Fort Laramie, she had regained her spectacles and her composure, but made no objection to his arm around her slim shoulders, which were weighted with their own burdens.

When he helped her from the ambulance, she held his hand again for a long moment. “You say two weeks to a month?”

“No more.”

She turned to look into his face, giving him the full power of her own beautiful eyes. “I say more. No woman willingly surrenders a child, even for so unkind a visitor as death.”

He did not doubt her own prognosis.