Into the Wilderness. Laura Abbot
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fort from quiet to bustling activity. Lantern light flared in the barracks, and he heard the raucous shouts of prompt risers rousing the slugabeds.
From inside, the lieutenant with whom he shared quarters grunted and coughed. Will Creekmore, a fellow from Wisconsin, began every day with prayer. While Caleb found the practice laudable, he wondered how it had served the man on the battlefield. He himself had struggled to find God in the chaos of armed conflict, finally latching onto the instinct for sacrifice, even love, that he observed in the way men in extremity cared for their brothers in arms. He had concluded that just as evil existed and tempted men to war, so was mercy present in the myriad selfless acts he’d witnessed. That thought was all that made his duties bearable. Yet his uneasy truce with God had suffered a significant setback at the Washita River.
He would go to his grave with the horrors of November 27, 1868. On that wintry dawn, he had led his troop to a rendezvous point above the Washita River where they waited in hushed darkness for Lt. Col. George Custer’s command to attack the camp of Chief Black Kettle and roughly two-hundred-fifty vulnerable Cheyenne. A survivor of the infamous 1864 Sand Creek Massacre, Black Kettle had negotiated for peace, but had been unable to control younger, more belligerent warriors, engaging in raids against white settlers.
Swallowing sourly with the memory, Caleb saw it once again in his mind’s eye. Their orders were to take woman and children hostage, but to kill anyone who fired on them and destroy the enemy’s horses. When the first rays of the sun illumined the horizon, the command came, bugles blew and the cavalry charged down on the sleeping village. It took only one shot from a single hapless Cheyenne to incite a frenzy of fighting. Screaming women clutching their children ran for the river, old people fell in their tracks, and bodies littered the snow.
In his nightmares he would forever see the little girl holding a cornhusk doll, a bullet hole through her chest and the lifeless body of a woman cradling beneath her a piteously mewling infant.
He had experienced horrific combat in the War between the States; however, that cause was justified and didn’t involve women and children on the battlefield. But the engagement on the Washita? That was different. It was a massacre. To his eternal shame, he had been unable to prevent it. No wonder he had lost his zest for soldiering. It was even difficult to believe himself worthy as a man.
The orange ball of the sun brought light into his dark thoughts. “God,” he whispered, “help me to understand. Why? Why?” Scraping a hand across his beard, he paused as if waiting for an answer, and then went back into his quarters to shave.
After breakfast, Major Hurlburt gathered the officers for a briefing. Spring wagon trains setting out for Santa Fe would soon be passing their way along with the usual supply wagons. Roving bands of Kiowas, Pawnees and Arapahos, angered by the white man’s usurpation of their tribal lands and hungry after a long winter of deprivation, were on the prowl. Scouts had already located Kiowas camped along the Pawnee Fork. Caleb and his sergeant were ordered to accompany a seasoned troop the following day to deal with the situation and familiarize themselves with the immediate territory.
That evening, keyed up in anticipation of action, Caleb sought the quiet of the post library. Before the war, he had entertained thoughts of studying at university, but now that was a distant dream. However, he reckoned the lack of formal education needn’t keep him from learning.
In a somber mood, he pulled a volume of Tennyson’s poems from the shelves. The book fell open to “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” and Caleb was transported instantly to the suicidal attack in the Crimean War. “Into the valley of Death / Rode the six hundred.” He looked up from the page, grimacing at the image of men riding to certain doom. Did mankind ever learn? Such atrocities were no different from what his own army had inflicted on the peace-seeking Indians massacred at Sand Creek and the shameful Battle of the Washita.
He closed the book, rubbing his eyes, gritty with the need for sleep. Crimea. Unwittingly, Florence Nightingale came to mind, her lantern bringing hope to the wounded and dying there. How incongruous that the lovely Lily Kellogg could also be engaged in such grisly hospital work. Yet her name had surfaced again and again in the conversations of men at Fort Larned. Although she brooked no nonsense, they said, she had a fearless and compassionate heart, and sometimes their healing had depended as much on that as on any medicines or procedures.
As if he had conjured her, the door opened and Lily entered, her attention fixed on the stack of books she carried. When she saw him, she uttered a startled “Oh” and dropped her armload on the floor. He hastened to her side, where they both knelt to gather the volumes.
“I didn’t mean to alarm you,” he assured her.
At that same moment she was saying, “I wasn’t looking where I was going.”
In the lantern light, her hair cast a golden glow, and he found himself at a loss for words, finally managing, “Do you come here often?”
“It’s my favorite place,” she murmured.
He assisted her to her feet and then gathered the books and laid them on a shelf. “Mine, too. No matter the post to which I’m assigned.”
Looking over his shoulder, she noted his book, abandoned on the chair. “What were you reading when I disturbed you?”
“First of all, you didn’t disturb me. Besides, Tennyson’s ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’ is rather gloomy. In truth, I was daydreaming rather than reading.”
She crossed the room, picked up the poetry collection and skimmed it. “I do so admire his work. ‘Flower in the Crannied Wall’ is one of my favorites.” She closed her eyes and recited, “‘Little flower—but if I could understand / What you are, root and all, and all in all, / I should know what God and man is.’”
“A big if. Can we ever know about God and man? Would we even want to? Man has a habit of mucking up things.”
She smiled, a glint of humor in her eyes. “Not only ‘man.’ In rare instances, ‘woman’ can also create problems.”
Rather than going to the unhappy place where a woman had created a problem for him, he chose to respond to her lightheartedness. “In rare instances? My dear miss, have you forgotten Eve?”
She laughed, a delightfully musical sound. “I fear, sir, that any discussion of serpents and apples might take an unpleasant turn.”
“Perhaps, instead, we should both pledge to reread Milton’s Paradise Lost and compare our reactions later.”
“He is a marvelous poet, isn’t he? Such descriptions of the Garden of Eden. Why, I myself might have bitten into the forbidden fruit.”
He had a sudden image of her rosy lips grazing a red-ripe apple. He mentally erased the charming picture. “Did you come for a particular title?”
She moved to the bookshelf, where she hesitated. “No, I’m browsing.” She laughed again. “That’s not exactly true. I’ve read nearly everything here.”
“Then I shall look forward to hearing your recommendations.” He was pleasantly surprised. From his brief exposure to her at the Hurlburts’, he hadn’t figured her for a bookworm. Discussing literature with her would provide at least one antidote for the boredom that was part of military life.
“I favor Mr. Dickens and the Romantic poets,” she said.
“My, quite a divergence of taste.”
“And why not? Fiction, poetry, biography, essays—we don’t have sufficient time to read everything, but I try.”
He inclined his head in an abbreviated bow. “Permit me, then, to take my leave so you may find the hidden gem that you have not read.”
She bestowed a smile that banished any thought of the Crimea. “Good night, Captain.”
“Good night, Miss Kellogg.” Then as an afterthought, he added, “I shall look forward to sharing our opinions concerning Paradise Lost.”
“As shall I,” she said.