They streamed over the wall, a spontaneous tide of fighting men, roaring with an abandon that curdled the blood of the Confederate troops.
The men in the beechnut uniforms broke and ran as one, scrambling in a twisted mess toward the stand of trees behind them.
By the time Lieutenant Dunbar pulled Cisco up, the blue-coated Union troops were already over the wall, chasing the terrified rebels into the woods.
His head suddenly lightened.
The world around him went into a spin.
The colonel and his aides were converging from one direction, General Tipton and his people from another. They’d both seen him fall, toppling unconscious from the saddle, and each man quickened his pace as the lieutenant went down. Running to the spot in the empty field where Cisco stood quietly next to the shapeless form lying at his feet, the colonel and General Tipton shared the same feelings, feelings that were rare in high-ranking officers, particularly in wartime.
They each shared a deep and genuine concern for a single individual.
Of the two, General Tipton was the more overwhelmed. In twenty-seven years of soldiering he had witnessed many acts of bravery, but nothing came close to the display he had witnessed that afternoon.
When Dunbar came to, the general was kneeling at his side with the fervency of a father at the side of a fallen son.
And when he found that this brave lieutenant had ridden onto the field already wounded, the general lowered his head as if in prayer and did something he had not done since childhood. Tears tumbled into his graying beard.
Lieutenant Dunbar was not in shape to talk much, but he did manage a single request. He said it several times.
“Don’t take my foot off.”
General Tipton heard and recorded that request as if it were a commandment from God. Lieutenant Dunbar was taken from the field in the general’s own ambulance, carried to the general’s regimental headquarters, and, once there, was placed under the direct supervision of the general’s personal physician.
There was a short scene when they arrived. General Tipton ordered his physician to save the young man’s foot, but after a quick examination, the physician replied that there was a strong possibility he would have to amputate.
General Tipton took the doctor aside then and told him, “If you don’t save that boy’s foot, I will have you cashiered for incompetence. I will have you cashiered if it’s the last thing I do.”
Lieutenant Dunbar’s recovery became an obsession with the general. He made time each day to look in on the young lieutenant and, at the same time, look over the shoulder of the doctor, who never stopped sweating in the two weeks it took to save Lieutenant Dunbar’s foot.
The general said little to the patient in that time. He only expressed fatherly concern. But when the foot was finally out of danger, he ducked into the tent one afternoon, pulled a chair close to the bed, and began to talk dispassionately about something that had formed in his mind.
Dunbar listened dumbfounded as the general laid out his idea. He wanted the war to be over for Lieutenant Dunbar because his actions on the field, actions that the general was still thinking about, were enough for one man in one war.
And he wanted the lieutenant to ask him for something because, and here the general lowered his voice, “We are all in your debt. I am in your debt.”
The lieutenant allowed himself a thin smile and said, “Well . . . I have my foot, sir.”
General Tipton didn’t return the smile.
“What do you want?” he said.
Dunbar closed his eyes and thought.
At last he said, “I have always wanted to be posted on the frontier.”
“Where?”
“Anywhere . . . just on the frontier.”
The general rose from his chair. “All right,” he said, and started out of the tent.
“Sir?”
The general stopped short, and when he looked back at the bed, it was with an affection that was disarming.
“I would like to keep the horse. . . . Can I do that?”
“Of course you can.”
Lieutenant Dunbar had pondered the interview with the general for the rest of the afternoon. He had been excited about the sudden, new prospects for his life. But he had also felt a twinge of guilt when he thought of the affection he had seen in the general’s face. He had not told anyone that he was only trying to commit suicide. But it seemed far too late now. That afternoon he decided he would never tell.
And now, lying in the clammy blankets, Dunbar made up his third smoke in half an hour and mused about the mysterious workings of fate that had finally brought him to Fort Sedgewick.
The room was growing lighter, and so was the lieutenant’s mood. He steered his thoughts away from the past and into the present. With the zeal of a man content with his place, he began to think about today’s phase of the cleanup campaign.
CHAPTER VI
Like a youngster who would rather skip the vegetables and get right to the pie, Lieutenant Dunbar passed over the difficult job of shoring up the supply house in favor of the more pleasant possibilities of constructing the awning.
Digging through the provisions, he found a set of field tents that would supply the canvas, but no amount of searching would produce a suitable instrument with which to stitch, and he wished he hadn’t been so quick in burning the carcasses.
He scoured the banks downriver for a good part of the morning before he found a small skeleton that yielded several strong slivers of bone that could be used for sewing.
Back at the supply house he found a thin length of rope that unraveled into the thread size he had imagined. Leather would have been more durable, but in making all his improvements, Lieutenant Dunbar liked the idea of assigning a temporary aspect to the work. Holding down the fort until it came fully to life again with the arrival of fresh troops.
Though careful to avoid expectations, he was sure that, sooner or later, someone would come.
The sewing was brutal. For the remainder of the second day he stitched doggedly at the canvas, making good progress. But by the time he knocked off late that afternoon, his hands were so sore and swollen that he had difficulty preparing his evening coffee.
In the morning his fingers were like stone, far too stiff to work the needle. He was tempted to try anyway, for he was close to finishing. But he didn’t.
Instead, he turned his attention to the corral. After careful study, he cannibalized four of the tallest and sturdiest posts. They had not been sunk deep, and it didn’t take much time to pull them out. Cisco wasn’t going to go anywhere, and the lieutenant toyed briefly with the idea of leaving the corral open. In the end, however, he decided a noncorral would violate the spirit of the cleanup campaign, so he took another hour to rearrange the fencing.
Then he spread the canvas in front of the sleeping hut and sank the posts deep, packing them tight as he could with the heavy soil.
The day had turned warm, and when he was finished with the posts, the lieutenant found himself traipsing into the shade of the sod hut. He sat on the edge of the bed and leaned back against the wall. His eyes were getting heavy. He lay down on the pallet to rest a moment and promptly fell into a deep, delicious sleep.
He woke flushed with the sensuous afterglow of having surrendered completely, in this case to a nap. Stretching out languidly, he dropped his hand over the side of the bed and, like a dreamy child, let his fingertips play lightly over the dirt floor.
He felt wonderful, lying there with nothing to do, and it occurred to him then that, in addition to inventing his own duties, he could also set his own pace. For the time being, anyway. He decided that, in the same way he had surrendered to the nap, he would give himself more leeway with other pleasures as well. Wouldn’t hurt to cut myself a little slack, he thought.