need one. When the water’s ready, you’ll go in there and bathe. I’ll get a change of clothing from the Reeses and leave it here in the parlor.”
He glanced at her, happy enough to see spots of red in each cheek, where before she had been almost ghostly white. “While you are doing all this, I’m going to talk to Major Townsend.”
“He will not listen,” she said quickly.
“He will,” he replied, sure of himself. “I left him feeling guilty this morning. My dear, great are the uses of guilt!”
Joe glanced at her again, just in time to see a fleeting smile. “I am going to make Major Townsend let you to teach in Private Benedict’s school.”
“I won’t!”
“You will, if I have to drag you there,” he assured her.
“You are as bad as everyone else!” Her voice had some bite to it now.
“I am worse,” he said, relieved to hear some fight in her. “I will not waste a perfectly good human life. What would Hippocrates say?”
Joe concluded it wasn’t going to be much of a bath, but she was smaller than he was and could fold more of herself into his tin tub. While Susanna glowered in the parlor, her arms folded across her chest, he found a clean towel and washcloth, and his last bar of soap. He draped the towel over a chair in the kitchen and set the soap in a saucer.
Susanna’s militant expression had not changed.
“Up you get, madam.”
She ignored him. He jerked the blanket from her with one motion and started on her buttons. With a gasp, she pushed away his hands and went into the kitchen, closing the door louder than he usually closed it. A smile on his face, Joe listened outside the door until he heard her step into the tub. Good.
Emily would probably have given him her cousin’s entire wardrobe, so great was her own guilt.
“Just a change of clothing,” he said. “Take it to my quarters and leave it in the parlor. I have business with Major Townsend.” He jabbed his finger at her. “Don’t you dare utter one word about this to anyone!”
Terrified, Emily shook her head.
Joe couldn’t overlook the wary expression on Major Townsend’s face when he sat down again in the post commander’s office. Calmly, Joe explained precisely what had happened, starting with what Susanna had told the O’Learys and ending with her sitting in a tub in his kitchen. “Mrs. Hopkins tried to starve herself to death, rather than have to face anyone—anyone!—in this garrison.”
“I can’t change people’s minds,” Townsend protested, but there was no denying the shock on his face.
“I’m not asking you to change anyone’s mind, Ed,” Joe assured him. “What I want you to do is authorize Mrs. Hopkins to teach with Private Benedict in the commissary storehouse.”
“Joe, you know general funds only cover one teacher for the enlisted men’s children, and it’s paltry enough. Government regulations.”
“I know. I’m going to pay her salary. It’ll come out of your office every month, and you won’t say a word about this to anyone,” Joe told him. “Since I cannot resign—something I should have done years ago, by the way—I’ll just have to make things better here.”
“People will talk.”
“Not if you keep this financial arrangement silent,” Joe replied. He couldn’t help himself; he pounded on the major’s desk, feeling the heat of anger on his own face. How many years had he just been existing? “Mrs. Hopkins has lost everything—her dignity as a wife, her child, her home, her respectability. We are going to change that woman’s luck.”
His commanding officer stared at him. “Why do I have the feeling that you would do this even if I did not give my permission?”
There was only one reply. “It’s the right thing to do. That’s all.”
Both men looked at each other. Ed Townsend looked away first.
“Very well. What will you pay her?”
“Twenty dollars a month,” Joe said. “It’s far less than the contract, but she already knows how much an enlisted man gets for teaching at Fort Laramie. Paying her more would make her suspicious. She must think the U.S. Army is paying her salary.”
Joe stood up. Without a word, he turned on his heel and left Major Townsend’s office. Outside, he breathed deep, catching just a whiff of rot from the venerable sinks behind the enlisted men’s barracks. He reckoned it was a sign of spring, when he would have to authorize a general police of the old place to discard the outhouse rubbish of winter.