her stride. “She’s a short one, but I had to hurry to keep up with her” was how Nick had put it.
Nick hadn’t been aware, but Joe had watched her, too, standing on his porch, a mug of his awful coffee in hand. He had admired at a distance Susanna’s pleasant sway and the purpose with which she moved. This wasn’t the frightened woman in the Shy-Dead depot; it wasn’t even the woman of yesterday with no hope in her eyes. This was a woman with a plan.
The notion nourished him all morning. Thanks again to his steward, the hospital ran like a top. After his early blunder, Joe had repented with a good save in what he always considered his specialty, debriding a nasty burn from Company A’s mess kitchen. At least, the look his steward gave him—the man hated debridement—had redemption written large upon it. Joe could retire to his office redeemed and at liberty to woolgather, when he should have been finalizing the list of pharmacopoeia for Omaha.
Other than that moment watching the poetry of a woman’s hips, Joe’s morning had two more gems in it. The first one came from Sergeant Rattigan, who returned his copy of George Drysdale’s article. The sergeant actually made himself at home in the office, less formal than usual. Well, the topic du jour was certainly not government issue; why be formal?
“I read the article to Maeve last night,” the sergeant said. “I didn’t know a lot of those words, but the meaning was clear—” he gave a self-conscious chuckle “—as Maeve so kindly pointed out to me. She’s a shrewd one!”
“We always knew that,” Joe said. “She’ll keep you on your toes, once Mrs. Hopkins teaches her to read. And?”
“We’ll do it, sir. We … we need each other, but I’d do anything to spare my darling Maeve one more heartache.”
The sergeant said it simply, but Joe heard every syllable of love. “I thought you would,” he told the man.
The sergeant smiled, stood up and snapped off one of his usual salutes, more precise than nearly anyone ever executed at Fort Laramie. He stopped at the door. “If you see Mrs. Hopkins today, tell her we’re expecting her for class in my parlor tonight, and we’d be pleased to serve her supper, too.”
“Include me in that invitation, and I’ll tell her,” Joe said.
“You’re included, sir, although I’ve been told by herself to vacate the premises for the evening. See you tonight, Major.”
The next gem of the day might have been called a milestone, if Joe had felt so inclined. After a satisfying hour standing around mostly idle while the capable wife of an Arikara scout presented the army with its newest Indian dependent, Joe had walked back to the hospital in that pleasant sort of euphoria that a successful birth always provided. It carried him into his office, where he loosened his collar and wrote a letter to the lycée in Paris where Louis Pasteur taught.
He had written such a letter once or twice in his head, and then on paper three times in the same number of years, only to scrap it. This time he wrote the entire letter, describing his medical training, his subsequent career, the war years and his own interest in microbiology. He had concluded with the hope that Pasteur might allow him entrance into the lycée in the autumn. He signed his name with a flourish, addressed an envelope and hurried the letter to the post office in the post trader’s complex before he lost his courage.
He had his first attack of nerves when John Collins, postmaster along with his post trader duties, raised his eyebrows at “Paris, France” on the envelope.
“Long way from here.” Collins tapped the letter. “Making some plans, sir?”
Joe had never known the post trader to pry, but he supposed it wasn’t every day that a letter to Paris crossed his desk. “I believe I am,” he said.
There was a small argument with Nick Martin after recall from fatigue, when the quiet man announced his intention of escorting Mrs. Hopkins back across the parade ground. Joe’s hospital steward intervened, claiming Nick for his own, which allowed the post surgeon to head for the commissary warehouse by himself.
He arrived just as the door opened to allow a flood of escaping students. A smile on his face, Joe watched as Susanna knelt by her little charges, making sure each one was buttoned, mittened and scarved against the omnipresent wind. He couldn’t help observing