There is a jug and a basin on a table beside the bed and the walls of the room where the photograph was taken are of dark, barked logs though the woman’s smooth, muscular back is lit and cut with shadow. Light gleams in the Indian woman’s eyes as if sourced there, though Kohn knows this must be a reflection of an artificial illumination. Despite her nakedness, there is nothing sexual about the photograph, Kohn realizes, thinking at first that the picture was a sort of French postcard. No, it is more than that and Kohn is, for a moment, mesmerized by it. There is something about the image. He cannot see the whole of the face but nonetheless recognizes the Indian woman he saw hanging laundry with the colonel’s wife. Sarah. His heartbeat quickens in his chest and sweat breaks under his arms despite the cold.
“You made this in the hog ranch?” Kohn holds the picture up for the photographer to see. “The sutler’s tavern off-post?”
“Why, yes . . .”
“She’s the whore Sarah, isn’t she?”
The tent flaps ruffle and Molloy enters before the young man can answer.
“For all that’s holy, Kohn, let the man up and dress himself,” Molloy says, resting on his crutches as if he has traveled a great distance. “How terribly rude. Forgive the sergeant, kind sir. You will come to find him a fair man but he can be short in the social graces.”
The air in the tent is suffused with whiskey fumes. As if aware of this and to mask the odor of his weakness, Molloy fumbles under his coat and comes out with a cheroot and box of matches. Kohn sees that the captain’s hands are steady as he lights the cigar.
Glover shoves off the weight of hides and blankets and stands. He is dressed already in woollen trousers, a bulky knitted sweater, several pairs of woollen socks, the under-pairs showing through holes in the outer layers, and Kohn thinks that the young man may have been several days in his bed without undressing. He is frail and thin under the layers of clothing, his pale hands delicate, knuckles round and raised like the rivets on a lady’s hatbox.
“My boots,” the photographer says. “I’ll just put on my boots.” He sits on a milking stool and pulls on a pair of boots that to Kohn’s eye must once have cost a cavalry sergeant’s monthly wage. They are scuffed and ragged now, carelessly worn and never once burnished. He takes an instant dislike to the young man, his wealth worn so carelessly as to speak of a life of ease. His life, from here out, will not be so easy.
“Is this the whore called Sarah?” Kohn says again.
“Sarah,” Glover says from the milking stool, looking up at the photograph. “Sarah . . .”
“Is it her name or not?”
“It may be. I forget. I asked some of them their names. There was more than one I photographed. You can see if you look.” He points up to the other pictures hanging from the line. “I didn’t really know them.”
“You spent a good amount of time among them, making pictures of them and whatever else you did, not to know their names.”
“I—”
“This is Sarah. You know her and you know what happened when the sutler was murdered. You were there and you are going to tell me what happened. Do you understand me?”
“Wait. I don’t know—”
“You know.” Kohn steps forward, looming over the young man. There is a ferocity in his eyes and even in his drunkenness Molloy can see the terror on the young photographer’s face.
“Please, sir. I don’t know anything.”
“Kohn, let the man up. Jesus wept but you are a hard man. A hard, cold man.” Molloy turns his attention to the photographer. “Stand up, sir. And then help me to sit down on the bed there like a good fellow.”
Kohn turns his eyes to Molloy, the rage not leaving them. Molloy smiles around his cheroot and, standing on his good leg, takes up his crutches in one hand and holds them out to Glover.
The photographer looks up to Molloy as if to a safe harbor and stands and takes the officer’s crutches and taking his arm around his shoulder he supports Molloy as far as his bed and eases him down to sit upon the pile of hides and blankets. “Much better,” Molloy says. “Thank you, sir. Sit. Sit with me here.”
The young man sits down beside Molloy on the cot. His eyes