of course forwarded it to General Cooke because that is what any officer would do when faced with the brutal killings of civilian employees under his command.”
“You don’t believe he sent your report? How did Cooke come to hear of the killings then? How did it come to be assumed that there was more to the deaths than an Indian attack?”
The surgeon puffs at his cigar, then says, “Well that I do not know, but there are five hundred-odd people, soldiers and civilians, attached to Fort Phil Kearny and every one of them knows that it was no more Indians who killed the sutler and his wife and the other fellow than the man on the moon.”
“And do any of the five hundred know who did it if it wasn’t Indians?”
“Only those who did it know for certain, Sergeant, but there is talk.”
“And what does that talk say?”
The surgeon washes his hands in a tub of soapy water atop the wood stove, his cigar clamped between his teeth. When he has dried his hands, he says, “That you will have to discover yourself. I will not be a party to men hanged on hearsay. I am aware of Mr. Kinney’s familial links to certain parties back East and know that is the only reason you and Lieutenant Molloy are here, Sergeant. I don’t doubt your honesty . . . or the lieutenant’s, but as a man of science I will not trade in rumors.”
“Of course, sir.”
“I can, however, show you pictures of the death scene and of the bodies. Come with me.”
The surgeon leads Kohn past a row of beds to the back of the barracks where he has hung a sheet weighted with lead shot to cordon off an office for himself. He unlocks a strongbox under the sturdy desk which would not be out of place in a grain merchant’s store and Kohn wonders how the doctor has come to have it; did he transport it all the way into this wilderness? The doctor lays out a series of photographs on the desk.
“You made these, sir?”
“Of course not. We have the good fortune to have on hand the services of one Ridgeway Glover, a professional photographer from Philadelphia. I asked him to make these pictures. He was not pleased to be asked but he did a fine job of it nonetheless, don’t you think?”
Kohn nods. The photographs are clear in their composition and terrible to look at. He can understand why the poor picture-maker would have balked at the job. Kohn has seen as much death as the devil and yet there is something about seeing it preserved in the utter stillness of the pictograph that adds to the horror. Like insects or fish frozen in the ice of a winter pond, the victims laid out for all eternity in the posture of their violent deaths. What value are these? He feels sordid, ashamed almost, to be staring at them.
“I had to get some of the men to tear away the roof to let enough light into the tavern for the pictures to be made. The camera’s eye requires more light than you would find in such a hovel.”
Kohn moves on to the pictures of the bodies laid out on the operating table he has seen at the far end of the barracks. Cleaned of blood, naked as God brought them into the world, the wounds like gaping mouths, so many in the woman’s body you couldn’t hope to count them all. A bullet wound, two, in the torso of the bigger, younger man. His scalp and hair gone, leaving only skull bone showing. One wound only, to the back of the head of the older man. Kinney. The sutler. The man we’ve been sent to avenge, Kohn thinks. He knows the type of wound.
“This younger man is scalped, sir. Surely . . .”
“Our soldiers also take scalps. It is a fact not widely disseminated in the Eastern papers but the habits of one side in a war are often enough adopted by the other. I will grant you, the younger male—no one seems to know his name—was scalped in such a way as to suggest that Indians had killed him. Perhaps they did, but . . .” The surgeon points to the two bullet wounds in the photograph with his cigar.
“But?” Kohn says.
“But I took two balls from these wounds. Curiosity, you see. A theory of mine. His death was not caused by scalping. I have tended