Page 37 of Two Wars and a Wedding

Dr. Stringfellow had set up a temporary infirmary right behind the lines, just out of range of the Spanish guns, moving rapidly from patient to patient, binding wounds and barking instructions all at the same time.

“Put him here.” Dr. Stringfellow’s sleeves had been rolled above the elbow and his forearms were coated with red. It looked like paint. But it wasn’t. Dr. Stringfellow frowned at Holt. “You. You’ve got a hole in your leg.”

“It’s clean.” Instinctively, Holt moved back. Never show weakness, never show wounds. He was an expert at avoiding doctors. Because sometimes they asked questions. And sometimes they didn’t.

“Nothing’s clean. Come see me later.” The doctor dropped to his knees beside Thomas, cutting away at the bloody fabric around his leg.

Paul looked at Holt in alarm, suddenly very young under his stubble and dirt. “You all right?”

“It’s just a scratch.” It wasn’t a scratch. It had gone clean through, just like de Almendares had warned him. Holt had no idea what it had gone through in the process, but it hadn’t broken bone and he could walk on it—mostly—so that was all that counted. “I’ve had worse.”

Paul’s eyes lit with admiration. “Of course,” he said. “I’m sure you have.”

Holt cursed himself. He hadn’t meant to feed this crazy idea Paul had that he was some sort of rough and tough cowboy.

He’d had worse, all right. But it hadn’t been outlaws or wild horses or whatever romantic tale Paul was telling himself.

His worst wounds had happened in a mansion in Springfield, Massachusetts. He’d had his head knocked against the polished mahogany of a sideboard, swallowed the taste of his own blood lying flat on his face on a Turkish carpet, and seen his black eye reflected in a sterling silver tea service. Holt could scarcely remember a time when he hadn’t been afraid, when he hadn’t known how to carry on through the pain, hiding bruises and cracked bones beneath starched linen and thick knickerbockers.

A Mauser hole was nothing to that.

“You all right? Maybe we should get you to the doc after all.”

“No. No, I’m fine.” Just ten years and a thousand miles away. Holt wasn’t that kid anymore. He’d earned his calluses, not with a pen but with whatever tools came to hand, working his way across the country, pure physical labor, as if he could sweat out his past. And if he died now, here, in this jungle? There was no one left on God’s green earth to mourn him.

Paul on the other hand . . . There was a whole family back in New York. Father, mother, doting siblings. Undoubtedly a girl, or ten. That Miss Hayes. She looked like a girl who didn’t need another tragedy in her life.

“Someone should stay with Lieutenant Thomas,” said Holt abruptly. “See him patched up, and get word to Colonel Wood.”

“And let our men go unavenged?” Paul’s amiable face was strangely stern. It was like watching a golden retriever turn into a Doberman. “They killed Ham. What did Ham ever do to anyone?”

He’d been doing his darnedest to kill as many Spaniards as possible. But Holt didn’t think Paul would appreciate that point.

And maybe, just maybe, he wasn’t doing Paul any favors trying to keep him out of the battle. He’d tried to save his mother. Get away, he’d said. It will be better for you, he’d said.

But it hadn’t, had it?

“All right, then.” Holt put his weight down as hard as he could on his injured leg. It hurt but it held. He checked his Krag. He chambered another round. “Once more unto the breach.”

Paul gave him a strange look, but Holt was already limping forward into the fray, quick as his injured leg would take him.

It wasn’t until Holt had flung himself onto his stomach at the front of the line, shooting and running and dropping and shooting again, that he remembered that cowboys weren’t supposed to quote Shakespeare.

Siboney, Cuba

June 25, 1898

“They call this a hospital?” whispered Kit.

It was full dark by the time Clara Barton’s bedraggled relief force reached Siboney, after a harrowing ride to shore in a rowboat that saw them nearly wrecked against the rocks. Betsy had seen more than one of the doctors retching as they crawled out onto the sand, then hastily wiping their mouths with their handkerchiefs.

They’d managed to collar a passing Cuban soldier, who had offered the information that both the Cuban and US Army hospitals lay just to the right of the beach. They had struggled through the sand, their wet skirts hampering their legs, the nurses in their white aprons and caps, ghostly in the dark. Betsy wasn’t sure if she was holding Kit’s hand or if Kit was holding hers, but she was glad of the human contact in the strange, dark night.

At the head of the group, Miss Barton strode confidently onto the verandah, demanding in ringing tones, “Is this the army hospital?”

One of the men on the verandah detached himself. “Who’s asking?”

He addressed not Miss Barton but the man behind her, Dr. Lesser.