The ambulance stayed behind at Fort Russell and was replaced by a wagon containing mainly requisitioned supplies. Rowan wrapped the formidable mound of fabric for the calico ball in burlap and set it next to Mary’s valise and bedroll, made from three of the pile of army blankets requisitioned for Fort Laramie.

Sergeant Blade tried to politely talk her out of riding sidesaddle, citing blustery weather and the hint of snow. She said it would take more than that to coop her up into a supply wagon with kegs of dried beef, red paint in tins, and surprisingly, even more dried raisins.

He finally shared news Mary didn’t want to hear. “A patrol in this morning from Fort Fetterman crossed a big trail of Indian ponies headed north. I’d rather you stayed in the wagon.”

Mary knew better than to argue. He added that the troopers had noticed the straight lines denoting travois, which usually meant women and children.

“It’s no raiding party, Mary.”

“Maybe we can give them some of the raisins,” she joked.

“The logic here, Miss Smarty, is to cut a low profile and avoid what looks like a sizeable party, even if they aren’t bent on raiding,” he said. “The wagon for you.”

“And if we surprise them by accident?”

“You’re determined to worry, aren’t you?”

“I like to know where I stand.”

“If we surprise them, it won’t be pretty,” he admitted. “Trust me to keep you safe.”

Maybe a joke would help. “You’d better, because I have fifteen dresses to make.”

“Sixteen. Don’t forget yours,” Rowan reminded her.

Mary made herself comfortable by adding a few blankets to her stash in the wagon. Someone had put in a pile of newspapers, the Chicago Tribune among them, probably intended for enlisted men’s day rooms and officers with subscriptions. She fished out the Tribs and settled in for a day reading about the Great Chicago Fire, as it was already being called, along with “One for the history books,” and “A conflagration such as we have never seen, and we have seen a lot.”

She spent the afternoon reading through pages of first-person accounts of the “raging inferno unequalled in all the annals of the United States,” shaking her head over loss of life and stories of families searching for children unaccounted for and hotheads ready to lynch all Irishmen because of Mrs. O’Leary’s cow. Sukey Washington’s sandwiches went down with ease, and so did the handful of raisins Mary knew no sharp-eyed commissary clerk would miss.

She had just started an article detailing what the various churches were doing to relieve the suffering poor when she heard Sergeant Blade holler, “Close up, men, we’re in for it.”

The teamster turned to her. “Head down,” he ordered. “Hang on.”

From the time she was small, her parents had taught her instant obedience. Her college-educated father had apologized for the lesson. “Nothing more will ever happen here to our Seneca Nation because it has all been done to us,” he had told her. “Even then, my father so taught me, and his father before him, going back and back. When someone tells you to obey, you obey.”

“Nëga:je:” Mary heard Papa speak to her from that corner of her mind called Seneca wisdom, the one she hadn’t visited much. She sank to the wagon bed. “I will try,” she repeated in English as she wedged herself between two kegs.

After trundling down and up through what she thought must be the Chugwater to the opposite bank, they headed on a run toward a higher point, then stopped with a lurch. She heard the teamster set the brake, then leap into the wagon bed with her. He rested his Sharps carbine against the wagon seat he had just vacated.

“Doing okay, missy?” he asked, his eyes forward on what, mercifully, she could not see.

“Doing okay,” she echoed.

She heard horses close to the wagon and the creak of leather as men dismounted. “What is happening?” she asked the driver, hoping she didn’t sound as frightened as she felt.

“There aren’t enough of us to allow one in four to hold the horses while the rest of the troopers dismount and fight,” he explained, then stopped to squeeze off a shot. “They’ve tied the horses to the wagon wheels. Glad I set the brake.”

Another shot. A gasp. The murmur of voices. Sobbing and then silence. Her nerves tuned like fine wire, Mary heard someone fiddle with the canvas at the back of the wagon and flinched as the tailgate dropped.

“Help me, Casey.”

She knew the sergeant’s voice, marveling that he sounded so calm. “Can I help, too?” she asked.

“You can. We’re handing in a wounded man. Casey will pull him toward you. Do what you can to stop the bleeding.”

She waited for the teamster to crawl toward the bleeding trooper that Rowan pushed inside as gently as he could, considering.

“Degadënö:nyöh,” she said.

“Come again?” Rowan asked.

“Just thanking my parents for teaching me things they thought I would never need,” she told him.

“And I thank them, too,” the sergeant said. “Keep your head down. We’ll get through this.” He slammed up the tailgate and jerked down the canvas.

The trooper stared at her with frightened eyes. Mary could not remember his name, or if she even knew it. “Your name?”

“Will Lemaster,” he said. “Can you help me?”

“I will do my best.”

Casey had returned to his crouch by the wagon seat. Will tugged himself closer to her, using his elbows because his left leg seemed useless. Mary saw the blood pooling under the fleshy part of his thigh, if troopers even had fleshy parts.

“Damn but I wish it had been an arrow. They don’t bleed so much at first,” he said. “Can you cut off my trousers above the shot hole?”

His question jolted her into motion. Mary opened her valise and took out her cutting shears. Thank goodness she had brought them along to Cheyenne. Like a typical Easterner, she hadn’t trusted a town as raw and ungainly as Cheyenne to have any such thing.

She did her best not to cause him any pain, and Will did his best not to do more than suck in his breath when she did. Her fingers were soon slippery with the trooper’s blood as she cut off the trouser leg and pulled it away.

“I don’t think the ball went all the way through,” she said.

The trooper grimaced. “A surgeon’s going to need to probe around. Right now, stop the bleeding. I can only lose so much.”

She looked with some longing at the pile of fabric that others had paid for, then returned to her valise, where she took out the beautiful dark-blue material with polka dots she had paid for a few hours ago.

She reminded herself she was leaving in January, and seriously, where would she have found the time to make that dress at all? Mary cut into the length of the material, moved the shears steadily up two yards, then cut across. Moving deliberately, her hands steady now, she folded the strip over and over until she had a respectable pad.

Another few snips and she cut more of the lovely fabric. She placed the pad over the wound weeping blood. “Hold it there,” she ordered.

He did as she said, fear gone from his face. Heavens, the man must have thought she knew what she was doing.

“Hold it tight as I start the wrap,” she said.

He did. After wiping her hands on her skirt, Mary wrapped the strip around the pad and his thigh until it was bound up neatly, with maximum pressure on the pad. If this didn’t work, she couldn’t think of anything else except a tourniquet, which even she knew would mean eventual amputation.

“Let’s hope it works, Will,” she said. “I’ve pretty well exhausted my skills.”

Mary picked up the canteen Sergeant Blade must have left for her or Will and dipped another hunk of her material in it. She swabbed at the wagon bed until it was less bloody and set the brown paper down that had wrapped the fabric.

“If you can scoot onto this, it will tell us if the bandage is working,” she said. “I’ll help you.”

She made him as comfortable as she could, with his head propped against a bag of cornmeal, then covered him with an army blanket. “It’s the best I can do right now,” she said. “I wish it were more.”

The private leaned back with a sigh. “All things considered, Miss Blue Eye, I’m fine.”

She smiled at that. “You’re a liar, Will, but thank you.”

“No, it’s the truth,” he insisted. “Just hold my hand now and then, and I’ll be the envy of the entire Fifth Cavalry.”

He honestly looked as though he meant it. Mary felt herself relaxing. There wouldn’t have been time to make a dress for herself anyway, and this was more important. She poured a tin cup of water from the canteen and held it to his lips, because bravado aside, his hands shook. Hers were remarkably steady. Mama would be impressed. When he finished, he sighed again and closed his eyes. “Wake me up if you need any help,” he joked.

She laughed, which made Casey, still kneeling by the wagon seat, look at her in surprise. He shook his head and turned his gaze outward again.

She sat beside the sleeping private and held his hand as the firing diminished and finally stopped. Obedient to the order from Sergeant Blade and from her own caution, she waited.

“Mary? Is he still alive? How’re you?”

“We’re fine.”

Funny thing was, they were. A most pleasant feeling had shouldered aside her apprehension. For the first time in her admittedly cosseted and comfortable life, she felt useful and needed, with the sleeping trooper not remotely concerned that she was at least some part Indian and young. It was a pleasant sensation, and she wanted more of it.

Her euphoria disappeared when Sergeant Blade threw back the canvas and dropped the tailgate again. He carried a young Sioux with his upper arm crooked at a strange angle.

“Ready to tackle another project?” Rowan asked, as casually as if he were commenting on the weather. “He fell off his horse. He’s not too happy.”