Chapter 18 #2
He left the dance floor. Sabrina saw that he was walking toward his quarters.
“Sloan!”
“What?”
“He knows—he knows that I know. He’s going to think that Jean told me. He’s going to—to hurt her again.”
“Sabrina, how could he possibly know?”
“He does!” she insisted.
As she watched, Lloyd reached his own doorway across the parade grounds.
She didn’t know what she was going to do; she only knew that Jean Jenkins was defenseless and needed help. She swung on Sloan. “Please, we’ve got to do something!”
She didn’t give Sloan a chance to respond. She started running from the dance floor.
She heard him swearing, then running after her.
Sloan was extremely fast, and he passed her halfway to the Jenkins’ door. But even from that point, she could hear Jean’s sudden cry of terror.
Sloan slammed a shoulder against the door and swung it open. Sabrina came running up behind him, just in time to see that he had wrenched Lloyd Jenkins off his wife. Jean crouched in a corner, shaking and sobbing while the two men went after one another, exchanging serious punches.
They were really no match for one another.
Sloan was lethal, even with his fists. Lloyd Jenkins was screaming for mercy and calling Sloan a bloody savage when Terry, Reno, and Custer burst in on the scene.
It was Autie Custer who dared to drag Sloan off Jenkins, and Reno who kept Jenkins from trying to swing back in revenge once he had been rescued from Sloan’s wrath.
“What in God’s name is going on here?” Terry demanded furiously.
He looked from Sloan to Jenkins, and back again. He stared at the sobbing Jean, and then, very expectantly, at Sabrina.
She opened her mouth to try to explain. Jean suddenly sobbed out her name. “Sabrina!”
She paused.
“All right, then. Reno, get help and escort Major Trelawny to the stockade.”
“Wait!” Sabrina began.
But she felt Sloan’s dark eyes on her. “I fight my own battles!” he told her.
She fell silent, watching as he was escorted out of the Jenkins’ house under guard. “Call a guard for Jenkins,” Terry said then.
“Sir! Trelawny burst into my house—”
“Mrs. Trelawny, perhaps you can see to Mrs. Jenkins,” Terry said. “Captain Jenkins, sir, you are under arrest as well!”
Jenkins opened his mouth and closed it. Under escort, he, too, left the house.
Sabrina wanted to run after the men. She felt responsible for Sloan’s arrest because it was she who had gotten him involved in the Jenkins’ dispute. Yet, what choice had she had? Jenkins had been hurting his wife.
Jean was quietly sobbing. Sabrina came to her, drew her to her feet, and hugged her.
“Jean, Jean, it will be all right.”
“It will never be all right. But thank you. You—you didn’t say anything.”
Sabrina smoothed back Jean’s hair. She didn’t tell Jean she was certain that, despite the fact that Sloan had been taken away under arrest first, she was pretty sure that General Terry had figured out what had been going on.
“Let me get you some sherry,” Sabrina told Jean.
She stayed with the other woman until Sarah Anderson came to take her place. She was glad to see Sarah, who was so competent and full of common sense.
“You’d best get home yourself,” Sarah told her.
Sabrina nodded.
“Don’t worry about Sloan; he’ll be all right.”
“I made him intervene,” Sabrina admitted.
Sarah smiled grimly. “Sloan will be all right. If Jean had really been hurt and he hadn’t intervened, he’d have never been able to live with himself. He’s a good man,” she added lightly.
Sabrina nodded and left Sarah with Jean.
As she walked the few steps home, she thought that Sarah was right.
Sloan would always stand up for the rights of the downtrodden.
When she had first found herself in difficult circumstances, he had determined to marry her.
Somehow he maintained his dignity and honesty in the midst of his own emotional turmoil. He was strong and exceptionally noble.
Maybe she had known from the beginning just how deeply she could come to care for him. It was frightening to love this way. She wasn’t sure that she could tell him the truth of it yet, but she knew that today, she was in his debt.
Back in the quarters she shared with him, she curled up in one of the upholstered chairs. She was going to wait there until he came home, no matter how long General held Terry held him a prisoner.
Sloan was humiliated at being imprisoned in the stockade.
In all his long years of military service, he had never once been locked up before.
There had probably been a few occasions in his wild youth during the Civil War when he might have been locked up for drinking and carousing with his fellow officers, but he’d never had the bad luck to get caught.
He looked at his knuckles where he’d split the flesh, hitting Jenkins. The blood had dried.
His fingers hurt.
Surely, though, Jenkins was in worse shape.
Ah, Sabrina. Well, he hoped she was happy. He’d spent years controlling his temper, forcing himself not to get into fights with Lloyd Jenkins, and now…
Well, he could readily admit that he didn’t regret his actions. Lloyd had one hell of a black eye himself now, and with a prayer, things might change for the better for Jean. She might even come up with the good sense to divorce Lloyd Jenkins.
“Major!”
At Sergeant Dawson’s call, he rose from the army cot he sat upon and approached the bars. He heard a key scraping in the lock, and Dawson opened his barred prison door.
“Major, sir, the general wants to see you.”
“Thank you, Sergeant,” Sloan said, dusting his plumed hat on his thigh and sweeping it back onto his head. He followed Dawson, wondering just what was going to happen now. He prayed strenuously that his wife wasn’t going to be involved.
It had grown late, he realized, as they walked across the yard to Terry’s headquarters. But Terry was seated at a desk, and Jenkins was already seated in one of the two chairs in front of it.
Sloan saluted; Terry did likewise. “Take a seat, Major,” the general told him.
He did as directed, aware that Jenkins was avoiding looking at him.
“We need to fight the hostiles—not one another,” Terry said.
Sloan didn’t reply.
“The major can be damned hostile,” Jenkins muttered.
Sloan shrugged. “I’ve seen more White men beat their wives than I’ve seen Indians beat theirs,” he said casually.
He thought that Jenkins was going to spring out of his chair and come at him again, but he didn’t. Lloyd Jenkins lowered his head slightly, and Sloan saw that he was shaking. He clenched his hands before him on his lap.
“He—Major Trelawny—has been wanting to come at me for a very long time, sir!” Jenkins said.
He didn’t look at Sloan. “He is an Indian—takes the part of the savages all the time. That’s what this was all about.
One day, sir, he is going to forget that he’s in the US Cavalry, and he’s going to join the heathens, running after us all, shooting off arrows and hacking us down with tomahawks! ”
Sloan gritted his teeth, remaining perfectly still.
“Was this some kind of a vengeance fight, Major?” Terry asked.
Sloan shook his head. “Sir, Jenkins has been calling me a traitor since we met. If I were going to pick a fight over his calling me a heathen, the battle would have been waged long ago.”
“She’s my wife!” Jenkins exploded.
Terry stared at Jenkins. “Ah.”
“You don’t understand, sir—”
“I think I do.”
“Sir, she is my wife—”
“That doesn’t give you the right to hurt her, son.”
“‘Wives, obey your husbands’!” Jenkins quoted. “That’s right from the Scriptures, sir.”
“Well, now, I haven’t read and reread my Scriptures for quite some time,” Terry told him, “but I surely don’t remember any place where a man is instructed to let his temper fly with his spouse.
” He offered Sloan a severe frown as well.
“You should both be in the stockade for a month,” Terry muttered.
“But we haven’t time for this nonsense. I’m ordering the two of you to get along. ”
“We’ll get along fine—” Sloan began.
“He needs to stay out of my business,” Jenkins interrupted.
Sloan stared at Terry without saying anything.
Terry looked from him to Jenkins. “Captain Jenkins, if I see your pretty young wife with an injury again, I’ll tear you apart myself, do you understand?
And not just that— I’ll see that you’re written up and perhaps drummed right out of this man’s army for behavior unbecoming to an officer. Do I make myself clear?”
“Yessir!”
“Now, as to you…” Terry stared at Sloan. “Go get some sleep. You’re out of here at dawn.”
“Pardon, sir?”
“I’ve briefs for you to deliver to Gibbon in the field.
You’re to move on out of here quickly, and we’ll meet up with you again at the mouth of the Yellowstone.
It’s important that you reach Gibbon with this information as soon as possible.
Also, if you encounter the hostiles along your way, you will be expected to report their position to Gibbon. Is that clear, Major?”
“Yessir.”
“You’re dismissed, gentlemen. Good evening.”
Sloan rose. Ignoring Jenkins, he strode to the door.
He’d leave again, come the dawn. He’d never imagined that he’d be ordered out so many days before the column was due to ride.
He’d wasted so much time.
And now…
He had tonight.
And God knew, he wondered enough himself when the Indians would shoot him for being a soldier or when the soldiers would shoot him for being an Indian. Some deep strain of destiny seemed knotted up inside of him. This might be his last night to attempt to conceive a child.
To achieve just a bit of immortality…
He assured himself that he was a capable soldier and man. He didn’t intend to die.
But still…