The Range Wolf by Andrew J. Fenady

engaged?”
    â€œWhat’s that?”
    â€œYou and Miss Brewster. How long have you been engaged to be married?”
    â€œOh . . . not very long.”
    â€œHave you set a wedding date?”
    â€œI’d say that now it very much depends on two people.”
    â€œTwo people?”
    â€œYou . . . and Wolf Riker.”
    â€œWell, there’s not much more I can do. Most of my effort on her behalf is already done. As for Wolf Riker, I’d say that’s largely between you and him.”
    â€œDo you think I have a better chance than . . .”
    â€œThan what?”
    I pointed to the empty plate.
    â€œThere’s a fundamental difference between you and that beast. You have brains.”
    â€œYou’re the second one who’s mentioned that to me.”
    â€œWho was the first? Surely not Cookie.”
    â€œNo. It was Simpson.”
    â€œWell, that’s good counsel. I hope he takes it, too.”
    â€œTell me something, doctor.”
    â€œMore counsel?”
    â€œNo. How is it that someone like you . . . educated . . . skilled . . . a doctor, is in the company of a man like Riker on a drive like this?”
    â€œYour description omitted one word . . .”
    â€œWhat word?”
    â€œDrunkard.” He went on speaking in a colorful monotone. “You’re here quite by accident—you and your fiancée. Mine is a different story. A long story.”
    â€œI’d like to hear it. If you don’t mind.”
    â€œNo. I don’t mind. I said it’s a long story. But I’ll give you the abbreviated rendition if you’re sure you care to listen.”
    â€œYes, Dr. Picard. I would.”
    â€œThen it begins during the war. Dr. Miles Picard, the city of San Francisco, prestigious, prospering, if not yet prosperous. Never more than a drink or two during the evening—and after years and years of study and sacrifice, and yes, loneliness, in love with a beautiful, young lady, Catherine Graham, engaged to be married, like you and Miss Brewster.
    â€œBut the war was going badly for the North, so badly that the Confederates, led by Lee and his generals, mostly West Point graduates, seemed invincible, winning battle after battle: Fort Sumter, Lexington, Belmont, Shiloh, Fort Royal, Bull Run—with Union casualties mounting every month and week and day and hour, without nearly enough doctors to save the lives of the sick and wounded.
    â€œI believed that even one more doctor could make a difference. I also believed that a woman would wait, but a war wouldn’t. Catherine begged me not to go, or, at least to marry her before leaving. But no, I felt that would be unfair to her if I didn’t come back.
    â€œAnd so I enlisted as a doctor in the Medical Corps.
    â€œSherman said that ‘war is hell.’ No one knew that better, or more bitterly, than a battlefield doctor tending hundreds of causalities on both sides, amputating arms, legs, sometimes arms and legs, trying to stop the bleeding amid screams of agony and the smell of death in so-called operating rooms at the front lines. And sometimes there were no lines. Yesterday’s victory turned into today’s defeat.
    â€œBut as time went on there were more victories than defeats for the Union. Still the casualties mounted and the doctors sought relief for those casualties and for themselves. Analgesics. Morphine. Whiskey. Anything to get the wounded and the doctors through the endless operations.
    â€œAnd then the letter came. Another casualty. This one not in the battlefield. More than a thousand miles away. A deadly fever had struck San Francisco and her family wrote that Catherine was among the dead.
    â€œAnd in a way so was I.
    â€œIf I had been there I might have saved her—and others. There weren’t enough doctors.
    â€œSomehow I found enough strength or courage or determination to go on. But unfortunately, I found that strength or courage or