The Healers

Andre was already completely under one of the wagons and half covered by the body of his dead friend, Felix, when he was struck in the back, under the bone in his shoulder, by a Comanche arrow. Battling the pain, he turned more on his side and a bit further under the wagon not only to take the pressure off the arrow in his back but also to show he’d been hit and to have some hope of being able to feign death and survive this. Those in the Comanche war party were roaming around, mopping up from their raid, freeing the wagon horses from their traces to take away, and gathering up whatever of value they could scrounge in the narrow trace in the Elk Mountain pass through the Wichita Mountains between the Oklahoma Indian territory and Texas. Andre Fouche had picked a bad time to leave New Orleans and try to join his brother in California. 1874 was an Indian uprising period in this region.

The striking of gold at Sutter’s Mill in 1848 had started a gold rush to California. His uncle, Edouard, a newly minted doctor at the time, had seen his chance to profitably meet the medical needs of a burgeoning population in the San Franciso area, and had made the move. Andre’s Creole father had come back to New Orleans a broken man after the end of the Civil War, Andre’s mother having already died of the fever during the war. When his father died in 1873 and wanting to become a doctor himself, Andre decided to join Edouard in California.

Andre, at nineteen, barely making it as a tender of a bar in a men’s gambling club on Rampart Street, who took men upstairs at the club and laid under them for money, had hooked up with Felix, a Creole half-breed gambler at the club. Felix fought a duel over a charge of cheating. He won the duel, but he thought it best to move on.

The two signed on as wagon drivers for a wagon train taking men out to the coast, up from Louisiana, across the Oklahoma territory and up to connect to the Cherokee Trail to northern California. At Fort Sill, they’d been warned that the Comanches were on the warpath and not to try going through the passes in the Wichita Mountains. Two days out of For Sill, in the pass around Elk Mountain, they were seen and attacked by a Comanche war party. They weren’t heavily armed. They were just an assortment of foot-loose men headed for the gold fields in California. They didn’t stand a chance with the Comanche warriors on their fleet ponies.

The Comanches left so quietly that it was some time before Andre could hope that they had left him. The arrow wound hurt like hell, but he’d had some medical training in New Orleans before he had left, fully intending to study with his uncle in California, and he believed that he would live, if he could get it out and the wound didn’t fester.

But he had to get out of here and he somehow had to get back to Fort Sill. He had no idea what was ahead, so he had to try to get back. But it had been a two-day’s wagon ride. The wagons were still here but no horses.

His lover, Felix, was here too, halfway covering him. But there was no question that he was dead. He’d take four arrows that Andre could see—one in the throat.

Andre gently pushed Felix off him and crawled out from underneath the wagon. But then he stopped, panicked. As soon as he’d moved out from underneath the wagon, he heard excited voices. They weren’t speaking English. It was the Comanches, he thought. They hadn’t all left. He was done for.

The voices were there, beside him now. Hands—at least four hands were on him. They were moving him. The pain in his shoulder suddenly was sharp. Fingers were probing the wound around the arrow shaft. He blacked out.

* * * *

Andre was feverish and unconscious for nearly ten days after the two Wichita tribe braves carried him up into the mountains to a lean-to shed hidden between a mountain stream and the base of a rock cliff. Etu and Kai weren’t with the Comanches or the Apaches, the principle tribes fighting the white men in the 1874 Indian uprising. Thei tribe, the Wichitas, lived in the mountains of their name, kept to themselves, and did some trading at Fort Sill.

Andre’s luck was that Etu was the tribe healer, had done minor arrow extraction before, and had native medicines with him. He and Kai had come upon the raid scene at the height of the attack, too late to have saved any of the men on the wagon train even if they’d been in a position to. They hid and watched. Eagle-eyed Etu had seen Andre under the wagon and, even though he was sure the others were dead, he wasn’t sure of that about Andre. They had waited for the Comanches herding the horses from the wagon back down to the plains around Elk Mountain to be well gone and then had come down to the slaughter scene to see if there were survivors.

The only one they found was Andre and he fainted as soon as they found him. They carried him into the bush, away from the scene, in case the Comanches returned. Etu attended to him there as far as extracting the arrow and dressing the wound with herbs to fight off infection. Then they carried him up to the lean-to in the mountains, a private place where they met and were intimate away from their village. Etu attended to Andre and Kai made the journey to Fort Sill, where he regularly went to trade to inform them of the attack and to put in motion a search party to come up into the pass to bury the dead and remove the wagons. This had not been the first wagon train lost this way in 1874. They had warned this one not to try to use the mountain passes.

Despite the best efforts of the Healer, because of the roughness of taking Andre up into the mountains, the wound did fester. For days Etu fought for the young man’s life. For days after that, when there was hope he’d survive, Andre was coming in and out of consciousness, on the edge of beginning to understand that he was alive and that a handsome native was tending to him. Then there were days when he was conscious but too weak to do anything for himself.

He lay there on elk skins, naked, while Etu bathed and cared for him. The situation was unavoidably intimate. Both of the young men were handsome, well-formed men. They also each were men who had gone with men and they saw this in each other and couldn’t avoid it.

Andre was shocked to find that Etu spoke excellent English.

The Wichita brave explained to him the difference between his tribe and those of the Comanches and Apaches that were on the warpath. And he explained why his English was good.

“My mother is white. She was on a wagon train as a young woman and was taken by the Apaches in a raid. After some time she was traded to the Wichita and was taken by my father, the medicine man, as his mate. She told me she went with him willingly. She never tried to go back. She said her family had all been killed and there was no ‘back’ for her to go to. She didn’t completely forget who she’d been, though. She taught me of her people and her people’s language, saying that someday it would be to my benefit to know it. My white-man’s name is Earl. She says that was her father’s name.”

As Andre healed, the two became unable to hide their attraction for each other or that each lay with men. Andre admitted that men covered him, and Etu said that he covered men. He said he came here with Kai occasionally and he covered Kai, but that Kai did both.

Etu had to tell Andre about Kai and his part in saving Andre, noting that he wasn’t here because he had gone to Fort Sill to tell them of the raid and massacre. He had then returned to the Wichita village to explain away Etu’s absence, which would be noted because Etu’s father, the medicine man, was now dead and Etu had taken his place as the village Healer. Kai told them Etu was healing someone. He didn’t tell them it was a white man saved from a Comanche raid.

One evening when Andre was nearly recovered, Etu was bathing him and massaging his muscles to keep him fit when their eyes met, their need became obvious, and the intimacy was consummated, the two kissing and fondling each other, and Etu, being careful of Andre’s shoulder, kneeling between Andre’s thighs, which the young man willingly opened to him. And they fucked.

They lay together that night and the subsequent nights, and they fucked. And they fucked.

When Kai finally appeared at the campsite again, both Etu and Andre realized that this had to come to an end. They were from two different worlds. Kai, who was accustomed to going to Fort Sill to trade, had brought horses, one for each of them. Without revealing to Kai their relationship—although he was not a naïve man; he could tell what they had been doing—they broke camp and Kai and Andre rode down to Fort Sill for Kai to say Andre had been found wandering in the mountains a survivor of the Comanche raid, and Etu rode back to the Wichita village to take up his life as the Healer there again.

* * * *

Groaning, Andre grasped the brass rung of the major’s bed above his head and hung on for dear life, cheek to blanket and mouth open wide in a yawn of pain-pleasure, as Major Beecham rode his ass hard in the final moments of the doggy fuck. The bed springs screeched in the rhythmic rocking of the bed so loud that anyone passing by the major’s quarters facing the parade court of Fort Sill would know what was happening inside. They all knew anyway, but Major Charles Beecham was the commander of Fort Sill. He could do as he pleased.

There were limits to what the major could reveal he did in his command of the fort, but fucking the young man who had been brought in as the sole survivor of a Comanche wagon train attack and who was recovering and acting as the fort nurse while he did so was not one of the secrets the major harbored.

With a grunt, the major tensed, jerked, and came—and then tensed, jerked, and came again. Turning to his side in the bed, he pulled the much smaller Andre onto his side and half way onto his body. Andre was naked, but the major was still in the BVDs, with the crotch flap lowered, that he’d worn as they slept together on his bed in the night. He embraced Andre close with one arm, handed the young man’s cock with the other, and beat the writhing and moaning Andre off until he had come as well.

With another grunt, the major rolled out of bed, went over to the wash basin, and cleaned himself off.

“You didn’t wince at all this time as I was doing you,” the major said. “That’s a good sign. You don’t have much pain in that shoulder at all now, I reckon.”

“No, it’s fine, sir,” Andre answered, rolling onto his back in the bed. He didn’t get out of the bed. He knew not to. This was just the start of the day.

“I’m told you got a letter from California yesterday. Your uncle?”

“Yes, sir. My uncle answered my letter—from San Francisco. He’s a doctor at City and County Hospital there—and teaches medicine at the University of the Pacific.”

“That’s what you want to do, isn’t it? You want to become a doctor.”

“Yes, sir, I do,” Andre answered.

“Doctor Granger tells me you’ve been helpful here—that you have some knowledge of native herbs that help with infection and headaches. You learn that back in Louisiana?”

“Some, sir,” Andre answered. He hadn’t learned it in Louisiana, though. He’d picked it up from Etu in the lean-to on the mountain while he was recovering from the arrow wound. He couldn’t tell that to Major Beecham, though, knowing what the official line on consorting with Indians. There were a few who came to the fort for trade and were permitted to do that, include the Wichita brave Kai, who gave Andre news of Etu when he came, but Andre knew the major wouldn’t like to hear just how close Andre had come to Etu—and to Kai, for that matter.

“So, now that you’re pretty well healed, you’ll be wanting to resume your journey out to California then,” the major said.

“Yes, sir. My uncle writes that I can come to him and he’ll get me into the medical school there. I can live with his family while I study.”

“The wagon train camped outside the wall is going to California.”

“Yes, sir, I know. I’ve already talked with them.”

“The uprising of last year is over now, so you should be safe through the Wichita Mountains.”

“That’s good to hear.”

“Doctor Granger is getting old. I’ll bet he’ll be gone in a couple of years and we’ll need a doctor. You’d be very welcome to come back as the fort doctor after your training.”

“That’s good to hear too.”

“You’ve been a real bright spot for the men here. I don’t mind telling you that—and not just because of the nursing. We have need for a young, yielding man such as yourself.”

“Thank you, sir.” He’d been too forthcoming with a soldier who had nursed him when he first came to the fort. He’d revealed he’d lain down for men for money in New Orleans. They quickly put him in position to do that here—without the money. His services went far in relieving the tension and boredom of the men at the fort.

“Yes, indeed, a real good gift to the men’s sport. We’ll miss you for that. I’ll miss you.”

The major had dressed by now. Andre remained on the bed, on his back, legs bent and spread, naked. The major went to the door out onto the parade court. Three other men were out there, waiting.

“He’s all yours, Lieutenant Shaffer . . . and then you next, Sergeant Nichols. Get your fill. He’s going to be taking the wagon train out there out to California now that he’s healed.” He only paused outside his door.

Then he resumed walking as Shaffer entered the room, stripping his clothes off as he approached the bed. Down to his BVDs, with the crotch flap down and a fisted erection protruding, he climbed onto the bed and on top of Andre, coming down on his knees between Andre’s spread thighs.

The young lieutenant was bigger, younger, and more vigorous than the major had been. Outside the room, the two sergeants, waiting their turn for sport, listened to the bed springs. Whereas before they were squeaking. Now they were singing—and the young male whore was yodeling.

As the singing of the bed springs went on and on, Sergeant Nichols became restless. He could wait no longer—and he had been welcomed to share with Andre before. He entered the room, stripping off his clothes. He found the lieutenant on his back on the bed, with Andre straddling his loins, facing him, and rising and falling on his cock. That was just fine with Sergeant Nichols. The lieutenant grunted and Andre moaned, as the sergeant climbed up on the bed, behind Andre. He pushed the young man’s torso forward and onto the lieutenant’s chest. This rolled Andre’s buttocks up and gave Nichols access to start burying his cock in the young man’s ass, running it in above Shaffer’s.

The bed springs squealed and sang, and new sounds were added—the rhythmic thumping of the headboard on the wall and Andre’s plaintive cries of “Fuck. FUCK! Oh, FUCKIN’ JESUS!” It was a miracle that the bed didn’t collapse.

* * * *

Six years later, Doctor Andre Fouche was back at Fort Sill, Major Charles Beecham having continued to press him to return and Doctor Granger having retired and returned to Pennsylvania. Andre’s medical studies in San Francisco had been a success and he had gained some notoriety on his ability to introduce some Native American medicinal herb cures into medical practices in the West. He had taken what Etu had taught him and sought more cures used by the tribes of northern California.

Incorporating local herbs in his treatments had come particularly useful when he returned to Fort Sill, as it gave him the opportunity to visit the mountains and mingle with the Wichita Indians living there. Peace had been struck years earlier with the Comanche and Apache tribes, the more rebellious leaders of which had been hauled off to prison in Florida, but they and the U.S. army forces and the settlers coming in from the East remained at arms’ length from each other. The Wichitas traded with the army camp and the settlers, but only in a limited way. The brave, Kai, still came to the fort regularly to do that and picked up once again as a conduit of communications between Andre and the Wichita villages on the mountain.

Thus, Andre and Etu once more were in communication, and, on the pretext of gathering herbs off the mountain, Andre journeyed there regularly. When he did, Etu would have already gathered the herbs and Andre spent his time in the village helping Etu, the village’s medicine man, with combining new and traditional medical treatments for the villagers. Major Beecham was known as a hater of the native tribes and the government’s policy was to keep them isolated and at arms’ length, so Andre’s visits to the Wichitas were conducted in secret. Those in the Fort Sill area benefited from them, though. Andre now lived outside the walls of the fort, where a town, supported by farms and ranches, was growing, and health-wise, this region of the Oklahoma Territory was better off than most areas of the United States because of the medicines Andre and Etu developed together.

The two still were in both love and lust, but in the intervening years Etu had taken a mate and fathered two children. Other than Kai, no one in his village knew that there had been—and, indeed, still was—a relationship with the white doctor.

On this Saturday, during this nearly every two month’s trip up into the mountains, Andre did as he had done before. He left the mountains for the horse-back journey back to Fort Sill that took the better part of two days. But he took three full days returning. The lean-to under the cliff where Etu had first doctored his arrow wound was still there, the shack improved in amenities. He stopped there for the first night. Before night fell, Etu had joined him, and they rode each other to their hearts’ content not just that night but the next night as well. Then, on the morning of the third day, Andre, with some regret at their parting, came down the mountain and Etu went up the mountain, back to his village and his own family.

The arrangement wasn’t the best and Andre was becoming tired of it, but he was still besotted with Etu and couldn’t give him up. He was worried what would happen if Major Beecham found out just how intimately he was consorting with a Wichita brave. The commander of Fort Sill was the most important and powerful man in this region of the Oklahoma Territory. His word was law and his justice wasn’t challenged.

The major no longer bedded Andre. At the passing of the six years Andre was in California getting his medical training and credentials, something had happened to dampen the major’s lust for men—or he had learned to hide it much better. Since the Indian uprisings had been put down and settlers had begun to arrive and tame the wilderness, the area had become civilized. The major had also gotten the message that it was family men who were being promoted into the higher ranks. He had gone back East and returned with a wife. There was little evidence that theirs was a happy or intimate life. It seemed more a move for convenience on both of their parts. But it had toned down the demonstrations of sexual lust by the major and his staff. Andre now was accepted as the regional doctor, not to be messed with in terms of his male whore background.

It was a curiosity to Andre that the man had been so lustful when Andre had first sojourned at the fort, recuperating for his onward journey to California. It was that Sunday, coming down out of the Wichita Mountains, that Andre understood why.

He came to a stand of trees around a pond well off the beaten path to the fort, having gone off the path to search for certain medicinal plants Andre knew grew in a particular spot. As he approached the trees, he heard them—men cavorting with each other in the pond.

There were two of them. Andre knew them both and recognized them by their raised voices and laughter. Major Beecham and the Wichita brave, Kai, were playing and wrestling and, as Andre watched from a hiding spot in the bushes, fucking in the pond. Much fell into place now, not least how frequently Kai appeared at the fort to trade and that the major, thought to be violently anti-Indian, had permitted him to do so.

Andre wondered how long the two men had been lovers and had found ways to meet and fuck just as Andre and Etu did. He also wondered why Kai never mentioned this to him. Perhaps Etu did know about it, though, and that this had helped him in maintaining a relationship with Andre that Andre had thought was more dangerous than it was.

This changed everything. This he could use in dealing with the major in his interest to regularize his connections with Etu more. If the major could have a Wichita male lover, so could Andre. Andre wouldn’t push it with Etu, because he had to be sensitive to Etu’s standing in the Wichita tribe and because Etu now had a family. But now Major Beecham could be handled.

Andre quietly returned to his horse and rode back to Fort Sill. He would say nothing to anyone but Beecham. He didn’t begrudge the two men the pleasure they took from each other. Andre just wanted a freer hand to help the settlers in the area and the Wichitas on the mountain enjoy a healthier life from their medical healers.