by William Gear
Weeds had grown thick around McConahough’s corral, which allowed Billy to slither close to their fire. With the horse guard returned, five men were now seated around it; pans were steaming on the stones.
“Damn,” one said, grinning. “They may hang us, but boys, I ain’t sure but what fucking that gal ain’t worth it.”
“Yep,” said another, “and Tucker’s still at it. The little shit gets his first ride on a damn fine-looking girl … and as many times as he can stiffen his wick in her. Me, I got my first cunt from a old black whore what was uglier than sin on Sunday … and loose as a mare’s ass to boot! And worst of all, I paid two whole dollars for that!”
The others laughed.
Billy’s heart slowed, the trembling gone from his hands.
The redheaded man on the end, however, looked worriedly over to where packs had been piled. “I’m telling you, boys, we shouldn’t have brought this one with us. Should have taken our turns at the place, cut her throat, and burned her and the old woman with the house.”
“Dewley never seen one this purty a’fore,” a dirty-faced, short man told him. “I ain’t never neither. Hair like snowy blond sunlight, eh? A goddess. That’s what Dewley called her. And them tits, why, they ain’t the biggest I ever got my hands around, but they sure fill a man’s hands.” He paused. “Reckon when Tucker’s finished, I’m taking me another turn.”
Later, Billy would realize that was when the devil took him over. In the mindless clarity, he walked forward, pulling the Dragoon from his belt.
The redhead. He’s the dangerous one.
“Hey,” a brown-haired man in a straw hat said, pointing at Billy.
The others turned, two of them reaching for pistols.
“Ya’ll got the Hancock girl? Say she’s a good fuck?” Billy was laughing, feeling the craziness of the moment. “Bet she is.”
Billy cocked the big Dragoon and shot the redhead through the center of his chest. Cocking and triggering, he shot the dirty-faced man, and then the blond. A black-eyed bearded man shot wildly with his pistol. Billy calmly laid the Dragoon’s front sight to cover the shooter’s nose and triggered. The man vanished in the billow of smoke.
The last man, sallow-faced, brown eyes wide, had leaped to his feet, tugging on his pistol. The Remington revolver’s hammer had caught in his shirt, fouling his attempt to free it. Finally, he tore it loose.
Billy shot him in the lights. Sallow-face staggered. The Remington wavered. His mouth worked—rage in his eyes as he worked the hammer back.
Billy cocked the Dragoon, smiled. The hammer clicked on an empty cylinder.
The sallow-faced man smiled his victory, taking his time, letting Billy see his death coming.
Even as the Remington discharged, Billy dropped the Colt. Threw himself right, and down as he shifted the Sharps.
The sallow-faced man blinked, seemingly fixed on the expanding puff of black powder smoke, then glanced down in time to see the Sharps’s black muzzle as Billy shot him in the chest.
Like an undercut tree, the sallow-faced man tilted, leaned, and toppled backward.
Like all good hunters, Billy took stock of his kills. The redheaded man was stone dead, as was the face-shot bearded man. The two others might have been mortally wounded, but Billy took no chances. Used the Bowie to cut their throats, left them choking and blowing blood in red misty sprays.
Sarah. Where’s Sarah?
Behind the packs and saddles a young boy had risen, his arms spread. Face pale with horror, his eyes were wide with disbelief. Pants wadded down around his ankles, his penis jutted hard, proud, and glistened wetly above the damp brown thatch of pubic hair. His shirt hung open exposing a thin white belly and protruding navel.
Billy started forward, the Bowie dripping blood from its tip.
The boy turned to run, tripped on his pants, and fell flat, trying desperately to jerk them up. “No, no, no,” he kept pleading as he tried again to leap to his feet, still tangled.
Billy launched himself, his body slamming down on the boy, driving the air from his lungs. His face inches from the boy’s, he stuck the Bowie in low, watched the youth’s eyes widen at the sting burning its way deep inside his guts.
“Was my sister good?” he gritted through clenched teeth, his powerful arm sliding the sharp knife up through muscle, intestine, and liver.
The boy’s limbs quivered, his head jerking this way and that. Terror-wide brown eyes fixed on Billy’s.
Billy rose to his feet, leaving the boy’s guts to spill out the long slit in his side.
“God! Dear God!” the boy cried, reaching down with frantically trembling hands to clutch at his bloody intestines.
Billy sucked a deep breath. A crazy joy began to dance through his chest. A feeling of ecstasy like nothing he’d ever experienced. His entire body might have become electric. Never had he felt so alive, so powerful and joyful.
And then he stopped short, blinked.
For a second the sight didn’t make sense, didn’t register.
Sarah lay on her back, spread-eagled. Short lengths of chain ran from the shackles on her wrists and ankles to stakes driven into the ground. The torn remains of her dress and camisole lay in shreds beneath her. Her long pale blond hair had been spread out over the grass as if arranged. A cloth gag had been stuffed in her mouth.
As he met her desperate, half-crazed stare, Billy’s breath stopped in his throat. His heart was banging like a wild thing. Knees buckling, he sank slowly to the ground.
This wasn’t the heavenly dream. Wasn’t the purity that had been his sister.
Distantly—as though he were gone from his body—he stared at her. Each bruise on her white skin, the bite marks around her nipples, the bloody fluids on the inside of her thighs and around her swollen … Around …
She saw, read his shock, and jerked her head away, as if to hide herself.
Billy struggled for breath. Felt himself float. How long? An eternity?
Sarah’s pleas, shouted against the gag, her jerking sobs, finally broke through the screaming in his mind.
He crawled forward on all fours, fingers fumbling as he pulled the pins from the shackles—watched her curl into a ball as she was freed. He untied the knotted rag from around her head. Pulled the wad of cloth from her mouth.
“Billy?” Her voice sounded small. Wounded.
He pulled her into his arms. She wept, huge racking sobs that shook her like a broken bird.
“Sorry,” he whispered in her ear. “I’m so … so sorry. My fault. I…”
Sarah hoarsely said, “Got to go. Dewley’s coming with the rest of them. They’s twenty-one in all. So that’s fifteen that went to Fayetteville to sell the wagon and what they took.”
“Can you ride? I mean, after what they done to your…”
“I think so.”
He helped her to her feet, aware of every inch of her naked body. “Got to get you something to wear.”
“Tucker’s pants, for one,” she said unsteadily, her eyes drifting, half mad in her head. “He’s my size.”
“Who’s Tucker?”
Her head sort of wobbled as she jerked it toward the dying boy. The kid was breathing fast, kept swallowing hard. His glittering gaze kept fixing on Billy’s when he wasn’t trying to stuff his spilling guts back inside him. Whimpers sounded half-choked in his throat.
Out by the road, Billy heard someone distantly calling, “Hurry up! They’s shooting back to the camp!”
“Who’s that?”
“Road guard,” she said through a sob as she tried, clumsily, to jerk Tucker’s pants from his limp legs. “Dewley’s coming.”
“Can’t take horses if they’re on the road.” He jerked the boy’s pants free and handed them to her. Picking up his knife, he stared down at the gutted boy. “Tucker, you say?”
The boy glanced his way with pain-glazed eyes.
Billy bent, grabbed Tucker by the privates and pulled.
“Billy! No!” Sarah screamed
as Billy neatly severed the boy’s penis and testicles.
“Guess your first was your last, huh?” He threw the boy’s parts full into his face.
Sarah stood, frozen and gaping, her face twitching. Glazed blue madness danced behind her eyes.
Walking to the packs, Billy found blankets, a red wool shirt that he tossed her, and then hurried to pick up the Sharps rifle. He ripped the pistol flask and bullet pouch from Sallow-face and took his Remington, leaving the Dragoon. Danny Goodman had a .36-caliber Remington that Billy had always admired. Now he had his own Model 1858, and a .44 at that.
He hesitated, looking at the men he’d killed. The ones who had raped Sarah.
Billy used the Bowie on each of them, leaving their castrated parts in their gaping mouths as John Gritts had told him the Cherokee once did.
“Come on!”
Sarah—shaking like a leaf in a hurricane—stumbled toward him, the pants tight around the swell of her hips. One sleeve of the red shirt kept evading her searching arm.
“What about shoes?” she asked.
“Where are yours?”
“I was barefoot when they come.”
“You been barefoot before.” He led the way back through the corral, behind the willows, and to the trail. “Can you climb?”
Shouts and horses were heard from the mouth of the cove. She literally sprang up the trail.
Billy followed, watching her bare feet as they dug into the damp soil. He was breathing hard by the time they passed the dead guard.
Maybe it’s only fifteen behind us?
Working his way through the cut up to the rim, he realized that Sarah was limping, her legs shaking with the effort.
No way they were going to make any kind of time.
“Sis, wait.”
He led the way to the limestone rim that overlooked the cove. Standing at the edge, he studied the camp, saw the horses, heard the shouts as men stomped back and forth.
A pistol shot rang out.
Someone must have taken pity on Tucker.
Billy dropped the block on the Sharps, slipped in a cartridge and raised the lever, neatly shearing open the back of the paper to expose the powder. Billy figured the distance at four hundred yards. Then he guesstimated the drop as he raised the Lawrence-patent sight for three hundred yards. Cocking the gun, he drew a bead on the big, black-bearded man stomping around, kicking the dead men around the fire.
The Sharps boomed, smoke billowing, and Billy raised his head. Through the blue haze, he wasn’t exactly sure of where the bullet hit, but the big man leaped as if he were scalded.
Cupping his mouth with both hands, Billy shouted, “You see what I did to them! I’ll get each one of you! You bastards are dead men!”
“Billy,” Sarah cried, “don’t!”
“Come on, sis,” he growled as he pushed past her. “We got a ways to go before nightfall.”
She stepped in behind him. “They’ll be coming for you.”
“I’m planning on it.”
42
November 3, 1863
Sarah looked up at the trees, most of the leaves gone now. Around them, the slopes were just catching the first light. Sparkling frost lay on the fall-brown grass. Her breath hung white in the cold air. She shivered in the blanket Billy had made her take.
She beat herself in the head again, self-induced pain bringing her back to the now. Tears, so hot and wet, silvered her eyes, dripping down one by one.
“Stop it!” Billy’s unforgiving hand caught her wrists, heedless of the scabs, or how it hurt.
But everything hurt. Her abused breasts. Where they’d bitten her neck. Stones had cut her tender feet, now gone numb from the cold. Her vagina burned and ached. Everything down there was raw and sore when she walked. Blood and fluid still soaked the pad she’d made for herself from dried moss.
“You’re hurting me,” she whispered dully, shooting him a hard sidelong glance where he gripped her wrists.
“You’re hurting yourself, beatin’ on your head that way.”
They’d spent the night under a limestone outcrop—the place long used for such things given the charcoal, the bits of broken Indian pottery, stone chips, and broken glass. The morning fire smoldered. Billy had carefully buried the bones from the turkey they’d had for supper and breakfast.
“Why go to the trouble?” she’d asked.
“So they think we’re starved and weak,” he had told her.
Finally turning her wrists loose, he said, “We gotta be going.”
“You don’t know Dewley. What you did to them men? Cutting them that way? He ain’t never going to stop.”
Who is this brother of mine? Castrating those bodies, that wasn’t the Billy she’d always known.
“Good.” Billy checked the cartridge box where it hung on his belt.
“Good?” She started to tremble again. “Billy, he’s mad-dog crazy! Something’s twisted in his mind. Broken like. He’s got the devil in his eyes, and there ain’t no beating the devil!”
Billy’s lips trembled as he looked out at the oaks, maples, and elms that filled the little valley. “He ain’t the only one with the devil in him. We laid us a good trail yesterday. That tracker of his?”
“Silas?”
“If he’s good, he’ll be a couple of hours behind us.”
A dull terror settled in her gut. “You’re letting them follow us?”
He gave a slight nod, his lips pressed hard, jaws bulging.
“Billy, I just want to go home. Get away. I want away.” Tears beaded. “I just want to be safe! To go somewhere and die!”
His expression hardened, eyes stony. “Debts gotta be paid, sis.”
She laid a hand on his shoulder, feeling the packed muscle under his shirt. “Billy, you don’t understand. You got lucky back at McConahough’s Cove. You caught ’em by surprise.”
“Me and Satan.” He looped his rolled blanket around his shoulders and reached a hand down to pull her up. She could see the hardness behind his eyes, the fact that something was tearing him up on the inside. Maybe it was that they still hadn’t seen to Maw’s body? He said he’d left it on the porch in a blanket.
She winced as she got painfully to her feet, looped her own blanket around her shoulders, and picked her tender way out onto the frosted grass. Her injured bare feet burned with the cold.
To her surprise, Billy stopped long enough to pick up a piece of white ash he’d been whittling on, and leaned on it like a crutch.
“What are you doing?”
“Making it look like I’m hurt.”
“But you ain’t!”
“They don’t know that.”
He led her on an easy trail that dropped down into the White River bottom, past an old logging camp, and along a partially overgrown haul road to the base of a cliff. Their progress, given Billy’s crutch, had proven uncomfortably slow.
“We got to go faster!” she called from ahead as he lagged.
“Stop a minute,” he said, glancing at the boggy ground.
She walked back, mud squishing between her toes, irritated that Billy was looking approvingly at the tracks she was leaving in the damp soil.
“We got to hurry!” she pleaded. “God, Billy, it’s bad enough with what I see … relive … every time I close my eyes!” She thrust an arm out. “They’re just back there! They’re coming!”
“Uh-huh.” One by one, he removed paper cartridges from the black cartridge box and carefully rolled them into his blanket. Leaving three in the box, he gestured her forward as he stumped along on his crutch, saying, “Take the trail to the right at the foot of the slope.”
“Up that cliff?”
“That’s right.”
She just happened to look back as they rounded the brush, seeing Billy drop the cartridge box with its precious three rounds.
“What are you doing?”
“Laying trail, sis.”
“They’ll think that’s your ammunition.”
“Re
ckon they will.”
Fifteen minutes later, sweating, her feet bleeding and raw from the abrasive limestone, she wondered when, if ever, they’d reach the top. In places she had to pull herself up, scrambling on all fours, only to find the trail edging along a limestone shelf above a sheer drop. Looking over the edge she saw jagged boulders at the bottom. By crickets, that was nothing to fall on.
Billy was stumbling, making a racket, dislodging small stones, as if he were on his last legs. She looked back, froze, that terrible cold wash numbing her to the core.
“Billy?”
He looked back, stopped short, seeing Dewley’s riders as they emerged from the haul road and stopped at the boggy stretch. There Silas stepped down from his horse and bent over their tracks.
Billy grinned for the first time that day. “’Bout time.”
Sarah scrambled for the next switchback, trying to forget the pain in her feet.
“Hold up,” Billy called as he lay down over a boulder, propped the Sharps, and adjusted the rear sight. The muzzle shot flame and smoke as the report carried out over the valley.
Sarah shaded her eyes. To her surprise, Dewley’s big black horse, called Locomotive, rose up, shook its head, and staggered sideways. Colonel Dewley barely kept his seat. Immediately, men scattered into the trees. Dewley stepped out of the saddle, checking his horse’s neck. Turning, he glared up at the steep trail.
Sarah said, “He sets store by that horse.”
One of the men was pointing at where Sarah in her red wool shirt and Billy stood exposed on the trail.
“Guess that got their attention,” Billy noted. “They got spyglasses?”
“Of course!”
He then made a show of reaching for his belt where the cartridge box should be. Fumbling, jerking his head around as if looking for it, he slapped his pockets, and lifted the Sharps, staring at it wistfully.
“They’re shooting!” Sarah cried as blue puffs were followed by the popping sound of guns. Moments later, bullets slapped the rocks and soil around them.
Billy pulled up his pistol, banging away. He shot three times, then bellowed, “Go away! Leave us alone!”