by William Gear
Her words haunted him.
All the best of our dreams …
She could have written his life.
After peeling off her bandages and cataloging the damage, he walked out into the office and waiting room. Butler, however, was gone.
Damn it, he’d really hurt him.
Stepping out onto the street, Doc sent a runner for Dr. John Elsner—the only other colleague Doc considered worth a damn. In association with Sister Eliza from the Episcopal church, Elsner had formed the new hospital. The one the miners hadn’t seen fit to deliver Aggie to.
With Elsner assisting, Doc devoted himself to Aggie’s face. Damn it, she had been a beautiful young woman. Working while she was under anesthetic, he carefully stitched her lacerations back together. Hour after hour, his back aching, he worked with a fine suture and silk as Dr. Elsner helped him position skin and tissue.
Doc finally blinked, arching the kinks out of his back. “What do you think?”
“I think I have seen the finest facial surgery in the world, Doctor.” Elsner worked his hands to relieve the cramp. “Should we bring her out of it?”
“I’ve kept you too long. Go home. I’ll see to her recovery.”
“It was a pleasure, sir. An honor.”
“Let me know how much I owe you for your time and skill.”
“No charge, Philip, if you promise to come to my rescue when I need it.”
Elsner closed the door behind him.
Doc studied the woman, her expression slack, mouth open. She would never be as she’d been, but if the inevitable infection didn’t complicate things, her appearance wouldn’t conjure that revulsion she feared.
He checked the lamps. Normally Butler’s job. Still half full of oil. Damn it, what had possessed him?
“Shouldn’t have shot off my mouth.” Again, he checked Aggie. She hadn’t lied about the damage to her breasts, but the skin wasn’t broken. Also to his relief, she wasn’t bleeding from the vagina. For good measure, while she was out, he gave her a vinegar douche, known to prevent pregnancy, and dried her.
He was sitting in his chair, sipping the last of the cold coffee he’d poured so long ago when she came to.
“Don’t reach for your face,” Doc told her.
She stopped, hand half raised. Her hazel-green eyes fixed on his, the panicked question lurking there.
“You won’t be the beauty that you were, Aggie. But you won’t be a monster, either.”
Doc handed her his examination mirror. She studied herself, fighting tears.
“Aggie, from here on out, it will just get better and better. Once the stitches are gone, and the redness fades … well, just trust me.”
She looked around. “What time is it?”
Doc checked his watch. “A little after ten.”
“I’m starved. And I have to piss.”
“We can attend to the piss. I’ll have to steady you and hold the pot.”
“I’m not having some man…”
“Some physician who has been in and out of your body all day. My apologies, but you have no secrets left.”
She smiled. Regretted it immediately.
“Nope. Keep that hand down,” Doc ordered. “If you can’t trust a physician, who can you trust?”
“After what’s happened to me? Should I trust any man?”
“I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t.”
Nevertheless, she let him help her. Maybe it was the first step on a long road.
“Do you have a place to stay?”
“No. Not that I’d want to be seen in public anyway.”
Doc yawned, blinked, and stretched. He couldn’t just turn her out on the street. Nor did he want to leave her at the surgery while he went home to fix things with Butler. Nor was Aggie the sort of woman who worried about her reputation. “I have a spare bed at home. I’d really like you close where Butler and I can ensure you don’t fool with those sutures. I promise we will be gentlemen.”
“Doc, I lost my place in decent society when I turned seventeen. And given what’s been done to me, I doubt I’m going to tempt you to any assault upon my virtue. What about food?”
He smiled, liking her spirit. “On the way there’s an all-night kitchen where I can procure two tins of soup.”
“Soup?”
“Chewing isn’t something you’d enjoy tonight. And believe me, as the anesthetic wears off, you’re going to start taking me at my word.”
“I can already feel it. It’s like a tight prickling all over my face.”
“I don’t want you walking, so let me call a carriage. And after I get you home, you can help me apologize to Butler.”
But when Doc finally arrived at his little house the windows were dark. Dismissing the carriage, he led Aggie inside.
The problem was, there was no Butler to apologize to.
And worse, Butler’s clothing, bedding, and war bag were gone as well as the cash and the Spencer rifle.
83
May 10, 1867
The horse Butler had bought was named Apple, a buckskin gelding, supposedly a seven-year-old. Apple was a tall and rangy fourteen-and-a-half hands, with good brown hooves. He seemed to have good wind, and a sound gait, but the horse was just lazy. The packhorse following behind on a lead was Shandy, a ten-year-old dapple-gray mare of thirteen hands. Butler and the men had haggled with the man at the livery, for both animals. And in the end, Butler had dickered a fair price—mostly. Which brought a smile to his lips, because by the end, the man would have agreed to anything to get Butler and the men out of his livery.
Leaning over the pommel of his saddle, Butler studied the irregular buttes with their sandstone caps; spring-green grasses waved in the wind. The remarkable blue sky overhead gave way to clouds that packed over the mountains to the south and west.
Before him spread the Laramie Basin, a high and shallow bowl bounded by the low, timbered slopes of the Black Mountains on the east, the Laramie Range to the south, and irregular rounded hills to the distant north.
“Been hard riding,” Kershaw noted from behind Butler’s right ear. “Reckon y’all been pushin’ yerseff, Cap’n. Same fer the hoss. He’s a stout one, but, suh, y’all might want t’ ease up a mite.”
“Long march ahead, Sergeant,” Butler told him, aware of the men dropping onto the ground around him. Good soldiers never stood when they could sit or lie down. They were looking winded and footsore. Butler was proud of them. Even with as many of them as were barefoot and threadbare, they’d tackled the Cherokee Trail north of Denver with enthusiasm. They’d forded streams, crossed the Cache la Poudre River, climbed up over the Virginia Dale divide, and marched over sagebrush and cactus without complaint.
“Cap’n?” Corporal Pettigrew called from where he propped his skinny arse on a sandstone outcrop. “Y’all reckon maybe we shouldn’t outta just up and lef’ yer brother thata way? Doc took care of us right fine. Leasta ways, that’s how the men and me feels.”
“You heard him, Corporal. He wanted us out.” Butler lifted his hat and rubbed his forehead where the band had eaten into his skin. He’d had to clamp it down tight against the constant and worrying west wind.
My God, this was lonesome country.
“Reckon he mighta jist been a bit teched, suh?” Kershaw told him. “Times is, yor brother takes on too much. Man’s only got shoulders so wide, suh.”
Butler nodded, thinking back to the expression on Doc’s face. Fury and frustration had been battling with each other. The cutting tone in Philip’s voice still stung like a lash.
“Sergeant, I think it’s time we struck out on our own.” He let his eyes trace the layers of low ridge and swale ahead. Wildflowers the likes of which he’d never seen dotted the grass in yellows, whites, purples, blues, and reds. The west wind plucked at his coat and teased the buckskin’s mane.
“Suh?” Kershaw asked uneasily.
“War’s over, Sergeant. And you all saw. Doc’s got his practice. Just like he always wanted. He
’s got a house. Even standing in the community.”
Butler read their expressions one by one. Jimmy Peterson, his blond locks tossing in the wind, looked pensive. Johnny Baker’s long brown hair hung over the collar of his worn and stained uniform coat. He fiddled with his hands, as if having nothing to do. Willy Pettigrew, the shirker—unable to meet Butler’s eyes—glanced away at the distant horizon. Quiet Frank Thompson, sandy hair looking greasy, his tan eyes seemed to question. And to the rear Billy Templeton squinted up at Butler, elbows propped on his knees where they poked through the holes in his gray pants with the stripe down the seam. Phil Vail, green eyes worried, ran fingers through his cinnamon hair, then shrugged as he looked away. Francis Parsons and Matthew Johnson watched him nervously from the other side, as if he were Moses on the mount.
“Où avancer? Where we going, Cap’n?” Kershaw asked.
Butler pointed. “North. Across the basin. Paw always talked about the Shining Mountains when I was a kid. That’s where he hunted beaver. Fought the Blackfeet. Said he was nothing but an illiterate fur hunter when he first got there, but he learned to read around the fire in winter camps. Met William Drummond Stewart. A Scottish lord, can you believe? Changed the course of his life. Lived with the Indians. Learned their ways.”
“Cap’n, suh?” Phil Vail asked. “With permission, suh. Y’all reckon home is that way? Or shouldn’t we be skeedaddling back toward Phillips County, Arkansas?”
Butler saw the conflict in the man’s eyes, the fragmented hope. “We tried Arkansas, Private. Our homes are lost. Our families dead and buried.” He smiled wistfully. “Any hope for Arkansas was lost when Tom Hindman was forced to give it all up. And like the beast, Arkansas rose and devoured its own tail until it was no more.”
“Heard the general fled to Mexico,” Kershaw said softly, his voice barely audible over the wind.
Butler squinted up at the sun, letting Apple crop grass. “Yes, he’s in Mexico. Him, Joe Shelby, and so many others. And, that being the case, gentlemen, what does that tell us about Arkansas?”
“Don’t rightly know, Cap’n,” Pettigrew answered. “But it don’t set right well, does it?”
“Not at all, Corporal. If there’s nothing for the likes of Tom Hindman, there’s certainly not a thing for us.”
“So, it’s the Shining Mountains, then?” Private Vail stood, head cocked as if waiting.
“Paw always said he wanted to see them again. The fight at Shiloh took that away from him. Maybe we’ll go see them for him. Maybe that’s where we’ll all find a home.”
“Yes, suh,” Kershaw said, and Butler thought he heard the snap of a salute. “But, if’n the Cap’n might consider? I’d suggest a slower pace. We don’t want t’ kill these hosses you bought. Or the men, neither.”
“Good advice, Sergeant.”
Butler put his heels to Apple, and the tired buckskin started down the long hill. Behind him, Shandy followed on her lead rope. Forming ranks, the men marched along behind, their feet swinging through the grass and wildflowers.
84
May 20, 1867
“It’s a total loss,” George Nichols said as he leaned on his polished ebony cane and looked at the charred wreckage of Aggie’s parlor house. He wore a black sack coat with matching vest, a paisley-patterned shirt beneath the white silk scarf at his neck, and striped trousers cut longer at the heels. His hooded dark eyes were fixed on the blackened timbers, ash, and ruin. Melted glass, the crumpled stoves, fire-grayed tins, and broken porcelain lay in heaps. The burned hulk of the piano was particularly poignant. The two billiard tables in the new addition had been turned into slate and charcoal.
Sarah took a deep breath. The smell of fire and wet ash filled her nostrils, although the last of the embers had died out days ago. She had put off seeing this. It had taken nearly a week before she could even think after the blow to the head Parmelee had dealt her. Then had come Bret’s funeral, an event held up at Nevadaville. They’d stood in a misty mountain rain as his earthly remains were lowered into the ground.
Solicitations had come from all quarters as rock and soil were shoveled in to resonate hollowly on the pine casket. She had forced herself to remain until the man she loved lay beneath six feet of mountain dirt.
I buried my heart and life down there with him.
After that she’d endured the lonely, quiet nights in her silent and dark house. There, Bret’s ghost had stalked the floors, anguished and forlorn, as she had alternately wept, screamed her anger, and beat her fists.
Maybe she’d gone crazy. First she had thought to drag the bed outside. She’d been raped on the thing. Thought to douse it with coal oil and set it afire. Had actually started, pulling the mattress off the frame and into the front room.
Somehow she hadn’t been able to drag it over the bloodstain Bret had left on the floor. Bret’s bed. The one he’d made his own. Burning it was like burning him. So she’d put it all back.
It had taken her days before she’d forced herself to scrub Aggie’s clotted blood from the table. The ropes they’d cut from her wrists had still been around the table legs.
Sarah had finally retrieved them. Burned them. As they’d been consumed in the stove, Sarah had screamed her hatred and anger.
Yes, she’d been a madwoman. She’d pulled Dewley’s old Colt from under the bed and checked the loads. More than once she’d cocked it, placed the muzzle to the side of her head, and laid her finger on the trigger.
Each time, she’d looked toward the mirror, wanting to stare into her eyes as she blew her brains across the room.
But Parmelee had smashed it. As he’d smashed so many things. Unable to watch herself die, to see that last explosion of her skull and being, she’d lowered the pistol each time.
Who am I? What am I?
She hated that little cabin. But within its walls, she’d been loved and cherished. Bret’s warm eyes stared out from every corner of the room. Either she was weeping over lost and reverent moments, or her skin was crawling as she relived those last hours of death and violation.
Opposites. They were tearing her apart.
“You had everything invested here, didn’t you?” Nichols asked as he gazed at the wreckage.
“Not quite everything, George. But almost.”
He pointed with his cane. “Parmelee didn’t just want to burn the place, he wanted to kill everyone inside it. He poured coal oil over the back steps, lit it, and went around front where he smashed one lamp in the entry. He threw a lit lantern through the front window to set the parlor afire.”
“Why?”
“My guess? He wanted people burning alive to focus the whole town’s attention here while he dealt with you, Bret, and Aggie. Thank God construction here is as shoddy as it is. Mick was able to break a hole in the wall and they all got out. Still, if Pat hadn’t been there when Aggie arrived, Parmelee’s plan would have worked. Pat was the one who sent a rider up to check on you. When he knocked at the door, Parmelee pulled a pistol and shot at him. Fortunately he missed, but before we could get up the hill, he was gone.”
“I guess I owe Pat my life.”
“There are worse men to owe it to. But that said, how much was outstanding on Aggie’s loan?”
“I’ll write off what she owed me. But she’s still a little more than two thousand in the hole to Pat.” Sarah shifted, her gut curdling at the sight and smell. But for a miracle of the wind, the whole block might have burned—and after that, the rest of Central City, built as it was of a mismatch of closely packed timber and frame buildings.
“Then I assume I needn’t ask if you need assistance, Mrs. Anderson?”
She glanced at him, reading those dangerous and dark eyes. “George, I would never take assistance from you. Even if it meant starving in the street.”
“Hard words, Sarah.”
She answered him with a bitter laugh. “Oh, stop it. You know exactly what kind of man you are. In a nickel melodrama you’d be the villain seeking to ravish the in
nocent virgin, but in real life, you’re just waiting to shoot the hero dead when he arrives at the last moment to save the girl. With you, it’s about taking it all no matter what the cost.”
“You sound oddly rational when you say that.”
Sarah shrugged. “I’m smart enough to do business with you, George. But only when the terms are spelled out. I’d never, in any way, seek to interfere in your dealings.”
He chuckled to himself. “By God, you are a remarkable woman.”
“Am I? All I can feel is grief and emptiness. Nothing’s left. I poured all of myself into Bret. All of my dreams into our future. I thought life had beaten all the love and trust out of me. But as soon as I found real happiness, that filthy beast…” She swallowed hard, fists knotted as the rage pulsed through her.
“Want some revenge?”
“Nothing would make me happier than to spit in his face the moment before I put a bullet through his brain.” She paused, considered her words, then said, “And afterward, I’ll cut his cock and balls off and stomp them in the mud.”
George shot her a sidelong glance. “Even harder words … from a lady.”
“I’m no lady, George. That’s for women who don’t hate life. Who don’t hate themselves.” She gave him a hard glare.
“I’ve learned that Parmelee owns a parlor house in Denver. A couple of weeks back, all of his girls vanished. His professor disappeared with the house take. Word is that Parmelee owes Francis Heatley money. Heatley holds the title. Pat has known Heatley for years. With a word, Heatley might call the loan.”
Sarah considered. “George, I’m going to cover Aggie’s debt to Pat. That’s the least I can do.” She gestured toward the ruins. “This is all my fault. Well, mine and Bret’s.”
“I could loan you the money.”
“I told you. I’ll conduct a fair transaction with you, but that’s all. And I don’t have anything to sell.”
His hard black eyes fixed on hers. “Of course you do. Five hundred dollars a night. Four nights. That’s two thousand dollars, Mrs. Anderson. Just about what Parmelee owes Francis Heatley. And I can think of no more salacious revenge.”