by William Gear
“So, how do we keep that from happening?”
“You really want to do this? Take up whoring?”
“You taught me that there’s a difference between a madam and a whore.”
“Best you can do? You drop the advertised price of your personal slick down to two-fifty a throw, but you take a hundred from very special clients. That’s still ten times the price of any other tail in town. And you’ve got the right to say no if you don’t like the johnny.”
“And if some filthy miner comes stumbling in with a chunk of gold in his hand and pus running out his prick?” Sarah asked softly.
Aggie arched a scarred eyebrow. “We wine him, dine him, and dope his drink so he thinks he had the ride of his life when he wakes up the next morning.”
“You still think it’s short-term?”
“Sarah, I paid attention in Chicago. A lot of houses specialized, but it’s still a business. If one of them figured an angle, some trick, wasn’t long before a couple of the other houses copied it. You start making money, you can damn bet that Big Ed, Heatley, and the others will want a piece of the market. They got more money than you do, more power than you do, and they’re just as smart.”
“Damn, you’re depressing.” Sarah took a deep breath.
“You gotta understand your place. You’re a woman trying to win a hand in a world where men hold all the cards and can shuffle them any way they please. You got one ace. One. They got the whole deck. You build something they want, they’ll take it.”
“How?”
“Pass a law, arrest your girls, send in thugs to break the place up, run articles in the paper that your girls are diseased, threaten your customers, order the merchants not to sell to you, raise your taxes, declare your title to the property invalid, file a lawsuit, bribe a judge. They got a thousand ways.”
Sarah felt her heart sink.
Aggie sipped her whiskey. “My advice? Build your Angel’s Lair for the short-term. Then, when it looks flush, sell it to Big Ed, or Heatley, or whoever.”
“Aggie, you sound like your heart’s not in it. And maybe you don’t understand what I’m asking. I don’t expect you to be competing with the girls to gin up income. I’ve got a head for figures and, for the moment, an exotic reputation. You have a feel for how to make the business work.”
“Things have changed, Sarah.”
“I’m sure as hell not blind to what Parmelee did to you.”
“That … and there’s Doc.”
The way she said it caused Sarah to arch an eyebrow. “You giving it out for free? Or just in trade for medical services? Pat hinted that this doctor wasn’t charging.”
“It’s not that.” Aggie looked down at her hands. “Doc’s … just … different. God Almighty, Sarah, I’m in love with the man. It’s just impossible. That’s all. He’s a real physician, trained back East. He survived a prison camp during the war. He’s lost everything. Even his crazy brother. But he still cares. It’s like living with a damned saint.” Then she burst into giggles. “Some saint, he can’t keep his cock out of the honey pot!”
“Must be the whiskey getting to you.” Sarah paused. “Why’s it impossible?”
“’Cause of what I am.” Aggie ran nervous fingers down the whiskey glass. “Never felt this way before, Sarah. It’s hard to keep my balance, to remember that, like this house, it’s a short-term proposition. I wake up every morning afraid he’s going to realize that he’s got a whore in his bed when he should have a respectable wife.”
Sarah sat back and rubbed her face. “Live it while you’ve got it, Aggie. The ones who will love you don’t last very long.”
“You’re going to need a physician when you open. Doc Hancock sees to girls all over the … What?”
“Sorry, the name startled me. He has a first name?”
“Philip. With one l. Like you, he came from Arkansas.”
Sarah took another swallow of whiskey to brace herself. A funny feeling, like insect wings, fluttered around her heart. “You said he had a crazy brother?”
“Butler. He lost his mind at the battle of Chickamauga. What Doc calls the fatigue. But I only met him for a moment the night they took me to Doc’s surgery.”
Sarah leaned her head back, taking a deep breath. Below Aggie’s hearing, Sarah whispered, “God, won’t this be one miserable family reunion?”
88
June 22, 1867
“Where we goin’, Cap’n?” Kershaw asked as Butler turned off the Overland Trail and headed north toward the gap between the distant Ferris and Green Mountains.
Ahead of them lay a basin, grass-filled, with sagebrush and intermittent greasewood flats. Patterns of old sand dunes, now covered with sparse grass and rabbit brush, marched off toward the east. The white dots of antelope could be seen in the distance.
On the western horizon low lines of sandstone-capped ridges disrupted the constant wind. Puffs of cloud seemed to dash toward him from the west, and an impossible blue infinity colored the sky.
“At that last station, they said the trail to the Shining Mountains lies ahead.” Butler pointed between Apple’s ears as the buckskin walked, head down. “Through that gap between the mountains lies the old Oregon Trail and the Sweetwater River. He said we couldn’t miss the ruts or the telegraph line. That we follow that to the Sweetwater Station, and from there take a trail north, down the Sweetwater Rim.”
“And then what, Cap’n?” Pettigrew asked, his voice almost a whine. Butler wondered how the man had ever made corporal, given the way he complained. Pettigrew was marching, dispirited, his rifle over his shoulder, blanket roll around his torso.
“The Wind River,” Butler told him, his voice awed. “Paw said he did his best trapping at the head of the Wind River. Prime beaver, that’s what he called it.”
“We ever gonna eat anything but rabbit, suh?” Phil Vail asked. “And even then, some of us is startin’ t’ worry ’bout ammunition. Y’all ain’t such a magnificent shot with that Yankee rifle.”
“We’ll get a deer or antelope as soon as we get away from the trail.”
“Cap’n,” Kershaw asked, “y’all still ain’t tolt us why we a-headin’ into them far mountains.”
“Got to get away,” Butler said softly, almost under his breath. “I dreamed last night while we were bivouacked. I was back at Shiloh. It was the morning of the attack. I was riding behind Tom Hindman when we charged the Federal camps. Caught ’em by surprise. But I remember the oddest thing. A young private. Not more’n seventeen. Parrot shell exploded just as it hit him.”
Butler closed his eyes, seeing it in his mind. “That boy just vanished into blue smoke and red haze. I remember thinking to myself, that can’t be real.”
“Suh?” Kershaw asked.
“Was any of it real, Sergeant? Or did I dream it? All of it? Am I still at home? In my bed on the farm?”
The wind lifted his hat brim and laid it flat against the crown. It pulled at his clothing, ruffling it. Gusts hissed in the brush and grass. But for the creak of the saddle, the occasional farting horse, it was the only sound.
He asked, “Am I about to wake, only to discover that everything’s just fine? That Paw’s at the legislature, and Billy’s dodging chores?”
Butler closed his eyes, but Kershaw didn’t answer. For long moments, he swayed with the horse’s steps, willing himself back to that place. He pictured himself in his bed, the cotton-ticked blanket up to his chin. Each sawed-plank board overhead was familiar right down to the dark knots and pattern of the grain. He could hear Maw and Sarah clinking ceramic bowls in the kitchen. The hollow sound of boots on the floor.
Doc had insisted he was crazy. Maybe that was the explanation. Only a crazy man could have imagined the war. Could there be any other reason for millions of men lining up and shooting each other down by the tens of thousands?
You just ain’t right in the head. It didn’t happen.
Yes, he’d be home. In his bed. Maw would have breakfast ready. Sarah would be making biscuit
s. He’d just wake up.
Except that when he opened his eyes, the sun-swept ridges, the turquoise sage, and lonely wind remained. He was still out in western Dakota territory. Which meant he’d left Doc in Denver. Maw was dead, and the farm taken. Billy and Sarah were vanished. Paw was rotted to bones at Shiloh.
That terrible war had been real. That innocent seventeen-year-old private was blown away by that exploding shell.
“Maybe I just haven’t run far enough,” Butler told himself, unwilling to look back. What if he did, and the men weren’t marching along behind? What if they really were dead back at Chickamauga?
“I couldn’t stand that,” he muttered under his breath where he hoped Kershaw couldn’t hear. “It would kill me.”
89
July 1, 1867
The steamboat was called the G. A. Thompson and she was berthed, bow to the current, at the Fort Benton levee. Five other boats—also recent arrivals—were nosed in behind her. This was the season of high water on the Missouri River as the surge of spring runoff peaked. Fort Benton was the head of navigation. Upstream the river entered a gorge filled with rapids and rocky drops.
In the darkness the boats had a fairylike appearance; their fine, two-story woodwork, railings, and windows glowed yellow in the July night. The light flickered and danced on the midnight-black water as the Missouri sucked and curled around the hulls.
Outside of the boats, there wasn’t much to Fort Benton: Two stores; a couple of hotels, the haphazard collection of tent warehouses; thrown-up, plank-sided shacks called shebangs; tents and lean-tos; dugouts; and even tipis. Camps had been set up by freighters awaiting the offloading of goods as the river boats steamed and chugged their way to the levee. Word in the camps was that five thousand tons of supplies would be unloaded by the arriving boats. These were mostly the staples: whiskey, flour, coal oil, powder, lead, tools, tin goods, nail kegs, canned food, canvas, rope, bolts of cloth, boots, shoes, and overalls. Most of Montana Territory’s heavy mining equipment—stamp mills, winches, boilers, and the like—arrived by wagon from the south.
Billy studied the boats as he waited in the night, batted at a swarm of mosquitoes, and chewed a sweet stem pulled from a clump of prairie grass. From one of the temporary tent saloons behind him came the sound of a violin playing “My Old Kentucky Home.” It was accompanied by whistles and hoots.
For most of the year, Fort Benton was a trading post with a population of fewer than fifty people. But for the summer months it swelled into a thriving metropolis. Then, as the boats were loaded with downriver goods and the wagons and newly arrived passengers lined out on the trails to Helena, Virginia City, and Canada, it shrank to its former insignificance.
Like everyone else, Billy was here because of the boats. And specifically, a man who had come to meet them.
He studied the G. A. Thompson through narrowed eyes. He’d seen steamboats a couple of times down on the Arkansas River, but only from a distance. To inspect one right up close like this was a marvel. By damn, they really were big. Like a downtown city building. Way up there, atop the second story, perched a high pilothouse. Shooting up beyond it were the two tall stacks, both with faint threads of smoke snaking out against the stars. And these were small boats with shallow draft capable of navigating the upper Missouri. He couldn’t imagine the behemoths that plied the Mississippi waters.
Billy chewed his grass stalk and waited.
A plank had been run from the deck to the shore, and in the lamplight’s glow, a black crewman stood watch. From time to time he’d strike a match and smoke a cigar. Occasionally he would pace, otherwise he’d sit on a barrel head, apparently cogitating on the night.
Over the soft slap of water on the hull and shore Billy heard steps coming down the deck from astern.
The guard turned his head and stood as Danny walked up to him and said, “Go get some shut-eye. Macky’s got the watch. I’ll keep an eye until he arrives.”
“Who you?” the black deckhand asked.
“Danny Goodman. Figured Macky would have said something about me. Been playing poker with him these last two days. Go on. He’s taking a shit off the stern. Said he’d be here as soon as he can button up his breeches.”
“All yourn, then,” the deckhand told him as he snuffed out his cigar. He nodded and walked down to the amidships doors, where he vanished inside the boat.
Billy hurried down the plank to the deck where Danny waited. By damn! He was really on a boat! He took the thong off his pistol, and asked, “How does it look?”
“I knocked on General Meagher’s door. He’s sick. Got the runs. But said he’d meet us on the stern. I put two of the lights out so it’s pretty dark.”
“What did you tell him?”
“Said there was a messenger from Governor Smith what needed to see him. That there was trouble with Major Lewis.”
“And who’s he?”
Danny dropped his voice to a whisper. “Lewis? He’s an army major sent here by General Sherman. It’s all a mess. This fella Meagher? He’s just the territorial secretary, but he called up a militia to fight Indians. He don’t have the authority, but he did it anyway. He’s here to pick up a load of guns due upriver on another boat any day now.”
“If the guns is on another boat, why’s he on this one?”
“All the passengers got off, right? So the boats is empty. Ain’t but two shabby hotels in the town, and all these people come in. Where would you rather sleep? Out there on the ground? Or here in a fancy stateroom with a roof and a feather bed? Captains turn the boats into hotels, make extra money that way.”
“Damn, I’d stay here. Hell, I’m on a real steamboat! And I can’t even look inside?”
“Let’s just do the job, Billy. Lay low a couple of days, and we can come back and do it! Rent staterooms. See the engines and the wheelhouse and everything.”
“By God, I love this job!”
As they passed the last of the cabins he asked, “What do you think Meagher did to rile George?”
“Could be anything. Montana’s politics is a worse mess than Arkansas’s if you can believe it.”
“Maybe I can’t.”
“Meagher pardoned a man a couple of weeks back that George wanted hung. And Meagher knew it. Feller named James Daniels had tied a knot in one of George’s ropes. Kilt one of George’s friends and queered a business deal. Cost him title to a bunch of claims at a place called Silver Bow Creek, over the other side of the mountain from Helena.”
“It don’t do to rile George,” Billy agreed.
“You there?” a voice heavy with Irish accent asked from the darkness by the stern rail. “You’re the man looking for me?”
“General Meagher?” With his left hand, Billy eased the Bowie from its scabbard. “Major Lewis wanted me to give you a message, sir. ’Specially with as illegal as the militia is.”
Billy offered his hand to the dark-bearded figure.
As Meagher grasped his hand, Billy pulled him close, running the Bowie up under the man’s breastbone and through the heart. Meagher stiffened, a croaking in his throat. He rose up onto his tiptoes, as if he were trying to lift himself off the blade.
“Message is, don’t never buck George Nichols, you Yankee piece of shit.” Danny had stepped close. Together they eased Meagher off the stern and into the water.
“Hold his hand,” Danny ordered as he bent down and tied a length of rope to the dead man’s wrist.
“What are we doing?” Billy pulled a meadowlark feather from his pocket and stuck it in a crack between the deck planks.
“You wanna just let him float? They’s gonna find the body, Billy. See that he was stabbed.”
“So?”
“Ain’t it better that he just disappear? Make it more of a mystery? You hold the rope, and we’ll pull him to shore, toss him over a horse, and haul him out into the middle of nowhere to bury.”
“Thought we was gonna come back and see the boats.”
“After he’s buried,
Billy. And they got good whiskey on these boats. And card games. I been practicing. I can win as often as I lose these days.”
As Danny left for the shore, Billy floated Meagher’s body over toward the levee bank. At Danny’s call, he tossed him the rope, then walked casually down the deck, looking at the fancy woodwork, hearing the hollow thump of his boots.
It was but a moment’s work to drag the general’s limp body from the dark water, and together he and Billy slung it over the roan’s saddle and tied it in place. Billy caught a stirrup and vaulted onto Locomotive’s back.
As they started into the darkness, Danny turned on his saddle, cupped his hands around his mouth, and shouted, “Man overboard!”
But Billy never looked back. He’d never heard of General Meagher. Wouldn’t have cared if he had. But at least he’d set foot on a steamboat. Maybe, if he was sleeping on one of them steamboats, in a real bed, with a whiskey load on, Maw wouldn’t rise nightmarelike from her grave.
Maybe there’d be peace.
“Danny?”
“Yep.”
“When we get back to Helena, I’m gonna wire George. Tell him I’m gonna stay in Montana for a while.”
“Think he’ll let you?”
“Don’t care. I’m gonna do it.”
90
July 10, 1867
Sometimes it didn’t matter how hard a man tried; he had to stand by and watch. Doc should have been hardened. He’d seen death often enough. Lived with it like a companion.
The worst part this time was the parents, both bending over the examination table. The mother, a narrow-faced woman dressed in dusty gray gingham, sobbed into a handkerchief. Her back was bowed as though bearing a great load, and her hair was coming loose from the old-style net she wore.
The father stood with slumped shoulders, head down in defeat. He kept kneading his worn felt hat with thick, dirt-encrusted fingers. The look on his face was what Doc called shock stupid. Hollow from disbelief and the inability to comprehend. Even simple words seemed beyond him.
The boy on the table had just turned six. He would never turn seven. Wouldn’t even see the sunset, given the sound of his labored breathing. Blood had run from his nose, mouth, and ears. His head was oddly distorted, flattened, the skull having been crushed. A dark bruise ran across the snapped jaw, cheeks, and bloody ear. The parents’ story was that the boy, Arnie, had fallen from the wagon. Landed just so on Market Street, and the combination of pulling oxen and the momentum of the wagon had rolled both right-side wheels over the boy’s head.