by William Gear
Dave seemed to smell her rat. His eyes narrowed. Then he asked, “What about you, crazy man? You give me your word as, what was it you said? An officer and a gentleman?”
“If Sarah does,” Butler said softly. He paused, his voice changing as it did when he talked to the men. “It’s because of Paw, Corporal. Everything goes back to Paw.”
Sarah eased her wounded leg down from the seat, ignoring the onlookers, and limped, seething, into Doc’s office.
He sat in his chair behind the desk, cheek propped on a hand. She could see the raw red where his bonds had chafed the skin on his wrists.
“Philip? Are you all right?”
“I’ll never be all right.” He looked at her, a desolate emptiness behind his pale eyes. “He winked at me as they were carrying him out. The way they were holding him, it had to hurt like thunder, but he winked at me. Told me it was all right.”
She stepped forward. “In a pig’s eye. They lynched our brother!” She glanced back to see Butler closing the door behind him. Through the window she could see Dave Cook driving away. “I’ll need to have a talk with Big Ed and have his—”
“Let it go, Sarah,” Doc whispered.
“Philip?”
“These stranglers? What they did? It was a kindness.”
“Are you as crazy as Butler?”
He shook his head. “I’m as sane as I’ve ever been.” A flicker of a smile died. “After the things he told me? I’d make a terrible priest. I’d wave my hand and say, ‘Go forth, my child, and throw your sinning soul off the nearest cliff.’”
She struggled for words, trying to understand.
“Billy was hurting, Sarah.” Philip seemed to choke back tears. “Deep down in his soul. In a place where there was no healing. He wanted it over.”
“How do you know?”
“Because he told me. Because I have been there. So many times.” He raised a hand, stalling her protest. “Sarah, the difference is that I wasn’t haunted by the men and women I’d murdered. I might have been miserable when I wanted to die, but I wasn’t condemned by my own self-loathing.”
“Holy sweet Jesus,” she murmured, dropping limply onto the bench. “What did I do to him when I left him?”
“Nothing,” Doc told her. “If you’ve got to go back to the beginning, it was when I caught Paw with Sally. Hell, maybe it goes clear back to him marrying Maw.”
“Or back to the mountains,” Butler said. His gaze flicked to the side. “You heard him, Sergeant, he started destroying people early on.”
Sarah clamped her hands against her ears, leaning forward, feeling sick. Moments later she felt Doc settle beside her, his arm going around her shoulder.
“Someone needs to see to arrangements for Billy,” Butler said, walking over to the desk. “He’s going to need a coffin. This time of year, warm as it is, we don’t want to tarry. Since it’s the Fourth of July, John Walley won’t be staying at his office for long. He’s going to need to find gravediggers. I’ll see if we can’t have the service tomorrow.”
Sarah was barely aware of Butler pulling Doc’s drawer open, removing the cash box. Her soul felt as if it were bruised, raw, and floating. There were things she needed to tell Billy. Confessions of the heart she would never be able to make now.
Butler rifled through the cash box, rattling coins, and stuffed his pocket full. Then he closed the tin box, replaced it, and shut the drawer.
“I’ll be back,” he promised, before shooting a glance at the men. Then he was gone, the bell ringing as he closed the door.
Doc pulled his arm tighter around Sarah’s shoulders as they sat in silence. Not since Bret had held her had any human offered her comfort.
God, I’m lonely.
And sad.
And tired.
She was wondering when it would ever end. Which was when Doc jerked upright, every muscle going tense. “The box!”
Sarah shifted. “What box?”
But Doc was on his feet, flying to the desk, clawing at the drawer. He ripped out the cash box, opened it, and stared in horror.
“Doc? What’s wrong?” she demanded.
“He’s got the candy!”
His face blanched with panic, Doc flung himself at the door. Wrenching it open, he raced out into the morning, crying, “No! Dear God, No!”
130
July 4, 1868
Butler tried to ignore the men as they trooped along at the edge of his vision. The saloons were going full blast. With the exception of the merchants trying to capitalize on folks come to town for the holiday, most businesses were closed. Horses, buggies, and carriages didn’t exactly clog the streets, but traffic was brisk.
The sound of Federal martial music filled the air. He could tell it bothered the men, but secession and the war had forever changed the way the Fourth was celebrated. And Denver had been a Union town, having spawned the Colorado Volunteers.
Butler could feel Kershaw hanging just behind him and out of sight as he made his way down the boardwalk, tipping his hat on occasion to the ladies, and trying to sort out the conflicting emotions in his breast.
Ruffians had murdered his brother in the night. Tied a rope around his neck and tossed him off a bridge. God knew he’d seen plenty of that during the war. Even been party to it when it came to deserters and spies.
It wasn’t as if young Billy hadn’t deserved it. If Butler stood back from his roiling emotions, thought about Swede Halverson, about the men Billy had murdered for money, and God forbid, about the prostitutes he’d strangled in fits of madness, it was high time he paid the ultimate price.
“But he’s my brother!”
Images swam through his memory. Billy as an infant, cradled in Maw’s arms. The two-footed bundle of trouble he’d been when he was two. The time he’d stolen Butler’s jackknife and laid his hand open “knife fighting” with imaginary raiding Choctaws. He’d been what? Eight? As Billy had grown older, he’d pitched in with the farmwork, taken on his share of the chores. When he worked, he worked hard. By the time he’d been ten, he could best Butler when it came to putting up tobacco or corn. And John Gritts had been taking him out hunting since he was little. No one could track, stalk, or fill a larder with game the way Billy could.
“That child!” Maw’s voice came unbidden from the past. “I swear, he’ll put me in my grave! If he ain’t the spittin’ image of his paw, I don’t know doodle when I see it.”
And strangers took him, and hung him.
“My fault,” Butler whispered, stepping around a family that had stopped to stare into a store window. “Mine and Tom Hindman’s. We made Arkansas into the kind of battleground it was. We were the ones who unleashed the whirlwind. Once Maw was dead and Sarah raped, what did Billy have left but raiding and ambushing?”
“Don’t you go puttin’ all de blame on yorseff, Cap’n.” Kershaw’s deep voice rumbled. “Avec certitude, yor brother make his own decisions.”
“Can’t live no other man’s life for ’im,” Corporal Pettigrew agreed from behind. “Ain’t yer fault, Cap’n.”
“What would have been different if I’d been there?”
“Reckon nothin’,” Vail called from the side. “Somebody would’a conscripted your sorry hide, Cap’n. They’d’a made you fight, one way or t’other.”
He turned onto Larimer Street and made his way to 1412 where Walley did his undertaking business. He hammered on the door. Then hammered again.
“Coming!” The cry was barely audible over the noise in the crowded street. Two open-air bands were playing. One down by Cherry Creek, the other up on Sixteenth. Nor was Larimer Street short on saloons, each with its door open to allow piano and horn music to spill out in hopes of luring additional patrons.
John J. Walley unlocked his door, staring out at Butler. “Yes?”
“I’m Butler Hancock. Come to see about Billy. Dave Cook’s deputies brought his body in this morning.” He took a breath, trying to still his grief. “I’m one of his brothers.”
“Ah yes, come in.” Walley closed the door behind him. “I haven’t prepared the body yet. What did the family have in mind?”
“Just a quiet burial tomorrow morning.” Butler tried to keep his hands from twitching like butterflies. “I hear that Doc buried his wife out at the boneyard. Maybe next to her?”
Walley lifted an eyebrow. “You familiar with the hill out there? It’s three hundred and twenty acres. The top of the hill is … well, for our better citizenry. One section is Jewish, another Catholic. Dr. Hancock’s wife, given his reputation in the community, is on the edge of that higher ground. It’s rather more expensive than the area off to the southeast.” He shrugged slightly. “Your brother Billy, having been involved in a shooting, claiming to be this Meadowlark—”
“How much for him to lie next to Mrs. Hancock?”
“Fifty dollars for the plot, a fir coffin, the excavation, and refilling the grave. Another twenty for embalming if you want it. Ten more if you want me to make the deceased presentable for a viewing.”
“Can I see him?”
“Mr. Hancock, I haven’t had time to—”
“Would I be seeing anything I haven’t seen on the battlefield? No? Then let me see my brother, please.”
Walley led the way through the front office and into the back. Butler felt his skin crawl at the sight of a woman laid out on her back, a series of tubes actually inserted into her veins and attached to a hand pump atop a brass tank.
He’d never seen embalming before. Wasn’t sure he wanted to know any more about it.
Billy lay on a stained pine table just inside the big sliding rear door. At the sight, Butler stopped short. His brother’s eyes were open and bulged, his tongue jammed out, the jaw dislocated, broken, and lopsided. Billy’s neck—oddly elongated, the skin chafed—looked unnatural, and for reasons Butler couldn’t quite understand, reminded him of a plucked turkey neck.
“I can make him look like he’s just asleep,” Walley said softly.
Butler drew a short breath. “No need, sir. Closed coffin. No embalming.” Butler reached in his pocket, pulling out coins. In the dim light he sorted through them, finding two twenty-dollar gold pieces and a ten. “There’s fifty for the lot and the rest.”
He dropped what remained in his pocket—all except the piece of hard candy he’d found in Doc’s cash box. That he cradled in his hand, thinking it inappropriate to pop it into his mouth when his brother lay there, cold, covered with a sheet, after having been viciously executed by hooded and masked stranglers.
“I’ll leave you alone, sir.” Walley retreated on silent feet.
“Well, Billy,” Butler said softly, “they sure played hell this time, didn’t they?” He reached out, pulled the sheet back so he could hold Billy’s cold hand. “It’s too late to ask now, but I hope you’ll forgive me for my part in all this.”
He sniffed, feeling an unfamiliar hole emptying in his heart. So this was what it was like to grieve?
“I’m going to tell Doc and Sarah not to come. I don’t think it would do any good for them to see you like this. Instead, I’ll say good-bye for all of us.”
He sniffed. “I wish … I wish we would have had the chance to talk. Like in the old days. Remember all those insane and impossible stories you told? How they made me laugh? I just wish we’d had the chance to do that again. One last time.”
He closed his eyes, whispering, “I will miss that.”
He patted Billy’s hand, and turned to go.
Butler had passed the woman on the table with her tubes and pumps when he remembered the candy cupped in his hand.
131
July 4, 1868
Doc ran as he had never run in his life. Arms pumping, feet flying. His leather-soled shoes slipped on the boardwalk. People stared at him in surprise as he careened through them, many diving out of the way at the last moment. He crashed into others, only to stumble before charging on.
“Move!” he screamed at the top of his lungs. “Out of the way! Emergency!”
As he ran, lungs burning, he cursed himself for the despicable idiot that he was. What vile failing of character had caused him to concoct that deadly candy in the first place?
Let alone leave it in the cash drawer!
Butler, please! Tell me you kept it for later!
He brutally plowed through a gaggle of children, knocking one or two sprawling, hearing bursts of crying behind him, mixed with shouts.
Let them curse him! Hate him for being a brute.
Wasn’t a candle to how he hated himself.
Let me make it in time!
Just the fact that he hadn’t stumbled onto a crowd gathered about Butler’s dead body was cause for hope. His brother must have put it in a pocket for later.
God, don’t let him eat it! Please!
Tears were running down his cheeks, adding to the dismay in people’s faces as he gasped and panted his way, arms out.
“Move!”
“Out of the way!”
He slipped as he rounded the corner onto Larimer Street, fell, tore his hand and knee on the boardwalk. Bowling to his feet, he knocked a woman onto her butt. She was screaming, a man pounded along behind Doc, shouting threats.
Beat me senseless later.
And God, yes, the man could have him. Cane him to within an inch of his life, or beyond, for all Doc cared.
At Walley’s, he grasped the doorknob, wrenched it open, and hurtled inside. Walley gaped, sitting at his desk, a cash box open before him.
“Butler! Where is he!”
Walley had just opened his mouth, pointing to the rear as Doc vaulted a chair and straight-armed the door.
Please, God! Please.
“Butler!” he bellowed. “For God’s sake, don’t eat that candy!”
And then he was in the back, sliding to a stop.
Staring.
Eyes wide, arms out.
“Dear God,” he whispered through sucking pants, sinking to his knees.
132
September 28, 1868
Butler wondered if he’d ever been this tired and out of breath. His ribs and belly ached, each heaving breath feeling for all the world like it was tearing his lungs out of his chest.
He paused, struggling for air in the high altitude. Spots flashed before his eyes as he dragged a sleeve over his sweaty forehead. Blinking to clear his vision, he looked out across the high, gray peaks, lines of them, growing ever more distant until they faded into the horizon. Snow already whitened the northern slopes, the southern exposures having been melted by the slanting fall sun.
A cool wind tugged at him from out of the west as he thought, This is how God sees the world. To do so is to be blessed.
Mountain after mountain, peak after ragged peak, the long, timber-clad slopes slanting off to the blue-gray sage-blanketed basins. And in the bottoms, the dark green meandering line of the Wind River, marked as it was by cottonwoods and willows. This was the view commanded by eagles, and now it was his.
“You coming?” Cracked Bone Thrower asked, grinning, his white teeth shining in his brown face. “Or are you just another lazy taipo? Come to buy favor and lay with one of our women because you have the wealth to do it?”
“Never,” Butler puffed, resettling the freshly gutted sheep carcass on his shoulders. He could feel the animal’s blood draining onto his bare shoulders; the sweet pungency filled his nostrils. He’d smelled enough blood tainted by unjust death on the battlefields. This, in contrast, was the blood of life. This death would feed his naatea through the long winter months. And in return the people offered their thanks to souls of the sheep who had died that they might live.
Butler’s shoulders were already streaked and smeared with caked sheep blood. After the last of the carcasses had been carried down to where the women were butchering, he would scoop up handfuls of snow from the big drift. Half stunned by the cold shock, and with Flicker’s help, he would sponge the blood and gore from his naked body.
“Li
ttle children have better wind than you do!” Cracked Bone Thrower called over his shoulder.
“I’ve been down in the flatlands,” Butler protested. “Doing taipo things! They are all lazy. You’ve told me that so often, you should believe it yourself. Once I train my lungs, the men and I can outwork you all.”
He shot a sidelong glance at the men where they had seated themselves on rocks and in places in the sun. That was the thing about being crazy. His men never changed, never looked any more ragged in their holey and tattered uniforms. They didn’t look bedraggled in the rain, never cared for their rifles or gear. They didn’t shiver in the cold.
And, like today, they never did any work.
Sometimes he wondered about the rules of his madness. The men were never in his lodge. Never watching or making comments when he and Mountain Flicker were locked together under the robes.
Sometimes—when he was particularly happy—they vanished for long periods of time.
Because, as Water Ghost Woman taught me, I no longer need them. Then, later, they just appeared as if nothing had happened.
That had been the case ever since his return from Denver. As if, having cast off the last links to the white world, he had found a growing peace of mind. His madness didn’t matter when he was surrounded by people who didn’t care if he kept the dead around when he needed a shield.
In addition, his hallucinations seemed to recede in intensity following a session in the sweat lodge, or in the days after he had gone with Puhagan in search of a spirit vision.
For the moment, however, he needn’t think about that. It took all of his concentration to pick his way down the trail to the snow patch. His muscles were trembling, knees shaking. But in the end, he waded out into the mushy snow and dropped the ram’s gutted carcass. With bloody hands he scooped snow into the gut cavity to cool the carcass and straightened.
Mountain Flicker worked at Red Rain’s side just down the slope. He shot her a happy smile. She grinned back, pausing to push back a strand of long black hair. Her finger left a bloody streak on her smooth cheek.
Butler scooped up a handful of snow for himself, packing it in his mouth and crunching it for the water it contained. Then he walked down to crouch beside Mountain Flicker. She had half skinned an ewe, and was competently running her knife around the connective tissue as she pulled with a firm brown hand.