This Scorched Earth

by William Gear

  “Dat show what he know ’bout us,” Kershaw said darkly. “We could still whip us a full regiment of blue bellies.”

  “As you proved so well at Chickamauga, Sergeant,” Butler reminded.

  Kershaw only growled in response. From where they crowded around the bunks, the rest of the men were looking uncertainly at Butler.

  “Philip?” Butler asked. “What about your own men, the ones who depend on you here?”

  Doc gave him a hollow look. “I’m tired, Butler. I save so few. I’m just … sick. Sick of death and suffering, and…” He coughed into his hand. “I’ve lost everything. Except perhaps you. I want to go home. I want to see Maw, Billy, and Sarah.”

  His eyes went dreamy. “I want to go down and sit on that flat rock and look at the sunlight on the river. I want to enjoy a cup of coffee on the porch and talk to Maw about the weather and the tobacco crop. Beyond that, I want…” He blinked away a tear. “I want to forget.”

  “The men and I,” Butler told him, “we’ll get you there, Philip. You’ll see.”

  “Oh, that makes me feel so much better.” Philip broke into maniacal laughter until the coughing grew so severe he gagged and almost threw up.

  47

  May 5, 1864

  A fire continued to burn—white ash smoking—in the center of the small camp. Packs and blankets lay around the periphery of the clearing. Horses, tethered back in the brush, watched with pricked ears.

  Odd how the simplest things, like building a fire, didn’t seem to mean anything to a man. The men in this camp hadn’t had the foggiest notion they were building the last fire they’d ever see.

  Billy stood over the wounded man, staring down at him over the Remington’s sights. The fellow lay on his back, air wheezing in and out through the hole blown out of his chest. With each breath the wound frothed with bubbly lung blood that soaked into the man’s blue wool shirt, exposed where the stained and patched buckskin coat hung open.

  The dying man looked up with shocked, disbelieving gray eyes. Speckles of frothy blood stained his dark blond beard. His nose was razor-thin, a pearling of lung-blood on his lips.

  He lay where he’d fallen on his bedding, stunned by Billy’s shot.

  Two more bodies lay to either side, one facedown, legs akimbo, the other looking like he’d just fallen asleep on his side, but for the pool of dark crimson leaking out of the hole in his head.

  Three down. One got away.

  Danny was bent over the facedown man: George Fletcher as Billy had heard him called. He’d been one of Dewley’s riders. One of the men who’d haunted the Hancock Farm looking for Billy and Sarah. Now Danny was rifling Fletcher’s pockets and possessions. Most of Dewley’s men carried gold, fancy watches, rings and jewelry, and other plunder they’d made off with from raiding.

  The second man, the one who looked asleep, had been called Francis Scopol, a burly black-haired man in his thirties. He’d been the man wounded in the thigh by Billy’s last shot the day after he rescued Sarah. The last of Dewley’s riders to be brought to justice.

  Maybe Maw’s hideous ghost would no longer rise up from the grave, clods of dirt falling from the old red blanket. Maybe the glowing hellfire in her empty eye sockets would dim. Hopefully she wouldn’t turn her rotted face toward him and reach out and unleash damnation from the tip of her skeletal finger.

  Hopefully the terrible demon image of Sarah wouldn’t slip into his nightmares anymore. She had first haunted his dreams the night he’d freed Sarah after the rape. That night her naked, abused apparition had hovered over him. To his horror and shame she had reached down and grabbed him. As her fingers wrapped around his cock he’d pumped seed into his trousers.

  What kind of head-sick son of a bitch had dreams like that about his sister anyway?

  God, he hated to sleep. Never knew if he’d rest, or if Maw would come to condemn his soul, or Sarah would corrupt his body with the most forbidden kind of sin.

  “Who’re you?” Billy asked the lung-shot man.

  “George Crawford,” the man whispered through the blood. “Why’d you shoot me?”

  Billy tilted his head at where Danny was pulling the pockets inside out on Scopol’s pants. “You were riding with Dewley’s men. They kilt my maw, raped my sister. Makes us at war.”

  “Raped…? You … swear?” Crawford’s wounded voice was barely audible.

  “Swear,” Billy agreed.

  “Didn’t … know that. Thought they’d join Paw’s rangers.”

  “Debts gotta be paid.”

  Crawford coughed weakly, blood spurting from the hole in his chest. He spit blood to clear his mouth and said, “My brother? Tobe? He … get away?”

  “Yep. But if he wasn’t part of Dewley’s rangers, well, I don’t got no fight with him.”

  “Reckon you do,” Crawford said, his eyes starting to flutter in his head. “You jist kilt me. He’ll be coming. Along with the rest.”

  “Crawford?” Danny asked, stepping over. “From down to Van Buren County? Relation to Amos?”

  “My … grandpap … Amos.” Crawford’s gaze drifted off, his mouth working weakly.

  “Shit and hellfire!” Danny cursed, stamping off to the side. He straightened, looking off in the direction Tobe had fled. “Reckon it’s too late to catch him?”

  “I heard of the Van Buren County Crawfords.” Billy looked down at where George was fading, his chest pumping weakly as his lungs filled with blood. “What in tarnal hell was any of the Crawfords doing riding with Dewley’s lot? Crawfords is Yankee guerrillas. Dewley’s lot was Rebel.”

  “Maybe they’s looking to change sides.” Danny licked his lips, looking nervously down the trail where Tobe had fled. He clicked the short stack of coins together that he’d culled from the dead men’s pockets. At the picket, the horses snuffled and whickered as they looked off in the direction Tobe had taken.

  “And what will the Crawfords do when good old Tobe reports?”

  “Come looking for us,” Danny said. “That Crawford bunch, they’s thick with Jeff Williams and his Yankee jayhawkers. They got them a regular war going with Allen Witt and his guerrillas over to Quitman. And somehow, Billy boy, we just got ourselves stuck right in the middle of it.”

  Billy looked down at the dying man. “Reckon I’m sorry I kilt you. Just bad luck. You was camping with the wrong men.”

  Even as he said, it, Crawford’s chest expanded one last time, the sucking wound under his right breast gurgling and going still.

  “Billy? What are we gonna do?”

  Billy turned his attention to the Boston Mountains where they rose to the south. They were smack in the middle of Franklin County, in unfamiliar territory. Billy glanced up at the sun, just nearing midday. “Reckon we’ll head home. Them are three good horses on that picket yonder. With our mounts, we can switch off. By this time tomorrow, we can be at the trapper’s cabin.”

  “They’ll figure it out, Billy. You don’t know them Crawfords. They’ll hear that you was hunting anybody what rode with Dewley. You done made a point of it to too many people since Sarah left. Reckon they’ll comb the whole length and width of the Upper White until they flush us out like lice.”

  “Might want to be shut of this country for a while.”

  “What if Sarah comes back?”

  Billy shook his head, thinking of how craftily she’d outfoxed even his abilities as a tracker. In the beginning, he just couldn’t believe she’d leave him so, but once it had soaked in, he’d come to understand that it was his fault. That he’d betrayed her trust. Hurt her to the bone.

  And she ain’t never gonna forgive me.

  Just the thought of it made him sick to his stomach.

  “She won’t. Not after this long. I ain’t told you, but I been having dreams. Maw comes back from the dead, shaking that finger of hers, telling me I done let her down. Got Sarah raped, and then I made her leave.”

  “You didn’t make her leave. She done it on her own. Took my damned horse in th
e process.”

  “Nope. I made her run. Did it the moment I told you how she’d been violated.” He shoved the dead Crawford with his toe. “Maw knows. That’s why she’s come back from the dead. She’s damning me to hell for failing her. My fault. I done it all wrong.”

  Danny bent down and started the task of going through Crawford’s pockets, saying, “Reckon they’ll kill us just as fast for looting the body as for making him dust in the first place.”

  Billy holstered his Remington and started going through the blankets and packs, setting aside anything they could use. It wasn’t a bad start: three more horses and a couple of sides of bacon, cornmeal, some pans, and money. He and Danny were well armed, had enough powder and shot, and the whole countryside was at war with itself. Travel by night, hole up by day, the biggest problem was staying clear of Union jayhawkers and Rebel guerrillas.

  And after they packed up their belongings at the trapper’s cabin? Where then?

  Missouri was out of the question. That truly was jumping from the frying pan right into the fire. Kansas was Yankee country. But just west was the Indian Nations. He could probably get through the Cherokee country, knowing enough of the language. Granted, Chief John Ross’s Union Cherokee were killing Stand Watie’s Confederate Cherokee—and vice versa—just as fast as Arkansans were killing each other. But beyond that, if the stories were true, Texas wasn’t at war with itself.

  “Crawfords can’t kill us if they can’t find us, Danny.” He picked up his Sharps and propped it on his shoulder. “What the hell is left for us in Arkansas anyway? Your family’s gone south, fled to Louisiana. Mine’s dead. Aren’t but a handful of farms left in Benton County. Elkhorn Tavern’s burned. We can’t farm ’cause anything we raise, whichever bunch of bushwhackers, Reb cavalry, or Yank army would confiscate it all anyway.”

  “And we’d be conscripted by whoever finds us first. Yank or Reb. We’d be tossed smack into the ranks to march, starve, and sleep shivering in the mud before being shot in battle.”

  “We got close to three hundred dollars in gold from Dewley’s bunch.” Billy grinned. “Reckon we could live pretty damn well on that in Texas.”

  Danny was staring at him as Billy hunched down and pulled his powder flask from his belt. Half cocking the Remington’s hammer, he rotated the empty cylinder and poured a measure of powder into the first empty chamber. Fishing a ball from his pouch, he seated it, turned the cylinder, and used the loading lever to press the ball home. He repeated the process on the two remaining empty chambers, sealed the loads with grease, and finally pinched caps onto the nipples before setting the hammer on the revolver’s safety notch.

  Danny had been watching pensively. “You ain’t leaving the hammer on an empty? You gonna trust the safety notch?”

  Billy worked his jaws as he looked around at the spring-green hills. “The way I figure it, Danny, I got a whole lot better chance of being shot by somebody else than I got of shooting myself if’n I snagged the hammer. Reckon it’s up in the air as to whether I’ll need that sixth shot before we even get out of this damn county.”

  Strapping their plunder onto one of the horses, Billy wondered, Where the hell are you, sis?

  For an instant, he had a vision. Like he’d heard tell of among religious folk. He thought he saw her, tall, naked, her golden hair streaming out behind her as if blowing in the wind. She lifted her arms in his direction. Blood was leaking down the insides of her long legs, and her high full breasts were bruised, bitten, and bleeding. Her pink nipples stood hard and erect. The dark shadow of her navel contrasted with the milky flat of her abdomen, and droplets of semen glittered on her golden pubic hair.

  Her eyes pinned his, and flashed—angry, damning, and unforgiving.

  The dream demon. This time in the light of day.

  And just as quickly, it was gone.

  Gasping, he struggled for breath. His heart was pounding.

  “C’mon, Danny. Sooner we get ourselves to Texas, the happier I’m gonna be.”

  48

  May 8, 1864

  In the days since he and Butler had walked out beneath the arched entry to Camp Douglas, Doc found himself in dire straits. Dressed in tatters, not a penny to their names, he and Butler were starved and sick. As he and his brother walked slowly south from Chicago along the Springfield Road, northwest Arkansas might have been on the other side of the world.

  A spring rain pattered on their bare heads, running down their faces. Their clothes were soaked, cold, and clinging. Mud squished between Butler’s toes. It clung to Doc’s old brogans and worked up through the holes in the soles.

  Not since the days after Shiloh had Doc been this hungry, wanting nothing more than to chew on something, anything, just for the taste if not the sustenance.

  A sense of complete despair filled him. Were it not for Butler, he would have loved nothing more than to fall prostrate in the mud and weep.

  He glanced at his brother. Butler’s eyes were flickering, lips moving as he “talked to his men.” He did it so rationally, as if—as he claimed—he could see them as clearly as the real world around him.

  What had happened to the young man who read Plato, recounted tales of the kings of England, quoted Voltaire, Hume, and Rousseau, and told of Julius Caesar and his conquests? What terrible thing had broken such a fine intellect and sent it scurrying into delusion?

  Doc had carefully felt Butler’s skull, seeking any sign of injury or wound. Nor did Butler remember being hit in the head at any time. The madness had just come upon him, according to the way Butler told it.

  Doc winced. As if his own hightailing for the deadline that day he’d read that Ann Marie had married precluded him of any such charge of insanity.

  He coughed, spitting the production into the wet grass at the side of the road.

  “Kershaw tells me the men are in need of rations,” Butler said offhandedly as he looked around at the cultivated fields on either side of the road. Lines of newly leafed beans, the first shoots of corn, and lettuce sprouted in lines behind the rail fences.

  “Well, Butler, you tell the good sergeant for me that I just don’t have an answer for him. If I hadn’t ‘swallowed the yellow dog’ and been paroled, we’d still be getting something at the mess in Camp Douglas.”

  He barely had the strength to gesture. “After dark we might be able to sneak past one of these fences and pick some of the lettuce without getting shot. On the other hand, our tracks would give us away come morning.”

  “Kershaw says that the men could probably mount a raid,” Butler agreed in a tone of voice that indicated it might be a military option.

  “Kershaw and the men,” Doc whispered under his breath. “Mount a raid.” He shook his head, water dripping from his cold nose. “All of Illinois should tremble.”

  Somehow he plodded on, each foot he managed to place ahead of the other being a small victory. Time after time, he and Butler would move aside as a wagon, carriage, or coach would pass. So, too, did riders. And more than once, pedestrians who gave them furtive looks, and who kept hands tucked into coat pockets where the smooth grip of a pistol or revolver no doubt reassured them.

  To each, Butler would smile and call a greeting, as if he were meeting a longtime acquaintance. And the travelers’ lack of a reply seemed not to bother him in the slightest.

  Not for the first time did Doc wonder if, of the two of them, Butler’s insanity wasn’t the better bargain.

  They stopped that night under a bridge. It was moderately dry, though water dripped between the planks. At their feet the rain-swollen creek would wake them should the waters rise up past the banks.

  “I could sure snuggle up to Colonel Armstrong’s donkey tonight,” Butler said absently.

  Doc wasn’t sure if he were talking to him or to his delusions. “Whose donkey?”

  Butler’s eyes went rubbery, his expression shifting from pinched to slack. “It’s the gospel truth. I swear it.”

  “Swear what?” Doc asked in irr
itation. “Sometimes, Butler, so help me…” But there was no use. A deep and yawning pit seemed to open before him, as if he could fall into the swirling water below his feet and let it carry him down into an eternal darkness.

  “Fella by the name of Chillon, so the story goes, walked all the way from California to join up with the Third Louisiana Infantry. Hébert’s regiment. Fought at Pea Ridge. Anyhow, Chillon had served in the French army and considered himself indispensible.” Butler paused. “Yes, Sergeant. That’s the man.”

  The pause was so long, Doc figured Butler had lost the thread of the story, and just as he was about to stretch out on the timbers, Butler added, “Chillon walked all that way from California, but he’d packed his possessions on the donkey. Being winter, every night he and the donkey slept all huddled up together for warmth.”

  “Are you making this up?”

  “Oh no. It’s told all over Arkansas. Chillon, of course, marched off to Pea Ridge and was killed in the fighting. It was winter, if you’ll recall. And on the retreat, Hébert had been captured, and Colonel Frank Armstrong had taken over.

  “Now, Armstrong looked a lot like Chillon. Older, bearded, wore the same style uniform, but he was a stuffy, self-aggrandized sort. So arrogant his men hated him.” A pause. “Yes, Corporal. Very much like General Bragg.”

  “Butler, does this have a point?”

  “It’s snowing, cold, and men are sleeping near naked in the snow, and of course, Chillon’s donkey can’t find his master anywhere. Armstrong, like everyone, was exhausted, and pitched out on the ground without so much as a tarp.

  “Which is where his first lieutenant found him the next morning, sort of spooned around Chillon’s donkey. Right plastered around him, and supposedly smiling blissfully in his sleep. Word is his trousers were at full attention, if you follow.”