by William Gear
Having nothing better to do as the sun inched slowly across the sky, she practiced until she got it right. Then it was just a matter of waiting as her imagination conjured one horrible thing after another. The provost marshal’s blue eyes faded into Dewley’s, sending a shiver up her spine.
Sarah strapped the .44 Colt around her hips, taking a moment to check the caps and loads. The hammer clicked crisply as she ensured the cylinder rotated freely.
She saw Jefferson as the black horse appeared on the fort trail. Bret rode hunched in the saddle, as if the weight of the world depressed his normally broad shoulders.
She ran to meet him, stopped short at the pale strain in his face, his eyes glazed, lips clamped in a pained line.
“Bret! A provost was here. My God, what’s wrong?”
He swayed in the saddle, as if balance had deserted him. She’d seen him come home drunk before, but this was different.
“Bret?”
“Sarah? I’m shot.” He grimaced. “I don’t think it’s bad, but by damn it sure hurts.”
Shot! Images of dying men, bleeding on the farmhouse floor, came flooding from her memory. Her heart skipped in sudden fear.
“Hang on to the saddle,” she told him, taking Jefferson by the bridle and leading him back to the house. There she tied him off and stepped over. “Easy now, kick loose of the stirrup. That’s right. Now, help me. I’ll take your weight.”
“No time. Gotta … gotta pack my war bag. Can’t stay. Have to leave everything behind as it is. They’ll be after me right quick.”
“I already packed everything, Bret. First, I gotta see to that wound.”
Somehow she got him off the horse, into the house, and lowered him to the bed. Pulling back his coat she winced at the sight of the blood. She might have been back at the farm after Pea Ridge. Reaching out she grabbed his bloody shirt and ripped it open. Grinding her teeth together kept her from gasping at the sight. Broken fragments of rib stuck out from the bleeding mess, but she couldn’t hear the sucking sounds she’d heard among the chest-shot men after Pea Ridge.
Dear God, Bret. Don’t die on me! Not like that.
“Didn’t figger ol’ Winston Parmelee was that good with a gun.”
“Who?” She reached down under her skirt, slipping her petticoat off her hips. As Bret gasped on the bed she began ripping it into long strips. She stepped outside long enough to drop them in the hot water she’d left steaming on the fire.
“That provost.” His eyes went rubbery in his head. “Damn. Hurts.”
“Gonna hurt worse right quick, but it’s got to be done, Bret.” She seated herself beside him with a rag and began picking at the bone fragments.
“Yaaa! Shit!” he screamed. “What are you doing?”
“Picking the bone out of the wound. You leave it in there, it’s gonna rot.” She bent over him, staring down into his eyes. “Bret, I’m sorry, but it’s the only chance you’ve got.”
He blinked. “Get me a piece of wood. Something to bite on.”
She stepped out, found a stick he’d been whittling on. With it, she fished out her boiled petticoat strips.
As soon as one cooled, she used it to dampen the wound. As Bret clamped the stick in his teeth, she began cleaning and picking the broken fragments loose.
Screams and whimpers came out muffled against the stick and Bret’s sucking cheeks. Sweat beaded on his face, his body tensing and bucking. When she was satisfied, she managed to wrap the strips of petticoat around him, used the stick for a handle, and wound the bandages tight.
“Better?” she asked.
“Dear God in heaven,” he said, sucking shallow breaths. “Wish he’da just killed me.”
“You can’t ride,” she told him. “Not with those splintered ribs.” She pulled his pistol from the holster, finding two cylinders empty. Pausing only long enough to load them, she left the gun in his hand.
“Parmelee walks through that door, shoot first. I’ll be back.”
“What…?
Sarah hurried around the back of the house and pulled the picket on the horses. Fifteen minutes later she was at Hervy Johnson’s, catching the old man by the fire as he enjoyed his evening cup of coffee.
“Hervy? How much you want for that spring wagon and harness?”
“Why, I couldn’t let that go fer lessn’ twenty dollars, Miss Sarah.”
“It’s a light wagon. You’ll take five. In gold.”
“Ten.”
“Five. In gold.”
“Why’d I sell it for five?”
“’Cause only a blind idiot would give you ten. Lessen it was Confederate funds.”
“Seven.”
“Five. In gold.”
“Sold.”
God smiled. The two horses had been broken to harness sometime in the past, though they were a bit fractious getting back to the dugout. Loading the belongings was easy. Getting Bret on his feet and to the spring wagon? That was a labor of Hercules.
She barely looked back as she slapped the ribbons, and the wagon lurched forward into the evening. Jefferson snuffled where he was tied on behind. She took the road down to the ferry, having just crossed the main road. Looking back, she saw the dark horses, maybe fifteen, that took the turn toward Bret’s. In the darkness they barely gave her a second glance. Then were lost in the gloom as they cantered toward the dugout.
“Guess we just made it,” she told herself. “Now, Bret, when we get to the ferry, you don’t say a word. You hear me?”
“I do,” he gasped from where he lay curled in the back.
By midnight she had passed through Van Buren, following the road north into the Boston Mountains.
“Where are you going, Sarah?” she asked herself as she blinked and let the horses walk. Enough moonlight glowed in the night sky to ensure she was staying to the road.
They would expect Bret to flee east along the river toward Little Rock. It was in her bones to head into home country. Assuming they made it to Fayetteville, she knew all the back roads and trails. It would take more than a provost to ferret her out of the Upper White backcountry.
She allowed herself a humorless chuckle. Her last five dollars might have gone for the wagon, but before—having been hungry for too long—she’d stocked up on cornmeal, wheat, oats, and baking soda. Bret’s Henry rifle along with fifty cartridges was behind the seat next to his shotgun, and she had her pistol on her hip.
“So now, Bret, darling,” she told the sleeping man behind her, “all I need is to keep you from dying on me.”
But that, she realized, might be a dream beyond hope.
62
September 2, 1865
Five hundred dollars!
The thought of it filled Billy’s brain like a fever as he lay in the dappled shade beneath the mesquite. The occasional fly buzzed around his head, apparently desperate for his sweat or enticed by the way he smelled after a week in the brasada. Not an hour earlier he’d watched a scorpion—worried by the way he’d shifted on the hot white limestone rock—skitter away.
A family of wrens had passed by not fifteen minutes ago, hardly paying him any heed at all as they hopped about in the cedars surrounding him.
Across the canyon, heat shimmered on the white rock and dark green foliage of live oak, redolent cedars, mesquite, and currants. From his perch, Billy could see down to the trail below where it skirted a dry and rock-filled streambed. In the distance he could see Packsaddle Mountain. Every two weeks, the captain and his patrol of mounted Negro cavalry made this loop. At Llano, they would spend the night before riding down to Fredericksburg, then back to Austin.
Billy hadn’t a clue why anyone would want to kill the captain—let alone pay five hundred dollars for it. Nor did he particularly care. The man was a Yankee, a pawn on the conqueror’s game board.
He shooed a fly. Maybe, if he made a good kill, the dreams would stop. He had awakened Danny last night after the nightmare image of Sarah, naked, her breasts bruised and bitten, had risen over his supine body.
As her hair billowed and twisted around her, she’d looked down at him with icy blue eyes and her lips, looking rotted, had twisted around fanglike teeth.
She had bent down then, her hands fastening on his pizzle.
Billy’s pumping loins had brought him awake screaming.
God in heaven, he hated that dream.
Miracle was, Danny hadn’t shot him dead when he jerked upright in the blankets.
The crack of a hoof on rock, followed a moment later by the metallic clink of buckles, gave Billy his warning. A shod hoof clicked on stone. A man laughed. The sound funneled up the canyon.
Soon now.
Billy’s heart began to slow, the feeling of euphoria rising. He shifted the Sharps where it lay propped on his pack and snuggled behind the stock. With the gun up, he peered through the sights to the place where the trail climbed up through the limestone rim. One hundred and twenty paces. He could see the cracked rock he’d practiced on yesterday. The elevation and windage were perfect.
“What you gonna do wit dat gal, Samuel? She gonna wan’ you t’ marry her. Den you’se gonna get transferred someplace else,” one of the colored troops called out.
“I’s gwine t’ marry her,” another called back. “An’ if’n I’s be transferred, I’s gwine t’ give her money t’ come. Dat’s what. Don’ gotta let massa break no marriages no mo’. Even if massa’s de army. Ain’t dat right, Cap’n?”
“Reckon so, Samuel,” a white voice, Northern accent, called back. “Though God alone knows how you can keep a woman on army wages.”
The first of them passed below Billy’s perch. The point riders, three black men in blue uniforms, kepis strapped tightly under their chins. They and their mounts looked tired and sweaty.
Then came the captain, crossed sabers glinting gold on the front of his campaign hat. He rode as if one with his mount, a big blood bay. Though he scanned the rim as he passed, it was with a trained soldier’s casualness, not that of a man expecting trouble.
The rest of the column followed in twos, the black soldiers in various postures, their carbines muzzle-down in the thimbles attached to their stirrup straps. The carbines yanked and swayed, tugging on the broad shoulder straps, as their horses labored up the grade.
Billy began to breathe as he settled the front sight on the notch. Inhale, hold, exhale; he followed the mantra Paw had taught him so long ago.
The point riders climbed through the narrow defile one by one, and then came the captain.
Billy let him ride into the sight picture, applied the slightest pressure to the trigger, and felt the Sharps punch back into his shoulder. Even as the report boomed in the narrow canyon, he heard the meaty smack of his minié ball into flesh.
Through the spinning cloud of blue smoke he saw the captain sag forward, then tumble sideways off his mount. The blood bay panicked, trying to shy sideways in the narrow gap, then bucked and kicked as it fought free.
Billy had already snapped the lever down, dropping the block. He shoved another greased cartridge into the smoking chamber and flicked the lever closed, shearing the paper to expose the powder. Plucking up the cap he’d set to the side, he pressed it over the nipple and resettled the rifle over his pack.
Below him was chaos, men shouting, horses milling, the clatter of confusion.
Two of the colored troops had dismounted and rushed to the captain. A sergeant was bellowing orders, pointing this way and that.
Billy waited.
As the two soldiers attended to the captain and raised him into a sitting position, Billy took up the slack on the trigger. One of the men was supporting the captain’s head.
Now!
The Sharps boomed again and spewed another wreath of smoke into the air.
Billy didn’t see the captain’s head explode as the lead bullet hit it—but the mess was apparent: the two stunned soldiers were spattered with blood, brains, and bone.
Then Billy was wiggling backward, bullets whacking off the limestone below his hiding place.
Getting to his feet, he ran. From long practice, he dropped the block, fishing another cartridge from his shirt pocket and slipping it into the chamber. Keeping low, he zigzagged through the brush—cat’s claw and mesquite thorns tearing at his clothing. He leaped from one limestone boulder to another, sprinted across an open expanse of stone, and slipped and slid his way down through a crack into a side canyon on the other side of the ridge.
Wasn’t no horse in the world going to follow him across or down that.
“How’d it go?” Danny asked as Billy burst into the small clearing. Danny was already mounted on his own horse, holding the reins for Locomotive.
“One through the lights, the second through his head. Now we gotta make tracks, Danny. Them might be freed black boys back there, but that ain’t to say they ain’t got one hell of a mad on, right now. And they might have some coon who can track us. Let’s go.”
He leaped into the saddle, jamming the Sharps into its scabbard as Locomotive sidestepped. Grabbing the reins, Billy gigged Locomotive into motion, leading the way down the narrow trail.
“What’s the plan?” Danny called from behind.
“Reckon we can make it to Magdelena’s roadhouse by midnight.” He grinned. “When we do, we’re celebrating. Reckon we’ll dip our wicks in a couple of whores and drink us a bottle of whiskey. Then it’s the back trails north to pick up our pay.”
“You paying?”
“Yep.”
“I want Rosalia.”
“Fine with me, I’ll settle for Helga.”
“That flat-chested skinny red-haired Dutch gal?”
“Yep.”
“Why her?”
“’Cause she lets me make believe.”
“Make believe? What kind of talk is that?”
“None of your damn business.” Fact was, she’d let him close his eyes, lay back, and imagine whoever he wanted while she rode him. And even if she suspected that he imagined a tall blond woman with blue eyes, and if he lost himself in the moment and called her “Sarah” she didn’t care.
63
September 10, 1865
Bret clung to life. For four days fever sought to burn him up. Then he began to mend.
At the end of each day’s travel, Sarah stopped, cared for the horses, built a fire, started supper, and stepped to the back of the wagon where she peeled off Bret’s pus-filled and blood-speckled bandages. Allowing the festering wound to air, she’d boil the old bandages while wrapping the previous day’s around Bret’s slowly healing chest.
The night of the tenth, just north of Fort Scott, Kansas, Bret actually sat up. He positioned himself with his legs dangling from the back of the wagon and watched her as she went about her evening chores.
“You saved my life, Sarah.”
“You’re not out of the thick timber yet, Bret.” She shot him a measuring look from the stew pot. She’d traded with a farmer that day: a tin of salt for a chicken.
Bret nodded faintly, glancing around the copse of trees where they’d camped by a small creek. Cottonwood and ash leaves rattled softly in the wind. From the fire rings and grazed areas they were far from the first to use it.
“I’m going to live,” he told her. “I’m going to do it for you.”
She avoided his eyes. “Why’d you desert?”
“How’d you know that?”
“Parmelee told me before he went off to shoot you.”
He took a breath, as if testing his ribs, and strangled a gasp. For a moment he was silent, then said, “I guess the war wasn’t making much sense to me.” A pause. “Battle after battle, my battery was in the thick of it. All I saw was the mass murder of men. Chancellorsville. That’s when I quit. The Rebs tried to take our battery. I had my boys wait until they were right at the cannon muzzles … and blew them away with canister. Then we fell to rifles and pistols. Drove them back.”
Bret used his thumbnail to pick at the wood tailgate. “I shot this boy. Little guy looked half starved. Dre
ssed in rags. Maybe he was sixteen. Maybe. After the Rebs fell back, this boy kept crawling toward me. He was choking on his blood, crying, ‘Help me, please, mister.’”
Bret glanced up at the night sky. “Can you believe that? He was looking me in the eyes. Knew it was me who’d shot him. But there he was, crawling toward me, reaching out with that shaking bloody hand. Wanted me to save him. Comfort him.” He paused. “And then later I walked out among the dead. You don’t know what canister, shot point-blank, does to people. Something inside me just couldn’t stand it anymore.”
“Paw made me read history. I don’t guess there’s ever been a war like this one. I heard a half-million men died.”
“I walked away after the battle, Sarah. I’ve always had a talent with cards. I can remember what’s played, know how to calculate the chance that an unplayed card will turn up. I just thought, like Thoreau, that my steps would take me west until I ran out of war.”
“I guess it worked until Parmelee caught up with you.”
His eyes were vacant. “Never will figure how he followed me all that way.”
“He scared me.” She straightened from the fire, a wooden spoon in her hand. “Glad you shot straighter than he did. That look he gave me when he left? He meant it when he said he’d see me again.”
Bret nodded, expression perplexed, as though struggling with something. “But for you, they’d have run me down. We both know that. I’d have hung for killing him.” He spread his hands, looking at them as if in wonder. “I’d be dead but for you.”
“Reckon I didn’t want to lose my thirty dollars.” She gave him a conspiratorial wink.
Bret’s dark brown eyes filled with intensity. “I think … Well, you and I have gone beyond a boss and the hired help.” He seemed to pick his words.
“Maybe.”
“I need you to understand something. Just hear me out before you say anything. I have come to love you with all of my heart. My life is yours, Sarah. It’s yours in any way you want to have it. I will remain as your friend. I would be your husband if you would have me. Or I will be thankful to act as just a casual acquaintance. But having said what I have, I will never impose myself on you.”
