by William Gear
“Just their medical care.”
Big Ed glanced sidelong at him. “A suspicious mind might think you were most adept at maneuvering Parmelee out, and the goddess in. Were that the case, I’d say well done. Saves action on the part of me and my associates to deal with the scoundrel. Beyond that, I don’t care, Doc. Town’s better served with a high-end house. But just between the two of us, if, shall we say, concerns come up. Who do I deal with? You, Aggie, or this Sarah Anderson?”
“Seriously, Mr. Chase, I have no stake in this. And while Aggie is a partner, most of the day-to-day decisions are made by Mrs. Anderson.”
“The Goddess?”
“So they say.”
“Is she as beautiful as they claim?”
“Honestly, I’ve never met the woman.”
Big Ed’s cold gaze fixed on his. “I’ve heard that George Nichols shelled out a thousand a night for the privilege of bedding her. Makes me wonder what sort of a woman could command such a price. Our Mr. Nichols—bag of shit that he may be—is nevertheless no one’s fool.”
At the foot of the stairs, Agatha called in a theatrical voice, “Gentlemen! If you will raise your glasses in toast, I present to you the most beautiful woman in Denver, Sarah Anderson!”
Doc and Big Ed turned.
She descended the stairs with an almost magical grace, her hips swaying, each step languid. Her dress created the most incredible image, one of shimmering gold and black. The silk conformed to her waist, but instead of the fashionable oval hoops, Sarah Anderson’s dress slimmed around her hips and narrowed at the thighs before expanding to a ruffled wealth at the hem. The fabric accented her flat abdomen and outlined each forward movement of her legs, while the train flowed down the stairs behind her. Rising from the waist, the fitted bodice was cut and trimmed in black braid and cut low over each swelling breast. The sleeves were hemmed eccentrically, ending in black lace cuffs. The effect was provocative, lean, and reeked of exotic female sexual allure.
“Dear God in heaven!” O’Reilly sounded awestruck. “Sarah? Is that you?”
She turned her head regally, her blond hair in a ringlet style Doc recalled was à l’impératrice. He wondered if Sarah had copied it from the same worn copy of Godey’s that he’d seen Bridget reading.
Sarah’s face was classic, the nose delicate, straight, and thin in the patrician manner, her brow high, cheeks exquisitely modeled over a full mouth and perfectly proportioned jaw. Every feature was magically sculpted atop her swanlike neck. She smiled, lips parting to expose straight white teeth behind rouged lips. One by one she met the men’s eyes, inclining her head slightly.
When she fixed on Big Ed, Doc heard him take a breath, as if he’d been holding it.
Then she was looking at him, and despite the powder and rouge, her mascara-darkened eyes seemed to burn right through to his soul. Something in his gut squirmed uncomfortably, as if she had singled him out for some special scrutiny. Her smile went from practiced, to reflect wry amusement, and then perhaps … disappointment? As if she’d expected something from him. But what?
O’Reilly broke the spell when he stepped forward, taking her hand. Only then did Doc realize how tall she was, and how perfectly proportioned.
“There,” Big Ed whispered under his breath, “is indeed a goddess.”
“I have got to make that woman’s acquaintance,” Francis Heatley said from behind Doc’s elbow. Doc wondered when he’d arrived.
“Take your turn, old pard. But after me,” Big Ed told him before stepping forward.
“She does make an entry, doesn’t she?” Aggie said as she moved up and took Doc’s elbow.
“Where did she learn that skill? One of the better houses in San Francisco? Europe?”
Aggie laughed as the men swarmed Sarah. “Hardly. She was just a gambler’s wife until Parmelee killed her husband. Since that day she’s reached down inside herself and pulled all of this out. As if she’s inventing the goddess as she goes along. I mean, damn! She’s got the brains and the beauty, as well as a natural sense for what men want. Hard to see that coming out of backwoods Arkansas, but there you have it.”
In the parlor the musicians had tackled Bach.
Doc watched Sarah shaking Big Ed’s hand, her face lighting as she traded smiles and glances. “Hope she’s as good as you think she is, Bridget. Big Ed is one of the most dangerous men I’ve ever met. Not the sort to trifle with. By day he has a seat on the city council and acts the politician, but at night most of his ‘enforcement’ is done by hired men who aren’t chosen for their manners.”
“Shh! Don’t call me Bridget. Not here. And damn it, Doc, yes. I hope she is as smart as she thinks she is. She’s gambling everything with this house. We’ve got a plan, and if by some miracle we can make it work, we’ll be rich.”
“And if not?”
“Worst case? You and I stand over Sarah’s grave to ensure that John Walley actually buries her in the coffin we buy for her. Word is that he buries a lot of corpses out there on the hill, but doesn’t waste a coffin if he can help it.”
Doc felt a shiver as he watched the beautiful young woman. What was she? Twenty-five at most? But as Denver’s lords of the demimonde swarmed around her, she seemed every bit as confident and poised as they were.
“Come on.” Doc took Aggie’s arm. “I’m starved. Take me to the dining room. I know you couldn’t get salmon, oysters, and caviar with the trails closed. So you and I are going to listen to music, eat roasted buffalo tongue and stuffed prairie chicken, while I look into your eyes.”
Aggie laughed, and let him lead her through the arch beneath the stairs and into the dining room. The food was exquisite and spiced with New Mexican red peppers and wild sage. The cook, Mam, had also managed a surprise: pickled elk’s heart. As with the dresses and furnishings, Doc wondered where they’d found the cook.
“Mam? She used to cook for a planter in Mississippi,” Aggie told him when he asked. “Just before the end of the war she poisoned the old man as payback for selling off her daughters and all the years he used her for sexual services. Then she ran off to join the contraband and ended up here.”
Later, when Aggie was called away for some consultation, Doc retreated to the parlor—a glass of Madeira in hand—to listen to the musicians. He had no idea what the piece of music was, but found it soothing, especially after the trials of the day.
Where, he wondered, was little Arnie? Had his parents taken him out to Jack O’Neill’s ranch—as the local boneyard was called? Or had they just driven him out onto the short grass and dug a hole?
“Are you enjoying yourself, Doctor?” Her voice was a pleasing contralto, and yes, he could hear Arkansas twang beneath the cultured tones she had adopted.
He stood as Sarah Anderson appeared and stopped before him.
“Yes, ma’am,” he told her. “I hadn’t realized how much I’ve missed music. You and Aggie have built a delightful establishment.”
She was watching him through those hard blue eyes, as if, again, she expected something from him that he didn’t understand. “Would you accompany me upstairs for a moment? I think there is something you and I should discuss.”
“Of course.” He let her lead the way, felt curious at the number of male eyes that watched him as he followed her golden and provocative posterior up the stairs.
As she turned toward her room, she said, “Aggie has told me a great deal about you. About the war, the prison camp, about Butler. She said you went back to Arkansas, that the farm had been seized by squatters. She didn’t say, but have you heard from your other brother, Billy?”
Doc shot her a nervous glance. What was it about her? Those eyes, he almost felt as if he should know them. Then it hit him. They reminded him of Paw’s eyes.
She closed the door behind him, indicated a chair, then seated herself on the edge of her much too plush-looking bed.
“Billy? Not a word.” He shook his head as he sat. “Nor from my sister. They’re just gone. Vanished. I’ve placed ads
in the Fayetteville paper. Little Rock, too. But nothing. I don’t even know if they are alive.”
Again she was looking at him with those haunting eyes, so he asked, “What about your family?”
“My paw was killed at Shiloh. Billy and I buried Maw behind the house … and you still have no idea, do you, Philip? That just stuns me. Have I really changed that much? What was I? A gangly girl of twelve when Paw used Sally Spears to humiliate you? Has life beaten and battered us so much that we’re unrecognizable?”
She stared away then, her eyes hurt and distant.
Doc swallowed hard, his heart beginning to hammer. Oh, dear God!
“Sarah?” But looking close, peering beneath the powder and rouge, he could see Maw’s cheeks and nose.
As it all came crashing down, he stood, met her as she rose and wrapped her arms around him. The tears caught him by surprise.
She, however, seemed immune, whispering, “It’s all right, Philip. There will be time to tell it all.” She paused. “But not tonight. I have a client.”
“Who?” Doc rasped, trying to find his voice. “Pat?”
“Big Ed Chase.”
“His wife’s name is Margaret.”
“That’s his concern. Did you know he hates George Nichols? Big Ed has offered me eleven hundred dollars for the pleasure of my company.” She pushed him away, staring into his eyes as if to see his soul. “So we’ll talk tomorrow, or the day after.”
She used a cloth from the stand beside the bed to wipe his tears. “Now, promise me something. Go down, enjoy the evening, but don’t tell Aggie who I am until tonight when you’re both home, and holding each other in bed.”
“Big Ed and George Nichols? Sarah, you’re playing with fire. They’ll kill you if you get in the way.”
“They can’t kill what’s already dead, Brother. Now go. I have a job to prepare for.”
God had done this. Played him after all—like a trout on a line.
91
August 15, 1867
According to the soldiers at Camp Brown on the Popo Agie River, they called it the Valley of the Warm Winds. To the west rose the jagged and pointed Wind River mountain range, its peaks still spotted with snowfields even this late in the season. The foothills beneath the steep and timbered slopes were the most unusual Butler had ever seen, the terraces being composed of piles of boulders and gravel, all mixed and tossed together in a way that made no sense.
The rocks appeared as insane as he was, which brought a cackle of laughter to his lips and askance glances from the men who marched to either side.
On his right the Wind River ran clear and cold, its waters splashing over the rocky bottom where the shapes of fast trout darted. Ospreys nested in the cottonwoods, and antelope watched from the far buttes, making their chirping calls.
Across the river, the land was as different as could be; flat-topped, sandstone-capped buttes rose in banded shades of gray, buff, and reddish brown. The northern horizon was blocked by the Owl Creeks—irregular mountains whose slopes looked tough and scarred behind the fortlike ramparts of foothills. Off to the northwest, they merged with the Absaroka Range, where its peaks seemed to chew at the sky.
The smell of the sage carried on the wind, the air fresh and crisp as it rattled the cottonwood leaves.
“Cap’n?” Kershaw asked cautiously. “What are we doing clear out heah? Ain’t even a road. We’s off’n de map.”
“Least we ain’t eatin’ rabbit no more,” Pettigrew mumbled from where he walked alongside Butler’s horse.
Phil Vail called from up front, “Glad the cap’n shot that prairie goat. Men can’t march ’thout rations.”
The rest of the men were giving him sidelong glances. He could feel their unease. Doc would have told him it was the expression of his own mind. That his delusions were tossing his own growing disquiet back at him.
Maybe that’s what it meant to be crazy.
“Bet they ain’t never heard no cannonade out heah,” Jimmy Peterson observed as he looked at the rock-studded terraces they passed.
“Y’all ask me,” Templeton groused, “it’s a damn desert.”
“Fayetteville had water.” Pettigrew wiped his dirty and torn sleeve over his powder-grimed face and gave the country a worried look.
“You men just wait,” Butler told them. “Paw said the upper Wind River and the Jackson’s Hole country is, as he put it, ‘some spectacular.’ Said water boiled out of the ground, as if bubbling up from hell.”
“We been in hell already, Cap’n.” Kershaw sounded short. “Think that’s what they called Chickamauga. Remember that place where we was all shot down? All the stink of sulfur and blood and death? Hell busted out on earth, and you could have stopped us from charging into it. Could have ordered us all back.”
Butler’s body spasmed as if his muscles had received a shock. His heart began to thud inside his chest.
“Stop it! Right now!” He swallowed hard, throat oddly tight. “Never mention that day. Not ever! You all hear me?”
He blinked, Apple nervous as the trembling in his hands ran down through the reins. He had proven a good mount—not very energetic, but calm and capable.
“Cain’t never run full tilt through no forest at night th’out running into de trees, Cap’n. An’ dat’s just a fact.”
“Your meaning is unclear, Sergeant.”
“Maybe time’s come foah you t’ recognize you’s runnin,’ and Chickamauga be dem trees.”
The horse sidestepped uneasily as tremors ran through Butler’s body. He couldn’t breathe, as if his lungs were suddenly starved for air.
“Calm, men. Calm,” he ordered, willing himself to breathe; he knotted the muscles in his arms to keep his hands from shaking. Spots had formed in his vision, a darkness creeping in from the sides. He blinked, gasping for air, and felt the world settle back into place.
Panting from the sudden fear, he said, “Sergeant Kershaw, you will never mention that place again. If you do, I will charge you with insubordination.”
“Truth be what it be, Cap’n.”
“Stop it! Go away! Get out!”
Hearing Doc’s words in his own mouth, Butler couldn’t help but hunch down in the saddle, almost flinching as he awaited his sergeant’s response. The only sound was the wind in the sagebrush and cottonwoods and the happy sounds of the river running over stone.
“Sergeant?” Butler snapped.
“Reckon he gone, suh,” Johnny Baker said warily.
Butler fixed his swimming vision, seeing the men, their faces ashen, their torn clothing hanging in tatters. Fear, like cold splinters, shone in their eyes.
“He be back.” Pettigrew shifted uneasily. “That damn Cajun’d do anything t’ keep me from making sergeant.”
“Forced march, men. Forward!” Butler spurred the horse, leading the way at a trot. When he looked behind, the men were following the packhorse at the double-quick.
“Kershaw, what were you thinking, mouthing off like that?”
Butler’s vision of the trail where it skirted a patch of willows shimmered and silvered as tears welled in his eyes.
92
August 20, 1867
Butler poked at the crackling fire with a stick. The men sat in a circle, quiet. Somber. He’d been forced to stop early that day, having pushed the horses too far, too fast. The animals were simply exhausted.
Pettigrew, the complainer, had called it to Butler’s attention when he announced, “Cap’n, keep it up, and you’re gonna kill that hoss. Then where all will y’ be?”
They’d passed beyond the low, piled rock and gravel foothills with their sprinkling of giant boulders—and skirted the base of blood-red sandstone cliffs where the Wind River looped close to the mountains. The range to the north, the Absarokas, were closing in now, jutting ever higher into the crystalline blue of the sky. Soaring gray cliffs, spotted with high snow patches, contrasted with the vault of the heavens.
The river remained a dividing line between worl
ds. To Butler’s left grew timbered patches with pines, groves of quaking aspen, and thick stands of willow that gave way to white-barked pine then fir-and-spruce-covered slopes.
On the right, across the river, lay a fantastic and colorful landscape—a layer cake of red, white, yellow, brown, and tan formations cut by drainages and eroded into spires, hollows, and patterns mindful of pictures he’d seen of mighty cathedrals.
The fire popped, sparks twirling up toward the night sky. Butler leaned his head back and filled his lungs with the cool, forest-scented air that blew down the valley from the northwest.
“Reckon ya’ll got to admit”—Billy Templeton had mimicked Butler’s posture—“them’s more stars than a feller ever sees back t’ Arkansas.”
“The scientists would tell you the air is thinner here,” Butler told him.
“How could air git thin? It’s jist air, ain’t it?” Johnny Baker asked.
“Something about being higher here than in Arkansas.” Butler smiled faintly as a meteor shot a sliver of light across the blackness.
Coyotes yipped and carried on to the south. Wolves howled in a lonely tremolo to the north, as if in answer.
“Is the water thinner, too?” Phil Vail asked. “Seemed every bit as thick and fast when we forded the river this morning.”
“I don’t know if the water is thinner,” Butler answered. “Maybe everything is. Maybe if we just keep climbing, we’ll become less and less substantial until we’re mere shadows of ourselves. And if we could climb high enough, we’d just vanish into nothingness.”
As soon as he’d said it, he wished he hadn’t. Sometimes he could see through the men as it was, only to have them firm up again. Or they’d be in one place one instant, and somewhere different the next.
He glanced around anxiously, nodding to each of them, assuring himself that they were still present. He hadn’t heard from Kershaw since dressing down the sergeant. Not since the near paralysis of fear that had left him weak and whimpering.
Tell me the men didn’t see that.
An officer’s first responsibility was to his men.
