This Scorched Earth

by William Gear

  No sooner had Butler come to terms with his own physical reaction to the goings-on, than he’d been abashed to find himself dreaming of Mountain Flicker in that way.

  To his further dismay, it had become a major topic of conversation among his men.

  Mountain Flicker had come to Cracked Bone Thrower’s lodge with the intention of marrying him. Among the Dukurika, Butler had learned, it was actually expected that when a man took a second wife, it should be his wife’s sister.

  And now Mountain Flicker was officially a woman.

  Which meant that, inevitably, Butler would have to listen to his friend and this sparkling young woman he so adored make those sounds. Do what he more and more longed to do himself.

  The blizzard made a howling out beyond the lodge, another twist of snowflakes pushing their way past the smoke hole to vanish in the heat.

  “I am very happy for you,” Butler told her, allowing his soul to ache a bit as he stared into her eyes. And he would be happy. Cracked Bone Thrower had become his friend. Red Rain and Mountain Flicker had made him part of their little family group. Accorded him every respect after hearing of his Underworld adventures with Water Ghost Woman. No matter how he had come to obsess over Mountain Flicker, he would force himself to be joyful when she and Cracked Bone Thrower married.

  Might even be tonight.

  “And how will y’all deal with that?” Kershaw’s thick drawl asked behind Butler’s ear.

  “I will do my duty, Sergeant,” he said crisply. Damn it, it was a measure of his disquiet that Kershaw had come. The Cajun only spoke when Butler’s turmoil was roiling.

  “Reckon, Cap’n, yer gone on the girl.”

  “I will acquit myself as a gentleman, Sergeant. I am delighted for my friends, delighted for Mountain Flicker.” And before Kershaw could goad him again, he ordered, “That will be all, Sergeant.”

  Cracked Bone Thrower, Mountain Flicker, and Red Rain were watching him with knowing eyes.

  “What was the dead man saying?” Cracked Bone Thrower asked. “The sergeant only comes when you are unhappy or worried.”

  Butler smiled wearily. “You know him too well. I was just telling him that I am happy for Mountain Flicker, and how her life will be changing.”

  He could sense the sudden tension. Even among the little boys. They were all looking at him expectantly.

  “Yes”—Cracked Bone Thrower thoughtfully set aside his plate of meat—“Flicker is now a woman. It is time that she took a man. Her father is not around to speak for her. So she has come to me. She would have you for as long as you would keep her.”

  Butler stopped short, as if he had imagined the words coming out of Cracked Bone Thrower’s mouth. “I thought she was to marry you.”

  “I will gladly take her for my second wife if you don’t want her, Butler. We are naatea, family. You have come among us, shown us honor and respect. Red Rain and I have watched you with Flicker. We have seen your attraction, how you look at her with fond longing. And she has told us she would be your wife.”

  Butler, his heart still pounding, turned to her. “You would be my wife?”

  “The word is gwee. Say it.” Flicker seemed unusually nervous.

  “Gway.”

  “Close enough,” she told him. “I will call you nadainape.”

  He knew that word, it was what Red Rain called Cracked Bone Thrower and what Puhagan’s wife Flowering Sage called him. The Dukurika used it suspiciously like Americans used “husband.”

  “And if I have to leave? Would you want to come with me? Go with me back to America?”

  “I don’t know,” she both said and signed with her hands.

  Cracked Bone Thrower shook his head. “She would not like the white world. I myself tried it when I was younger. You know that among the Dukurika, a man is expected to marry his wife’s sister. If your puha says you must leave, she will become my second wife.”

  “Just like that?” Butler asked, amazed.

  Mountain Flicker shot him a shy smile. “We are not white men, Butler. We are newe Dukurika. If you become part of our naatea, call me gwee, you will take responsibility for Red Rain, as well. If anything should happen to Dick Hamilton”—she smiled as she teased Cracked Bone Thrower with his white name—“you will call my sister gwee, wife, and care for her as well as share her bed.”

  “What’re y’all gonna do now, Cap’n?” Kershaw asked dryly behind Butler’s ear.

  “Do you really want this?” he asked Mountain Flicker.

  Her smile widened. “You are a puzzle. Filled with puha, you see the dead. You faced Pa’waip and she gifted you. These things scare me, but you are a kind man who works hard. You help with the hunting and packing, and make me laugh. You have known pain and terrible things, but they have not made you bitter. I think you would make a good father for my children.”

  “Father?” Butler asked himself softly, somewhat stunned.

  He looked into her thoughtful dark eyes, his heart pounding. She wasn’t fooling. None of them were. He was being asked to join their family. He wasn’t a lunatic in their eyes. Not some piece of broken human being to be kicked, shunned, pitied, or humiliated. They wanted him because of who he was. Because he was crazy!

  He reached out, drew her to him, and hugged her. Kissing the top of her red-lined head. “I would be delighted to call you gwee. I will cherish it every time you call me nadainape.”

  To Cracked Bone Thrower, he said, “You, I will call babi, my older brother. And Red Rain, you are gwee to me.”

  That night after the lodge had been made ready, and the last trips had been made outside for relief and to check the dogs and horses, Flicker knelt in the dying light of the fire and slipped her beautiful dress off.

  Butler had already undressed and crawled under the robes. His hands were trembling; his heart beat in anticipation and terror as she slipped in beside him. He’d never felt a woman’s body against his, and for a moment, she just lay there, as if savoring the feeling herself.

  Then she leaned her lips to his ear and whispered, “Nadainape.”

  “I have never done this before,” he whispered.

  “Me, either,” she whispered back.

  She took his trembling hand, placed it between her breasts so that he could feel her pounding heart. Then, sighing, she led him in an exploration of her body.

  They didn’t sleep much that night. Butler was too delighted with the soft sounds of pleasure that Mountain Flicker made deep down in her throat.

  101

  February 28, 1868

  The wind couldn’t have cut more keenly if it were a knife. Backed by small flakes of blowing snow, it sliced through Billy’s coat, finding every small crack and gap. Locomotive, powerful beast that he was, nevertheless showed signs of fatigue. The packhorse following behind kept stumbling, jerking on the lead rope every time he did.

  Billy knotted the muscles in his leg, arm, and side on the left. Then he’d tense his right in a futile effort to keep warm. By constant exercise he built heat, but it sapped his energy, and his stomach felt like a chafing and empty hole. Every muscle had gone stiff, as if it were made of wood.

  He kept Locomotive moving on the rocky road, the horse’s hooves clacking on the worn river cobblestones, the cleat-tipped winter shoes slipping on ice. On his right, just past the line of winter-stark cottonwoods, the Missouri River’s course was marked by a broken, piled, and snow-covered swath of ice. The wind-torn bottom country almost looked smoky, an illusion created by the gray cottonwoods and their interlaced branches. Snow streaked the upland bluffs to the east where it had filled in drainages and cuts; the sides of the slopes drifted in rounded and sculpted mounds behind bare, windblown patches of sage.

  The trail turned toward the river, and squinting against the bitter wind, Billy could see the ferry at Eldorado Bar. It was drawn up on the far side, choked with ice; the little shack just opposite it looked snug with a streamer of smoke curling out of the stovepipe to be wicked away by the wind.
/>
  Picking his way along the bank, floundering through drifted drainages, he kept staring longingly at the river. Back at the Great Falls, they’d no doubt found the body. One more in a long list. A man Billy hadn’t known. Just a name on a telegram. A poor bastard that somehow stood in George Nichols’s way. Already frozen, the corpse would have been hauled off to a shed to await the spring thaw and burial. They would be speculating about the meadowlark feather in the corpse’s pocket. That storekeeper’s wife would have told them about the young man in the slouch hat that rode the big black horse.

  She might have even gotten a good enough look at Billy to draw a likeness of him. Though none of them would know his name.

  He stopped Locomotive, feeling the big black tremble as he looked out over the broad Missouri. Here the ice was smooth, not cracked and piled, as if the river ran slower.

  He fought a bout of shivering.

  “Goddamn it!”

  He couldn’t stay out—not given the bruise-dark band of clouds rolling down from the northwest. He could sense the building fury. This was going to be one hell of a blizzard. The kind that killed men and froze animals stiff. And just over there, beyond that far shore, the road led to Helena, a stable for the horses, and a warm hotel room for him. Maybe with a hot bath. And afterward, a woman to keep his bed occupied.

  If he could cross that ice.

  He should dismount, but as cold as his legs were, would he be able to mount again? He blinked his eyes, then had to place a mittened hand to them where the tears froze his lashes together.

  “God fucking damn,” he whispered. “Locomotive, reckon we’re gonna die one way or another, and what the hell, Devil’s gonna get me in the end anyway.” He glanced around. “Sure as shit, we can’t stay here.”

  He tapped spurs lightly to the black’s side, and—dumb trusting brute that he was—the big black horse slowly minced his way out onto the frozen river. Once on the ice, Billy turned the packhorse free. The buckskin would either follow or not.

  “Easy there, hoss,” Billy whispered to Locomotive’s frost-whitened ears. “One step at a time.”

  He heard a hollow crack.

  Damn it!

  “Whoa, now.” He almost fell as he climbed off, easing his foot down on the snow-streaked ice. Shivering, taking the reins, he half stepped forward. Locomotive had his eyes rolled back and worked the bit.

  “Gotta go slow, old friend,” Billy soothed, leading the way. To keep on line he picked a toppled cottonwood on the far bank, and kept sliding his steps forward. If the ice broke, if Locomotive fell through, Billy could hurl himself headlong. Maybe he’d have a chance.

  Sure. A chance to freeze to death as the blizzard raged down on him and buried him in a whiteout of howling snow.

  Off to the right he could see an open patch. Black water running fast before vanishing down into the darkness and cold depths.

  What would it be like, falling through? Feeling the cold shock of icy water through his clothes, the grip of the current. To grab at the lip of the ice, fighting, struggling, terrified as the cold ate his strength? That moment of desperate realization, knowing that nothing could save him. Right up to the moment his fingers let go and he was dragged down into the blackness. Thrashing, bumping up against the ice, feeling it slide past. The air in his lungs would begin to burn, bitter with cold, and he’d finally blow it out and suck frigid water into his chest.

  There, he would die. Down in the black depths. Floating along, arms and limbs akimbo, hair playing in the current. And no one would ever find him.

  Forgotten by everyone but the Devil.

  Damnit all, how thick is the fucking ice?

  He’d never been so scared in all his life. If only he’d waited. Shot that fancy-dressed son of a bitch after the weather cleared.

  He shook, jaw muscles in such a spasm that his teeth clacked like castanets.

  He’d worked wide around the black hole.

  Heard the ice crack beneath him again.

  Froze.

  His heart skipping.

  But nothing happened.

  Step by step, he shivered his way, expecting at any instant to hear that final crack. Each step was made with the expectation that the ice had to give way.

  What the fuck had possessed him to try this? Better to have just kept riding until he froze in the saddle and fell off into a drift.

  But he’d made it halfway. Maybe more.

  “Slow, you stupid idiot,” he whispered, the wind tearing his breath away.

  Again the ice cracked, seemed to shift. Locomotive pulled up, muscles tense, head up, on the verge of panic.

  “Easy there, old friend. Whoa, now. Easy. That’s it. Just stand for a bit. Get your bearings. That’s my good old horse.”

  And once again the stupid beast believed him.

  “One step at a time,” he told the horse, worrying that he couldn’t feel his feet anymore, and that his knees were so stiff he could barely bend them.

  Damn, had he ever been this cold?

  And then they were across, scrambling, slipping, as they climbed the icy bank and onto the snow-packed rocky shore.

  He couldn’t bend his legs, couldn’t find the strength to climb into the saddle. He might have crossed the river, but he was still going to freeze.

  Until he fixed on the fallen cottonwood.

  “Come here, boy. That’s it.”

  Took him three tries to clamber up onto the log, then to launch himself halfway into the saddle and swing over.

  Two hours later, his body like senseless clay, he topped the rise from the Prickly Pear Valley and into Last Chance Gulch. His brain numb, he passed the shacks and cribs on the outskirts, then into town. He passed J. H. Ming’s books, Cannon’s Steam Bakery, Binzel & Hamper’s, and the Occidental Billiard Hall.

  At the livery he staggered off the horse, pounded on the door, and mumbled something incoherently at the hostler before stumbling to the small heat stove in the man’s office. In bliss, he shucked off his frozen and snow-packed coat. Practically hugging the stove, he had to wait nearly a half hour before he could talk rationally to the proprietor.

  “You just made it,” the man told him. “Cain’t hardly see across the street the way it’s coming down.”

  Billy sucked at the cup of hot coffee the man had given him. “I couldn’t think. Hands were too numb to move.”

  He sipped again, belly happy. “I was starting to feel warm. Ain’t that something? To look down and see all that ice on my legs … and feel like it was July?”

  “Yep. And next you go to sleep. Not a bad way to go, I guess.” The old man pointed a knobby finger at him. “Son, yer jist damn lucky you made it.” He paused. “Thinking of sleeping here, are ye?”

  “No. I’m good enough to find my way to a hotel and a meal.”

  Billy wrapped himself in his coat, pulled his hat down, and stepped out into the storm. He knew the way from his previous visits, but in the blinding waves of snow, he still had trouble finding the hotel.

  To his relief he got the last room, left his coat and war bag, and wearily made his way to the restaurant for the obligatory meal of elk, beans, and biscuits. He couldn’t have cared less as long as it was piping hot!

  It was a measure of his fatigue that he was halfway through the meal before he noticed the blond man across the room. The gent was staring at him through eyes as cold and blue as the blizzard blowing outside. That same man he’d sat across the table from in Fort Benton.

  Win Parmelee. The fellow looking for the Meadowlark.

  102

  March 7, 1868

  Sarah—dressed in a robe—allowed George Nichols to take her arm and escort her down the stairs to the Angel’s Lair dining room. He was dressed in the finery he’d been wearing when he arrived the night before: a tailored black sack suit, starched white shirt, with a silk scarf at the neck. His long wool coat was hanging in the foyer along with his silk hat.

  “That really was exquisite, I’m all abuzz,” he told
her as he held the chair for her. After she seated herself, he pulled his chair next to hers and sat, elbows propped on the table as he clasped both of her hands. The look in his dark and dangerous eyes was almost worshipful.

  Mam burst out the door, a silver coffee service on a tray with two cups.

  “Morning, Mam!” Nichols greeted.

  “Mr. Nichols, suh,” she told him with a slight nod of acknowledgment. “Y’all ready fo’ breakfast?”

  “At your convenience,” Sarah told her with a smile, knowing full well it would be delivered within minutes.

  After Mam left, Nichols took a deep breath, then, as if embarking on a perilous path, said, “I would like to think that if there was a limit to what the human body could sense and experience, I had already discovered it in your bed. But each time…” He shook his head. “Dear God, Sarah, my entire body tingles just thinking about it.”

  She gave him a satisfied smile. “It was rather pleasant. I imagine I shall have to nap half the day just to recover. Last night was … well, let us call it special.”

  Something powerful lay behind his black eyes, an intensity to the set of his face. “I find myself drawn to Denver with ever greater urgency. No sooner do I return to my work in Central City than I find my mind obsessed with you. It’s enough to drive me mad.”

  “We make a study of obsession at Angel’s Lair. Did you enjoy the play last night? I thought Agatha gave a wonderful performance of Helen being seduced by Paris. That was the beginning of the Trojan War, you know? I think it fed your appetites more than a little.”

  “I thought you were crazy when you mentioned this theater nonsense.” He paused. “I never liked theater.”