This Scorched Earth

by William Gear

  Around him, the men were giving him a hollow-eyed look. Butler realized his heart was pounding. He swallowed hard and took a swig of coffee.

  Sarah drummed her fingers on the table. “What would I change if I could go back? I’d shoot Dewley off his horse the day he rode into the yard. Fight him off from the house, even if it meant they burned it down around Maw and me. But it would have saved me the rape and all that followed. Saved Billy the guilt. Kept him from having to find me like that. I think that’s what really drove him crazy.”

  “You’re the strong one, Sarah.” He reached out and took her hand. “After I’m gone, Philip is going to need your strength. The men and I have discussed it. They are going to hang Billy. He’s evil, and he knows it. But Doc is only going to see his little brother going to the gallows, and it’s going to crucify his soul.”

  She met Butler’s eyes and nodded. “Hell, it’s going to be hard enough on me. I’m the cause of it, even though it wasn’t my doing. Damn it! It was all I could do to save myself, let alone him.”

  “This is Billy we’re talking about,” Butler said softly. “He was bound to be a hellion. Maw knew. So did John Gritts. Paw might have had a hint, but he wouldn’t have cared. Billy always hung on the edge. If the war hadn’t come. If Gritts had stayed around, and Maw had been there for a guide, maybe they could have taken the sharp edges off Billy’s nature. One thing I can tell you, he wasn’t ever going to stay and be a farmer.”

  “You were going to be a scholar. Now what? You’re going to be a wild Indian?”

  He smiled at that. “Not wild. Just free. For as long as it lasts.”

  She pursed her lips. “I wish you wouldn’t go. I’ve heard talk. The man Billy killed leaving the Criterion? Swede? He has friends. They’re burying him tomorrow. There’s talk of forming a vengeance committee.”

  “Dave Cook won’t let them.” Butler glanced at the men, reading their expressions. Pettigrew tilted his head, as if indicating it was time to head north. “I know, Corporal. We’ve been away too long already.”

  To Sarah he said, “A couple of days. Just long enough to get to know you again, and maybe talk to Doc about Billy. Then we’re heading north.”

  He thought her eyes had changed. More of a steely blue now. Harder. After his last visit to the farm he’d left hoping that Sarah would one day be the dreamy-eyed girl he’d known before the war. Before blood and dying men. Before the famine and hard times. Instead, after fate had played its hand, she’d become this beautiful, tough, and calculating woman. God help the man who tried to cross her.

  She said, “I can promise you one thing: I don’t know how, but one way or another, I’m not letting Billy hang.”

  128

  July 3, 1868

  The pain was down to a dull ache, except when Billy moved. Then it blasted through him like lightning, causing his eyes to water and his guts to squirm. A part of him cussed and fretted about being laid up like this. All that time, all those fights, and he’d never so much as been scratched. Now Philip told him he’d never walk without crutches. His physician brother might fret about the wound in Billy’s ass, but the one that played hell was the two smashed ribs that had stopped one of the pistol balls. If he so much as drew a breath too fast, his chest stitched itself in agony.

  And God help him if he sneezed or coughed.

  Billy glanced sidelong at where Philip sat at the small desk. In the glow of a coal oil lamp he was reading a medical journal. Not much more than a pamphlet that Doc subscribed to from Boston.

  “What time is it?” Billy asked.

  Doc pulled his pocket watch. “A little after eight.”

  “Got to take a leak.”

  “Well, do it.” Doc looked over from his journal. “That’s why you’re on the table with the hole in it.”

  Billy made a face, letting go and listening to his urine dribbling into the thunder mug under the table.

  “Hell of a circumstance,” he muttered under his breath.

  “Believe me, you really don’t want to try and stand up and urinate like a man.”

  Doc set his medical pamphlet aside, stepped over, and removed the chamber pot. Eyes thoughtful, he inspected the pot’s contents. “Good, the bleeding in your bruised kidney has slowed. You’re healing.”

  “Wish t’ hell that bastard had used a bigger gun.”

  “If it hadn’t been a .32, it would have killed you, little brother.”

  “That’s the point I was trying to make.”

  Billy waited while Doc went out back to the jakes and emptied the pot. When he came back in and replaced it, he studied Billy with pained eyes. Damn, did he have to look that way? Half crazy with worry?

  “What?”

  “I can understand you going after Dewley’s rapists. I’d have done the same.” Doc pulled his chair over and sat where he could look Billy in the eyes. “But the first time you took money to kill someone? You had to know that was a step over the line.”

  Billy smiled faintly, thinking back to Charlie Deveroux. “That was Texas. It was war and war’s paybacks. The man I killed was the enemy, a skunk who’d used his position to kill others and take their property. Wasn’t much of a moral line to step over.”

  Billy slowly shifted his good arm. “See, the thing is, I could have looked all I wanted to, and I never would have seen no line, Doc. It’s like what shade of pink is the difference between white and red? And one day it just plumb hits you that you’re something you never quite thought you’d be. And you know what? You’re already damned by then, so what the hell?”

  “When did these dreams about Maw and Sarah start?”

  “After I found Maw’s body. She come that night and damned me. Told me I done let her down.” He ground his teeth. “Hell, seems I was always letting her down one way or another. I just never could be the boy she wanted me to be. But that day I found her dying in the house? I knew there wasn’t no forgiving me for nothing after that.”

  “I think you wrong her. The woman who raised me wouldn’t condemn you for not being there to be killed when the bushwhackers rode in. She’d have wanted you to rescue Sarah. To live.”

  Billy used his good hand to make a fist and prop his chin so he could see Doc better. “Maybe. But things changed when you left. She and Paw went at each other. Not tooth and nail like bobcats in a bag, but cold and hard and silent. Paw moved his bed into the spare room. That’s when she really come down on me. ‘Don’t you become a wastrel like your paw, boy!’ she told me one time when I didn’t get the chicken coop cleaned out.”

  He grinned. “Tarnal hell, what’s chicken shit compared to a two-day hunt with John Gritts?”

  Doc sighed. “Butler told me that she knew about Paw and Sally Spears. You heard that story?”

  “Somehow I missed that one. Reckon it would explain some things, though.”

  Philip hesitated. “Tell me about these dreams you have. I understand Maw rising from the grave. But what about the one with Sarah? You said she was naked and raped.”

  Billy chewed his lips and frowned. Did he dare tell?

  What the hell, you’re already dead and dying.

  “You promise me what I tell you is atwixt you and me, and no other? And never, on your holy honor, do you mention a word of this to Sarah?”

  “I give you my word.” Doc laid a hand on his heart.

  Billy exhaled slowly so as not to hurt his ribs. “I’m laying on my back, buck-assed naked, and Sarah rises up looking like she did at Dewley’s camp. She’s stripped bare. All covered with bites and bruises, and from her privates … well, you can tell she’s been used hard. Her hair’s mussed and blowing like in a wind. She walks over, looks down at me with hell-burning eyes, and reaches down. I can’t stop her when she lays hold of my johnson. And then she lowers herself and…”

  Billy swallowed. “Well, hell, Doc. There ain’t no way fittin’ to talk about it. I just wake up shamed and hating myself. Sometimes I go through weeks of it. Dreams of Maw, dreams of Sarah. Some
times the whores I killed change faces with Sarah. You see, I got the Devil inside, and he tortures me something fierce.”

  Doc sat silently, a frown lining his forehead.

  Billy made a face. “Devil’s been in me since the day I walked into Dewley’s camp and shot those bastards down.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “’Cause I could feel him in my chest, Doc. I didn’t have no fear, didn’t have a hesitation. He was there, making sure I done it right. I don’t remember giving him my soul in return for getting Sarah out, but he must have known I’da said yes if he’d a bothered to ask.”

  Doc rubbed his face, as if exhausted. “I don’t know that I can stall Marshal Cook, but I have some influential friends. Men who, for a price, can probably get you out of Denver. It will—”

  “Thought you give your word to that marshal.”

  “You’re my brother, Billy.”

  “Fuck that! Did you hear a word I said? I’m tired of hurting all the time. I’ve lived with hell bottled in me for too long now.” He blinked back tears. “There ain’t no happy ending out there. Ain’t no redemption. I want the hurting to stop. I just want it over!”

  “Billy, there are places that might be able—”

  The bell in the front rang.

  “Hold that thought. We’ll pick it up when I get back.”

  Billy watched his brother rise and hurry through the door.

  Goddamn you, Philip. Last thing I need is some damn hero figuring he’s a-gonna be a fucking saint.

  Billy couldn’t hear the words out front, spoken as low as they were. He heard what sounded like a bench being shifted. Some soft thumps. Most likely someone injured being laid out.

  He closed his eyes, trying to keep from breathing hard and hurting. All of life had funneled down to a desperate hope that in return for that damn confession, Dave Cook would give him that one shot. It wasn’t such an impossible thing to ask for. Why the hell stretch it out?

  He heard Doc coming back, his boots scuffing on the floor.

  Billy opened his eyes, staring into someone’s belly: a check-patterned linen vest with brass buttons partially covered with a polished gun belt, the holster empty.

  Billy winced as he turned his head, looking up at a stranger. Revolver in hand, the man stared down with hard brown eyes. A mustache flared over wide lips. Homburg-style hat set forward on his head. Then more came flooding in. Maybe ten altogether. Most had bandanas over their faces, some wore bags over their heads with cutouts for eyes.

  “Who’er you?” Billy asked.

  “Friends of Swede Halverson’s.” The man’s smile carried no humor. “You know why we’re here?”

  Billy swallowed hard. “Yep. And if you can’t get this job done right and fast I’m calling you all a bunch of bleeding cunts.”

  Someone shoved a wad of cloth into his mouth. Quick hands tied his ankles together. His scream died in the gag as they jerked his arms behind him and bound them.

  He would have smiled as the hard hands grabbed onto him, but pain blasted hot and white through his chest and shoulder.

  As they carried him to the front, he was relieved to see Philip, hands and feet tied to the bench, a gag in his mouth. His brother’s panicked eyes met his, and Billy found the courage to shoot him a wink in return.

  And then they were out into the night.

  Billy was thrown into the back of a wagon; his muffled scream elicited no response. Damn, that hurt! It brought tears to his eyes.

  Then the wagon started forward.

  Fuck you, Devil! He kept repeating it over and over in his head. Like a prayer. The way he’d heard that the Catholic monks did in their monasteries.

  He heard the horses and wagon cross onto a hollow bridge, and the driver called “whoa” as he pulled to a stop. Was it no more than a couple of minutes that had passed?

  Billy lost his senses—blinded by pain as they tossed him from the wagon and onto the bridge. Claws might have been tearing his wounds in all directions.

  He was gasping, pulling at the gag in his mouth, sucking all the air he could through his nostrils.

  Fear had finally come to claim him, his bowels loose, heart hammering.

  The rope was cool as they placed it around his neck, and he flinched as they jerked the knot tight.

  He was lifted. Heard a weird wail coming from his throat. Then they tossed him out, body flopping.

  For a moment, he fell. Weightless.

  He heard the pop as lightning flashed, blinding and eternal …

  129

  July 4, 1868

  Sarah used the toe of her shoe to close the dampers on the cookstove in her kitchen, and winced as it pulled at the wound in her thigh. With a hot pad she shifted the fry pan to the side and dished out fried eggs mixed with bacon, thin-sliced potatoes, and bits of fresh red pepper and onion.

  She tried not to limp as she carried the plates into the dining room. Butler sat, elbows propped on her table. A cup of coffee steamed in his hands as he stared out the window. Her dirt yard was illuminated by the slanted light of dawn, the distant horizon green.

  “I do appreciate you staying here last night,” she told him as she eased into her chair. “The few times I woke up in the night, all I had to do was remind myself that you were in the next room. I think that’s the best night’s sleep I’ve had in years.”

  “And this is the best breakfast I’ve had in years,” he told her. “Well, maybe right up there with the buffalo tongue stew that Mountain Flicker makes when the sego lilies are fresh.” His expression warmed. “I know she’d hate it here, but I wish she was with me.”

  “You really do love her, don’t you?”

  “Were I Sir Walter Scott I would write epic poetry about her.”

  “I’m lucky enough when I can write a check without errors.” She had just picked up her fork when the banging came at the door.

  “Oh, sit,” she told Butler. “If I don’t use this leg, it’s going to stiffen. Besides, it’s probably just one of the workmen arrived early.”

  Still, as she hitched her way to the front door she reached back, reassured that the pocket revolver in her bustle was easily at hand. All it took was a jerk on the bow and the holster pocket opened to expose the pistol grip.

  At the door, she undid the bolt and opened it, stepping back.

  To her surprise, Dave Cook stood there, hat in hand, his coat open to expose his badge. “Mrs. Anderson,” he greeted. A tightness lay behind his eyes, his expression pinched.

  “Marshal? Can I help you?”

  “Is your brother here?”

  “We’re just having breakfast. If you’d care to join…” She saw his expression harden. “What’s happened?”

  “If you wouldn’t mind, Doc’s down at his surgery. He’s a bit banged up, but he’s going to be fine. It’s about Billy, ma’am. I’m afraid some of the boys formed a vigilance committee last night. His body was found this morning hanging from the Lawrence Street Bridge.”

  The world seemed to sway. She could imagine the scene, had seen it before. Vigilantes liked using the Lawrence Street Bridge. The drop was far enough to break the neck, the railing sturdy enough to take the weight. In the morning the corpse would be seen by many, hanging limp, the head to the side, eyes bugged, tongue stuck out like a swollen plumb.

  Not Billy!

  She turned, feeling sick. “Butler! Hurry! We have to go.”

  “What about breakfast?” he called.

  “Leave it. Something’s happened to Billy!” She turned just long enough to grab her bonnet, and thrust Butler’s reprehensible hat into his hands as she hobbled her way out and down the stairs to Cook’s spring wagon.

  “Tell me what happened?” she demanded as she climbed painfully into the seat and arranged her bustle. Butler had clambered into the back and was carrying on a disjointed conversation with his men.

  “Butler, stop it!” she told him. “Now quiet the men and listen.”

  Dave Cook slapped the
reins, saying, “According to Doc, they walked into his office last night just after dark. Someone shoved a shotgun under his chin, and others gagged him and tied him up. Then they went in and carried Billy out.”

  “Did he recognize any of them?” Sarah asked, a cold anger building.

  “No. Doc said they were hooded when they came in.”

  “And Billy?”

  “It was quick and clean. I had him taken down first thing. He’s at John Walley’s. Soon as I saw to him, I hotfooted to Doc’s. Got him untied and had Doc Elsner check him out. He’s hopping mad and blaming himself.”

  Cook stuck a finger under Sarah’s nose. “Wasn’t a damn thing he could’a done. Not unless he’d’a got his fool head blown off fighting with that shotgun.”

  “God … not Billy,” Sarah whispered. “When does it ever end?”

  “Right here and now,” Cook told her. “Sarah, you think about this long and hard! You know damn well that I’ve got contacts all over the territory through the Detectives Association. So I know what Parmelee did to you and your husband. Parmelee’s dead. I know Nichols was up to no good at your place. Your brother’s gone and killed him. But Billy sure as hell had no business shooting Swede. And he told me he killed them track layers. Now he’s paid.”

  She glared into his hard eyes.

  “You following me, Sarah?” he demanded. “I know he was kin, but the balance is paid. You gonna give me your word that you’ll let a sleeping dog lie? Or do I gear up for a string of vendetta killings that tears this city apart?”

  Sarah ground her teeth.

  “Where does it end?” Dave Cook asked softly as they pulled up in front of Doc’s. A small crowd had gathered, all talking among themselves.

  “All right,” she lied, her heart like a stone in her chest. “It ends here.”