by Bill Brooks
Toussaint said, “We ought to cut sign around this
cabin. Each ride out in a wide circle see if we can pick
up which way that crazy old man went.”
“See,” Jake said. “I knew you knew more than I
did about tracking.”
“Well, unless he grew wings and flew away, he’s
probably left a footprint or something. That recent
rain has made the ground soft.”
Will Bird watched Jake and Toussaint as he lifted out
another shovel of dirt and flung it up onto the pile al-
ready dug. He envied them their work much more
than that of his own. He dreaded having to go inside
the house and carry out the dead and bury them. He
didn’t like anything that was dead—not horses, or
cows, or even dogs, and especially not humans. The
first person he ever saw dead was his granddad when
Will was probably five or six years old—laid out in
the parlor of his aunt’s house in Kentucky. It was late
autumn he remembered—like it was now. The old
man was laid out with a thin piece of cheesecloth cov-
ering his face to keep the flies off; because of the cold
nights, the flies came into the house. There were folks
weeping, adults, mostly women, but some men, too.
A man came and played mournful tunes on a fiddle
for a time there in the parlor. His fiddle playing only
seemed to make things sadder, the women cry louder.
The kids mostly were shuttled outdoors where they
played as though death did not exist. Will was told to
join them but he couldn’t get the thought of his
granddad out of his mind and instead of playing, he
stood outside looking in through the parlor’s window.
Later they brought up a wagon pulled by a mule and
put the casket with his granddad in it and took him
off to a small cemetery on a knobby rise overlooking
a woodsmoke-filled valley and buried him there. Will
Bird thought all night about his granddad down in the
ground inside that box alone and lonely and how he’d
be down there forever. And was still, he thought, as he
raised the last shovelful of dirt from a grave now deep
enough. Dead folks reminded Will of sadder times.
Boy, he sure didn’t want to go in and carry out the
dead.
Jake and Toussaint picked up a set of boot tracks a
dozen yards from the cabin that led toward Cooper’s
Creek. Once there they found an empty bottle of black-
berry wine, a picnic basket, some pieces of butcher’s
paper scattered. They also saw a set of wheel tracks
heading due west. They rode on, with the wind now
shifting so that it blew directly into their faces forcing
them to lower their heads in order to stand the brunt of
it and keep blowing debris out of their eyes.
Two hours later, they stopped to rest their horses.
The wind had let up; the weather turning almost
pleasant once again.
“Weather out on these grasslands is constantly
full of surprise,” Toussaint said looking at the shift-
ing sky.
“What do you think our odds are of getting her
back alive?” Jake said.”
“A man who would kill his own kin, wife and
daughter and sons . . . Hell, I don’t guess he’d have
much use for her once he . . .”
“Yeah,” Jake said. “I agree. But since we haven’t
found her body, I have a feeling he’s keeping her alive
for more than just that one thing. I think if we can
press him hard, we’ll be able to get her back.”
“You were something other before you came out
here and got yourself shot by Bob Olive,” Toussaint
said.
Jake looked at him.
“And who you are exactly, none of us knows, but
I think you used to doctor somewhere. Question is,
how come you ain’t doctoring now, ’stead of being a
lawman. Seems to me doctoring has a whole lot more
going for it than having that tin target pinned to your
coat. A lot more.”
“It was another lifetime ago,” he said. “I don’t
doctor anymore.”
“Must be a reason you don’t.”
“I thought the code of the West was you never
asked a man his business.”
“That what this is, the West—a place where men
live by codes? I sure as hell haven’t seen much of that,
if it is.”
“There could be those who will come around look-
ing for a man who used to be a doctor. Thing is, I’m
not him. You catch my meaning?”
“Yeah,” Toussaint said. “I catch it just fine.”
“Let’s mount up. I want to press the Swede as hard
as we can.”
They continued to follow the buggy tracks, came
across a square of linen tatted with lace. Toussaint
dismounted and examined it, handed it up to Jake.
“Looks like she left this for us.”
Toussaint said, “I always did think Martha was a
whole lot smarter than Otis.”
16
The Stone brothers could barely believe their
eyes: women on a prairie—five of them frolicking.
“Guddamn,” said Zack Stone.
“Guddamn is right,” said his eldest brother Ze-
bidiah. The youngest, Zane, simply stared with his
jaw flopped open.
“Like they was rained down from the heavens,”
Zack said.
“Don’t be a guddamn fool, it don’t rain wimmen,”
said Zeb.
“They got a fellow with them,” Zane said as they
drew closer.
Ellis Kansas had gone on the far side of the wagon
to make water; there wasn’t much privacy on the
grasslands, so he’d stood on one side of the wagon
while the girls frolicked on the other side, not that
they hadn’t seen such things before. For one thing, the
eldest of the group, Maggie Short, had grown up with
seven brothers, several of whom introduced her into
the ways of carnal sin. And for another thing, all were
prostitutes and had firsthand witnessed the worst of
men’s habits.
Ellis Kansas had gone to Bismarck to recruit them.
Since he now operated the only saloon in Sweet Sor-
row (the other having stood vacant since the death of
its owner), he saw plenty of opportunity to bring in
lots of extra cash.
“You’ll be the only feminine pulchritude on the
plains up that way,” he had told the recruits. “You’ll
have a chance to earn fast and easy money, but even
more so, you’ll have a chance to find husbands. That
territory is full of bachelors. They practically swoon
at the mere sight of a woman. You’ll be the fairies of
the fields.” Ellis Kansas had the gift of gab.
Even in light of his new role as pimp, Ellis Kansas
considered himself a gentleman and his newly hired
girls, ladies, and thought it best to maintain a certain
decorum around them, hence standing out of plain
sight to make water.
He heard Maggie say, “They’s men coming.”
He
buttoned up quick and came around the wagon
where they stood pointing.
“Good, maybe I can hire them to fix this busted
wheel.”
But as soon as he got a closer look at the men, he
knew that they weren’t wheel-fixers, and if anything
they were as full of potential trouble as a lightning
storm.
He said out of the side of his mouth, “You ladies
get behind the wagon till I can equate these particular
gents.”
The brothers rode up and halted their mounts, and
for a full moment the three of them locked stares with
Ellis Kansas. He told himself that the situation was
bad, him against three, and him with naught but a
pair of two-shot derringers in his boots that were only
good for close-in work. Shit, shit, shit!
“How do, gents,” he said.
The eyes of the Stone brothers went from Ellis
Kansas to the women—what they could see of them—
on the far side of the wagon: five lovely faces. Then
they shifted their gaze to the wheel lying on the
ground.
Zeb rolled his eyes like some old bull looking for a
place to graze.
Zack scratched himself.
Zane sat grinning under his flop hat.
“Looks like your wheel fell off,” Zeb said.
“It surely did. I wonder if I might ask your help
getting it back on?”
“You might.”
Then nobody said anything. The girls stood breath-
less wondering how things were going to play out.
Maggie, the practical one of the bunch, sure hoped
there wouldn’t be any killing; that Ellis would not be
shot dead. For it would mean they’d be left without
their benefactor and the promised jobs, and faced with
starting over and left on their own in these far-flung
prairies, perhaps murdered themselves once murder be-
gan. Personally, at the age of thirty, she was feeling a bit
long in the tooth and was counting on winning Ellis’s
affections, and thereby possibly obtaining the position
of house madam. Such a position would mean she’d
not have to rely on her fading youth and beauty as
much as she would otherwise. She knew if she had to
compete for lonesome men’s attention with the other
younger women, she’d forever struggle to make a go of
it. She felt she had it in her to be a boss and earn regu-
lar wages.
“Well, then, I’m asking,” Ellis said, picking up the
conversation from where it had dropped off.
“We don’t work for free, mister.”
“No, I would expect to pay you for your time.”
“Might offer to pay in some of that,” Zeb said
nodding toward the girls.
“Mighty dear price just to fix a wheel.”
Zeb stretched forth an arm.
“I don’t see an army of wheelwrights passing this
way, do you? You could be sitting here a mighty long
time. I hear there are still ragtag bands of wild Indi-
ans about, and bears and wolves aplenty. And that
don’t even speak of road agents, rapists, and murder-
ers. How dear a price is it you think for us’ns to fix
that wheel and get you on your way?”
“What do you propose?”
“Us’ns with them, a turn apiece.”
Ellis did a quick tote in his head: three of them, go-
ing rate of ten dollars a toss, one turn each: thirty dol-
lars. Dear price indeed just to fix a wheel, but like the
fellow said, what choice had he? They’d been out on
the grasslands almost three hours already and these
were the first humans to come along in that time, if
you could call them humans.
“Wait a second,” he said and went to confer with
the girls.
“I need three of you to let those gents have a go
with you in order to get that wheel fixed and get us on
to our destination—any volunteers, or do you want
me to choose?”
“They look dirty as hogs,” Baby Doe, the youn-
gest, said.
“Best get used to it, out here on these prairies,” El-
lis said. “It ain’t exactly Denver or San Francisco
where baths are plentiful and men are sociable
enough to always know to take a bath even if a bath is
available, which it ain’t always. These most likely are
representative of what you’ll be working with once
we get to Sweet Sorrow.”
“But we thought you said there were lots of poten-
tial husbands,” the China Doll said.
Ellis looked at her, this tall oriental girl.
“Hell, these”—he turned once to look over his
shoulder at the scruffy men—“might be the cream of
the crop. But it don’t mean they wouldn’t be looking
for a wife.”
“I’ll give ’em a go,” Maggie said, hoping to curry
extra favor.
“Me, too,” Sweetwater Sue said.
“If she does, I will, too,” Narcissa said, reluctant
to let her darling Sue out of her sight.
“Okay, then.”
Ellis walked back to the men.
“Done deal, but I want to have that wheel put on
first.”
The three dismounted and set about lifting the
wagon and attaching the wheel and had the job ac-
complished in under half an hour. The work caused
them to sweat through their dusty shirts and their
hands were greasy and their faces, too. They wiped
off best as possible with their kerchiefs, then stood
waiting. Ellis called the girls over. They approached
like debutantes.
Zeb looked them over, then said, “What about that
black child yonder,” indicating Black Mary.
“I get extra for her.”
“Hell you say.”
Ellis could see putting up a fuss would only lead to
trouble he wasn’t prepared for. He called Black Mary
over. She was something over six feet tall, taller than
any one of the Stone brothers and Zeb had his mind
all over her because of it. Zack chose Sue and Zane
chose Narcissa, whom the others called China Doll.
Nobody chose Maggie; she figured it was because she
was older than the others and it didn’t make her feel
good to think that three dirty-shirt cowboys wouldn’t
choose her for a quick go in the grass even though it
wasn’t something she would have favored, given the
choice.
Ellis Kansas walked back to the wagon with Mag-
gie while the brothers walked off a distance with the
girls. Baby Doe sang to herself, alone and fearless in
her doped state of mind.
Maggie said, “I’d like you to consider making me
house madam.”
Ellis had been thinking it was a poor way to begin
his new venture, having to trade favors for a wheel
fixing.
He looked at her. She had a small scar there at the
corner of one eye, and her skin wasn’t the best, and he
could see in her pale green eyes a sort of weariness.
He could easily see she was clinging to the last threads
of her youth, and therefor
e her future, for men were
always wont to prize youth and beauty in a woman,
and those of Maggie’s years and worn looks weren’t
in as high demand—except by the loneliest of men
who prized them the same way they would a work an-
imal, someone to wash and clean, plow and plant—an
extra hand, only cheaper, something to lay with at
night and have cook for them in the morning.
“I’ll consider it.” He felt a bit sorry for her, but
knew, too, that life could be difficult once a man let a
woman into his business.
“What will it take to convince you?” she said.
“You know I’ll do anything for you, Ellis.”
“I don’t mix my business with pleasure, Maggie.
And if there’s something I want from you, I guess all
I’d need to do is ask.”
Baby Doe did not join the conversation, for she did
not care one way or the other about very much in life.
She’d been raised by a family of privilege—Bostonian
Brahmins—and was never required to have opinions
or make decisions beyond which steamed vegetables
she might want to eat for supper. Hence she was eas-
ily swayed to this or that by others of a stronger
mind, such as eventually arrived in the form of a
young man from an equally wealthy family. He
talked her into running away with him to the West.
This she did, more out of boredom than from any true
sense of adventure. The young man abandoned her in
Denver where she was ultimately taken in by an
equally persuasive and handsome pimp named
Solomon Lang who lost her in a card game to the
owner of a house of prostitution, where, among other
vices, she became addicted to cocaine and opium. She
was only seventeen, still a sweet but beguiled child
who was happy with making shapes out of the clouds
that passed overhead as she fed upon the little white
tablets she kept in a purple velvet reticule decorated
with fine silver threads.
“I’m a fair man,” Ellis said to Maggie, “and I’ll
give your suggestion full consideration.”
“You know I would appreciate it, Ellis.”
He looked at her and said, “Dear child, it is un-
seemly to go begging.”
The look on her face told him how much she’d
been depending on him to promote her. Now he was
half sorry he’d chosen her in the first place. She had
maybe a year or two left in her before he’d have to go
cut rate on her price. He toted in his head the cost of
