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
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
