Billy pulled himself up to the bed. “What did happen?”
“You was howling. Like the devil hisself had hold o’ you. Screaming, ‘Maw, I didn’t kill her.’ And ‘Sarah, go back to hell! Leave me alone!’ And a whole lotta ‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry!’ Like to waked the dead.”
Billy rubbed his wet face. “I did?”
The image of Maw was still so clear. She’d risen from the grave, clods of dirt dropping away from her thin bones and gray flesh. Her torn-out eye sockets red and burning, her half-rotted finger pointed at him. Her death-bloated face had been filled with hate.
“This ain’t the first time,” Danny told him softly. “Mostly, it comes when we’re out on the trail. Before a job. I just let you howl until it’s all wore out.”
“Why do you do that?”
“’Cause I’m afraid if’n I wakes you up, you’ll shoot my ass afore you figger out which world yer in.”
Danny settled onto his bed. “Usually you’re some better after a killing. Wasn’t nothing different about the one you did tonight, was there?”
“Naw, I just walked up behind him and stuck the Bowie up under his ribs. He never had a clue until that blade sliced his insides apart. Wasn’t enough left in one piece to let him pull a breath, let alone give off a scream.” Billy grinned. “Merry Christmas. Reckon that’s all the gift he’s ever gonna get.”
Danny was silent for a while, head bowed in the darkness.
Softly, he asked, “What happened to Margarita? Seriously? Warn’t like you not to talk about her. That clip-jawed ‘She run off with a gambler’ don’t cut no water with me.” He paused. “Just answer me this: she didn’t make it to Sante Fe at all, did she?”
He didn’t know why he said it. Maybe it was the presence of Maw’s ghost, ranting and raving mad from the afterlife. “No.”
Danny took a deep breath. “Any way anybody gonna recognize her body?”
“No.”
Danny exhaled. “Well, at least there’s that.”
Billy rubbed his face. “I think Sarah’s dead, ’cause her spirit done become a demon. Like happens sometimes among the Cherokee. It’s ’cause of me letting her get taken. Then all them men used her hard. You should have seen her eyes that day when she went down and cut up Dewley. All crazy and haunted.”
“Did Margarita do something to you?”
Billy shook his head. “There’s times … like with that little Margarita girl, that I got the devil in me. But Sarah’s demon? She’s plumb evil. Comes in the night, Danny. She’s naked, all bit up and bruised, and her hair’s blowing around. Her eyes is insane and hellish. I can’t run. Can’t get up. She stands over me and reaches down. Grabs me by the cock … and all hell breaks loose.”
“Jesus.” Danny gestured his helplessness. “It ain’t yer fault, Billy! You saw. You was there when old man Darrow started the raiding. Yankee or Reb. Wasn’t no one safe. And it wouldn’t have made no difference if’n you’d been there when Dewley rode in. They’d a shot you down without a chance. Yer Maw’d still be dead. And not only would Sarah have been taken and raped and kilt, but you’d be dead, too.”
“I was responsible.”
“That’s no more than horse shit in the street. You saved your sister, and at least your maw got a decent burial. And you’re still alive. She’d a wanted that.”
“Not as a devil-filled killer.”
“So, stop! We’ll walk away. We got enough money. Hell, let’s go back to Arkansas. Buy a farm. Make whiskey. Hunt for a living. Who cares?”
“Can’t quit,” Billy said quietly as he continued to rub his shaking hands over his hot face.
“Why not, fer God’s sake? So what if the Meadowlark just up and disappears? George Nichols can do his own killin’.”
“I gotta pay.”
“You already paid enough, Billy.”
He shook his head. “That’s what Maw rises up from the grave to tell me. That I let the devil into my heart, and I’m his. It’s just a matter of time, Danny. I’m damned. He can collect me whenever he wants, and God’s gonna look the other way. Then it’s just Sarah’s demon and me, fighting it out for all eternity.”
“Billy, if you’d just let me—”
“I fuck my sister in my dreams! I’m a sick son of a bitch, Danny.” He laughed in open defiance of the desolation inside him. “And one of these days, I gotta burn in hell fer it.”
76
December 27, 1866
“Who is he?” Doc asked as he stepped out of his surgery and into the front office where Big Ed Chase waited before the heat stove. Doc was still drying his hands after washing them. There had been a lot of blood as the frozen corpse thawed.
Doc’s front office was ten by twenty, the room finished in cut pine, spruce, and fir—depending upon what had been hauled down from the mountains on any given day. The room still had the smell of fresh-cut lumber. Two windows looked out onto snowy Fifteenth Street. Pocked by horse and human tracks, lined from wheeled traffic, the street sported frozen piles of horse manure and a couple of empty bottles abandoned just out past Doc’s boardwalk.
Big Ed Chase turned, fixing Doc with his hard blue eyes. The man was six foot four, with pale blond hair. The broad jaw, wide and firm mouth, and prominent nose gave his face a powerful look—one that complemented his position in Denver society. Chase wore a buffalo coat, now thrown back on his shoulders to expose his fine black wool sack suit and the boiled white shirt beneath.
Not only was Chase on the city council, he and his partners controlled the city’s entertainment business. When it came to the better gambling dens, parlor houses, theaters, dance halls, hurdy-gurdy, and burlesque, Big Ed had an interest, as he did in much of Denver City’s prime real estate.
In the beginning, Big Ed had made a name for himself running fair games, and overseeing it all from a
