She looked around. “What time is it?”
Doc checked his watch. “A little after ten.”
“I’m starved. And I have to piss.”
“We can attend to the piss. I’ll have to steady you and hold the pot.”
“I’m not having some man…”
“Some physician who has been in and out of your body all day. My apologies, but you have no secrets left.”
She smiled. Regretted it immediately.
“Nope. Keep that hand down,” Doc ordered. “If you can’t trust a physician, who can you trust?”
“After what’s happened to me? Should I trust any man?”
“I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t.”
Nevertheless, she let him help her. Maybe it was the first step on a long road.
“Do you have a place to stay?”
“No. Not that I’d want to be seen in public anyway.”
Doc yawned, blinked, and stretched. He couldn’t just turn her out on the street. Nor did he want to leave her at the surgery while he went home to fix things with Butler. Nor was Aggie the sort of woman who worried about her reputation. “I have a spare bed at home. I’d really like you close where Butler and I can ensure you don’t fool with those sutures. I promise we will be gentlemen.”
“Doc, I lost my place in decent society when I turned seventeen. And given what’s been done to me, I doubt I’m going to tempt you to any assault upon my virtue. What about food?”
He smiled, liking her spirit. “On the way there’s an all-night kitchen where I can procure two tins of soup.”
“Soup?”
“Chewing isn’t something you’d enjoy tonight. And believe me, as the anesthetic wears off, you’re going to start taking me at my word.”
“I can already feel it. It’s like a tight prickling all over my face.”
“I don’t want you walking, so let me call a carriage. And after I get you home, you can help me apologize to Butler.”
But when Doc finally arrived at his little house the windows were dark. Dismissing the carriage, he led Aggie inside.
The problem was, there was no Butler to apologize to.
And worse, Butler’s clothing, bedding, and war bag were gone as well as the cash and the Spencer rifle.
83
May 10, 1867
The horse Butler had bought was named Apple, a buckskin gelding, supposedly a seven-year-old. Apple was a tall and rangy fourteen-and-a-half hands, with good brown hooves. He seemed to have good wind, and a sound gait, but the horse was just lazy. The packhorse following behind on a lead was Shandy, a ten-year-old dapple-gray mare of thirteen hands. Butler and the men had haggled with the man at the livery, for both animals. And in the end, Butler had dickered a fair price—mostly. Which brought a smile to his lips, because by the end, the man would have agreed to anything to get Butler and the men out of his livery.
Leaning over the pommel of his saddle, Butler studied the irregular buttes with their sandstone caps; spring-green grasses waved in the wind. The remarkable blue sky overhead gave way to clouds that packed over the mountains to the south and west.
Before him spread the Laramie Basin, a high and shallow bowl bounded by the low, timbered slopes of the Black Mountains on the east, the Laramie Range to the south, and irregular rounded hills to the distant north.
“Been hard riding,” Kershaw noted from behind Butler’s right ear. “Reckon y’all been pushin’ yerseff, Cap’n. Same fer the hoss. He’s a stout one, but, suh, y’all might want t’ ease up a mite.”
“Long march ahead, Sergeant,” Butler told him, aware of the men dropping onto the ground around him. Good soldiers never stood when they could sit or lie down. They were looking winded and footsore. Butler was proud of them. Even with as many of them as were barefoot and threadbare, they’d tackled the Cherokee Trail north of Denver with enthusiasm. They’d forded streams, crossed the Cache la Poudre River, climbed up over the Virginia Dale divide, and marched over sagebrush and cactus without complaint.
“Cap’n?” Corporal Pettigrew called from where he propped his skinny arse on a sandstone outcrop. “Y’all reckon maybe we shouldn’t outta just up and lef’ yer brother thata way? Doc took care of us right fine. Leasta ways, that’s how the men and me feels.”
“You heard him, Corporal. He wanted us out.” Butler lifted his hat and rubbed his forehead where the band had eaten into his skin. He’d had to clamp it down tight against the constant and worrying west wind.
My God, this was lonesome country.
“Reckon he mighta jist been a bit teched, suh?” Kershaw told him. “Times is, yor brother takes on too much. Man’s only got shoulders so wide, suh.”
Butler nodded, thinking back to the expression on Doc’s face. Fury and frustration had been battling with each other. The cutting tone in Philip’s voice still stung like a lash.
“Sergeant, I think it’s time we struck out on our own.” He let his eyes trace the layers of low ridge and swale ahead. Wildflowers the likes of which he’d never seen dotted the grass in yellows, whites, purples, blues, and reds. The west wind plucked at his coat and teased the buckskin’s mane.
“Suh?” Kershaw asked uneasily.
“War’s over, Sergeant. And you all saw. Doc’s got his practice. Just like he always wanted. He’s got a house. Even standing in the community.”
Butler read their expressions one by one. Jimmy Peterson, his blond locks tossing in the wind, looked pensive. Johnny Baker’s long brown hair hung over the collar of his worn and stained uniform coat. He fiddled with his hands, as if having nothing to do. Willy Pettigrew, the shirker—unable to meet Butler’s eyes—glanced away at the distant horizon. Quiet Frank Thompson, sandy hair looking greasy, his tan eyes seemed to question. And to the rear Billy Templeton squinted up at Butler, elbows propped on his knees where they poked through the holes in his gray pants with the stripe down the seam. Phil
