“Où avancer? Where we going, Cap’n?” Kershaw asked.
Butler pointed. “North. Across the basin. Paw always talked about the Shining Mountains when I was a kid. That’s where he hunted beaver. Fought the Blackfeet. Said he was nothing but an illiterate fur hunter when he first got there, but he learned to read around the fire in winter camps. Met William Drummond Stewart. A Scottish lord, can you believe? Changed the course of his life. Lived with the Indians. Learned their ways.”
“Cap’n, suh?” Phil Vail asked. “With permission, suh. Y’all reckon home is that way? Or shouldn’t we be skeedaddling back toward Phillips County, Arkansas?”
Butler saw the conflict in the man’s eyes, the fragmented hope. “We tried Arkansas, Private. Our homes are lost. Our families dead and buried.” He smiled wistfully. “Any hope for Arkansas was lost when Tom Hindman was forced to give it all up. And like the beast, Arkansas rose and devoured its own tail until it was no more.”
“Heard the general fled to Mexico,” Kershaw said softly, his voice barely audible over the wind.
Butler squinted up at the sun, letting Apple crop grass. “Yes, he’s in Mexico. Him, Joe Shelby, and so many others. And, that being the case, gentlemen, what does that tell us about Arkansas?”
“Don’t rightly know, Cap’n,” Pettigrew answered. “But it don’t set right well, does it?”
“Not at all, Corporal. If there’s nothing for the likes of Tom Hindman, there’s certainly not a thing for us.”
“So, it’s the Shining Mountains, then?” Private Vail stood, head cocked as if waiting.
“Paw always said he wanted to see them again. The fight at Shiloh took that away from him. Maybe we’ll go see them for him. Maybe that’s where we’ll all find a home.”
“Yes, suh,” Kershaw said, and Butler thought he heard the snap of a salute. “But, if’n the Cap’n might consider? I’d suggest a slower pace. We don’t want t’ kill these hosses you bought. Or the men, neither.”
“Good advice, Sergeant.”
Butler put his heels to Apple, and the tired buckskin started down the long hill. Behind him, Shandy followed on her lead rope. Forming ranks, the men marched along behind, their feet swinging through the grass and wildflowers.
84
May 20, 1867
“It’s a total loss,” George Nichols said as he leaned on his polished ebony cane and looked at the charred wreckage of Aggie’s parlor house. He wore a black sack coat with matching vest, a paisley-patterned shirt beneath the white silk scarf at his neck, and striped trousers cut longer at the heels. His hooded dark eyes were fixed on the blackened timbers, ash, and ruin. Melted glass, the crumpled stoves, fire-grayed tins, and broken porcelain lay in heaps. The burned hulk of the piano was particularly poignant. The two billiard tables in the new addition had been turned into slate and charcoal.
Sarah took a deep breath. The smell of fire and wet ash filled her nostrils, although the last of the embers had died out days ago. She had put off seeing this. It had taken nearly a week before she could even think after the blow to the head Parmelee had dealt her. Then had come Bret’s funeral, an event held up at Nevadaville. They’d stood in a misty mountain rain as his earthly remains were lowered into the ground.
Solicitations had come from all quarters as rock and soil were shoveled in to resonate hollowly on the pine casket. She had forced herself to remain until the man she loved lay beneath six feet of mountain dirt.
I buried my heart and life down there with him.
After that she’d endured the lonely, quiet nights in her silent and dark house. There, Bret’s ghost had stalked the floors, anguished and forlorn, as she had alternately wept, screamed her anger, and beat her fists.
Maybe she’d gone crazy. First she had thought to drag the bed outside. She’d been raped on the thing. Thought to douse it with coal oil and set it afire. Had actually started, pulling the mattress off the frame and into the front room.
Somehow she hadn’t been able to drag it over the bloodstain Bret had left on the floor. Bret’s bed. The one he’d made his own. Burning it was like burning him. So she’d put it all back.
It had taken her days before she’d forced herself to scrub Aggie’s clotted blood from the table. The ropes they’d cut from her wrists had still been around the table legs.
Sarah had finally retrieved them. Burned them. As they’d been consumed in the stove, Sarah had screamed her hatred and anger.
Yes, she’d been a madwoman. She’d pulled Dewley’s old Colt from under the bed and checked the loads. More than once she’d cocked it, placed the muzzle to the side of her head, and laid her finger on the trigger.
Each time, she’d looked toward the mirror, wanting to stare into her eyes as she blew her brains across the room.
But Parmelee had smashed it. As he’d smashed so many things. Unable to watch herself die, to see that last explosion of her skull and being, she’d lowered the pistol each time.
Who am I? What am I?
She hated that little cabin. But within its walls, she’d been loved and cherished. Bret’s warm eyes stared out from every corner of the room. Either she was weeping over lost and reverent moments, or her skin was crawling as she relived those last hours of death and violation.
Opposites. They were tearing her apart.
“You had everything invested here, didn’t you?” Nichols asked as he gazed at the wreckage.
“Not quite everything, George. But almost.”
He pointed with his cane. “Parmelee didn’t just want to burn the place, he wanted to kill everyone inside it. He poured coal oil over the back steps, lit it, and went around front where he smashed one lamp in the entry.
