“Damn, you’re depressing.” Sarah took a deep breath.
“You gotta understand your place. You’re a woman trying to win a hand in a world where men hold all the cards and can shuffle them any way they please. You got one ace. One. They got the whole deck. You build something they want, they’ll take it.”
“How?”
“Pass a law, arrest your girls, send in thugs to break the place up, run articles in the paper that your girls are diseased, threaten your customers, order the merchants not to sell to you, raise your taxes, declare your title to the property invalid, file a lawsuit, bribe a judge. They got a thousand ways.”
Sarah felt her heart sink.
Aggie sipped her whiskey. “My advice? Build your Angel’s Lair for the short-term. Then, when it looks flush, sell it to Big Ed, or Heatley, or whoever.”
“Aggie, you sound like your heart’s not in it. And maybe you don’t understand what I’m asking. I don’t expect you to be competing with the girls to gin up income. I’ve got a head for figures and, for the moment, an exotic reputation. You have a feel for how to make the business work.”
“Things have changed, Sarah.”
“I’m sure as hell not blind to what Parmelee did to you.”
“That … and there’s Doc.”
The way she said it caused Sarah to arch an eyebrow. “You giving it out for free? Or just in trade for medical services? Pat hinted that this doctor wasn’t charging.”
“It’s not that.” Aggie looked down at her hands. “Doc’s … just … different. God Almighty, Sarah, I’m in love with the man. It’s just impossible. That’s all. He’s a real physician, trained back East. He survived a prison camp during the war. He’s lost everything. Even his crazy brother. But he still cares. It’s like living with a damned saint.” Then she burst into giggles. “Some saint, he can’t keep his cock out of the honey pot!”
“Must be the whiskey getting to you.” Sarah paused. “Why’s it impossible?”
“’Cause of what I am.” Aggie ran nervous fingers down the whiskey glass. “Never felt this way before, Sarah. It’s hard to keep my balance, to remember that, like this house, it’s a short-term proposition. I wake up every morning afraid he’s going to realize that he’s got a whore in his bed when he should have a respectable wife.”
Sarah sat back and rubbed her face. “Live it while you’ve got it, Aggie. The ones who will love you don’t last very long.”
“You’re going to need a physician when you open. Doc Hancock sees to girls all over the … What?”
“Sorry, the name startled me. He has a first name?”
“Philip. With one l. Like you, he came from Arkansas.”
Sarah took another swallow of whiskey to brace herself. A funny feeling, like insect wings, fluttered around her heart. “You said he had a crazy brother?”
“Butler. He lost his mind at the battle of Chickamauga. What Doc calls the fatigue. But I only met him for a moment the night they took me to Doc’s surgery.”
Sarah leaned her head back, taking a deep breath. Below Aggie’s hearing, Sarah whispered, “God, won’t this be one miserable family reunion?”
88
June 22, 1867
“Where we goin’, Cap’n?” Kershaw asked as Butler turned off the Overland Trail and headed north toward the gap between the distant Ferris and Green Mountains.
Ahead of them lay a basin, grass-filled, with sagebrush and intermittent greasewood flats. Patterns of old sand dunes, now covered with sparse grass and rabbit brush, marched off toward the east. The white dots of antelope could be seen in the distance.
On the western horizon low lines of sandstone-capped ridges disrupted the constant wind. Puffs of cloud seemed to dash toward him from the west, and an impossible blue infinity colored the sky.
“At that last station, they said the trail to the Shining Mountains lies ahead.” Butler pointed between Apple’s ears as the buckskin walked, head down. “Through that gap between the mountains lies the old Oregon Trail and the Sweetwater River. He said we couldn’t miss the ruts or the telegraph line. That we follow that to the Sweetwater Station, and from there take a trail north, down the Sweetwater Rim.”
“And then what, Cap’n?” Pettigrew asked, his voice almost a whine. Butler wondered how the man had ever made corporal, given the way he complained. Pettigrew was marching, dispirited, his rifle over his shoulder, blanket roll around his torso.
“The Wind River,” Butler told him, his voice awed. “Paw said he did his best trapping at the head of the Wind River. Prime beaver, that’s what he called it.”
“We ever gonna eat anything but rabbit, suh?” Phil Vail asked. “And even then, some of us is startin’ t’ worry ’bout ammunition. Y’all ain’t such a magnificent shot with that Yankee rifle.”
“We’ll get a deer or antelope as soon as we get away from the trail.”
“Cap’n,” Kershaw asked, “y’all still ain’t tolt us why we a-headin’ into them far mountains.”
“Got to get away,” Butler said softly, almost under his breath. “I dreamed last night while we were bivouacked. I was back at Shiloh. It was the morning of the attack. I was riding behind Tom Hindman when we charged the Federal camps. Caught ’em by surprise. But I remember the oddest thing. A young private. Not more’n seventeen. Parrot shell exploded just as it hit him.”
Butler closed his eyes, seeing it in his mind. “That boy just vanished into blue smoke and red haze. I remember thinking to myself, that can’t be real.”
“Suh?” Kershaw asked.
“Was any of it real, Sergeant? Or did I dream it? All of it? Am I still at home? In my bed on the farm?”
The wind lifted his hat brim and laid it flat against the crown.
