He asked, “Am I about to wake, only to discover that everything’s just fine? That Paw’s at the legislature, and Billy’s dodging chores?”
Butler closed his eyes, but Kershaw didn’t answer. For long moments, he swayed with the horse’s steps, willing himself back to that place. He pictured himself in his bed, the cotton-ticked blanket up to his chin. Each sawed-plank board overhead was familiar right down to the dark knots and pattern of the grain. He could hear Maw and Sarah clinking ceramic bowls in the kitchen. The hollow sound of boots on the floor.
Doc had insisted he was crazy. Maybe that was the explanation. Only a crazy man could have imagined the war. Could there be any other reason for millions of men lining up and shooting each other down by the tens of thousands?
You just ain’t right in the head. It didn’t happen.
Yes, he’d be home. In his bed. Maw would have breakfast ready. Sarah would be making biscuits. He’d just wake up.
Except that when he opened his eyes, the sun-swept ridges, the turquoise sage, and lonely wind remained. He was still out in western Dakota territory. Which meant he’d left Doc in Denver. Maw was dead, and the farm taken. Billy and Sarah were vanished. Paw was rotted to bones at Shiloh.
That terrible war had been real. That innocent seventeen-year-old private was blown away by that exploding shell.
“Maybe I just haven’t run far enough,” Butler told himself, unwilling to look back. What if he did, and the men weren’t marching along behind? What if they really were dead back at Chickamauga?
“I couldn’t stand that,” he muttered under his breath where he hoped Kershaw couldn’t hear. “It would kill me.”
89
July 1, 1867
The steamboat was called the G. A. Thompson and she was berthed, bow to the current, at the Fort Benton levee. Five other boats—also recent arrivals—were nosed in behind her. This was the season of high water on the Missouri River as the surge of spring runoff peaked. Fort Benton was the head of navigation. Upstream the river entered a gorge filled with rapids and rocky drops.
In the darkness the boats had a fairylike appearance; their fine, two-story woodwork, railings, and windows glowed yellow in the July night. The light flickered and danced on the midnight-black water as the Missouri sucked and curled around the hulls.
Outside of the boats, there wasn’t much to Fort Benton: Two stores; a couple of hotels, the haphazard collection of tent warehouses; thrown-up, plank-sided shacks called shebangs; tents and lean-tos; dugouts; and even tipis. Camps had been set up by freighters awaiting the offloading of goods as the river boats steamed and chugged their way to the levee. Word in the camps was that five thousand tons of supplies would be unloaded by the arriving boats. These were mostly the staples: whiskey, flour, coal oil, powder, lead, tools, tin goods, nail kegs, canned food, canvas, rope, bolts of cloth, boots, shoes, and overalls. Most of Montana Territory’s heavy mining equipment—stamp mills, winches, boilers, and the like—arrived by wagon from the south.
Billy studied the boats as he waited in the night, batted at a swarm of mosquitoes, and chewed a sweet stem pulled from a clump of prairie grass. From one of the temporary tent saloons behind him came the sound of a violin playing “My Old Kentucky Home.” It was accompanied by whistles and hoots.
For most of the year, Fort Benton was a trading post with a population of fewer than fifty people. But for the summer months it swelled into a thriving metropolis. Then, as the boats were loaded with downriver goods and the wagons and newly arrived passengers lined out on the trails to Helena, Virginia City, and Canada, it shrank to its former insignificance.
Like everyone else, Billy was here because of the boats. And specifically, a man who had come to meet them.
He studied the G. A. Thompson through narrowed eyes. He’d seen steamboats a couple of times down on the Arkansas River, but only from a distance. To inspect one right up close like this was a marvel. By damn, they really were big. Like a downtown city building. Way up there, atop the second story, perched a high pilothouse. Shooting up beyond it were the two tall stacks, both with faint threads of smoke snaking out against the stars. And these were small boats with shallow draft capable of navigating the upper Missouri. He couldn’t imagine the behemoths that plied the Mississippi waters.
Billy chewed his grass stalk and waited.
A plank had been run from the deck to the shore, and in the lamplight’s glow, a black crewman stood watch. From time to time he’d strike a match and smoke a cigar. Occasionally he would pace, otherwise he’d sit on a barrel head, apparently cogitating on the night.
Over the soft slap of water on the hull and shore Billy heard steps coming down the deck from astern.
The guard turned his head and stood as Danny walked up to him and said, “Go get some shut-eye. Macky’s got the watch. I’ll keep an eye until he arrives.”
“Who you?” the black deckhand asked.
“Danny Goodman. Figured Macky would have said something about me. Been playing poker with him these last two days. Go on. He’s taking a shit off the stern. Said he’d be here as soon as he can button up his breeches.”
“All yourn, then,” the deckhand told him as he snuffed out his cigar. He nodded and walked down to the amidships doors, where he vanished inside the boat.
Billy hurried down the plank to the deck where Danny waited. By damn! He was really on a boat! He took the thong off his pistol, and asked, “How does it look?”
“I knocked on General Meagher’s door. He’s sick. Got the runs. But said he’d meet us on the stern. I
