“Sounds like supply and commissary is getting’ thin along with the air.” Frank Thompson was jabbing a stick into the ground. “But … guess it ain’t the fust time we all been on short rations.”
As Butler looked around, the men had turned somber, eyes either on the distance or the ground at their feet.
He couldn’t stand it. “Have any of you seen Sergeant Kershaw?”
No one so much as met his eyes.
“I just can’t take insubordination. An officer must have obedience.”
“Kershaw’s right,” Pettigrew told him, “you caint miss all them trees. They’s there whether y’all wants t’ see them or not.”
“That day is done, gentlemen.” Again he felt the throb of fear growing around his heart.
Don’t go there, Butler. If you do, it will destroy you.
“How about a song?” Butler asked, and began singing. “‘Hurrah! Hurrah! For Southern rights, hurrah! Hurrah for the Bonnie Blue Flag that bears a single star. Hurrah for our Confederacy…’”
His voice faded. None had joined in.
“Would you rather we sang ‘Lorena’?” Seeing only sad expressions, he asked, “What about ‘The Rose of Alabama’?”
Billy Templeton stared into space. Jimmy Peterson slowly touched his fingertips together and pulled them apart, only to do it all over again. Pettigrew was shaking his head, gaze vacant. None would so much as look him in the eye.
“We had to leave,” Butler said, hating the emptiness inside. “Doc wanted us out of his life.”
One by one, he looked at them, saying, “We can do this! It’s not the first time we’ve faced long odds. You should have been with Tom Hindman and me in Arkansas. We had nothing. The state was lost! But we brought it back. Yes, it was hard. Yes, we made difficult choices. But damn it, men, we built an army.”
“And lost it at Prairie Grove,” Pettigrew reminded. “And all them partisan rangers? Wasn’t they the ones who tore the state apart? Drove the people away from their homes? How’d that work out, Cap’n? Arkansans killin’ each other instead of Yankee invaders? If Tom Hindman was so all-fired smart, why’d they th’ow him outta Arkansas? What’s he doing in Mexico? Why’nt he win the damn war?”
Butler shivered, leveling a shaking finger at Pettigrew. “Stop it! I don’t want to hear any more. Not a word. We did what we had to. Don’t you see? Killing those men … those boys? They were deserters. Right down to those children the Texans shot down. That wasn’t my fault. No sirree. They abandoned their oath and their state.”
He swallowed hard, looking down at his shaking hands. “Not my fault,” he whispered. Damn it! Why couldn’t he stop the spasms in his hands?
“Didn’t have to let us charge up that hill,” someone muttered.
Butler snapped his head up. “Who said that? Speak up.”
The men seemed frozen, flickering ghostlike at the edge of the firelight. None of them would meet his eyes.
The trembling in his hands was worse, as if the muscles in his arms had lost all control.
“It wasn’t my fault,” Butler whispered. “It wasn’t me.”
93
September 1, 1867
Maybe shooting the calf elk would change things. At least, Butler hoped so as he stood over the brown carcass. He pulled a hind leg up and propped it against his back to expose the light tan underbelly. Working carefully, he sliced through hair and skin to open the belly, slitting from the brisket, past the penis, to the pelvic bone. The warm smell of blood, fat, and the hot sweet scent of elk internals rose to bathe Butler’s face. In the cold morning air, steam from the guts rose in delicate tendrils.
Please, let this change things.
He wasn’t sure he could stand the growing strain, the long periods of quiet as the men avoided him. It was horrible the way he’d catch them casting accusatory looks in his direction when they thought he wasn’t looking.
It was all because Kershaw had left.
Damn him anyway.
Then, that morning, this bull calf had burst from behind a patch of willows, water dribbling from its mouth where it had been drinking. Two cow elk had exploded from the other side of the thicket and fled headlong for the timber a couple hundred yards up the slope.
Confused, the calf had stared openly at Butler and his horses. In that moment of hesitation, Butler had pulled up the Spencer, eared the hammer back, and shot the calf in the chest as it whirled and ran after the two bounding cows. The way the beast had run full-out up the sage-studded slope toward the timber left Butler wondering if he’d missed. Impossible as that seemed.
Apple hadn’t appreciated the carbine’s sharp report and made life interesting as Butler tried to control his crow-hopping mount, keep his seat, and maintain his grip on both the carbine and the packhorse’s lead rope.
As the horse had settled, the distant calf had slowed, staggered, and finally fallen just shy of the timber. It had been a remarkable run for a lung shot.
Butler and the men picked up the first frothy crimson spots halfway to the animal, and the blood trail had increased until they reached the calf, lying on its side, eyes wide and dark.
“You see,” Butler told them. “We’re back on full rations. Tonight we’ll feast on backstrap. No Confederate commissary ever fessed up the like of that, now did they?”
He pointed his bloody knife at Pettigrew. “Corporal, you’ve been bitching like an old one-legged hen in a muddy barnyard.” He waved around at the rest of them. “You all have. Which is what soldiers do. I understand. But lookee here. An officer’s first responsibility is to his men. And tonight, we’re feasting like we were in Richmond at Jeff Davis’s table. Not even Tom Hindman could have provided the like.”
Butler bent to cut out the anus and core the pelvis before reaching into the gut cavity. He jerked everything loose, and pulled the intestines and bladder out into the sagebrush.
Two ravens had appeared, both cawing to each other as they bounced from branch to branch in the closest fir
