“What the hell difference does it make? I ain’t got nothing to live for anyway.”
Danny spread his hands wide. “Then, for God’s sake, find something, you damned fool! There’s got to be something else in this old world that puts that joy in your heart besides sticking a knife in some johnny’s guts, or popping your cork in a whore while you’re choking her.”
“Ain’t found it yet.” He considered the implications as they resumed their way. “You ever going back to Arkansas? You still got family. They might even have moved back to Benton County.”
“Maybe. Someday. After it’s all rebuilt. I’m kinda like you, I guess. When I look back at Arkansas, all I see is ruin and death and war. Never figgered I’d live this long. But since I have, and I got a stake in my sock, I’m thinking I might like to try life without the bloodshed and fret.”
They reached the front door of Follet’s. Billy reached out, stopping his friend. “I don’t know how long I got till the Devil snaps me up. But till then, I need you, Danny. Ain’t a better front man in the country than you. Hell, you’re the only reason I’m still alive.”
Danny grinned at him. “You know why, don’t you? It’s ’cause I figured out how to talk to a man, string him on, and he ain’t got a clue about what’s running in my mind. He thinks I’m his best friend, right up to the moment the Meadowlark slips in the back door. Reckon it’s like a sixth sense, knowing when the time to act is ’thout the other guy catching wise.”
“And don’t think I don’t appreciate it. That’s why I can’t quit. Not yet. But maybe in another six months or so. Maybe we’ll both just ride away.”
“Hell, just for you being willing to think about it, I’ll buy you a whole bottle of Follett’s best.” Danny slapped him on the shoulder, and led the way into the log-and-tent saloon.
When Billy blinked awake the next morning, he was lying on the sawdust-covered floor. His mouth was dry as Montana dust, his head pounding, and his stomach flipping and tickling with the urge to puke. Sunlight could be seen through the cracks and gaps in the walls. Men talked softly, and glasses clinked from the bar. Billy’s eyes might have been full of gravel as he blinked to clear his sight.
He still clutched a whiskey bottle in which a swallow or two remained. Tilting it to his lips, he sucked it down, reveling in the taste and wetness on his tongue.
Sitting up, he brushed sawdust from his clothes, groaned, and staggered to his feet. Damn, he was still drunk given the swimming and wobbling. Nevertheless he staggered out the back to the two-hole outhouse. Made it halfway through a piss before he caught the odor coming up through the hole. At just a whiff, he bent double and threw up. Then came the dry heaves; with each convulsion of his guts, he thought his head was going to explode.
Exhausted and weary, he staggered back to his room, drank the entire pitcher of wash water, and collapsed on his bed.
Dusk was darkening the sky when his bladder insisted he rise and stumble over to the chamber pot.
It wasn’t until the morning after that that he discovered that Danny was gone. Not only was his room empty and his bedroll and war bag gone, but so was his horse from the livery.
“He left this fer ye,” the hostler told him, handing him a folded piece of paper sealed with a drop of candle wax.
Billy broke the seal. Read the short note. He crumpled the paper in his fist. A curious weakness in his knees caused him to lean against one of the support posts. Like he’d gone hollow inside.
Printed in Danny’s poor block script was written: Cant Do this no Mor yor frend Dany.
95
September 4, 1867
“These mountains are old, coon,” Cracked Bone Thrower told Butler as they sat on the edge of the high mountain camp. The Sheep Eater village literally perched at the top of the world, on a long, knifelike ridge between two rocky peaks. Hardly the place anyone sane would think to put even a temporary camp. The aerie was so high, Butler was surprised that when he reached overhead his fingers didn’t rake the clouds.
Groves of white-bark pine lay to either side, the occasional nutcracker flying past on black-and-white wings.
But, God in heaven, did it ever have a view! The majesty before him—ragged peak after ragged peak fading into the distance—seemed to swell his heart. His men, dressed in their rags, were seated in a line behind him, quiet and awed, as if they’d become acolytes desperate for knowledge.
Cracked Bone Thrower, his half-white face passive, gestured toward the panorama of distant snow-capped crags. “In the beginning, Tam Apo, our father, lifted hisself from Tam Segobia, our mother, to create the arch of the sky. That was the beginning of everything. And it was plumb mixed up as the spirit beings and the first creatures come up from the Underworld, and the springs began to flow. From them came the spirits of the Underworld. Beings like the nynymbi, the little people. The rock ogres we call dzoavits, and the Giant Cannibals. All walked the earth. Some still do.”
“Sounds like demons t’ me,” Billy Thompson muttered.
“Amen to that, friend,” Johnny Baker agreed softly.
Cracked Bone Thrower laced his fingers around his knees and leaned back, the mountain breeze tossing his long brown-black hair as he continued, saying, “The Water Ghost Woman, her name is Pa’waip, rose from the watery depths, beautiful and deadly. Her sheath is forever desperate for a man’s pizzle. With a smile and flashing dark eyes, she draws a man close. Such is her beauty that when she lies down and spreads her legs, a man cannot help himself. It is said that at the moment his seed squirts
