“It will be waiting for us next year,” Cracked Bone Thrower told him with a shrug. “We know these hills and camps. Why carry heavy tools when you know there’s another one just like it waiting where you left it last season? And shelters are easy to make. It doesn’t take more than an afternoon.”
Butler had offered his horses, both of which were packed with meat. So, too, were the big pack dogs, each loaded with the weight of a sheep. Every man, woman, and child carried his share.
“We’re headed for a camp down in the canyon,” Cracked Bone Thrower told him. “From there it is a couple of days’ travel to a special place. One where Puhagan wants to take you. It is an old place, one where puha rises from the ground through cracks in the stone. A place where Water Babies and nynymbi and dzoavits emerge from the Underworld.”
“And what does that have to do with me?”
“He will see if you are good or evil, Butler Hancock. There, he and the spirits will look into your souls.”
Butler had to turn his concentration to a tricky descent where the trail pitched almost straight down. Here he had to skip to stay ahead of the horses, hooves locked as they slid. The pack dogs, he’d noted, had simply jumped from boulder to boulder. No wonder these people didn’t have horses.
When the trail went back to simple switchbacks, he asked, “What do you mean, souls? I’ve only got one.”
Cracked Bone Thrower raised a skeptical eyebrow. “You plumb sure about that, coon? You see ghosts, yes? You say you see them with your eyes, but my eyes don’t see nobody. Maybe you got another soul in yer body? Puhagan, he wonders if’n you got the usual three souls, or maybe a fourth.”
“Three souls? A fourth? That’s…” But he couldn’t quite allow himself to say it was crazy.
“Sounds like satanic nonsense to me,” Pettigrew grumbled where he walked off to the side.
Cracked Bone Thrower might have been loaded with feathers, instead of the eighty-some pounds of meat slung on his back, given the way he hopped onto a log that had fallen across the trail. He said, “Among the Newe we know a person has three souls. Your suap is the soul that fills your lungs and breath. The mugwa is the soul what lives in your bones and blood. Finally your nuvashieip is the seeing soul that slips in and out of your body. You see through its eyes when you dream, when you see faraway places. Puhagan wonders if perhaps you somehow have two different nuvashieip locked inside you.”
“And how is he going to find this out?” Butler asked skeptically, glancing sidelong to where his men marched beside him; somehow they maintained their footing on the steep mountainside.
Pettigrew was grinning, shaking his head dismissively. Billy Templeton, however, looked worried. The others, marching along, kept shooting Cracked Bone Thrower wary sidelong glances.
Kershaw, however, had been missing since he’d announced the arrival of the Sheep Eaters. That realization sent a tingle of warning through Butler’s gut. The sergeant hadn’t been acting right. Not since Butler’s stern rebuke for bringing up Chickamauga on the trail.
But this notion that he had another soul stuck inside him?
Silly heathen superstition!
“And what will the puhagan do if he thinks my souls are evil?” Butler asked.
“He will kill you. And then, as each of your diseased souls emerges from your body, he will destroy them. If your mugwa is good, he will leave your body for the wolves and coyotes. If it is evil, he will roll a big boulder onto your bones to trap them there forever.”
Butler ground his teeth, seeing hard promise in Cracked Bone Thrower’s black eyes. Little sparks of fear began to flicker around his heart.
96
September 8, 1867
“I now pronounce you man and wife,” the preacher said, one hand on the pages of his open Bible. “You may kiss the bride.”
Sarah watched Doc lift the light blue veil from Aggie’s scar-lined face. No, not Aggie. Bridget. Bridget O’Fallon Hancock. It had come as a shock to Sarah when the preacher called her friend Bridget, but of course Aggie would have wanted to be married under her given name.
Doc leaned forward, placing his lips on Bridget’s, kissing her with a sensitive passion Sarah had only known with Bret. The two of them seemed to melt together, as if the small church were illusory and the two lovers the only reality in the firmament.
The preacher cleared his throat, slightly embarrassed, and murmured, “Reckon y’all got the rest of yer lives fer that.”
Doc and Bridget broke apart, grinned, and turned, both shooting radiant smiles at Sarah.
Doc took Bridget’s arm and marched her up to Sarah. “May I present my wife, Mrs. Hancock?”
“My pleasure,” Sarah told Bridget, folding her into a hug. “I couldn’t wish you a better man. And look! We’re truly sisters!”
Bridget hugged her fiercely. “This is the happiest day of my life.”
“Come,” Sarah said as they parted. “I’ve taken the liberty of ordering food to be delivered to Doc’s … uh, your house. I thought we might have a quiet supper before I retire and leave you to contemplate your happiness. It should be a family celebration.”
Doc was giving her a thoughtful look as he held Bridget’s arm and walked from the crude little church. Why Doc had chosen it was beyond her, given his constant preoccupation with God, justice, suffering, and the inherent flaws in the universe.
A carriage waited to take them the three blocks to Doc’s. An indulgence Sarah had insisted on.
“Don’t be a silly duck,” she’d told him. “I insist. You shall be treated as royalty.”
She’d been ready to pull the cord on the cannon and shoot the moon when it came to the wedding, only to have Doc and Aggie demur.
“We want it small,” Doc had insisted. “Just the three of us
