“And Parmelee’s still out there,” Bridget noted.
“And Parmelee’s still out there,” Sarah repeated softly.
Doc’s eyes mirrored a wounded soul, as if he shared every bit of her suffering and anger. Bridget, lips pursed, glanced anxiously at her husband.
“We have all lost so much,” he said softly. “Suffered so much. I just wish … Well, never mind.”
Sarah shook her head, raised her hands. “But let us forget about me. Today is about you. Both of you. And it is about family, and the realization that even though there are only three of us left, you and Aggie are building the future with that wonderful new life within her womb.”
Sarah lifted her glass again. “To both of you, and to a better and brighter future!”
“To the future,” they chimed, a rosy glow in Bridget’s cheeks. She looked so happy, so flushed with joy, that for a moment at least, Sarah could almost believe in hope again.
97
September 22, 1867
The fire popped and crackled, shooting sparks up into the chilly night sky. Butler sat naked but for a sheephide blanket wrapped around his shoulders. His breath was visible with each exhalation and shone in the firelight as though golden.
He, Cracked Bone Thrower, and Puhagan had traveled here—a three-day journey back down the Wind River and then west into the foothills, following the channel of a rushing, clear-watered creek that Cracked Bone Thrower had told him was called Water Belonging to Pandzoavitz—where on the northern bank, above a small clear-water lake, the puhagan had ordered a camp made just up from the shore and below a boulder-studded field that rose to a steep and rocky valley slope.
“You must be clean inside and out, Man Who Talks to No One. There will be no food. No water. Just the praying.”
Puhagan had erected a small, domed shelter with Cracked Bone Thrower’s help. For a solid day now, Butler had been walking down to the lake, bathing, and climbing the slope to the little sweat lodge where the puhagan had brushed Butler’s naked body with a branch of sagebrush, then scooped smoke from the fire with an eagle-wing fan and wafted it over Butler’s flesh. All the while the old man kept singing in the soft and sibilant Dukurika tongue.
After each of these cleansings, Butler was urged into the cramped sweat lodge. Cracked Bone Thrower would lift stones from the fire with mule deer horns, and lay them inside the small lodge.
After the puhagan had entered, he would close the flap, sealing them in darkness. Then, from a bladder, he would douse the white-glowing stones. Steam would explode in an angry sizzle. Within moments, Butler would be gasping for breath, his skin prickling, and sweat would run from his hide as if he were being baked alive.
Having endured all that, he threw his head back and blinked up at the night, seeing a billion stars like frost across the sky. The Milky Way ran in a forked streak from horizon to horizon, only to be blocked by the black shadows of the narrowing mountain valley to either side.
The men were crowded around, just out of the fire’s light. More than seeing them, Butler could feel their presence. Pettigrew—usually the complainer—was unusually sullen. And while Kershaw remained missing, Butler could sense the Cajun’s fear.
That sent a shiver down his back. He’d never known Kershaw to be afraid of anything.
At Puhagan’s barked command, Cracked Bone Thrower said, “Put your blanket down. Then lay on your back, looking up at the sky.”
Butler nodded, arranging the sheep-hide blanket on the scrubby grass and lying down. The chill immediately ate into his chest, stomach, and thighs. He could feel his testicles knotting, his skin going to gooseflesh. Nevertheless, he endured, looking up at the night sky in all its crystal brilliance.
Still singing, Puhagan leaned over him and began thumping on Butler’s body. First he tapped on his arms, then his shoulders, his chest, and belly. Next he thumped on Butler’s right leg starting at the thigh and moving down to the foot. Finally he did the left.
Sitting back on his haunches, the old man raised his hands to the night sky, and sang with greater emphasis. When he finished, he reached into a pouch and removed a stone tube maybe five inches long, an inch in diameter, with a hole drilled through it.
The man bent down, placed the tube to Butler’s shivering skin, and sucked vigorously at the upper arms. Then above Butler’s right and left breasts. Just up from his navel. In the hollow above his pubis bone, and on both thighs.
“What was that?” Butler asked, as Puhagan straightened.
Cracked Bone Thrower told him, “He has found poisoned places in your body. He has sucked them out.”
Even as Cracked Bone Thrower said this, the puhagan bent to the side, spitting what looked like a stream of bloody spit into the flames. As the expectorate hit the fire, it burst into a malignant yellow smoke that rose in a pillar.
“Dear God,” Butler whispered.
Puhagan turned, staring thoughtfully at Butler who was now shivering from the chill. He said something in Shoshoni, his voice firm.
“Eat what the puhagan gives you,” Cracked Bone Thrower told him. “It is toyatawura. The Power plant. It will free your souls and allow you to see into the places of Power. Only when toyatawura has separated you from yourself, can you travel to the dark water world beneath the earth.”
Butler took the bits of woody root the old man gave him, and
