Frantic, he bent over Bridget, scooped her into his arms. Surely he could carry her as far as the surgery. Even as he lifted her, he could feel Bridget’s blood, warm, wet, dribbling her life and their child’s life away like sand through an hourglass.
Three blocks.
All he had to do was make it three blocks.
104
April 6, 1868
Spring was coming to Virginia City, laid out as it was along the westward-trending Alder Gulch. To the north and south the logged-out slopes were green with grass, the black stumps of long-gone trees speckling the rocky ground. Outcrops, roads, tipples, and prospect holes gave the mountains a hivelike look. Overhead a spring-blue sky was dotted with clouds that drifted serenely up from the southwest.
Virginia City’s element-gray, plank-board buildings contrasted with the painted establishments, many of them weather-faded. Whitewash was expensive and hard to come by, having to be shipped in from the east to Salt Lake and then north, or by ox train from San Francisco. Most structures were allowed to just warp and fade with the seasons.
Two days ago, Billy had made use of just that weather-dry character to set fire to a miner’s cabin down on the Ruby. After Billy had cut the man’s throat, a sprinkling of kerosene from one of his lamps and a match had sent the shack up like a torch. Before the ashes had cooled, one of George Nichols’s agents was filing on the man’s claim. Being no miner, Billy couldn’t make sense of it—most of the valley looking like nothing but granite and quartz outcroppings.
But that wasn’t his business.
His war bag packed, hat clamped firmly on his head, he felt jittery. His dreams had been haunted with Maw’s body rising from the grave, as if she were stalking him. The line girl he’d slept with last night didn’t know how lucky she was. He’d kept from choking her as he bucked up and down on her body. Maybe it was her half-lucid brown eyes, vacant from the opium she’d chugged down from a patent-medicine bottle. Maybe it was the slack way she’d held her jaw, as if it were already dislocated. Whatever the reason, he’d popped his cork, rolled off her, and found himself somewhat relieved that she was still breathing when he’d awakened that morning.
The snow high up on the mountains was mostly melted. Grass was up. Time had come to make his way back toward Colorado. Truth be told, he was tired of being alone. Not that he and George had ever had much in common, but he wondered if maybe he shouldn’t see the man one last time and close the books on the Meadowlark’s activities.
“And do what?” he asked himself as he strode down to the Pork and Bean, a moderately acceptable eatery featuring hot-cooked meals. Stepping in the door, he made his customary scan of the clientele.
He stopped short. At a back table, Win Parmelee sat over an empty plate, a cup of steaming coffee resting by his right hand. His cold blue eyes were fixed on Billy, and narrowing. The man’s lips quivered, then he looked away.
Win Parmelee. Seemed that wherever Billy went, he stumbled over the man as if he were a stone in the road.
Billy found a table across from Parmelee and tried to ignore him. It wasn’t like Montana Territory was that all-fired big despite the distances. Benton, Helena, Virginia City, Dillon, Bannock, Bozeman, and a handful of failing placer camps were about the only real towns. If a man did business in Montana, he’d be in one of those few places.
Or was it that Parmelee suspected who Billy really was? The thought of that sparked an almost insatiable curiosity. He fought down the impulse to walk over and ask the man flat out.
A girl of about ten came with a coffeepot and cup, asking if he wanted breakfast. At his nod she filled his cup and flounced off for the kitchen.
The rest of the clientele were the normal miners in their filthy boots, saloonkeepers in decidedly natty dress, freighters and mule skinners, and even a fellow in a sack suit who might have been a banker.
Through breakfast, Billy remained acutely aware of Parmelee. Watched him pick up his travel satchel, and step warily out the door.
Definitely a hunter.
“Just like me,” Billy whispered under his breath as he chased boiled beans across his plate with a piece ripped from a loaf of bread. But, did he really suspect?
Leaving a fifty-cent piece for his two-bit breakfast, he picked up his war bag with his left hand, leaving his right to dangle by the Remington’s butt. At the door, he glanced both ways, then stepped out on the street.
Despite having a woman in his bed, Maw had come last night. There would be trouble today. She’d warned him from the grave. The Cherokee used to tell him about how important it was to listen to the dead.
“Whatever happened to you, John Gritts?”
A one-legged Indian? John had sided with Stand Watie’s Confederates. John Ross’s Union faction had won in the end. If Billy knew anything about Cherokee they would continue killing each other for years after the whites had finally made peace. It sure didn’t take no fortune-teller to figure that out.
But, damn it, he’d like to see John again. Sit with him on a porch, smoke a pipe, talk about old times. A sudden longing—almost a physical pain— brought tears to Billy’s eyes. By Hob, he wished he was home. Wished he could hear Maw’s voice, smell Paw’s pipe. See Sarah, still innocent and pure, prancing in from the springhouse with her water pails.
Foolish damn nonsense.
Billy wiped away a sudden tear, glanced around the rutted and rocky street, seeing no sign of Parmelee.
Odd to think of John Gritts. To think of home. Maybe it was a sign. Maybe time had come to go back to Tahlequah, look up the Gritts family and find John. Hell, he had plenty of money. It wouldn’t take
