“How am I going to live?” Philip’s voice sounded distant.
Sarah glanced at Walley, standing in the rear, and nodded her head. The two gravediggers started forward with their shovels. They drove their blades into the dirt piles, and tossed the first shovelfuls back into the holes. The soil thumped hollowly on Aggie’s casket. Little James Butler’s barely made a sound.
Aggie’s casket. Not Bridget’s. It was how Sarah would remember her. That part of her friend’s identity was hers, while Philip could claim all of her that was Bridget.
“Dear brother”—she took a deep breath—“how many times have you told me that a physician is one of the most impotent of men? That so many maladies defy your skills?”
He glanced at the small grave immediately to the right. “My little boy was dead in the womb. I can take that. But not Bridget.” He closed his eyes, tears trickling down to mix with the light rain in his beard. “I don’t want to live. Not without her.”
She pulled him to her shoulder, pressing his wet head against her, feeling the sobs rack his body.
“Wasn’t your fault. You did everything you could.”
“I couldn’t stop the bleeding!” He swallowed hard. “And the worst part was, she knew she was dying, and she kept saying ‘Don’t blame yourself, Philip. Promise me.’ But I couldn’t … couldn’t…”
“Are you God, brother?”
“My wife and my son are dead”—he shivered against her—“I’m not even dirt.”
106
April 26, 1868
As Butler rode up the mountain pass he realized he’d never been better. The whole of his life had changed, and for the first time ever, he felt truly happy.
He’d just spent the winter in a four-pole Sheep Eater tipi in the high mountains. The winter’s diet had consisted of pit-roasted mountain sheep, elk, sage grouse, fish, and stews made of netted waxwings. Along with root breads, he’d devoured cakes made of crushed crickets and buffalo pemmican. His body had never been stronger, his wind deeper, or his thoughts more clear. He was possessed of a new energy.
The men watched him with worried eyes, sometimes they even faded, seemed to slip away for hours, even a day or two.
Nights around the fire with Mountain Flicker at his side, Cracked Bone Thrower and Red Rain across the fire, not to mention the boys, had been among the finest in his life as he’d found a home in Puhagan’s small family band.
Cracked Bone Thrower had taught him to make and walk on snowshoes, and he’d learned how to snare elk with a braided rawhide lasso and a bowed fir tree. Snare elk? Who would have ever thought?
Better yet, on those days when Pettigrew and the men pressed in on him, no one in the Dukurika camp looked at him askance. Not even when he spent hours talking to Jimmy Peterson about St. Francis County, or listening to Johnny Baker chatter on about his two sisters back in Arkadelphia. The Sheep Eaters just shrugged and considered it his special Power—along with those granted him by Water Ghost Woman.
Though no one had any idea who or what the silver eagle might be.
The winter had given him time for introspection. He could recall his boyhood in the Arkansas mountains with joy. Remember hiking and hunting in the forested uplands around the White River; reading by the nightly fire during winter’s chill; and the joy of dressing out a hog with anticipation of Maw’s culinary magic as she cooked the loin. It all lingered like honeyed joy in his memory.
His days in the academy in Pennsylvania had been filled with thrill and terror as he pitted his brain and intellect against that of other students, sometimes retiring in triumph, other times in ignominious defeat. Challenging. Fun. And forever filled with the stress of constant study and testing.
And then had come the war.
As his horse climbed the trail behind Cracked Bone Thrower and his pack of dogs, Butler struggled to make sense of the things he’d witnessed, participated in, and somehow survived.
Glancing off to the side, he could see the men marching along in their tattered uniforms, rifles pitched across their shoulders.
Phantoms. The creation of his broken mind.
Doc had told him over and over that they were a figment of his madness, but Water Ghost Woman finally had convinced him. Some part of his white man’s brain had wanted to blame the narcotic Power of the toyatawura. But, damn it, he’d seen Water Ghost Woman, felt her body against his. Died down there in the watery Underworld. And what the hell? He was crazy. If he could see dead Confederate soldiers marching along in ranks, of course he could see terrifying mystical Indian spirit beings.
That day back at the lake when he’d related the story to Cracked Bone Thrower, who’d told Puhagan, they’d sure as hell believed. Though it amazed them that a taipo, a white man, had survived one of their most dangerous spirit journeys.
Apple’s hooves cracked hollowly on the rocky trail as Puhagan—up in the lead—pulled up. He was surrounded by six pack dogs, all panting under their loads. Behind the elder followed Cracked Bone Thrower and Red Rain—with her infant daughter in her cradleboard on her back.
Butler was proud of that little baby girl. He’d been called to help deliver her. Cracked Bone Thrower and Red Rain’s two young sons, Cricket and Water Snake, each with their own packs, immediately threw themselves down to rest. Among the Sheep Eaters everyone carried part of the load.
Mountain Flicker turned back toward Butler. As she smiled, her teeth gleamed in her triangular face with its broad cheekbones.
Butler grinned back. My, how life had changed.
Checking on the men, he saw that they had already dropped onto the rocks and taken seats in the sagebrush. Over his shoulder the view was spectacular. He could see clear across the basin, rimmed as it was on the west-southwest by the Wind River Mountains, and on the south by the Sweetwater Rim. To the east and below he could make
