Introductions continued as Butler dismounted and helped Cracked Bone Thrower unpack Shandy’s load. He led the animals to water and then to a grassy flat where he staked them on pickets.
By the time he made it back to camp, a good fire was burning. Puhagan’s and Cracked Bone Thrower’s small tipis had been pitched, and Mountain Flicker was halfway through the task of weaving branches she’d stripped from juniper into a conical structure for Butler and herself. As soon as she finished with the frame, she’d wrap their lodge cover around it.
“Go and see the hurt taipo,” she told him as her nimble fingers wove the prickly juniper. “This will be finished by the time you get back. Then we will eat.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Butler told her with a salute. She always smiled when he saluted her, knowing it was a gesture of respect.
“That big earth lodge,” she told him, pointing to a domed structure back in the trees.
Butler made his way to the low entrance, calling, “Puhagan?”
“We are here, Butler,” Cracked Bone Thrower replied.
Butler ducked into the low, warm interior, finding it lit by a stone-slab-lined fire pit just inside the door. The odor of stale sweat and sepsis made him grimace; flashes of memory took him back to Camp Douglas, and filth, despair, and death.
The taipo lay in the back. In the dim light Puhagan was peeling back a blanket to expose long gashes that ran diagonally across the big man’s chest. The right hand was missing, the forearm a lacerated mess—skin and muscle stripped from the bone—and dripping infection. The left hand was chewed and missing the ring finger and pinky. Dark scabs could be seen across the man’s scalp where teeth or claws had ripped through the long white hair.
“It was a spring grizzly,” Cracked Bone Thrower told Butler. “She had just come out of her cave with two cubs. The Silver Eagle”—he indicated the wincing white man—“came upon them by accident. She would have killed him and eaten him, but he managed to jump off the trail and fell down a steep slope. At the bottom a juniper tree stopped his fall, but even then, his leg is broken.”
The Silver Eagle.
Water Ghost Woman’s gift.
It all made sense.
Cracked Bone Thrower was giving him a “see, I told you so” look. Puha was at play here. He felt the Power of it settle on his shoulders like a heavy cloak.
Butler fixed on the man’s thin face, on his high forehead, the matted beard, and hawkish nose. Behind the parted lips he could see the chipped tooth, the gap worn in the teeth from years of clenching a pipe stem.
As if he were hearing it again, Water Ghost Woman’s words echoed in the cramped structure. “By saving the Silver Eagle, you condemn him.”
“I have the puha to heal,” he whispered, heart pounding.
“What was that?” Cracked Bone Thrower asked, the men looking up at Butler.
“He has to be cleansed,” Butler told them. “The claw marks and bites are infected; I’ve seen it before, after the battles. You’ve told me of the Smoking Waters, where hot water bubbles from the earth. The Bah’gewana. We need to take him there if there’s to be any chance of saving him.”
Cracked Bone Thrower had translated and Puhagan straightened, asking in Shoshoni, “You know this?”
Butler nodded. “Can we go there tomorrow? Pack him on the horse?”
“Ha’a,” Puhagan told him. “But we need to set that broken leg first.”
Butler dropped on his knees, laying a hand on the fevered man’s forehead. Delirious blue eyes wavered in their sockets as he stared up at Butler. The man’s lips parted, his tongue working as if he were trying to speak.
“It’s going to be all right, puha has brought me to you. Water Ghost Woman said I could save you.”
“Butler?” the man finally managed to whisper.
“It’s me, Paw.”
107
April 28, 1868
The play that night at Angel’s Lair was Caesar and Cleopatra. The back of the parlor sported five chairs in which the clients sat, cigars and their liquor of choice at hand. On the raised stage, two male actors played Julius Caesar and Mark Antony. The background looked like a dressed-stone wall, and the only props were two velvet-upholstered chaise longues.
Resources in isolated Denver being what they were, Caesar’s and Antony’s helmets might have looked more like buckets, and the breastplates they wore like stove parts; nor did the red kilts resemble the pictures of Romans that Sarah had seen in the magazines. The sandals had been borrowed from an acting troupe, as had the swords.
Across the foyer, the two violins and a cello added a musical background while the actors spouted their lines in the glow of the floor lamps.
The one playing Caesar—a tall black-haired Ohioan—declared in his nasal twang, “I tell you, Mark Antony, I shall burn Egypt! Raze it to the ground! I am Caesar! I come, I see, I conquer!”
“But Caesar,” Antony objected, “this is the land of Pharaohs, birthplace of Moses. To simply lay it waste is a hideous bit of business.”
At this juncture, Theresa, dressed in a simple shift, entered the room, bowing down in such a manner as to tease the audience with her rounded buttocks.
“Hail, Caesar!” she cried. “I am Memnis, servant to Cleopatra, Queen of the Nile. She has sent me with a gift for the noble Caesar!”
Mark Antony stepped forward, laying a hand on Caesar’s arm. “Before you unleash havoc on the Egyptians, Caesar, at least see what the queen sends.”
“I only do this for you, Antony,” Caesar quipped, gesturing.
Into the room came Mick, bare-chested, wearing a pair of baggy yellow pants. A roll of carpet was carried crosswise in his arms. This he laid on the raised platform at Caesar’s feet, bowed, left.
“She sends me a
