She stood in sudden silence, blue smoke rising, the smell of sulfur and blood in the room.
The whimpering cry from the dining room came again. She glanced down at Parmelee, bleeding on her floor. The man’s eyes were open, as vacant as glass marbles. His beard now matted with blood. It frothed in his mouth and bubbled in his nostrils.
The whimpering came again.
She cocked her revolver, took a step, and almost toppled. Her left leg didn’t seem to work. She locked her knee, hobbled to the wide arch that separated the parlor and dining room.
Leaning against it, she glanced down. Saw the man who huddled into a ball. He wore a fringed buckskin jacket. The wool pants were travel-stained and tucked into high cavalry boots. Dirty blond locks straggled out over his shoulders, his head hidden by a weathered felt hat.
“Who are you?” she demanded.
“Don’t hurt me, Sarah,” he whispered. “I don’t want to kill you no more. Don’t…” He sucked in a terrified breath. “Don’t fucking touch me!”
She blinked, aware of the growing ache and weakness in her left leg. “Billy?”
She let herself sag. Crouched beside him. “Billy?”
“No!” he cried. “Tell Maw to leave me alone! I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!”
She reached for him, only to feel a shock run through him as she grasped his arm.
He looked up, terrified. In that instant, he screamed, “You demon bitch!”
He knocked her backward, his hands going for her throat. She fought, clawed, as he bowled her onto her back. “Billy, for God’s sake, it’s me! Sarah!”
He was leaning over her, hair hanging down, tears streaking from his eyes to patter on her face. A wild insanity twisted his expression, teeth bared. His eyes were possessed of a weird blue light.
She felt her throat crushing under his grip.
Driven by an animal terror, she pulled her hand back and drove the revolver hard into the side of his head. The force of the blow knocked the hat off his head.
As he collapsed sideways, she managed to scramble out from under him. Scuttled away. Her left leg like numb meat.
Across from him, she lifted herself up onto one of the chairs and, over the cocked pistol, watched him pant as he lay there.
“Sarah?” he whispered hoarsely.
“What in the name of hell are you doing, Billy?” she rasped. It hurt when she coughed, and she fingered her throat. Why did men always go for her throat?
He looked up, half dazed, raised a hand to the side of his head. “You’re … alive?”
“Not by much,” she told him wearily. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“You’re … not a demon?”
“Do I look like a goddamned demon?” She shook her head, glancing back at Parmelee, now apparently dead on her floor. “What the hell are you doing with Parmelee and George Nichols? How did you get here? Just tell me what’s going on!”
“You’re … the Goddess?” he rasped. “Thought you were dead. Haunting me. The nightmares … the endless goddamned nightmares…” He started to cry again. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
She swallowed painfully. “I’d never haunt you.” She paused. “Billy, I’m the one that’s sorry. Back at the trapper’s cabin, I was lost. More than a little crazy. A thousand times I’ve wished I could have gone back, told you it was all right.”
“My fault,” he told her through streaming tears. “All my fault.”
“Wasn’t anybody’s fault. Just the damn war. The madness. Men turned to animals. That’s all.”
“I got ’em all,” he whispered. “Dewley’s bunch. Ran every last one of ’em down and killed him. But you still kept coming to haunt my dreams. All naked and raped. Reaching out for … for…”
“Jesus!” She sucked a breath, suddenly starved for air. “Damn it, listen to me! I’m alive because you saved me. Now, get up. I’m shot! Parmelee’s dead on the floor. I think I shot Nichols, but he’s running. Philip and Butler are due here any minute. Philip’s a doctor. Here in Denver.”
She pulled her skirt up, blood was leaking out of a hole about four inches below the point of her hip. It should have hurt worse than it did.
Billy’s expression seemed to clear, and he wiped the tears from his face. “George? How did you know he’s broke?”
She thinned her lips, balanced the revolver in her hand. If Billy went crazy and started to strangle her again? Could she shoot him?
Hell yes!
“I broke him. I’m tired of men raping me. Abusing me. Parmelee, George, it don’t matter, little brother.”
“George … raped you,” Billy said absently, as if his mind were a thousand miles away.
“Tried to.” She indicated the revolver. “Reckon when it comes to men, I’m getting right practiced at beating ’em off.”
Odd how the mere presence of her brother made her language slip back to the Arkansas hills.
“He can’t let this go,” Billy said, picking up the big Remington that lay on the floor beside him. He climbed wearily to his feet. “Is there some reason why I’m always proved to be the fool?”
“Where are you going?”
“To get George,” he told her.
“Billy, wait. Philip and Butler are coming. We need to talk. There are so many questions.”
He gave her an eerie, half-possessed stare as he paused at the kitchen door. “It’s my responsibility, Sis. Has been since Paw left. I gotta finish it.”
Then he was gone.
“Billy!” She rose to start after him, only to have her leg give out. Grabbing at the table, she barely kept from falling. For a moment the room spun. When it cleared she heard the back door slam.
For the time being, all she could do was prop herself up, cling to her revolver, and pant.
124
June 29, 1868
God—or the Devil—has played me for a fool!
A bitterness like he’d never known leached his insides like lye on raw meat.
Billy trotted Locomotive to the livery where George liked
