“Who?” Billy asked dryly, then waved it away with a feeble flip of the wrist. “Don’t matter, Sis. I been tempting the Devil to come get me. Took the lazy old shit way too long as it is. Just give me that one shot, Marshal, and the rest is all yours.”
Butler waved the men down as they broke into a cacophony of questions and protests.
“Dear God,” Philip whispered under his breath. “Is this true?”
Billy smiled wearily, eyes closed. “Best hunting there ever was.”
Dave Cook straightened. “Doc, you’re a good man, and I hate to do this, but your brother is under arrest. How soon can he be moved?”
“Maybe a week depending on how bad the infection is,” Doc said dully. “Especially in that pelvic wound.”
Given the confusion in Doc’s expression, Butler ached for him. He winced at the horror in Sarah’s face as she stared disbelievingly at her brother. Billy and Sarah, they were the close ones.
“You give me your word, Doc?” Cook asked. “You won’t let him out of here? Won’t put your brother in a wagon some night and sneak him outta town?”
“You have my word, Marshal.” Doc closed his eyes, looking as stricken as if he were denouncing Jesus in the garden.
“And mine as an officer and gentleman,” Butler told him. “The men will follow my orders regarding my brother’s disposition.” He glanced at his men, all crowded and cowed in the back of the surgery. “Isn’t that right?”
At their assent he added, “There, Marshal. See?”
The corners of Cook’s mouth tightened, but he nodded and looked at Sarah.
She pursed her lips, eyes thinned in misery, and nodded.
127
July 2, 1868
Butler stood with his hands on his hips as he studied Sarah’s parlor floor. He couldn’t help but admire his work. The floorboards still had a slight discoloration in the grain—but only if a person knew what to look for. Had Parmelee’s blood not sat for so long, he might have even managed to scrub that out.
The men had provided encouragement as he’d worked with the bristle brush, and they’d pointed out places he needed to concentrate on.
The sound of hammers and sawing reassured him. The workmen were back at it. A sign that Sarah’s life was returning to normal for her. Or as normal as it would ever be again.
Life just seemed to kick her around.
He tossed the brush up and caught it, then stooped to pick up the rags he’d used to dry the floor. Walking into the dining room, he disposed of them in a bucket and went to pour a cup of coffee before seating himself at the table across from Sarah. Sunshine beamed in through the bay windows.
“Unless you know what to look for,” he told her, “you’ll never know it was there.”
“I really appreciate it,” she told him. “I feel guilty.”
“You were shot in the leg. You can’t be bending down and breaking that wound open. You worry us enough when you climb up and down the stairs.”
“I wanted to sleep in my own bed. With my big revolver at hand.” She drew a breath that thinned her nostrils. “Didn’t entirely work. It’s one thing to know that Parmelee and Nichols are dead, and another for the feeling of threat to go away.” She glanced off to the side. “Assuming it ever really does.”
Butler shrugged. “I lived in terror from the moment I was placed in command of Company A. I should never have agreed to lead the men up that hill.” He shook his head. “Funny, isn’t it? I can remember the charge, the Yankee guns and smoke and noise. And then it’s a haze of dreamlike images. I remember pain. And then waking up among a group of prisoners and feeling such relief that so many of the men were still with me.”
He glanced at where they lounged at the peripheries of the room. Several nodded in reply.
She rubbed her eyes, looking exhausted. “I think we’re all crazy in one way or another. You hallucinate dead men to soothe your guilt. Philip’s a suffering saint trying to save the world when he can’t even save himself. I turned to prostitution as a way to punish myself for something that wasn’t my fault. And Billy? My God, he’s a…”
She knotted a fist, knuckles going white. “I should have stayed with him back at the trapper’s cabin. But, damn it, Butler, I couldn’t face it. Day after miserable day. Couldn’t stand the way he’d look at me. It was the horror and pity in his eyes. And then he brought Danny to see, to share…”
Butler stared into his coffee. “Maybe we’re all bad seeds. Maybe that’s why Maw stuck it out. She was trying so hard to turn us into good people, all the while wondering about the sins of the father, and wondering if they’d come home to roost.”
“It would break her heart to know about Billy.” Sarah stared dry-eyed into the distance. “And he knows it. That’s why he goes on about his nightmares, about Maw rising from the grave. And God knows what part I play in them. He said I was naked and raped, and I reached for him. Damn, he won’t even look at me when he talks about them. It must be so horrible…”
“It’s partly my fault.”
“Yours? How?”
“I should have talked Tom Hindman out of issuing Order Number 17 that created the partisan rangers. Of all the mistakes, that was the worst.” Butler gestured in futility. “In the end we just turned the people loose on each other. There would have been no Dewley. No Darrow. So what if the Federals had taken the entire state back in sixty-two? Yankees were going to win in the end anyway; and you, Maw, and Billy would still be at the farm. The mills wouldn’t have been burned, northwest Arkansas wouldn’t have
