Out by the road, Billy heard someone distantly calling, “Hurry up! They’s shooting back to the camp!”
“Who’s that?”
“Road guard,” she said through a sob as she tried, clumsily, to jerk Tucker’s pants from his limp legs. “Dewley’s coming.”
“Can’t take horses if they’re on the road.” He jerked the boy’s pants free and handed them to her. Picking up his knife, he stared down at the gutted boy. “Tucker, you say?”
The boy glanced his way with pain-glazed eyes.
Billy bent, grabbed Tucker by the privates and pulled.
“Billy! No!” Sarah screamed as Billy neatly severed the boy’s penis and testicles.
“Guess your first was your last, huh?” He threw the boy’s parts full into his face.
Sarah stood, frozen and gaping, her face twitching. Glazed blue madness danced behind her eyes.
Walking to the packs, Billy found blankets, a red wool shirt that he tossed her, and then hurried to pick up the Sharps rifle. He ripped the pistol flask and bullet pouch from Sallow-face and took his Remington, leaving the Dragoon. Danny Goodman had a .36-caliber Remington that Billy had always admired. Now he had his own Model 1858, and a .44 at that.
He hesitated, looking at the men he’d killed. The ones who had raped Sarah.
Billy used the Bowie on each of them, leaving their castrated parts in their gaping mouths as John Gritts had told him the Cherokee once did.
“Come on!”
Sarah—shaking like a leaf in a hurricane—stumbled toward him, the pants tight around the swell of her hips. One sleeve of the red shirt kept evading her searching arm.
“What about shoes?” she asked.
“Where are yours?”
“I was barefoot when they come.”
“You been barefoot before.” He led the way back through the corral, behind the willows, and to the trail. “Can you climb?”
Shouts and horses were heard from the mouth of the cove. She literally sprang up the trail.
Billy followed, watching her bare feet as they dug into the damp soil. He was breathing hard by the time they passed the dead guard.
Maybe it’s only fifteen behind us?
Working his way through the cut up to the rim, he realized that Sarah was limping, her legs shaking with the effort.
No way they were going to make any kind of time.
“Sis, wait.”
He led the way to the limestone rim that overlooked the cove. Standing at the edge, he studied the camp, saw the horses, heard the shouts as men stomped back and forth.
A pistol shot rang out.
Someone must have taken pity on Tucker.
Billy dropped the block on the Sharps, slipped in a cartridge and raised the lever, neatly shearing open the back of the paper to expose the powder. Billy figured the distance at four hundred yards. Then he guesstimated the drop as he raised the Lawrence-patent sight for three hundred yards. Cocking the gun, he drew a bead on the big, black-bearded man stomping around, kicking the dead men around the fire.
The Sharps boomed, smoke billowing, and Billy raised his head. Through the blue haze, he wasn’t exactly sure of where the bullet hit, but the big man leaped as if he were scalded.
Cupping his mouth with both hands, Billy shouted, “You see what I did to them! I’ll get each one of you! You bastards are dead men!”
“Billy,” Sarah cried, “don’t!”
“Come on, sis,” he growled as he pushed past her. “We got a ways to go before nightfall.”
She stepped in behind him. “They’ll be coming for you.”
“I’m planning on it.”
42
November 3, 1863
Sarah looked up at the trees, most of the leaves gone now. Around them, the slopes were just catching the first light. Sparkling frost lay on the fall-brown grass. Her breath hung white in the cold air. She shivered in the blanket Billy had made her take.
She beat herself in the head again, self-induced pain bringing her back to the now. Tears, so hot and wet, silvered her eyes, dripping down one by one.
“Stop it!” Billy’s unforgiving hand caught her wrists, heedless of the scabs, or how it hurt.
But everything hurt. Her abused breasts. Where they’d bitten her neck. Stones had cut her tender feet, now gone numb from the cold. Her vagina burned and ached. Everything down there was raw and sore when she walked. Blood and fluid still soaked the pad she’d made for herself from dried moss.
“You’re hurting me,” she whispered dully, shooting him a hard sidelong glance where he gripped her wrists.
“You’re hurting yourself, beatin’ on your head that way.”
They’d spent the night under a limestone outcrop—the place long used for such things given the charcoal, the bits of broken Indian pottery, stone chips, and broken glass. The morning fire smoldered. Billy had carefully buried the bones from the turkey they’d had for supper and breakfast.
“Why go to the trouble?” she’d asked.
“So they think we’re starved and weak,” he had told her.
Finally turning her wrists loose, he said, “We gotta be going.”
“You don’t know Dewley. What you did to them men? Cutting them that way? He ain’t never going to stop.”
Who is this brother of mine? Castrating those bodies, that wasn’t the Billy she’d always known.
“Good.” Billy checked the cartridge box where it hung on his belt.
“Good?” She started to tremble again. “Billy, he’s mad-dog crazy! Something’s twisted in his mind. Broken like. He’s got the devil in his eyes, and there ain’t no beating the devil!”
Billy’s lips trembled as he looked out at the oaks, maples, and elms that filled the little valley. “He ain’t the only one with the devil in him. We laid us a good trail yesterday. That tracker of his?”
“Silas?”
“If he’s good, he’ll be a couple of hours behind us.”
A dull terror settled in her gut. “You’re letting them follow us?”
He gave a slight nod, his lips pressed hard, jaws bulging.
“Billy, I just want to go home. Get away. I want away.” Tears beaded. “I just want to be safe! To go somewhere and die!”
His expression hardened, eyes stony. “Debts gotta be paid, sis.”
She laid a hand on his
