And she ain’t never gonna forgive me.
Just the thought of it made him sick to his stomach.
“She won’t. Not after this long. I ain’t told you, but I been having dreams. Maw comes back from the dead, shaking that finger of hers, telling me I done let her down. Got Sarah raped, and then I made her leave.”
“You didn’t make her leave. She done it on her own. Took my damned horse in the process.”
“Nope. I made her run. Did it the moment I told you how she’d been violated.” He shoved the dead Crawford with his toe. “Maw knows. That’s why she’s come back from the dead. She’s damning me to hell for failing her. My fault. I done it all wrong.”
Danny bent down and started the task of going through Crawford’s pockets, saying, “Reckon they’ll kill us just as fast for looting the body as for making him dust in the first place.”
Billy holstered his Remington and started going through the blankets and packs, setting aside anything they could use. It wasn’t a bad start: three more horses and a couple of sides of bacon, cornmeal, some pans, and money. He and Danny were well armed, had enough powder and shot, and the whole countryside was at war with itself. Travel by night, hole up by day, the biggest problem was staying clear of Union jayhawkers and Rebel guerrillas.
And after they packed up their belongings at the trapper’s cabin? Where then?
Missouri was out of the question. That truly was jumping from the frying pan right into the fire. Kansas was Yankee country. But just west was the Indian Nations. He could probably get through the Cherokee country, knowing enough of the language. Granted, Chief John Ross’s Union Cherokee were killing Stand Watie’s Confederate Cherokee—and vice versa—just as fast as Arkansans were killing each other. But beyond that, if the stories were true, Texas wasn’t at war with itself.
“Crawfords can’t kill us if they can’t find us, Danny.” He picked up his Sharps and propped it on his shoulder. “What the hell is left for us in Arkansas anyway? Your family’s gone south, fled to Louisiana. Mine’s dead. Aren’t but a handful of farms left in Benton County. Elkhorn Tavern’s burned. We can’t farm ’cause anything we raise, whichever bunch of bushwhackers, Reb cavalry, or Yank army would confiscate it all anyway.”
“And we’d be conscripted by whoever finds us first. Yank or Reb. We’d be tossed smack into the ranks to march, starve, and sleep shivering in the mud before being shot in battle.”
“We got close to three hundred dollars in gold from Dewley’s bunch.” Billy grinned. “Reckon we could live pretty damn well on that in Texas.”
Danny was staring at him as Billy hunched down and pulled his powder flask from his belt. Half cocking the Remington’s hammer, he rotated the empty cylinder and poured a measure of powder into the first empty chamber. Fishing a ball from his pouch, he seated it, turned the cylinder, and used the loading lever to press the ball home. He repeated the process on the two remaining empty chambers, sealed the loads with grease, and finally pinched caps onto the nipples before setting the hammer on the revolver’s safety notch.
Danny had been watching pensively. “You ain’t leaving the hammer on an empty? You gonna trust the safety notch?”
Billy worked his jaws as he looked around at the spring-green hills. “The way I figure it, Danny, I got a whole lot better chance of being shot by somebody else than I got of shooting myself if’n I snagged the hammer. Reckon it’s up in the air as to whether I’ll need that sixth shot before we even get out of this damn county.”
Strapping their plunder onto one of the horses, Billy wondered, Where the hell are you, sis?
For an instant, he had a vision. Like he’d heard tell of among religious folk. He thought he saw her, tall, naked, her golden hair streaming out behind her as if blowing in the wind. She lifted her arms in his direction. Blood was leaking down the insides of her long legs, and her high full breasts were bruised, bitten, and bleeding. Her pink nipples stood hard and erect. The dark shadow of her navel contrasted with the milky flat of her abdomen, and droplets of semen glittered on her golden pubic hair.
Her eyes pinned his, and flashed—angry, damning, and unforgiving.
The dream demon. This time in the light of day.
And just as quickly, it was gone.
Gasping, he struggled for breath. His heart was pounding.
“C’mon, Danny. Sooner we get ourselves to Texas, the happier I’m gonna be.”
48
May 8, 1864
In the days since he and Butler had walked out beneath the arched entry to Camp Douglas, Doc found himself in dire straits. Dressed in tatters, not a penny to their names, he and Butler were starved and sick. As he and his brother walked slowly south from Chicago along the Springfield Road, northwest Arkansas might have been on the other side of the world.
A spring rain pattered on their bare heads, running down their faces. Their clothes were soaked, cold, and clinging. Mud squished between Butler’s toes. It clung to Doc’s old brogans and worked up through the holes in the soles.
Not since the days after Shiloh had Doc been this hungry, wanting nothing more than to chew on something, anything, just for the taste if not the sustenance.
A sense of complete despair filled him. Were it not for Butler, he would have loved nothing more than to fall prostrate in the mud and weep.
He glanced at his brother. Butler’s eyes were flickering, lips moving as he “talked to his men.” He did it so rationally, as if—as he claimed—he could see them as clearly as the
