That, and the incestuous Sarah demon who still lurked just beneath his dreams. What wouldn’t he do to murder that apparitional bitch?
His heart was beating faster, the warm anticipation running through him. By Hob and thunder, he never felt as alive as he did when he was hunting a man. That surge of joy rising in his chest was every bit as intoxicating as a good bottle of whiskey. Every nerve seemed to sing, every vein and artery pumped, his senses sharp as a razor and his soul humming with anticipation.
The sound of a horse’s hooves carried, the dogs running out to bark a greeting as they had done each night that Billy watched the place from his vantage back in the trees.
“Whoa, now, Midnight.” Hartlee’s thick Texas accent carried on the warm evening air. “That’s a good boy. Bait of oats fer y’all tonight.”
Hartlee led the big black horse through the barn door, missing the black gelding’s nostrils as they flared at the unfamiliar scent of a strange human.
Billy smiled.
I got you!
He waited, his entire body electric. No need to rush. Like John Gritts had always said, he liked them right up close. The ultimate triumph of the perfect hunter.
Hartlee finished rubbing the horse down, poured water from a bucket, and scooped grain out of a sack and into the stall’s manger.
He backed out, cooing to the horse, taking one final look at the magnificent sixteen-hand gelding.
As Hartlee hesitated, Billy stepped out, his Cherokee moccasins silent on the straw-covered dirt. As Billy lifted the ax, Anson Hartlee had no more warning than the tom turkey that long-ago day when Billy had last hunted with John Gritts.
53
April 10, 1865
News had come by telegraph. Robert E. Lee had surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia the day before. The final vertebra in the spine of Confederate resistance had been broken.
A line of flashing yellow-orange light leaped outward in the darkness. Not even a second later Sarah heard the crashing boom of the cannons. The sound reverberated across the Arkansas River Valley. A cheer went up from the crowd that had gathered on the Belle Point heights before Fort Smith.
While the crowd shouted their enthusiasm and seemed to wash back and forth before the fort’s stone walls, Sarah wasn’t sure what she should be feeling. The war had ruined their lives. Paw declared dead, no word from Butler or Doc, Maw shot, Sarah running from life itself, the farm abandoned, and who knew where Billy was. She should have felt relief, but the future loomed before her like a descending and ugly black cloud.
Men were singing “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Women sobbed and cried. Little girls hugged their mothers’ skirts and chattered back and forth. The little boys whooped and cavorted as they ran back and forth through the maze of adult legs.
Another flash of light and fire shot forth even as the evening breeze carried the acrid stench of burned powder across the crowd. The clapping thunder of the celebratory guns echoed across the valley. Hats were being waved. Two men danced with each other, arms interlaced as they kicked and shuffled. Sarah heard liquid as a bottle was passed back and forth. The sound of a fiddle came from somewhere.
These were Union folk—or so they said—farmers and refugees for the most part who had come to live and till fields beneath the protective umbrella and within the military boundary protected by the fort. Similar military sanctuaries had been set up around Van Buren on the other side of the river, and up in Washington and Benton Counties. Literally armed agricultural compounds protected by Federal cavalry. Islands of survival in the ruined sea that had once been northwest Arkansas. The rest was a wild no-man’s-land of forest and abandoned farms. The domain of the jayhawker and bushwhacker as they raided and murdered each other among burned mills and along overgrown roads.
The Confederacy was dying before her eyes. Its memory would pass like an autumn leaf, grown brittle and cast loose, tossed on the currents of passion to settle softly, brown and desiccated. The only certainty remaining was decomposition.
Looking back, what had it all been for?
The gnawing in her belly distracted her from any deeper philosophical explorations. Her only food that day had been a biscuit for breakfast. Compensation for washing a Yankee captain’s coat.
The cannons in Fort Smith flashed and boomed once more. People cheered as the reverberations rose to the cloud-dark night sky.
She placed a hand to her breast. The war was over.
Butler, Philip, and Billy—if any of them were still alive—would be safe now. They could go home, pick up the plow, and reclaim the farm from the weeds, assuming no one had burned the house.
“But what of me?” she wondered, knowing full well that she’d never go back. The looming black cloud that was her future seemed to hang even lower over her head.
Two men, obviously drunk, staggered toward her. One jabbed the other with his elbow, indicating Sarah. They both grinned foolishly, doffed their hats, and cried in unison, “Best of the evening, ma’am!” Then broke into giggles.
“Y’all need an escort?” the taller asked as he replaced his hat.
“Thank you, but my husband wouldn’t understand.” She craned her neck, looking past them. “He should be back any moment.”
“Y’all have a nice night,” the short one said with a sigh. Then dragged his associate away into the crowd.
Sarah exhaled her tension. She felt the Colt revolver’s cool grip under her fingers and wondered when she’d reached into the heavy canvas sack that hung from her shoulder.
The ugly lump of steel, brass, and wood—capped and loaded—remained her one true and dependable ally in life.
A smile came to her chapped lips as she remembered Maxwell Johnson’s panic-white face as he dabbed at the furrow her bullet had cut through the web of his neck. The young dandy would think twice before he entered a woman’s
