Authors: Dani Amore
I
f
the town of Platteville, Nevada, had been much to look at before the battle
with the Paiute, Bird would have been surprised. Because the way it looked now,
as she and Tower rode into town from Fort Stewart, there wasn’t much left.
A
small cluster of buildings ran along a single sodden street. Half of the
structures showed signs of fire damage; the other half looked like they were
about to collapse.
Bird
followed Tower to what was left of Platteville’s general store. It was clearly one
of the buildings that had been set on fire, with black scorch marks over most
of the facade, a cracked front window, and a missing front door.
They
tied their horses to the hitching post and went inside.
The
debris wasn’t limited to the outside. The store was a mess. Shelves were
knocked down, merchandise was strewn about, and empty bullet casings still
littered the floor.
“Just
haven’t had time to get her cleaned up proper,” a voice said behind them.
Bird
turned and saw an older man wearing a striped vest and an enormous pocket
watch, its chain hooked to one of the buttons of the vest.
“Looks
like you were right in the middle of it,” Tower said to the man.
“I
was!” He walked over to the store’s counter and leaned forward, resting his
forearms on the wooden rail. “It happened right here, you know. Name’s Thompson,
by the way. I own this place. And I’m the mayor, though not much of that matters
now, I suppose.”
“What
happened right here?” Tower said.
“Those
worthless jackasses saw those Indian girls buying candy and just slung ’em over
their shoulders and rode out of town. ’Cept the one who circled back behind the
hotel and took the one girl up to his room. Found her later.”
The
man shook his head.
“Them
Indians butchered an entire family. The Robsons, live just up the street. The
husband, wife, and all four children. Cut ’em down like dogs. They killed
pretty near everyone they come across. Didn’t matter to them.”
Bird
wanted to point out the Indians hadn’t started the debacle, but there was no
point in arguing about it.
“Do
you think you could introduce me to the folks that are still left in town?”
Tower said. He held up his Bible. “I’d like to offer what help I can, even
though I know there isn’t much comfort to be found in a terrible tragedy like
this.”
Thompson
looked around the skeleton of what his store had been.
“I’d
be happy to get you out and about the town, Preacher. Maybe you can help the
healing begin. Maybe we can put Platteville back together. Better than it was.”
The man sighed.
“Besides,
I just can’t bring myself to tackle the job of cleaning this place up. Don’t
know if there’s a point to doin’ it.”
Bird
stepped aside as the two men left the store.
She
went out, climbed onto the Appaloosa, and headed for the hotel.
B
ird
climbed up onto what was left of the hotel’s porch and had to watch her step. The
hotel had been burned as well, although it looked like most of the fire had
been limited to the front of the building and wasn’t able to make its way
inside.
Bullet
holes and broken arrow shafts littered the floor. Inside, every piece of
furniture was smashed, burned, or turned upside down.
A
man sat alone on the floor of the hotel’s main room, a bottle of whiskey by his
side. He was middle-aged, with dark pants, a white shirt full of stains, and
suspenders that were hanging by his side.
“Hate
to see a man drinking alone,” Bird said.
“Then
go ahead and join me,” the man said, his voice thick with alcohol. “Good luck
finding a glass, though,” he said and waved a hand around the room.
Bird
glanced beneath a table that was sheltering a stack of china from the dining
room, she assumed, and spotted a lone coffee cup. She looked inside, then wiped
it clean with her shirt.
She
went back to the man, and he held the bottle up for her. She filled the cup,
tossed it back, then refilled it.
“Thank
you kindly for the drink,” she said. “This hotel your place?”
“It
was,” the man said. “This is my farewell drink to a dream that just died. I’m
heading back to Chicago. I gave the West a try, but it didn’t work out.”
Bird
sipped from the whiskey in her coffee cup. If it had been a regular glass, she
would have downed the whole thing already.
“So
rumor is one of the Paiute girls was killed here.”
The
man’s shoulders began to shake, and at first Bird thought the man was laughing.
But then he wiped his eyes and she understood that he was crying.
“Damndest
thing I’ve ever seen,” he said. “I have half a mind to go up there and set that
hellish nightmare on fire, burn the rest of it down. But I can’t set foot in
there. Did once — won’t ever go again.”
“Set
foot where?” Bird said.
The
man sighed, a wet noisy sound that came out mostly through his nose.
“The
room where that sick bastard — ”
The
man couldn’t finish the thought. He threw his glass against the far wall, got
to his feet, and drank straight from the bottle. He emptied it, then threw it
against the wall, too. It shattered, and some of the glass pieces rained down
on the broken china that littered the floor. It sounded to Bird like strange, discordant
music.
“I’ve
got to get the hell out of here,” he said. “Out of this damn hotel and out of
this goddamn town.”
He
stormed past Bird, thunked off the porch, and staggered down the street.
Bird
finished her whiskey and went to the stairs.
How
many rooms can there be?
she
thought.
At
the top of the stairs there was a landing, with torn and shredded mattresses,
some night tables smashed to pieces, and a washbasin stomped into hundreds of
tiny shards.
One
by one, Bird opened the door to each room, or at least the rooms that had
doors, and looked inside. It wasn’t until she got to the last room at the end
of the hall that she knew what she would find inside.
The
door had been ripped from its hinges and hung askew, as if it were trying to
block the person entering from seeing the entire interior at once.
Bird
pushed the door to the side, and its edge tore a gouge in the wallpaper as she
stepped through the doorway.
For
a moment, she lost her breath.
The
walls were smeared with blood, splattered in places, fashioned into crude
pentagrams on several sections of wall.
A
great pool of dried blood sat in the middle of the room. The bed that had most
likely been the central piece of furniture was half in the window, half out,
the mattress wedged in place by thick shards of glass.
Bird
took in the sight of the room, transported back in time to other places, other
scenes like this one. There had been too many. One was too many, but there had
certainly been more than one. Many, many more than one.
She
carefully stepped toward the corner of the room, a sense of unease creeping
over her as she stood in the middle of such wanton destruction.
Bird
turned and looked back toward the room’s entrance. There was a message, written
in blood, on the inside of the door that still hung askew.
The
words were tilted, so Bird had to angle her head to read them.
At
the top of the door, a finger most likely dipped in the blood of the young
Paiute girl had scrawled one name.
Bird.
She
felt her insides go cold and a current of electricity vibrate up her arms, and
she instinctively put her hand on her gun.
Bird
stood frozen, the chaos of the room falling away from her as she let her eyes
travel down to the words below her name, their crude shapes punctuated with
long tendrils of dried blood.
See
you in San Francisco.
— T.R.
T
he
barren rock of Nevada slowly gave way to the rugged beauty of eastern
California. Tower had never been in this part of the country and was staggered
by its vastness, by the soaring hills, the wide valleys, and the sweeping power
of its rivers.
He
was saddle weary from being on the trail for the last three days, but he felt
good, satisfied with the work he had done in Platteville. The innocent victims
of the conflict there had needed a calming presence, one that could restore
their faith in what the future could bring, and he had filled that role.
Now
he was looking forward to the next stop on his circuit ride, which was a small
town just beyond the edge of the Sierra Nevadas, called Bing City. Tower liked
the sound of the name.
Ahead
of him, Bird rode like she always did — casual but alert, looking like she was
on a brief jaunt into town. But Tower wasn’t fooled. He knew she was always
watching, always on guard. It was one of the traits that had helped her
survive, but that also made her difficult to understand. At times, he took
comfort in her vigilance, but he also wondered if the price for that wariness
was too high. Especially for her.
The
amount of whiskey she consumed never seemed to affect her, a fact that both surprised
Tower and caused him chagrin.
He
had not lived a sheltered life; he had seen more than his fair share of
hard-drinking men who had grown overly fond of the bottle. But he had never
seen a person, man or woman, who drank as often and in such large quantities as
Bird Hitchcock. Which made her skill with a gun all the more impressive. A part
of him wondered, though, if she kept drinking at this pace, would it one day
slow down her reflexes? And would that happen at an inopportune time, say, in
the middle of a gunfight on some dusty main street?
Tower
shuddered at the thought.
He
wondered how he could get through to her. Lead her to some sort of resolution
within herself that would put her on a path to forgiveness not just for the
people who had done injurious things to her, but forgiveness for the most important
person she needed to feel compassion for: herself.
The
trail dipped down into an arroyo, then rose again quickly, leading them to the
edge of a meadow anchored by one of the largest fallen trees Tower had ever
seen. It had been uprooted, creating a wall of root and dirt against a bank of earth
and rock.
It
was the perfect place to settle into for the night; the large upheaval of dirt
would create a natural wall against which they could bank their fire and rest
in the reflected heat.
Tower
put a loose hobble on his horse, letting him graze on some thick grass at the
edge of the meadow. He found a small stream just down from the rock ledge and
washed his face.
He
noticed that Bird didn’t seem herself, looking off to the far horizon. She built
a small fire, then drank quietly from a bottle as the flames slowly took hold
and the nearly smokeless heat took a slight chill from the air.
Tower
unfurled his bedroll and stretched out between the fire and the root wall. He
read from his Bible, set the book on his chest, and was almost instantly
asleep. He dreamed of a time just before he joined the army, when he told his
mother that he was leaving home to take a stand against the rebels of the South.
She hadn’t said much, her face gray and tired. Tower remembered the chill of
that evening. His father’s whereabouts were unknown, and that lack of knowledge
weighed down the family like a slab of rock unceasingly exerting its constant,
blind pressure.
In
the dream, he was back in his bed, trying not to let the fear of the unknown
get to him. Often as a boy he would grind his teeth in his sleep, and the
action would create an exquisite headache centered in the middle of his
forehead.
The
pain would only stop when he woke up, as he did now. The pain was very real
because the muzzle of Bird’s gun was pressing hard into the middle of his
forehead.
She
was straddling him, and he could smell the whiskey coming off her in waves.
Bird
pulled back the hammer of her gun and Tower felt the vibration of it clicking
into place. On either side of the gun barrel, Tower could see the heavy lead
bullets, each resting in its own chamber.
“Even
though I know you’re a man of few words” — Bird took a long drink from the
whiskey bottle, keeping the pistol pressed firmly against his forehead — “I do
believe now is a very good time for you to do some talking, Mr. Tower,” she
said.