no speak to Pawnee snake. I speak to bluecoats or anybody but no Pawnee. Pawnee snakes kill my baby kids, girl and boy. Kill my man and my people. Kill my life, all my life, so Two Doves is whore now. I no speak to Pawnee snake.”
The woman spits into the fire. Her bare feet are cracked and filthy. She wears a matted buffalo rug about her shoulders and a blue gingham skirt. Her hair is black and braided. There are the last vestiges of her pride in the care she has taken with her hair, Molloy thinks. She must once have been a beauty. She smokes a clay pipe and the pipe smoke and her breath mingle with smoke from the fire. Her eyes are small cuts in a drink-swollen face and in them Molloy sees great sadness. He wonders has she whiskey for the sadness. It is one certain cure for it. Death is another. He can smell it on the woman. Whiskey. Death. He has a flashing memory of a mother in Tennessee, wailing over the bloodied body of her son.
He says, “May I sit with you, ma’am?”
“Pay money or pay something to eat, to drink. Then sit with Two Doves. One dollar for fucking. One hand of coffee for Two Dove mouth. Fresh bean. One—”
“Kohn, pay the woman,” Molloy says, lowering himself onto the buffalo hides and setting his crutches to the side. He pats the woman’s arm. “Just talking, missus. Just some easy words between us.”
Kohn begins to rummage under his greatcoat for his purse but before he can find it Jonathan hands Molloy a bottle of amber liquid. “I will go back now,” the scout says.
Molloy says, “Jonathan, you are a fine man. As fine a man as any I’ve met on my travels. The good lady will be much inclined to forgive the depredations served upon her people by yours, in exchange for what is behind the glass of this bottle, God bless you.”
“Sir—” Kohn says.
“—whisht, Daniel.” Molloy hands the bottle of whiskey to the woman. “I’ll have a small chat with the woman while you wait over there by the river. Stand picket so that we are not bushwhacked by her cousins, for the love of Christ. Make yourself useful.”
Kohn watches Jonathan return the way they came. “Sir, I’m begging you, sir.”
Molloy whispers something to Two Doves and the woman laughs.
“It will be dark soon, sir,” Kohn says. He stalks over to the river’s edge, the bank a steep drop of several feet. Across the narrow, winter-sparse waters, across the grazing land that ends in the nearby hills, he can see the procession of horses, men and wagons that comprise the woodtrain. From behind him he can hear voices. In the woman’s voice is laughter, occasionally, and the give and take of conversation, and Kohn wonders idly on the impression that Molloy has upon all those who meet him. From the most depraved and desperate of whores and alcoholics to generals and lawyers and men of means, all take to the captain. All laugh with him, dip their heads to him in confidence. It is a gift he has.
The cloud cover thins briefly, as if in anticipation of night, and over the distant Big Horns the sky flares orange and pink, the clouds painted and washed with dying sunlight, and Kohn watches them. It will be dark soon. They should not be this far from the fort without horses, so lightly armed and immobile.
“Daniel,” Molloy calls over to him. “Come help me up, please. I cannot manage on my own steam.”
Kohn hears the Indian woman laugh as he turns around and walks to the awning. He lifts Molloy to his feet and hands him his crutches. Molloy stinks of whiskey but Kohn notes that Two Doves is holding the bottle and it is two-thirds full. It does not matter, he thinks. One drop is enough to start him.
“You may thank Miss Two Doves, Kohn,” Molloy says, more heat in his jesting now, in his bonhomie. “She has been a most helpful witness. There is little a bottle won’t buy a man in this life, Kohn. Very little. You’d do well to remember that.”
As they begin to walk, gingerly, over the half-buried river stones to the path, Kohn says, “Well, was Private O’Driscoll there that night? Was he there when the sutler was killed?”
“She didn’t know. She does not know the names of the men she meets, and I can understand that as