Page 20 of Sure as Shooting

“Yes,” said the major. “It was fortunate it was not he who mistook you for a Digger warrior.”

The siblings wished to reminisce, to go over the stories of last winter, to at last come to a conclusion as to how they had lost each other. Bud suggested they go to his room at Boling’s Hotel, so they walked over there.

Belle had never been to a “room” in Boling’s Hotel, and indeed it wasn’t like any hotel she could recall back in Missouri. The partitions between the hovels were merely sheets of hanging canvas, and Bud shared the eight-foot cell with another absent fellow named James Fell. They sat on Bud’s rickety cot and held hands, their knees touching. Bud explained that last winter in the mountains, it had taken him a week to find a cabin with a human being, and once he’d raised enough men willing to go back to find her, not a female bone was to be found around their makeshift shack.

“You must have suffered so much, dear Belle,” Bud nearly sobbed.

“Not so badly. Not any more than we suffered in that prairie schooner we lived in for months crossing the plains. I mean, cold is cold. Snow is snow. The only way to ever stay warm is the American way—a snug, paneled house with a rock fireplace. And a feather counterpane.”

“Or get the goddamned hell out of the goddamned mountains,” Bud said with a new ferocity, gnashing his teeth in anger and wrenching her hands. “I tell you, Bellissima. I’m going to open up a trading post to rival that bastard Ashbury’s kingdom, but we’ve got to eliminate these Injuns first. You’ve got plenty of gripes against them. I saw as well as you how they bashed in poor Samantha’s little tiny head—hell, Bellissima. I had to bury her because you were loco with grief!”

Belle didn’t want to think about Samantha. “Major Ashbury doesn’t seem like such a horrible bastard. He’s given me a room in his house in exchange for housekeeping duties.”

Releasing her hands, Bud leaped to his feet. “Housekeeping duties? What does he think you are—a maid?”

Belle closed her eyes patiently. “Well, yes, actually, Bud. What skills do I have other than keeping a house and playing the piano?”

But Bud was determined to rant. “Who the hell does he think he is—Major Frémont? Surely you must know what his tomfool out-and-out doughhead intentions are, ‘giving’ you a room in his house!”

“Well, Bud. It’s a much nicer room than this one, you have to admit.”

“I admit nothing!” Bud paced the small, smelly enclosure—he hadn’t allowed her to sit on Jim Fell’s cot, as Jim had puked on it the night before, and an army of crawling bugs infested the ticking. “Listen, Bellissima. I’m not letting you out of my sights again, but we have to exterminate these red devils of the forest. I was trying to get into the Ahwahnee Valley to find you, as that’s where I heard those critters from the salt lake went after they murdered everyone in our party. I was sure you were with Tenaya—that miserable bastard from the creek swamp. Come with us, Bellissima! You can be with the scouting party. You know your way around those parts. And if Ashbury isn’t as big of a bastard as I suspect him of being, he’ll give you the finest buffalo robes to sleep in—not that I want you to owe him anything, hear? I’ll buy them with my battalion pay, by gum!”

Belle nodded. “It’s all right, Bud. I’m accustomed to sleeping on the ground. I haven’t slept well on Major Ashbury’s hair mattress. Some sort of—female hysteria, I suppose. But I’ll come with you. I’m only acquainted with three men in California now, and I don’t want to be left alone again.”