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Show THE ZEPHYR/FEBRUARY-MARCH work now. Butch’s eyes popped wide, wild sparks in the whites reflected from the campfire light, as he raised up on his shoulders, stout arms twitching, spastic. “What, Butch? What?” Butch sighed, relaxed, and closed his eyes. And died. It took Calamity a few minutes to get her mind around Butch’s new condition. The poultice hadn’t helped. Her tender ministrations hadn’t helped. “There, there,” hadn't helped either. “Well goddam you, Butch Parker, anyways.” Crickets churruped, and a coyote howled. The night smelled of burnt sagewood, old blood, and tobacco. And Butch.A comet passed among the stars. Nobody saw Calamity Djinn cry. She cried till dawn. 2008 their owndamnselves.” With that, he’d taught her to fish, shoot, skin, fight, smoke, patch clothes and wounds, cook, and fix a fair rosehip tea. After he taught her all he knew, he loaned her to his friend Shot in the Hip, a Shoshone medicine man. “Ol’ Shotsie’ll give you the lowdown on medicine manning, stuff even I don’t know. Y’ever need to set your own leg, or take out a bullet or an arrow, you'll remember your lessons.” Calamity learned how to use and abuse more than three hundred herbs, roots, flowers, leaves, barks, pollens, sap, seeds, stems, stalks, and grasses. She learned how to use bear fat and wild onion to make a salve for burns, how to use badger gall and flax seed to brew a tea to cure headaches, how to use dried moss and coyote shit to staunch a wound. She learned how to cure every ailment, harm, malady, and complaint known to man, Indian, and horse. “What else is there?” Calamity had asked Shot in the Hip when her training was near done. It had taken up the latter half of the winter and early spring her first year west of the Missouri. She was smart, a quick learner. # The creekbank ground a hundred yards away afforded better digging, so Calamity decided to bury Butch there. She dug with her hatchet, and her toad sticker, and a good pole she found, and with her fingers. She dug without let up, wanting to be sure Butch was deep enough that no goddam coyote dug him up. She dug as the sun rose above the Winds, sweat soaking her buckskins, making her stink and itch. Then she rolled Butch’s huge corpse onto a makeshift travois--he was still wrapped in her buffalo robe--and tied it down with rawhide rope. She dragged the contraption across the grassy meadow to the grave. Beside the hole, she caught her breath before speaking. “I ain’t said a prayer in thirty--I mean twenty-nine--years. Sorry, Lord. Been too busy, I reckon, to pay you no social calls.” She sniffled, and blew her nose on her sleeve. “But I expect you know all that, about me, about the beaver trade going to the dogs in these parts--hell, fifteen years ago, and more--about me wanting to settle, have kids. About this here miserable, no good, ornery, son-of-a-bitch--” She anchored fists on narrow hips and addressed the Winds, as if God lived there, and could hear her from where she stood a good four days west. “WNell, never mind. This here’s Butch Parker, and maybe he never amounted to much--I guess you know--but I loved him anyway. I--I--” The old Indian, as tiny as Calamity, frowned, adding wrinkles to his leathery face. “You know everything Indians know, and everything the French and Americans know. You're a good doctor. What else is there to know?” “How to raise the dead?” At the time, Calamity had thought she was joking. # The batwing doors of the Lucky Nickel Saloon, on Laramie’s muddy Second Avenue, swung open, and a woman stepped inside. She stood there, firm as an old cottonwood. She wore buckskins, knee-high moccasins spread in a shooter’s stance. Besides the oldfashioned garb, like the old-time trappers used to wear before the beaver trade petered out thirty years gone and more, the woman toted an ancient Sharps, as long as she was tall. The doors swung shut behind her, squeaking. It was an hour before noon, and the saloon was empty, except for Mick, the Irish bartender, and Casper, the one-eyed ex-gunfighter, who wasn’t very drunk yet, and Banky, but he was passed out under a and his big hands trembled. It took a lot to rile Mick, who frowned, even in a fight. : It took Calamity a few minutes to get her mind around Butch’s new condition. The poultice hadn’t helped. Her tender ministrations hadn’t helped. “There, there,” hadn’t helped either. table. Jack Thatcher hadn‘t arrived yet. The woman peered around, squinty-eyed, adjusting to the dim interior. “Lord a’mighty,” Mick whispered, awe cracking his deep bass voice. His eyes bugged, seldom neither smiled nor “What?” Casper said. He didn’t turn around to see who'd come in. Couldn't see worth diddly anyway. Mick nodded toward the door. “Know who that is?” Sweat speckled his broad forehead. Casper turned at last. He squinted. “Reckon I don’t.” “Daughter of Butch Parker and Calamity Djinn.” Casper turned back to Mick, his thin brows raised in inquiry. “What?” he said, a touch worried-sounding. She burst out crying again. Wiping away tears, she undid the ropes that secured the robe-clad corpse to the travois, and heaved Butch toward his grave. _ The robe slipped from her sweaty han ds, and Butch fell part way out, onto his back, feet and legs in the grave. Cold dead eyes looked up at Calamity. “You know the story, don’t you?” Mick whispered. The woman stalked toward them ‘across the sawdust floor. “Aw, that’s just a fairy tale,” Casper said, voice wavering, “made up to scare children and--” “Pardon me, barkeep.” The woman propped the Sharps, muzzle up, against the bar. “Yés'm?” Mick's voice cracked again. “I just got into town,” she said, “and I’m looking for me a husband.” I shut them eyes, didn‘t I? ~ That did it. “T can’t hardly marry me no corpse, now can I, huh?” She'd said that. She'd tried a Jimsonweed poultice and “There, there.” Neither answered, but she had more tricks in her possibles sack. # Twenty years before, Calamity was named Sarah Jane Foster. Indians killed her folks the same summer she met Bob Beaumont, a handsome young fellow, son of a nearby Ken Rand writes fiction and nonfiction fulltime from his home in West Jordan, Utah. See his biography and bibliography at www.sfwa.org/members/Rand/ Fairwood Press is NOW accepting preorders for Where Angels Fear, Ken’s short story collection, volume 1, (the dark stories). Details at www.fairwoodpress.com. Go to “catalog” then “fiction collections.” farmer. An adventurer, Bob was. When Sarah Jane lost her folks, Bob was about to head out West, to see some land, and trap beaver in the Shining Mountains. Bereft of family, in love with Bob, Sarah joined him. Bob fell off his horse en route and broke his fool neck. Sarah, with nowhere else to go and nothing else to do, buried him and moved on. She joined up with old Jim Bridger’s outfit. When she told him her story, she got dubbed “Calamity” on the spot. Bridger told her. “Nobody treks these here mountains without knowing how to do for | ESPRESSO CAFE 59 &. Main in McStiff Plaza 259.555! MARK TWAIN comes to MONDO The finest ESPRESSO COFFEES on the COLORADO PLATEAU... 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