Dan Simmons - Black Hills

And how, when we were in the box at yet another performance of Julius Caesar or arriving at yet another general’s or politician’s home for yet another reception—I was the Boy General, perhaps the most famous young general of the war, and much in demand, as were you for your loveliness—you would squeeze my hand without looking at me and blush most becomingly, and I would know you were thinking about the maidenly absence beneath your silk gown and petticoats. And both of us then could think only about the play or reception being over and of returning to our sacred little room at the odious boardinghouse.

My darling Libbie.

I have been thinking about the autumn three years ago, just after my Yellowstone Campaign, when you finally came out to join me at Fort Abraham Lincoln. The frame house the soldiers had built for us there was beautiful; the first real home you and I had ever occupied.

That first Saturday you were there, you and I rose before dawn and rode far west out on the Dakota plain, leaving the fort far behind even before the sun rose. You complained because decorum demanded that you ride sidesaddle, even though I know you prefer to ride like a boy. By nine a.m. we were far, far out on the prairie and we roughly followed the meanderings of that one small stream that curled east back toward Bismarck and the fort and the Missouri River, the few cottonwoods along that sad little creek the only signs of life except for the low-nibbled grass and sage and Spanish bayonet.

We came across a single bull buffalo and I told you to stay back while I shot it, but you rode along close behind, clinging tight to your saddle horn with your free hand as your horse galloped faster than any lady riding sidesaddle had a right to demand of the animal. The bull was old enough—and perhaps alone enough—that he quit his half-hearted loping within a mile and merely stood there on the prairie, head down, occasionally taking an absent-minded munch of the short-cropped prairie grass, acting as if we were no threat at all.

We both dismounted. You held the horses’ reins while I removed my custom-made Remington sporting rifle from its scabbard. There was no tree or branch to use as a support, but I went to one knee and steadied the relatively short but heavy rifle as best I could.

The Remington No. 1 Sporting Rifle had become my favorite during my Yellowstone expedition, and I’d killed antelope, buffalo, elk, blacktail deer, white wolves, geese, and prairie chickens with it at distances up to 630 yards. (I confess to you, Libbie, that some of the prairie chickens simply exploded into feathers upon the impact of the 425-gram .50-caliber bullet backed by 70 grains of black powder.) The .50–70 had allowed me to bring down forty-one antelopes at a distance of 250 yards, so I had little doubt that it would serve for this single old bull bison at less than a hundred yards.

It took only one shot to the heart. The ancient bull dropped as if eager to leave its lonely world.

When you and I rode up to the fallen beast, you said, “What will you do now, darling?” and I replied, “Oh, send some of the men out to carve up the carcass, although I fear this old fellow will be tough chewing. But the head is magnificent.”

“What would the Indians do?” you asked.

“The Indians,” I said, surprised. “You mean the Sioux or Cheyenne?”

“Yes,” you said, smiling sweetly at me as we sat there in the heat, the saddles creaking under us, flies already beginning to buzz around the dead bison’s blood.

“The Indians would immediately cut its belly open and eat all or part of the poor fellow’s liver,” I said.

You slid off your horse and looked up at me. Your face, so radiant in the clear, warm autumn sunlight, held a new kind of excitement, one I had never seen before.

“Oh , let’s do that, Autie,” you said.

I remember that I stayed mounted and just laughed. “We would both be covered with blood,” I said. “Hardly the way for the commanding officer’s wife to return from a ride during her first week at Fort Abe Lincoln. What would the men in the regiment think?”

In response you began stripping out of your clothes. I remember glancing around anxiously, but the prairie was its usual tan and barren early-autumn void. Except for a low line of willows along the creek a mile to the north, only twenty miles of mid-morning flat prairie emptiness met the eye. I dismounted and rushed to disrobe next to you.

When we were naked except for our boots (the prairie is a living pincushion of tiny cacti and not-so-tiny thorns and stickers and quick-scuttling biting things), I took my long hunting knife from its beaded scabbard and slit the bison along the length of its distended belly. The mass of organs and connecting tubules and endless yards of gray-glistening guts slid out as easily as the dumped contents of a black and hairy purse. You couldn’t believe it when I cut away the liver and held it up between us.

“Dear God.” You laughed excitedly. “It’s as large as a man’s head.”

“Larger than this man’s,” I said, and began slicing into the heavy mass. A fluid thick and black burbled up in the cuts along with the blood. “Do you want the first slice?” I asked, glancing yet again over my shoulder to make sure that we were alone and unobserved.

“No,” you said. “Do not cut it up as if we were at a table, Autie. Let us take communion here as if we were Sioux or Cheyenne.”

You took the liver—you were barely able to hold it up, I remember, and I had to help you steady it just above your face—and your perfect white teeth flashed as you bit deep. You gnawed that chunk of the old bull’s liver off and away and then chewed maniacally rather than choke. The blood and bile (or whatever that darker fluid was) spattered your chin and cheeks and bare breasts and the slight bulge of your belly.

I would have laughed then, but there was something too ceremonial, too ancient, too physical… too terrifying… in watching you take yet another bite of that liver, the blood now flowing down over your chin like a red Niagara.

Straining, your shoulders and soiled upper arms showing muscles I’d never noticed, you handed the heavy, bleeding, seeping mass to me.

I managed to chew off three heavy chunks. I usually enjoy the cooked liver from bison, antelopes, deer, or cows, tossed in flour perhaps and fried up with bacon and onions, but this raw, thick-skinned organ tasted overwhelmingly sour. There was as much of the blood and heavy liquid in my mouth as there was meat.

I did not laugh. I chewed slowly, sacramentally, and then tossed the heavy liver back into the fly-gathering pile of guts and heart and stomach and more guts.

We both drank deeply from our respective canteens then.

I looked down at us—blood everywhere in streaks and rivulets and spatters and explosive patterns across my scarred flesh and your ivory-white skin, it looked as if I were wearing red gauntlets up to the elbow—and I said, “Now what, my dearest?”

Setting your canteen carefully back on your saddle, handling it gingerly so as not to leave more bloody handprints than necessary, you said, “Can we reach that creek on one horse?”

I looked toward the meandering line of willows to the north. “On one horse?” I understood your logic then. “There aren’t many horses I would trust with that duty, but Vic is one of them,” I said, and began removing his saddle and gear.