some animals that looked like gray dogs, but bigger and heavier, with huge heads and jaws. These must be the infamous buffalo wolves Otto talked about, the lobos. Fallen on hard times, now that the buffalo had been killed off hereabouts. It struck her that the wolves, nearly out of provender, were not unlike the nation itself, with the Panic raging. True Americans, these lobos.
Otto had said that the distance to Crooked Creek and their rendezvous with Captain McKay was only some thirty miles from Dodge City, half a day’s ride for a man on a swift pony. But it would take them longer. The oxen were slow. They could have made better time staying on the Camp Supply road, but Otto was fearful of Indian attack. Hostiles. She thought again of the poison he’d given her. She could never “bite the big bite,” as he put it. What would the Indians—Mister Lo—do with her if indeed she was cornered? She was young and not bad-looking. He wouldn’t tomahawk her or scalp her or torture her, he did that only to old women and men of fighting age. Didn’t he? The young, especially those of the feminine gland, Mister Lo took captive. He would rape her probably, but rape wasn’t fatal, and perhaps he’d then claim her for a bride. It happened, you read about it all the time. It had happened to Tom’s mother. What killed her, anyway? Probably pneumonia or smallpox or something even worse; the sanitation in their camps was said to be dreadful.
She reached into her blouse to withdraw the poison capsule from between her breasts, where, lacking a reticule, she’d placed it for safekeeping. In the sunlight she saw that the brass was tinged with verdigris. She threw the horrid package away into the prairie grass, not looking to see where it fell.
Whatever happened, she could never bring herself to use it. Jenny Dousmann would be no martyr to virginity.
T HAT FIRST NIGHT they stopped to make camp with an hour of daylight left. Otto led the wagons to a shallow coulee he knew not far off the trail. Here they would be out of the wind, with water close at hand. A seep spring flowed year round at the head of the coulee. After they had unhitched the horses, mules, and oxen, Tom and Otto rubbed them down with gunny sacks while Jenny filled two camp kettles with spring water. Then they led the animals to water. Tom gathered dried buffalo chips from the surrounding grass and started a small, nearly smokeless cookfire. There was no firewood to speak of, just saltbush, prickly pear, and a scrubby chokecherry or two growing along the seep as it ran down the coulee to disappear in the sand.
“Perhaps there is some good to this slaughter of the buffalo, after all,” Otto said. “If they were still here in their millions, our pleasant little spring would be a stinking bog filled with their dung, the grass trampled and cropped so short that our stock couldn’t feed.”
He laughed, slid his new Sharps from its leather case in the smaller wagon, and threw a loaded belt of cartridges over his shoulder.
“I saw some prongbucks a while ago,” he said. “Maybe I can kill one for supper, spare us eating bully beef.”
Jenny watched him out of sight, heading back the way they had come. Then she, too, went to the wagon and removed her Henry from where it lay wrapped in some sacking.
The Henry was a slim, beautiful, lever-action rifle with an oiled walnut stock and a steel-blue octagon barrel. On its brass receiver a previous owner had engraved a melodramatic etching of a frontiersman shooting two Hostiles. About a dozen more Indians lay dead in the background. One of them reached an arm skyward as if to touch it one last time. Poor Lo! On the other side was a scene of a mighty stag’s death leap at the sting of the fatal shot, its long-tined antlers laid back in graceful agony, with the same bold frontiersman standing off at a distance in the forest primeval, his rifle at his shoulder, dribbling gunsmoke.
In the wagonbed Jenny found the box of
Otto had said that the distance to Crooked Creek and their rendezvous with Captain McKay was only some thirty miles from Dodge City, half a day’s ride for a man on a swift pony. But it would take them longer. The oxen were slow. They could have made better time staying on the Camp Supply road, but Otto was fearful of Indian attack. Hostiles. She thought again of the poison he’d given her. She could never “bite the big bite,” as he put it. What would the Indians—Mister Lo—do with her if indeed she was cornered? She was young and not bad-looking. He wouldn’t tomahawk her or scalp her or torture her, he did that only to old women and men of fighting age. Didn’t he? The young, especially those of the feminine gland, Mister Lo took captive. He would rape her probably, but rape wasn’t fatal, and perhaps he’d then claim her for a bride. It happened, you read about it all the time. It had happened to Tom’s mother. What killed her, anyway? Probably pneumonia or smallpox or something even worse; the sanitation in their camps was said to be dreadful.
She reached into her blouse to withdraw the poison capsule from between her breasts, where, lacking a reticule, she’d placed it for safekeeping. In the sunlight she saw that the brass was tinged with verdigris. She threw the horrid package away into the prairie grass, not looking to see where it fell.
Whatever happened, she could never bring herself to use it. Jenny Dousmann would be no martyr to virginity.
T HAT FIRST NIGHT they stopped to make camp with an hour of daylight left. Otto led the wagons to a shallow coulee he knew not far off the trail. Here they would be out of the wind, with water close at hand. A seep spring flowed year round at the head of the coulee. After they had unhitched the horses, mules, and oxen, Tom and Otto rubbed them down with gunny sacks while Jenny filled two camp kettles with spring water. Then they led the animals to water. Tom gathered dried buffalo chips from the surrounding grass and started a small, nearly smokeless cookfire. There was no firewood to speak of, just saltbush, prickly pear, and a scrubby chokecherry or two growing along the seep as it ran down the coulee to disappear in the sand.
“Perhaps there is some good to this slaughter of the buffalo, after all,” Otto said. “If they were still here in their millions, our pleasant little spring would be a stinking bog filled with their dung, the grass trampled and cropped so short that our stock couldn’t feed.”
He laughed, slid his new Sharps from its leather case in the smaller wagon, and threw a loaded belt of cartridges over his shoulder.
“I saw some prongbucks a while ago,” he said. “Maybe I can kill one for supper, spare us eating bully beef.”
Jenny watched him out of sight, heading back the way they had come. Then she, too, went to the wagon and removed her Henry from where it lay wrapped in some sacking.
The Henry was a slim, beautiful, lever-action rifle with an oiled walnut stock and a steel-blue octagon barrel. On its brass receiver a previous owner had engraved a melodramatic etching of a frontiersman shooting two Hostiles. About a dozen more Indians lay dead in the background. One of them reached an arm skyward as if to touch it one last time. Poor Lo! On the other side was a scene of a mighty stag’s death leap at the sting of the fatal shot, its long-tined antlers laid back in graceful agony, with the same bold frontiersman standing off at a distance in the forest primeval, his rifle at his shoulder, dribbling gunsmoke.
In the wagonbed Jenny found the box of
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