Wagons to Nowhere

by Orrin Russell

  He worked his hands over Balum’s body, pressing and prodding in a way that only a man well-versed in his trade could do. He took vials of liquid from his bag, creams and balms, and cleaned the wounds. He threaded a needle and sewed shut the gashes cut by the Farro brothers’ bootheels.

  From a stool by the cupboards Angelique watched him work. At times she stood to hold a lantern where light was needed, or clear bloodied rags and bandages from the table.

  Doc Fryer worked for the better part of two hours by lantern light, and when he had finished he returned his tools to his bag and stood back to look at Balum. Not once had he spoken.

  Angelique rose from the stool and stood next to him.

  ‘What do you have to say?’ she said.

  Doc Fryer wet his lips with his tongue, and answered in his slow drawl. ‘He was worse off last time.’

  Angelique let out her breath in relief.

  ‘He’s cut up something bad,’ said the doc, ‘but nothing’s broken. Bruises are already nasty, and so’s the swelling. See those ribs? You’d think they were broken. They aren’t. They’re gonna feel broke though.’

  ‘Anything I can do?’

  ‘All kinds of things you could do. But you know this man and so do I. He won’t take no fussing over unless he wants it. Just the way he is. But like I say, it’s just cuts and bruises. Bad ones, but they’ll heal.’

  He took his bag in his hand and placed his hat on his head. As he did so he gave a nod to Angelique and let himself out through the back door.

  16

  Balum’s eyes opened before sunup. The first thing they saw was Angelique. She slept seated on the stool by the cupboards.

  ‘ Consuelo? ’ he mumbled. ‘ Que pasó? ’

  His vision was blurred and his ears seemed to have bells ringing in them.

  She woke quickly and went to him.

  ‘Balum,’ she said, and touched his shoulder softly with her fingers. ‘Stay still Balum, don’t move.’

  He cried out in pain and fell back to the table.

  ‘Wha…?’ he began.

  ‘You’re hurt Balum. Lie still now.’

  ‘How bad?’

  ‘Doc Fryer says nothing’s broken. You need rest though, and lots of it.’

  ‘No,’ Balum negated with a small shake of his head.

  ‘You’re in no condition to move around.’

  ‘I have to get back.’

  Angelique put her hands on her hips and looked down at him lying on the kitchen table. ‘Get back to what?’

  He summed it up concisely. The expedition, Cafferty’s request, and his role in it. When she had heard it all she crossed her arms over her bosom and frowned.

  ‘That’s preposterous. Those fools have brought it upon themselves. There’s no need you playing a saviour to them all.’

  ‘I did to you, didn’t I?’

  She paused. ‘Yes. You did. That was different. You had your own reasons. Tell me, do you have your own reasons this time?’

  He thought of Leigha and Suzanne. Those were not reasons. Those were perks. He thought of Joe’s question and his answer to it: restlessness. It wasn’t good enough.

  ‘Why did those two men attack you last night? Why would they do that?’

  He did not know the answer, so did not respond.

  ‘Stay here Balum. Stay with me.’

  He turned his head towards her. ‘For how long?’

  ‘Until you’re better.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Balum…’

  He gripped the edge of the table and wrenched himself into a seated position. His legs dropped off the side and he sat clenching the table edge and gasping in pain. He felt as though his body was made of brittle wood, and each movement caused the sinews to crack and pop, sending pain rippling through his frame.

  He fought through it. He dressed himself in his clothes, and Angelique offered him a new shirt, as his own had been ripped and stained in blood.

  When he had finished dressing and put his boots on he walked gingerly to the back door. Angelique caught his arm before he could open it.

  ‘Don’t hate me Balum.’

  ‘I don’t hate you.’

  ‘You know how it would end. You and me.’

  He nodded.

  ‘Don’t do anything foolish out there. Come back when you’re done and see me. You have a place. Right here,’ she put his hand on her chest over her heart, then reached up and pulled his head down to her and kissed him.

  The roan stood tied to a post out back just as he had left it. He patted it on the neck and murmured aloud an apology to the animal. It was no way to treat a horse; saddled all night without food or drink.

  He rode out of Cheyenne in the dark of night. The eastern sky held only the faintest suggestion of the coming morning. The bounce of the saddle proved nearly unbearable, and a mile outside town he dismounted and fell to his knees in the grass. He wretched, limbs shaking and a coldness enveloping his body. His innards convulsed and he dry-heaved with groans of exertion, but nothing came out.

  The effort was painful enough to well his eyes with tears. He knelt on all fours next to the roan and let them run down his face and drip into the grass.

  When he had composed himself he returned to the saddle and pointed the horse’s nose westward.

  He found the wagon train an hour after sunrise. Twice he had passed out in the saddle and twice had been jerked awake by stabs of pain. Several of the stitches Doc Fryer had sewed him up with popped apart, and blood had begun to run from the cuts.

  Those who saw him ride up looked on in bewilderment on seeing the man bruised and bloody, drooping in the saddle. He paid them no mind. Through the mass of moving wagons he rode, past animals, walkers, carts, and the squeaks and groans of wooden wheels on axles. In the center of it all he could make out the familiar wagons of his party, and the covered cloth of his own, driven by Joe. With teeth clenched, he covered the remaining distance all the way to his own wagon, right up to the driver’s seat where he reached a hand out with his last remaining consciousness and took hold of the wooden plank.

  Joe yanked the oxen team to a stop. He was off the wagon in one jump, and Balum fell into the man’s arms, wasted and unconscious.

  17

  The bounce and roll of the wagon did not wake him. He lay in the back on a bed of blankets, shaded by the white canvas above. Disjointed dreams haunted him in a restless sleep. Consuelo, fire, a jail cell dark and damp in a Mexican prison. He dreamt he stood on the edge of a great body of water, his mission to cross, and the resolve not in him.

  It was the stop of the wagon that lifted him from sleep. The sun had neared its peak and the caravan had stopped for lunch. The front flap opened a crack and Joe stuck his head in.

  ‘You alive back there?’

  Balum bent his head up a might.

  ‘You took a beating alright,’ said Joe, climbing into the back. ‘I’ve got you some water here, and soon as we cook up some grub I’ll get you a plate. You got the strength in you to tell me what happened?’

  ‘Farros,’ he wheezed.

  ‘Farro brothers?’

  Balum nodded.

  Joe observed his partner for a moment then left the wagon bed through the canvas drape. Balum took the mug of water Joe had left and sipped the cool liquid. He could hear the voices of his party outside the wagon as they went about their afternoon routines. He stared at the canvas cover above him, his mind blank. He longed for a comforting wad of tobacco in his cheek.

  As he lay gazing upwards and thinking of tobacco, a voice sounded outside the wagon. An unmistakable voice, loud and authoritative; Frederick Nelson. Balum forgot about the tobacco and refocused.

  ‘That man Balum of yours around here?’ Nelson’s voice rang out.

  There was a brief moment of silence.

  ‘Where is he?’ sounded Nelson again. Then after a pause, ‘Loafing in the wagon? Well that bum can loaf somewhere else. I’m through with him.’

  ‘What�
��s this all about?’ said Jonathan Atkisson.

  ‘He’s a troublemaker. Rode to town last night, drunk and looking for a fight after I gave explicit directions to stay put with the wagons.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Picked a fight with Gus and Saul. Gave Gus a shiner the size of a silver dollar. I knew that man was no good when you brought him to me Jonathan, and now I’ve been proven right. You can tell him to get off my expedition and take his fight with him.’

  ‘Frederick…’ said Atkisson, but stopped as the sound of hoofbeats galloped away.

  Voices began to talk over one another, making it difficult for Balum to distinguish any single one. After a minute the canvas drape opened at the front of the wagon and Joe came through, followed by Jeb Darrow.

  Jeb’s eyes fell on Balum’s bloodied shirt. He knelt next to him and unbuttoned it, revealing the bruised and swollen skin, cut and stitched together.

  ‘My God,’ he said. ‘This man’s been beat half to death. These wounds need cleaning. You boys have turpentine around? Bandages?’

  Joe opened a case containing precisely what Jeb asked for.

  ‘Nelson came by just a minute ago,’ Jeb said as he cleaned the cuts and rebandaged them. ‘Says you went to town and picked a fight with those Farro boys. Now that don’t seem right to me. No one in their right mind would start a fight with those two together. You might have some spunk in you but you ain’t no fool. Am I right?’

  Balum nodded.

  ‘He wants you gone.’

  ‘I heard,’ said Balum.

  ‘Well don’t worry just yet. Atkisson rode off after him. Nelson might be wagon master, but most this expedition was put together by Jonathan. Most everybody here knows him, and he’s respected. Even Nelson’s got to listen to him. And he will.’

  The canvas drape opened again and Suzanne poked her head in with a plate of food.

  ‘Are you alright dear?’ she asked.

  ‘He’ll live,’ said Jeb. ‘Hand over that plate and close the drape. Man needs rest, not womenfolk fussing over him.’

  The men left him with the plate of grub. Shortly thereafter the wagon wheels set to motion and the familiar rocking returned. It rocked Balum right to sleep and into another round of hazy dreams conjuring up slivers of his past, his present, and of themes entirely the domain of his subconscious.

  He woke again before they stopped for the night, and lay on his back on the blankets, wishing again for tobacco. He stared at nothing in the darkened interior of the wagon and listened to the noises outside; the crackle of the campfire, the snorts of the animals as they were unhitched, unsaddled and cared for.

  When Joe appeared with a steaming plate of potatoes and flank steak, Balum perked up.

  ‘Hungry?’ he asked.

  Balum nodded.

  ‘That’s a good sign. More good news too. Atkisson talked Nelson down, you’re alright to stay on. Atkisson though, he’s none too pleased. He puts a lot of stock in Nelson, and I’ll tell you what, I think he’s swallowed that story of you starting the fight.’

  ‘He’s got the wool over his eyes,’ said Balum. ‘Can’t see through the man’s surface.’

  ‘We were up near the front of the pack this afternoon. Not far behind Nelson’s wagon.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘I thought you said that wagon was near empty.’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘Not anymore. Something’s weighing it down. Tracks sink in and there’s no easy bounce to it. They must have stocked up in Cheyenne.’

  Balum frowned. ‘Doesn’t make sense,’ he said.

  ‘No, it doesn’t.’

  Balum’s eyes glazed over and he ran through the events of the night before. Charles and Will, Angelique, the fight.

  ‘Hold on,’ he said. ‘You remember that munitions shopkeeper? The one who sold us that dynamite?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Ran into him last night. He was saying something about the Farro brothers. Something...damn it I was drunk. What did he say?’

  Joe’s black eyes watched him, waiting.

  ‘Something about heavy lifting. Where was I for the heavy lifting. Now what do you make of that?’

  Joe shrugged.

  ‘Said something about starting a war. Goddamn it Joe, what was he talking about?’

  ‘You’re sure that conversation happened?’

  ‘I’m sure.’

  ‘Nothing adds up. Hasn’t since we started out of Denver.’

  ‘We need to find out what’s in that wagon, Joe. Whatever it is, it sure as hell isn’t flour and salt pork.’

  18

  The morning sun that broke over the Oregon Expedition snuck one of its rays through the back flap of Balum’s wagon cover. It found him still bruised and battered, but absent the crushing hangover the whiskey had given him. By the time the ray of sun woke him the caravan had already set itself to motion. Breakfast had been made, the wagons hitched, animals fed and watered.

  He winced as he rolled to an elbow and pushed himself into a seated position. Barely had he done so when Joe reached back and opened the front canvas flap a peak. His eyes gave Balum a once-over from head to toe.

  ‘Might want to lay back down and look a little sicker if you know what’s good for you,’ he whispered.

  Balum didn’t ask questions. No sooner had he dropped back to the blankets than Suzanne Darrow’s voice sounded just outside the canvas. A question was put to Joe, to which he answered in silent gestures, and the next moment she was climbing through the canvas and into the wagon bed.

  The smile that stretched across his face was not insincere. Not in the least. It was an honest reaction to the sight of a woman seldom seen on the western frontier. A woman of undeniable beauty, blessed with genes that had granted her a figure in excess of the laws of justice.

  The morning’s attire had been selected specifically for Balum. It did more to ease his suffering than any tinctures a medic could provide. A soft fabric wrapped around her thighs, hugging a voluptuous rear end and winched tight around a delicate waist. The same fabric made its way up her torso, and cupped two large, exquisitely spherical breasts. It did not cover them completely, but instead ended several inches above her nipples, allowing a great swath of cleavage to bounce in the open air.

  Never in his life had Balum seen such clothing. As different as things might be back East, not even there could he imagine such revealing attire was the norm. The soft features of her face looked at him in concern, and she crawled to his side.

  ‘Oh you poor thing,’ she cooed. ‘Don’t you worry, I’m going to make you feel better. Let me see these cuts.’

  She opened his shirtfront without hesitation and began to fuss over him. The kit containing bandages and turpentine was at hand, and she bathed his wounds and rewrapped them with fresh dressings. Her fingers were soft and comforting on his skin. He let his eyes take in her face and the heavy breasts that swung gently over him as the wagon lurched along the bumpy ground. She murmured soothing words and took her eyes away from her work to look at him and smile when she caught him gazing at her breasts.

  ‘Does that feel better?’ she asked as she worked.

  ‘Much better,’ he replied.

  She knelt next to him, her knees alongside his waist. The wagon jerked, sending her towards him, and she grabbed hold of his shoulder to steady herself, letting out a soft giggle.

  ‘Everybody is talking about you,’ she said. ‘Some say you started that fight. That you’re a troublemaker. My Uncle doesn’t believe it though. He says you’re no fool.’

  ‘What do you believe?’

  ‘I don’t like those two brothers. I think they’re repulsive. I believe just what you told Uncle Jeb; that they ganged up on you.’

  ‘That’s what happened.’

  ‘I believe you,’ she patted his chest. There was a creak, the wagon teetered upwards on one side, then fell back to the ground with a thump. It threw Suzanne forward, spilling her onto Balum. Her body landed
on his, her plump breasts careening directly into his face. The cleavage split apart for him and his nose and eyeballs were buried between two massive mounds of flesh.

  He wrapped his arms around her waist in a reflexive response and squeezed her into him. Her hand shot out and landed directly on his crotch. His cock had slowly engorged throughout her doting on him, and her fingers wrapped around the swollen rod beneath his trousers.

  ‘Oh,’ she giggled when he released her. ‘You are feeling better, aren’t you?’

  Her hand gently caressed his cock through his pants. The urge came over him to grab her and squeeze her giant breasts back into his face. He wanted the smell of her flesh back in his nose, and the soft feel of her body on top of his.

  Before he could respond he heard the heavy smack of Joe’s palm hitting the driving bench outside. Not a second later the voice of Leigha Atkisson could be heard, followed by the sound of her feet climbing aboard.

  The canvas drape moved aside and she appeared in the opening.

  ‘Good mor...oh. Hello Miss Darrow.’

  A look crossed the young girl’s face. Balum lay on his back with his shirt opened. Suzanne knelt next to him, her face flushed and red and the tops of her breasts large and exposed before her. The faces of both her and Balum contained expressions unique to those who have been caught at something unseemly.

  ‘I just came…’ she started and stopped, unsure of herself. ‘I brought you some biscuits and jam. I didn’t see you at breakfast and thought you might be hungry.’

  ‘That’s so kind of you Leigha,’ said Suzanne. ‘Please, come in. I was just changing Mr. Balum’s dressings.’

  ‘Oh no, that’s alright. I’ll leave them here.’

  She set them inside the wagon and retracted her head, letting the drape fall closed again before Balum could thank her.

  Suzanne looked down at Balum. She reached her hand back to his trousers and gave his cock a squeeze, then pulled the canvas drape aside and exited.