by Sharon Sala
When Eulis stomped back into camp he was grinning and holding up a freshly skinned squirrel.
“Got it with one shot!” he crowed, then did a double take when he saw Letty in pants—his pants. “What’s that you’re trying to wear on your legs?”
“I’m not trying, I’m doing it,” she said, took the squirrel, hacked it up into a few large pieces and tossed it in the water.
“Them’s my pants,” Eulis said.
“Not anymore,” Letty said.
Eulis frowned. “It ain’t seemly for a lady to—”
“Oh, shut up, Eulis. I might be redeemed and got myself some religion, but that only means my sins were forgiven. It still doesn’t make a lady out of me. I’m out of dresses and you’ve got pants to spare. I can’t cross the Rockies butt naked.”
Eulis sighed. She had a point, but he still hated to give up those pants. Since he couldn’t complain about her mode of dress, he figured he’d take a shot at her cooking skills since they both knew they were nonexistent.
“Don’t forget to toss in a little salt,” he said, as he pointed to the pot.
Letty nodded and reached behind Eulis’s bedroll for the salt bag. She got a big pinch, tossed it in the pot, and gave it a quick stir.
“I’m going to the bushes,” she said. “Be right back.”
“Watch out for—”
“Yeah, yeah, I know. Watch out for the skunks.”
Eulis frowned. “Just watch out, all right?”
Letty wiggled her fingers beneath Eulis’s nose and made a face at him.
“I’m watching… you do the same.”
Eulis was watching all right—watching her shapely hips swaying hither and yon as she walked into the trees. It occurred to him to be glad that the only emotions he ever felt towards her were either empathy or fear, because she looked a whole lot better in those pants than he did.
So they cooked the squirrel, ate the meal, and passed the night without concern. The next morning they broke their fast, hitched up the team, and resumed their journey. The days and nights became a collage of heat, hunger, thirst, and misery, interspersed with an occasional moment of realization that they might not live to see the Colorado gold fields after all.
Letty couldn’t remember a time when they hadn’t been on the trail. Her years of screwing drunken cowboys seemed like it had happened to someone else. She’d lost weight, but was stronger and browner, and she wouldn’t let herself think about the times when’ she’d had plenty to eat and a bath every night.
At the same time, Eulis had sweated away the last of his yearnings for whiskey, become a better shot, and learned to appreciate Letty’s tenacity and her refusal to quit.
The trail they’d been following was vague at best, and most of the time non-existent. They gauged their direction by sunrise, sunset, and the stars at night. They only way they knew for sure they were doing it right, was because the thin blue line of the mountains on the horizon was becoming larger and darker. Danger was with them every mile of the way, sometimes they knew it, sometimes they did not.
On a dark, moonless night when they’d been without water for almost twenty-four hours, they were forced to stop and make dry camp. Their water barrel was empty and the canteens had been empty even longer.
“We need water bad,” Eulis said.
Letty sighed. “Well, don’t look at me. I haven’t had a bath since Sunday, and then it wasn’t a real bath. I just rolled around in that muddy creek and pretended I was clean.”
Eulis frowned. “What day is it now?”
“It’s Thursday… I think.”
“So, what do you think we oughta do?” Eulis asked.
Letty turned and stared toward the mountains. Her gut knotted as she thought about how many days they had yet to go before they even reached the foothills.
“I’d say, first off, we better say our prayers real good tonight before we go to sleep, because if we don’t get ourselves a miracle, we won’t ever have to worry about anything again.”
Eulis sighed. “I’m sorry.”
“What for?” Letty asked.
“I’m the one who suggested tryin’ out the gold fields.”
“Yeah, well you didn’t hear me begging you not to go, did you?”
“No, I reckon not,” Eulis said.
“Look at it this way. We’re closer than we were the day before, and that’s called progress. So if we’re still making progress, then what more could we ask?”
“Beats me,” Eulis said, and took their bedrolls out of the back of the wagon.
“What are you gonna do?” Letty asked.
“I thought you might want a little privacy while I shake out the bedrolls.”
Letty did a three hundred and sixty degree turn and then gestured wildly around them, to the treeless land and the horizon that went on forever.
“Privacy? Where do you suppose I might find me some of that?”
Eulis frowned. He hated it when she caught him saying something dumb, and this was one of those times. There wasn’t a bush to be had for forty miles, nor a hill to climb, or a ditch in which to squat.
“I suppose you’ll have to use your imagination,” he said.
Letty thumped him up beside his ear.
“Then close your eyes while I go over there and pee and imagine I have a gun up your ass, because one look from you and constipation will be a thing of the past.
Eulis frowned. “All you had to do was say so. I don’t need to be threatened to do the gentlemanly thing, you know.”
Letty stomped off a short distance away, untied the rope around her waist, then glanced over her shoulder to where Eulis was standing. Even though they’d seen each other naked more than once, their relationship was still one to need boundaries. Satisfied that Eulis was looking in another direction, she dropped her pants, and squatted. To be on the safe side, she closed her eyes, reasoning that if she couldn’t see him, then he couldn’t see her.
Night came. They chewed on a piece of jerky, hobbled the mules, and then tied them to the opposite side of the wagon.
“You gonna build a fire?” Letty asked, as Eulis shook out their bedrolls.
“Nothing to burn,” Eulis said.
Letty looked up. The sky was peppered with stars, but she could barely make out Eulis’s shape.
“Sure is dark.”
“Yeah.”
“I think I’ll sleep in the wagon,” Letty said, then crawled up into the wagon and shoved some boxes around to make room for her to stretch out.
“I’ll bunk under it,” Eulis added.
A few minutes later, except for the occasional snort from the mules, the prairie was quiet. Letty fell asleep looking up at the sky and listening to Eulis snore. She was dreaming that she was back in Lizard Flats at the White Dove Saloon and some drunken cowboy was breathing hard against her ear.
“Go ’way,” she mumbled, and swatted at the cowboy, but his persistent kisses and snuffles against her ear didn’t stop.
Letty rolled from her right side to her left, but the aggravation continued.
“I’m done for the night,” she mumbled again.
Something pulled at her hair. She reached up and slapped at the cowboy’s face. He snorted. She sat up with a jerk, then gasped and clapped a hand over her mouth to keep from screaming.
It was daylight, and as far as the eye could see in any direction, both the wagon and the mules they’d tied to it were surrounded by buffalo.
The heat from their bodies was visible, as steam rose from their great wooly humps in the cool morning air. The smell was unlike anything she’d ever known—something dank and musky, coupled with the overpowering scents of fresh urine and manure as they grazed their way past. Every so often an intermittent bellow would sound from out beyond the wagon, at which time a small plume of dust would fill the air, along with the sound of heads butting and calves bawling.
Slowly, so as not to startle the vast sea of beasts, Letty crawled to her knees, and then leaned
over the side of the wagon. Even as she was leaning she was praying that Eulis was still there, and not scattered in bits and pieces beneath a million hooves.
She thought she could see the corner of his blanket, and leaned a little farther over, calling softly.
“Eulis… are you there?”
No sound. No answer.
Letty’s throat tightened as fear spiked. She called a little louder.
“Eulis.”
Nothing.
A buffalo cow shoved a young bull out of her way, and in the process knocked Letty’s head against the wagon. The pain was quick and sharp, and she quickly pulled herself upright, and crawled to the middle of the wagon bed, rubbing the ear that had been thumped. Her hands were shaking. She wanted to scream. Instead, she watched in horror as a large bull with a broken horn suddenly bumped the wagon with his head, shoving aside a young calf as if demanding smooth passage.
For just a moment, Letty found herself staring into a pair of black, emotionless eyes, and felt as if she was in the presence of the Devil himself.
Her stomach knotted. She started to pray.
“Oh Lord, please… I’ve never asked you for much and expected even less, but I’m begging you now, get us out of this mess… alive if you please.”
At that point, she felt a loud thump on the bottom of the wagon bed and figured that Eulis was awake.
“Eulis… is that you?”
“Jesus God All Mighty!”
Letty sighed. It was Eulis all right, and he was obviously awake.
“Don’t move,” she said.
“Too late,” he mumbled, and started to curse.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Other than the fact that I peed my pants and we’re probably gonna die, not a damned thing.”
“Eulis…”
“What?”
“What are we going to do?”
“Hell if I know, Leticia! I can’t see daylight farther than a foot on either side of this wagon. You tell me.”
Letty looked about her and shuddered. “They’re everywhere.”
“What do you mean, everywhere?”
“They’re as far as I can see in every direction.”
“Lord have mercy,” Eulis mumbled, then a few moments later, called out. “Don’t panic, but I’m comin’ up.”
“No! No! What if they see you and start a stampede?”
Eulis sighed. “I know I’m not as pretty as you, but I ain’t gonna make any sudden moves. Just stay still.”
Before Letty could answer, she saw Eulis’s hands grip the back end of the wagon and then slowly, he pulled himself up and over, landing with a soft thump on top of Letty’s legs. For once, she didn’t have a thing to say, which in itself was frightening.
Finally, he got the guts to look and got up on his hands and knees. If he hadn’t already peed his pants, he might have done it again.
It was like looking at a dark and breathing flood of mass destruction, moving slowly upon the land, and trampling everything in its path.
He flinched, as if someone had just punched him in the belly and looked at Letty.
“Eulis?”
He shook his head. “I reckon we’re done for.”
She started to cry.
Rescue The Perishing
The sun came up, illuminating even more of the disastrous position in which Eulis and Letty had landed. Letty sat motionless with her head down on her knees, too overwhelmed to look or move, for fear of setting off a stampede. The lack of water had even taken a back seat to the fact that they were most likely going to die, being trampled into bits and pieces. Letty wondered if it took longer to get to heaven if your body parts got scattered and you never got buried.
Eulis, on the other hand, had been so staggered by the situation in which they found themselves that he’d laid down and gone to sleep.
To Letty’s disgust and dismay, he continued to sleep, even as the sun slid slowly toward the western horizon. With every passing hour, the buffalo continued to move past them in a never-ending wave. Dust was so thick in the air that the horizon was blurred, and even though she couldn’t see them, she knew a pack of wolves hovered somewhere in the distance. She heard them setting off an evening chorale of eerie howls and yips as they hung near the edge of the herd, hoping to pick off a straggler or a calf too young to keep up.
Suddenly, a massive bull went head first against the side of the wagon, as if pissed off that it was in his way.
The wagon rocked.
A mule brayed and then kicked.
Letty screamed.
And Eulis woke up, dismayed to find out that he wasn’t back in Lizard Flats having himself a stiff drink after all.
“What’s happenin’?” he mumbled.
“We’re dying!” Letty screamed, and then covered her face with her hands and threw herself down into the wagon, unable to face anymore.
Eulis waited for the end, but nothing else happened. The pissed off bull moved on, and the massive movement of wooly beasts continued to pass, politely parting to accommodate the wagon and mules in their paths. Finally, he reached down and shook Letty on the shoulder.
“Letty… Letty… I think it’s all right.”
Letty rolled up into a ball and pulled her bedroll over her head.
“It’s never going to be all right again,” she said, and started to cry.
Eulis sighed. Considering the plight they were in, he was in no position to argue, and during the hours they’d been stranded, he had been doing some serious thinking. So serious, in fact, that he had come to the conclusion that God had meted out this punishment to them because of their deceit.
When he’d agreed to Letty’s original plan of impersonating the preacher, he hadn’t given any thought to what God might think about the lie. He’d married and buried and christened and blessed in the name of God, but without any authority. It had seemed like a good idea at the time, but looking back, all he could think about was the fraud they’d committed upon innocent people.
As hard as he’d tried, he couldn’t reconcile what they’d done as being just, and from the looks of their situation now, God wasn’t in a forgiving mood, either. He’d put them square in the middle of hell on earth.
Eulis looked at Letty, who was little more than a lump beneath her covers. Even though he knew her lips were cracked and her face was burned bad from the sun, she was still one of the toughest women he’d ever known. If he had to be in this situation, he could not have picked a better partner to have at his back.
“Letty.”
She pulled the covers off and sat up.
“What?” she whispered.
“Do you—”
“Sssh,” she hissed, and slapped a hand over his mouth. “Not so loud.”
He lowered his voice. “What’s wrong?”
“The better question would be what’s not wrong?”
“Why are we whisperin’?” Eulis asked.
A pair of cows suddenly butted heads, slamming one against the wagon bed while the other moved past, satisfied that she’d made her point.
“That’s why,” Letty said, pointing to the two massive cows. “Do you know what’s gonna happen to us if they get spooked? There won’t be enough left of us to bury. So I figure if we don’t do anything stupid, we might have a chance.”
“If they don’t move on soon, we’re gonna die anyway. We need water bad.”
Letty wanted to argue, but she couldn’t ignore the facts. He was right.
“You know what, Preacher Howe… I think you need to pray. I think we both need to pray.”
Eulis shrugged. “I will if you will.”
Letty frowned. “You’re the preacher.”
“Yeah, and the shit you’re standin’ in is as deep as mine.”
Another buffalo bumped into the wagon. One of the mules on the other side brayed and kicked, connecting with a large cow who retaliated by knocking the mule completely down.
Letty gasped, and lunged over the si
de of the wagon. She grabbed hold of the rope with all her might and started pulling.
“Help me, Eulis, help me! We’ve got to get the mule up or they’ll trample him.”
Eulis threw himself forward, grabbed onto the rope and then lunged backward, putting all of his weight into the effort. Within seconds, the mule was up, wild-eyed and chomping at the makeshift halter that tethered him down.
Letty rocked back on her heels, and then started to shake.
“That was close,” she said.
No sooner had their nerves started to calm, than a ripple of thunder came rolling down the valley. Stunned by the sound, they looked up at the quickly darkening sky, then flinched and ducked as a bolt of lightning suddenly ripped across the sky.
“Oh no,” Letty muttered.
“What? We need the rain,” Eulis said.
“Lightning. The lightning is going to spook them. We’ve got to do something, and we’ve got to do it now.”
No sooner had she said it, than the first drops of rain began to fall, splattering hard against the wide shoulders and wooly heads of the great beasts. In response, the movement of the herd perceptibly slowed and they began to draw closer and closer together.
Eulis and Letty lifted their parched lips to the sky, reveling in the life-giving moisture falling onto them, as did their mules. As they sat with the rain falling on their faces and the herd gathering ever tighter together, Eulis lifted his gaze to the hills, and saw the chance for their only way out.
“I’ve got an idea,” Eulis said. “Get the harness.”
Soaked to the skin and half sick from hunger and fear, Letty rolled over onto her hands and knees.
“The harness? Have you lost your mind?”
“Probably, but hand ’em here anyway.”
Letty dragged the harnesses out from beneath the seat. Eulis took them from her, while gauging the motion and mood of the herd against the oncoming storm. The mules eyes were rolling wildly as they snorted and stomped. Even they seemed to sense the urgency of the moment.
“Here goes nothin’,” he said, threw a leg over the side of the wagon and slid down until he was standing between the mules with the harness in his hands.