by Gene Curry
Loneliness and the ever-blowing wind are what I remember about the crossings I’ve made. The wind is always there, hot or cold, and it saws at the nerves as nothing else can. In the face of the prairie wind, friendly men turn silent and rush quickly to anger; animosities emerge that remain for life.
Of all the people here, only Hannah Claggett seemed peaceful. There was a strange serenity about her that made me wonder. She brushed her hair and coiled it in that school-teacherish way of hers. She smiled at me and said good morning as if we were meeting on some village street. But I knew she wanted cock—needed it. And I liked her very much.
Maggie O’Hara, standing beside her wagon, stared at me and said nothing. Flaxie looked at me and then looked away. I wondered how the night had gone for them. Flaxie was subdued, almost frightened in her manner. Thinking of the double-edged knife, I hardly blamed her. All I wanted Flaxie to do was to stay away from me. A pity—but I didn’t want to have to kill Maggie O’Hara. That’s what I would have to do, if she pulled a knife on me again. It was a shame about Flaxie; no matter, I would have to make do with the other fifty women in the train. Forty-nine, to be exact, for it wasn’t likely that Maggie would ever join me under the stars.
The cattle were to be handled by an old geezer I hadn’t seen before. He came loping along on a good-looking bay and introduced himself as Kiowa Sam Jaspers. The boy with him I took to be his grandson, but old Sam announced with some pride that the boy was his son. I wasn’t sure if I believed him, but they did belong to the same family. There was no mistaking the potato noses and long-lobed ears.
Sam said the boy’s name was Cyrus. “A good lad, but not too bright in the head,” Sam said. “Don’t have much to say neither. Ain’t that so, boy?”
“Sure is,” the boy said.
Sam informed me that he had been raised by the Kiowas and knew their customs and language. That was a safe thing to say, since we weren’t going anywhere close to Texas. Maybe he really had been raised by the Kiowas. Anything was possible. But I marked him down for a liar and hoped he knew more about cows than he did about Kiowas.
“You know much about Kiowas?” the old man asked.
“Not many in my part of Texas,” I said, thinking that when you have to work with a man, it’s best not to show him up as a liar, if you have no special reason for doing so.
“Then you’ll hear many good Kiowa stories before this journey is over,” old Sam said.
Not if I can help it, I thought.
I had been looking at the boy called Cyrus. His quiet tongue would be a mercy on a long trip; on the other hand, a lame-brained boy in a wagonful of young women could be a problem. I didn’t know how old he was, maybe about sixteen or seventeen, but plenty big for his age. The boy’s lack of brains wouldn’t bother some of the ladies, if they got hot enough between the legs on cold nights.
I motioned Kiowa Sam aside and said, “That boy ever been with a woman that you know of?”
“Never has,” Kiowa Sam said. “I ought to know. I been looking after him all his life.” The old man laughed. “That don’t mean he won’t get the itch one of these days.”
The boy seemed to have taken a fancy to Hannah Claggett, maybe because she was the only one who didn’t talk to him as you would to a dog. I didn’t want this lamebrain to be her first man. I gave Kiowa Sam a look that stopped his smile. “Tell Cyrus to wait till we get to California. You tell him, because it’s your place to tell him. If you don’t, I will.”
The old man’s seamed face grew ugly. “Maybe you will and maybe you won’t.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning you wasn’t doing so bad last night with that Southern gal. That one’s a woman-licker, case you didn’t know.”
Well there was no profit in beating hell out of an old man. He wore a gun, a good-looking old Schofield .45 six-shooter in an oiled holster with an open end. The long-barreled Schofield had the front sight filed off so it wouldn’t snag on the leather when it was yanked from the holster. When you see a man with the front sight of his pistol filed off, it means he’s a braggart or one hell of a shot at close range.
I looked from Sam to the hulking son. Best I could tell, Sam was past the age for women. The little pot belly that hung on his skinny frame said his main pleasure in life was the cook pot. Besides, he’d been guarding the cattle, and there was no reason why he should come spying on me and Flaxie. So it had to be the boy, hot in the crotch and wanting to know how a real man did it to a woman. That in itself wasn’t so bad: Boys like a free show so they can brag about it later. But there was something about this muscle-bound lout that bothered me.
“You mind your business, and I’ll mind mine,” Sam said. “That boy is my business. Yours is to get these whores to California.”
“Ladies, old man,” I corrected him. “We got nothing but ladies on this trip.”
Sam spat. He wasn’t much afraid of me. Maybe he was too old to care. I didn’t care either. I’d kill him if I had to.
He stared at me, a concerned father. “Then what’s my boy to do if he gets the itch on the way across?”
“You ever live on a farm?” I asked Sam.
“I been on one. What’s that got to do with it?”
“Tell your boy to do what farm boys usually do when their pants get too hot. Bossy won’t mind.”
What I was saying was nothing but the truth, but Kiowa Sam didn’t like it.
“You calling my boy a calf-lover, Saddler?” the old man asked. His hand moved slightly closer to his holstered Schofield.
“Nobody says he has to fall in love with the critter,” I said.
Sam laughed, and I knew he would use what I’d said in one of his stories years hence. If he lived that long.
Just then Reverend Claggett raised his hand, and the wagon train pointed its way west.
Chapter Six
A bugle blew, and we were off to the land of the free. Some trains are so well set-up, so well planned and organized, that you think nothing can stop them. Most of these outfits are bossed, sometimes owned completely, by rich men with visions of model communities dancing in their heads. Often these rich organizers and visionaries have been soldiers in their time—officers naturally—and they think they know how to do it. Many of them do. They see an overland trek as just another military maneuver, the movement of a large amount of goods from one place to another.
But our train did not make an impressive sight. This was no rich overland train, and there was no uniformity in its appearance. It had been put together by Josiah Claggett’s iron will. I guessed he’d had no money of his own, so he must have set up the train with donations. He was a hard man to say no to.
The wagons had been standing for so long that grass had grown up beside the wagon wheels. But the wheels began to turn when the bugle blew. Kiowa Sam did the bugling, though he wasn’t very good at it. I was glad to see so many oxen pulling away. Those big bastards are slow and dumb, but they get you there. They’re more like slow-moving machines than animals and their meat isn’t all that hard to take. Given a choice, I’ll take ox steak over horse steak. Mule meat, even stewed soft, is pretty bad.
Reverend Claggett drove the lead wagon in the right column. Hannah sat beside him, prissy but pretty in the bright morning light. She was sewing a patch on one of the old man’s coats. Some of the women knew how to handle wagons already; some didn’t, but before we got to California they would all know.
Most of the wagons were Conestogas, those big landships that had originated in Pennsylvania more than a century and a half before. They had to cross rough country, and they were built to take it. Usually they were about twenty-seven feet long, eleven feet high, and the real big ones could go as heavy as four thousand pounds. That’s one big piece of work, and it could take four or five men two months to make one.
The bed was boat-shaped, the center sagging, the ends arched upward. This was no whim on the builder’s part. If the load shifted, it shifted toward the center. This helped o
n the upgrades and downgrades. It was especially meant to keep the load from shifting back toward the end gates on steep grades. If that happened, you’d have your belongings strewn all over the trail.
I’m going into all this detail because the Conestoga, like the buffalo, is vanishing from the West. Oh, you still see some in the wild places. Most of the ones you see are old. Ours were old then, had made many a crossing, and had had the sides gouged by Indian lances or splintered by rifle fire.
The heavy chains that held the end gates in place rattled as we moved off. A light morning wind filled the wagon covers made of white canvas or homespun; they were puckered by a draw rope that held down the ends. The ends were lashed to the wagon sides.
Iversen drove none too expertly, while Culligan walked forward on both sides of the wagons, not inspecting every wheel as it passed but always aware of what was happening. If we didn’t get through, it wouldn’t be because of Culligan, sullen and ill-tempered though he was. There was no need to be so careful on the first stage of the journey. All the same, he was. I respect a man who knows his job and does it well.
Some of Culligan’s truculence came from pride in his work; the rest was Irish. This bull-browed boy had an awesome responsibility. The wagons had to move and keep moving. They carried immense weight, and their underpinnings had to be seen to constantly. Heavily ironed and braced, the bolsters and the axles were of hickory; the hubs of sour or black gum were almost impossible to split. The rims of the wheels were anywhere from two to ten inches. A four-inch rim was the usual size, and the front wheels were, as a rule, about a foot smaller than the back. Heavy iron tires, usually two half-circles of iron welded tight, held the wheel together. To put a good wagon together took as much blacksmithing as woodworking. Like all good wagon wheels, they were dished out slightly. Most Conestogas were painted in the national colors: red, white and blue. The running gear was red, a Prussian blue body, and a white canvas top. The colors of our wagons, however, were somewhat faded.
Maggie O’Hara, originally a farmer’s daughter, handled the wagon as well as any man. No doubt the daily grind of prison life had toughened her body, though I must say there was nothing hard about it. Idly, I found myself wondering how many men had stuck it in Maggie in her time. I guessed a few hundred, at least. I found myself thinking about Hanrahan’s dead son. The man must have been mighty peculiar to want to do other things to Maggie besides fuck her in a nice, natural manner. Yet, in a way, I understood. There was an arrogance about her that could get your hackles up—and your cock—just by looking at her. Maybe I was being swell-headed, but I figured she wanted a strong man to subdue her, and hadn’t yet found him.
Flaxie Cole sat beside her on the wagon seat, dark and demure, not daring to look my way. It had been so good under that blanket on the grass in the moonlight. When she first came to me, bare feet rustling in the grass, I had looked forward to many such nights. Damn it to hell! I had no mind to tangle with her jailbird “husband,” not unless I wanted more trouble than I was ready to handle.
I rode along by the wagons, checking the gear. Culligan, mindful only of his own job, showed no interest in what was being carried. Except for a grand piano, we had just about everything else with us on that trail. Most wagons had tool boxes affixed to their left sides in back of the lazy board, which pulled out in front of the rear left wheel. In such boxes you’d find the usual gear of a frontier freighter: hatchets, axes, an auger, different kinds of nails, extra rope, linchpins, kingbolts and strap iron. In the big boxes there might be the wagon jack, but as a rule, it was too big to fit into the limited space. Big, heavy, and clumsy, its usual place would be hanging from the rear axle, alongside the tar bucket with the pine tar to lubricate the wheels. The jacks worked with a lever handle, much like an ordinary pump handle. They had to be damned sturdy to lift a wagon weighing three or four tons, and sometimes more.
I myself was concerned about water. You’d think a sea of grass would have a sea of water under it. No such thing. You found water where you found it, when you were lucky. Sometimes the Indians poisoned the water to spite each other as much as the invading whites. It was even said that some wandering white gun-runners sold the poison to the Indians. It would, I thought, be a pleasure to hang a man like that.
Independence dropped away behind us. There were no more backward glances. The women knew there was no turning back. A wagon train may be slow, but the big wheels turn, and the old life falls behind.
The water barrels were lashed good and tight; I found them well-banded with no leaks. Water meant everything. You could root and scratch for food, manage to survive on things considered inedible, but you had to have water.
This was our first morning out. Enthusiasm was strong. Kiowa Sam and his lamebrain son Cyrus were seeing to the cattle. Cyrus was as slow in movement as he was in speech; he did his job well when Sam told him how to do it, or reminded him of something he had forgotten. Now and then his work took him too close to the Claggett wagon. I didn’t like that, but for the moment it wasn’t important enough to do anything about it. Claggett took no heed of him, staring straight ahead, as if he could see all the way across the continent, even through the snowy wall of the Rockies.
Hannah Claggett always smiled at Cyrus as he came close to the wagon. Every time she did so, he blushed like a dude with a bad sunburn, but here was no bashful swain, I decided. The shyness was genuine enough, but what would happen when Hannah realized that she had been leading on a possibly dangerous fool. Maybe she did know it: figured she’d get her first poke from somebody harmless.
Maybe I should have kept my broken Texas nose out of it. But something warned me that Cyrus was trouble. On a remote ranch with somebody to keep the blinkers on him, he might have lived out a useful enough life, buggering a few lambs to while away the lonely hours. But he wasn’t on a ranch. I didn’t want to tell Claggett about it, because that would make trouble for the girl. I didn’t want to have to kill Cyrus, something I most certainly would have to do if he attacked her. Sometimes, on a long journey, you have to shoot or hang a troublemaker. It can be a tonic for everyone who witnesses it. But that’s usually when you have to deal with a lot of would-be hard cases. On this trip most of the witnesses to Cyrus’s death would be young women.
Cyrus’s way of getting close to the Claggett wagon was to maneuver a stray in that direction. I knew it was no accident after it happened for the second time. At the moment, the cows were well watered and well grassed, so the wandering off was the fool’s idea of being clever. The next time he did it, I kicked my horse and rode up close. I got a remote nod from the preacher and a smile from Hannah. She had been smiling at Cyrus too. Cyrus wasn’t so glad to see me, so I got nothing from him.
“Having trouble with the cows, is that it?” I said, nodding at the half-grown calf.
Cyrus turned sullen at being called down in front of his lady love. “They run off,” he said. “They do that, I come and fetch them back. That happens.”
“That happens too much. If you can’t run a smooth herd in this country, what’s going to happen when we hit rough country?”
“I know my work, how to do it,” Cyrus said.
I turned my horse toward the wagon and saw that Kiowa Sam was watching from where he was with the rest of the cows.
“Then do it,” I told Cyrus. “Another thing. Next time a cow strays, tell him to pick another wagon.”
Cyrus had a lame brain, but part of it—the crafty part—worked well enough. “They follow up this wagon ’cause it’s in the lead.”
“Have a talk with the cows,” I said. “Tell them it’s against the rules to bunch up at the lead wagon.” Cyrus’s slack mouth hung open. “That’s crazy,” he said. “How can I talk to cows?”
Kiowa Sam was nosing his horse through the small herd, trying to hear what was being said.
I had to say everything plain in the end. “Keep your strays away from this wagon, Cyrus. Do that, or I’ll set you to riding drag.”
&nb
sp; Cyrus didn’t like that; it was the worst job in a train. Some trains don’t even bother with a back point man. Usually the people in the last wagons watch the country behind them. When it’s flat country, you can see far enough to spot trouble. We might do it later when we got into broken country. At the moment there was no need. But I was ready to make a job for Cyrus, if I had to. The man who rides the back point has to swallow the dust kicked up by the train. There is no one to talk to, no company at all. And in hostile country you’re an easy target.
“You got no right to do that,” Cyrus said.
“Sonny,” I said, “I can do just about anything I please. Now get the hell away from here and stay away.”
Cyrus rode back to have a confab with his father. I looked at Hannah Claggett; her eyes were wild with excitement. Two men had been quarreling over her! Hannah was a bright, if peculiar, girl. She knew the whole thing had nothing to do with stray cows. Damn it to hell! I felt like a fool, trading hard words with a lamebrain about a mad minister’s bespectacled daughter.
“Don’t you think you were a bit hard on Cyrus?” Hannah asked, her eyes merry. “You’d really do what you said you’d do?”
I should have caught on sooner, but I can be slow. Hannah thought I was jealous. Not true at all. I fully intended to throw a leg over her, that is if I didn’t have to risk a bullet from the preacher while I was doing it. But jealous—no! Hell, I wasn’t even jealous of Maggie O’Hara, who was doing all those peculiar woman things to the sweetest little furry beaver in the whole train. Well, no, the sweetest little beaver in the train belonged to Maggie herself. I was as sure of that as I am that I’ll never die in bed—if I’m lucky, I won’t. I didn’t give a damn about all the men who had been in Maggie’s life, or in Maggie herself. But that was just dreaming. Flaxie would have done fine. Take it from me, she was sweet as a nest of wild honey.