While his horses were drinking, he walked along the bank of the creek, picking up dead limbs for his fire and scouting for tracks left by any animal. This country should be good for deer or antelope, he was thinking. But he could find no sign of either. Resigned to his salt pork diet, he carried his firewood back to his camp and prepared to build a fire. Could have bought some more matches, too, he thought as he started a flame under the dead grass and leaves he was using for kindling. It was then that he sensed he was being watched.
He immediately became tense as his kindling began to catch fire. Moving very slowly, he reached for the Colt riding on his hip and eased it up out of the holster, cocking the hammer back as he did. His senses told him that the danger was to his left, somewhere on the bank, so he slowly turned his head in that direction. Seeing no one, he continued to turn until he was looking almost directly behind him before he discovered his observer. A large rabbit sat watching him, curious no doubt as to what strange creature had invaded his world.
Damn, Perley thought and shot the unfortunate visitor to his camp. “You gave me a fright there for a minute, but you’re surely welcome. There’ll be no salt pork for breakfast this mornin’.”
The .44 slug had almost torn the head off the rabbit, but the meat had not been damaged. Perley skinned it, gutted it, and soon had it roasting over the fire. It was a welcome change from the bacon he had planned to cook. It was a sizable rabbit, but he had no intention of saving any of it for later. He ate the whole rabbit, washed down with a couple of cups of coffee, the effect of which made it inviting to take a little nap.
* * *
“What the hell was that?” Blanche Dickens exclaimed, looking around her cautiously for the source. She hurried up from the edge of the water where she had been rinsing out her cup and plate. “Did you hear that?” she asked Dolly Rich.
“Yeah, I heard it,” Dolly replied. “It was a gunshot, a pistol, sounded like to me.” She walked up to the top of the high bank of the creek and peered upstream, but the trees along the banks blocked her line of sight. “Maybe somebody huntin’ up that way.”
“With a pistol?” Blanche questioned. “More like somebody shootin’ somebody else. Just what we need right now.”
“Maybe not,” Lucy Butcher said. “Maybe it’s somebody who can give us some help.” She looked back at the carcass of the old horse where it had fallen, still hitched up to the wagon, which was only partially out of the water. “We damn-sure need some help.”
“Lucy’s right,” Grace Belcher said. “We need help. The four of us women can’t get that wagon outta the creek, and even if we do, I don’t think any of us can bring a dead horse back to life. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I don’t wanna walk all the way to Dodge City and leave my trunk with all my belongings here in this creek.” Her comments were met with uncertain expressions, but it was obvious the other three felt the same.
“It sounded like it mighta been a half mile or more back up that way,” Lucy said, pointing upstream. “Instead of just settin’ here talkin’ about it, I think we oughta go find out who did the shootin’. They might be comin’ this way. I’d rather see them before they see us.” When her three companions just looked at each other, still uncertain, she volunteered. “Hell, I’ll sneak up the creek to find ’em. I’ll take the shotgun with me. Anybody else wanna go with me?”
No one did.
Blanche summed up the reason pretty accurately. “Honey, if I was as young as you, maybe I’d go with you, but if I was to get caught in those trees and had to run, I couldn’t.” Dolly and Grace nodded in agreement.
Lucy shook her head as if disgusted. “Just as well. If I have to run for my life, I’d just as soon not have to herd one of you old women ahead of me.” She picked up the shotgun they had rescued from the wagon earlier and set out along the bank.
When she was out of their sight, Grace posed a question. “What are we gonna do if she runs into some Indians or outlaws? We might lose her and the shotgun.” She shook her head slowly at the thought. “We’ve got no business out here in the middle of nowhere with no protection and a dead horse. Whose idea was this, anyway?”
“Yours,” Blanche answered.
“Huh,” Grace grunted. “Well, it was a good idea. Dodge City’s about the only hope left for us since the ranch at Fort Supply dried up. It wasn’t my idea to buy that damned old horse, though.” She pointed a finger at Dolly. “And if you knew how to drive a horse and wagon, we wouldn’t be stuck here with the damn thing half outta the water.”
“You coulda took over anytime you thought you could do better,” Dolly replied in her defense. “Besides, all three of you helped pick that place to cross.”
While the argument over who was to blame for their predicament continued, Lucy was making her way through a stand of cottonwoods about a mile upstream. Preparing to circle around a clump of bushes that extended out over the water, she stopped in her tracks, afraid to take another step. In the small clearing she was about to cross, she discovered several horses grazing. She dropped to one knee and clutched the shotgun while she decided what to do. When it appeared no one had seen her, she scanned the creek bank in search of anyone, but saw no one. She saw a campfire, but no people. Her eyes swept across the creek bank again, then stopped and went back a few yards when she spotted someone lying flat on his back. Thinking he was probably the victim of the gunshot they had heard, she quickly looked around the clearing for his assailant. No sign of anyone else.
Where could they be? Were they hiding, perhaps having seen her approaching? Maybe they were circling around behind her. In a state of panic, she could feel her heart beating against her breast. Her next thought was to turn and run, but looking behind her revealed no sign of anyone. Still afraid to move, she remained there, stone still, until she realized that if there was anyone else, they would have surely attacked her already. Returning her gaze to the body lying on the ground, it occurred to her that the man may have shot himself, either accidentally or on purpose, and that was the gunshot they had heard. Thinking that explanation a possibility, she felt emboldened to the point where she was determined to find out.
Ready to flee at any time, should she have to, she approached the body, walking as quietly and carefully as she could manage, her shotgun held at the ready. She paused only once when the big bay horse grazing nearby whinnied and snorted a couple of times. With still no sign of life from the man sprawled on his back, she inched closer until she could see him clearly. He was a young man. His eyes were closed, his face relaxed as if in peace, but she saw no sign of a gunshot wound.
Suddenly, his eyes opened. She started, but was too stunned to move.
Perley was looking at the business end of a double-barreled shotgun inches from his face. Too startled to think, he realized that one wrong move might cause him to have his head blown off. He took his eyes off the two dark tunnels that threatened him and looked beyond the barrels of the shotgun to focus on the terrified face of a young woman. For a long moment, they looked each other in the eyes, both parties afraid to make a move, lest it might ignite an explosion.
Finally, Perley spoke. “I made some coffee. You want a cup?”
Startled, Lucy hesitated before she answered, her shotgun still inches from his face. “I don’t know. Yes, I guess I would enjoy a cup of coffee if you have plenty to spare.”
“If you don’t mind, I’ll move this outta my face.” He slowly raised his hand and gently moved the double barrels of her shotgun to point away from him. When she made no effort to resist, he took the weapon from her and placed it beside his saddle on the ground.
She took a step back and looked around her.
He sensed what she was thinking. “Ain’t nobody but me. Were you fixin’ to shoot me with that shotgun?”
Aware now that he was not a threat to her, she began to recover her composure. “I mighta if I’d had to. Tell you the truth, I thought you were already dead.”
“I thought I was, too, when I
woke up and saw that shotgun in my face.”
“We heard a shot,” she went on. “Who got shot?”
“Him,” Perley answered and pointed to the rabbit pelt hanging on a bush on the other side of the fire. “If you’da got here a little while ago, I coulda offered you some.”
She nodded slowly, seeming still to be somewhat in a fog. He went to his packs to find his extra coffee cup. After he filled it, there was a little left in the pot, so he emptied the rest into his cup. She took the cup when he offered it.
Finally, he asked, “Where’d you come from?”
She took a couple of sips from the cup before answering. “Back there, about a mile or so downstream.” He was about to ask for more information than that, but she continued. “Four of us. Our wagon’s stuck in the creek and our horse died tryin’ to pull it out.”
“There’s four of you?” Perley asked. “Family?”
“No, just four of us women.”
“Four women?” he couldn’t help asking in surprise. “Where were you goin’?”
“Dodge City.”
Four women alone on their way to Dodge City. It was an easy assumption to make that they were “sporting ladies,” but he asked anyway. “Whaddaya gonna do in Dodge? You know folks there?”
“We’re gonna do what we always do,” Lucy replied. “We just need to get someplace that ain’t dyin’ out like the one we just left.”
When Perley asked where that was, she told him they’d worked on a ranch at Fort Supply.
“I thought that old army post was shut down,” he said.
“It might as well be. That’s why we’re goin’ to Dodge City.” Rapidly becoming impatient with the man’s polite conversation, she finally asked her question. “Can you help us get there?”
“I reckon I can try,” Perley answered. “I’ll have to break camp first.”
She said again that they were only about a mile from the wagon and asked why he had to pack up everything to go that far.
“Because I need to keep an eye on my possibles. Ain’t likely to run into anybody out here, but I ran into you, so it’s best to keep ’em where I can watch ’em.”
“I’ll help you,” she said. “I don’t wanna be gone so long my friends will think something’s happened to me.”
“’Preciate it.” Perley quickly unhobbled his horses and got them ready for the trail while Lucy rinsed his cup and put out the fire.
Then she helped him load his horses. “What’s in the sacks?”
“Which ones?” Perley replied. “Those hangin’ on the saddle of that one horse is holdin’ all my cookin’ stuff and my clothes. Those on the horses with the packsaddles are totin’ seed corn.” As he expected, she asked why so much seed corn and he told her the same story he had tried to convince Billy Tuttle with.
She only shrugged and commented, “It must be really special corn, since you’ve got so much of it.”
“There ain’t none like it where I’m from,” he responded. “It’s a real money crop.”
Ready to go, he helped her up to ride on Billy’s horse and they headed downstream.
* * *
“She’s been gone a helluva long time,” Dolly Rich declared, a worried frown on her face. “What if she ran into some trouble? We’d never know it until it was too late.”
“We ain’t heard no gunshots,” Grace said, “so nobody shot her. ’Course, they mighta just grabbed her and now they know we’re here.” She looked around her frantically as if searching for something. “We oughta be thinkin’ about protecting ourselves.”
“How?” Blanche spoke up. Older than the other three, she was usually the one who made the decisions. “Lucy’s got the only damn gun we brought with us. There ain’t nothin’ much we can do except wait and see what happens.”
“You don’t reckon it’s Jake, do ya?” Dolly was the first to come out with it, but it was clearly on the minds of all three.
Blanche started to answer, but Grace interrupted her. “Why don’t you ask Lucy? Here she comes now.”
A moment later, Lucy came out of the trees astride a horse, and a man on a horse followed along behind her. He was leading three more horses. The first question that came to mind was the one Dolly had just asked, but they could see right away that it was not Jake Barnes. There was still the question of whether or not Lucy was riding in under her own free will or if she was being herded back under threat.
Moments later, they were relieved when Lucy pulled up before them and slid off the horse.
“Look what I ran into,” she sang out cheerfully. “I got us some help. This is—” She paused abruptly and turned toward Perley. “I swear, I didn’t even ask your name, did I? Or tell you mine, for that matter.”
“Perley Gates,” he replied as he dismounted, his attention immediately drawn to the horse’s carcass hitched up to the wagon. Ignoring the usual facial reactions upon introducing himself, he was first prompted to ask, “Where’s your other horse?” The dead horse was hitched up to the side of the wagon tongue.
“There weren’t no other horse and there weren’t no other wagon,” Blanche answered, “so we hitched him up to the side. He was doin’ fine till we got stuck in the water. Is that your real name?” In her business, she had dealt with many men going by names other than the one their mama and papa had given them.
Perley smiled patiently. “Yes, ma’am. What’s yours?”
“Blanche Dickens,” she replied. “You already met Lucy, and this is Dolly and Grace. We’re obliged for your help.”
He could pull the wagon out of the water, but it was obvious to him that it wouldn’t do them much good without a horse, or horses, to pull it. He stood there for a long moment, staring at the dead horse, while the women stood staring at him. They needed two horses and he had two he didn’t need. It would seem like the perfect twist of fate that had caused the two parties to meet, and in the middle of the prairie where there was no wagon road to anywhere.
Not even an Indian trail or a game trail. What in the world are they doing out here?
Somehow, he didn’t imagine they had any money to buy two of the horses from him, so he didn’t bother to ask. Stepped in another cow pie. He couldn’t leave them without the horses to get them to Dodge City. From the hopeful expressions on all four faces, he knew they were thinking the same thing. He was reminded of four puppies begging at the kitchen table for scraps.
“First thing is to pull your wagon outta the creek,” he finally commented, and went at once to unhitch the dead horse from the wagon tongue.
The women gathered around to watch him as he freed the harness from the carcass. Using the lead rope from his packhorses and Buck’s horsepower to roll the carcass on its side, he managed to separate the unfortunate nag from the traces. “How long has he been lyin’ here?” he asked as he labored.
“Since yesterday mornin’,” Blanche answered. “We were thinkin’ about butcherin’ him and eatin’ him before much longer if we didn’t get outta here.”
“We didn’t know how long he could set there before he started gettin’ rank,” Grace commented. “But we were gonna use up all the bacon and jerky before we started in on him.”
“I expect he’da let you know before very much longer,” Perley said.
“I feel real bad that we killed him pullin’ that wagon,” Lucy said.
Perley took another look at the carcass. “I expect he’da died of old age by the time he got to Dodge, anyway.” With the wagon free now, he pushed it back into the water just far enough to allow the wheels to turn and miss the carcass.
It was a simple task for Buck to pull the wagon out of the water and up onto the creek bank. The women cheered when the wagon rolled up on dry ground. Then the hopeful puppy-dog faces returned as they gathered around Perley.
“Are you by any chance headed for Dodge?” Blanche asked.
“I just came from Dodge,” Perley said. “I’m headin’ south. Got a long ride ahead of me to Texas.” He hated to say the w
ords, but knew he had no choice. “I reckon I can go back to Dodge and lose another day or two, so you nice ladies won’t have to pull a wagon there.”
His declaration was met with a joyous cheer from all four.
“Hallelujah,” Dolly exclaimed. “I knew anybody named Perley Gates had to be an angel!”
“We’d offer to buy a horse from you,” Blanche said, “but we ain’t hardly got the price of a good horse between the four of us. We spent most of what we had to buy that one you see layin’ there, but we can pay you for usin’ one of your horses to take us to Dodge. ’Course, that’s if you’re willin’ to take it out in trade.”
He didn’t have to take any time to consider that proposition. “Why, no, ma’am. I wouldn’t take any money for escortin’ you nice ladies that little distance. I’m just glad I happened to come along when you needed help. Tell you what, though, I’ll hitch two horses up to your wagon, so it won’t be so hard on just one. And we’ll get ready to roll. It’s already past noon.”
That set the four in motion, gathering up the few cooking things they had removed from the wagon and their bedding from the one night spent sleeping on the ground. Perley watched them scurrying around to leave, all the while wondering why he always seemed to find himself in scenes such as this.
“Is it very far from here to Dodge?” Grace asked.
“It’s a little over thirty miles, I’d say,” Perley replied. “Day and a half in that wagon. We’ll go back the way I just came. I know a good spot to camp tonight.”
The two saddle horses were not too enthusiastic about being hitched up to the wagon, causing Perley to have to work with them a little before turning the reins over to Dolly. When they settled down, Perley led his party away from the creek and started to retrace his tracks from that morning. Spirits were high among the four women in the wagon because it seemed their journey was nearing an end. There was much speculation about the Good Samaritan who had happened upon them.
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