The Travelers 1

by Lee Hunnicutt

  Jack sat down next to Beth and picked up his mess gear. He tried to put his spoon in the beans. His hands began to shake. The spoon tapped against the plate and the plate shook. Beans flew off of the side of the plate. He dropped the plate and spoon and was breathing in short gasps.

  He pulled out his canteen and with shaky hands unscrewed the top. He tried to raise it to his lips spilling water all over his neck and chest. Finally using both hands, he was able to bring the canteen to his mouth and take three long pulls of water.

  Instead of putting the canteen back in its case, he turned his face up and poured the rest of the contents on his head and face. He set the canteen down and put his face in his hands.

  Beth looked worriedly at Sonny and put her arm around Jack.

  Jack said, “It’s been a long day. I just need a minute to get a hold of myself. Dirty Earl is the first person that I’ve killed this week.” He let out an explosive burst of air, stood up and then sat/fell back down. He laid his head on Beth’s shoulder.

  Up until this time, the three of them had been busy tying up Curly Bob and Slim and tending to Two Feathers and hadn’t time to think of what had transpired that night. This first break in the business of survival had finally brought the enormity of what had happened home to them.

  Sonny and Beth didn’t say a word. Beth just held Jack tightly and patted his back.

  Jack finally raised his head and said, “Whew, I don’t know what came over me. I couldn’t hold on to my spoon or mess gear.” He held his hands out in front of him. They were still shaking but not as violently as before.

  Beth said, “Just lean back Jack and take it easy. It’ll pass. You’re right, this has been a long day. I thought the day at the wagon was the longest day of my life. Boy was I wrong. I hope today doesn’t get any longer because it sure beats the day at the wagon hands down.”

  Sonny expelled air sharply and leaned back against a flour sack and said, “I thought you were dead Beth. When he had that knife at your throat, I thought you were dead.” He choked back tears.

  “I know. I know,” said Beth, her voice high pitched. She moved over next to her brother and put her arms around him. She wouldn’t let herself cry. She said, “Be strong Sonny. Be strong. I didn’t die. You and Jack saved me.” She smiled and pulled his face around so he could look at her and said, “You’re my hero.” Her voice squeaky. She could taste the tears on the back of her throat.

  She sniffed loudly “We made it. We showed those bastards. We kicked Butt!” she said with a nervous laugh.

  Sonny gave an equally nervous laugh and said, “Yeah! We did. Didn’t we? Right Jack?”

  Jack gave a weak smile. He stopped and gave what Beth and Sonny had said some thought. He got to his feet and said, “By God Beth you’re right. We were strong. We didn’t freeze in panic. We acted. We didn’t let them get us. We got them.” He was yelling now. It felt good. He felt good.

  “They were going to kill us and they were going to do worse to you, Beth. But we got them first.” Jack yelled through clenched teeth.

  From feeling so weak and scared, he now felt full of energy, strong, euphoric. He didn’t realize it but he was stamping his feet and taking small hops in place. This feeling shocked him and when he looked at Beth and Sonny they were looking at him with their mouths opened in surprise.

  He looked over at where Two Feathers lay. The Indian with great pain had raised himself up on one elbow and was looking intently through his good eye. Their eyes met and Two Feathers gave Jack a knowing smile. He then surprised them all. He began to sing.

  It sent chills down Jack’s spine and he felt the hair raise on the back of his neck and arms. He listened to Two Feathers’ chant and he went flush all over. The singing stirred something deep inside Jack. He began to chant along with Two Feathers and he began to dance around the fire. Two Feathers voice became stronger and louder. Although there were no drums, Jack could hear drums and as he danced he could hear the voices of warriors long dead singing and dancing with him.

  To Sonny’s surprise Beth got to her feet and joined Jack. She began dancing and chanting.

  The dancing became faster and more frantic. The next thing Sonny knew, he found himself dancing and singing with as much fervor as Beth and Jack.

  The dance was wild and primitive and they not only danced around the fire, they danced around Dirty Earl’s body. As they danced around the body they yipped and yelled in triumph over their slain enemy. Sonny and Beth could also hear the drums. It quickened their blood and intensified their dance.

  They were covered in sweat and they felt an exhilaration that they had never felt before in their short lives.

  Jack was the first to drop out of the dance. He collapsed near one of the sacks by the fire. Soon Sonny joined him but Beth kept up the dance. She threw her head back so that she looked at the stars and the heavens above. She and Two Feathers were the only ones singing now. Her voice was strong and loud. She spun in one place by Dirty Earl’s body. She was like a dervish, twirling, leaping. Her feet pounding faster and faster on the ground. Her eyes were wild. She put her hands in the air and spun in one place.

  She collapsed. It was over as abruptly as it had begun. The drums that had been so loud in their ears had suddenly stopped. All was quiet.

  When the singing started Curly Bob and Slim’s blood ran cold. They couldn’t see what was happening but whatever it was they didn’t like it. When the dancing stopped and it was quiet, that was even more unnerving. Slim felt like screaming but was too terrified to do so. Curly Bob clenched his teeth and clamped his eyes shut.

  Beth was in a heap. Her body heaving as she sucked in air. She pushed herself up and tried to sit but fell back down. In a few minutes she tried again and was successful. She then got up on wobbly legs and staggered over to the boys and plopped down beside them. She was still breathing hard.

  Jack looked over at Two Feathers. He was lying back on his bedding breathing hard.

  After they got their breath back Sonny said, “What was that?”

  “I don’t know.” laughed Jack “But for our next dance number….”

  Beth giggled.

  Sonny picked up his canteen and took a long swallow He then passed it to Jack who drank and passed it to Beth saying “Finish it.”

  She took down the water in two big thirsty gulps.

  Jack reached in his pack and took out a bottle of iodine tablets and put a tablet in each canteen. He said, “I don’t want to wait for Beth’s water to cool.” referring to the water Beth had put on the fire to wash Two Feathers’ wounds. “I need water now and suspect we all do including him.” pointing to Two Feathers.

  He went down to the river and filled the canteens. He returned and gave a canteen to Beth and one to Sonny. They began to shake their canteens to dissolve the iodine tablet. They waited twenty minutes for the tablet to sterilize the water.

  Jack threw some more wood on the fire and said, “I think I could eat some beans now.” He picked up his mess gear. It had cold beans and dirt in it so he went to the river and washed it out.

  Beth picked up one of the canteens and prepared a plate of beans and went over to Two Feathers. She touched his arm and he turned to look at her. His was face impassive.

  She offered him the water. He took a drink and pulled the canteen away from his mouth and looked sharply at it and then at Beth. She laughed and said, “It tastes funny because of the iodine tablet. Psssh, I’m talking to this guy like he understands what I’m saying.” She took the canteen from his hands and took a drink herself to show him it wasn’t poisoned and then handed it back to him. He was pretty desperate for a drink so he took it and drank almost all of it.

  She then began to feed him the beans. His lips were swollen and she could see where his teeth had passed through his upper lip. She thought, “It must be painful as Hell to eat or drink.”

  He ate about three quarters of the plate and then pushed it away.

  Beth went back to the fire and pi
cked up the two cans of water that she had previously boiled and cooled. She sat them next to Two Feathers and took some soap from her pack. From her first aid kit she took some gauze and an antibacterial ointment.

  Jack was eating so she called Sonny to help her. “Sonny come here and bring your Bacitration Ointment with you. Mine won’t be enough to cover all of these cuts and abrasions.”

  When Sonny had moved over next to her she said, “Pour a little water over my hands.”

  Sonny poured the water and she lathered up her hands. He then poured water so she could rinse them.

  She had a clean pair of socks in her pack that she had taken out when she got the soap.

  She said to Sonny “This is about as sterile as we get.” And she lathered up the sock.

  Two Feathers had been watching them. He knew what was going to happen.

  She began to wash his face. She then washed his elbows, knees and as best she could without moving his shoulders. From being dragged, the skin was worn off and there were bits of dirt and gravel embedded in the wounds. The last thing she bathed was the broken finger on his left hand. After she had bathed him, she spread the ointment on the wounds.

  He let her do this and lay there without a sound or movement.

  Beth said to Sonny “This has to hurt but look at him. Not a peep.”

  She was very careful and as thorough as she could be in the firelight.

  She had to sponge off the soap. It would have been easier to have poured water over his face but they didn’t want to get his bedding wet. She was convinced he had broken ribs so she didn’t want him to move.

  She told Sonny all of this and he said, “He’s going to have to move sooner or later. In the last hour and a half, you’ve given him almost two quarts of water.”

  She looked at him and said surprised “I didn’t think of that. Can we make him a bed pan?”

  “If we did I don’t know if he would know what it was and we might not be able to get him to use it.” Sonny said.

  Jack came over “I’ve got those splints ready.”

  “We need more light,” said Beth. “Do you think if we brought a flashlight over here it would scare him too much?”

  “There’s one way to find out.” Jack said and he pulled one out of his pack.

  Two Feathers was watching Jack. Jack pointed to the flashlight. It was one of those black aluminum lights, powered by two AA batteries. He turned it on.

  Two Feathers pulled back and gasped in surprise and then gasped again in pain.

  Jack played the light over Beth and then Sonny. He held out his hand a put the beam on his hand. He then very carefully and gently took Two Feathers’ good hand and put the light on it. Two Feathers was still surprised by the light but he didn’t move or pull his hand away.

  Jack said, “Well I think we have accustomed him to one of the miracles of modern man. Let’s set the finger.”

  Beth took Two Feathers’ left hand and applied Bacitration Ointment. The finger was broken between the knuckles of the hand and the first joint. The bone protruded through the top of the finger.

  “How do you break a small bone like that and get it to come through the skin?” said Sonny. “I can see how long bones do that but something as small as the bones between the finger joint? There just doesn’t seem that there would be enough bone to travel that far to go through the skin unless they stomped on his hand.”

  “Well,” said Jack “they did drag him behind a horse. Maybe while he was hanging on to the rope his hand ran into a rock or something.”

  “Who’s going to set the finger?” said Beth.

  “Beth is holding his hand steady and I’m holding the light. It looks like you, Sonny,” said Jack.

  “Oh no, not me.”

  “Nobody wants to do it, Sonny but somebody has to and it might as well be you.” Beth said.

  Sonny swallowed hard, looked at the finger and then looked at Two Feathers. He moved around until he was directly in front of the hand. He looked Two Feathers in the eye and using Jack’s hand, demonstrated what he was going to do.

  Two Feathers face was impassive. It was impossible to tell if he knew what Sonny meant by his little demonstration.

  Sonny cleared his throat and swallowed hard. He took Two Feathers’ hand in his left hand and gently took the broken finger in his right hand.

  The break was bad. The finger was at a forty-five degree down angle from where it would have normally been.

  Sony slowly pulled the finger out and up until it was in what Sonny thought was its normal position. He then gently released traction on the finger until the two pieces of bone were back together.

  Beth put some more ointment on the wound and Jack with the flashlight in his mouth put the two pieces of wood that he had fashioned as splints on the finger. One piece ran along the palm of the hand under the finger and the other piece on the back of the hand on top of the finger.

  As Jack held the splint in place, Beth began wrapping gauze around the splint to hold it in place. Once that was done she encased the finger and splint in tape.

  Two Feathers made not a sound nor did his expression change during the procedure.

  Sonny said, “My god that had to hurt and he didn’t bat an eye.”

  “Yeah,” said Beth “When I washed his wounds it was the same way. It was as if he was made of wood. I know it had to hurt but he didn’t do a thing.”

  Jack said, “I’ve read about the stoic attitude that the plains Indians had towards pain but I never thought that I would witness it. He has to feel pain like the rest of us but he sure doesn’t act like it.”

  Sonny mused, “I wonder if one of us could behave like that in the face of that much pain?”

  “I hope we never have to find out,” said Beth as she put away her first aid kit.

  Jack picked up the cooking cans and asked “Is the water in these cans OK for drinking?”

  “Yeah,” said Beth “all we did was pour from them.”

  “Well I’ll pour the rest in our canteens then. Sonny you keep an eye on Curly Bob and Slim. Beth will you help me with the dishes?”

  They gathered up the all of the dirty gear and went down to the river. Jack lit the way with his flashlight.

  Jack filled the cooking cans with water and Beth washed the dishes.

  Beth said as she washed the bean pot “It’s been quite a day.”

  “It sure has,” said Jack. “In less than a week we travel more than a hundred years back in time to Colorado, run into the wreckage of a massacre and shoot someone. What’s next?”

  “Well you know what they say?” Beth said. “Cheer up, things could be worse so I cheered up and sure enough things got worse.”

  “Well I hope things don’t get worse,” said Jack.

  They picked up everything and headed back to the fire.

  Jack put the cans on the fire to boil and sat down next to Sonny. Beth sat near Two Feathers.

  “Well, what are we going to do now?” said Sonny.

  “Hard Luck was the ghost town in Colorado Frank took us to,” said Beth. “We could go there. The way Slim talked it was a real town with people. It hasn’t become a ghost town yet.”

  “I don’t know Beth,” said Sonny. “What are we going to do with Curly Bob and Slim? If we ride into town on their horse without them, we’re liable to be hanged as horse thieves. If we ride in with them, we’ll be hanged as murderers for shooting Dirty Earl. Who’s going to believe three kids over the word of adults? What do we do with Two Feathers? We can’t leave him here and if we take him to town they’ll lynch him.”

  “Well, what do we do?” said Jack. “I guess”, answering his own question, “we could head for the hills. Maybe take Two Feathers back to his own people.”

  “I don’t see that we have any choice.” Beth said. “If what Sonny says is true and I think what he says is true, we have to head for the hills.”

  Sonny said, “Well if we do we’re in much better shape than we were in. Judging by what
Curly Bob and Slim had on those packhorses, we’ll have lots to eat. I didn’t get to see too much of what they were carrying but I did see this sack of flour”, he patted the sack he was leaning on, “and a sack of beans. We’ll have to take inventory in the morning.”

  Two Feathers reached out and touched Beth. She looked at him and said with concern “What?”

  He motioned to the boys. Jack and Sonny stood up and came over to him.

  He reached up with his good hand for Jack to help him to his feet. Sonny grabbed his left elbow and with great effort they were able to get him to his feet.

  As Two Feathers stood up he sucked in air sharply.

  “That hurt,” said Jack.

  “I bet he has to take a leak,” said Sonny.

  Two Feathers motioned with his head for the boys to take him over to where Curly Bob was tied. He leaned heavily on the boys and moved very slowly.

  Jack said to Sonny “His wounds are beginning to set up and get sore.”

  “Yeah, he’s gonna hurt for a long time and it’s going to get worse before it gets better. Poor guy.”

  When they got over to Curly Bob so that Curly Bob could see them, it was Curly Bob’s turn to suck in air.

  “What are you goin’ do?” his voice broke. He started to struggle against his bonds but he was held fast. “What are you goin to do? Get him away from me.” he screamed. “Get him away.” he wailed.

  Two Feathers gave a low laugh and pulled aside his loin cloth and pissed on Curly Bob’s head and face.

  Curly Bob’s fear turned to anger. “Damn you! Damn you!” Curly Bob spit, sputtered and screamed.

  Jack leaned down so that he could look Curly Bob in the eye and said, “Shut up you bastard or I’ll let him scalp you now.”

  Curly Bob looked at Jack with pure, evil hatred but did as Jack said.

  Jack straightened up and he and Sonny took Two Feathers back to the fire. Even though it was painful to laugh, Two Feathers chuckled on the short walk back to his bedding.

  Slim couldn’t see what was going on but could hear Curly Bob’s pleadings and screams. Not knowing what was happening was terrible for Slim and his imagination ran wild with his worst fears. This was going to be the worst night of his life.