The Travelers 1

by Lee Hunnicutt

  He smiled and held his hand down for her.

  When she was seated beside him, he said, “Jane, this here’s Beth, Sonny and Jack. This here’s Marthy Jane Cannary.”

  “We’re pleased to meet you ma’am,” said Beth.

  “Pleased to meet ya’all too and don’t ma’am me. The name’s Jane.

  You must be them kids the Army was all worked up about, them ones the Cheyenne had.”

  “Yeah, them’s the ones.” Johnson said trying to cut the conversation short. He knew this was a sore subject for the kids.

  He popped the horses on the rump with the reins and they all continued into town.

  The women on the porch started yelling after the wagon, “Goodbye Johnny. Come back and see us.”

  Johnson popped the horses harder with the reins to get them into a trot.

  Jane laughed and hit Johnson on the shoulder with the heel of her hand and said with a smile “Yew ole dog, yew. I didn’t know yew had it in ya.”

  All Johnson did was sweat and squirm.

  When they came into town, Johnson reined the horses to a walk and Beth put on her best, sweetest smile and said, “How did those women know your name and why would they say those things about you?”

  Jane laughed, looked behind Johnson’s back and winked at Beth and said, “Yeah, John why would they?”

  A week later they had said their good byes to Jane and Johnson and headed west. They had picked up more supplies in town. They had gone to the saw mill and put in an order for wooden planks to be cut to their specifications. Some of the extra things they bought were a couple of barrels of pitch, hammers, quarter inch mesh, sheet metal, rope, a keg of nails, saws, picks, and shovels.

  They were about a half day out when Sonny who was riding alongside the wagon slapped his thigh and said, “Hot damn! Now I know who she is.”

  Both Jack and Beth gave him a puzzled look. Beth was driving the wagon and Jack was sitting next to her. Their horses were tied to the rear of the wagon.

  Jack said, “Who?”

  “Marthy Jane Cannary.

  She’s Calamity Jane. She won’t get the name for a while but she will be Calamity Jane in about a year.”

  Beth gave Sonny an excited look and said, “You’re right! Martha Jane Cannary was born in the early 1850s. She can’t be much over twenty years old and she’ll be a legend in another couple of years.”

  Jack said with excitement in his voice, “We have meet all of the great chiefs of the Northern and Southern Cheyenne, the Arapahos and some of the Sioux. Now, we have not only met and traveled with Liver Eatin’ Johnson, he’s our friend and last night we had steak and beer with Calamity Jane.

  Does it get any better than this? Wow!”

  The rest of the afternoon was spent in excited chatter. Full of the exuberance of youth, they were off on a new adventure and life was good.

  They traveled from Fort Laramie to the North Platte and followed the river up into Colorado. They were deep in Cheyenne country.

  They had been on the road for about two weeks when they came across a small war party of Cheyenne. The Cheyenne traveled with them for two days until the warriors got bored and left them.

  They had been in this part of Colorado many times before and they knew the best and easiest way to get the wagon to where they wanted to go.

  Another week took them to the place where they had met Curly Bob and Jack had shot Dirty Earl. They knew that they had about two days ride to Hard Luck and from there not more than a four-day ride to where they hoped to find gold.

  The closer they got to Hard Luck the more apprehensive they became. They kept thinking about Curly Bob and Slim. What if they were in Hard Luck and what if there were more of them? Jack still had the wanted poster that he had taken off Curly Bob. They all agreed that he was probably part of the gang mentioned in the poster.

  Jack said, “Maybe we should detour around Hard Luck.”

  “That’s two, maybe three weeks,” said Sonny. “I say we go through Hard Luck.

  I mean, what’re the odds that Curly Bob and his thug pals will be there? Slim to none.”

  “If we detour, the odds are none,” said Jack. “What do you think, Beth?”

  “I hope never to see Curly Bob again but I say we take the chance. We can’t be runnin’ scared. I’m not goin’ to spend the rest of my life wondering if that SOB’s goin’ to be around every corner.

  If Curly Bob’s in Hard Luck,” her voice and face became hard, “it’ll be his last day on Earth.”

  Jack gave a grim smile and said, “Let’s do it then.”

  They timed their arrival at Hard Luck so that they came through the town just at sunup. They figured that if they came through early enough, nobody would be up and they could pass through without any trouble.

  They figured right. The only person they saw was a drunk curled up asleep in front of the saloon.

  The town didn’t look much different than when they had visited it a hundred years in the future. When Frank had taken them to Hard Luck in the 1970s the place had looked run down and seedy but the kids had thought that it looked that way because of age. They were wrong.

  Jack said, “This place is a shit hole. I thought this place was a dump in the 1970s but I thought that was because it was old and nobody had lived in it for almost a hundred years. I think it looked better a hundred years from now than it does now.

  Boy that sounded weird.”

  Beth laughed and said, “Yeah, that did sound weird but you’re right. This place is a dump.”

  From the time they had entered the town to the time they left it was less than five minutes.

  After they had put a few miles between them and the town, they heaved a sigh of relief. They had been prepared for trouble but they certainly didn’t want any.

  A few miles out of Hard Luck they entered one of those long wide valleys that you find in the Rockies. They were following the river that ran through the valley. That night they camped a half mile off the trail. They didn’t want anyone bumping into them in the night.

  At midmorning the next day, they could see buzzards circling a few miles in front of them. It could have been anything, a dead deer or elk but in their minds they thought back to the first time they had seen them that thick in this part of the country.

  Beth said, “I wonder what Spotted Horse has been up to?”

  She looked at the boys and said, “You don’t think he has been raiding this far south do you?”

  “It could be anything Beth,” said Sonny.

  “Yeah, I know but I can’t help but think of that family we found. It was Spotted Horse’s arrow that Jack pulled out of that mule.”

  “Sonny’s right. It could be anything and it probably is but I can’t help thinking of Spotted Horse myself.

  He sure did like lifting white people’s scalps” Jack said casually.

  Sonny was driving the wagon and Beth was riding alongside Jack

  Beth shook her head and said, “When I found out that Spotted Horse had lead the raid on those settlers, the first time I saw him I thought he was a monster.

  It was Spotted Horse that made me the bow shot that I am today. He always treated me with kindness and as an equal, not just some skinny girl who was in the way.”

  “Yeah,” said Jack “our views on this white man, Indian thing sure have changed.

  I’m not looking forward to finding dead white people with no hair up there.” He pointed to the front where the buzzards were circling, “If we do find that, I’m not going to feel good about it but I can’t condemn the Cheyenne.”

  “Yeah, me neither” said Sonny “but it’s probably a deer or something like that.”

  In their hearts they were hoping that Sonny was right but he was wrong.

  When they came upon the covered wagon it was much like the first time when they had found a family massacred. Bodies were strewn around the wagon. This time the horses were gone, all of the bodies had their hair and the buzzards hadn’t begun
to tear the bodies apart. Like last time, the wagon had been looted.

  Jack dismounted, dropped down on one knee and said, “This wasn’t the work of Indians. The horses are shod.”

  Beth was walking through the belongings that were lying on the ground.

  She said, “Whoever did this musta been pretty hard up. This is just one family and it doesn’t look like a rich family at that.”

  Sonny was looking at the bodies. There was an adult male lying on his side. Sonny pushed him with his foot to roll him over on his back. He had been shot twice in the chest.

  Not too far from him was what must have been his wife. Her skirts were pulled up and she was naked from the waist down. She had been shot in the face. Next to her, was a young woman about seventeen years old. Her cloths had been cut off her. Her throat was cut.

  About a hundred feet away was another woman about nineteen years old. She was naked lying in the fetal position.

  A few feet from the rear of the wagon was the body of a boy about nine years old, shot in the back.

  Beth walked around the other side of the wagon.

  Sonny had walked over to the young woman who was lying in the fetal position. He called to Jack, “Hey Jack, come give me a hand. Will you?”

  Jack was down on one knee breaking open a horse turd. He brought it up to his nose and smelled it and then crumbled it between his fingers.

  He got up and walked over to Sonny.

  Sonny said, “Help me carry her over to the rest. I want to get them all together and cover them up with the wagon’s canvas.”

  Jack looked down at the body. His heart went out to her.

  He said, “Let me see if I can find something to cover her with. It’s the least we can do.”

  He came back with a bed sheet.

  They straightened the body out and rolled it over on its back.

  Sonny said in disgust, “Ah shit, look what they did, miserable bastards.”

  She had one knife wound in the stomach.

  Jack shook his head and said sadly, “It makes you want to weep for her.

  The bastards knifed her once and then left her here to die.

  They humiliated her, knifed her and left her to die in pain and to die alone.”

  His eyes brimmed with tears and his voice filled with anger.

  “I want to track ‘em down. I want ‘em to pay.

  We leave the wagon here and we go get ‘em.”

  Sonny was looking down at the body of this pretty young woman. She looked so peaceful but he knew that there was nothing peaceful about her death.

  He looked at Jack and said through his clenched teeth “Yeah.”

  His jaw muscles were working.

  His voice was choked with anger. “We catch ‘em and we kill ‘em like the Cheyenne would kill ‘em.”

  “There’s one alive!” It was Beth. She was about fifty yards away from the wagon.

  Jack gently laid the sheet over the body and they trotted over to where Beth was.

  Beth was kneeling over what looked like a boy with long red hair.

  Beth said, “She’ beat up but she’s still alive.”

  The girl was wearing dark heavy cotton pants and a home spun shirt. She looked to be about four feet ten inches tall.

  Her face and her shirt were covered in blood.

  Beth said, “She looks worse than she is. She has a scalp wound here.”

  Beth pointed to a clotted mass along the hairline.

  “And it looks like she was shot just below the collarbone,” said Beth pointing at the girl’s left shoulder.

  “Just lookin’ at her you’d think she was dead. She’s covered in blood.

  That’s probably what saved her,” said Sonny.

  “We’re gonna hafta clean her up, stitch the head wound and see how bad the bullet wound is.

  Sonny, I’m gonna need two pots of boiling water and Jack see if you can find some sheets or cloth in their wagon. I’m gonna need sterile water to clean the wound and we need to boil the cloth to sterilize it,” said Beth.

  Sonny got a pot from their wagon and found another pot on the ground near the covered wagon. He filled both pots from the drinking water barrel on the covered wagon.

  Jack had found some more sheets and was working on starting a fire near the wagon.

  Sonny set the pots down next to Jack and headed back to where Beth was.

  When he got there he said, “Let me pick her up and carry her closer to the fire.”

  “Yeah, that’s a good idea, Sonny.”

  Sonny bent down and gently picked the wounded girl up and headed towards Jack.

  Beth went to the covered wagon and found some blankets and spread one on the ground next to the fire that Jack had just started.

  Jack said, “While you wait for the water to boil, Sonny and I will go pick up the girl that’s over there and bring her back with the rest. We’ll start burying ‘em.”

  Sonny looked at Beth and said with sadness in his voice “They raped her, knifed her in the stomach, Beth and they left her to die.

  Jack and I want to track ‘em down but we can’t do it without you. Jack figures that there were ten to twelve of ‘em and he figures that their tracks are about a day old.”

  “We can’t leave her here,” said Beth.

  “Yeah, I know but it sickens me to think that they’ll get away with this.”

  “I know but we can’t do it all, Sonny.”

  Sonny grimly nodded his head.

  As Beth waited for the water to boil, Jack and Sonny had lined all of the bodies in a row and had covered them with the canvas covering from the covered wagon.

  Jack went over to their wagon and returned with two shovels and a pickax.

  The boys began digging a large common grave.

  They had bought a wooden box of lye soap in Fort Laramie. Beth went over to their wagon and came back with a bar.

  She let the water boil for ten minutes and then took it off the fire to cool.

  She then began to cut off the wounded girls clothes. She needed to do this in order to clean her up and to check if there were any other wounds or broken bones.

  Fortunately, it was a sunny, unseasonably warm day.

  The boys were sweating and had stripped to the waist. Grave digging was hard work.

  Beth had checked the girl and as far as she could tell there were no broken bones nor were there any other wounds. By looking at the girl’s pupils she had concluded that there was no concussion.

  Beth thought that the girl was in a faint because of loss of blood and shock.

  When the water had cooled, she had called Jack away from his grisly duty to pour water over her hands so that she could wash and rinse her hands. Once that was done she began to clean the wounds and to bathe the unconscious girl.

  Once the blood had been cleaned off, she could see that the scalp wound wasn’t serious It appeared that the bullet had passed just under the right collarbone at an upward angle and had exited just up and behind the collarbone. The collarbone itself hadn’t been fractured and the wound was high enough that the lung hadn’t been punctured.

  The bad news was that she had been shot. The good news was it was a flesh wound.

  Beth attacked the gunshot wound with a vengeance. See was glad that the girl was unconscious as she cleaned pieces of the girl’s shirt out of the wound.

  After she was satisfied that she had cleaned the bullet wound out as best she could, she began to clean and sew up the scalp wound. She was glad that the wound was along the hairline. Even if it left a bad scar her hair would hide it.

  They still had Bacitration Ointment in their packs and she had liberally spread it on both wounds. She tore the sheets into bandages then bound the shoulder wound. She folded a blanket up for a pillow and had covered the nude girl with the other two blankets. Now all she could do was hope for the best.

  The boys had finished the grave and were laying the bodies side by side in the hole. They had wrapped each body in a sheet
or a piece of canvas.

  Beth walked over to them.

  Jack was in the grave and Sonny was passing the bodies down to him. When the last body was laid in the grave, Jack climbed out and both boys looked at their handy work.

  Sonny said to Beth, “Why don’t you go see if you can find a family Bible or something we can use to identify them? Maybe we can carve a marker or something.”

  Beth nodded and went to the wagon. The boys began to fill the hole with dirt.

  Beth came over with the family Bible.

  She said, “The parents were Sean and Catherine O’Day. The two older girls were Mary Margaret and Barbara Germain and the boy was Peter Michael.”

  Beth looked over at the little redhead and said, “She must be Anne Elizabeth. She’s two months younger than you and I, Sonny.

  She’ll be fourteen in July, whenever July is.”

  Since living with the Cheyenne, they knew what year it was but they didn’t have a clue as to what month they were in and they had neglected to ask what the date was when they were in Fort Laramie. They had long ago put their watches in their backpacks. The last time one of them had looked into their packs the watches had long since run down. Since they had been living with the Cheyenne, time didn’t mean much to them anymore.

  Jack walked to their wagon and came back with a saw. He climbed up on the O’Day’s wagon and began sawing out the front seat.

  It took him less than five minutes and he when had finished he climbed down and came back over to the grave.

  Sonny was shoveling the last of the dirt over the mound.

  Holding up the board, Jack said, “What should I put on this?”

  “How about, ‘Here Lies the O’Day Family, RIP’?” said Sonny.

  Beth nodded her head and Jack said, “OK.”

  Beth said, “We might as well camp here for the night. Sonny, let’s see what we can salvage from the O’Day’s wagon.”

  Jack went over to their wagon, pulled out his knife, sat down and using the right front wagon wheel as a back rest began carving the inscription.

  As Jack carved and Sonny scrounged through the wagon Beth looked in on her patient.

  Sonny began to load stuff from the O’Day’s wagon into their wagon. There was bedding, blankets, clothes for Anne Elizabeth, flour, salt, sugar, potatoes, tools for cold shoeing horses, canned and dried beef. He also found a flute, two violins, a guitar and sheet music.