by Darrel Bird
off the spit. Jade handed her a piece of the meat, and she sat down and began tearing at it with her teeth, “Oh my goodness, this is SO good!”
Jade had given Jasper a piece, and threaded more on the spit before she began eating hers. Jasper took note of it too, and decided he had done the right thing by saving these people.
By the time the second batch of meat was ready, they were waiting for it to get done. In an hour they had each had their fill. Jasper finished cutting the meat up. The meat made his pack heavy. He didn’t take all of the meat because it would quickly go rank in the July heat.
“We’ll move until we come to water, and then camp for the rest of the day. Not safe to do it here as the smoke could attract unwanted attention.”
“Sondra and I can keep going.”
“I know you could, but I need to get you both in better shape. How are your sores healing up?”
“Ok.” Jade said.
“The next we find water, we’ll all get as clean as we can, take one day wash our clothes, and rest up. After that, we make a push for the Rockies.”
“Won’t the mountains make it harder to live in the winter?”
“We won’t actually be high in the mountains; we’ll actually be in the foot hills if we can find a secluded valley where we can grow food, and hunt.”
They hadn’t gone more than ten miles before they came to a small creek that made its way in and out of the beginning prairie; the country was beginning to be more open. Jasper didn’t know exactly where they were, but he thought they were in that finger of land in Oklahoma that was like a finger pointing toward California. If he was where he wanted to be, they would not enter Kansas or New Mexico, but would cross the Colorado border in a hard days walk. He found a place that had trees all around yet yielded a grassy bank on a creek.
“We’ll camp here by these trees. It’s a little way from the creek. I know you girls will want to bathe in the creek. The creek bank will hide you, but I can still see the top of your heads.”
He laid his pack under a large oak. It was an ideal place that would have made a good picnic spot in days gone by. Jade and Sondra laid their pack beside his, and headed for the creek. They didn’t have soap, but there was lots of sand in the creek bed here.
Jasper made a fire pit under the Oak, and then using the folding spit, he threaded what was left of the deer meat onto the steel rod. In about a half hour the women returned to the camp looking much refreshed.
“My turn, you ladies tend the meat, and keep watch. I got enough dirt on me to start a potato patch.”
He walked down the steep bank of the creek, and looking back, all he could see was the oak with smoke rising up from the fire. He took his cloths off, and examined himself. His privates itched when the air hit him. He worried about infection or fevers from the numerous chiggers, and tick bites, and also the filth from not being able to keep clean, which was always a problem.
He walked out into the creek, and at this particular spot the water came up to his waist. He luxuriated in the feel of the clean water. One thing the war had produced was clean water in the streams. In the past he had found dead people in them, but that had lessened over the years until it was a rarity. When he found comfort, the losses of the past came marching back to try to haunt him, but this day, he fought them back. Just give me a little time to appreciate the moment Lord…just five minutes. When he prayed that little prayer the ghosts began to recede, and he lay back in the water, and closed his eyes.
He was startled when he heard something flop on the bank, and he looked up to see Jade standing there. She had thrown his extra pants down to him, “Can’t a guy get a little privacy?”
She smiled down at him, “I like what I see.”
“Get out of here Jade!”
“I thought you maybe would like to wash those clothes, those aren’t clean, but they’ll do until the clean ones get dry.” She laughed and turned away toward the camp. He had forgotten to bring his extra pants and shirt to wash. He scrubbed himself clean with sand, and then washed his extra pants and shirt the best he could in the stream.
When he returned the women were sitting by the fire eating the deer meat. They each had a bowl of some green looking vegetable, “I found some dandelion, and made soup.”
“I hate dandelion, but I guess I’ll have to eat it.” She dipped a bowl for him, and he took a piece of the deer meat, and sat down.
“One of you get the rifle, and get on watch.”
“Grouch.” Jade looked at him, and made a sour face.
“I’d rather be a live grouch than a dead duck.”
“Just about the time we were beginning to like you.” Sondra looked at him and laughed.
Jade took the rifle and walked off to the outer perimeter of the camp. Jasper watched as she faded back in among the shadows of a tree.
“What were you doing down there so long?” Sondra asked.
“Fighting ghosts from the past I guess.”
Sondra looked at him soberly, “I know what you mean. Seems like when I get comfortable is when they want to visit. Do you think it will ever get better Jasper?”
“I don’t know. I’ll sleep a couple hours, and then relieve Jade.”
He lay back, and closed his eyes, and fell into a deep sleep. He felt the sharp jab of a rifle barrel in his stomach, and fought his way to the top. Two men were holding him pinned to the ground, “Wakey, wakey Jeraldine!” A man with bad breath slugged him upside the head with a rifle butt.
There were two other men walking up to the camp with five horses. The men jerked his arms behind him and were tying him with rope. Another of the men had Sondra about twenty feet away. He was trying to kiss her, “Get off me you filthy sack of hog guts!”
The man laughed and slapped her hard, almost knocking her down, and then he jerked on the rope he had her tied with, and came toward the camp.
“Easy capture Nick, the broad was taking a piss, and the other one was easy to sneak up on.”
A blonde headed man stared hard at them, “You better not damage the property too much, you remember what happened to Fred don’t you?”
“Aw we didn’t hurt’em none.”
“Can’t we sample the women Nick?” Asked one of the men in a wheedling voice.
“No! If you gotta, you can wait until we get back to town, and get one of the whores. Now get them on the horses, you beat’em so you walk!”
Jasper could hear the men grumbling, as he felt hands lift him from behind, and he was thrown face down over one of the saddles. He desperately tried to look for Jade, and finally spotted her, a man was coming up to the camp with her, her hands tied behind her back. He tried to blink the blood away that was running off his forehead and into his eyes.
“Abe, get that man up in the saddle properly, or I’ll shoot you myself!”
The man that was leading the horse stopped, and walked back around the horse, jerking him back across the saddle to the ground.
“Now get up astraddle that horse mister!” The man punched him between the shoulder blades. He got his foot into a stirrup, the man gave him a shove, and he was able to clamber into the saddle.
He was a lot more comfortable in the saddle than lying face down across it, “Where are you taking us?” He asked the surly faced man leading the horse.
“To Noble.”
“To Noble Oklahoma?”
“Colorado jerk wad! Now shut up, or you may not get there.”
The group traveled for two hours before Jasper spotted the church steeple of a small town through the scattered trees about a quarter mile away. They broke out onto a paved road, and the riding was easier, except Jasper gritted his teeth because the men didn’t bother to lead the horses by the side of the road in the dirt. These men didn’t care for any life, either that of man or animals. He knew the only cure for them was death from disease or rifle bullet to the brain, and they would enter hell screaming curses to the God that made them. The only way to deal with men like this was to dispatch without
mercy or remorse.
They soon entered the shade tree lined street of the tiny town with its typical post office, courthouse two grocery stores, and a tavern. There were a few other shops that had tried to make it in a declining economy. There was a police station in the center of town which announced “Noble police department’ in white block letters. As he looked around he saw people stare, and then duck their heads, and enter the nearest building they could find. He saw fear in the eyes of the people. I got just about as much chance of them letting me live as a fart in a tornado. The horse stopped in front of the police department, and the man jerked him roughly out of the saddle. He was barely able to get his feet under him instead of landing hard on the pavement, “Get on in here!” The man jerked him toward the door. The other two men handled the women just about as rough. They drug them into a back room where there was a holding cell of some sort. They were shoved roughly into the room before the door slammed shut, and he heard the jingle of the keys, as the door was locked. There were bars across the front of the room, and a single commode in the open in the corner.
The last man started to leave the room and Jasper asked, “Aren’t you going to untie us? Not much