CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“There it is,” Walter Homes said from the wagon seat. Harriet turned around and beckoned Annie to climb through all the debris, furniture, and foodstuffs from the back of the bouncing wagon to come see.
When she stuck her head through the opening in the canvas cover, both mother and father pointed to the southwest.
“Our first mountain,” Walter said.
Annie found it in the distance, a mound of red, orange, and white against the pure blue sky.
“Papa,” she said with a smile. “It’s not our first mountain. The Ouachitas were practically in our backyard in Arkansas.”
Her father laughed and urged the horses to continue pulling. They were climbing, which Annie found a relief after all those desolate days crossing the western plains of Texas and that abysmal Panhandle region.
“Honey,” her father said. “It’s our first Western mountain.”
“Papa, if someone lived in Baltimore, Maryland, or even Memphis, Tennessee, he or she would have said the Ouachitas were western mountains.”
Her father chuckled, but her mother chided Annie. “Goodness gracious, child, what has gotten into you?” Harriet tilted her head toward the lone butte, and said, “You never saw anything like that in Dead Trout, Arkansas, or the Ouachitas, now did you?”
She decided to play nice and relented. “No, ma’am.” Besides, it was a wonderful sight to behold, the flatness of the Panhandle making way for a rugged terrain of red rocks, red dirt, red dust, and blue skies, with short trees sprouting on the lower levels of the butte and the surrounding countryside.
“Are we still in Texas?”
“Not if I have my bearings right,” Walter Homes said. “We should be in the Territory of New Mexico by now.” He gestured to the north. “Fort Bascom should be somewhere in that general direction.”
“Where the smoke is?” Annie asked.
Her father almost dropped the heavy leather lines to the team pulling the wagon. Jerking his head around, she lifted her arm so he could see exactly where she had detected the smoke.
Walter said nothing, but his mouth that had been turned upward over the sight of his first Western mountain, suddenly reversed course, frowned briefly, and turned into a rigid flat line.
“Looks like a series of nice fluffy white clouds,” Annie’s mother said.
Annie refrained from calling her mother an idiot.
“Well,” Walter said, “I suppose that’s smoke, all right. Maybe from Fort Bascom. It could be anything, my family, because . . .” He trailed off.
Winfield Baker was riding his mule toward them, coming from the lead wagons ahead. They saw him slow down beside the Carter wagon, then the Stanton wagon, where to Annie’s jealous fit, he turned the mule around and rode alongside, likely letting that shameless hussy Betsy Stanton flirt with him, or perhaps even roll him a cigarette. Then he said something, pointed toward the smoke, turned the mule around, and finally made a rather leisurely way to the Jeffries wagon. Since that family had no girls, Winfield Baker spoke with them only a few moments, though he did point out the smoke, and then gesture toward a dry creek bed up the trail and down a ways.
At length, he rode to the Homes wagon.
“Sir,” he called out. “The Reverend Sergeant Major Homer Primrose III suggested that I have a word with you, Mr. Homes.”
“I see.” Annie’s father kept the wagon moving, but her mother was clutching the cross of German pewter than hung from her neck, her lips moving in silent prayer, and her face paling as she looked at another puff of white smoke on the far horizon.
Well, Annie had to give Winfield Baker some credit. He turned his mule around and rode alongside their wagon just as he had done with the Stantons’ Studebaker—and that harlot daughter of theirs.
“That smoke over there could mean trouble, sir,” Winfield said as he bounced up and down on the mule’s bare back. He had only a rawhide hackamore to guide the animal, too.
“Annie just pointed it out to us, Winfield,” Walter Homes said. “I’m surprised the good reverend even noticed it.”
“Actually, I saw the smoke first, Mr. Homes,” Winfield said. “I told the reverend.”
“Well, that’s a jim-dandy job, son,” her father said.
“Oh, it was nothing, really.”
“Well, you have keen eyes.”
“Thank you, sir.” Winfield stared briefly at Annie before swallowing and regaining his focus. He pointed to that spot off the trail. “Since the reverend thinks that smoke might be from Indians, he has ordered the wagons to turn off the trail at the cut—there. You can see the first wagon making its way down now.”
Indeed, the Reverend Sergeant Major Homer Primrose III large wagon had made the turn and was following a narrow trail toward a rocky bed that cut deep into the country.
“How long do you think we’ll have to wait?” Walter asked.
“The reverend did not say, sir.”
“Is he planning on sending out a party of men to investigate this smoke?”
“I don’t know, sir. I just told him about the smoke, and he saw the place down there, and he said we should circle the wagons and wait this danger out.”
“Then he thinks there is danger.”
“Well, I guess so. But, well, you know, sir. We’re—”
“Alone?” Annie finished the sentence for him.
“Well . . .” The boy began to get flustered. “I need to—” He turned around sharply, sitting erect and looking with a deep intensity toward the smoke. “Did you hear something, Mr. Homes?”
Annie glanced briefly at her father, and tried to see where exactly Walter was looking.
“No, son, I can’t—”
“There!” Walter snapped, and leaned so far he almost toppled off the mule.
Annie heard it then, a faint rolling. Echoes of...
“A gunshot?” her father asked. He looked off toward the smoke with keen purpose.
Another low rumble followed. And another.
“Maybe,” Annie’s mother said wistfully, “It’s just thunder.”
“Without a cloud in the sky, Mama,” Annie pointed out.
“Well . . .” Harriet nodded as though she had discovered the undebatable answer. “Fort Bascom. They must be firing off their cannons.”
No one looked at Annie’s mother, but her father turned back and urged the mules a little closer.
“You see the trail, sir,” Winfield Baker said. “Just follow the other wagons, and I’ll see you in the camp.” He grabbed the hackamore tighter. “I must let the other folks know, Mr. Homes.” He tipped his hat at Annie’s mother, then tipped his hat and blushed at Annie. Kicking his mule, he trotted off toward the Simpsons’ wagon.
“He’s such a nice young boy,” Annie’s mother said, forgetting about those darned cannons that must have been going off at Fort Bascom.
Mama sure hit the nail on the head, Annie thought. Winfield Baker was a fine young boy.
* * *
In the arroyo below the trail, with the wagons in a tight circle and all the animals inside, Annie Homes suddenly felt a cold dread. She had mocked her father, mocked her mother, and Betsy Stanton—but that witch deserved it. Annie had even picked on poor Winfield Baker. Yet now she wished she was surrounded by the safety and the closeness of the Ouachita Mountains and not that deadly, barren butte that looked as though it had been bathed in blood.
Actually, she’d have given anything if she could see the mountain, red as blood and pale as death or not. But she saw nothing but the blackness of the New Mexican desert. She had prayed and prayed and prayed that the moon would rise and bathe them in light, but a few minutes ago, she heard Mr. Stanton tell someone that it was the new moon. There would be no moonlight. No stars. And under orders from the Reverend Sergeant Major Homer Primrose III, there would be no campfires, no cookfires, no pipes, cigars, or cigarettes being smoked this night. Every man in camp held a rifle. A few women held guns, too. Her father had even given Annie a folding knife, and had locked the main blade open before he slipped it onto her sweaty hand.
“Just in case, darling,” he said. Then he had grinned, and tried to make a joke. “I figured you might want to pass your time this evening vittling, sweetheart.”
“Do you mean whittling, Papa?”
He had laughed, before wandering into the depths of blackness.
It might have been bearable had the coyotes not started. Laughing, howling like hyenas, mocking those poor, foolish travelers from Dead Trout, Arkansas. For several minutes, they sang their mocking song at the wayfarers until . . . silence.
Deathly still. Nothing but blackness all around them. The wind did not blow. The coyotes did not howl. The livestock so close to them all made not one sound.
Until a voice called out that almost made the frightened Annie Homes stab herself with her papa’s knife.
“Hello the camp. Mind if I come in?”