“QUANTRILL WANTS to establish a winter camp in Texas,” Bill Anderson was telling me. “That’s what I’m supposed to be doing now. Heading to cross the Red River into Grayson County. We have some people there already. They sent a courier to tell Quantrill that the river is a hellhole, full of quicksand bogs, and to take the ferry. And that they found a good spot for the camp on Mineral Creek. But Quantrill wants me to put my stamp on it before he heads down there. Doesn’t trust the scouts. Trusts me. Whadd’ya think of that?”
He was sitting next to the fire, smoking a cheroot. I was scrubbing out the coffeepot with sand after nearly throwing up my supper of rabbit that I’d helped skin. He’d made me take a dose of the horrible whiskey to settle my stomach. I almost died from the taste of it, the way it burned going down, but then a peculiar thing happened: I got all warm inside and I didn’t want to throw up anymore.
Girls do the dishes after supper, Bill had told me. At least his sisters always did, always helped the help. And a campout was no different from a fancy dining room. I didn’t argue, afraid of what he might do to me.
“The courier said there’s plenty of forage for the horses in Texas, and the creek is full of turtles and the like, catfish and trout. The woods are full of pigs and deer. I’d like to get there sooner than soon and make my own report to Quantrill. Do you understand?”
I nodded yes. “But I may be holding you back.”
“No, ma’am,” he answered. “You keep me company and that’ll get me there faster. Two heads are better than one. And you lookin’ so much like Jenny, well, it keeps me cheerful. I like teaching you things. We’re out here in the hinterland enough so we can travel days now. And tomorrow I’m gonna teach you to shoot.”
I lay there under the stars unable to sleep. I could easily slip away, I knew, if not for the fact that I did not know where I was, so there was no sense in escaping.
But lying awake was a good thing, too. For in the night lit only by a crescent moon, I saw forms moving in the nearby woods, and I trembled with fear.
Someone is out there, spying on us. No. Several someones.
I could do nothing. I felt helpless with Bloody Bill Anderson sleeping on the other side of the fire. If I woke him, what would he do? How far did the name “Bloody Bill” go with him? Would he kill them all? And if I didn’t alert him, would they kill us?
Wait. Suppose the creeping dark forms were Seth and Martha and some friends come to get me?
I wanted to throw up again. I decided I needed more whiskey, so I crawled around the fire, as quietly as I could, to where Bill’s flask lay beside him.
Luckily, my fate was decided for me. I knocked it over.
Before I knew what hit me, two hands grasped my wrists in an ironlike grip. “What are you doing, miss?”
“I need some whiskey.”
“You? You need? What you need is a good spanking, I’m thinking.”
“No. You don’t understand. I’m going to throw up.”
“Why?”
I bit my lower lip. I pointed to the woods. “There’re people out there. Creeping around.”
At once he was crouched down next to me, checking the revolvers at his waist, picking up his rifle, putting on his hat. “Get down and stay down,” he ordered.
I did so. But I started to cry, too. “I want my brother, Seth.” I did my crying quietly.
“You shut up about Seth. I’m your brother from here on. Get used to it.”
For some reason, while he was scolding me in harsh whispers, our pursuers had gone out of sight. “Now see what you’ve done?” he mumbled, as if I were personally responsible for picking them up and putting them down someplace else. “How the hell do I know where they are now?”
“We’re right here, mister,” a voice behind us said. “So don’t you take no notion of shooting. Matter of fact, why don’t you put those guns of yourn on the ground?”
And he poked a stick into Bill’s back. Likely feeling that he was cornered by a fox, Bill set down his rifle, then his four Navy Colt revolvers, and we turned around to face three of the most disreputable characters on the face of the earth.
One picked up Bill’s rifle. “What do they call you?” he asked.
Bill didn’t answer, and even I didn’t want him shot at that juncture, because Seth always said, “Don’t trade off the devil you’ve got for one you don’t know.”
“Anderson,” I told them. “His name is Bill Anderson. Bloody Bill Anderson.”
“And you?” the man asked. “You his child bride? Or what?”
“She’s my sister,” Bill said.
“Then why she look so scared?”
“’Cause she don’t wanna go to Texas with me. But she’s goin’.”
“Bloody Bill,” the man repeated. “You wouldn’t be with Quantrill’s Raiders, would you?”
“Yes, he would,” I answered. “And if you harm us, Quantrill will kill you.”
“And now that the pleasantries are over,” Bill said, “who the hell are you all?”
The man relaxed a bit. In spite of his torn clothing, unshaven face, and the shoeless feet of his two younger companions, and their accumulated dirt and lack of firearms, he bore himself like an officer in the Confederate army. “We’re part of the many affected by Order Number 11. We’ve no place to go. We missed the wagon train and are just wandering the earth like the Lord’s people in the Bible. And there are hundreds of others like us out here.” He gestured with his head to the woods.
For a moment there was silence, and a wolf howled in the distance. Then our visitor came over and took all of Bill’s weapons. After which he made us remove our shoes and hand them over.
“Sister, is it?” he said to me. “Well, I for one don’t believe it. And as we proceed on, we’ll tell everybody we met you. What’s your name, little sweetie?”
“Juliet Bradshaw.”
He handed the revolvers over to his companions and tossed the rifle aside, out into the darkness. “You find that tomorrow. By then we’ll be long since gone,” he told Bill.
I was surprised that they didn’t take Bill’s horse and all our supplies. But they didn’t. They just took our shoes and walked off, polite as you please, to the east, where the sky was already getting lighter and the sun promised us a kiss if we’d wait up for her another hour or two.
Bill was cussing. “Damned nice of them to leave me a rifle,” he said. “Lie down, Juliet, and go to sleep. And don’t give me no sass.”