Keegan or McCulloch in months. When he got to Purgatory City with his five hundred bucks for Hans or Otto Kruger, he’d buy them a beer or whiskey.
The hairs on his neck started tingling, and he let his eye rise from the telescopic sight even before he heard the revolver behind him being cocked, and the German-accented guttural voice say, “Ja. I know it be robbed. Too bad ya not live to see us spend all dat money.”
Well, Breen thought as he eased down the hammer on the big rifle and slowly brought the rifle up and leaned it against the wall beside the window. Nobody told him to raise his hands, but he figured that was the general idea. By the time he turned around on his knees, his hands were high, and he saw the big man with blond hair and a Remington revolver aimed at his chest.
“Kruger.” At first he thought Hans, or Otto, must have hurried away from the bank, climbed to the second floor—the church bells drowning out the noise of his spurs on the stairs—and figured to dispatch Breen before robbing the bank. But no, that wouldn’t make any sense. The bank would be closed by the time that happened. Suddenly, he remembered the Kruger that went into the bank wore striped britches. This Hun’s pants were checked.
“I am Otto,” the German said with an even-toothed grin. “And ya be dead ven da shooting starts.”
“Maybe there won’t be any shooting.” Breen smiled.
“Ha. Alvays dere be shooting ven Hans rob bank.” Otto Kruger walked to the foot of the bed, never lowering the revolver.
Every plan that passed through Breen’s brain never slowed down. Every idea he thought of that might not leave him dead was stupid, hopeless, and would have him deader than dirt.
Then a lovely woman stepped into the room, carrying a tray that brought with it the aroma of fried steak, boiled potatoes, hot coffee, and chocolate cake.
CHAPTER FOUR
As captain of the wagon train that had left Dead Trout, Arkansas, the Reverend Sergeant Major Homer Primrose III called every man, woman, and child he was leading to the promised land to kneel in the camp’s circle. He was captain of the train, but preferred his rank of sergeant major, which he had earned through hard campaigning with the Thirteenth Arkansas Infantry for the late Confederacy.
All twenty-six people knelt, bowed their heads, and took hands as the Reverend began to pray.
“Dear Lord,” he said, “Please guide us safely through the evil, sinful town that blocks our path to the glory that awaits us in Rapture Valley, Territory of Arizona. God, spare our children from the sights of debauchery, lewdness, smut, immorality, and from the offensiveness and drunkenness. Spare them, Lord, spare all of us, from the wretched, the gamblers, the confidence men and, Lord have mercy, the confidence women. And the fornicators—especially the fornicators, prostitutes, the soiled doves, the bawdy women, the strumpets, concubines, the harlots, the ladies of the evening, the courtesans, the lost lambs. Oh those poor lost souls. Lord have mercy on them—those scarlet women, those Jezebels, shameless hussies, the dance hall girls. Oh, God, if you could just strike down all those dancers with a thunderous bolt of lighting—and the floozies and the tramps and the trollops. And God, please spare us from the nymphomaniacs, if thus be Thy Will!”
He went on for deliverance from the evils of the gamblers and the confidence men (again), and the cutthroats and murderers and any Jayhawkers that might have drifted down from Kansas into the Panhandle of Texas, and any Yankee-loving son of a cur dog that dared slight the great Confederate States of America and, in especial, the state most noble to that glorious of now lost cause, Arkansas.
“Lord, you know after years of Yankee rule and the curse of Reconstruction, there was nothing left for us, your poor servants in Dead Trout, but you showed us the glory that awaits us if we make it to Rapture Valley,” he prayed on, sweating. “And if by your grace we survive this Sodom of Texas, the Gomorrah of our travels, if we can live to see New Mexico Territory and aren’t bushwhacked, raped, pillaged and tortured to death—all for your glory—by Mexicans or Apaches, and maybe Mormons if any of them live in the territory, and get us to . . .”
By that point, raven-haired Annie Homes’ neck hurt from such an eternally long bow, and her knees hurt from the prickly pear cactus on the flat expanse of Texas. She lifted her head and looked beyond their camp at the trail that led to Five Scalps, Texas. She breathed a little easier seeing that Winfield Baker had stopped praying, too, as had Betsy Stanton. Betsy, harlot that she was, began rolling a cigarette.
“You better hope the sergeant major doesn’t see you,” Annie whispered.
Betsy licked the paper and stuck the cigarette into her mouth.
“Got a match?” she asked Winfield, who tried to stifle his laugh. After winking at Annie, Betsy unbuttoned the top button on her blouse and dropped the unlit cigarette between her ample bosoms. “I’ll smoke it later, I reckon.” She giggled.
Winfield Baker’s eyes bulged.
That didn’t make Annie happy, but she held her temper and tongue and made herself look down the road at the dust sweeping across the first buildings on the outskirts of Five Scalps. Maybe, she prayed, that was the Lord hearing the long prayer of the reverend and sending his vengeance to destroy the evil that awaited them just a mile down the trail.
“Amen,” the preacher said.
Annie, Winfield, and Betsy quickly dropped their heads, answered, “Amen,” and then raised their heads and looked up at the heavens. They thanked the Lord again, helped each other off the cactus, thorns, and ants, and slapped at the dust and bits of gravel. Cactus spines stuck in their clothes and flesh.
“Reverend Sergeant Major Homer?” Annie heard her father Walter ask. “Flat as this country is, wouldn’t it make sense to just ride around Five Scalps, and not go through it?”
“Yeah,” said Horace Greeley, whose name often was the butt of many a joke. The Horace Greeley from Dead Trout, Arkansas, only touched a newspaper when he took one to the privy since he could neither read nor write. But this Horace Greeley was going West—just like that other Horace Greeley had invited and urged Americans to do.
“Well,” the preacher said in a blast of fire and brimstone, “You may flee if such is your will. Ride around a test that God himself has put before us. Nay, say I. Nay, will I. As a sergeant major in the Thirteenth Arkansas Infantry, I, the Reverend Sergeant Major Homer Primrose the Third, will see what is God’s will.”
He had already preached too much fear into the hearts of his fellow Arkansas travelers. Twenty-one of them elected to ride around Five Scalps, so Annie climbed into the back of the covered wagon, settled on the blanket and sack of flour between the chifforobe and her mother’s pie safe, and felt the oxen start walking. As the wagon lurched, Annie bumped her head against the wagon and cursed—but not loud enough for her parents or the pious sergeant major to hear. She bounced this way and that, although she really could not tell the difference between the path they had been following and the plains they crossed to go around the nefarious town.
Eventually, the wagons stopped, and she heard her mother and father climb down from the driver’s box. Annie pulled herself out from between the two pieces of furniture and rubbed her upper left arm where she felt certain she would see a bruise by tomorrow. She crawled through the tangle of blankets, clothes, and sacks, and peered through the rear oval opening in the canvas covering the wagon. Other members of the train—men, women, girls about Annie’s age, boys a few years older, and the little kids, were gathering and looking back east at the
