I figured that Five Scalps would be a great deal larger.”
“It sure ain’t like the picture of that wicked city of Gomorrah that we got in our Bible,” Jimmy said, leaning forward and grinning. “Howdy, Annie.”
She returned the greeting and took a step closer to Five Scalps, Texas, so she could always say she got closer to that evil place than any of the other members of the Primrose Train.
“I don’t see the captain,” said one of the men off to Annie’s left.
“Or the others,” an old lady murmured.
“My God,” said Aunt Rachel, the oldest woman on the wagon train, who, as far as Annie knew, wasn’t related to anyone in Dead Trout, but everybody called her Aunt. “ Maybe they’ve been taken in by those evil villains.”
“Either that or the prairie swallowed ’em up,” someone else said.
A few of the men huddled together to determine their next course of action.
Annie inched her way about another foot closer, though Five Scalps still had to be a quarter mile, from where they had stopped.
“Huh,” she said, holding her scarf when a gust of wind blew.
The town might have five scalps somewhere, but it didn’t have five buildings, even if you included the privy.
A good-sized adobe structure, two stories with a high wall enclosing the flat roof, and gun ports on all sides. Too small for a fort, certainly not a jail, but from the number of horses at the hitching rail, it had to be the center of town. In fact, it was the town’s center. To its left and across the trail stood a smaller building, but it wasn’t anything more than a sod hut. To the big adobe’s right and on the same side of the trail stood another soddie, but a mite larger than the one on the left-hand side of the trail. Three buildings. Four if you included the privy. Five if you wanted to count the corral.
Annie pointed. “Isn’t that the Reverend Primrose’s wagon?”
It was hard to tell. The wind had picked up again and was blowing dust.
Her father tensed. “By the terrors, those dirty dogs must have bushwhacked the Reverend. And Thad, Jim, Hawg, and Muldoon.”
Another man said, “Isn’t that our captain wandering to that hovel across the street?”
Added Hawg’s cousin, “With that gal hanging on his arm?”
For about the time it took the man who looked a lot like the Reverend Sergeant Major Homer Primrose III cross the dusty street, no one in the Primrose Train spoke. The wind blew dust as the man managed to keep his hat on with one hand, his other hand holding on to the scantily clad damsel in distress. A moment later, the reverend—or someone who looked a lot like the reverend—and the girl were inside the soddie.
“Maybe that’s the church,” said Mrs. Primrose, whose husband had insisted that she travel with Aunt Rachel around Five Scalps. Mrs. Primrose said it again and nodded in affirmation. “Yes, that is the church.”
“What are we to do?” Aunt Rachel asked, then spit out juice from her snuff.
“Wait for the baptism,” Hawg’s cousin said.
Winfield Baker could not stifle his snigger, which caused him to get a quick scolding from his mother, father, and grandmother.
Annie’s father pulled his hat down tighter and turned around. “Let’s just see to our teams and our families. We’ll wait here. Stay close to your families, and I’m sure the captain will rejoin us later when he has . . .” His voice trailed off as he sighed.
Annie followed her parents back to the wagon.
* * *
She liked the way her father prayed. He sounded sincere, never so pompous as the Reverend Primrose. Her father prayed like he meant it. He didn’t ramble like the wagon train boss, but got to the point and wrapped it up. When he thanked God, he sounded sincere.
Annie’s family had corn pone, salt pork, leftover beans, and hot tea for their supper. They rolled out their bedrolls and sat on them, watching that big ball of orange slowly sink in the west like it had found quicksand in the distance and was being pulled underneath. The skies turned red, orange, purple and yellow, and finally the tip of the sun bid good-bye for the night.
“We never saw anything like that in Arkansas,” Walter said. “Did we, Mother?” Annie’s father often called his wife Mother.
“Too many trees.” Harriet shook her head. “Never thought I’d miss those trees till we got out here. When’s the last time we saw a tree?”
He laughed. “We’ll see them in Rapture Valley, Mother.” He winked at Annie. “The hillsides are filled with trees, piñon, and juniper, even pines farther up the hills. But the valley is wonderful and lush with grass. Paradise for sure. I’ll build my two girls a home in the hills, and the rest of the valley I’ll cover with my cattle.”
He had been talking about this for years.
The Reverend Primrose said the residents of Dead Trout had been driven out by carpetbaggers and Yankee scalawags, but Walter had been dreaming of leaving the Arkansas hills since even before the War Between the States. When that flyer showed up from the Concord mail stage, and someone posted it on the wall at the general store, he had seen it. He had been the first to suggest that a few families set out for the new country. Get away from the poverty and mosquitoes of the hills. Do what Horace Greeley—the newspaper man—said. Go West.
If anyone asked Annie, the men of the wagon train should have elected her father as the head of the train, but the reverend had been a good soldier, at least if you listened to what he said. He had even once set out for California, spent three years there before returning to Arkansas. He knew the trails even though the one he had taken to California and back had been much farther north.
“Do you trust the reverend?” Annie heard herself ask.
“Child,” her mother, Harriet, scolded, “He’s a man of the cloth.”
Annie’s eyes shot toward Five Scalps and the soddie across from the big trading post or whatever it was. She wondered if her first thought, Sergeant Major Primrose likely is not wearing any sort of cloth right now, would be declared a sin come Judgment Day.
Her father smiled with the patience of a father. “He has been to California.”
“We’re not going to California,” she pointed out.
“But he knows the trails, or at least, how to handle a wagon train on the trail.” Walter reached over and patted her arm. “You see how he taught us to circle our wagons at camp, and he guided us across the Red River into Texas. Now here we are, deep in Comanche and Kiowa territory, and we have not been attacked yet.”
“And he preaches a good sermon.” Harriet had always been one to admire some brimstone and vinegar.
“We have traveled six hundred miles, Daughter. Perhaps farther, and that means we are almost halfway to our new home. I would not disservice our train’s duly elected captain by complaining or making disparaging comments as to his wisdom or leadership abilities. We are
