by Sharon Sala
“No ma’am, you did not deserve to be mistreated. He was a man of the cloth—a man you were raised to trust. It was him that stepped over the line.” Then he touched her hand, then her arm. “Charity, girl, it doesn’t matter what he did to you. You’re what matters.”
Charity was stunned. She mattered? But did she matter to him?
“Those are kind words,” she whispered. “But find me a man who can ignore what I’ve done and I’ll show you a saint.”
Beau laid his hand at the side of her face. “I reckon you’re lookin’ at one now, but I ain’t no damn saint. I’m just a man who’s in love with a fine, gentle woman.”
Before, the pain had been too great to cry. But now the tears came, flowing free and cleansing.
“You love me? After all that I’ve… that he—”
“Yes.”
“Oh, Beau.”
Her tears were his undoing. “Lord, girl. Don’t cry. Don’t cry no more. I can’t bear it.”
He took her in his arms. “I have loved you for a long time now, Charity Doone. And I ain’t pushin’ you none, but when I get back from killin’ that preacher, I want to make you my wife.”
Charity was torn between pure joy and true fright. Suddenly the thought of Beau James putting himself into harm’s way was appalling.
“Oh Beau, I love you, too. And I will be proud to marry you. But if you love me as you say you do, please, please don’t go looking for Reverend Howe on your own. If anything happened to you, I would surely die.”
Beau’s heart soared. She loved him! But what she was asking was something he couldn’t give. He kissed her cheek, and then her lips, groaning beneath his breath as he made himself stop.
“You ain’t gonna die and I ain’t takin’ you back to the ranch and livin’ happy ever after while knowin’ that damned preacher broke your trust. I’ll see that man face to face before I quit the trail.”
His truth had been said. It was up to her to accept it. She did because he gave her no choice.
“Then so be it,” she said. “But you won’t go alone. If Hetty wants to go back tomorrow, she can go on her own. I’m going with you, Beau James. When we go home, we go together or not at all.”
Beau knew she was a winner. He grinned and swung her off of her feet and into his arms.
“Then we’d better be gettin’ back to the camp. I reckon there’s some things about us that Miss Hetty needs to know.”
Charity grinned while her feet dangled inches above the ground. “Knowing my sister, she’s already figured the whole thing out.”
Charity was right. Mehitable had taken their news in stride. But she didn’t go home. None of them did. In fact, when the freight wagon pulled into town the next day, they all had a new destination.
Lizard Flats.
It would be a hard two-day ride, but this time with a prize at the end of the trail.
A Drunk By Any Other Name
For a drunk whose normal speed was crawl, Eulis Potter came awake all too sudden and wondered why. Immobile, he contemplated the bright light of day through the slits in his eyelids and the fact that there was nothing between his head and the hard packed earth but his hat.
He’d passed out in the alley, which meant he hadn’t made it to his room, after all. He knew where he was because he recognized the roof line of Goslin’s General Store. But something was different. Something he couldn’t quite name. He wrinkled his nose. An odor of sweetness wafted up his nostrils, which was puzzling because good smells and Eulis did not coincide.
Molasses, he thought. That’s what he smelled. When he was a tyke, no more than four or five, his mother had made him molasses cookies. He closed his eyes against the glare of the sun and thought of the face of Kiowa Bill on the wanted poster in his room at the White Dove Saloon. Funny how smells could bring back memories.
His arms felt like fence posts. His legs felt like lead. That last batch of rotgut Will the Bartender had bought wasn’t fit to sell. And yet Eulis had drunk his fair share, and from the way he was feeling, everyone else’s. He licked his lips and then frowned. Damned if he wasn’t tasting that molasses as well. This was quite a memory.
Someone giggled at the end of the alley. He didn’t bother to look. Someone was always laughing at him, or calling him names. But he’d long since quit caring what other people thought. He couldn’t be bothered with their business when he was so involved in his own.
Something crawled on his leg. He needed to move. Once he’d passed out and woke up with a snake up his pants. But that had been in the fall of the year and the snake had been looking for a place to get warm. God knows it was hot enough for snakes in Lizard Flats without them having to crawl up a poor man’s pants.
Someone giggled again. Then again.
“G’way,” he mumbled. “Leave me be.”
The giggles increased. And so did the crawling sensation. In fact, now that he thought about, the crawling wasn’t just up his leg. It was all over. On his ankles. On his arms. On his face. In his beard. He opened one eye just enough to peek out. Hell’s fire. Even crawling up his nose.
He lifted his hands, frowning at the tiny brown rash all over. And then his eyes opened wide. Oh God. That rot gut had been bad—real bad. He was worse off than he thought. He was hallucinating—and even worse—the brown rash was starting to move.
The giggles increased into wild bursts of laughter.
The scent of molasses was strong in his nose. The taste sweet on his lips. He licked them again, amazed at how strong his memory had become. Then he turned his head and spit. This was wrong. Molasses didn’t have seeds.
The crawling sensation was making him crazy. He sat up with a groan and slapped at his pants near his knee. The crawling was worse now. Swaying where he sat, he bent his knee and pulled up his pants, just to make sure it was absent of snakes. To his dismay, the dancing brown rash was down there as well.
“Oh lordy,” he muttered. “I been poisoned, that’s what. I been poisoned and I’m a’ goin’ to die.”
A tiny pain shot behind his ear, then in the bush of beard below his chin. He crawled to his feet and started toward the street. Maybe Matt Goslin had something in his store that would help cure his rash.
He stumbled. Something crashed against the wall. He looked down, frowning at a jug laying in the dirt. It was too small for whiskey and too large for liniment. He picked it up, lifting it to his nose—just in case he’d been wrong about the whiskey part.
To his surprise, the molasses smell was even stronger. He poked his finger into the narrow neck. It came away covered in thick, brown syrup… and ants. He could see them now. Crawling out of the lip of the jug and down the sides like little soldiers on the march.
It took a few moments—and another pain down his neck—for reality to sink in. He looked at the trio of tow-head boys peeking around the corner of the building and knew it wasn’t a rash he was suffering. Coupled with their hysterical giggles and the contents of the molasses jug that they’d poured onto his person, he’d knew he’d been had.
“You little devils,” he shrieked. They’d used him for bait. He came out of the alley, shedding clothes as he ran.
His coat fell at the feet of the blacksmith’s wife as he staggered across her path. She screamed and danced sideways as the coat hit her shoes.
Still on the move, his hat and shirt were the next to go as they landed in the middle of the street. A rancher’s daughter took one look at Eulis’s white hairy belly, still crawling with ants and started to laugh.
By the time he got to the watering trough in front of the livery, he was clawing at his hair and his beard. Desperate to stop the stings, he went in face first, landing with a belly flop and sending a spray of water high into the air. Moments later, he came up gasping and looked down. Hundreds of ant carcasses were floating on the water. He sat down in the trough, groaning in pain and disbelief as Pete Samuels, the owner of the livery, came out on the run.
“Eulis, dang your hide. That ain�
�t no place to take a bath.”
“Ain’t bathin’,” Eulis muttered, while combing his fingers through the sticky gunk in his hair and face.
“Then what the hell are you doin’?” he shouted.
Eulis pointed. “Ants.”
Pete gawked. Sure enough, the surface of the water was littered with them. It didn’t take long for the three laughing boys and the stench of a sweetened down Eulis to make things more clear. He shook his head. Those little dickens had sure caused a stir, pouring molasses on a passed-out drunk.
“Well, get the damned things off and then fill up my trough with clean water, you hear?”
Eulis nodded. “Be glad to,” he offered. “Just as soon as I pick the rest of these ants out of my beard. Durn things sting hard, don’t you know?”
Pete went back into his livery, muttering to himself.
Eulis continued to pick off the ants, splashing himself now and then with the murky green water and heartily glad he hadn’t been forced to shed his pants. His last pair of long johns had fallen apart last winter. He’d been doing without ever since.
Alfonso Worthy was on his way to Sophie’s house for supper. But it wasn’t the thought of her food that was hurrying his steps, it was the telegram he had in his pocket. The preacher was coming with the next wagon of freight. He could hardly wait. Not until he heard Sophie Hollis say the words, I do, was he going to rest easy.
And because he was so engrossed in his own bit of news, he missed seeing the clothes lying in the street. But he did see a small crowd gathering around the livery. He pulled out his pocket watch and checked the time. He was a little bit early and his curiosity won out. He stepped off the sidewalk and into the street just as a trio of young boys came barreling past him.
“Hooligans,” he muttered, settling his hat a bit firmer on his head.
The frown was still on his face as he began pushing his way through the crowd. It did his blood pressure no good when he got to the front and saw Eulis sitting in the watering trough.
“Oh my word!” he muttered.
With a proper gentleman preacher coming from back east, he’d done everything within his power to increase the social amenities in Lizard Flats. He’d even hired a man to whitewash the bank, only now it stuck out like a sore thumb in a town where every other building was a plain, weathered gray, but Alfonso didn’t care. It was a sign of prosperity. For a banker, a necessity, indeed.
But now this? How would this town fare in the preacher’s eyes if the town drunk was allowed to take public baths.
“What’s the meaning of this?” he shouted.
Eulis looked up. His head was throbbing and his vision had doubled. To make matters worse, the little roosters suddenly dancing in front of him looked a lot like Worthy, the banker.
“Have you all gone insane?” Alfonso continued, staring about in great confusion. “Why is this man being allowed to bathe in public? It’s a disgrace, I tell you! In fact, he’s a disgrace!”
“I ain’t bathin’,” Eulis muttered. Then he felt something crawling at the back of his neck and thrust his fingers through the wet, sticky mass of his hair, digging and picking until he felt the small ant. He mashed it before it could bite, ending its futile bid for freedom.
Alfonso was livid. Everyone watching seemed to think this was funny. They were snickering and pointing at the man like a side show freak. It was all he could do not to scream. He thought of Sophie. Now that she was his intended, he felt obligated to protect her in every way that he knew. He gritted his teeth and leaned closer until he and Eulis were almost eye to eye.
Water clung to Eulis’s hair and beard, mixing with the remnants of molasses to give him a rather interesting appearance. If it wasn’t for the stink of his body and the condition of what was left of his clothes, he might have looked sugar-coated.
“If not a bath, then pray tell what do you call this?”
“I been anted,” Eulis muttered. “I’m just pickin’ ’em off.”
Alfonso frowned. Anted? He’d never heard of such a thing. Then he looked down at the water. Hundreds of dead ants were floating upon the surface. He gawked.
“Good lord! How did such a thing happen?”
Eulis frowned. For a banker, old Worthy was pretty dim.
“Wal, you take a jug of somethin’ sweet and—”
“Oh for pity’s sake,” Alfonso snapped. “Get yourself out of there!” He straightened and glared at the crowd. “And you people are no better for gawking at a fool. Someone get him out of Pete’s trough and off of the street. What would the preacher think if he was to come into town right now?”
They began to mutter among themselves. They hadn’t thought of it quite like that.
“Right, Mr. Worthy,” someone said.
Alfonso stomped away, satisfied that he’d dealt with a sticky issue in a satisfactory manner.
The guilty crowd dispersed, leaving Eulis to get himself out of the trough. His steps were dragging as he recovered the rest of his clothes from where they lay. Holding them between his thumb and forefinger, he dragged them through the dust to the trough, then doused them up and down a few times to remove all the critters before putting them back on, dripping wet.
With his head throbbing and his mouth gone dry, he went about the business of draining the ant-ridden water, then refilling the trough with clean water just as he’d promised to do. Every step that he took squished. Every move he made dripped. And there was still a bit of molasses in his hair and his beard that he hadn’t gotten out, but the ants were all gone, and he was some cooler than he’d been in quite a while. All in all, it wasn’t such a bad way to start a new day.
A Preacher By Any Other Name
“Good bread. Good meat. Praise the Lord. Time to eat. Amen.”
The sanctimonious expression on Parson Sutter’s face disappeared as he lifted his head, gauging his partner’s attention span before aiming for the skillet of fry bread.
Henry Wainwright looked back over the campfire with a warning glance. The last thirty-three years of his existence had been spent with Elmer Sutter. And at each meal, no matter where or what condition they were in, Parson said grace before he ate.
Henry reached for the aforementioned bread just ahead of his partner’s fist, thanking his lucky stars that he got a goodly portion on his plate before Parson got to it. Parson Sutter had an appetite bigger than his feet. And while he was a good man to have at your back in a fight, he was hell to feed behind.
The evening sun was at their backs as they crouched before the campfire. The concoction in the cast iron pot hanging over the flames bubbled slowly from the heat. A day-old jackrabbit, wild onions, and a bit of sage added for flavor, composed the contents of the pot. It was the rabbit’s last dance.
Parson lifted a ladle, dripping with stew. “How ’bout another round, Henry?”
Henry nodded. “Don’t mind if I do.”
He offered his plate as Parson poured an extra-full ladle of rabbit stew onto the battered tin. Overflowing droplets fell into the fire with a hiss, bringing a familiar frown to Parson’s brow.
“Waste not, want not,” Parson said, and ladled his own helping more carefully.
Henry shook his head as he ate, chewing on one side of his jaw while talking out of the other. It was the same dinner conversation they’d had for the last thirty-three years, but it suited the two old trappers just fine.
“Do you hafta preach at every dang meal?” Henry muttered, sopping at his stew with what was left of his bread.
“A godly man is a decent man,” Parson said, then belched and farted at the same time to prove he was also on the same plane as his buddy, Henry.
Henry nodded. “Yeah, and a decent man would ’a died out here long ago and you know it.”
Parson shook his head in disgust at his partner’s lack of reverence. He leaned against the tree at his back, smoothed a hand over his long gray hair and then did the same for his beard.
“When I die—”
&n
bsp; Henry spit into the fire and then interrupted. “Hells bells, Elmer, as if I ain’t already heard this a thousand times. When you die, you want proper words spoke over your body a’fore you’re planted in the ground. Not by just anyone, but by a real man of the cloth. Right?”
Parson’s expression brightened. “By a real preacher! Not some old coot who got religion after the shit was scared out of him. I’m talking about the real thing. That’s what I want.”
“And ain’t I been telling you ever night for thirty-odd years that I’d find you one?” He waited until Parson nodded. Satisfied that he had his attention, he finished off the conversation and the last of his bread at the same time. “Well, I ain’t had no reason to change my mind. If I said I’ll do it, then I’ll do it.”
Having said his piece, Henry glared at the rapt expression on his partner’s face. Parson was like a gnat buzzing on a sore. When he got to talking religion, he didn’t know when to stop.
Parson gave Henry a long, hard look. “You promise?”
The conversation had taken a change from the norm and it startled Henry enough that he answered without rancor. “Well shore I promise. I’m your partner ain’t I? If you can’t trust your partner, who the hell can you trust?”
“Then that’s that,” Parson mumbled.
Henry frowned as he scratched at his privates out of habit. Except for that time last year when they’d gotten stranded in Lizard Flats and he’d visited the White Dove Saloon, it had been years since he’d used them for anything other than relieving himself, but it still felt manly to shift them from side to side now and then.
“What’s the big deal, Parson? You act like you’re about to cross over any minute, gettin’ all serious like that on me, and all.”
“You never know when your time is coming,” Parson said. Then he shook his head and tilted it sideways before he belched. There was too much sage in the stew for his liking. “You just never know.”
