“All right,” Rose said, with grudging acceptance. “At least I get to ride up front.”
“I’m sure you’ll all take turns doing that,” Bo said as he took her hand and helped her climb onto the high driver’s box.
Scratch had already untied his mount’s reins and swung up into the saddle. Bo closed the tailgate and fastened his horse at the back of the wagon, then pulled himself up onto the seat next to Rose.
“Are you ladies ready to go?” he asked as he took hold of the team’s reins.
“More than ready,” Cecilia answered from inside the wagon, underneath the arching canvas cover.
“Let’s head out, then.”
Bo hauled the team around and started the wagon rolling in the direction of Silverhill.
* * *
The four young women riding in the wagon bed clustered around the opening in the front so they could look out past Bo and Rose and see where they were going. The road followed the Rio Grande for a while, then turned west and crossed the river on a wooden bridge.
“I thought you said we weren’t going into Mexico,” Cecilia said as she peered over Bo’s right shoulder.
“We didn’t,” he said. With his left thumb, he pointed back to the south. “The Mexican border’s half a mile or so that way. After it reaches that point, it doesn’t follow the river anymore. We’re in New Mexico Territory now. The Rio Grande runs on north through the territory to its source in the San Juan Mountains in southern Colorado.”
“You know a lot about such things, don’t you?” Rose asked.
Bo shrugged and said, “I ought to. Scratch and I have wandered around out here for a lot of years.”
“But you’re from Texas,” Rose said. “Why have you been so many other places?”
“It’s a long story,” Bo said. “Maybe I’ll tell it to you ladies sometime.”
In truth, though, he had no intention of doing that. Some things a man was better off keeping to himself. The history he and Scratch shared had a lot of tragedy in it, as well as plenty of incidents that proper young ladies didn’t have any business hearing about.
The day was a beautiful one, although Bo knew it would be plenty hot before the afternoon was over. Right now, at their location in the valley of the Rio Grande, a hint of coolness lingered in the breeze that swept over the semiarid plains. The sky was a breathtaking blue, dotted with white, puffy clouds.
A number of places in the West were called Big Sky Country, and those descriptions were accurate. The sky and the landscape in front of them seemed to go on forever. Scratch rode about a hundred yards in front of the wagon, scouting the trail for any signs of trouble.
Bo knew they could cover twenty miles a day without pushing the team too hard. When he estimated they had put half that distance behind them, the sun was almost directly overhead. During the morning, he had stopped a couple of times to let the horses rest, but this time as he reined the team to a halt, he said, “We’ll stop here for a while and eat some lunch.”
“It’ll feel good to get out and stretch our . . . limbs,” Cecilia said, carefully choosing the more decorous word.
Bo wouldn’t have been offended if she’d said “legs.” He knew perfectly well that women had them just like men did. But if Cecilia wanted to maintain a sense of propriety, that was fine.
Scratch trotted back to join them and dismounted. So far they hadn’t seen anyone else on the trail, but Bo didn’t expect that to last. With Silverhill being a mining boomtown, more people were bound to be on the way there.
“Want me to rustle up enough wood for a fire, so we can boil a pot of coffee?” Scratch asked.
Bo looked around. Trees were scarce, almost to the point of nonexistence, in this area, but he saw plenty of mesquite bushes and knew Scratch could find enough broken branches to fuel a small fire.
“Sure, go ahead,” he told his friend. “I’ll fry up some bacon, too.”
They could take their time, he thought. After all, they didn’t have to arrive in Silverhill on any certain day. The young women had given their intended bridegrooms a rough window of when they would arrive, but a day or two either way wouldn’t make any difference.
The meal was simple but good and filling. Bo and Scratch were hunkered beside the dying fire, enjoying the last of the coffee in their tin cups, when Cecilia went to the wagon and came back with that little Smith & Wesson revolver in her hand.
“No one is anywhere around,” she said. “I think it’s time for some target practice.”
CHAPTER 13
Bo and Scratch traded dubious glances. The other four young women weren’t the least bit hesitant, though.
Rose said, “Yes, let’s!” and hurried toward the wagon. The other three followed her, obviously bent on retrieving their pistols.
Scratch said, “I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to make sure they know what they’re doin’. The last thing we want is for those gals to start throwin’ lead around without ever firin’ a gun before.”
Bo nodded and said, “You’re right.” He drank the last of his coffee. “But I don’t have to be enthusiastic about it.”
A grin stretched across Scratch’s face as he said, “Aw, come on. It might be fun.”
“We’ll see,” Bo said.
He and Scratch stood up and waited as the five young women gathered around them, each holding one of the identical little revolvers.
“First thing,” Bo said. “Have any of you ever shot a gun before?”
“I have,” Rose said. “My father tried to show me how to shoot. He wasn’t very good at it, though.”
“Fathers are never good at teaching daughters anything,” Jean said. “They’re too impatient.”
She got nods of agreement from Beth and Luella.
Jean went on, “My father doesn’t even know I have this gun. He wouldn’t have approved, and my mother certainly wouldn’t have. She’d insist that a lady has no business even being anywhere around a firearm, let alone shooting one.”
Scratch said, “There’s an old sayin’ about how God created all men, but Colonel Sam Colt is the one who made ’em equal. That applies to ladies, too. Remember, a gun don’t know who’s holdin’ it or whose finger is on the trigger. You get good enough with a hogleg, you don’t have to worry about whether there’s a fella around. You can take care of yourself.” The silver-haired Texan chuckled. “Although I reckon it’d be a stretch to call them things hoglegs. They ain’t even as big as a hog’s foot.”
“Are they all loaded?” Bo asked.
Cecilia held up her pistol and said, “Of course. As we discussed before, what good is an unloaded weapon?”
“Let me see it.”
Bo held out his hand, and with a bit of reluctance, Cecilia placed the Smith & Wesson in it. He unlatched the barrel and pivoted it up, removed the cylinder, used the rammer pin under the barrel to poke one of the .22 cartridges out of it, then replaced the cylinder and closed the gun. He turned the cylinder until the empty chamber was under the hammer.
“That’s the way you want to carry a revolver,” he told the young women. “Unless you know you’re going to be doing a lot of shooting right away, keep the hammer resting on an empty chamber. That way it won’t go off by accident if you drop it.”
“Can that really happen?” Rose asked.
“Sure,” Scratch said. “I’ve seen it happen more than once. Came close to havin’ a slug part my hair because of it, too.”
“Why don’t all of you go ahead and do that, like I just showed you?” Bo said. He handed the pistol he had used for the demonstration back to Cecilia, along with the bullet he had taken out of the cylinder. She dropped it in a pocket of her dress.
Jean and Luella struggled with the mechanism on their guns, but Rose and Beth took to it more easily. Bo and Scratch worked with them until they all had the guns loaded properly.
“These are single-action revolvers,” Bo went on. “That means you have to pull the hammer back to cock it before you squeeze the trigge
r to fire. Line up there beside the wagon, facing away from it, with about three feet between each of you.”
He waited until they had arranged themselves satisfactorily, then said, “All right, use your thumb to pull the hammer back, but keep the gun pointed toward the ground in front of you when you do. You’ll see that when you cock it, the cylinder turns so there’s a live round where the hammer’s going to fall. So don’t pull the trigger. In fact, keep your finger away from it.”
“We can’t shoot if we don’t put our finger on the trigger,” Cecilia said.
“You’re not going to shoot just yet,” Bo told her. “You’re just cocking the gun.”
“This seems awfully slow,” Rose said. “In the dime novels, Smoke Jensen never takes this long to get his gun out and start shooting.”
Scratch said, “Generally speakin’, them dime novels are written by fellas who don’t know their . . . uh . . . elbows from a hole in the ground. I’ve heard that they’re mostly drunk while they’re writin’ ’em, too.”
“See those three clumps of prickly pear about fifteen feet from the edge of the trail?” Bo asked. “I want you to raise your guns, aim at any of those clumps, and whenever you’re ready, go ahead and shoot.”
“Should we hold the gun with one hand or two?” Luella asked.
“However you’re most comfortable.”
Luella nodded and steadied her grip by using both hands. So did Jean and Cecilia. Rose and Beth each used one hand. The young women stood there and pointed the little revolvers at the clumps of prickly pear cactus as long seconds dragged by.
“Well?” Rose finally said. “Is anybody going to shoot or not?”
No sooner were the words out of her mouth than the gun in Jean’s hand cracked and jumped. Jean screamed and jumped. More shots blasted as the sounds made the other young women jerk their triggers.
Bo was watching the cactus. No bits of the spiny flesh leaped into the air. He saw a few spurts of dust well beyond the cactus, though.
“What happened?” Rose cried. “Did we hit it?”
“I think we all missed,” Cecilia said with a note of disgust in her voice.
“You did,” Bo said, “but don’t feel too bad about that. Like I told you, those guns aren’t very accurate at more than ten feet. Rose, you take a few steps in front of the others. The rest of you, point your guns at the ground again and leave them that way.”
“Should we cock them again?” Beth asked.
“Not just yet,” Scratch told her. “Leave the hammers down.”
Rose moved forward until Bo told her to stop. She was approximately ten feet away from one of the cactus clumps. Bo told her to cock the gun and aim at one of the plants.
“Take your time. When you’re ready to shoot, take a breath and hold it. Then squeeze the trigger. Don’t jerk it.”
A few more seconds went by. Bo watched Rose this time, so he knew when she took that breath and held it. A heartbeat later, the gun cracked.
Bo had switched his gaze to the cactus. He saw pulp and juice fly from the very top of one of the pads.
“I hit it!” Rose exclaimed, sounding like she couldn’t believe it. “I hit it! I did hit it, didn’t I?”
“You sure did,” Scratch told her. “See if you can hit it again, just like you did that time.”
Rose repeated the process. Her next shot drilled the cactus pad a couple of inches down from the top.
“That’s good,” Bo said. “Somebody else step up and give it a try.”
Rose looked like she would have preferred to keep shooting, but she stepped back to let the others have a turn.
They all hesitated, but after a moment, Beth said, “Oh, all right. I’ll see what I can do.”
Her first two shots missed, but the third nicked the side of a pad. That seemed to please her immensely.
The others were getting into the spirit of it. Luella said, “I’m next!” and stepped up to aim two-handed at the cactus. When she fired, one of the pads split in two as the bullet struck it. Luella stared at it in disbelief for a second, then squealed and did a little dance of delight.
Scratch wore a wide grin as he said, “That was good shootin’.”
“She was just lucky!” Rose protested. “I can do better than that.”
“You had several tries, and you didn’t do better,” Luella said.
“Well, let me back up there—”
“Hold on, hold on,” Bo said. “Miss Jean and Miss Cecilia haven’t taken a turn yet.”
Jean looked at the revolver in her hand and said, “I’m not sure I want to. I think getting a gun may have been a mistake—”
“Nonsense,” Cecilia said briskly. “Mr. Morton is right about Colonel Colt making men—and women—equal. If we become proficient in the use of firearms, that can only be a good thing.”
She strode forward a couple of steps, lifted the revolver, and steadied it with both hands as she squinted over the barrel. Her first shot kicked up dirt right in front of one of the prickly pear clumps. Cecilia took a deep breath, cocked the gun, and aimed again. This shot knocked a chunk from one of the pads into the air.
“See?” she said to Jean as she turned around. “If I can do this, so can you.”
“Well . . . maybe.”
Unfortunately, Jean couldn’t, at least not today. Every one of her shots missed, even though she emptied the revolver, and when she was done, she just shook her head in despair.
“Don’t worry about it,” Beth said as she patted her on the shoulder. “You’ll get the hang of it.”
“There are so many more important things for a young woman to know,” Jean muttered.
Bo wasn’t sure about that, not when the young women in question were heading for a mining boomtown. But they all had prospective husbands waiting for them, he reminded himself. It would be up to those hombres to make sure nothing happened to their new brides.
The only responsibility he and Scratch had was making sure that they got there safely.
“The horses have rested long enough,” he said. “Let’s climb back in the wagon and get started again. Probably be a good idea if you all reloaded those pistols. You saw how to do it. Just remember, make sure the hammer’s resting on an empty chamber. We don’t need any accidents along the way.”
CHAPTER 14
For the next two days, the wagon rolled at a steady pace across the hot landscape. These were the upper reaches of the Sonoran Desert. The flat, sandy, arid terrain was broken up by small ranges of hills here and there, but those didn’t present any obstacles. They were scattered enough that it was no trouble to go around them.
Bo kept his word and let Rose Winston handle the team much of the time, spelling her only when she got worn out. Beth took a few turns at driving, as well, and having spent time on a farm as a girl, she seemed to know what she was doing.
Whenever one of the young women had the reins, Bo saddled his horse and rode ahead with Scratch. That gave them a chance to talk without being overheard.
“What do you think of them?” Bo asked his old friend.
“The ladies? Why, they’re just about the prettiest bunch of fillies—”
“I know they’re easy on the eyes,” Bo said. “Do you think they can make it in Silverhill?”
Scratch pursed his lips and didn’t say anything for a moment. Bo knew he was thinking about the question.
“Some of ’em can,” Scratch finally said. “I’d bet a hat full of pesos on that. That Miss Rose, she’s a tomboy, and she’s capable of handlin’ ’most anything life throws at her. Miss Beth ain’t far behind her when it comes to that. And Miss Cecilia . . .” Scratch glanced over his shoulder toward the wagon and grinned. “Miss Cecilia’s so durn stubborn, she ain’t gonna let anything get the best of her if there’s anything in the world that she can do about it.”
“That’s the way I have them sized up, too,” Bo agreed. “But what about Miss Luella and Miss Jean?”
“Well . . . I reckon both of ’em have
been sort of protected and pampered all their lives because of how pretty they are. They never had to learn how to do much, so they didn’t. I’d say that Miss Luella is a mite more capable than Miss Jean is.”
Bo nodded and said, “Jean’s the one I’m the most worried about. I hope the fella who marries her figures out pretty quick that it’s going to be a big job keeping her happy . . . and that he’s willing to work at it.”
“He’ll have to be,” Scratch said. “Other wise he’s in for a whole heap o’ trouble.”
“Have they said anything to you about the men they intend to marry?”
“Nope. Didn’t figure it was really any of my business.”
“Mine, either,” Bo said. “I’m curious, though.”
Scratch chuckled and said, “You always have been. You like to know what makes folks tick. I’m happy just to take ’em however they appear to be.”
“People aren’t always what they appear.”
“No,” Scratch said, “but sooner or later, you find out about that. Their true nature comes out. Snakes got to bite, and scorpions got to sting. It’s the way of the world.”
Bo nodded, knowing his old friend was right.
That evening around the campfire, Bo indulged his curiosity. He said, “Why don’t you ladies tell us about the men you’re going to marry?”
“They all have successful mining claims,” Cecilia said. “They’re substantial men.”
Jean added, “We wouldn’t have agreed to marry them otherwise.”
“We all talked it over,” Luella said. “You might say we made the decisions together.”
“Of course, we didn’t share everything that was in the letters we exchanged with our gentlemen,” Jean said. “That wouldn’t have been proper.” She blushed prettily in the firelight.
Cecilia said, “The important thing is that they’re all in a position to support a wife and family. None of us would have agreed to their proposals if we didn’t believe that.”
“You make it sound like we’re just marrying them for their money,” Rose said with a frown.
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