by Leon Loy
4
Patrick O’Riley operated his prostitution cribs on the outskirts of Fort Griffin, near the banks of Clear Fork of the Brazos River. It was well known that the girls he kept in the barren sheds were held there involuntarily. The hefty pay-off given to local law officials ensured he was left alone.
It had been very difficult for Sparrow to tell Caleb some of the things she was forced to do while held captive by O’Riley two years ago. A lesser woman would have succumbed under the physical and emotional abuse she experienced. Once she told him, he never asked her to repeat those experiences, but he never stopped thinking about it. He promised himself to one day ruin O’Riley, but he kept such thoughts from her.
Late in March, an opportunity to fulfill that promise presented itself. Charles Rath was planning a trip to Sweetwater Creek near Fort Elliott, in the Texas panhandle, one hundred and fifty miles south of Dodge City. Initially, a supply center for buffalo hunters, cattlemen were moving to the area and establishing ranches. He was sending a large ox train of supplies, not only for the store he had there, but also for a sundry of new saloons and shops which had sprung up nearby. From there, Rath was going on to Fort Griffin to finalize the sale of his business interest there to his partner, Frank Conrad. Caleb convinced Rath that he would be a great asset on the trip. Rath agreed, offering him a substantial bonus in pay.
The day he chose to tell Sparrow of this assignment was on a Sunday. They attended service at Union Church with the McCartys, and had lunch with them at their home. Afterwards, it being a warm afternoon, he saddled Sparrow’s pinto, and his mare, and they rode out across the prairie through the low hills north of town.
They passed fields strewn with the bleached bones of buffalo, remnants of the great hunts a couple years earlier. The bones gleamed in the afternoon sun like the white tops of waves in a green sea of spring grass.
In the distance, they could see men, women, and children gathering bones into baskets and dumping them in wagons. Harvesting bones provided many settlers moving into the area with a much-needed source of income. The bones were sold to buyers, like Rath, who shipped them back east where they would be ground for fertilizer, or as an additive for livestock feed.
The couple rode past the wooded banks of Duck Creek, and climbed onto a slope carpeted with early-blooming purple vervain and yellow broom-weed. Here they dismounted and sat on the new grass.
The gentle breeze and the warm spring sun on their faces felt pleasant. For a long while, they were silent. Caleb found himself watching Sparrow as she sat next to him gazing at the horizon, lost in her thoughts. Wisps of her hair, loose from the clasp behind her head, danced in the wind about her neck.
She turned to see him looking at her, and smiled. It reminded him of the first time he had seen her smile, in the trading post near the Double Mountains. Comanche braves were clamoring to get into the sod cabin and take their scalps, yet she had managed to smile at him. Their lives had been so different since that violent day, which seemed so long ago now.
“Do you remember the day we met?” he asked.
She gave him an affectionate look. “How can I forget that day?” she said. “It was the worst, and the best day of my life.”
Caleb fell silent, reliving the intense battle with the Comanche, which nearly cost him his life. It had taken a year to regain full use of the arm from the arrow wound in his shoulder. Even now, lifting his arm above his head often made him wince. But he would have endured even worse to be where he sat today.
“Me too,” he said. “Mostly, it was the best.”
She leaned toward him, and they kissed. The feel of her excited him and he pulled her close. She unbuttoned the top of her blouse and placed his hand over her heart. Touching her electrified him. Pressing her back into the grass, he kissed her passionately. She slipped her arms around him and ran her fingers along the back of his neck and hairline, not wanting him to stop. With his hands, he traced her narrow waist and the curve of her hips.
After a while, locked in an embrace, they lay still; serene and satisfied. Caleb propped onto an elbow and studied her eyes. The various specks of green, blue, and brown in her pupils had always fascinated him, but now, as he watched, he thought he could see the colors swirling and spinning in a sensuous dance around the black center of her iris. Through those amazing eyes, she spoke to him of her love deep, and strong, and true. A poet’s words could never come close to relaying what she told him through her eyes.
He kissed her brow, and felt her eyelids against his beard as she closed her eyes. He buried his chin in her hair, and inhaled.
“Do you like it here?” he asked.
“I like it because you are here,” she said.
He thought about what he would say next. “I mean the town. The McCartys. The house.”
“Sallie is good to me,” she said. “She makes me remember my mother. And the doctor is very kind.”
“And the town?”
“I like the house,” she said.
“I know the town is a rough place,” he said, picking up on her avoidance of his question. He could feel her tense. “But that will change. The new sheriff, Bat Masterson, seems to be as competent as Wyatt and Morgan. They are serious about keeping the peace, and doing a pretty good job of it. And then, there’s Dr. Holliday. I think he has a crush on you.”
She looked up at him, and he could tell from her expression she didn’t understand what he meant. “I think he likes you a lot,” he explained.
She grinned, and said, “He does not.”
“Oh, I’m sure of it. But who doesn’t,” Caleb said.
He fell quiet. His thoughts had returned to the awful O’Riley, of his abuse of Sparrow. He began imagining the days ahead, of how he would seek out the evil man and end his reign of terror.
“What is it, Caleb?” she asked. “You have something on your tongue that wants out.”
He laughed at the way she sometimes put words together. Sparrow had learned much from Sallie, but the Indian way of saying things occasionally surfaced.
“Mr. Rath is taking a train of supplies to his store in a town south of here. I will be going with him. It will mean my being gone for a short time.”
She sat up, rigid. “You are going…where?”
“A settlement just getting started.”
“I will go with you,” she said, an urgent tremble in her voice, like there was no other alternative.
“It will not be a place for women. Not decent women.”
“What does that mean?” she asked.
“What does what mean?”
“Decent women.”
Caleb laughed. “There will probably be some women like those on Front Street, in the dance halls, and parlor houses. There usually are, when these places get started.”
“Like O’Riley’s?” she asked, and he noted the pain just mentioning his name caused her.
“No, not like that, exactly.”
She frowned. “That does not make me happy.”
“Well, Sparrow, you have nothing to worry about. I won’t get within twenty feet of a saloon, or dance hall. And, I have no interest in any woman on this earth, other than you.”
She gave him a puzzled look. “Then why must you go?”
“It’s an opportunity to make more money. Lots more. Enough to get started on a place of our own. Then we won’t have to live in town. We can build a place out here if you like.”
Her eyes darkened, and her expression grew somber. He could see she was struggling inside.
“It will only be for a couple of months,” he added. “When the store is set up, I will come back. You will hardly know I’m gone.”
“That is two moons. Why so long?”
“It will take a long time to get where we’re going by ox train.”
“Where is this place?” she asked.
“
Texas,” he said. Immediately, he could see the alarm on her face. He had no intention of telling her of his plan to go to Fort Griffin.
“No, Caleb,” she said. “Not Texas. That ranger may come find you.”
“I have thought about it,” he said. “We won’t be going that far south. I don’t think rangers will be anywhere near where we will be, not Sergeant Hartsel anyway.”
“He is not the one I mean.”
“Oh, you mean that young ranger, Justin?”
She nodded.
“He gave his word that he would not come looking for me. It was all settled. Remember?”
She looked away, and he knew she was trying to process it. He gave her time.
“What will I do?” she said.
“I have already talked to the doctor. He and Sallie would love for you to stay with them. She could use some help with their son. You’ll be safe there, and being around children might be good practice.”
She didn’t pick up on it right away. When she did, she said, “You want me to have a baby?”
“Someday,” he said. “And we will have a baby. Not just you.”
Her eyes sparkled, and the hint of a smile moved the corners of her mouth. Despite not wanting to let him off the hook for leaving her for so long, the thought of having a baby was a pleasant one.
“You are just trying to change the subject, Caleb,” she scolded, half-heartedly.
“That doesn’t work with you. You focus on a topic like a hawk.”
He plucked a stem of grass, put it between his teeth, and laid back with his hands behind his head. Stretching the shoulder still hurt a little, but the doctor prescribed stretching often to prevent stiffness from settling in. Sparrow noticed the discomfort on his face and brushed her fingers over his shoulder, remembering the long days and nights she had nursed the infected wound, after Job had dug out the arrowhead.
“When will you go?” she asked.
Caleb extended his hand out in front of him. The sun was a hand and a half from the horizon, about an hour and a half, and the ride back to town would take every bit of an hour. Already the prairie was awash in amber light.
“Now,” he said.
Sparrow’s eyes widened, and she drew back. “What?”
“No, I mean we have to leave here now. It’s getting late.”
She stood, brushing grass from her skirt. “You know what I mean,” she said, walking to her horse. “When do you go to Texas?”
He stood to help her into the saddle, but she quickly hiked up her skirt, stepped into the stirrup, and pulled herself up before he got to her.
“In a few days, maybe a week,” he said.
As he was climbing into his saddle, she said, “You better not be gone long, Caleb Thomason, or some cowboy might come and take me away.”
She slapped her heels against the pinto’s sides, launching it forward, yipping like a Comanche. His face split with a grin, and he lightly touched spurs to the mare’s flank, and set out after her.
They raced down the flowered slope, and across the golden prairie, toward town.
Fort Griffin
1878
5
The train of fifteen freight wagons, each pulled by teams of eight oxen, left Dodge City at daybreak a week later. Thirty men, two for each wagon, were hired to drive and care for the teams, and unload once they reached Sweetwater. Half of them would accompany Rath to Fort Griffin to move his belongings back to the new town.
The route took them southeast to Camp Supply, then southwest down the military road. The most difficult part of the trip was crossing the Cimarron and Canadian rivers. One wagon was lost in quicksand at the Cimarron, though the team and most of the supplies were salvaged and added to the remaining wagons.
It took three weeks to reach Sweetwater. The settlement had not yet taken on the look of a true town. It was just a string of crudely built shelters, businesses, and saloons in between a fork in the creek. There was one restaurant run by a man named O’Loughlin and his wife, two general merchandise stores, a blacksmith, livery stable, barbershop, four saloons, and a dance hall. Under construction were a stone jail, and a hotel. With Rath’s train were a Chinaman and his wife and two daughters, who were to start a laundry.
As the heavy freight wagons, with their weary teams of oxen, rattled past the saloons, a dozen women poured into the dusty street, greeting them with cheers and waving handkerchiefs. These were saloon and dance hall girls, and prostitutes, ranging in age from mid-teens to middle age. Drovers, merchants, and buffalo hunters added to the reception by firing their guns into the air. The arrival of the supply train was the most anticipated event in Sweetwater since the last supply train the previous fall.
When the long train of wagons reached Rath’s store, his business partners, Bob Wright and Lee Reynolds, met them to begin unloading. The store was a sprawling complex of structures built with various materials at the end of the broad street. The first building was erected three years earlier, and was little more than pickets stuck into the ground, held together with mud, and a sod roof. As the store needed more space, additions had been made, using available lumber and adobe.
Two days later, the wagons were empty and the merchandise distributed to the various business establishments. The men were finishing breakfast seated at long tables outside the store.
Caleb seated himself near Charles Rath. The pen holding the livestock, including over one hundred oxen, was close enough that their pungent odor wafted in on the breeze. Rath commented on it.
“The aroma of a thousand pounds of fresh turd just don’t quite make for an appetizing breakfast, does it Caleb?” He pushed his plate away, and poured more coffee into his tin cup.
“You get used to it,” Caleb said, swatting at a fly.
“The smell of success, I reckon. It goes along with freighting. But it still puts me off my breakfast.”
Caleb sipped his coffee, and said, “Yes, Sir.”
Rath looked beyond the pen to the prairie stretching out before them. “One day, there will be a railroad through here, just like in Dodge City. All through this country, you wait and see.”
He raised his cup, and tasted his coffee to see if it was cool enough to drink.
“Mr. Rath, there is something I need to discuss with you,” Caleb said, “In private, if you don’t mind.”
“Alright. Let’s walk over to the creek.” Rath said, standing. Caleb followed him as he set off across the rows of wagon ruts toward the trees which lined the creek.
“There is a reason I wanted to come on this trip I haven’t fully disclosed,” Caleb said, when they were out of earshot from the men at the tables.
Rath stopped, eyeing the younger man over the rim of his cup as he took a sip. “I figured as much,” he said. “It must be important for you to leave that pretty wife of yours in Dodge.”
“Yes, Sir, it is. There is a man in Fort Griffin who hurt her real bad. It happened before I met her. This man kidnaps women, and forces them into whoring.”
“Hmmm. A bad business, that.”
“Yes, Sir, it is. Some of the girls are beaten. Some of them die from sickness.”
“This man kidnapped Sparrow?”
“He did. And held her in one of those shacks for months.” And Caleb’s face revealed what he didn’t want to say.
“You don’t have to tell me more. I see what you mean. What’s the man’s name? I am quite familiar with the Flat.”
“O’Riley is all I know.”
Rath made a ticking sound with his mouth. “I have heard of him. Patrick O’Riley. Big Irishman. Used to skin buffalo, ’till he started in the whoring business.”
“It is my plan to put him out of that business,” Caleb said.
“How do you intend to do that?”
Caleb didn’t answer. He watched silently as Rath finished his cof
fee.
“You don’t have to tell me that, either,” Rath said. “It’s probably best I don’t know. We will have the wagons and team ready to start for the Flat tomorrow.”
“It will take more than a week by wagon to get there,” Caleb said.
“Probably two,” Rath said.
“Mr. Rath, I would like to borrow a horse, and have your permission to leave for Fort Griffin today.”
Rath tossed the dregs from his cup, and studied the man standing across from him. It had been more than a year since Caleb had come into his store and asked him for a job. He had no references, other than a nod from Dr. McCarty, who had treated him for an arrow wound to his shoulder, and gave almost no personal information about himself. All Rath knew about the young man was that he came to Dodge City from somewhere else—he never told from where—and he didn’t drink, or gamble in saloons.
The incident when Caleb went after those drovers who assaulted his wife, armed only with an ax handle, had earned him the reputation as a man not to trifle with. He was fiercely protective of his wife, and Rath admired that in him. As his employee, Caleb had proven to be invaluable in the store. He had a good head for business, and an instinct for spotting and preventing losses—better even than Rath himself.
“I can loan you a horse, but I can’t pay you for the time you’re off on your own,” he said.
“I wouldn’t expect it. Once I’m through with O’Riley, I will rejoin you, if you’ll have me.”
“I’ll have you. But why not get the law to deal with him?”
“I’d rather not get involved with the law.”
Rath considered that for a moment. “Well, I guess you have your reasons. I won’t ask why. You sure you can’t wait for me and the men?”
“This doesn’t involve anyone but me.”
Rath could see it was useless to argue. “All right, Caleb. You are one of the best hands I have on payroll, and it would be a shame to lose you. I had a hunch when I saw you with your pistol buckled on this morning that you weren’t coming to just stock supplies.”
