C.J. figured they had gone at least twenty-five of the over fifty-five miles to the Truckee River.
The easy half was all Jimmy could think.
The next thirty miles, the sun would bake them as dry as an overcooked biscuit, as Truitt would say.
As the sun crested the distant ridge, they started out again, the horses wading slowly in the soft sand.
The farther they got into the desert, the more bones and remains of wagons they found. Some of the remains had been there for years, others were fairly new. Jimmy had no doubt that by the time the summer was finished, and all the wagon companies behind them had crossed this, there would be many, many more broken dreams littering this nightmarish place.
It seemed that Mark Twain’s description of this desert was very accurate.
At one point, C.J. pointed out a pile of bones ten feet off to one side of the trail. It took Jimmy a moment to realize what he was looking at in the hot sun.
Human bones.
Maybe three people, their bones piled like fire wood, their skulls gaping at the sand around them.
And from that point on, they saw more and more human bones. Out here, the people who were still alive didn’t dare stop and bury anyone. They just left them beside the trail and pushed on.
They had no choice.
They now stopped every hour to rest and feed and water the horses. Jimmy drank what he thought he should to make the water last, but it never felt like enough.
With the sun moving higher in the sky, the temperatures climbed, making him feel like he was standing far too close to a raging fire.
The glare off the sand was blinding, and waves of heat just radiated up like the sand itself was on fire.
To Jimmy, the short stops seemed almost worse than moving forward, but he knew they had to do them, to pace this journey.
At one point, about an hour after dawn, they came across a bubbling hot springs, the water so hot that steam filled the air around it even in the dry heat. There was no reason for even trying to cool and drink the water, since it smelled like sulfur.
Josh said that someone reported that there used to be a sign here that said, “If you can’t go forward, you won’t survive going back.”
“The sign is a myth,” C.J. said. “But more than likely the meaning is very true.”
Truitt said something about now knowing where the devil lived as they went past the bubbling, hot sulfur water.
Chapter Twenty-six
ONE DOWN
JIMMY WATCHED TRUITT sway for a moment side-to-side in his saddle like he was on a boat in high waves, then tumble off his horse and land with a thud in the hot, desert sand.
“Truitt’s down!” Jimmy shouted to the others ahead of him, panic filling his gut like a bad meal. He jumped off his horse and scrambled in the deep sand to where his friend lay. He felt like he was running through deep water, the sand was so soft. It fought him every step.
He knelt beside Truitt, the hot sand burning through his pants. Carefully, he turned his friend over and brushed the sand away from his mouth and eyes, moving Truitt’s brown hair off his forehead at the same time. Truitt’s skin was red and he was breathing shallowly.
“Truitt? Can you hear me?”
Truitt moaned, but didn’t open his eyes.
They couldn’t lose Truitt. Not now. Not here.
Long ran up with the rest and knelt in the sand. He quickly unscrewed a canteen and poured a little water on Truitt’s forehead. The sand and dirt turned to a thin mud and dried in streamers down his cheeks almost instantly in the intense heat.
Long glanced over at Jimmy. “Open his mouth.”
Jimmy pried open Truitt’s mouth with his fingers and Long poured the water in slowly. Truitt choked for a moment, coughed, then drank.
After a moment which seemed like an eternity, it was as if Long had given him a magic medicine. Truitt blinked, opened his eyes, looked at the five men hovering over him, and then asked in a soft whisper, “What happened?”
Long gave him another drink of water, then stood. “Heat.”
He pulled out a piece of buffalo jerky from his belt pouch and handed it to Truitt. “Chew on this and drink.”
Truitt made a face, but did as Long said. None of them liked how salty Long’s jerky was, but they all trusted Long when it came to anything having to do with survival out in the west. And right now, here in the middle of The Forty Mile Desert, the most dangerous stretch of the California Trail, they really needed his special skills to stay alive.
“Everyone, water and jerky,” Long said, taking a drink himself and then taking out a piece of buffalo jerky. Long had spent nights smoking the jerky back after leaving Fort Hall, and Truitt had complained that Long had used a lot of their salt provisions for the process.
All Long had said was, “We will need it salty.” He hadn’t explained, and no one had asked. It was now, in the heat, that for some reason, Long wanted them all eating the salty jerky.
After they got out of this, if they got out of this, Jimmy would ask him why.
Jimmy moved away from Truitt and stood beside the horses, letting his wide-brimmed hat protect his face from the glaring sun. He then did as the others, working on the jerky and washing it down with water. They had carried into the Forty Mile Desert as much water as they could, but they were going through it alarmingly fast.
Long and Zach gave water to the horses. Joshua and C.J. sat in the shade their horses offered, drinking and chewing on the buffalo jerky.
Truitt had managed to move over beside C.J. in the slight shade of one horse and was looking better by the minute.
Jimmy turned and looked back the way they had come. The drifting sand made it impossible to see anything but the distant low hills. In the other direction, ahead, through the haze of the hot summer day, were the mountains of the Sierras. They looked to be both invitingly close, and impossibly distant.
And somewhere, just ahead of them, Jake Benson and his two remaining men were moving with a wagon company. Benson had killed Jimmy’ parents, shot his brother, and then had killed another family back on Goose Creek, on the east side of Nevada.
At night, Jimmy was still haunted by the man they had accidentally killed at that homestead, but during the day, Jimmy just didn’t let himself think about it. That man had been one of the men who had killed Jimmy’s parents, and the family on the homestead, and who knew how many others. Yet Jimmy still hated the fact that the man had died. That wasn’t what they had planned.
And the accident had given him many, many nightmares over the past weeks. He had no doubt, it was going to haunt him for a lot longer.
He pushed the thought away. Right now, Benson and his men were ahead of them, in the desert, pretending to help a small company of wagons. More than likely, Benson was going to rob and kill the fine people in the wagons somewhere in the middle of this horrible desert, but there was nothing Jimmy or any of the others could do about it. They had even tried to warn the people, but had been ignored.
“Keep eating and drinking,” Long said. “We’ll rest the horses for another ten minutes.”
Jimmy nodded. Even though Jimmy was mostly in charge of the group, when it came to the horses, Long was in charge. He knew how to keep them alive and moving west, and that was all that mattered.
Jimmy looked at the distant mountains and wondered if he would ever see them. They had a long way left to go to get across this desert, and their water supply was going down fast. Without water, what happened to Truitt would happen to them all in the intense heat.
Very quickly.
Chapter Twenty-seven
MORE TROUBLE AHEAD
AFTER THEY RESTED and had eaten the jerky and drank enough water, Long said to Jimmy. “We need to walk from here. The horses can’t carry us much farther in this deep sand and in this heat.”
Jimmy agreed.
Long had warned them all this would happen. It was part of their plan So, on foot, they started out again, leading their horse
s.
Each step felt to Jimmy like he was sinking in quicksand, as the desert wanted to not let his boot go. He tried to stay in the wagon tracks, but often missed and stumbled, using the reins of his horse to keep himself from falling face down.
Every step drained more and more energy.
Every mile was a torture.
It wasn’t even the hottest time of the day yet, yet the air felt like he was inside a hot oven.
An hour later, as they crested a slight rise in the desert floor about three hours after dawn, they could see the seven wagons that Benson had been “helping” across the desert.
They were stopped dead in the trail and there were no signs of people or the oxen and horses that had been pulling them.
Jimmy wanted to stop short, let Long scout ahead and see what was happening, but both C.J. and Josh said, “We can’t stop. We have to go past them.”
Jimmy glanced at Long, who clearly agreed with C.J. and Josh.
If they stopped, they died.
If Benson was still with those wagons, they were going to have to take the chance and walk right past him.
Jimmy didn’t like that idea at all.
In fact, that idea scared him almost as much as this desert did.
“We ride the next mile until we’re past those wagons,” Jimmy said.
Long agreed and had everyone give their horse a drink.
Back in the saddle, even moving slowly, it didn’t seem to take them long to cross the next mile of desert.
Jimmy now wasn’t focused on the sun, but on what was ahead. He hardly took his eye off those wagons.
There was no sign at all of life.
Nothing was moving, not even the canvas tops of the wagons, since there was no wind at all in this forsaken place.
The closer they got, the more likely it was looking that Benson and his men had robbed the poor wagon company, killed everyone and left.
Twice so far, in the thick sand, the trail had gone around what had been a stopped wagon company some years before. Those wagons had been weather-beaten and the white bones of stock and people littered everywhere. Now this wagon company had stopped right in the middle of the trail as well, and it didn’t look as if those wagons were ever going another foot forward.
There were no oxen or horses left with the wagons to pull them.
As they got close enough to see details, it became clear that what they were seeing was a massacre.
Benson and his men had struck again.
All the men and boys were scattered around the wagons, some laying face down in the sand, others face up. They were clearly all dead. A couple of them had guns in their hands, including the man Jimmy and Long had talked to.
It seemed he had been wrong. He had let Benson get the drop on him.
Jimmy had no idea why they hadn’t heard the shooting. Maybe sound didn’t carry well over the sand.
“No women,” Zach said as they got closer.
Jimmy was surprised he hadn’t noticed that. There weren’t any women’s or children’s bodies in sight at all. Maybe Benson and his men had taken them.
Then Long pointed to one man’s body and Jimmy recognized him as one of Benson’s men. It was the one with the broken arm. It looked like he had just passed out and died right where he lay. Or maybe one of the wagon men had shot him.
Long led them in a wide circle around the wagons, starting what would become the new trail through the sand.
It wasn’t until they passed the last wagon in line that Truitt shouted, “The women!”
At first, Jimmy didn’t see them. Then, as Truitt turned and rode toward the wagons, Jimmy finally saw movement. It was a child moving his arm.
The women and children were laying in the sand in the shade under the lead wagons. None of them seemed to have been shot, but the heat of the first three hours of the day without water had done its worst on them.
All the Wild Boys moved closer, leading their horses to what little shade the wagons gave them, then dismounted.
Jimmy found one woman who looked to be about his mother’s age. She was barely able to talk and he gave her a small sip of water. Her chapped lips struggled with the drink, but after a moment, some life returned to her eyes.
“Give everyone else some water,” Jimmy said to the other Wild Boys, “see who is alive, who isn’t.”
“Don’t give them too much water at first,” Long said. “In their conditions, it will make them sick.”
The boys spread out to the women and children laying under the wagons, waking them, giving them water.
“Jake Benson?” Jimmy asked the woman. “Did he do this?”
She nodded. “He and his men turned on us in the middle of the night. They said we were slowing them down. They robbed us, shot the men, then took all the water, stock, and money. They left us here to die.”
Jimmy felt sick to his stomach. Benson was the most cold-hearted creature that had ever pretended to be human. How could anyone do this simply for money?
Jimmy gave the woman another small sip, then stood and went to talk to Zach and C.J.
“We have to get these women and children to the Truckee,” Jimmy said.
“I can’t see how we can,” C.J. said.
“But we can’t leave them,” Zach said, echoing exactly what Jimmy was thinking.
“I know that,” C. J. said. “But taking them may mean that none of us make it. We’re still a long ways from that river.”
Jimmy nodded. The sun was pounding on them. It felt like he had gotten far, far too close to a fire and there was no place to get away to.
“How far?” Jimmy asked.
C.J. shrugged. “From my guess, we are still a good fifteen, maybe twenty miles away from the river, through thick sand.”
“And Long is going to want us to walk to save the horses,” Zach said.
Jimmy didn’t like the sound of that. “Find out how many women and children there are. And have Long check how much water we all have. Then we’ll all talk. We’re all risking our lives with this, we all need to be a part of this decision.”
The rules of the west were that each person took care of themselves, but Jimmy had no doubt that he couldn’t let these woman and children just die here. He was going to help them somehow, save them from what Benson had done.
He just hoped it didn’t cost them all their lives.
Continued next month…
USA Today bestselling writer, Dean Wesley Smith, returns to the fan favorite universe of the Earth Protection League.
Once again, Captain Brian Saber and Captain Dorothy “Dot” Leeds must leave their nursing home to fight for the very survival of the Earth.
This story first appeared in Fiction River: Moonscapes. The story was also incorporated as a number of chapters in the novel last month, Life of a Dream.
DREAMS OF A MOON
ONE
THE YOUNG, STRONG lieutenant gently nudged Captain Brian Saber in his nursing home bed, pulled back the blanket and sheet covering him, and then easily picked Brian up with strong arms. His name was Lieutenant Magusson, but he had told Brian one night that some people called him Big Ed.
Brian was going on a mission.
Brian could feel the excitement surge through his old body.
A mission, a chance to live again, to be young again.
He made himself take as deep a breath as he could without setting off a fit of coughing.
The Shady Valley Nursing Home room hadn’t changed since Brian fell asleep at 10 p.m. Now his old clock on his dresser told him it was a little after one in the morning. If he survived this mission, he would be back in fifteen minutes. But he might be out there in space for a month or more, if he was lucky.
Big Ed turned for the room’s sliding glass door. Behind him Brian saw Captain Dorothy “Dot” Leeds being carried from her room across the hall and through his room. The young woman carrying her was Lieutenant Sherrie and she followed Brian and Big Ed out into the cold night air of a Chicago wint
er.
The light nightshirt Brian wore to bed was no match for the biting cold air, but he didn’t mind. He wouldn’t be out in the cold long enough for it to matter.
Overhead he could see the full moon, bright in the night sky. He and Dot were both far too old to ever walk under that moon. But at some point they would be together, staring up at some moon, somewhere.
No one talked.
No one said a word.
They were on a mission for the Earth Protection League. Something had happened on the border a long ways from Earth, which is why the League needed Brian and Dot. The League needed their ships, needed the two of them young and willing to fight.
All over the country right now his crew and Dot’s crew were going through the same routine.
Damn he was excited.
He always felt this way going on a mission.
The four of them neared the center of the courtyard of the nursing home. The frozen snow crunched under the boots of the two lieutenants and Brian could see his shallow breath in the dim light.
The full moon was so beautiful on a clear winter night. He hoped he would see it again tonight.
Then a yellow beam struck them from above and lifted all four of them up easily into the big intergalactic transport ship.
The warm air of the ship covered him and behind him he heard Dot say softly, “See you on the other side.”
He would have answered her, but he couldn’t talk louder than a whisper. He couldn’t walk or even lift his arms much at all either. A stroke had taken most of those skills a few years earlier.
She knew that and didn’t expect an answer from him. He was eighty-eight, she was eighty-seven. Both of them were captains of major starships for the Earth Protection League.
They had been friends in the nursing home and one night she had seen him being carried out to go on a mission. So the next day he got permission to recruit her, and she had risen quickly to the rank of captain as well, in just under twenty missions. She was that good.
Smith's Monthly #9 Page 5
