Camp Camel: The Heart of Texas

by Eaton, Rosemary

  Apparently someone had a sense of humor much like Bryan’s. Any thing done was probably for Dallas’ discomfort or perhaps to discourage another man from wanting to get too near. This was not camel pee any more than Bryan’s medicine for her was anything less than a man marking his territory or making a point. Lacy’s mind went to Dallas’ name Light Feather. Well her hand certainly felt like a light feathers stroking the folds of her skin. Then it occurred to Lacy, maybe Dallas had intimate knowledge of exactly how light her fingertips were. Maybe she had pleasured him as well.

  Lacy’s thoughts were interrupted by a knock at the door. Bryan’s voice called out, “Lacy, you about through in there? Mrs. Tyler says dinner is ready.”

  Lacy opened the door. Bryan noticed both women’s hair was wet and Lacy’s eyes were whiter than he’d seen in quite some time. She had a rosy blush to her cheeks even if there her brow was furrowed. Bryan’s brow went up, “My God, did you do each other?”

  Lacy felt like she was a little drunk, “I had to show her Bryan. She thought I was trying to cook her. Besides we both needed that hot bath.” Lacy’s tried to focus on Bryan, “She can hold her breath. I mean really hold it. Then she blew bubbles at me.”

  Bryan was grinning, “Well it certainly did you some good Lacy. Your eyes look like someone who spent the day …” Bryan didn’t finish. Apparently Jenny thought it was his turn. She was trying to undress him.

  Lacy looked at Bryan and blushed, “Oh no. I think she thinks I’m your wife too. I’ve got to go Bryan. Brianna needs me, I need to leave.” Lacy quickly left closing the door behind her.

  Private White asked, “Is he in for the night?”

  Lacy looked flushed and flustered, “Don’t know. Give him some time. I think she’s giving him a bath, then he might feel like eating something.” Lacy flushed again.

  Private White frowned, “What? She’s bathing him? Damned, maybe I should forget about what Ma would say.”

  There were sounds of protest coming from the other side of the door, then Bryan threw up his hands and gave in. Jenny slowly took his clothes off rubbing her hands over his back muscles until Bryan felt like his skin was putty in her hands, then she went for his pants and smiled as he dipped into the now mildly cool water and shivered. She quickly took the white man’s dress off her clean scrubbed body and joined him in the tub. She took the rag and soap and lathered it on his back, his arms, then moved to his chest and rolled her fingers around his nibbles and washed off the soap and leaned into his chest and sucked them gently like a baby. Bryan could feel stirrings from below. He hadn’t felt like this since, well since before his lover died on him at Lacy’s farm. He wasn’t much of a man, but he could give you a good bath and bring up feelings that made you want him desperately.

  Bryan realized he was in dangerous ground and reached over and drank the remainder of one of the glasses of lemonade trying to cool the fire now burning hot in his loins. Jenny was doing to him what Sparrow Hawk expected or something between what Lacy had showed her and Sparrow Hawk might have gotten in a creek from his wives. Her hands were wandering very close to forbidden ground. The more he tried to gently persuade her to cease her southern movement, the more she flanked him on both sides until she had him in her grasp. Bryan sighed. He had tried. There was nothing left to pretend modesty about and he surrendered his will to resist and enjoyed the massage of his balls as a rainbow floated across his closed eyes and oh so gently she brought him to climax. Then to his surprise he turned her to her side and found himself inside of her screaming out Jenny I love you Darling. Be my wife! I’ve never felt like this.”

  Bryan looked at her long braids and the delicate streaks of red that crossed back and forth, “You’re absolutely beautiful. I guess that wasn’t camel pee. That almost looks like blood dripping with the different lengths and colors. You used a die?”

  Jenny looked where his hands touched her braids and pointed to the red strands. She had no intention of telling this man what was used to color her strands. Each represented an honor bestowed by Red Cedar for service done. He would not think them so pretty he knew knew how they got their colors. She just shrugged her shoulders like she didn’t understand the question.

  Bryan smiled, “Your turn. He pleasured her until her back arched as she took his hair in her hands and pulled him closer as she rocked to the rhythm of his strokes. He could feel her breath, heavy panting and her neck flushed with excitement. Her eyes her full of joy and spoke what her vocal cords could not. They both lay there exhausted, but clear eyed and not wanting more than to lay cuddled in each others embrace.

  Private White was holding his hands to his ears when his Sergeant relieved him for the night. Sergeant Cook asked, “What’s the matter lad? How do you expect to catch that woman if you’re not listening for her to escape. Take you hands off your ears before I box them.”

  Private White looked at his Sergeant and replied, “Sir, Sorry Sir. But I could not listen one moment more. The Captain there offered me that reformed squaw and I turned him down and tonight she made me regret it something terrible. She took both the Major’s wife in that tub and then she took himself there at until he proposed to her and pleasured her back. She can’t scream, but I recognized that sound Sir. They had at it something fierce.”

  The Sergeant frowned, “Private. Himself is a Captain. You don’t talk about your Captain or the Major’s wife like that or I’ll have to report you for drinking on duty. To much a going on today for sure between rattle snakes, and Comanche squaws. I’d tell you to report to the good doctor, but I think you must have drank some venom from that rattler to be in such a state or perhaps the good doctor already gave you a tonic and this is the ravings from the foul tasting stuff he concocts. I don’t hear a peep from in there. Go get some rest son. You’ve done your duty today and I’ll tell the Major that when he gets back.” The Sergeant chuckled. The Private must have sampled the lemonade himself. But there it was, she took both. Someone was going to be very happy when the bets were settled and it wasn’t the men. Not one person said both.

  Private White looked at his Sergeant, “I’m not touched or dunk or drugged. I’m telling you that squaw took both woman and man tonight.” The Private made the sign of the cross, “Bedeviled for sure. What’s the Major going to say when his wife tells him she made love better than himself.” The Private was kicking himself all the way back to his barracks. That could have been him.

  The Green Eyed Monster

  Sergeant Cook put his ear to the door. The Major himself had given him specific orders to keep his wife on the other side of the camel pen and now he was suspecting he knew why. Mrs. Sanders had a taste for more than men and somehow in all the commotion of the day, Chief Sparrow Hawk’s wife had taken her revenge for being taken and locked up and guarded by Daisy. She considered the camel a smelly filthy beastie for sure the way she just lay still like death the minute they brought Daisy into her stall.

  But Sergeant Cook knew the legend of Nahuu, Sparrow Hawk’s Knife. Quiet and deadly. He was betting she was just waiting her time for the perfect moment to strike. As a matter of fact, at least a fourth of the camp who grew up locally were betting on when that moment might be, if the camel would win or the squaw, and if she could hold her breath long enough to dig herself out of that newly dug out tunnel if both ends suddenly closed.

  Paul had given him the initial idea when he talked about well holes that the boys crawled down at the mission that lead out and away in case of Indian attacks and wanted to know if the water well did the same. John mentioned a boy had been buried alive when they escaped the clutches of the good Friar. A part of their tunnel had collapsed.

  The trap was laid and bets put down. Seemed to Sergeant Cook, it was sweet justice for the Hardgrove family. So what if she starved to death or smothered or a camel took her by the throat and ripped out her veins. A bullet seemed too quick. Maybe a rope that stretched and made the guilty linger might be a little more to his liking, but this was sweeter. Watchin
g her choose her own method to die was a good betting proposition. They might even contribute part of the pot to the Hardgrove boy if he survived his stay with Sparrow Hawk.

  Sergeant Cook considered the present situation. It was one thing to be caught betting. It was another to disappoint your commander concerning his family and an explicit order to keep his wife away from the squaw. Well there was no way around it now. He would have to dispatch someone to give the news to the Major immediately and hope he understood the Captain out ranked him. The Sergeant called Private White back and whispered something in his ear so as not to wake the occupants of Doctor Travers’ quarters. Private White frowned, “You want me to tell him?”

  Sergeant Cook said, “I order to you ride and tell him Private. He can’t be away for weeks with this going on behind his back. He has children to think of and we have our scalp to consider if you know what I mean.”

  Private White nodded, “Yes, Sir I do. I’ll take Donigan Sir. He’s the fastest we have left.” Private White saluted and he ran for the camel pen and in a flash he was coming out mounted on Donigan headed for San Antonio.

  The next morning Dallas was busy in the General Store unloading the goods from Camp Verde as the clerk made records of what was brought, the value, the number and then took the Major’s list of goods the women had requested be brought back to the Camp in exchange. As the clerk started to take each item requested down from the shelves and bring them out from the store room, he casually asked, “So you’re keeping her at the Fort?”

  Dallas looked puzzled, “Who? My wife. Yes my wife is living with me at Camp Verde.”

  The clerk looked embarrassed, “No not Mrs. Sanders Sir, although she is a right fine woman. I meant herself. You know the green eyed monster of a squaw with no voice. Never trusted a woman with those eyes that change colors on you.”

  Dallas looked down and brought his eyes back up to the clerk, “Green eye monster? You think all women with hazel eyes are jealous?”

  The clerk replied, “Why no Sir. She’s just a monster with green eyes when it suits her and nice safe brown at other times. Well known fact hazel eyes can’t be trusted to stay the same. She turns Injun like they say like her eyes turn colors. White one minute and Injun the next with no warnings.”

  Dallas grimaced, “Who told you that?”

  The clerk just kept pulling out his supplies, “Well known you couldn’t get a sponsor or even her Pappy to admit she was his. People talk Major. Some say she has the devil in her. Others say her brother made a mistake when he sold her back. He should have dealt with the problem then and he paid the price and is rotting in Arkansas for his sins. Others say she’s carrying your brother Bo child and some other green eyed white captive you haven’t found yet is having his. Old bate and switch routine and Albert Pike has fallen for it.”

  Dallas’ lips drew tight. His thoughts went to the preacher that had made all kinds of accusations against Lacy as a youth that weren’t true but once they left the Preacher’s lips, they might have well be written in stone. Dallas needed to disarm this rumor before it gained too much attention. Dallas replied seriously, “Not everything you hear is true you know. I think Sparrow Hawk has made it perfectly clear, it’s her child with him that matters. The Hardgrove family paid an awful price to make sure his point was clear.”

  Clerk said under his breath, “Pride before the fall, Major. Can’t admit you’re wrong can you?”

  Dallas’ face turned red, but he pretended he didn’t hear it and turned his attention to the supplies and barked out, “Private Marrow! Help load these in the wagon for the trip back.” Private Marrow yelled back, “Yes, Sir. Right away Sir.” He was grinning. He wasn’t going to have to ride those stinking camels to Mexico.

  Just then there was a disturbance outside as Dallas heard the sound of horse and mules excited on the street. Dallas looked at the clerk, “Keep pulling those supplies. We’ll be out of your way as soon as we can.”

  The clerk laughed, “Camel problems Major? Maybe if this keeps up, it will be Captain Crockett next time?”

  Dallas looked back, “What did you say?”

  The clerk just looked at him, “Not the only thing we heard about you. PIU or should I say PEE UUU! Rat on your fellow soldiers and pure honest working folks for some notion that this state belongs any where other than in the Union. Junior Sanders, you were definitely a disappointment to Senior after his family took you and your mother into their family like their own. Broke his heart you did. You might as well killed him yourself.”

  Dallas swallowed down his bile and went out the door. The clerk wasn’t the first and he wouldn’t be the last person to consider his enlistment history less than expected. His Grandfather was a retired Union officer and was well respected in these parts. Many of the people around San Antonio couldn’t understand how any of them could fight for the CSA after the blood they shed to become a state.

  Dallas still didn’t talk to most of his extended family that ran the Bar-S Ranch other than Bo Callahan, his brother not by blood, but by common ground of being raised with him at the Bar-S after his step-father re-married Bo’s mother. Maybe he needed to talk to his step-brother about the accusation the clerk raised. That certainly would explained the tip on where they could grab the Knife.

  The Sanders, controlled one of the largest and richest ranches in Southern Texas. Dallas and his family had split apart when Dallas refused to let several poor ranchers sell their land cheap to his family. Dallas knew the tar and oil that bubbled to the surface was worth it’s weight in gold if they would just hang on. Some people knew that, but it wasn’t something he talked about. That was private as far as Dallas was concerned, and he knew his adopted Grandfather approved of his standing up to his step-father. Getting into a pissing match with the clerk would serve no purpose.

  Dallas had refused his grandfather Sanders, Dallas Sanders Senior, a retired Major in the U.S. Army when he tried to buy a commission for his adopted name sake Junior Sanders, when the war started. If he was bound and determined to fight for Texas, then better as an officer than cannon fodder.

  They didn’t always agree on everything, but there was one thing, Senior, Dallas, and even Bo had in common and that was their love of Victoria Vegas. She had almost married Dallas, been Senior’s wife, and now Bo’s. Like them she was a PIU agent and a good one. She could play the part of the rich girl or wrangle cattle with the best of drivers. The fact she used them like he used Lacy and any other target to get what she wanted just made it smart a little more that he didn’t end up with Victoria. At the start of the war she was playing all three of them searching for the Heart of Texas diamond.

  Then the hard heads of the family locked horns as Junior told Senior to his face that he intended to earn his stripes and if he had to go under a different name to avoid favoritism he would. One of the names Dallas had chosen was Dallas Texas Crockett. As a PIU agent for the CSA, Dallas assumed the rank and name required for each assignment. It had only been when Lacy discovered the truth or as close as she was likely to learn of the truth that Dallas took back his adopted name of Sanders and he had moved quickly up in rank from Captain Crockett to Major Sanders as he found hidden jewels and treasure in Arkansas. Those jewels and treasures were being used to fund the cattle drive. They would help feed the CSA’s Eastern army that was waging an active battle with the Union. But they also paid Texas ranchers for the beef on their range that had little other market value. It would help save some of the ranchers from the same financial ruin cotton farmers were seeing as their markets were cut off and crops burned. Dallas had no love of slavery, but he did understand what it was like to go hungry. He had lived in Dallas Texas as a street urchin before Mr. Sanders married his mother Marcy May.

  Dallas was a decorated hero from the Battle of Manassas and could have been given a medical discharge after Cotton Plant if he had pushed the issue. Instead, here he was with a family stationed at the least requested assignment in the CSA, in charge of the camels at Cam
p Verde. A compromise he considered well worth it that allowed him to adopt his bastard son JC and spend time with Lacy Richardson Crockett Sanders, his wife under multiple names. Lacy had been hand fasted to Sergeant Crockett, married by General Hindman himself after trying her for treason and clearing her name as a true blooded Southern girl ready to charge in front of General Curtis’ army any day and die for the South. Lacy was married by her father an officer in the CSA in Arkansas as a Sanders after both her prior marriages were put in doubt due to his real name, and eventually Lacy said no more. She understood she might have to marry him a dozen times more if she wanted to keep up with what ever name the PIU sent him under cover with and decided it didn’t matter as long as he intended to stay.

  Dallas’ mind quickly came back to the matter at hand as he rushed out into the street. There was Private White tearing through the street on Donigan directly toward the store. Horses, mules, and people in general weren’t totally comfortable with camels. The cattle, oxen, horses, and mules could be accustomed to them with the right introduction, but on first sight they were generally considered a new predator introduced into the animal’s world and met with fear, mistrust and stampede. Private White knew better. For him to totally disregard his entrance this way, something was seriously wrong back at the Fort.

  Dallas directed all the available men to assist the locals in restoring order in the streets as Private White dismounted and quickly saluted and whispered his message in Dallas’ ear looking around to make sure no one else was in hearing range. Dallas blinked, frowned, and his face had the look of someone dumb struck with something so unbelievable as to be funny, then he stopped smiling, “WHAT! MY GOD, DID I TELL THE GOOD SERGEANT TO NOT LET MY WIFE NEAR THEM AT ALL COSTS! CAPTAIN TRAVERS, OF COURSE CAPTAIN TRAVERS!”