Evan Hunter - The Chisholms - A novel of the journey West

The wind was blowing in from the west; it set the low bushes to rattling. They both squinted against a sudden gust, and turned their backs to it. The wagon covers were flapping, sparks were dancing in the air above the fire. Hadley put his arm around her, and they walked to the fire together. From the open-topped Oates wagon, they could hear the Indian woman murmuring in her sleep.

Hadley took off his boots, and watched as Minerva delicately pulled back the hem of her skirt and began unlacing her shoes. Her legs were still as splendid as they’d been when first he viewed them on their wedding night, Minerva standing tall and still and radiantly expectant. Her slender ankles were revealed now as she dropped one shoe and then the other to the ground, and lowered her skirt again, raising her eyes to catch his glance. A thin, knowledgeable smile crossed her mouth. She unbuttoned the bodice over her bosom, still firm and ample. There were things on a woman never changed, Hadley thought: legs and hips and bosom; that was a fact. Well, maybe they changed just a mite.

Beneath the blanket together, she rested her head on his shoulder and her hand on his chest, the way she’d done for as long as he could remember. They were silent for a bit. Then she whispered, “What do you think of the carpenter’s wife?”

“What about her?”

“She does go on nursin that child of hers,” Minerva said. “Yankin out a teat ten, twelve times a day, never mind who’s lookin.”

“Ain’t nobody lookin,” Hadley said.

“Bobbo’s looking. You ought to tell him to quit, Hadley.”

“Hell, Min, she’s just sucklin the babe, is all.”

“Ain’t a baby alive can take that much milk ’thout turnin into a calf,” Minerva said, and Hadley burst out laughing.

She tried to shush him, but she was laughing herself now. In the night, they clung to each other and quaked with laughter while the wind howled in over the prairie. And at last, when they had both quieted down again, Minerva telling him to hush now before he waked the entire party, Hadley claiming it was her cackling like a hen, she whispered again to him about Bobbo, and he promised to warn the boy against spying on Mrs. Comyns. “Though she has got a fine pair of pumpkins there,” Hadley said, and Minerva got to laughing again till someone from one of the wagons — they thought it was the Indian woman, but hushing sounded just the same in any language — shhed at them to keep still.

They were adept at making love with others sleeping not a stone’s throw away. Silently, they went about it. And as always, Hadley had to clap his hand over Minerva’s mouth to stifle the scream that would have wakened living and dead alike and caused St. Peter at the pearlies to think for sure that sinners had taken over the earth and were reveling in the joys of the flesh.

In a little while, it began raining gently.

By two in the morning, the camp was a quagmire. What had started as the mildest of rainfalls became a blustery fearsome storm that woke the entire party and sent them scurrying for cover inside or under the wagons. Bobbo, standing guard with Timothy, walked from position to position around the perimeter, peering through the heavy rain, listening for sounds other than those he could readily recognize, not knowing what on earth an Indian might sound like in the dark. Probably wouldn’t sound like nothing at all, wouldn’t even make a whisper, just zzzzzzzt, and your throat’d be cut, and zzzzzzzt, your scalp’d be taken.

He passed the Comyns wagon, and thought of Sarah Comyns inside there, and wondered was she naked. Seemed to Bobbo she nursed her infant daughter far too often for the comfort of the men in the party, though suckling wasn’t no sin and a breast nothing to hide. He’d caught himself stealing a glance at her more than once today, and was fearful the carpenter might have noticed. Had enormous hands, Comyns did, could just see them gripping a hammer and driving a nail home. Bobbo’d witnessed enough women suckling their babes back home; wasn’t right to stare that way each time Sarah yanked herself out of her bodice and began squeezing. Blondy-haired she was, same as Rachel Lowery, who his brother Gideon had fucked. Freckles on the full sloping tops of her breasts. Bobbo guessed she was twenty-four or — five, the carpenter’s second wife.

The rain kept falling.

Bobbo walked the perimeter with his pants bulging, thinking of Sarah Comyns, thinking of Rachel Lowery, even thinking of the Indian woman who was Timothy’s wife, wondering what her quim might be like under that long elkskin skirt, Indian black and Indian tangled, he supposed, thick as the hair on her—

He heard something.

He stopped dead, raised the rifle.

There. Again.

The sound was coming from within the circle. He whirled, his finger on the trigger.

Timothy Oates was huddled under his wagon, a blanket tented over his head, his rifle in his lap. He was guzzling whiskey from a bottle. Bobbo stared at him in disbelief. Timothy had traveled with the military; he certainly knew better than to leave his post, rain or not! A man standing guard did not run under a wagon when a few raindrops fell. He did not cradle his rifle in his lap. He especially did not swill booze from a bottle.

Bobbo sprinted across the circle. Rain drilled the enclosure, sending up wet puffs of mud wherever it struck the ground. It rattled on twill covers, soaked the open wagon under which Timothy Oates crouched, with his wife beside him. Bobbo knelt and peered under the wagon.

“I know,” Timothy said. “I drink too much.”

“We’ve a watch to stand here,” Bobbo said. “Come out from under the cart.”

“It’s raining,” Timothy said.

“I know it’s raining,” Bobbo said. “Rain is what I’m standing in here. Now come on out of there before we’re scalped in our sleep.”

“We’ll neither of us be scalped in our sleep,” Timothy said, “since neither of us is asleep, you’ll notice.”

“I’m talking of the others. Come on now — get out from under that wagon.”

“I prefer it here, I think, to there.”

“Are you drunk, man?”

“Yes, I’m drunk,” Timothy said, and nodded.

“Then a cold bath’ll sober you,” Bobbo said, and yanked him out from under the wagon while the Indian woman shrieked and howled to the night as though her husband were being dragged to a hanging tree. It was the most Bobbo had heard from her since they’d left Independence, but he was in no mood for her yelling, especially since he understood not a word of it. He told her to shut up, and was surprised when she obeyed. From inside the Comyns wagon, Sarah asked, “Is it Indians? Is it an attack?” and Timothy replied in his drunken stupor, “It is an Indian, madam, but not an attack,” and Sarah said, “What? What did he say, Jonah?” and Comyns said, “Hush.”

In the rain, Bobbo walked Timothy around the perimeter from wagon to wagon, supporting him with one arm around his waist, his hand clutching the leather belt there, his other hand holding his rifle upside down so that rain wouldn’t enter the barrel. Timothy began singing.

“Quiet,” Bobbo said. “How’d you get so drunk, man?”

“By drinking,” Timothy said, interrupting his song for just an instant and then bellowing into the rain again. He was singing in gibberish, it seemed at first, till Bobbo realized he was using an Indian tongue, more’n likely his wife’s. “An-pe tu wi,” he sang, “tan-yan hi-na pa nun...”

“Shut up, man,” Bobbo said. “You’ll wake the camp.”

“It’s a fair-weather song,” Timothy said, reeling, almost knocking Bobbo into the mud, and then bellowing again, “We he a he, an-pe-tu...”