BAD WATER part 2

Copyright (c) 2017 by Randall R. Peterson ALL RIGHTS RESERVED This is a work of fiction. All persons, locations and actions are from the author's imagination or have been used in a fictitious manner.

BAD WATER

Part 2

By R. Peterson

            It was dark when Tom awakened, his hands tied with rope and his head throbbing and swollen. Flickering light from several campfires leaked through the rough, wooden board sides of the wagon he lay in. The skeletal girl whom Zachariah had called the Demon Child was sitting upright on the dirty blankets taking slow sips from a leaky tin cup. Her eyes had lost much of the yellow orange glow that Tom remembered before he had been knocked unconscious but tiny black worms still stitched the corners of her too-wide mouth. “Who are you?” she asked between drinks. The snake-like hiss of her voice was becoming more of a growl. Outside the wagon Tom could hear people laughing, some almost hysterically, and he thought a few of the Mormon settlers must be drinking the bad lake water. He wondered if this girl was doing the same.

            “I’m the sheriff of a two-bit town named South Fork about eighty miles south of here,” Tom told her. “What’s your name?”

The blanket the girl sat on was crawling with insects and Tom noticed a drop of water fall from the broken cup and burn a fly like it was acid.

            “Bishop Johnson and the other elders call me Demon Child,” The girl whispered. “But my mother called me Belinda … before the Lamanites took us.”

            “Why would they call you that?” Tom thought he knew the answer, but was being polite and the girl did seem to be becoming less of an animal all the time.

            “The Indians burned our farm and killed my pa and my brother,” Belinda said. “They took my mother and me to their village in the hills. I began to cry and then to scream when they raped my mother and I couldn’t stop. The terror and the smell of the dirty savage was too much for my mind and I finally started to laugh. Once I started laughing I couldn’t stop that either. I thought they would just kill me … but oddly they were scared. There was a big fight and finally a warrior named Crow Feathers lassoed me with a rope and dragged me out onto the desert and left me there. He rode away like all the demons of Hell were just two jumps behind his pony.”

            “They thought you had a Devil in you,” Tom told her.

            “So did the Mormons when they found me,” Belinda said. “I’d been crawling in the hot sand for three days without water eating meat from rotten buffalo carcasses. I think the Johnson Overland Company would have abandoned me too, but the same Indians attacked their wagon-train shortly after I was found and then broke off the attack when they spied me. Zachariah and the others now think I’m some kind of a living Liahona, although tainted by Satan, sent by God to protect and deliver them safely to the promised land of Gilmore.”

Tom heard the sound of gunfire outside followed by even louder laughter. “I believe the water in the lake is bad,” he told Belinda. “I believe it makes people go crazy … although in your case it seems to have made you well again.”

Belinda smiled and Tom noticed that she was rather pretty. She used a towel to wipe the worms from the corners of her mouth. “Bad water couldn’t make me any crazier than I was,” she said. “I guess for me the water had to go the other way!”

            “These ropes are awful tight … can you untie me?” Tom squirmed to sit upright.

            “It’s been a long time since anyone trusted me,” Belinda said. “I guess if you don’t think I’m crazy the least I can do is trust you.”

            “Oh, I still think you’re crazy,” Tom told her with a grin as she tugged on the knots. “I just think you’re better company than those people out there.”

-------2-------

Tom stared through a crack in the boards. The Johnson Overland Company had formed a circle around two wild eyed men dancing around each other and flashing knives. The fight stopped when young men started passing around jugs filled with the lake water. All were silent as Zachariah led the congregation in a sacrament prayer. From somewhere in the darkness a wolf howled and then another answered. “Oh God the eternal father, bless and sanctify this water to all the souls who partake of it that they might remember the blood of thy son which was shed for them …”

“No!” Tom moaned. “They can’t all start drinking the lake water!”

The fight erupted again after another prayer and loaves of bread were passed around. “This is all mixed up!” Belinda gasped. “They’re doing the sacrament ritual backwards the bread comes before the water.”

            “Not as mixed up as it’s gonna get,” Tom said grimly.

            “You’ve had six wives for two years Brother Bean,” a burly man yelled as he slashed the air with a knife, “and not even one child yet! The Elder’s Quorum is beginning to wonder if you’re a little limp on your responsibilities!”

            “The two dozen that you claim have all spewed from your fast-Sunday loins look like black bears that have bred with sheep,” Bean thundered. “I know you don’t have any Negro or Mexican women in that brothel you call a wagon, Brother Larsen. How come half them kids is different shades of black or brown?”

The two men lunged toward each other just as the circle began to sing Jenny Get Your Hoe Cake Done and clap and stomp along with a wailing banjo being plucked at pepper speed. Suddenly two gunshots silenced the music and froze the fighting men. Bishop Zachariah Johnson stood with both smoking barrels of a Parker ten-gauge shotgun pointed toward the sky. His eyes were bright as embers glowing in a campfire. “Enough!” he thundered. ‘The angel Gabriel has seen fit to send me a vision and has extracted from me a promise for his immediate desires!” The Bishop’s tongue hung almost to his chin and flapped in the night breeze.

            “What holy mission has the Lord set us on?” a chorus of excited women exclaimed.

            “A Lamanite village lies less than twenty miles to the north,” Zachariah’s eyes were as two coal-oil lamps pumped to a fiery orange brightness. “These outcasts from God’s family are even now thirsting for instructions from the divine guidance of John Taylor and the rest of the twelve. Praise the Lord! We must take God’s words to these heathens!”

The crowd erupted with shouts of “Glory to Hosanna!” and then began to sing with frenzied voices. An elderly woman frowned her displeasure at the celebration with her arms folded sternly across her chest … obviously unaware that she was standing outside her wagon bath-day naked.

“Sowing in the sunshine, sowing in the shadows,

Fearing neither clouds nor winter’s chilling breeze;

By and by the harvest, and the labor ended,

We shall come rejoicing, bringing in the sheaves.”

Tom felt the ropes tying his hands come loose just as he spied Zachariah walking toward the wagon with his shotgun. “Quick,” Tom told Belinda. “You’ve got to appear crazy and he can’t see my hands are untied. Belinda flung herself on Tom just as the Bishop opened the back of the wagon. “Give me back my mouse slippers you thieving bastard,” she hissed as she raked her fingernails across Tom’s face. “They are too small for you and you always tie their lace-tails in knots!”

            “Sorry Sheriff, but this is for your own good,” Zachariah said as he slammed the stock of the gun into Tom’s head. “Demons will always be about us …” He glanced at Belinda and shook his head, “but they won’t enter your dreams as long as you have a clean conscience.”

The Mormon leader stayed well clear of the Demon Child as he put down a plate of food and a jug of water and then closed the back of the wagon.

            “Do you think he believed I was crazy?” Belinda asked as soon as Zachariah left.

Tom only moaned as he drifted into unconciousness.

-------3-------

                It was near morning but still dark when Tom felt the wagon begin to lurch forward not a slow and steady gate but in a frenzy as if someone were whipping the horses. His head ached and he struggled into a sitting position as the wagon bounced and careened to the sound of banging pans and shrieks. Belinda was peering through the crack in the boards her eyes were like two full moons reflecting on water. “What’s happening?” Tom held his head with both hands as if it might tumble from his shoulders. “The congregation has been drinking the lake water all night,” Belinda said. “They plan to take God’s word to the Lamanite village at first light!”

Tom tried to think. It was hard as he kept bouncing against the roof and banging into the sides. Whoever was driving the wagon had whipped the horses into a wild gallop. The only Indian camp he knew of close by belonged to Crow Feathers, the same renegade Blackfoot War Chief that had dragged Belinda out onto the desert. They left the reservation for months at a time and burned farms and ranches when the buffalo was hard to find.  Tom pushed Belinda aside and tried to peer through the crack. There was too much dust and flying rocks to see. Suddenly both wheels on the right side hit something hard and half of the wooden box on top of the wagon broke away. Rushing air blew away splinters and broken boards. Tom grabbed Belinda and they hung onto the floor.

All twenty six wagons were hurtling across the still dark desert. The moon sinking into the western horizon peeked from behind a streak of clouds and appeared to be laughing. The driver of Tom and Belinda’s wagon stood on the seat with his legs spread wide. He whipped the team of six horses with religious frenzy. The racing wagons had the cloth covers removed and most of the people appeared to be standing. Some banged pots and pans together while others held song books. All appeared to be singing. Tom thought he might find Comanche tied to the back of one of the wagons, but obviously the Mormons had not been able to convert his wild mare.

Zachariah was in the back of the lead wagon lashed naked to a limbed pine tree and a splintered sideboard in the shape of a cross. The tall pole bolted to the wagon frame rocked and swayed from side to side like the mast of a ship in a terrible storm. His voice rose above the mayhem like a clap of thunder. “For behold the Lord sayeth I will visit them with the sword and with famine and with pestilence!”

The wagon flying along next to Tom and Belinda hit something and a dozen people were thrown into the air like corn popping from a fry pan. Before the thrashing arms and legs of men women and children came down, the wagon overturned in an explosion of blood, dust, shattered wheel spokes and torn linen.

A broken brake rod sprayed a plume of sparks as it banged against an axle on the wagon ahead and a wave of burning sagebrush followed behind … lighting the night sky.

The wagons thundered down a steep incline and Tom could see the tops of teepees through the smoke in a clearing below. Dogs barked and ran around several campfires. Two arrows stuck in the wood just above Belinda’s head. Tom pulled her down. The Indians gave up trying to fight the intruders and instead fled, many still naked, from the madness. A squaw holding two infants ran out of a lodge and through a campfire without slowing.

Two young braves leaped on ponies inside a makeshift corral and the flying hooves tangled in the rope enclosure and pulled down several racks of drying meat and at least three lodges.

Bishop Johnson was almost in the center of the village when he commanded his faithful to stop. Two wagons collided with each other and one overturned rolling over two teepees and a campfire. The sun was just rising. Tom looked out the back of the wagon. The desert behind was littered with broken wagons, screaming horses, rolling barrels, guns, torn bags of flour and the bodies of men, women and children. Several of the Indian lodges were on fire. “I will visit them in my fierce anger, sayeth the Lord!” Zachariah thundered from high above the mayhem.

Tom figured there had been at least a hundred and twenty Mormon men women and children before the strange nighttime missionary call … now there were less than thirty, clinging wild eyed to seven battered wagons. The Bishop looked pleased with himself. “Behold the unwashed come unto God!” Zachariah began to laugh while hanging from the cross. Those few left in the wagons once again began to sing. Tom watched a grey haired man jump from a wagon and pick up a violin lying in the dirt. He pried loose a saw blade nailed to the side of a wagon and used it for a bow.

“When I was young I used to wait

On the master and hand him his plate;

And pass the bottle when he got dry,

And brush away the blue tail fly.

Jimmy crack corn and I don't care,

Jimmy crack corn and I don't care,

Jimmy crack corn and I don't care,

My master's gone away.”

“Master Hell! It’s your mind that’s gone away!” Tom mumbled.

The men and women all began to dance. Tom peered into the dust and darkness … the Blackfoot Indians were returning through the trees with Crow Feathers in the lead  … they were fitting bows to arrows and waving spears … and Tom doubted they planned to join in with the Mormons’ celebrations.

TO BE CONTINUED …