BAD WATER part 4

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.

By R. Peterson

            Driven insane by the poison lake water, Zachariah’s eyes blazed like Foxfire as he thrust the rifle barrel under the barely conscious Indian holy man’s chin. Blood poured onto the ground from a gunshot-wound in Ghost Bear’s stomach.

“What do you want?” Sheriff Thomas Lang asked in a conversational tone, even though he thought the Mormon Bishop was beyond all reasoning, but he had to try something. The one-hundred furious Blackfoot warriors surrounding the immigrants were unmoving for the time being but they wouldn’t be for long. If their spiritual leader was killed there would be a massacre.

“I want to lead all the lost lambs to greener pastures and the Lamanites to the eternal works of God!” Zachariah thundered. “The good Lord has made this body of water appear in the desert as a testament to his righteousness … we who are blessed among men must not scorn his everlasting gift!” Defiantly, the Bishop lifted the canteen hanging by his side and took another long drink without moving his finger from the rifle’s trigger.

“An earthquake released this water that’s probably been trapped inside a rock cliff for millions of years,” Tom told him. “I don’t know what’s tainted it … but it ain’t good. Look around! Do you see any animals drinking this vile liquid? They won’t because they sense something wrong! My own horse shied away and I trust her more than I do your demented visions of holy gifts!”

He Who Jumps and several other Indians rushed forward ready to thrust their spears through the Mormon leader’s stomach but Crow Feather’s held them back. “While He Who Talks to Ghosts still breathes we must listen to his council!”

Ghost Bear’s wrinkled face was so pale he almost looked like a white man as he raised his lethargic head. The fingers covering the smoking hole in his unadorned buckskin shirt were saturated with blood. His wheezing voice was firm, but often interrupted by coughing.

“For many years I have wandered through these hills looking for the horses and the lodges of our people who have followed the buffalo spirits. They are many … even before the great battle with Yellow Hair. At night the wind brings the smell of their fires but they are too far away and no longer walk these lands. The white man digs in the ground for gold but the Indian knows that in the earth is a place of the dead where the bad spirits linger. Anything of value that comes from under the land has been touched by the demons.” His head drooped for a moment and then he stared at the lake. “Many Devils live in this water and they swim past your tongue when you drink. Your body becomes their lodge and when one is torn down they move into another. To destroy the demons you must burn the lodges where they sleep and all things that they touch. My lodge is old and torn. I don’t think a Devil would like it … but I’m not sure. Today is a good day to die … I can smell the smoke and it is not far. I can hear the buffalo meat sing as it roasts on the fire!”

Ghost Bear stretched out his bloody fingers and grasped the Bishop’s hand that held the rifle trigger. After a brief struggle the gun blasted.

Zachariah was as surprised as anyone when the Indian’s head exploded in a large fan spray of bone, brain and blood. He turned and ran into the lake slowing only when it became waist deep. “Oh God! The eternal father! Bless and sanctify this water to all the souls who partake of it …” he thundered.

All the warriors rushed forward but Crow Feathers was one step ahead. He bashed the Bishop in the head with a rifle butt and knocked away the smoking gun. Zachariah floated for a few moments then began to sink. Crow feathers dragged his arms under the water but could not find him. Within minutes all the Mormons on shore were pinned to the ground. “Do not kill them with knives, arrows or spears,” Crow Feathers ordered. “You heard He Who Talks to Ghosts. They and all their belongings must be burned!”

“I thought they were going to let us go!” Belinda was almost laughing as four warriors bound her and Tom’s hands behind their backs. Tom thought fear does strange things to people.

“Crow Feathers said that from this moment forward our fate and the Mormons would be bound together,” Tom told her. “The chief is a man of his word.”

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

Tom and Belinda were tied to the same wagon wheel as the Indians gathered wood, dried grass, broken crates and barrels, piling the debris in a mountain around them and the remaining Mormons. “I want to thank you for coming into my life,” Belinda whispered to Tom.

“It looks like we’re going to be nothing but ashes in a few minutes,” Tom said. “Why thank me?”

“I don’t think it was really the water that changed me,” Belinda told him. “I think it was you. I’ve been around a lot of mortal men but I’ve never met a real one before. There is something different about you, some quality deep inside that makes me want to take you with me forever.” Tom didn’t see her turn her head and spit the rotted tooth out of her mouth.

Tom was only half listening to her. He could see Crow Feathers and the others talking in a circle. Most of the Indians had finished and were now waiting with lit torches. It looked like every bit of scrap wood and every burnable twig for a square mile had been piled around those about to be consumed by fire. He could feel the unfired 45 cartridge bouncing on a chain around his neck. It gave him a strange hope. Dr. Descombey’s aged mother had told his fortune from the back of a gypsy wagon years before and this special bullet was supposed to cause his death. All the other details of his future had come true. Even though he’d drained the cartridge of all its gun-powder … he still thought it best to keep it close. Belinda was humming contentedly.

Crow Feathers unsheathed an elk-bone handled knife and walked toward Tom and Belinda holding a lit torch in his other hand. “This woman appears to have driven the Devil away that was inside her,” the chief said, “and you were a fierce enemy and friend to He Who Talks to Ghosts” He reached out and cut the rope that bound them to the wagon wheel. “We have decided to kill you on another day … but the others … those who insist on calling us Lamanites must be burned!”

“Let us go?” Tom was surprised by the angry hissing sound of Belinda’s voice. When he turned Belinda’s eyes were once again the yellow/orange glow of insanity. Her claw-like fingers dug into Tom’s arms. “I’ve waited centuries for this moment,” the demon inside her wailed. “To return to the underworld with you as my prize. Fire is not just something to cook your flesh, it is the doorway to Hell and we’re going to open it together!”

Tom suddenly realized that the demon had never left the young girl … only hidden. “I thought Woman with Rock looked everywhere … where were you hiding?”

            “Inside the bitch’s shoe,” the demon said making Belinda stomp her foot. “I only swallow blood and whiskey so I bit one of her toes off!”

Before Tom could react, the Demon Child wrestled the torch away from Crow Feathers and rising into the air like a banshee swept it around her in a circle. Within minutes, the entire outside ring of the burn pile was an infernal vortex of rushing air and swirling flames.

The heat was blinding and the hot windstorm instant. A flock of birds filled the sky with wings made of fire. Tom covered his face with his hands and tried to stumble through the flames. He felt the demon child grasp his shirt and pull him upward. Her laughter reminded him of the residents of an Abilene sanitarium running onto the streets after a black tornado funnel cloud began plowing a hay field and stock pens just behind the building. On that long ago day he’d ran from a saloon and then clutched a stone well casing as he watched several of the mentally ill get sucked into the air … screaming like delighted children.

            “All the heat is up here! Come play with me!” The demon lifted Tom higher into the air.

Tom forced his eyes open long enough to see the Indians below fleeing in all directions. The screams of the immigrant women and children sounded strangely like pipe organ music.

All Tom could do was clutch the bullet on a chain in his fingers and try to believe the old woman knew what she was talking about. That’s when he felt the first splash of cold water on his face and then another. He thought it might be raining but no rain he’d ever been in dropped water drops as big as barrels. Tom opened his eyes and looked down. The lake was shaking and casting huge walls of water twenty feet into the air. It was another earthquake, bigger than the first and twice as terrifying … but exactly on time.

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

The demon’s screech sounded like a Union artillery shell falling on the city of Vicksburg. Tom was too young to remember the War Between the States but his father had described it in exacting detail. What was left of Belinda let go of his shirt as she fell. Steam rose in plumes like the water was growing living thing as it covered the banks and doused the flames.

When a dazed Tom landed on the ground he was instantly thrust into a human stampede. Men women and children some still slapping flames from their clothes, ran in all directions most moving their arms and legs furiously even as they were tossed into the air.

With a mighty tearing sound the land under the lake was ripped open swallowing the poison liquid in seconds like a zigzagging serpent. Tom watched as first one wagon and then another rolled into the widening earth mouth along with flailing arms and legs clad in overall denim and calico. Dirt, flames, wind and water, it was as if all the elements of the Earth were being ferociously mixed in a giant desert bowl. Tom closed his eyes this time from dust and flying debris. From somewhere far off he thought he heard a horse whinny and then another. The pounding of hoofs sounded like rolling thunder as Comanche led the stolen Indian horses into the bedlam.

-------4-------

            Tom instinctively grasped Comanche’s flying mane as the high spirited mare charged past. It was a good thing he did. The gaping chasm that swallowed the lake closed up again like a giant cellar door slapped shut by the wind. There were several smaller tremors like muscle spasms from a dying man but slowly a reverence came over the land.

In the stillness that followed, Tom could only hear the anguished sounds of injured men and women and the crying of children. Comanche stopped two hundred yards from where the lake had been and Tom limped back. There were no more than a handful of survivors from the Mormon immigrant party and one partially burned but still intact wagon. The demons seemed to have left with the bad water … the Indians did not return. Belinda and the thing that was inside her were never seen again.

Tom stayed for two days and helped the immigrants gather their belongings and catch the horses. They offered him a ride to Gilmore but he declined. When the overloaded wagon pulled away Tom could hear singing from those who walked behind.

            He almost went back for the saddle and the bags of stolen gold ore that he left when he’d tried to warn the wagon train but somehow he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Ghost Bears had said that anything the water touched it corrupted. Come to think of it when Tom recovered the gold ore it was lighter than what had been stolen. Tom reasoned that Dillard and Dodd Cole had probably smashed the ore by the lakeside and then panned out the pure gold in the water. He was sure if that was the case he didn’t want anything to do with it. What was the old saying Money is the Root of All Evil … in this case it was almost surely true.

Tom rode bareback toward South Fork and tried to forget about everything that had happened and tried not to think about what he was going to say to the citizens that elected him.

  

-------5-------

When Tom rode over the crest of the Centennial Mountains he was looking down at the valley where Elisabeth Walker grazed her herds during most of the summer. A cloud of fine dust sifted into the August sky as a group of ranch-workers drove a few hundred steers to where there was better grass and more water. Several of the smiling herders took off their wide brimmed sombreros and waved them in the air as Tom rode passed. One extra fat vaquero mounted on a cantankerous overloaded horse laughed out loud. "La señora del jefe le preocupa que tal vez los forajidos mala te tiro y te dejan en el desierto para buitres comer, pero decimos no! El sheriff es demasiado como un zorro!"

“Perhaps Elisabeth is right and someday I will be killed,” Tom returned the laugh. “Pero no esta vez!"

Elisabeth was helping a young Mexican girl hang wet pants and shirts on a clothes line when Tom rode into the ranch yard. The girl smiled broadly and seemed to dance. "Vemos las declaraciones del sheriff! No murió después de todo!" Elisabeth stared openmouthed at Tom for a moment showing the chipped front tooth that she forgot to cover with her tongue before she dropped the basket she was holding and stomped into the sprawling two-story house slamming the door behind her.

Tom dismounted leaving Comanche to trim the carefully tended Kentucky Bluegrass lawn and walked into the large barn where he could hear a hammer ringing against an anvil. One of the Mendez brothers, who had taken up blacksmithing after he’d injured his leg and lost his brother in a mining accident, limped over as Tom walked through the wide double doors. Paco was holding a red hot horseshoe with a pair of metal thongs. “Gracias a la Santa Madre que cobró nuevamente vida,” he said. “La señora del jefe estaba a punto de cerrar el Rancho … and send everyman out to look for your body!”

“She didn’t look all that happy to see me,” Tom took off his partially burned hat and fanned his head from the heat coming from a stone forge, “and I’m afraid she’s going to be even less happy when I tell her what happened on the trail.”

“Did you get very drunk and marry some whore who works in a saloon?” Paco gave the sheriff an accusing look.

“No nothing like that,” Tom told him.

‘Then everything is fine!” Paco laughed.

-------6-------

They talked for several minutes mostly about the Mendez family back in Mexico and about the amount of money Paco was able to send to them every month and then Tom decided he’d better talk to Elisabeth another time. He caught Comanche and was just about to climb on her back when the door to the house opened. Elisabeth had put on a frilly yellow dress that looked like it had to have come all the way from the east. Her face looked fresh washed and scrubbed and her long auburn hair was pulled back and tied in a ribbon. “As long as you’re here you’d better come inside for a bite to eat and coffee,” she said. “I’ve never turned away a traveler yet and I’m not about to on your account.”

Tom took off his hat and followed her into the house. The inside was furnished far better than the governor’s mansion in Bannock where he got his sheriff job. “I’m sorry but I’ve got some bad news,” Tom told her as they sat side by side at a long table.

            “Oh, and what might that be?” Elisabeth poured coffee into a fancy China cup and placed it in front of Tom along with a bowl of sugar and crème from an ice-house.

Tom shook his head. “Them outlaws won’t be robbing anymore of your ore wagons,” he said. “But I lost the bags of gold they took!”

            Elisabeth grinned without opening her mouth. Her eyes seemed to dance. “Tom, women lose hairpins and men, especially you, lose track of time … but nobody misplaces twenty pounds of gold ore in heavy leather bags!”

            “I didn’t really lose your gold,” Tom said miserably. “After everything that happened I just didn’t want to take the chance to go back after it!”

            “And all this time I thought you were stubborn and would never learn! I think there might be hope for you yet!” Elisabeth smiled as she leaned forward and kissed him.

THE END ?

BAD WATER part 3

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.

By R. Peterson

            Crow Feathers was an honorable leader of the Blackfoot tribe. The fact that he had turned renegade and led his people off a tiny Indian reservation after broken promises and outright lies from the U.S. government seemed almost justified to Tom. The settlers his warriors killed and the farms and ranches they burned were a horrible retaliation of a proud and starving people pushed onto desert lands with no game, no water and no future.

“Áóoyiwa Ko'komíki'somma!” The dark eyes in Crow Feathers head missed nothing as he gazed at the white man’s wagons sitting in the middle of his destroyed village.

“He says we eat the moon,” Tom told Belinda.

“That’s impossible!”

“It’s just his way of saying we’re all crazy!”

Bishop Johnson, tied to a makeshift cross mounted in the back of a wagon, chose the most inopportune time to open his mouth. “Behold! The hungry sinners come unto God and are filled with righteousness!”  

An angry Indian warrior raised his spear and prepared to plunge it into the Mormon leader’s chest.

“Wait!” Tom yelled using the few Siksika words he knew and a universal sign language. “These people have been poisoned and they don’t know what they are doing!”

Crow Feathers stretched out his arm and stopped He Who Jumps. He stared at Tom, noted the redness of his wrists from the ropes and then quickly turned away after glancing at Belinda. “I will listen to Rides Yellow Horse’s words before we kill our enemies.”

Tom had heard other Indian tribes address him by this name and it made him wonder where Comanche was. He climbed out of the wagon and moved closer so that all could hear him. Just before he began speaking he felt Belinda brush against his side and he placed a protective arm around the kid “Two days ago the ground shook and a large river hidden inside a mountain spilled out onto the desert. I was chasing two outlaws who camped next to the new lake and they became as if possessed by demons after drinking the water.” Tom gestured to the Mormons. Zachariah was smiling as he hung on the cross and a group of women appeared to be dancing silently around his wagon.  “These people are a religious group headed to a settlement on the other side of these mountains. I warned them about the water but they would not listen.”

            “All white men lie!” He Who Jumps yelled. “They sell bottles of the Devil Water from the backs of their wagons.” A murmur of agreement swept through the Indians.

            “This is not the same white man’s whiskey that makes a warrior do foolish things,” Tom told them. “All who drink this water go out of their minds.”

            “What of your woman?” Crow Feathers pointed to Belinda. “Did she also drink this Devil water?”

            “I’m not his woman,” Belinda said then added with a whisper. “Not yet.”

            “Yes,” Tom was finding it hard to explain. “She was out of her head when we were placed together but when she drank the bad water … the demon inside her fled.”

            “Rides Yellow Horse lies!” He Who Jumps lunged forward but Crow Feathers pulled him back. “If demons are in the water she drank … then they are also in her!”

            “Tell Woman with Rock  to look in this white woman’s mouth and listen to her breath,” Crow Feathers ordered. “She will know if the demon has gone … or if it is only sleeping.”

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

An hour later, an ancient looking female with a face like a dried blackberry dressed in white buffalo robes and supported by two bowed elk antlers she used as crutches hobbled into the camp. She stopped a few feet in front of Tom and took something burning from a stone jar filled with glowing embers. She waved a smoking root in the air and chanted “Awkiii yi nao si ya himiii,” while staring at Belinda.

            “She wants you to breath in the smoke,” Tom told Belinda.

            “What is it?” The girl held tight to the back of Tom’s shirt.

            “Maybe our way out of this mess.”

Belinda took a deep breath and drew the harsh smoke into her lungs. Her eyes watered and after a moment she began to gag and cough. The old woman smiled and then leaned forward and pried open Belinda’s mouth wide. She swept her eyes from side to side as she stared down the girl’s throat then she put her ear next to the open mouth and listened. Her small bright eyes appeared to dart in all directions.

            “What is she doing?” Belinda gasped when the old woman finally released her.

            “Looking for a Devil … and listening for snoring to see if the demon might be sleeping in your belly.” Tom told her.

The old woman hobbled away waving her arms in the air as if she had been bothered by noisy children.

            “Your words are true,” Crow Feathers said. “Three moons ago we felt the land tremble as a door to the underworld was opened and this woman had a bad spirit inside her and the water has washed it away.”

He Who Jumps threw his lance on the ground and stomped away, several others followed him.

            “Will you allow us to leave with our promise of restitution for the damage to your village?” Tom asked him.

            “When all our horses have returned you, the wild yellow thief and the woman may go,” Crow Feathers said. “They follow your horse across the plains and are very hard to catch. We Siksika cannot chase them. Instead we must decide how to dispose of the demons that live in these people. When your woman was possessed by the bad spirit I dragged her from our camp on a horse so that she would not infect others. It is dangerous to kill anyone with a demon inside them for the bad spirit that leaves will seek to find a new body to move into from any that are close. Now my horse follows the yellow one.         

“I’m not his woman,” Belinda said.

            “I am a lawman and my job is to protect these people, Tom told them. “This bad water is something new to me.”  Tom thought hard, and remembered something that might help. “These people have a book that they believe contains much magic. Perhaps something in it will make them well.”

            “I have asked Ghost Bear to come to our camp for council,” Crow Feathers said. “When He Who Talks to Spirits arrives with the rising sun we will go to this lake and discover its secrets. From this time forward your blood and these people are bound together.”

The women dancing around Zachariah’s wagon were spinning faster and faster. Tom noticed that they were still stopping occasionally to drink cups filled with lake water from a barrel mounted on the side of the wagon. One of the men crowed like a rooster as he soaked a torn shirt in the water and passed it up on the end of a long stick to the Bishop hanging on the cross. Zachariah Johnson smiled broadly as he sucked the moisture into his mouth and stared upward at the clouds.  “Halleluiah!” he shouted. “I can see Jesus picking cotton with God!’

            “What’s happening?” Belinda was tugging on Tom’s shirt; her eyes were like a trapped fox.

            “They want their horses back. It seems my horse has led them away. A great Indian medicine man from the north country has been summoned,” Tom said. “He will decide if we live or die.”

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

None of the Blackfeet seemed to want to get too near the infected whites. Occasionally a brave but mostly women would quickly dart into the destroyed camp grab up some needed object and flee back to a new camp they were making as if pursued by demons. They were careful not to pick up anything they thought the white people had touched. The Indians had posted guards to prevent their captives from escaping.

Tom realized the Mormons were never going to stop drinking the bad water on their own and searched through Zachariah’s wagon until he found an axe. After making sure that none of the Mormons were armed and hiding several rifles, he smashed the blade into the water barrels repeatedly until the staves broke and the water spilled onto the ground. Two young men in clean white shirts tried to stop him with their fists. Tom knocked both of them easily to the ground. “That water was delivered to us poured and stirred by the hand of God,” one boy blubbered wiping dirt from his face.

            “Then he must have had a dirty finger,” Tom told them. “There is a creek over in them trees. From now on if anyone of you Saints wants to drink, you get your water from there.”

            Tom was almost sorry he told them about the other water supply. Late in the afternoon some of the remaining Mormons had unhitched a balking mule from one of the wagons and with great ceremony was baptizing the repentant creature in the stream.

It was an hour after dark and Zachariah was still reciting scriptures from the Book of Mormon by memory with a voice like rolling thunder when a frustrated Tom and Belinda unlashed the wooden cross from the wagon and lowered him to the ground. “What you’ve done is sacrilege!” Two scowling women approached Tom and spat in his face. The Bishop glared at Tom and Belinda like a wounded badger caught in a trap but allowed the women to pull him into a wagon.

            “Perhaps so,” A weary Tom sighed. “But I can’t sleep when it sounds like it’s going to rain!”

-------4-------

Ghost Bear arrived at dawn, walking slowly and without any feathers in his grey hair or other ornamentation. Nevertheless he aroused awe amongst the members of Crow Feather’s camp. The warriors all laid their weapons at his feet as a gesture of respect and submission and the women covered their faces. Only the camp’s children approached him at a run and there was laughter and squeals of delight as he spun them around and tossed them in the air. “He don’t look so ferocious,” Belinda whispered. The old man chased several of the children around the fires pretending to be a bear.

Belinda had been up for over an hour and Tom noticed she had borrowed a clean dress from one of the Mormon women and her hair was brushed back and tied with a ribbon. She no longer looked like a skinny child but a young woman. Before he thought she was maybe twelve years old now she looked more like sixteen.

            “Don’t let Ghost Bear’s interaction with children fool you,” Tom told her. “This medicine man is revered as a great enemy and warrior by most of the plains tribes including the Crow, Cheyenne and the Oglala Lakota.

            “Why do the Lamanites revere their enemies?”

            “Indians believe that strong enemies are a kind of prestige and that fighting is a good thing … if your enemies are weak then you must be also. When an Indian wants to fight you … it is a sign that he likes you and also a sign of respect.”

Crow Feathers tried to gift Ghost Bears with his ceremonial lance but the old man ignored him, instead he approached Tom and Belinda frowning. “That metal thistle stuck on your dirty shirt makes people angry … and they wish to kill you,” he spoke an almost perfect, but spiteful English as he waved a withered hand like a claw in front of Tom’s face. “Your woman looks like dried grass. She would be better off with a crippled dog … than a rabbit who cannot feed her.”

            “Your shabby and stinking clothes are sage brush that hides a wolf raised by skunks,” Tom told him. Belinda gasped and stepped away from the sheriff, not sure she wanted to be close to him.

Ghost Bears looked furious for a few moments and the camp was deathly silent then suddenly he laughed. ‘I sometimes go many winters without any insults,’ he said. “It is good to share a camp with one whose tongue is not afraid of being cut off.”

            “Only a man who believes the insults are true gets mad when he hears them,” Tom told him.

Belinda had been holding her breath and now she released it with relief. “Why didn’t you tell me this Ghost chief was your friend … for a minute there I thought we were in trouble!”

            “Sheriff Thomas Lang is a great leader among the white man,” Ghost Bears said. “Therefore I think he is a man for a leader like me to kill. These other white people have a sickness. I think it is not good to touch them. I am old; it has been many winters since a scalp has hung above my lodge. This day we shall go look at the waters that have come from the spirit world under the land.” Ghost Bears smiled broadly.  “Then we will have a feast and a fire dance to chase the water spirits back into the ground. Perhaps the Sheriff and his woman will join us.”

            “For the last time I’m not his woman!” Belinda shouted.

            The entire camp including the captive Mormons with their wagons and horses forming a protective circle around their Bishop, followed Ghost Bear as he slowly walked to the new lake. Tom thought some of the craziness was leaving most of the religious settlers after they’d stopped drinking the bad water; he just hoped they could all stay alive long enough for things to get back to normal.

            “Don’t worry,” Belinda whispered to Tom as they followed. “He’s just an old man. How tough can he be? Whatever weapon the Lamanite chief chooses I’m sure you can totally beat him!”

            “You don’t understand the Blackfoot tribes or their ways,” Tom sighed. “The fire dance to honor the new lake that he talked about has only three participants … you, me, and a large ring of burning sticks.”

Belinda gasped. “They plan to burn us?”

            “Unless we can totally defeat the fire by draining the lake or dancing our way out of it,” Tom told her with a grin.

-------5-------

            “This demon water has no mouth,” Ghost Bear said when he had walked all the way around the new lake once. He noticed the fresh graves and smiled at Tom. “It will die of thirst as long as the sun continues to rise each day.”

            “What of those who drink the poison before it dries up?” Tom asked.

            “The only bones I see are of your enemies,” Ghost Bear said. “Animals are not as easily fooled as white men. We will camp here and wait. I feel the wind whispering to the trees. Another sign soon comes this way from the spirit world.”

Ghost Bear was right about the feast. A group of warriors left followed by their squaws and a few hours later returned with meat from three buffalo. Even the Mormon women helped, baking bread and picking wild berries for pies. The craziness of the last two days was being replaced with smiles and hospitality. Although Bishop Johnson sat in the ruins of his wagon, muttering and casting dark looks at the Indian’s wise man.

-------6-------

            “It has been many moons since my stomach has been this big,” Ghost Bear said smiling and standing up as he patted his middle. “The lake is afraid of the day and the sun. Perhaps the Siksika will find another way to chase it away … without a fire dance!” He walked through the congenial whites and the Indians smiling at everyone.

            “Does this mean what I think it does?” Belinda stopped crying for the first time in hours. Tom noticed her sliding closer to him and it made him feel uncomfortable. He had enough trouble just dealing with the Indians and the Mormons.

            “I think so,” Tom told her. “The lake looks like it has dropped a foot just since yesterday.”

Suddenly a shot rang out. Tom saw Ghost Bear fall to the ground knocking over a table laden with food. Several women screamed. A second later, Bishop Johnson jerked the apparently gut-shot old Indian from the ground holding a rifle to his head. A hundred Blackfoot warriors rushed forward and then stopped in barely contained fury as Zachariah cocked the gun and placed his finger on the trigger. “This lake is from heaven,” the Mormon leader thundered taking a long drink from a canteen that had been hidden under his coat. Moisture dripped off his long ragged beard. “We will not allow God’s precious gift to be cast aside by a bunch of filthy Lamanites!”

            “Where did he get that damn rifle?” Belinda moaned.

            “From Hell I suppose,” Tom said. “Bishop Johnson seems to have a key to the back door.”

TO BE CONTINUED …

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 …

BAD WATER

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

By R. Peterson

Thomas Lang galloped Comanche to the top of the butte and stopped. The prancing Texas mare sidestepped wind-polished rock as she gulped mouthfuls of dry air like water. The scorching sun was almost directly overhead so the Indian Fig cactus and Sage that littered the vast desert below cast no shadows. Two tiny flecks of sifted dust, rising perhaps four miles out in a sky baked dull orange by blistering sand, showed the ex-confederate soldiers he chased were too far ahead and would not be caught this day. The thick Crow weave blanket under the saddle was wet; better to wait out the heat and travel in the cool of night. Perhaps then it might be only buzzard picked bones and two leather bags filled with semi-refined Blue Bonnet ore that he captured.

Elisabeth Walker, the owner of the gold mine, had been furious as Tom saddled up to go after the outlaws. “There can’t be more than ten pounds of pure gold in them bags once it’s melted down,” she said. “Fourteen-hundred dollars ain’t near enough to get yourself killed over!”

“They killed one of your wagon drivers and left another for dead,” Tom argued. “It’s not just about the money!”

“I know that!” Elisabeth tried to get between Tom and his horse. “I’m no innocent schoolmarm fresh off the stage from St. Louis!  Dillard and Dodd Cole were a plague in Missouri when I lived there. Either brother would just as soon shoot you as look at you. Both of the killers rode for a time with “Billy” Clarke Quantrill and I heard he ran them off because they were too bloodthirsty.” Elisabeth tried to undo Comanche’s saddle cinch “You best bide your time in town until a posse can be put together!”

Elisabeth had been crying as Tom rode out of South Fork.

An hour later, the Sheriff found an overhang on the north side of an ancient volcano that offered shade but no breeze. After shooting a rattlesnake he poured water for his horse. Tom took only three gulps for himself and then put the wet hat back on his head. The first canteen was empty; only two more remained lashed to his saddlebags. Only one thing was more valuable than gold in western Montana in August 1879 … water. Tom took off his cartridge belt and laid the loaded single action Colt 45 next to the saddle he used as a pillow … and then he slept.

Just before Tom opened his eyes he thought he was sleeping on a bench in the Abilene train station. The rough wooden building shook like a St. Louis bordello dancer each time the snorting Kansas Pacific locomotive smoked and banged into the bustling cow town. When he heard the horse whinny, rear and pull against the brush she was tethered to he knew it was no dream. The rock on which he lay seemed to suddenly turn liquid as it heaved and rolled in waves beneath him. Small rocks began to rain down from the ledge above and he buried his head under the saddle hoping Comanche had sense enough to break the leather reins that tied her to the earthquake.

Less than thirty seconds later it was over. By the time the first aftershock came, fifteen minutes later, Tom had already caught Comanche and was riding down the western side. A crowd of curious stars watched his progress from a cool and darkened sky. One of the flickering red lights low on the invisible horizon looked too bright to be a planet and Tom hoped the outlaws would have coffee on.

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

The first rays of morning light were rising over the mountains to the east when Tom saw his first dark wonder of nature. The entire side of a mountain had fallen away and a never-before-seen-tributary gushed from an opening halfway up the side of a granite cliff. The water sprayed mist twenty feet in the air as it tumbled and splashed over piled, fresh boulders flung in its pathway. Wild thrashing torrents formed into a river as it roared through a canyon and then spread across the low parts of the desert ahead. “And I was worried my tongue was going to dry up and blow away,” Tom removed the canteen strapped to his pack, drank heavily and then splashed his arms and face.

It wasn’t until they neared the muddy pools spreading outward that Comanche snorted, jerked and turned away. “Dern! I shouldn’t have been so quick to dance.” Tom wiped his brow. There weren’t too many things the sheriff put his full trust in, but his horse and water were one. If Comanche refused to drink … she probably had a damn good reason.

Reluctantly, Tom rode Comanche ten miles in the opposite direction to fill his canteens from a source in the mountains. This time the wild Texas mare drank heavily and even tried to roll in the muddy spring. “Wish I’d thought of that,” Tom grinned, “but it’s a little too late now!”

It was two hours after sunset when the sheriff found his way back to the new lake. Light from a campfire reflected on the water. Tom dismounted and crept up to the camp on foot. Dillard and Dodd Cole were both laughing at something. A strong odor stung Tom’s eyes. A smell like a haunch of fatty beef that had fallen into the flames.

Tom blinked his eyes not sure if he was seeing right. Dodd Cole sat on a log next to a rock-ringed fire with a large cooking pan filled with what appeared to be lake-water on the ground next to him. His boots were off and he would alternate sticking first one bare foot and then the other into the fire giggling as the bloody flesh charred and blistered. After the foot had actually began to flame he would plunge it into the pan of water and breathe the steam vapors all while smiling broadly. Tom could see only the back of one horse and it stumbled through the brush without a tie rope like it was severely lame and going blind. Dillard sat on a rock several feet from his brother furiously whittling something with a buffalo knife all the while singing loudly in a skinner’s voice. “Oh! Bright are the jewels from love's deep mint …God bless my toes while picking lint!”

Thomas Lang stood and took two steps into the camp, cocking and bringing a Colt 45 level on each man. “You boys been drinking that lake water?” he asked. Both men burst out laughing. Tom noticed each man’s eyes appeared to glow with an orange-yellow sickness. As if in reply, Dillard dropped what he was carving and reached for a jug. “Best drink this side of my mother’s grave,” he said as he gulped and the water trickled down his beard. Tom watched the horse hoof roll toward the fire. Dillard had carved a heart with an arrow through it and what looked like his initials.

“I’m sorry about your mother, but you men are under arrest,” the sheriff told them.

“Oh maw ain’t dead yet … but we plans a real nice funeral for her don’t we … Dudd?” Dillard laughed as he glanced at his brother.

“Cut her throat and let her pretty blood drip in the gravy-pan right after she pulls them top brown biscuits from the oven!” The younger Cole licked his lips and patted his overlarge stomach.

“You lose a horse on the trail?” Tom used one gun barrel to point to the half-carved severed hoof resting next to the fire stones.

“My horse ran off thirsty,” Dodd smiled and rolled his eyes. “We had to whip Dillard’s nag and burn its legs to make the damn thing drink.” He turned his head to one side. “Pouring a pan of water into a screaming horse’s mouth is no easy chore!”

“Like night-shooting nigras inside a burning church!” Dillard smiled with the memory.

“All that jumping around I think the poor critter picked up a stone …” Dodd closed one eye and a tear ran down his cheek as he shook his head. “Sorry! But that bruised hoof just had to come off!”

“I want you both to turn around and put your hands over your heads,” Tom ordered. The men appeared to be growing sicker by the minute. A nauseating smell like burnt almonds suddenly choked the air.

“Peggy be bawn!” Dodd burst into a rapid fire song as he stepped into the fire holding his hands behind his head. His bare feet kicked and pumped furiously to the words as he kept his upper body stiff in the crackling flames.

“Oh  Ireland be a sharp fine country,

And all Scots to her be kin,

So I must gang-alang without you,

My pleasures to begin!”

Tom was so astonished he barely noticed the gun in Dillard’s hand until he heard the hammer cock. He turned as a chunk of led tore into his left arm, and shot the man four times each time listening to the growing hysterical laughter that spilled from his mouth like a soup pot boiling over. The excited speech deteriorated to fat-lip gibberish mixed with poor-white talk.

           

“Doo bla gum bo … Come on in, friend, the water be jus fine!” A demon made of fire beckoned. Tom shot the bloody, scorched thing dancing in the flames with his last eight bullets … before a thin smoke finally began to rise.

Sheriff Thomas Lang’s hands were shaking so bad he had a hard time reloading, but he knew the horse with one bloody leg stump thrashing through the brush would have to be put down.

Tom found two sun-bleached buffalo skulls not far from the dead horse and placed them on  stakes he drove into the ground near each end of the lake’s shore then he kicked lots of dirt over all three bodies. He didn’t need any crazy buzzards flying through the air and he hoped that whoever came along would heed the poison warning.

An hour later, he loaded the saddle bags with the gold ore on the back of Comanche and led her on foot away from the mind sickness. There was no way he was going to sleep tonight … in this place of devils.

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

It was near morning when Tom finally stopped to rest at the top of a ridge with a slight breeze blowing but he had wanted to get as far away from the smell of madness as possible. He was just about to turn and head back to South Fork when a glimmer of dust on the horizon caught his eye. Ten minutes later he could pick out two dozen covered wagons driving toward the lake. “Damn,” Tom muttered as he unloaded everything off his horse except the sweat. He had rode Comanche many times without a saddle, not always by choice, and the increase in speed just might make the difference between life and death for the hapless travelers.

It was a group of Mormon settlers obviously lost and too far north on their way to Utah. Tom noticed one bearded man and at least three to six women crowded into each wagon plus at least four times that many children riding and walking alongside. Comanche was winded and sweating heavily when he stopped the train just as the first wagons reached the lake.

“You can’t drink that water!” Tom yelled trying to catch his breath.

“Why not?” the man in the lead wagon reached for a rifle just behind the seat. “Our map shows open range with no restrictions!”

“The water ain’t no good,” Tom said. “It smells of a devil … and it ain’t as pure as it looks!”

“None of us is as pure as we look!” the man smiled. “Thanks for the warning … Sheriff!” He noticed Tom’s badge and the rifle disappeared. “My name is Zachariah Johnson and this here is the Johnson Overland Company. We was just about to stop for our mid-day meal … won’t you join us?”

“You folks is a bit north for Utah,” Tom said as he slipped off his horse.

“The good Lord shines a light before the faithful,” Zachariah said, “and we cannot be lost. Our party is headed to a place called Gilmore just on the other side of these mountains.”

Tom had heard of the silver mining town worked by leftover Chinese railroad immigrants. It lay in a dry valley filled with sage brush. He didn’t think it was a proper destination and it showed on his face.

“The good Lord stretches forth his hand and a garden grows in the desert,” Zachariah sounded like he was preaching. Tom only nodded.

The group proved to be more than accommodating, offering him a special place at a quickly assembled table and he was surrounded by children. “You kill any Lamanites with those guns?” Tom noticed several admiring looks from a group of blue eyed giggling females. All the dresses they wore were crisp, bright and clean. He wondered if they were all wives … or spoken for. The mid-day meal was a rich fresh vegetable and venison soup made from what looked like the last of the party’s water supply along with fresh baked bread. After a prayer, bowls were passed around and a group of women began to sing Come Come ye Saints.

After eating, Zachariah asked Tom to follow him to one of the wagons. The only one boarded up and without a cloth cover. “There is something about our people that you don’t know,” he explained and then motioned for the sheriff to look in the back of the wagon.

A skeletal girl, covered with scabs, lay sprawled near-naked on a pile of dirty, fly-infested blankets. She turned and hissed as Tom stared. Her jagged teeth were as green as new corn leaves with tiny black worms stitching the corners of her too wide mouth.

Tom didn’t see the man swing the heavy cast iron pan but heard the crash a split second before his head began to swell. Then there was only darkness.

“Put him in the back with the demon child,” Zachariah told the men surrounding his wagon, “then water the stock and fill all the barrels with water.”

“Sorry Sheriff,” he whispered as an unconscious Tom was pulled into the wagon. “We bring our own laws and devils with us … and only God in heaven can direct a Latter Day Saint what to drink!”

TO BE CONTINUED …