“Not of any damned Mormon,” I answered, taking advantage of the opportunity to curse our enemies without fear of the avenging back of mother’s hand.
I noted the little smile that curled his tired lips for the moment when he heard my reply.
“Well, then, Jesse,” he said, “will you go with Jed to the spring for water?”
I was all eagerness.
“We’re going to dress the two of you up as girls,” he continued, “so that maybe they won’t fire on you.”
I insisted on going as I was, as a male human that wore pants; but I surrendered quickly enough when father suggested that he would find some other boy to dress up and go along with Jed.
A chest was fetched in from the Chattox wagon. The Chattox girls were twins and of about a size with Jed and me. Several of the women got around to help. They were the Sunday dresses of the Chattox twins, and had come in the chest all the way from Arkansas .
In her anxiety mother left the baby with Sarah Dunlap, and came as far as the trench with me. There, under a wagon and behind the little breastwork of sand, Jed and I received our last instructions. Then we crawled out and stood up in the open. We were dressed precisely alike—white stockings, white dresses, with big blue sashes, and white sunbonnets. Jed’s right and my left hand were clasped together. In each of our free hands we carried two small pails.
“Take it easy,” father cautioned, as we began our advance. “Go slow. Walk like girls.”
Not a shot was fired. We made the spring safely, filled our pails, and lay down and took a good drink ourselves. With a full pail in each hand we made the return trip. And still not a shot was fired.
I cannot remember how many journeys we made—fully fifteen or twenty. We walked slowly, always going out with hands clasped, always coming back slowly with four pails of water. It was astonishing how thirsty we were. We lay down several times and took long drinks.
But it was too much for our enemies. I cannot imagine that the Indians would have withheld their fire for so long, girls or no girls, had they not obeyed instructions from the whites who were with them. At any rate Jed and I were just starting on another trip when a rifle went off from the Indian hill, and then another.
“Come back!” mother cried out.
I looked at Jed, and found him looking at me. I knew he was stubborn and had made up his mind to be the last one in. So I started to advance, and at the same instant he started.
“You!—Jesse!” cried my mother. And there was more than a smacking in the way she said it.
Jed offered to clasp hands, but I shook my head.
“Run for it,” I said.
And while we hotfooted it across the sand it seemed all the rifles on Indian hill were turned loose on us. I got to the spring a little ahead, so that Jed had to wait for me to fill my pails.
“Now run for it,” he told me; and from the leisurely way he went about filling his own pails I knew he was determined to be in last.
So I crouched down, and, while I waited, watched the puffs of dust raised by the bullets. We began the return side by side and running.
“Not so fast,” I cautioned him, “or you’ll spill half the water.”
That stung him, and he slacked back perceptibly. Midway I stumbled and fell headlong. A bullet, striking directly in front of me, filled my eyes with sand. For the moment I thought I was shot.
“Done it a-purpose,” Jed sneered as I scrambled to my feet. He had stood and waited for me.
I caught his idea. He thought I had fallen deliberately in order to spill my water and go back for more. This rivalry between us was a serious matter—so serious, indeed, that I immediately took advantage of what he had imputed and raced back to the spring. And Jed Dunham, scornful of the bullets that were puffing dust all around him, stood there upright in the open and waited for me. We came in side by side, with honours even in our boys’ foolhardiness. But when we delivered the water Jed had only one pailful. A bullet had gone through the other pail close to the bottom.
Mother took it out on me with a lecture on disobedience. She must have known, after what I had done, that father wouldn’t let her smack me; for, while she was lecturing, father winked at me across her shoulder. It was the first time he had ever winked at me.
Back in the rifle pit Jed and I were heroes. The women wept and blessed us, and kissed us and mauled us. And I confess I was proud of the demonstration, although, like Jed, I let on that I did not like all such making-over. But Jeremy Hopkins, a great bandage about the stump of his left wrist, said we were the stuff white men were made out of—men like Daniel Boone, like Kit Carson, and Davy Crockett. I was prouder of that than all the rest.
The remainder of the day I seem to have been bothered principally with the pain of my right eye caused by the sand that had been kicked into it by the bullet. The eye was bloodshot, mother said; and to me it seemed to hurt just as much whether I kept it open or closed. I tried both ways.
Things were quieter in the rifle pit, because all had had water, though strong upon us was the problem of how the next water was to be procured. Coupled with this was the known fact that our ammunition was almost exhausted. A thorough overhauling of the wagons by father had resulted in finding five pounds of powder. A very little more was in the flasks of the men.
I remembered the sundown attack of the night before, and anticipated it this time by crawling to the trench before sunset. I crept into a place alongside of Laban. He was busy chewing tobacco, and did not notice me. For some time I watched him, fearing that when he discovered me he would order me back. He would take a long squint out between the wagon wheels, chew steadily a while, and then spit carefully into a little depression he had made in the sand.
“How’s tricks?” I asked finally. It was the way he always addressed me.
“Fine,” he answered. “Most remarkable fine, Jesse, now that I can chew again. My mouth was that dry that I couldn’t chew from sun-up to when you brung the water.”
Here a man showed head and shoulders over the top of the little hill to the north-east occupied by the whites. Laban sighted his rifle on him for a long minute. Then he shook his head.
“Four hundred yards. Nope, I don’t risk it. I might get him, and then again I mightn’t, an’ your dad is mighty anxious about the powder.”
“What do you think our chances are?” I asked, man-fashion, for, after my water exploit, I was feeling very much the man.
Laban seemed to consider carefully for a space ere he replied.
“Jesse, I don’t mind tellin’ you we’re in a damned bad hole. But we’ll get out, oh, we’ll get out, you can bet your bottom dollar.”
“Some of us ain’t going to get out,” I objected.
“Who, for instance?” he queried.
“Why, Bill Tyler, and Mrs. Grant, and Silas Dunlap, and all the rest.”
“Aw, shucks, Jesse—they’re in the ground already. Don’t you know everybody has to bury their dead as they traipse along? They’ve ben doin’ it for thousands of years I reckon, and there’s just as many alive as ever they was. You see, Jesse, birth and death go hand-in-hand. And they’re born as fast as they die—faster, I reckon, because they’ve increased and multiplied. Now you, you might a-got killed this afternoon packin’ water. But you’re here, ain’t you, a-gassin’ with me an’ likely to grow up an’ be the father of a fine large family in Californy. They say everything grows large in Californy.”
This cheerful way of looking at the matter encouraged me to dare sudden expression of a long covetousness.
“Say, Laban, supposin’ you got killed here—”
“Who?—me?” he cried.
“I’m just sayin’ supposin’,” I explained.
“Oh, all right then. Go on. Supposin’ I am killed?”
“Will you give me your scalps?”
“Your ma’ll smack you if she catches you a-wearin’ them,” he temporized.
“I don’t have to wear them when she’s around. Now if you got killed, Laban, somebody’d have to get them scalps. Why not me?”
“Why not?” he repeated. “That’s correct, and why not you? All right, Jesse. I like you, and your pa. The
