probably wanting him to share it with her. It was a
pretty small prairie dog. How he came across it fell
right in line with the rest of his luck that day: an eagle
had dropped it. Big Belly was just riding along when
all of a sudden this dark shadow floated across his
path and
landed right in front of him and he looked up to see
an eagle circling and he guessed the eagle had
dropped it not meaning to, or perhaps the Creator
was still watching over him and had sent the eagle to
give him a gift of food to go along with the gift of
horses. For he had seriously thought about eating one
of the horses and now he wouldn’t have to.
Big Belly had made camp early, seeing the storm
forming off in the distance, he thought it best to make
a fire and eat his gift of prairie dog before it rained
and made it too wet for a fire. Now the Creator had
sent him a woman as well. This is the best damn day
I’ve had in ten moons, he thought.
He told her to sit down and he’d share his prairie
dog with her.
And when she just looked at him, he motioned for
her to sit and she did.
“Fire feels good,” she said.
Big Belly looked her over pretty good. He never
had a white woman before. He wondered what it
would be like to fornicate with one. He said, “You
like Comanche?”
Martha had no idea what the fat Indian was saying
to her, but he seemed friendly enough and she felt a
little less apprehensive. Still, she knew that men were
pretty much men, no matter what color their skin
was. She knew Indians could be dangerous, but then
so, too, could buffalo hunters and teamsters and min-
ers and youngsters who robbed banks and were dope
addicts.
“My name is Martha,” she said.
“Marda . . .” he said.
“Yes,” she said. “Martha. And what’s yours?”
She pointed at herself when she said her name and he
took it to mean she was telling him what her name was.
He tapped his chest with a thumb and said, “Na-
han-o-hay.”
“That’s a real nice name,” she said.
He asked her if she’d like to fornicate with him af-
ter they ate.
She smiled, not understanding a single word of
what he said. He took that as a good sign.
She watched as he turned the critter over in the fire,
its carcass already burnt black. She couldn’t help but
swallow down her immense hunger.
“Marda . . .” he said, looking at her.
“Yes,” she said. “That’s my name, don’t wear it
out.” But she said it with a smile in order that he not
take it in his head to scalp her or worse, like she’d heard
Indians did to white women—at least the bad ones that
used to be around before the army killed most of them.
He had a face round as a fry pan, and only some
teeth, and the way his eyes were fixed at a slant made
him look scary with the fire’s light flickering over his
features. She’d only seen one other Indian in her
life—one that traveled with a medicine show that had
come through Sweet Sorrow two summers previous.
She remember his name was Chief Rain in the Face
and he whooped and did a war dance when the Pro-
fessor of the show gave him a bottle of his special
elixir to drink in order to demonstrate its curative
powers, the Professor saying, “Why this poor crea-
ture was lame with a severe case of lumbago and gout
when I first found him—near dead of half a dozen
maladies . . .” and so on and so forth, the Chief sit-
ting in a stupor the whole while. Then the Professor
gave him a swallow of the cure-all and the Chief got
up and did a rambunctious war dance and strutted
about like a young buck, yelped and shouted! Martha
wasn’t at all convinced the Chief was a real Indian at
all, but Otis bought a few bottles of the elixir to sell
in the store, anyway.
A few more cold rain drops fell into the fire caus-
ing it to hiss and pop.
“I don’t suppose you’d have an extra blanket?” she
said, wrapping her arms around herself to indicate
what she meant.
Big Belly wondered if she was asking him if he
wanted to get into his blanket with her and fornicate.
He nodded and said, “Sure, sure, but let’s eat this
puny little prairie dog first, okay?”
Every drop of rain that touched her skin was so
cold it felt hot.
She wondered if she would ever get back to Sweet
Sorrow alive.
20
Otis Dollar sat up and said, “I feel like I been
beat with a fry pan.” His head hurt something ter-
rible and all night he’d fallen in and out of a fitful
sleep, dreaming alternately of Martha and Jesus.
Only in his dreams Martha had glowing eyes like a
rabid wolf and laughed at him as she danced with the
