Then she heard a noise. Something that wasn’t sup-
posed to be there. And her romantic notions exploded
from her head like a covey of quail flushed from the
brush.
*
*
*
The prairie dog tasted like charred wood. It was
bony, too. Little bones Martha had to gnaw on to get
the least little bit of meat off of. Still, she was so hun-
gry it could have been a Delmonico steak she was eat-
ing instead of a measly little prairie dog.
“What you think, sister?” Fat Belly said to her in
Comanche.
Martha wasn’t sure what he was saying, so she just
sort of smiled around her piece of the prairie dog. She
didn’t know how an Indian could get fat eating such
small creatures; this fellow must have eaten a terrible
lot of the little things.
“I wish this was a steak,” she said, feeling some-
what compelled to say something to him.
He wondered if she was praising him for his cook-
ing skills. He didn’t know what white women said to
their men for providing them with food, whether or
not they praised them and as part of their praise of-
fered themselves in gratitude. He had it in mind that if
she offered herself to him, he would overlook the fact
she was white. A man couldn’t be too choosy when it
came to either food or women in such skinny country
as the grasslands.
“You might make a good wife,” he said. “I could
use a good wife. I’ve got three horses now and who
knows what else the Creator might give me. I never
planned on having another wife, but then I never
planned on being run out of Texas, neither. I had two
or three wives down there but the Rangers killed
them. They would have killed me too, but I was too
smart for them. Some day I might go back there and
rub out all the Rangers.”
Martha listened to the mumbo-jumbo talk. She
was cold and wet and the rain fell hard enough to put
out the fire, and once it was snuffed they sat there in
the darkness getting colder and wetter, the fat Indian
talking about something she didn’t understand, but
knowing how most men thought when it was dark
and there was a woman around who could keep them
warm and comfortable. She grew more nervous and
finally said, “ ’S’cuse me, but I got to go use the
bushes,” and stood up.
“Where you going?” Big Belly said when he no-
ticed the woman standing against the skyline, the rain
falling in his hair and in his eyes. “You and me better
get inside them horse blankets, eh?”
But then suddenly she wasn’t standing there any-
more and Big Belly said, “Hey! Hey!” calling to her.
“You better not go off, some bear might get you,
wolves maybe.”
But it did no good, his warnings. He waited a long
time, then curled up in the horse blankets with the
rain falling on his face and thought it was too dark
and wet to go chasing after a woman. I’d just as soon
stay dry. Besides, I still got my horses. He didn’t think
she’d go very far in the rain, that even though she was
white, she’d figure out how wet and cold it was and
come back to camp and get in the blankets with him.
He closed his eyes and waited.
She stumbled along in the dark, fear forcing her to
keep going and not turn back. She didn’t know what
was worse, catching her death from pneumonia, or
maybe getting eaten by a bear or wolves, or being at
the mercy of the fat Indian’s carnal desires. She may
not have understood his lingo, but she understood the
look in his eyes before the fire got doused. Lonesome
men always had that same lonesome look. And if she
hadn’t been a married woman, she might have used
her womanly charms and such lonesomeness to her
advantage. But she’d taken a vow to be faithful to
Otis, in spite of his sometimes pitiful behavior, and
faithful she’d be as long as she had a single breath left
in her. She’d rather get et by wolves than break her
wedding vows.
And on she stumbled into the long wet night, fear
and cold howling in her every fiber.
The storm swept over them and brought with it rain
and an early darkness.
Toussaint had been thinking about Karen; what he
would feel like if it was her instead of Martha they
were trying to rescue. He figured the first opportunity
he had, he’d go and ask Karen to marry him. He’d
give her the silver ring he had in his pocket. She’d
raise hell of course, refuse and tell him to get off her
land, threaten to shoot him maybe if he didn’t. Hell,
he didn’t care if she did shoot him just as long as she
agreed to marry him afterward. He missed her like he
never thought he would. He couldn’t even say why he
missed her exactly—maybe it was because he missed
the bad parts of being married to her as much as he
missed the good parts; she always made him feel alive,
even if at times miserable. She always kept his pot
