had plenty of trouble coming, and yet worse might occur if he tried to go back on his own.
'I expect if we paid that woman she'd board the girl,' July said. 'You go buy some duds. You'll be a laughingstock if you try to travel in those you got on.'
The woman at the livery stable agreed to board Janey for three dollars a month. July paid for two months. When told she was to stay in Fort Worth, Janey didn't say a word. The woman spoke to her cheerfully about getting some better clothes, but Janey sat on the washtub, silent.
The woman offered to take Joe, too, and board him free if he would help out around the livery stable. July was tempted, but Joe looked so unhappy that he relented and decided to let him stay with them. Then Roscoe showed up, in clothes that looked so stiff it was a wonder he could even walk in them.
'I guess you might break them clothes in by Christmas,' the liverystable woman said, laughing. 'You look like you're wearing stovepipes.'
'I can't help it if they're black,' Roscoe said. 'It was all they had that fit.'
He felt sorry about leaving Janey. What if old Sam got well and tracked them to Fort Worth and found her? He offered her two dollars in case she had expenses, but Janey just shook her head. When they rode off, she was still sitting on the big washtub.
Joe was glad she wasn't coming. She made him feel that he didn't do things very well.
He didn't have long to enjoy being glad, though. That night they camped on the plains, twenty miles north of Fort Worth. July felt it was all right to sleep without a guard, as there were trail herds on both sides of them. They could hear the night herders singing to the cattle.
In the morning, when Joe opened his eyes, Janey was squatting by the cold campfire. She still wore her sack. Even July had not heard her come. When July woke up she handed him back the six dollars he had given the woman. July just took it, looking surprised. Joe felt annoyed. It was wrong of the girl to come without July's permission. If the Indians carried her off, he for one would not be too sorry-although, when he thought about it, he realized he himself might be an easier catch. The girl had followed them at night, across the plains. It was something he couldn't have done.
All that day the girl ran along on her own, never getting far behind. She was not like any of the girls Joe had known in Fort Smith, none of whom could have kept up for five minutes. Joe didn't know what to make of her, and neither did July, or even Roscoe, who had found her. But soon they were far out on the plains, and it was clear to everyone that Janey was along for the trip.
53.
LONG BEFORE THE WHISKEY BOAT STOPPED, Elmira knew she was going to have trouble with Big Zwey. The man had never approached her, or even spoken to her, but every time she went out of her shed to sit and watch the water, she felt his eyes on her. And when they loaded the whiskey in wagons and started across the plains for Bents' Fort, his eyes followed her in whatever wagon she chose to ride for the day.
It seemed to her it might be the fact that she was so small that made Big Zwey so interested. It was a problem she had had before. Huge men seemed to like her because she was so tiny. Big Zwey was even larger than the buffalo hunter who had caused her to run to July.
Sometimes in the evening, when he brought her her food, Fowler would sit and talk with her a bit. He had a scar which ran over his nose and down across his lips into his beard. He had a rough look, but his eyes were dreamy.
'This whiskey-hauling business has about petered out,' he said one evening. 'Indians kept the trade going. Now they've about got them all penned up, down in these parts. I may go up north.'
'Are there many towns up north?' she asked, remembering that Dee had mentioned going north. Dee liked his comforts-hotels and barbershops and such. Once she had offered to cut his hair and had made a mess of it. Dee had been good-natured about it, but he did remark that it paid to stick to professionals. He was vain about his looks.
'There's Ogallala,' Fowler said. 'That's on the Platte. There's towns in Montana, but that's a long way.'
Big Zwey had a deep voice. She could sometimes hear him talking to the men, even over the creak of the wagon wheels. He wore a long buffalo coat and seldom took it off, even when the days were hot.
One morning there was great excitement. Just as the morning mists began to thin, the man on guard claimed to have seen six Indians on a ridge. He was a young man, very nervous. If there were Indians, they did not reappear. During the day the men surprised three buffalo and killed one of them. That night Fowler brought Elmira samples of the liver and the tongue-the best parts, he said.
The men had talked about the Fort so much that Elmira had supposed it was a real town, but it was just a few scattered buildings, none in good repair. There was only one woman there, the wife of a blacksmith, and she had gone crazy due to the death of all five of her children. She sat in a chair all day, saying nothing to anyone.
Fowler did his best for Elmira. He got the traders to let her have a little room-just a tiny, dirty closet, really. It was next to a warehouse where piles of buffalo skins were stored. The smell of the skins was worse than anything that had happened on the river. Her room was full of fleas that had escaped from the skins. She spent much of her time scratching.
Though the Fort was nothing much to see, it was a busy place, with riders coming and going all the time. Watching them, Elmira wished she was a man so she could just buy a horse and ride away. The men let her alone, but they did look at her whenever she left her room. There were several wild-looking Mexicans who scared her worse than the buffalo hunters.
After a week of scratching, she began to realize she had done a foolish thing, taking the whiskey boat. In Fort Smith, all she had felt was an overwhelming desire to go. The day she left she felt that her life depended on getting out of Fort Smith that day-she had a fear that July would suddenly show up again.
She didn't regret leaving, but neither did she calculate on landing in a place as bad as Bent's Fort. In the cow towns, stages came and went, at least-if you didn't like Dodge you could always go to Abilene. But no stage came to Bent's Fort-just a wagon track that soon disappeared into the emptiness of the plains.
Though she had not been bothered, the men at the Fort looked very rough. 'They don't think you're worth robbing,' Fowler said, but she wasn't sure he was right. Some of the Mexicans looked like they might do worse than rob her if the mood struck them. Once, sitting under the little shed outside her room, she saw a fight between two Mexicans. She heard a yell and saw each man pull a knife. They went at one another like butchers. Their clothes were soon bloody, but evidently the cuts were not serious, for after a while they stopped fighting and went back to gambling together.
Fowler said there might be a party of hunters going north, and that perhaps they would take her, but a week passed and the party didn't materialize. Then one day Fowler brought her a little plate of food, under her shed. He looked at her sheepishly, as if he had something to say but didn't want to say it.
'Big Zwey wants to marry you,' he said finally, in an apologetic tone.
'Well, I'm already married,' she said.
'What if he just wants to marry you temporary?' Fowler asked.
'It's always temporary,' Elmira said. 'Why don't he ask himself?'
'Zwey ain't much of a talker,' Fowler said.
'I've heard him talk,' she said. 'He talks to the men.'
Fowler laughed and said no more. Elmira felt angry. She was in a spot if some man was wanting to marry her. Someone had thrown a fresh buffalo skin into the warehouse and she could hear the flies buzzing on it from where she sat.
'He'll take you to Ogallala, if you'll do it,' Fowler said. 'You might think about it. He ain't as bad as some.'
'How would you know?' she asked. 'You ain't been married to him.'
Fowler shrugged. 'He might be your best bet,' he said. 'I'm going back downriver next week. A couple of hide haulers are taking a load to Kansas, and they might take you, but it'd be a hard trip. You'd have to smell them stinkin' hides all the way. Anyway, the hide haulers are rough,' he said. 'I think Zwey would treat you all right.'
'I don't want to go to Kansas,' she said. 'I been to Kansas.'
What ruined that was that she was pregnant, and showing. Some of the saloons weren't particular, but it was
