Stand Up and Die. William W. Johnstone

of Texas, the Gomorrah of our travels, if we can live to see New Mexico Territory and aren’t bushwhacked, raped, pillaged and tortured to death—all for your glory—by Mexicans or Apaches, and maybe Mormons if any of them live in the territory, and get us to . . .”

      By that point, raven-haired Annie Homes’ neck hurt from such an eternally long bow, and her knees hurt from the prickly pear cactus on the flat expanse of Texas. She lifted her head and looked beyond their camp at the trail that led to Five Scalps, Texas. She breathed a little easier seeing that Winfield Baker had stopped praying, too, as had Betsy Stanton. Betsy, harlot that she was, began rolling a cigarette.

      “You better hope the sergeant major doesn’t see you,” Annie whispered.

      Betsy licked the paper and stuck the cigarette into her mouth.

      “Got a match?” she asked Winfield, who tried to stifle his laugh. After winking at Annie, Betsy unbuttoned the top button on her blouse and dropped the unlit cigarette between her ample bosoms. “I’ll smoke it later, I reckon.” She giggled.

      Winfield Baker’s eyes bulged.

      That didn’t make Annie happy, but she held her temper and tongue and made herself look down the road at the dust sweeping across the first buildings on the outskirts of Five Scalps. Maybe, she prayed, that was the Lord hearing the long prayer of the reverend and sending his vengeance to destroy the evil that awaited them just a mile down the trail.

      “Amen,” the preacher said.

      Annie, Winfield, and Betsy quickly dropped their heads, answered, “Amen,” and then raised their heads and looked up at the heavens. They thanked the Lord again, helped each other off the cactus, thorns, and ants, and slapped at the dust and bits of gravel. Cactus spines stuck in their clothes and flesh.

      “Reverend Sergeant Major Homer?” Annie heard her father Walter ask. “Flat as this country is, wouldn’t it make sense to just ride around Five Scalps, and not go through it?”

      “Yeah,” said Horace Greeley, whose name often was the butt of many a joke. The Horace Greeley from Dead Trout, Arkansas, only touched a newspaper when he took one to the privy since he could neither read nor write. But this Horace Greeley was going West—just like that other Horace Greeley had invited and urged Americans to do.

      “Well,” the preacher said in a blast of fire and brimstone, “You may flee if such is your will. Ride around a test that God himself has put before us. Nay, say I. Nay, will I. As a sergeant major in the Thirteenth Arkansas Infantry, I, the Reverend Sergeant Major Homer Primrose the Third, will see what is God’s will.”

      He had already preached too much fear into the hearts of his fellow Arkansas travelers. Twenty-one of them elected to ride around Five Scalps, so Annie climbed into the back of the covered wagon, settled on the blanket and sack of flour between the chifforobe and her mother’s pie safe, and felt the oxen start walking. As the wagon lurched, Annie bumped her head against the wagon and cursed—but not loud enough for her parents or the pious sergeant major to hear. She bounced this way and that, although she really could not tell the difference between the path they had been following and the plains they crossed to go around the nefarious town.

      Eventually, the wagons stopped, and she heard her mother and father climb down from the driver’s box. Annie pulled herself out from between the two pieces of furniture and rubbed her upper left arm where she felt certain she would see a bruise by tomorrow. She crawled through the tangle of blankets, clothes, and sacks, and peered through the rear oval opening in the canvas covering the wagon. Other members of the train—men, women, girls about Annie’s age, boys a few years older, and the little kids, were gathering and looking back east at the town of Five Scalps.

      “Huh,” Winfield Baker was telling Jimmy Donovan when Annie came up beside him. “From all the stories we heard, I figured that Five Scalps would be a great deal larger.”

      “It sure ain’t like the picture of that wicked city of Gomorrah that we got in our Bible,” Jimmy said, leaning forward and grinning. “Howdy, Annie.”

      She returned the greeting and took a step closer to Five Scalps, Texas, so she could always say she got closer to that evil place than any of the other members of the Primrose Train.

      “I don’t see the captain,” said one of the men off to Annie’s left.

      “Or the others,” an old lady murmured.

      “My God,” said Aunt Rachel, the oldest woman on the wagon train, who, as far as Annie knew, wasn’t related to anyone in Dead Trout, but everybody called her Aunt. “ Maybe they’ve been taken in by those evil villains.”

      “Either that or the prairie swallowed ’em up,” someone else said.

      A few of the men huddled together to determine their next course of action.

      Annie inched her way about another foot closer, though Five Scalps still had to be a quarter mile, from where they had stopped.

      “Huh,” she said, holding her scarf when a gust of wind blew.

      The town might have five scalps somewhere, but it didn’t have five buildings, even if you included the privy.

      A good-sized adobe structure, two stories with a high wall enclosing the flat roof, and gun ports on all sides. Too small for a fort, certainly not a jail, but from the number of horses at the hitching rail, it had to be the center of town. In fact, it was the town’s center. To its left and across the trail stood a smaller building, but it wasn’t anything more than a sod hut. To the big adobe’s right and on the same side of the trail stood another soddie, but a mite larger than the one on the left-hand side of the trail. Three buildings. Four if you included the privy. Five if you wanted to count the corral.

      Annie pointed. “Isn’t that the Reverend Primrose’s wagon?”

      It was hard to tell. The wind had picked up again and was blowing dust.

      Her father tensed. “By the terrors, those dirty dogs must have bushwhacked the Reverend. And Thad, Jim, Hawg, and Muldoon.”

      Another man said, “Isn’t that our captain wandering to that hovel across the street?”

      Added Hawg’s cousin, “With that gal hanging on his arm?”

      For about the time it took the man who looked a lot like the Reverend Sergeant Major Homer Primrose III cross the dusty street, no one in the Primrose Train spoke. The wind blew dust as the man managed to keep his hat on with one hand, his other hand holding on to the scantily clad damsel in distress. A moment later, the reverend—or someone who looked a lot like the reverend—and the girl were inside the soddie.

      “Maybe that’s the church,” said Mrs. Primrose, whose husband had insisted that she travel with Aunt Rachel around Five Scalps. Mrs. Primrose said it again and nodded in affirmation. “Yes, that is the church.”

      “What are we to do?” Aunt Rachel asked, then spit out juice from her snuff.

      “Wait for the baptism,” Hawg’s cousin said.

      Winfield Baker could not stifle his snigger, which caused him to get a quick scolding from his mother, father, and grandmother.

      Annie’s father pulled his hat down tighter and turned around. “Let’s just see to our teams and our families. We’ll wait here. Stay close to your families, and I’m sure the captain will rejoin us later when he has . . .” His voice trailed off as he sighed.

      Annie followed her parents back to the wagon.

      * * *

      She liked the way her father prayed. He sounded sincere, never so pompous as the Reverend Primrose. Her father prayed like he meant it. He didn’t ramble like the wagon train boss, but got to the point and wrapped it up. When he thanked God, he sounded sincere.

      Annie’s family had corn pone, salt pork, leftover beans, and hot tea for their supper. They rolled out their bedrolls and sat on them, watching that big ball of orange slowly sink in the west