A guard comes to Dewey’s cell door, holds a Bible between the bars. “Here’s you a copy of the Good Book, Howard Dewey. It would be a wise thing if’n you read it, ever’ word.”
“I cain’t read worth a flip.”
“Take it anyway and learn.”
Dewey lies on his cot, opens the Bible to page one. “All right, here we go. Genesis. One. In the be…be…beginnin’ God cre…cre…created the heaven and the…earth. Two. And the earth was with…out form, and vo-ide er vo-eed, and…dark…ness was upon the face of the deep.”
The abandoned homestead. Burning summer sun. Jonah pulls up in a dilapidated, ox-drawn wagon piled with supplies, the Sharps at his side, his stolen horse tied at the rear. He steps down and unloads building materials and commodities: wire, a keg of nails, hammer and rough-hewn lumber, sacks of beans, coffee and flour.
He puts his hands on his hips and admires his new home place. As if to greet him, the old windmill turns squeakily in a sudden gust of wind and the outhouse topples over. He glances at the leaning barn. “She’ll fall in the next storm,” he says to himself. Prairie dog warrens surround the house. Their towns, one a few feet from another, stretch as far as the eye can see. Hundreds of them stand sentinel behind their hillocks, all watching Jonah and yelping.
Dewey’s cell. Thirty days have been marked by lampblack streaks on the wall. He places his small table beneath the high window and stands on it tiptoe to look out at the only outdoor scene afforded him: a high stone wall and a four-seater outhouse with prisoners lined up to use it. All are naked and hatless under a broiling sun. They sweat so profusely the ground is wet beneath them.
Now he lies on his cot and opens the Bible. “And God blessed them, and God said unto them, be fruit-ful, and multi…multi-ply, and replen-ish the earth, and sub-due it: and have dome-onion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle and every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.”
The homestead. The rat terrier, a permanent resident, sleeps in the shade of the horse, which obligingly remains perfectly still. Repairs have been made on the house and outhouse; the barn has been propped up with cottonwood logs. The windmill, greased, turns freely, keeping the well full of water. Not far from the house, Jonah plows sod behind his ox. From a safe distance, prairie dogs watch him work. From an even safer distance, Six Toes and Bow String also watch.
Bow string says, “The white man is a working fool.”
Six Toes adds, “And his god is a slave driver.”
They stifle laughter.
Dewey, having grown a bushy mustache, watches carpenters work on a gallows and a coffin, then makes another mark on the wall with lampblack and lies on his cot to read the Bible aloud amid the din of prisoners coughing, wailing, moaning, fighting, crying and swearing. “This is an evil among all things that are done under the sun…Yeah also the heart of the sons of men is full of evil, and madness is in their heart while they live, and after that they go to the dead.” He closes the book and thinks. “I’ll eat my hat and shit it out a shoe if this book ain’t all true, ever’ got-damned word of it.”
With a thump, a pair of grasshoppers land on the window bar and begin the mating process. Dewey, celibate all this time, is quickly aroused by the sight. Gradually his hand slides inside his trousers and he fondles himself.
A room in a well-to-do Kansas City home. Nelly, about thirty, sits before a mirror, sketching herself on a piece of letter-size paper. She looks at the sketch, seems satisfied. She applies lipstick, makes an imprint of her lips on the paper, folds it, stuffs it into an envelope along with a letter. She lays the envelope on a table next to a newspaper opened to an ad for mail-order brides. She addresses the letter to: Mr. Jonah Binder, Dodge City, Kansas.
A knock at the door. “Nelly? You in there, girl?”
She’s frightened, hides the newspaper and letter. “Yes, Papa? What is it?”
“You know, Sweetheart.”
“Not tonight, Papa. Please.”
“How come, Honey Pot? You know how empty my bed is without your mamma. You know how I get the longin’.”
“She’s been gone five years, Papa.”
“Lemme in!”
“No! I don’t care about your longings anymore.”
“The hell you say!” He forces the door open and enters, a paunchy man in his sixties. He removes his tie, backs Nelly into the bed.
“Please. Don’t do it, Papa.”
“You look just like your mamma, darling baby. You’ve got the same set of teets.”
“I’m not her!”
He unbuttons his shirt. “Take off them clothes, now. Don’t make me do it. I might hurt you.” He takes a big swig from a flask.
Realizing she has little choice, she surrenders and undresses.
A wooden walk in front of the Hotel Dodge & Saloon. Jonah’s ox wagon pulls up. In the bed is a cage containing a dozen prairie dogs. Jonah hops out, carries the cage through the rear door of the building into the kitchen, a dim, gloomy room with steaming pots everywhere and a layer of grease on every surface. An iron pot of thick, brown stew bubbles on a wood stove. On another burner, a pig’s head boils. Cockroaches run along the wall.
A Chinese cook, Mr. Ling, chops onions and carrots with a cleaver. A mouse feeds on a piece of carrot at the edge of the chopping block. With a sudden, deft strike of the cleaver, Mr. Ling chops off the mouse’s head, sweeps the pieces to the floor with the cleaver blade, and resumes chopping carrots.
Jonah enters, sets the cage down. “Here’s a dozen, Mr. Ling, fer the stew pot.”
Mr. Ling takes one of the prairie dogs from the cage and twists its neck until it breaks. He lays the carcass on the chopping block and feels it for fatness. He slits open the belly and smells the innards. “Mmmmm. Velly flaglant.”
“Them’s as good as eatin’ in Kansas gets. I’ll let ‘em go real cheap. The whole bunch fer a dollar. Now don’t go sayin’ there’s prairie dogs everywhere and how they’re not worth spit. Lookee, it ain’t the dogs yer payin’ for — it’s the trappin’. I got special methods.”
“Okay. One dollar.” He gives Jonah a dollar, opens the cage, dumps the prairie dogs into a sack.
In a grocer’s, Jonah loads up on flour, beans, coffee, tobacco and whiskey. He lays all his money on the counter. “My bride’s comin’ today from Kansas City.”
The clerk says, “Ain’t that nice.”
“She’s a looker, too. We’ll have us some babies, I ‘spect.”
“Ain’t that nice.”
The train station waiting room. Jonah enters, approaches the station master. “Yeah, feller, what do you want?”
“Pardon me, sir, but is that train from Kansas City runnin’ on time?”
“Far as I know, it is. Can’t guarantee they’ll all have their hair, though. Some Kiowas killed some people out by Salina. Whole family. Took scalps. Even the baby’s.”
“Good Lord, don’t be goin’ on thataway. I got my mail-order bride on that train.” He displays her sketch. “That there is a picture she drew of herself, lookin’ in the mirror. Ain’t she the prettiest thing you ever seen? She wants to homestead, like me. Don’t care for city life a’tall. I got some plans, too.”
“Don’t we all. What’s yorn?”
“Prairie dogs. I got a way of trappin’ em. You git a nail keg, you fill it half with sand. You turn the keg over a prairie dog hole. Course you gotta make it so you can open the top when you got one trapped. See, a dog will burrow up through the sand to see what’s goin’ on, but he can’t dig his way down again. He’s trapped.”