Peppard says, “Is he Muerto?”
Ratoncito swats the horse on the flank with his hat. It trots off a few yards, where the strap holding the travois breaks under the strain and it falls into the muck, submerging Jonah’s body.
Katie says, “Sure ain’t the world’s nicest burial place.”
“A man can go to Heaven from anywhere, girl.”
Katie has another swig of her tincture.
Thunder rumbles in the west. A notable increase in wind flaps the sails. Peppard takes the helm. “Finally gettin’ up a decent wind. Come on, Ratoncito, let’s sail out of this damned mudhole.” The two pull the sails up to full, the wagon begins to move, gradually building up momentum in an ever-increasing wind, then rolls out of the muck and off into the open prairie again, blown along just ahead of the storm.
Nelly sits at the table in her white nightgown with a straight-ahead, unfocused stare. Dewey feeds her mashed beans. She eats slowly, mechanically. When she drools, he wipes it from her chin. “Where the hell is that husband o’ yours? I need to talk to him. What kind of a man would leave his wife alone out here in the company o’ somebody like me?” Nelly doesn’t answer. She’s not fully conscious.
The storm has passed. The wind wagon has come to a stop atop a hill, its sails torn in places. Ratoncito, high on the mast, repairs them with a needle and thread. Jonah’s horse drinks water from Ratoncito’s hat.
Peppard and Katie sit under the only tree in sight, a young hedge-apple with bright green fruit. She leans against one side of the tree, Peppard against the other, such that they face in opposite directions, she east, he west. From these positions, they reach around with both arms and interlock fingers.
“Luther?”
“Yes, sweetheart, what is it you want?”
“What if we get sick and die? What if we catch the cholera?”
“I ‘spect that’s in the all-powerful hands of the great provider, Katie. I do have a thought, however. I love you more than I ever loved any other woman in my whole life, including my sainted mother, Laura Lee. And, that’s sayin’ a damned lot.”
“Are you going to marry me, Luther?”
“Soon as we git back to Hays. And then we’ll pack up this wagon and we’ll roll all the way to Denver for the honeymoon.”
“Luther? Come here and show me how much you love me.”
Peppard scurries around and they begin to kiss passionately, until Katie looks over his shoulder, sees Jonah’s homestead in the distance and breaks off the kissing.
“What’s the matter, the wind blowed out yer flame?”
“See that little house way over there? That’s where that dead man lives, I wager. We oughta go tell his family.”
Peppard squints to see the house. “Reckon it’d be the neighborly thing to do, let ‘em know where the body’s at ‘case they want to come on out ‘n git it. And if they’re sick, why we can just make ‘em a note, tie it on a rock, and throw it to ‘em. Draw a little map, showin’ where the body is.”
“No, Luther, there’s nothing neighborly about that.”
“Well, my love, tell me, what would be the most neighborly thing to do?”
“We can’t leave human remains out in the middle of a wallow to get eaten up and dragged all over creation.”
“Yes, my love. You know, it gives me a very special pleasure when you talk to me hard like that and stern, like my mother used to.”
“Let’s go, now.”
“Pinch me.”
“Where?”
“Somewhere where it hurts.”
Katie stands on tiptoe, kisses him, then grabs him by the ear and leads him down the hill. He squeals with pleasure all the way. At the bottom they watch Ratoncito, on Jonah’s horse, tow the body out of the muck at the end of a long rope.
Later that day, yet another summer storm thunders in from the west. Near the house, Dewey finishes digging a shallow grave. James lies in a crudely-made coffin on the ground beside him. Nelly looks on, thin and pale. “Want me to say some words, ma’am? I know the Bible.”
“I guess so. Nothin’ was his fault.”
“Jesus loves little children. This here innocent boy, he will rise again. Jesus said, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. Them who believe in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die.’ John Eleven.”
“Thank you, Mr. Dewey.” She helps Dewey pick up the ropes that will lower the coffin.
Sails in the far distance catch their attention. The wagon is out of control in a fierce wind. Ratoncito struggles with the sails and leans on the brake, while Peppard, at the helm, tries to steer. Katie cowers in the bed, screaming. Jonah’s horse, tied to the wagon’s stern, drags the body on the travois.
“Drop anchor, Ratoncito! Drop anchor!”
Ratoncito lifts the heavy anchor and throws it over the stern, where it plows into the earth and cuts a swath through the sod. Dewey and Nelly drop the rope and the coffin falls into the hole. They run for the house, but the wagon overtakes them. Their bodies, caught up in and tumbling with the wheel spokes, cause the wagon to tip over and roll, crushing Peppard, Katie and Ratoncito in the process. Jonah’s body is thrown from the travois. His horse is the only survivor.
A few days later, Six Toes and Bow String walk their horses past the wreck as vultures and the little dog feed on the corpses. They observe the scene without expression. Bow String says, “When the white man is gone, the Great Spirit will be satisfied.” He strips off the buffalo hide jacket from Dewey’s corpse and tries it on. It fits him well. He and Six Toes ride off, passing through a prairie dog town near the collapsed barn. They fail to notice that one of the prairie dog mounds is studded with gold nuggets, and that other nuggets lie strewn among other mounds.
The Devil in Kansas
Shrublands near Trinidad, Colorado, late afternoon.
A U.S. Post Office step-van is parked in the dirt driveway of a shabby adobe bungalow. In the front yard, smoke rises from a trash fire in a rusty metal drum. Dry weeds roll past a satellite dish. Two buzzards feed on a dead rattlesnake. Grasshoppers mate on the door of a small metal garage.
In a bedroom of the bungalow, Sherry lies in a queen-size waterbed, sheet pulled to her shoulders. After fiddling with her silver eyebrow ring, she fires up a joint and has a pull of schnapps from the bottle. A bruise on her cheek and a healing shiner suggest a recent beating.
As she steps into tight jeans and puts on her bra, she looks toward a fastidious mail carrier, who stands before a dresser mirror combing his hair and working wax from his ear with a Q-tip. She says, “You better get down the road. Happy Hour’s over. The old man’ll be here pretty soon.”
When the mail carrier’s obsessive primping is finished, he slips into his comfortable orthopedic shoes, drops Sherry’s mail on her dresser, along with a hundred dollar bill, and leaves without a word.
Sherry pockets the hundred, tosses on a T-shirt and checks her mail. “Junk. Junk. Junk.” She drops the envelopes unopened into a trash can. “And more junk.” She fans through an issue of Dirt Rider Magazine, stops at a photo of a flame-red-clad dirt bike competitor flying through the air upside-down. The caption reads: Colorado Record Holder Moe Cross — To his fans, he’s ‘The Devil from Kansas.’