The wagon rumbled through the pitiful camp, churning up dust, coating the surrounding tents with yet another layer of the fine red powder that relentlessly worked its way into eyes and hair; into clothes and bedding,even into the very food the rag tag group ate but once a day. Long legs, clad in buff colored pants, hung seemingly lifeless out of the back of the conveyance. Another hapless cowboy or perhaps a drifter fallen prey to a pretty face offering up a glass of whiskey laced generously with laudanum for which she was paid $5.00 a head. The barkeep kept the weapons and the horses and his mouth shut.
The wagon rolled to a rocking stop and Frank Hawley, an enormous hulk of a man with no hair to speak of and dressed in filthy twill pants and a stained buckskin jerkin, jumped down from the seat and marched to the rear. He grabbed the cowboy's wrists and heaved him over a massive shoulder and walked to a row of shabby tents where deposited his load, none too gently, onto the hard ground.
A lone woman stood before one of the tents her feelings in turmoil as she watched someone's husband, someone's son, a lover or a friend snatched from the everyday business of living only to be forced to labor in the small silver mine so far off the beaten path that no one came looking...ever. Not for missing cowboys or drifters or even her own small band of travelers waylaid on the way west to California.
Walking over to the crumpled figure she sighed wearily. Here lay the newest prisoner guilty of simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time. He was a strong one, tall and fit with a full head of deep, rich brown hair and a rakish mustache. He'd last a few months more than most, she thought, much less if he crossed Hawley or tried to escape.
Squatting, she brushed a lock of stray hair back from his forehead. It was a pity he'd never see his wife and children again. As it was he'd barely see the sun, forced to work from sun-up to sun-down seven days a week until he was no longer of any use, the dust he'd inhale day after day causing pneumonia and the lack of food making him so weak he could no longer lift a hammer or turn a jack leg.
The small silver mine was nearly played out but with labor so cheap Hawley could keep it going until the last ounce of ore was brought forth. Stretching out her hand the woman ran a reddened and calloused finger absently along the strong line of the stranger's jaw.
"Pretty, ain't he?"
The voice sent chills down her spine and she jumped up and instinctively backed away awaiting the large man's next move.
Laughing, Hawley spit a stream of tobacco juice at her feet and she took another step back. Smiling like the feral animal he was he then released the slack in the leather lead he held in his hand and one of the mangy dogs he kept in the camp lunged at her. She scrambled back still further fearing what the curr might do next but it only circled once and began to sniff the downed man.
Hawley pulled the lead up tight and yanked the dog up next to him again and, with squinted piggish eyes, said to the woman, "I liked you a hell of a lot better when you weren't such a timid little mouse; when you used to fight me," and her faced paled visibly. Glancing down at the newcomer he then smiled wolfishly. "Get him up and ready for work by morning. If he ain't ready I'll shoot the son of a bitch where he lays." Spitting once more, the glob of odious brown juice hitting the prone man in the chest, Hawley walked away dragging the hound.
Kneeling in the dirt next to the unconscious man's head she slapped his pale cheeks again and again calling him back from oblivion. He finally opened his eyes and she smiled wanly at him but now that he was conscious pain lanced through his head and his stomach roiled. Vicious cramps caused him to coil into a fetal position and his breath came in labored pants. It had begun.
She'd seen it all before, the agony, the vomiting, the fouling of clothes, all the result of the Mickey Finn he'd been given. Just bar whiskey of dubious origins and a pain killing elixir, simple and necessary commodities found in any frontier town, but when mixed together they created a potent and thoroughly debilitating poison.
It was her job to bathe faces with cool water, to keep the newcomers from suffocating in their own vomit and, when it was over, help them to bathe. She fed them a little something to quiet tormented stomachs and washed soiled clothing...and did as she was told, day after day, week after week, month after month; all the while praying that God would strike Frank Hawley down where he stood.
But Hawley would wake up each day hail and hearty and she would then pray to God to take her away from the filth, the pain and the death that had become her life. She asked God to simply let her die but an unbidden and seemingly boundless inner strength kept her going. That and the knowledge that Hawley would just find someone else to take her place and things would continue on as before, the cruel, sadistic brute and his cowardly brother, getting rich off the very life's blood of others.
The clank of metal on metal brought her out of her sad reverie as Hawley tossed a pair of heavy shackles on the ground next to his prisoner. Refusing to put them on him until the sickness had passed and he was clean again, an agreement she and Hawley had come to and one for which she had paid dearly, she simply tossed them to one side and waited.
The sickness came on him with a vengeance and Buck Wilmington wondered how a few glasses of whiskey, no matter how rotgut, could make him so sick? His insides churned and knotted until he could no longer control his bodily functions and vomit spewed forth from his mouth into the dust while liquid fire ran from his bowels. Cool soothing hands gently moved his head, caressed his face, wiped his mouth and a sweet voice reassured him, promising him he'd be all right.
The chills shook him as sweat broke out on his skin then quickly dried in the baking sun. He could hear his own moans as he bucked and heaved until there was nothing left inside of him and dry heaves wracked his body, abdominal muscles burning. Death would be a welcome relief he thought between bouts of painful cramps, his eyes closed tightly, teeth grinding so forcefully his jaw ached.
In the ensuing delirium he called out for his mother and someone named Chris. He fought gun-battles long past, smiled when he talked disjointedly of a kid and, when he was at his very worst, he saw the graceful, lazy turns of vultures circling over his body and the bright light of heaven.
In reality the bright light was the setting sun and the carrion birds were the gentle wafting of the long, dark tresses of the woman who tended him and, as she bent to unbutton his shirt and bathe his chest, he noticed her eyes. As blue as a Colorado winter's sky but veiled in so much sadness.