Phil was not wrong.

Chapter Four

We Everetts looked at Tom in silence. I could nearly feel my brother quivering with excitement. I thought he was too well-mannered to dance around and ask impatient questions, but the excitement won out. “Are they on the warpath?”

Tom smiled at him “They seem to just want to get away.”

“Away from what?” I asked, feeling no reassurance.

“Maybe treaties, probably reservations, Miss Everett.” He shrugged.

“If they had a treaty, why this trouble?” I persisted.

I could tell the lieutenant was rapidly tiring of me. He mumbled something about settlers needing more land. At least he didn’t pat me on the head and say, “There, there, little girl. The government knows what’s best.”

“Ought we to turn back?” Father sounded hopeful. I already knew that his idea of roughing it was sitting in an armchair in front of a fireplace.

“No, no,” the lieutenant answered, his reassurance sounding anything but comforting. As for me, I was ready to throw in the towel. So far, there had been little adventure in our adventure.

“No,” Tom went on, glancing at me and making my heart perform curious leaps. “We don’t want to spoil Miss Everett’s trip, do we? They’re heading north to Canada. We are perfectly safe.”

We spent the night in a wretched tarpaper shack the owner had the presumption to label a hotel. Everything we ate either swam in grease or had been drowned in boiling water. The bed clothes were a curious gray that made even Phil shudder, Phil, the least fastidious among us.

Eugenie and I shared a room. We whispered until late, then searched for a clean spot to settle into. I was dozing off and having trouble with coherent sentences when we heard strange breathing and moans on the other side of our wall. We heard booted men walking around, followed by a rustle of the straw tick mattress, then that heavy breathing.

I had my suspicions, but Eugenie was completely mystified. You might wonder at such naivete; after all, she was fourteen. Bear in mind that we were reared in a gentler era by parents who were discerning in the extreme.

Eugenie was too drowsy to be really curious, so I put her off with a few mumbled answers. Several men came and went, and one of them was familiar to me.

I heard the usual noises – boots hitting the floor, the mattress rustling like an elephant crashing through the underbrush, and funny breathing. This time was different: a crescendo of grunts and groans, strange silence, then a resounding slap, followed by the woman gasping for breath, as if someone throttled her.

That same someone must have slammed the woman against the wall. I listened in terror as her body slithered down the partition. I heard a coin drop on the floor, and this: “Hey missy, you’re not even worth this dime.”

I knew that voice. I could almost see the wrangler leering at what was probably an unconscious woman. I held my breath as he stomped out of the room, then started breathing again when I heard the woman stir, groan and flop down on the mattress.