Out West Ch. 11: Mount Nebo

The mayhem created at the Trading Post was soon put behind us. Martha said we should "leave the dead to bury the dead", which was all the religion the dead men were going to get from us; our focus was on the living - and mine was on Evie.

Naturally, she was bewildered, but I think it helped that she realised that her only option was to come with us. If she stayed at the Trading Post, then her life would become the nightmare that it had begun to be. As Martha and the others cleared up and took what we wanted, telling Ben that he should count himself lucky to still be alive, I took Evie aside.

"I am grateful, don't get me wrong," she said, softly, "but I can't help wondering what is to become of me?"

"Of course," I said, understanding her hesitation, "that will depend on you. Once we are at Sharpy's Creek you can make up your mind."

She looked puzzled.

"But I belong to you now."

"Evie, this country abolished slavery, it fought a bloody and dreadful war to do it, so please do not feel that you are my slave, although, if it were your wish to be with me, I should never deny it."

I caught the look in her eyes. It was almost one of amusement.

"I saw the way you looked at me. It was the way men look at women they want, although it was not a man's way of looking at all. Among my people loving takes a variety of forms."

She left it there, dangling. I did not know whether it was deliberate, or whether it was accidental. It was as though a door had been slightly opened, some light let in, but then it had been closed. Had I imagined it all?

Evie went to talk with Jacob, detailing the best route to Sharpy's Creek. It was, she said, close to where she had been sold by her "family", but as she was with us, she felt safe.

So, it was we set off, after another chapter in the legend of Jack Anders had been written. What we did not know was that before the journey was complete, we would have written another one - which, along with the one we had just completed, would change the course of our history.

Emma seemed happiest. She had a goal, and I was fully expecting her to achieve it, though quite where she thought bedding Tim would get her was another matter. Kate had been deep in conversation with Martha about their next steps, which reminded me that while Tim was my Ithaca, he was but a stage on the way West for my companions. Evie scouted on ahead, which left me to my own devices.

In truth, I had thought little of what would happen once I saw Tim again. I would tell him he was the earl and a rich man in his own right now, but from what I was hearing, he was a rich man here. Would he want to come back to the restrictions of our English class system? It made him rich and gave him power, but he had won both those things for himself here. And how would he view me? He'd only known me as his studious little sister, the runt of the litter, who was a problem to the family in so far as they were obliged to give me a dowry to persuade some poor man to take me as his wife. Money, as Papa had been fond of reminding Mama, "did not grow on trees" and as I was so undesirable a match, it might, he thought, have been better to have kept me at home to be a companion for Mama in her declining years. Well, circumstances had negated that last option, and I was now able to negate the first one; but what next?

Martha broke in on my reveries.

"Pix, ain't seen nuthin' of Evie. She rode on ahead. I need to stay with the girls and the wagon, could you go on an' see if you can find her? Oh, and if you could find some fresh meat for us for later, that would be just grand. Take the Winchester."

As I was in my trousers which looked like a split skirt, I was happy to break my boredom and ride ahead. Maybe Evie had taken the opportunity to go, who knew? I sighed. The journey had given me so much. I did not want it to end. Yet, of course, all good things come to an end; the only consolation is that the same is true of the bad things.

I rode on ahead, and seeing tracks leading up the bluff, I followed them cautiously. It was not long before I saw Evie, who was prostrate and looking over the brown of the hill. She cautioned me to be quiet, so I dismounted and joined her.

"Look," she said, gesturing ahead, down in the gully.

Her eyesight was acute, I needed the telescope to see what she saw so clear.

There were five men, and it looked as though they had attacked the settlement. I could see a man, an Indian by the look of him, lying dead, and two of them had hold of a woman, one had torn her top off, exposing her breasts, the other was at her skirts. You did not need to be a mind-reader to know what was going to happen. An older woman, visibly failing, was being held by two of the others, clearly being made to watch was about to happen to the younger.

"That is the family who sold me to the Trader."

I could understand why Evie seemed conflicted, but every instinct in me shouted that I had to stop it. Thanks to the configuration of the terrain, we were about eighty yards away. I knew the 1866 model (which was the one Martha had bought, lighter, if less effective than its more recent replacement) was supposed to have a range of 100 yards, but I had not really used it except for rabbit shooting on our journey and would be relying on the expertise I had built up using a different weapon back home; but needs must.

The question of how to hit the would-be rapist and not his victim was solved by their preferred way of taking her. Had he decided to lie on top of her like a normal man, I should have hesitated to fire, but he wanted her from behind, which meant he separated himself from her for a moment. That was enough, allowing for the slight wind, I aimed carefully and fired.

"You got him!" I heard Evie say, as I turned my aim right to take out the man who was holding her shoulders down.

"And that's two!" I heard Evie exclaim.

But now it was harder, the other three men were alert, and one was diving to the left for his rifle, I missed him, but got the rifle: fair enough. The intended victim had rolled over and started to run. One of the men took aim, making himself too tempting a target for me, and before he could fire, I had. I didn't need Evie to tell me - that one went straight to the heart. The remaining two headed for their horses, and I took a risky shot, which paid off, as one of them clutched his thigh. They rode off in a cloud of dust.

"Where did you learn that?"

I was pleased that I had impressed Evie, but at that point more concerned for the intended victims.

"Oh, at home, life on a country estate has its little pluses," I said, smiling at her, "but let's see if we can help!"

Evie outdistanced me, and as I caught up, I could see her embracing the young woman whom the men had intended to rape.

"Pixie, this is my sister, Ruth Pine Leaf, Ruth, this is the woman who saved you."

Ruth was another tall woman, she looked flustered and was still adjusting her clothing. She embraced me, pulling me to her bosom and saying over and again "thank you, thank you!"

I had saved her, but, it transpired, been too late to save her mother, who had died even as the rescue was underway.

Evie and I checked out the men. Two were dead and the other badly hurt. While I was pondering our options, Ruth acted, plunging a knife into his heart.

"Bastard!"

Well, that was the way of the West, and as Martha said when we told her what had happened, "weren't no loss to no-one, good riddance of bad rubbish!" It was hard to dissent.

Ruth gathered what she could of her belongings and came with us. It was hardly safe for her to stay there.

Martha seemed anxious as we approached, she had clearly been scanning the horizon.

"What took you so long...?" She started to say, before stopping on seeing there were three of us, "and who in 'tarnation is this? Is this your new hobby Pixie, picking up Indian ladies?"

Evie explained. Martha looked impressed.

"Had no idea that I had such a crack shot with me, I thought it was just rabbits, Pixie?"

"Rabbits - and rapists!" I quipped back, hiding the fact I had begun to shake. In the heat of the moment and pumped up on adrenaline, I had felt fine, but now, well now it was all I could do not to vomit. Martha looked sympathetic.

"'tis natural, little one, felt the same myself first time I killed one. Guessin' this is your first?"

I confirmed it.

We camped in a low valley that evening.

Just as I finished my prayers, there was a rustling outside, the flap of the tent was lifted - there was Evie's face. She looked deep into my eyes. I stared back, as one mesmerised.

Her eyes were a shade of green I never saw anywhere save in them. Her smile was both shy and yet determined. I watched in a silence broken only by my heart beating like a big bass drum as she approached me. As her breath touched my face, it was sweet, like the taste of gingerbread, I shivered as her hands touched my face. She lifted my chin up to face her.

"Pixie, I am your woman, life or death, I shall not leave you."

Breathless, shivers shooting through me like sparks rising upward in a clear and still night sky, I knew somewhere deep down what to say, and the answer rose from the innermost parts of my being.

"Evie, I am your woman, life or death, I shall not leave you."

And so, we came together for the first time.

She pulled down my shift to reveal my small breasts. Any embarrassment I might have felt was banished by her reaction:

"I love these, so cute and lickable."

She proceeded to live up to her words, sending jolts of erotic pleasure through to my very heart. No-one had ever paid them this attention, and my nipples showed their appreciation.

As she kissed and sucked them, somehow, I helped her off with her dress. She was naked beneath it, a perfect body the shade of dark copper burnished in the flames. I wanted her breasts, which were larger, but not as large as Emma's. As I took her coffee-coloured nipples into my mouth one by one and sucked on them, Evie's reaction told me all I needed to know.

She pushed my back onto my bedroll. She kissed me, long, slow and with such passion that I thought I might climax at that alone. As her tongue pushed into my mouth, I opened, eager to have it, to let our tongues play their dance of erotic appreciation. As she filled my mouth and our lips pressed tight, her scent completed her ravaging of my senses.

Our breasts pressed together as she lay on top of me. My legs were opened for her; all of me was open to her. We shifted, my left leg atop her hip so my pussy could press against her tummy while her pussy pressed against my right thigh. As we wrestled to get it just as we both needed it, I felt myself wetter than I had ever been; I had never felt this before. If a bomb waiting to explode had feelings, it would be those I had that night - and so many nights since.

As Evie's lips took mine, her right breast pressed into my arm and my breast pressed against her left one; combined with the feelings from my treasure below, the waves began. I wanted to wait, I did not want this to end too quickly - or indeed end ever. As by instinct, Evie knew.

Pulling away a little, which made me sigh, she rolled over, so I was on top. I knew what she needed, so I moved to worship her breasts. They were soft to my touch, and my hands caressed them before, slowly, I applied my lips to her stiff, crinkled nipples, first flicking them, then, slowly, pulse-sucking on them. As I drew each nipple out to her full length before scratching them with my teeth, Evie moaned:

"Oh Pixie, oh yes, yes, yes, more, more!"

I knew anyway. I did what we both wanted. That was, and is, how it is with Evie.

When she was moaning continuously, I moved my lips down her flat tummy, trailing my tongue to leave lines of saliva as waymarks to her treasure mound. I stroked her hairs, which made her writhe. Her legs parted, and I nestled between them, my delicate fingers peeling back her dark lips to reveal a glistening pinkness made more vivid by the colour contrast.

As my tongue tasted her sweet essence for the first time, I almost climaxed. It was sweet yet tangy, I wanted more and more, ploughing my tongue in her furrow to garner the nectar to lavish on her button. As the tip of my tongue teased her, I felt more of her essence on my face. My tongue danced in small circles on her button, I liked it, suckled it, then flicked it, and all the while my face got wetter.

My fingers began to feel for her inner wetness, and I felt a hand on my head. She raised my wet face.

"I want you, too, over!"

I knew.

As I lay, I saw her wonderous treasure above my face, spider's web strands of nectar glistening in the candlelight. She lowered it onto my eager face, and as she did so, I felt her own tongue on my bud. How I did not climax at that moment I shall never know; it was as though something bigger shot through me - as though we became one.

How long we lay thus, pleasuring each other, I never knew, as by then I had transcended earthly things. We were one that night and did not part. Naught but death will do that.

[Martha's Journal]

It had been a hard day, at least a hard evening and night. I had stood atop the ridge and seen the Promised Land. That started up my melancholia.

Pleased as we were to be almost at journey's end, there was a sense of foreboding and even loss. Our fellowship would end soon and we four, who had loved each other so intimately and so well, would be scattered to the winds. Would we see each other again, ever? Seemed not likely.

An' then there was the hopes and fears of us all.

I could see little Pixie had been shaken up by what she'd had to do, but as I told her, by golly she'd grown in moral stature. Saving a woman from rape justified what she'd done, and she'd probably saved many more women; I'd had saved the bastard and cut his balls off; but that's just me and my way 'o thinkin'.

My beautiful Emma had her cap set on Lord Tim, which meant either I'd lose her, or she'd have her heart broke; wasn't good whichever way it went.

As for my Kate, well she'd gotten more attached to me as I had to her, but somehow, I couldn't see her settlin' down to be the wife of a prosperous rancher. That girl liked her adventures in bed too much for that.

Then there was little, nor not perhaps so little Pixie. How that woman had changed. She'd never be higher than a kiddo, but she'd matured. Old Romantic that I am, I believed that America had given her the freedom to be who she could be. I hoped that she'd not dwindle away back to that prissy little madam who'd been held in by the expectations of others. It made me smile to wonder what her Pa and Ma would've thought of her takin' up with a Cherokee woman. I hoped Evie would have her.

Then there was me! The octagonal peg lookin' for a round hole. If my Emma got her man, I doubted I'd end up Kate, weren't sure it'd work anyhow. Pix would go her way. And what would become of Martha? I couldn't be Jacob forever!

And that right as the campfire burned low, I thought back across my life, counting the things that mattered to me most.

There are things we do that we always remember, I will remember the opera and Emma's voice, I will remember my wedding and honeymoon, I will remember the first night Emma and I made love, all those wonderful things, as well as the terribly crushing memories like getting the letter about Jacob, or the night that boy finally passed. But in a sense, those were things that we do, man's doing.

As much as I remember those things, there were other things I remember, the sound of a thunderstorm, the fog on the Missouri, the birth of a calf, but today was different.

I had been scouting maybe a quarter mile ahead of the wagons, before this the landscape had been pretty much the same since we had left Pierre pretty much all the same. Where had been climbing form the river valley that was clear, but to what we were not sure. I had heard tell that there were mountains west, then of course the Rockies even further west, but other than that, I had no idea what we were heading into.

What I saw when I cleared a ridge well there was no way to be prepared for it.

In Missouri there were always trees, if you didn't constantly keep 'em beat back a true would sprout in winder box. So long vistas just ain't what a body is used to, but and before me was an expanse of empty space. It looked empty at first, but as the sun behind me climbed in the sky I saw colors.

Colors beyond anything I had ever seen the earth. The very ground itself seemed to have been cut and sculpted into a thousand ridges and spines, all made up uncounted layers of rock colored in reds, and yellows, tans and greys of different textures and hues like some monstrous layer cake all cut and scared and shaped like the very finger of God had dug in at random leaving ridges and cliffs that stuck out into the air and just dissolved away into the sky. It occurred to me that a thousand men and horses could hide in those hills and valleys for a century and never a one would be found. As if that was not wonder enough, it was all capped in wild fields of flowers and growing things stretching from horizon to horizon as far as the eye could seek.

Above all that, multicolored sculptures of stone and earth with its head of green hair growing with flowers was a sky.

The sky was as deep a blue as I have ever seen, with grey black clouds painted across as far as I could see. Strangely below these clouds shower streamers of darker grey angled as it seemed waterfall from the clouds to the ground. I suddenly realized it was a rain storm many miles away, I watched the lightning arch and trace across monstrous mountains of clouds that billowed up from the ground to the very heavens above. What caught my eye beyond the lightning battles the clouds was the product of the storm, or rather thereof. I thought at first it was a trick of my eyes, but I became certain as I watched the rain fall but it would water no crops, nor quench any thirst for it was clear that the water never reached the ground from the clouds from which it fell. The rain that this parched land needed seemed only torture and tease like a cruel lover, showing her beauty but never yielding herself to the one who needed her most.

I knew how old Moses had felt on Mount Nebo. And with that melancholy thought, my eyes finally found rest. The morrow would bring what it would bring.

I gave one last tour of the site. I saw two bodies moving, silhoutted by the candlight in Pixie's tent. Looked like she and Evie had made their peace; I was glad for 'em. Kate and Emma were bedded down too. Time for old Moses to do the same, I thought. Then it hit me - Moses had not entered the Promised Land. I would, so maybe there was hope yet?