Dorothy Garlock Read Online Free PDF

a bright crystal blue. He was dressed in tight black pants and wore a loose, embroidered vest over his shirt. His boots were Mexican style, as was his hat; a black sombrero held by a cord about his neck rode on his back. He had two silver pistols in holsters strapped around his slim hips.
    Johanna turned her attention back to Jacy. She was looking directly into the man’s eyes as if mesmerized. She was quieter, and Johanna drew her down to sit once more on the box beside her.
    The tall man didn’t move, even when the others left to go to the cookfire. He lingered to look at Jacy.
    “Thank you,” Johanna said quietly.
    He looked at Johanna as if seeing her for the first time, tilted his head, and walked away.
    Red detached himself from a group of men by the fire and came to squat in front of the two young women.
    “Ma’am,” he said earnestly to Jacy, “there ain’t a man jack here what wouldn’t lay his life right down on the line fer ya. Ya don’t have nothin’ to be feared of long as you’re with us, and that’s the God’s truth.”
    His kind, homely face and sincere manner must have gotten through to Jacy, for she timidly held out her hand to him and he gripped it with his big, rough one. A lump rose in Johanna’s throat that threatened to choke her, and tears sprang to her eyes. To hide them she reached into the back of the wagon and brought out her guitar. Red carried the crate closer to the campfire and she and Jacy moved out into the center of the circle.
    When Johanna began to strum the strings of the instrument with her slender, knowing fingers, all conversation ceased. She flashed a sudden, bright smile around the circle and began to sing an old ballad her father had taught her when she was a child.
     
    “Two little children, a boy and a girl,
stood by the old church door.
    The little girl’s feet were as brown as the curls
that lay on the dress that she wore.”
     
    She sang the ballad in English, then repeated it in Spanish. Her voice had a kind of sweet, husky throb that drifted gently on the cool night breeze. She sang song after song, and never had a more attentive audience. She let her eyes roam over the faces of the men. Most of them were of Mexican descent, as was the tall, handsome man with the silver pistols. He had moved back in the shadows and was sitting very still. The brim of his sombrero was pulled down over his eyes, but he was facing toward her, and Johanna could almost feel the impact of his sharp, blue eyes. Something about his manner gave her a moment of uneasiness, but she pushed the thought away and gave her attention to entertaining the men who had made her and Jacy feel so welcome among them.
    That night, for the first time in her life, Johanna slept in a covered wagon. Although tired, she felt strangely more contented than she had since her parents’ death.
    *   *   *
    “H’yaw! Hee-yaw!” Mooney shouted at his team and cracked the bullwhip over their backs. The yell was echoed down the line as the drivers started their teams and the cumbersome wagons began to move. The camp had been stirring since an hour before daylight, when Codger had banged on the iron pot. “Come ’n’ git it before I throw it away!” he’d yelled.
    This was their fifth day on the trail. About them lay vast, immeasurable distances, broken by a purple tinge, the hint of the mountains ahead. The sun sent its heat waves shimmering down on the train as it moved sluggishly across the desert of sparse prairie grass and baked earth.
    Johanna fastened her eyes on the notch in the mountains toward which they were heading. Mooney had pointed out that they would have to cross the river before they reached the mountain pass. All travel on the plains was governed by the need for water. When they reached the river they would fill their barrels, and the water would have to last until they reached the mountain pass, where there was a water hole. Between the river and the mountain pass was the meanest