Trudging manfully at the left fore wheel behind Mr. Jenks’ four span of mules, trailing my eighteen-foot tapering lash and occasionally well-nigh cutting off my own ear when I tried to throw it, I played the 168 teamster—although sooth to say there was little of play in the job, on that road, at that time of the day.
The sun was more vexatious, being an hour lower, when we bravely entered Benton’s boiling main street. We made brief halt for the finishing up of business; and cleaving a lane through the pedestrians and vehicles and animals there congregated, the challenges of the street gamblers having assailed us in vain, we proceeded—our Mormons gazing straight ahead, scornful of the devil’s enticements, our few Gentiles responding in kind to the quips and waves and salutations.
Thus we eventually left Benton; in about an hour’s march or some three miles out we formed corral for camp on the farther side of the road from the railroad tracks which we had been skirting.
Travel, except upon the tracks (for they were rarely vacant) ceased at sundown; and we all, having eaten our suppers, were sitting by our fires, smoking and talking, with the sky crimson in the west and the desert getting mysterious with purple shadows, when as another construction train of box cars and platform cars clanked by I chanced to note a figure spring out asprawl, alight with a whiffle of sand, and staggering up hasten for us.
First it accosted the hulk Daniel, who was temporarily out on herd, keeping the animals from the tracks. I saw him lean from his saddle; then he rode spurring in, bawling like a calf: 169
“Paw! Paw! Hey, yu-all! Thar’s a woman yonder in britches an’ she ’laows to come on. She’s lookin’ for Mister Jenks.”
Save for his excited stuttering silence reigned, a minute. Then in a storm of rude raillery—“That’s a hoss on you, George!” “Didn’t know you owned one o’ them critters, George,” “Does she wear the britches, George?” and so forth—my friend Jenks arose, peering, his whiskered mouth so agape that he almost dropped his pipe. And we all peered, with the women of the caravan smitten mute but intensely curious, while the solitary figure, braving our stares, came on to the fires.
“Gawd almighty!” Mr. Jenks delivered.
Likewise straightening I mentally repeated the ejaculation, for now I knew her as well as he. Yes, by the muttered babble others in our party knew her. It was My Lady—formerly My Lady—clad in embroidered short Spanish jacket, tightish velvet pantaloons, booted to the knees, pulled down upon her yellow hair a black soft hat, and hanging from the just-revealed belt around her slender waist, a revolver trifle.
She paused, small and alone, viewing us, her eyes very blue, her face very white.