Daisy in the Fringe

Dear Diary,

Mr Trask came to speak to me today.  He said that what with Bob and Pete leaving the caravan, and with Plato getting hurt and all, he needed some more guards bad.  He had seen me shooting that harpy yesterday, he said, and if he knew I could shoot like that, he never would have made me a cook.  He said that he’d like me to be a guard, and that guards made near double what a cook made, and now that we had fewer slaves, he didn’t need two cooks anymore anyway.

Then he asked me if I could shoot a pistol.  Well, I ain’t never shot a pistol before, but I never fired a shotgun before yesterday, so I told Dusty to tell him that I figured I could manage.  Instead she told him that I was the best shot back in Spartaville, that I could shoot the eye out of a dove at fifty paces, but that we had to pawn daddy’s pearl-handled revolver, which he left to me in his will, to buy medicine for our sick momma.  That was about the most concerned I ever heard Dusty be about momma being sick!

Mr Trask gave Dusty a look that made me wonder if he hadn’t figured her out by now.  Then he says, we’ll see, and he set up a line of empty bean cans a ways away.  Then he gives me a pistol and says Let’s see what you can do.

I took the pistol, and it seemed to fit right into my hand.  So I shot at those cans and managed to hit most of them.  Mr Trask just nodded and said, well, I guess maybe Dusty was telling the truth this time, and that I could be a guard if I wanted.

I asked him if it meant I would have to kill people, but Dusty just told him that I said that I’d be glad to be a guard, that I hadn’t killed no varmints in a couple of months, and was starting to miss it.  Mr Trask just laughed, and he told me I could keep Plato’s shotgun, and the pistol I had used to shoot the cans.  I could ride one of the horses from now on too, and stand a watch at night and all.

I’m going to miss spending all day with the kids.  They’re real sweeties.  But this means that I’ll have more money to send home, and maybe even have a little left over that I might be able to use to get a little cloth.  I ain’t had a chance to do any sewing since we left Spartaville, and I’m starting to miss it.

Dear Diary,

We was riding along round about noon today when a flock of harpies came flying over the hill right at us.  All the horses started getting all nervous, so we stopped the wagons and the guards got off their horses, tied them up, and got out their guns.

The harpies was now all overhead.  They started dropping their loads.  I had heard of what harpy guano could do, but I ain’t never seen it before.  One load hit a nearby tree and it started smoking.  Soon there was a real blaze going, which just made the horses even more nervous.

Meanwhile, all the guards were shooting away to beat the band.  Mr Trask kept yelling to aim for the queen, but even though the guards hit a couple of harpies, the queen (an ugly old thing with a big green head and scaly looking feathers) kept zipping around too fast for them to hit.  We was getting her mad, though – she flew right over us and let loose.  I dove out of the way, but Plato Parker, one of the guards, was a little slow.  The load hit his shoulder, and he dropped his gun and stared screaming.

I was getting worried now, cause them harpies was forming a big V with the queen at the point and heading towards the wagons.  I didn’t know what to do – I thought about hiding underneath, but I figured that if that harpy dung could burn up that old tree, the wagon wasn’t going to be no protection at all.  I figured the best I could do was to do my part helping the guards, so I grabbed up Plato’s shotgun, took aim at the sky, and let rip.

It must have been my lucky day because I managed to hit that queen right on the wing.  She gave a loud squawk and plummeted to the earth.  She was still hissing, but Dusty put another round into her and she didn’t get up no more.  After that, all the rest of the flock just scattered.

Meanwhile, Plato Parker was screaming.  I looked over, and the flesh on his arm was burned right down to the bone.  That made me feel pretty sick, and I wasn’t the only one puking in the bushes.  Mr Trask gave him a drink that put him to sleep, and then Doc did something to the burn that made it stop bubbling.   But I don’t think his arm is going to be much good for anything any more.

Dear Diary,

We’re back on the road again.  Mr Trask says that he knows some homesteads not too far off where they’ve been having hard times.  He figures that he can get some of them to sell us their kids to make up for our low stock.

I told Dusty that it seems like a funny kind of business to me.  She just laughed and said, well shucks, those people need cash somehow.  And if they couldn’t raise horses, well, at least they knew how to raise something that could bring in a little money.

She was grousing about having to be on watch half the night, though.  Bob Pepper and Pete Avraikos dropped out back in Alexandria, so we’re a little short on guards.  I figured that they wouldn’t need as many guards, what with us having fewer slaves and all.  But Mr Trask says that’s not how it works – that we need to keep the same number of people on guard no matter how few slaves we got.  He reckons we’ll find some new guards at the next ranch we come to.  He says he could have hired on someone new back in Alexandria, except we had to leave town earlier than he wanted, cause it turned out that one of those boys that was bothering us in that tavern was the mayor’s nephew.

Dear Diary,

Mr Trask says that Dusty and me should stay back at the barn until we’ve left Alexandria.  He said that he ain’t got no problems with what happened at the bar the other night – if those boys didn’t want a good beating, they should have acted like gentlemen.  But he thinks it’d be a good idea if Dusty and me stay out of sight.

Dusty isn’t too happy to be stuck here.  She keeps saying that we should sneak back to that bar, that there’s sure to be some nice boys in town, and the ones that ain’t nice won’t be bothering us no more.  But I told her that I’m not going nowhere – I don’t want to get Mr Trask mad, and I don’t like that bar all that much anyway.  I told her that if she wanted to go risking trouble all that much, she could just go without me.  But instead she just grumbled and got a card game going with some of the guards.

Meanwhile, we’re selling slaves left and right.  We’re down to about half a dozen now.  Cooking is getting easy, though each of them guards eat like a dozen slaves.

Dear Diary,

Something really funny happened today.  And I don’t mean funny haha.

We got to this town called Alexandria where Mr Trask said he could sell a bunch of slaves.  He rented a barn and locked them all in, and after we had gotten them fed, he said that we all could go into town and have a look around if we wanted.  That sounded like fun, so Dusty and me headed off.

We first went to the baths.  It was good to get clean – I had no bath since we left home.  I was practically caked with dirt, what with all the dust and such on the road.  And the laundry women did a real nice job with my stuff – I felt nice and fresh for the first time in a week.

Then Dusty said she’d take me to the bar for a drink.  I didn’t think that was a good idea, but Dusty said that now that we was out and alone and women of the world, it was time for us to start having a little fun.  I said I had no money, but she said she’d just got paid, so she’d treat.  And besides, she said, a couple pretty girls like us never had to worry about paying for our own drinks.  I wasn’t sure I liked the sound of that, but I went along.

The bar was a big place called Dionysus’s Ranch.  There was about a dozen horses tied up outside, and at least twice that many people inside.  It was a mixed bunch – lots of fancy dudes from the town, but some banker types too.  Near the bar there were a couple of fancy looking ladies, and they were getting lots of attention from the men.

Some guys from the caravan were already there, hanging around the bar near the fancy ladies.  I saw Hank Blalock, one of the younger guards, drinking straight from a bottle and telling a story in a loud voice to everyone around.  I didn’t get the point of what he was saying – something about a priestess and a temple eunuch and a lot of shooting and cussing and broken windows and such.  But everyone was laughing, and he seemed to be having a real good time just like Daddy used to.

Dusty said, “Aw hades, I’m tired of those fellas – let’s go meet someone new,” and she led me down to the other side of the bar.  Sure enough, these four dudes came over to us and offered to buy us a drink.  I told Dusty I wanted a sarsparilla, but she told them that we were just in with the caravan, and what we wanted most in the world was whiskey.  They laughed at that, and had the bartender bring us each a glass.

After another drink, one of the guys, his name was Alvin, sidled up next to Dusty.  He seemed to think it was funny that she was a caravan guard, and he asked what I did.  Dusty told them that I was a slave-driver – the most dangerous of them all, they called me old Iron Leg, because I was so good at kicking those slaves when they was bad.  Well, Alvin thought that was real funny, and his buddy Earl said he thought I was too pretty to kick anybody.

They was pouring us more drinks right from the bottle now, but I was starting to feel woozy and so only sipped mine.  But Dusty kept on telling her stories, about how we had to fight off a bunch of cerberii that was trying to eat our slaves.  She was telling of how I cracked the skull of one of them hounds with a frying pan when Alvin put his arm around her.  She tried to push him back, but he just pulled her closer and kissed her right on the lips.  Earl was laughing at this and saying that Alvin would give that pretty little caravan girl something real hard to fight off, and then he put an arm around my waist and said, “But I’ll just have to take the little dummy, because she’s got no frying pan here!”  Then he started to put his other arm around me to pull me closer.

I was getting all scared, and I looked around for some of the guys from the caravan, but they was all the way the other end of the bar with the fancy ladies and they didn’t seem to notice anything going on.  Dusty broke away from Alvin and came over and grabbed ahold of Earl and said, “You leave my sister alone!”  Alvin said, “Oh honey, he don’t mean no harm.  Come on now, we bought you drinks and everything – how about showing us how sweet you can be!”  And he grabbed Dusty again and started pulling tight.

Even Dusty was looking nervous now, and I didn’t like seeing her like that.  I would have screamed if I could, but instead, just as Earl was pulling me towards his big fat lips, I pulled his arm from around my back and pushed him off me.  Then I went over to where Alvin was pawing Dusty and I made a fist and used it to whack him but good.  He went flying back across this other table where some banker-types were sitting, and glass went flying everywhere.

Earl and their other friends (there seemed a whole bunch of them now) got real big and said there wasn’t no cause to hurt nobody, but if we wanted some rough stuff we could have it.  I ain’t sure exactly what happened after that, because I saw all red, but next thing I know Dusty’s dragging me away from a pile of busted-up glass and broken chairs and fancy dudes all laid out, and she’s shouting that they better not try any of that again, because next time Old Iron-leg would have her frying pan with and then they’d really be sorry.

We got back to the caravan, and my knuckles felt kind of sore.  One was split up, but I got it fixed.  I still wasn’t sure exactly what happened, and I was all shook up about it, but Dusty seemed to think it was just about the funniest thing ever.

A little later, Mr Taggart, who is one of the guards, came by near where I slept.  He was laughing and said he ain’t never seen no girl punch like that, ain’t hardly seen anyone get punched that hard by anybody.  It was a treat to see, he said, and maybe I should be a guard instead of just a cook if I could punch like that.  And Dusty was laughing too, and said that she didn’t know if I would make a caravan guard, but I sure did guard her right well, and if she knew I could punch that hard, she never would have teased me like that all those years.

I don’t know about any of that.  I just know that when I think how that Alvin grabbed Dusty, well, I don’t feel sorry at all.

Dear Diary,

This adventuring stuff sure is hard work.  I get up before the sun to help make breakfast for everyone.  Then it’s a long day traveling over dusty roads.  I’m usually in one of the carts with the slaves, keeping the kids entertained mostly, though that ain’t always easy.  We usually keep moving until late afternoon.  Then I’m fixing dinner, eating, and cleaning up.  Most nights I’m up late, usually comforting one of the little ones – they’re all pretty sad and scared to be away from home.  Finally I get to my bedroll to snatch a few hours, and then it all begins again.

None of the slaves seem all that happy.  The little ones all miss their homes, but the grown ones seem pretty resigned to their fate.  Leastways, they have been since one of the big bucks tried to break free the first day.  The guards hunted him down, and then Mr Trask beat him to within an inch of his life with a wagon iron.  He said that beating one like that would keep the others from trying to run, and I guess it works because nobody’s tried to run since.

I do my best to keep the kids happy, and it seems to help.  They don’t never cry for too long, and I can even get most of them to laugh every now and then.  I got a few of them working on little leather braids to use as belts or something – they seem to like that, cause it keeps them busy while we’re in the carts.

All the kids seem scared of the guards.  I can’t blame them – the guards seem like a pretty tough bunch.  They’re always riding back and forth by the carts, with their big guns and all.  I’d be scared if I was one of them kids too, especially after Mr Trask made them watch him beating that one.

Sometimes Dusty rides by my cart for a while.  I like that – she’s full of funny stories about the other guards, and that makes them seem less scary somehow.  She says that they’re always telling rude stories around the fire at night, and was having a farting contest the other night after we had beans.  It reads pretty crude when I write it here, but she made it sound funny.  She also says that we’re going to be in a town in a couple days, and that she’d take me out for a good time when we got there.

It’s pretty clear that the guards are the big deals around here.  Well, the big deal after Mr Trask and his counting man, anyway.  They ride on their special cart, with a big iron lockbox on it that they use to hold the money that they’re making selling slaves.  It’s the most comfortable cart of them all – they even got springs to make it less bumpy.

But at least I’m earning money.  I still ain’t gotten any more since Mr Trask gave me my first month’s pay, but when I do, I may have to buy Dusty a pretty hair ribbon or something.  She’s the only girl guard, and she could use something to help her look nice.

Dear Diary,

Daddy always used to say that the wheel just kept rolling and rolling.  And I guess it’s rolling a little for me.

I went down to town to ask Dusty if she could help us at all while I looked for another job.  She listened to me and said that she wasn’t sure about that, but maybe she could help me find a job instead.  Well, I wasn’t sure what kind of job she meant, but she took me over to the slave-master and introduced me.

It seems he saw me playing with the little slave kids the other day, and he liked how much they were cheered up by my visit.  He says that one of the biggest problems in his business is that the kids, who are usually worth the most, got all sad enough to sometimes die before they get sold.  He figured that if he had someone with who could take care of them and keep them cheerful, that person could easily earn their salary.

Then he asked if I could cook too, and I said yes, and he said that a big operation like his needed lots of cooks to keep the slaves fed, and so I could help that way too.  And to make a long story short, he said he’d like to hire me to come with them to cook and take care of the little ones.

I didn’t know what to say!  (Well, Dusty did my talking for me, but you know what I mean.)  I figured that would be great, especially when he told me what he’d pay me, which was about 3 times what Mrs Hawkins paid.  Plus he’d feed me and give me a place to sleep while we were working.

I explained about Momma, and he said that I could send money home to her.  Plus, he’d give me my first month pay in advance, so I could leave some money for Momma.  I didn’t know what to say about that, except I’d have to check with Momma.  He said that was okay, but to hurry back , cause they was leaving tomorrow morning and he’d need my help in the kitchens.

I ran home and told Momma all about it.  Momma burst into tears and said she’d never be able to manage without me.  But then I told her about how much money I’d be making, and that I’d be able to give her my first month’s pay, so she figured we’d have to do what we have to do.

(Dusty came back with me, and Momma made a big deal about her.  I could see Dusty didn’t like it much – she hates it when Momma gets all teary and clingy.  But I reckon that it’s a good thing that she at least got to say goodbye.)

Anyway, I’m packing up now.  I can only bring one bag with me, so it’s hard to figure what to bring.  Dusty says I won’t be able to wear no dresses on the road, so I can have one of her old pairs of jeans.  It’s gonna be hard to keep clean – I’ll have to get a second pair somewhere so I can clean one whiles wearing the other.  I’m bringing the spare iron, so I can keep things neat and pressed.  And my Bubbles, of course.  And you, dear Diary – I can’t go nowhere without you!

So goodbye to Spartaville.  It looks like Dusty’s not the only one who’s going to get to go on an adventure!

Dear Diary,

More bad news! Mr Hawkins came back from town this morning with a present for Mrs Hawkins. He had bought her a slave girl all of her own – a pretty little thing who knows all about cleaning and mending and stuff. He told her that she’s important enough that she should have her own girl to do her chores, not just a hireling like me.

Mrs Hawkins didn’t look too pleased, but when he mentioned how much the other ladies would be jealous, she started looking happier. Anyway, this means that I’m out of a job. I don’t know how I’m going to get food for Momma – maybe I can go talk to Dusty and, if she’s making enough money, she can give some to us to tide us over.

Dear Diary,

Dusty never did come back last night. But she came to see me at the Hawkins house, so she’s okay. It turned out she did head out to that slaver last night. But not to sell herself – I should have known she was too smart for that! Nope, she found out that they had bought up a big new bunch of slaves in town, and they needed some new guards. And sure enough, she managed to talk their boss into hiring her on! I don’t know how she did that – I ain’t never heard of no girl guard before – but she talked him into it somehow.

This morning, she came to the house to say goodbye to me. She’s got a real job now, and they’re even giving her a horse and a shotgun to use as a guard. Mrs Hawkins needed some stuff picked up in town, so she let me go with Dusty to see her off. I went out there, but it was kind of sad – there’s all those kids just sold as slaves by their kin, what with times being so hard lately, and they didn’t seem too happy at all. I gave a couple of them a few treats and showed them a couple of tricks, and they seemed better after that.

Dusty sure did look real important and all, what with carrying a gun and telling those slaves what to do. And they all listened to her, even the big bucks! That seemed pretty funny to me, but I suppose I always knew she’d be okay.

Anyway, she’s off on her big adventure tomorrow. I told her she should come home to say goodbye to Momma, but she says no, she don’t like no goodbyes, and so I should say goodbye for her.

I sure am going to miss her!

Dear Diary,

Things are lively over in town. There’s a slave caravan coming through, with a line of 20 slaves. They’re looking to buy and sell. Mr Hawkins bought a couple big bucks to help on the ranch. He told Mrs Hawkins she should go and pick herself out a girl for the house, but Mrs Hawkins said all those slave-girls are sluts. So I guess I still have a job.

Momma said that with money so tight, she may need to sell Dusty or me just to make ends meet. That way, she says, she’d only need to feed one of us. That made Dusty real mad – she said we were too old, that Momma couldn’t sell us now anyway. Then she said, “But you don’t want to feed me no more, fine, I can take care of myself!” She stormed off. I’m worried about what she’s going to do – especially because I saw her head on over towards that slave caravan. She ain’t going to do something desperate, is she? I hope Dusty won’t sell herself just to get away from Momma!

Anyway, I’m worried now. I don’t know what Dusty did, but it’s pretty late now, and she still isn’t back. She ain’t never been out this late – I hope she’s okay! I’d go look for her, but I got no idea where to look.