Date Creek

April 3rd, 1871. Jody Wells lay on his bunk at the Yuma Territorial Prison, where he’d spent the last four years for a robbery he didn’t commit. It was only ten o’clock in the morning, and already the sweat trickled from his forehead. Thank God it was Sunday, their only day of rest from the rock pile. Not a day went by that he didn’t think of the night he’d come upon and helloed the camp fire that changed his life. Four years ago, he’d left Kansas for Arizona to find his cousin, Billy Wells. He carried his letter for two years until one night his father, in a drunken stupor, had died when he burnt their farm to the ground. Having nothing left, Jody caught up their only mare, saddled her, and headed west. He hadn’t even thought to sell the farm; all that was left was burnt ruin, dust, tumble weeds, and dried prairie grass. Three days later, huddled against the light rain under a couple of cottonwoods, his fire spit and crackled as he cooked the last of his two dollars worth of bacon. His coffee had run out that morning, forty miles back down the trail. Hunkered down, he used his knife tip to spear himself a sliver of sizzling fat with a piece of meat still left on it. As he brought it up to his lips to blow on it, he stopped. There, not twenty feet away, sat a coyote, not moving a twitch; he even looked like he licked his lips once as another one paced back and forth behind the first. Jody reached down and felt around until his fingers dug up a stone big enough to throw. How he wished he had a gun, but then even if he did, he’d never had much truck with guns, except an old Springfield forty-four he’d traded for and used to hunt now and then. Bullets were hard to come by, so he didn’t hunt much. He got more game and was better with an old bow and arrow he’d traded some passing Kiowa for when he was only seventeen. Six years later, he still carried the bow and was darn good with it. His fingers finally found a good size rock, but when he looked up, the coyotes were gone as if by magic. Jody picked up his last piece of bacon up and chewed slowly. He got up, stretched, and looked around at the miles and mile of bare nothing for as far as he could see. His belly was already telling his he’d have to do something soon, as the bacon just wasn’t enough. So he picked off a couple sucker branches from a low limb and started stripping them down with his old hunting knife. He walked a little ways south of where he was camped under the cottonwoods, scanning the ground for a small game trial. It didn’t take long to find where game had worked their way down into a small gully where water trickled. He fixed himself a loose snare and set it across the trail, taking care not to disturb the ground. He then made his way back to his fire and bedded down for the night. Jody woke while the stars still lit the sky, and his stomach still rumbled beneath his blanket. The ground was still wet form the night before, but somewhat dry where he’d slept. He gathered his twigs and branches and started his fire, wishing he had some coffee this morning. He sat there with his blanket wrapped around his shoulders, trying to fan his fire into life with his hat. Gradually it took enough he could sit there and warm his hands. It didn’t take long for the grayness of morning to start creeping up enough for him to see by, so he walked down to where he’d set his snare, only to find it gone. He could see the ground was disturbed where the trap had been. He was awful sure the tracks looked like badger, and that was nothing he wanted to mess with. After filling his canteen and his belly with the brackish water, he saddled his mare, filled his canteen once more, and headed out. After two hours of steady riding, he turned his horse southwest. Already, the day was so dry, the short, stubby plains grass crackled beneath the horse’s feet as he plodded along. He was so hungry when he stopped to rest the mare that he thought of eating a handful of oats he was carrying in a sack tied across the back of his saddle, but when he looked, that was just about all that was left. After looking, he tied the sack back, but as he looked over the horse’s rump, he thought he saw something off in the distance, smoke maybe. He rode back up to a rise he’d just passed so that maybe he could get a better look, but when he got there and shaded his eyes, he saw nothing, even though he was sure he had. He figured it to be sixteen to eighteen miles, but he was sure he’d seen smoke. After watering the mare, he started out again, cutting south for a while, then back west around some breaks to avoid cutting in and out of the ravines. He’d avoided them, as they were full of shale, and twice he’d nearly had to jump from the saddle as his mare lost her footing and almost toppled over. It was hot and dry in the late afternoon when he finally topped a rise and came riding into a stand of cottonwoods that ran all along a ridge. He stopped and let the mare crop the grass as he looked around for a way down off the ridge. Working the mare back and forth between the trees, he made his way downward, where he was pretty sure he’d come into a valley or range of some sort, as he could smell cattle and fresh cut hay.