Chapter 8

They found the 3 Indians in this attack and Abigail did her usual surgical procedures. Abigail had taken to putting the severed nose in the Indian's mouth and the severed cock in his ass hole. Jim confirmed that the Indians were Yaqui, so that bit of doubt was removed, though that was hardly the kind of news to make the people feel any better.

The guards were kept hopping as the wagon train was sniped at more than once every day. The arrows were all marked as Yaqui, but this was no consolation. The guards rarely got in a shot at a sniper, but they kept trying, since this made both guards and guarded feel better. Abe and Abigail remained in the drag position; despite this being the most dangerous position, they continued to request the assignment. None of the other guards argued with their choice; there was a kind of mystique about Abigail which made everybody else feel better when she was guarding their most vulnerable position.

Whenever a shot was heard from the drag, everybody's morale took a little boost because the shot may have come from Abigail, and she was known not to shoot without a confirmed target. It was interesting that she never bragged about her prowess—she didn't have to; everybody else did it for her. This made it very comforting for Abigail to be guarding the rear. Abe glowed in pride that it was HIS wife that they were talking about!

This sniping had been going on for about a week, but it had gotten much worse the last two days. Josephus asked if there was something John could do about it. He responded that he didn't have enough people to chase Indians and guard the train. Josephus was going to have to choose which he wanted John to do. They reached a compromise of sorts, three men from the train would join the guards while John, Abigail, and Abe went out hunting Indians.

The first time someone was shot at the next morning, those three dashed toward the source of the arrow as fast as their horses could take them. They didn't actually catch the shooter, but they did get there fast enough that he didn't have time to erase his trail. The trail through the loose sand was plain enough that they were able to follow from horseback at a pace which kept considerable pressure on their quarry. It was true that the horses would tire before the man did, particularly in this heat, but they hoped that they were close enough to catch sight of the Indian before their horses gave out.

There he was! He was leaning against a rock, hunched in its shadow, but Abigail's sharp eye picked him out. He didn't see them; he was too tired to look. Abigail drew her rifle and dropped to the ground. She ran to a nearby boulder and leaned against it to steady her aim. She may have taken longer than usual to line up her shot, but she got off a beauty. It caught the Indian in the gut just above his bellybutton, and knocked him down without killing him, though he was sure to die in a few minutes.

She climbed back on her horse, and the three hunters rode to the downed Indian, who was, indeed, a Yaqui. Abigail ran up to him and ignored his feeble efforts to stab her with his knife. She used her bowie knife to cut off his nose and stuffed it into his mouth. He tried to spit it out, but didn't have the strength. Abigail then cut off his cock as close to his body as she could. She rolled him over onto his face, and Abe stood on his shoulders to hold him still while Abigail stuffed the man's cock into his ass hole. Abe rolled the man back onto his back so that he could drown in his own blood coming from his nose. Abigail spit on him and they rode off, leaving the Indian to die.

They rode back to the wagon train and resumed the routine of guard duty. The same kind of thing happened that afternoon, and a couple of more times the next day. Two of those times they caught the Indians, and Abigail did her thing.

They were left in peace for two days after that, then the cycle started over again. They caught their first Indian of this cycle pretty much the same way as before, but Abigail's shot caught him in the hip, instead of directly into the gut. The shattered hip was going to kill him, but it was going to take a lot longer than a wound in the gut. If he was particularly unlucky, the Indian might live for years, effectively paralyzed from the waist, down.

Abigail decided to treat this man a little differently from the others. She did cut off the tip of his nose, but left most of it in place, and she cauterized it with a red hot knife blade. She put the tourniquet on his cock and left some of it when she cut it off. The stub was cauterized, too, and the tourniquet was removed. She still stuffed the man's severed cock end into his anus, but not so far that it couldn't be easily removed. Abigail said, in Spanish, "Do you know who I am?"

The Indian answered, "No, I don't know you."

"I am Cock Cutter. Now you know why I am called that. I have let you live so that you can tell your people what happens to fools who cross me. You may live, but you will never walk or fuck again. Any woman who looks at you will be sick to her stomach. I will do this to any Yaqui fool I meet. If I shoot a fool so that he dies, I will just cut off his nose and cock, but if he lives, I will do to him what I have done to you. Now, I have one last thing to do to you. I waited so that you would hear and understand what I have said. My last task is to crush your balls. I will do that now."

Abigail found two suitable rocks and crushed the man's balls with them. As she was leaving, she said, "I hope that you live a long time and tell many people what I have done to you."

Two friends from his village found him before he died. They kept him alive, but they weren't sure that they had done him any favors. He told them what Cock Cutter had done and what she had said. This was the beginning of the legend of Cock Cutter among the Yaqui. This man lived for three more years before finally taking his own life, but, before he died, he told every man who would listen the story of his adventure with Cock Cutter on that fateful day.

This last Cock Cutter victim was enough to gain the wagon train over a week of peace. The journey was not any easier, except that they were not shot at several times a day by Indians trying to prove their bravery.

The wagon train was in the middle of a wasteland of sand and a very few cacti when they came upon a "town." This town consisted of a couple of large tents, one of which served as a saloon. The other was a "hotel," but it really was a brothel of the lowest order. It was served by two Indian women and one White woman, all three so ugly that it was truly hard to look at them. The men of the train, even the single men, could not believe that these women actually had any business.

Oscar knew better than to stop in this town, but a couple of the younger men did slip off to the saloon for a drink. Both of them nearly died of whatever it was they drank. At Josephus' request, John burned the saloon tent to the ground. Interestingly enough, most of the "alcohol" would not even burn!

The wagon train wended it way for several more miles before they stopped for supper. They had pulled the wagons into the usual defensive box and were relaxing as much as they could in the oppressive heat. It would be an hour or so before the temperature started to drop, so nobody was making much effort to do more than he had too. That was why the rifle shot fired into the camp was such a surprise.

There was a mad scramble for weapons as people tried to determine where the shot had come from. Somebody spotted a puff of powder smoke near the top of a low hill of sand, so everybody assumed that was where the shot had come from. The first shot had not hit anyone, but not so for the second shot.

The whole train was looking toward the sand hill when the second shot plowed into the arm of a man looking the wrong way. At the sound of the shot, almost all eyes jerked around to see the remnants of a smoke puff drift away from the top of another low sand hill to the opposite side of the camp from the first shot. Other than gathering weapons, people had been slow to react to the first shot, but the second shot sent them scurrying for cover. Thus, the third shot did no harm, but it was confusing, since it came from a third side of the camp. Finally, "the other shoe dropped," and a fourth shot came in from the fourth side.

They were "surrounded," but there had been only four shots fired. This was not enough rifles to be a significant menace to a train of 50 wagons, so there must be something weird afoot. Then a burning arrow came arcing in from the site of the first shot. The arrow struck the canvas top over one of the wagons. This burst into bright flames which lit up a large area in the early dusk of the evening. Some people picked up buckets and tried to throw water on the flames, but Oscar yelled at them to throw sand, not water, since they would need the water to drink.