Pretty soon, Martha Mule peeked her soft nose out, sniffing, and decided to take General Lunarista up on his offer to desert. I would have braved the bombs and nabbed her, but I was unfit for either the braving or the nabbing. I was sweating pain and stiff with scabs. So I just watched the mule pull herself out like a monkey. She looked around Fort Texas like she didn't recognize it, it was so stunk up with the by-products of glory that Walter Scott forgot to promulgate among the peaceful populace:sickness, smoke, sweat, and scatological flies. So it was for us Angry-Saxon mule men, penned up in this six-sided Fort Slow-Polk-on-the-Moon, after an interminable week of Lunar bombardment on this all important P. of T.

Martha Mule stuck her snout in a bitter shell crater, looking for something to eat. She found nothing but some 6-pounder wadding, chewed it awhile, found it too bitter, and sniffed another crater. There she found some socks from our bombed-dry laundry line.

Them pesky Lunars were getting sort of lazy with their cannonade, only lobbing a shell in every ten minutes or so. What were they up to now, we wondered.

Along came another desultory shell - whang! - it bounced in the yard, bounded out, and blew in the air beyond us. But this was enough to set Martha a-moseying up the eastern slope. She bobbed by the sentry, who was too miserable to get out of his rifle pit and grab her. Then she must have caught a scent of the Cold Sea, because her ears stuck out horizontal and she started bobbing her head up and down. Excepting myself, the last we Cotton Balers saw of her was her snout on the upward bob, still chewing on that sock. "Good luck Martha," I thought. "And no hard feelings neither."

The day after my punishment I was in a grim good humor, partly because McKnight had been giving me hourly doses of Rupert's Tonic against my pain. The only spirit left in the fort was in that good Tonic. It tonic'd me a little.

Another reason I didn't feel so bad as my wounds might prefer me to feel was that my camp-wife was dutifully attending me in a most uncharacteristically steady manner. She sat by me while I dozed, keeping the flies off my raw back as best she could. She held my hand when I suffered a bad spell of pain, let me win a couple dog- chewed checkers games, and cheered me by saying that when General Lunarista (a kind of slow-poke himself, I was beginning to think) got around to assaulting our walls, them Moonmen might not skewer me with a bayonet, since I was wounded.

No, they were Christian. They might just let me heal up, then give me the "Black Bean Treatment".

That's what they did to some of those Ranger-bandito folks a few years back - some Texas Ballooners who swooped down and robbed a south-of-the-Cold-Sea crater - then got their silk caught up on a steeple's cross. So the Lunars let `em heal from their broken bones, then let `em pick beans out of a jar. They said they'd only kill the black bean pickers. Since it was obviously god's will when the cross stabbed the silk, it followed that the black bean would be a divine decision also. So pick your beans, ye wretcheds!

They killed the black bean pickers. And let the white bean Texans go. With an exception.

Turns out god gave the top Texan rascal a big clean white bean. White as snow. Not a speck of black on `er. But General Santa Luna wanted him shot because he was the handsome Hernani, not to mention pilot, and dang the white bean!

So they shot him, too. Had a priest take his confession first, so it was square by the church. (But it wasn't square by the Texans, who were a lot closer to the Moon than the Moon was to god.)

Well, I doubted that would happen to me, because I'd heard from Six-Fingers Bourdett that General Santa Luna had dropped all his political ballast and ballooned himself into exile. He'd moored his tether rope to a pretty nice asteroid which would soon, I didn't doubt, become another star on the Star-Spangled Banner. So I didn't fear the black bean treatment.

But I stuck a white bean in my pocket just in case.

"I don't hear no more bombs," I said later. "Is this the assault, then?"

Sarah said, "With all our cannons we could hold off the hordes of the Great Ottoman Poobah, which is why the score is still tied up, I reckon, like this:

Inning           1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  Score  Errors

Slow-Polks       1  2  1  2  0  0  0  *  *  6      3
Pesky Lunars     1  1  1  2  1  0  0  *  *  6      1

Sarah was so nice and steady and wife-like, I'd figured that though I was the one who got whipped, she got tamed. Maybe we'd ask the Reverend to put his stamp on our team-hitch. She didn't say nothing about how dumb I was to make trouble, or that I was mean to pick on a man just because he was made of metal. So I figured she liked me better for it, because it showed danderfully righteous gall and gumption. Of course, I was all wrong, about one hundred and eighty degrees wrong as a matter of fact, as the following day showed.

There was no sign of P. P. F. S. He was long gone by now.

So, besides Sarah and my safety from the dreaded Black Bean Treatment, I was glad my wounds were healing up nice. Maybe Kelly knew a way to tease the cat o'nine tails so that its bark was worse than its bite. That bark was bad, my friend, let me tell you. But maybe Kelly knew a trick, because I could walk the next day, a little, keeping my back straight, my hand on Sarah's shoulder - I walked up and down the gallery, which is how I saw Martha Mule's escape.

One time when I woke up from dozing it was because Old Sock was standing over me with his hoodoo bone, spelling me with Feel-All- Betters and I don't know what else. Soon as he saw me wake he limped off in a hurry.

Kelly was always grinning with guilt about the flogging. He set up his Daguerreotype of Ma beside me, which was nice, but that grey and gritty studio pose of her in that heavy black Sunday dress, the photographer's iron clamp holding her head still for all those minutes, a frown on her face and a yawn in her eyes, well, it made me feel bad about her, so I turned it away.

Now, speaking of Martha Mule, I should say that even Martha Miles was nice to me, praying for my health too, every time she prayed for the Major's. She like me now because I was a punished sinner, and my hurts looked bad, being fresh, but at least she liked me. So in summary I enjoyed that day's aristocracy among the wounded.

And here and there throughout the day I had to give a little laugh at myself because there I was, whipped, but not whupped - No, I felt kind of breathless, like a renegade, up and running, free and Omni Potent, and I just didn't know what I'd do next before Hangman got me.

There was a shout on the wall, and another, and another -

"HO!"

"SMOKE!"

"Cap'n Miles! Cap'n Miles!"

Was it the assault?

We heard a far off booming. Then there was a long rumble of thunder. Whose ordinance was doing that mumbling and grumbling? A mob rushed out of the Bomb-Proofs, howling like madmen. Reverend McKnight and a Music carried Major Brown up on a stretcher. I saw him weakly salute Captain Miles. With slow, slow strides I, too, left that subterranean stink hole, leaning on Sarah. I sunk my bare feet in the slope, slowly climbing, until - Sarah gasped, "The Barrows!" - we viewed something fantastic.

All the northeast had disappeared in a great big black cloud. We heard the thunder of that cloud, and the sputter of its leaden hail.

Round the Timber Barrows, The Army of Observation was fighting the Army of the Sea of Tranquility for the road back to us!

There were no Lunars to be seen in our neighborhood, but for a few mounted scouts keeping their spyglasses on us, and some miserable-looking militia hiding in Plato's Crater. The entire Tranky Army had rushed off to wrestle with Old Zach and the boys - and they took their annoying popguns with `em!

The cloud grew and grew, getting blacker. Every few minutes it flickered with lightning - that showed us that Ringgold's giant electrics were bolting their jagged edged galvanic ferocity at the Lunar lines. The smoke changed. First it funneled out of the Timber Barrows, then, several hours later, out of the little Wheel Barrows. Looked like the Lunars were falling back. We were so nervous. Even Sarah was biting her nails. We cheered and stopped; cheered again and stopped again; - Captain Miles ordered silence. And then, then thunder stopped. The smoke slowly roiled away.

All of a sudden we saw the first of the far-off Lunar columns double- timing westward in retreat. (But westward meant toward us, so it looking to us like they were advancing.) Some of the columns looked pretty worn and ragged. The officers were hard pressed to beat the men back into their ranks. - Old Zach had pushed them back, then! The entire Army of the Sea of Tranquility! We Slow-Polks gave him a mighty HURRAH!

But Ole Rough `n' Ready still had to bust through them to rescue us. And we could see the little dots of General Lunarista's men making camp plum inside William's U. S. Bond Crater, square broadside to the road. William's Bond was old and broken down, but it had some rough looking hills. There were still two Mooners for every one Dough-Boy. And we Cotton Balers were down to just four day's rations. "How's our friends ever going to scare the Lunars out of them hills yonder, Sarah? ...Sarah - ?"

Sarah didn't reply. I turned and looked for her. I couldn't see her in the yard. I looked behind Captain Seawell's 6-pounder. Nope. I couldn't find her. I couldn't find Captain Seawell, either.

I labored hard not to think about where she was or what she might be doing. So I was not thinking anything of nothing when I stalked stiffly back down the dark and lonely Bomb-Proof. I couldn't find her. I went back into the Infirmary, and found her rattlesnake apron hanging were she had left it. Though she usually went around barefoot, her boots were gone, too.

In it, I saw her apron was missing its Colt repeater. But there was a crumpled note.

DEER FRANK I JEST WANTID TO SAY
GREEN GRO'S THE LOREL &
THE LOREL GRO'S GREEN &
YUR THE NISEST MEDEL MEN
I EVER SEEN.
DO YOU LYK ME SARAH.

Go to the next chapter of Moonifest Destiny
Go to the table of contents for Moonifest Destiny
Go back to the Quanta home page