The Devil in Kansas by David Ohle

Author:David Ohle [Ohle, David]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Lazy Fascist Press
Published: 2013-12-04T00:00:00+00:00

Two days of hard riding later, Dewey and Jonah come to a creek and dismount near a tall cottonwood tree, their horses exhausted. Nearby is an abandoned homestead with a small house, a well, a windmill and a leaning barn. The old windmill, not oiled for many years, gives off eerie tones as wind whistles through holes in its wooden blades, which cast moving, free form shadows.

The frame of an outhouse remains, too near the well for proper sanitation.

A scarecrow stuffed with cottonwood leaves and dry prairie grass is all that’s left of a garden plot gone fallow and weedy over the years. Hundreds of prairie dog hillocks dot the area. While the horses drink at the creek, Jonah climbs the cottonwood and looks westward through a telescope. Dewey stretches and arches his back to take the kinks out, then limps toward the empty house. On the way he accidentally steps into a prairie dog hole, turning his good ankle. “You devils! You already got one o’ my feet.” Furious, he fires a shot at the nearest prairie dog, blowing it to pieces.

In the house a few things have been left behind: three dishes, a child’s doll, a gnarled boot, a dead rat rotting in a corner, a Farmer’s Almanac. Dewey walks around, checking things out. He is startled to see a rat terrier behind a broken chair with its foot on a half-eaten prairie dog carcass. Dewey snaps his fingers. “Here, little feller. Come on over here. Looks like you done been left behind.” He kneels. The dog creeps warily over to him. He pets it. Its tail wags.

Jonah yells, “Git on out here, Mr. Dewey! Lord God a’mighty. Look what’s comin’ after us.”

With its masts and sails in place, the wind wagon glides through high grass and over rough sod at a fast clip, blown along by strong winds from the west. Sheriff Peppard operates the rudder while Ratoncito mans the brake.

“You see ‘em yet, Ratoncito?”

Ratoncito applies the brake. Peppard lowers the sails. They roll to a slow stop. Ratoncito climbs out of the wagon, kneels, shoos flies and sniffs at a pile of horse dung.

“How long are we behind ‘em, Ratoncito?”

Ratoncito holds up two fingers, then three.

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