Summary

Johanna gets clothes from the women of Wichita Falls, who the narrator notes were scared to use force on the “small, thin girl with scars on her forearms and a stare like a china doll” (13). So Captain Kidd turns towards a rougher set of women, some of whom have been jailed before, to force Johanna into bathing and dressing. The women scrub Johanna’s lice-ridden hair, before “wrestl[ing] her” (14) into her new clothes—dress, stockings, shoes, and all. However, it is not long before Johanna’s dress hems are covered with dirt.

Meanwhile, Captain Kidd uses the fifty-dollar coin to buy a dark green excursion wagon, which he plans to sell in either Castroville or San Antonio “if he ever got there” (15). The wagon has two rows of seats and the words, “Curative Waters East Mineral Springs Texas” painted on the side in...