Come Sundown (18 page)

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Authors: Mike Blakely

BOOK: Come Sundown
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“If we didn't give a damn for you we never would have brought it up in the first place,” Kit said, a kind smile on his leathery face.
“I know that, Kit.”
William rose from the chair. “Listen, Kid, it's been a long time since I heard you saw that fiddle. Why don't you play a song or two for me and ol' Kit. We'll roll up the rugs and get the gals to dance with us.”
With my mind whirling around the warnings of my frontier mentors, and my heart aching for another moment with Westerly, I was hardly in the mood to entertain. But music was scarce out there in the wilderness, and the bearer of it carried with him a responsibility to share it for the public good. I pulled myself up off my pallet, got my left-handed Stradivarius out of its deerskin case, and began tuning up. At least no one would talk at me while I played, and I could think. And perhaps some of my angst would vent from my soul through the music, like steam from a pressure valve. Then there was one further thought. Perhaps Westerly would come around and hear me play. She probably did not even know that I possessed the gift of music. I craved her attention.
“It'll do me good to play a few,” I said.
William smiled—a rare expression for his face these days—and left to make arrangements for my impromptu concert. Kit remained behind, watching William go. Finally, he turned back to me and said, almost in a whisper, “Kid. There's somethin' else … Somethin' I wanna …”
“What is it?” I replied, sensing the gravity in his tone.
“That girl. That Cheyenne girl …”
“Yes?”
“You been teachin' her to read and write?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Kid, you know I … Well, they mean to make me a lieutenant colonel.”
“I know that, Kit, you told me.”
“Well, the hell of it is, I cain't even
spell
‘lieutenant colonel. ' I cain't spell much of nothin' at all. My name's about it, and a few leetle-bitty words. I know I'm just a volunteer, but
those boys in the regular army … You ever heard of an officer who couldn't read or write his own orders?”
“You'll have an adjutant for that. A scribe.”
“I know that, but … An officer ought to be able to read his own.”
I had never seen such fear in Kit's eyes. “Don't worry,” I said. “We'll start tomorrow evening.”
The worry melted from his brow and poured into his smile. “You reckon you can open an ol' rusty trap like mine?” he asked, tapping his temple with his trigger finger.
I tucked my fiddle under my arm. “Colonel Carson, by end of this war, I'll have you reading and writing like a West Point graduate.”
I
slept only about an hour after the last dancer tired and drifted away to bed. When I awoke before dawn, I knew I would sleep no more that night. Too many uncertainties about the future writhed in my brain. Surely you have lain in your own bed and pondered and worried and fretted over the vagaries of human existence yourself. Silence and darkness can sometimes amplify the disquietudes of love, money, pride, fear, heartaches and ailments, angers and regrets, until a body attempting to lie in repose will twist and sweat as if undergoing calisthenics. You have experienced this as well as I—that is certain—but though you know now that you are not alone in this, that does you little good when you are the one tossing sleeplessly. Now you know how I felt when I awoke early that morning, worried with war, romance, and my doubts over my own personal value to humankind.
I will tell you this: there is no sense in lying about in your own self-pity and wallowing in your own bed of anxiety. Get up! Wash the dishes. Organize the clutter. Fold the linens. Sweep the floor. Write a letter. Stack the wood. Light a fire and look around. You'll find what needs doing.
Me? Luckily, I had horses to ride, so I rose from my pallet
and pulled on my clothes. It was still dark, but I lit a candle, made my breakfast, and gathered my tack.
Of the twenty horses I had brought from Comanche country, only two had been ridden when acquired from the Indians, and even they were green. In order to get top dollar for these mounts, I had spent many a long day training them at William's stockade. Actually, the money meant less to me than the pride I took in training a horse that would neither fear nor hate a man, but would partner up with a rider and carry him with willingness and dignity. Initially, I had broken them the Indian way, riding them in deep water, mud, or sand. This tired the horses quickly, and I could work several horses in a day if I stayed at it hard enough.
Once each horse had been saddled three times and ridden the Indian way, I had started taking them on longer rides on solid ground. Each needed many a mile, so I could ride only two or three a day. My job was to make each horse responsive and obedient to the bit and the reins, and to pressure from my knees, heels, voice, and even the slightest variation in posture in the saddle.
To accomplish this, I had to repeat the commands and cues scores of times—turning, stopping, changing from walk to trot to canter—always with consistency. And I had to outlast the animal's resistance to my control, for most horses would test my ability to dominate them. A green horse with only its fourth or fifth saddle on might kick, paw, or rear even before the rider mounted. After I got aboard, the horse might buck, ramp, or bolt recklessly away—anything to get rid of me. I found all of this highly invigorating.
That morning, after my breakfast of leftover cornbread and beans heated over the coals of last night's fire—I decided to take on the least willing of the mounts I had been training, and confront her problems. She was a black-and-white pinto filly—not too pretty, but built for long rides. She was a true Indian pony of mustang blood, not some long yearling stolen from a Mexican ranch. Her head, which was too large for her body, sported a moose nose and eyes that walled white with suspicion and fear. Her neck tied in too high at the withers, and her tail set too low to suit me, but she was sound and could be made to ride.
It took some time to get the filly caught, bridled, and saddled, but finally I was ready to go.
I mounted, pulled her head to the right, touched her with my spurs, and got her to walk. Immediately, she tried to put her head down and buck, but I yanked her head back up and pulled her hard to the right to turn her in a tight circle. This was a method I had seen good trainers use among the Comanches and the Mexicans. A rider could usually exert his control over a pugnacious mount by pulling the animal's head around and making it turn in a small circle. This almost always daunted the animal and taught respect for the hard metal bit in its mouth.
Within a few minutes, I had the pinto filly trotting and cantering around the pen fairly well, though she constantly lurched and shied at nothing, and forever tested and protested. Whenever her protests became too disrespectful, I would muscle her head around this way or that, cut her in a small circle, and reassert my impression of control over her. Now she needed about two hours of hard riding at a steady trot and canter. I got down to open the gate and begin that very endeavor.
I had been so focused on this filly that I had lost track of almost everything else around me. So it was that I was quite surprised to look into the adjoining pen of horses to find Westerly throwing a saddle on one of the better horses in the bunch—a four-year-old bay gelding with a Mexican brand. This four-year-old was smart and agreeable and had been among the easiest to train. Westerly had chosen well, though I could not quite fathom why she was saddling one of my horses.
“What are you doing?” I asked, a smirk on my face.
“You have too many horses to ride. I want to help.”
“You don't have to. I will manage.”
“I want to. You have helped me learn. I want to do something in return.”
I smiled. The prospect of riding with Westerly was even more appealing than the thought of riding alone. “It is going to be a hard ride. These ponies need lessons.”
“I will help you teach them, as you have taught me. I can ride as hard as you.”
I opened the gate and got on the filly. It would be well to make the horses ride together for a change, I thought. Westerly
was opening her own gate and leading her bay gelding out. The bay had learned well, and did not protest much when she mounted. He hadn't bucked since the first time I saddled him. I nodded the crown of my hat toward the west, and we took off at a trot.
For three hours we rode the plains around Boggsville and William's stockade, trotting, loping, galloping; turning and stopping; crossing trickles of water and fallen logs in the Purgatory bottoms; introducing the horses to new experiences. For three hours we did not speak. We simply rode. Sometimes side by side. Sometimes one ahead of the other. For three hours we communicated with our smiles and our eyes. My filly jumped a jackrabbit once and almost bucked me off. Westerly laughed, then covered her mouth at my mock glare. On we rode, until our green mounts were lathered with sweat and holding their heads low in fatigue.
“I'm getting hungry,” I said.
Westerly smiled. “We can take these horses back and saddle two fresh ones. Then we can ride them to my lodge and tie them to the trees there. My sister and I will make some food. My sister's husband killed a stray buffalo yesterday. After we eat, we can ride the two fresh horses as we have ridden these this morning.”
“I would like that,” I said.
We rode on for another half-mile, both of us feeling comfortable in our silence.
“I am happy,” Westerly said then. “I am happy that my sister and I will go with you to trade with the Comanches.”
I nodded. “Yes. I am happy about that, too.” We rode until William's stockade came into view over the ridge. “Your father, Chief Lone Bear,” I said, leaving the comment half finished.
“Yes?”
“Where does he camp?” This was practically a wedding proposal, and we both knew it. If Westerly wanted to share a lodge with me, she would tell me where to find her father.
“Big Timbers,” she said, her eyes cast down toward the mane of the horse she rode. She glanced toward me, and smiled. “He goes there to collect the treaty gifts from the fort.”
I nodded. “I will go see him.”
By the time we rode into the stockade, we were both quite flushed. William happened to step from his house as we rode by to turn the tired horses into the corral. He watched us pass for a few seconds, then put his hands on his hips and shook his head. I could only shrug at him and smile.
 
 
A FEW DAYS later, I took seven green-broke horses to Chief Lone Bear and told him I wanted to marry his daughter. I told him that I could speak Cheyenne, that I could hunt and ride and fight, and that I would always see that Westerly and her family were taken care of. After he looked me and the seven horses over, he agreed.
I kept the bay gelding Westerly liked, to give to her as a wedding gift. For my own mount, I kept that hardheaded pinto filly. I don't know why. She didn't like me very much.
William chided me when I returned to the stockade. “You could've got top dollar for those horses from the army,” he said. “Now all you've got for all your work is a wife and a bunch of in-laws.”
Kit Carson was there, too, laughing and shaking his head stiffly. “You can't talk no sense into him, William. Just look at his face. That young man's love-struck.”
The ceremony was simple. Westerly's sister and the other women of Boggsville carried the bride to me on a blanket whose edges they all held. They eased her down to the ground in front of the porch to the Boggs cabin, where I was staying at the time. I came out of the cabin and Westerly rose to her feet to meet me at the bottom of the porch steps. John Prowers draped the blanket upon which Westerly had arrived around both our shoulders at once, and we went away to a lodge my new Cheyenne wife had raised up the Purgatory.
She was nervous that night. Cheyenne women prided themselves on remaining chaste until marriage. Westerly had rarely touched a man before, much less felt her bare breasts pressed against a man's chest as they pressed hot against mine. I treated her with all the patience and gentleness I had, and introduced her to many new pleasures I'm sure she never knew existed.
Later, in the faint moonlight that filtered in through the smoke hole of the tipi, she lay on her side, her body warm against mine, and for the first time stared long into my eyes, a faint, bewitching smile curling the very corners of her mouth as her fingers explored scars she found on my body.
B
urnt Belly let his open palm brush across the stalks of the cattails at the edge of Adobe Creek. “Ah,” he said. “Here is one.” He stooped and pulled the stalk from the creek bed, finding the root swollen with starch, ready for crushing into a fine white flour. He handed it to me to rinse. “Now,
you
touch the plants, and find another good one,” he said.
I tried to listen, but the stalks were not talking to me. Finally, I chose one at random, hoping for a lucky pick. “This one,” I said, wrapping my hand around the stalk. I pulled it, finding the rootstock conspicuously thin.
Burnt Belly laughed at me. “That one is not ready yet. You do not know how to listen.”
“I'm trying to listen, but I hear nothing.”
“Stop trying,” he replied. He tilted his head up the creek bank, urging me to follow him. He led me to a Yucca plant perched at the edge of the cutbank, its roots holding the soil together. “What do you feel from this plant?”
I wrapped my palm around one of the many bayonetlike daggers that protruded from the center of the plant. I shook my head, unable to feel it say anything to me. “I know that the fibers can be stripped and twisted into a strong cord. I know that the young bloom is good to eat in the spring. The new seed pods can be boiled and eaten.”
“You have seen the women use the plant in these ways. You are not feeling anything.”
“You told me to stop trying.”
“Do not
try.
Just listen.”
I must have been trying, because I didn't hear a thing from that blasted plant.
Burnt Belly frowned. With his first two gnarled fingers, he gently touched one of the daggers, stroking it, feeling the point. “The roots. She tells me the roots can be made into a tea that will ease pains in the joints of old people like me. You do not
hear
that?”
“Maybe I did not touch it in the right place.”
“It does not matter where you touch it! Come. Try this one.”
The old shaman led me to a weed growing up from a place where the creek bank had washed out. The weed stood three feet high. It had coarse stems and rough, misshapen leaves. I detected a slight acrid scent when I got close to the plant. Weary of my failures as a shaman, I absently reached out and touched the weed at the base of one of those flowers, and when I did, I felt a sudden pang that made me draw my hand back.
“Tell me,” Burnt Belly said. “Quickly.”
“She is dangerous.”
“Yes! Poisonous. Almost any part of this plant can kill you. It has been used to murder people. Now you hear, but you are only listening for danger. Listen for the good things, as well.”
“I will try,” I said.
“Do not try! Do. Know in your heart that you can hear the voices of the living things.”
I turned to the nearest plant—a willow tree. I already knew that the willow had many uses to the Indians. Like the yucca, a cord could be twisted and woven from strips of bark; children made whistles from tubes of bark carefully slipped off a stem; the inner bark was dried and ground into a flour; crushed roots were soaked in water and grease by vain warriors to prevent dandruff; tender willow leaves were used as a poultice on wounds and cuts. And as I placed my palm gently around a branch and let my thumb fall seductively into a fork of the branch, I faintly heard the willow speaking to my heart, trying to heal me and all of humanity with ancient medicine. It was confusing, for the willow seemed to have much medicine to offer. The voice of the tree buzzed like a beehive and mumbled like a friend trying to speak to me through a roaring wind. I
could not quite make out what she was trying to say. Then, a word or two came clear, but not so much a spoken word as an unpainted portrait of an idea.
My root, steeped in water, renders a cure for internal bleeding, and choking in the throat. My bark, made into a tea, relieves pain that comes with urination.
I wondered in amazement if I had really heard this, or if my mind had just concocted something out of desperation. I turned to the medicine man to tell him what I had heard, but I could tell by the pleased look on his face that he already knew. Just then, a boy's voice shouted from the village strung out along three miles of Bent's Creek, Adobe Creek, and the Canadian River. The boy was the camp crier, sent to spread the news of some important event. We were near enough to hear the boy shouting, but too far to understand his words.
“We must go back to the lodges,” Burnt Belly said. “Something is happening.”
 
 
WESTERLY AND I had been in camp with Kills Something's band of Quahadi Comanche for five months now. The trade for horses had proven highly profitable, for the Comanches were raiding a frontier the Confederacy could not protect, driving away thousands of fine mounts. Westerly and I would gather the horses here, and wait for the next trade caravan from William's stockade to bring things the Indians wanted in trade for the horses. In this way, horses from Confederate Texas became Union remounts.
Westerly and I lived in a cozy tipi that we had raised near Kills Something's lodge. We were completely satisfied with working the horses by day, reading to each other by firelight, and making love in our lodge after dark. She had become the perfect mate, partner, and lover, and I could only congratulate myself for having the good sense to take her for my wife, against the advice of my mentors in the Indian trade. I fell more in love with her every day.
In my spare time, I had begun to take some lessons from Burnt Belly on medicinal uses for plants, but the studies were
difficult because the old man wouldn't just teach me. He said the plants themselves would teach me, and constantly urged me to seek some kind of mystic level of wisdom I scarcely knew how to achieve. It seemed that I had discovered something important with the willow tree just now, only to be interrupted by the boy shouting in the village.
The old man and I walked out of the woods to the prairie that served as our campground, and saw what had caused the commotion. John Prowers had arrived with another string of trade wagons from William's stockade. Three canvas-covered Studebaker prairie schooners were sliding and crunching their way down into the Canadian Breaks a mile to the north, followed by a larger Conestoga pulled by six fine mules. Burnt Belly stopped and squinted at the sight, as I went over to Westerly who was waiting for me at our lodge door, a beautiful smile on her face. Her sister was coming, and we would enjoy brisk bouts of commerce for the next several days. I came to her and took her by the hand.
“I know you have missed your sister.”
“Yes, I have,” she admitted. She gently squeezed my hand and gave me a beautiful smile. Then she turned her eyes to the wagons that came lumbering toward camp behind teams of tired mules.
The appearance of the wagons and the announcement of the camp crier had stirred the peaceful village of hide lodges into an anthill of activity. Women dropped their chores and grabbed their children to greet the wagons. Old men who had been napping or making weapons emerged from their lodges. Warriors working with horses, and boys tending herds, galloped to the north to salute the trade wagons and all the good things they carried.
“Look!” Burnt Belly said, from where he had stopped to watch the arrival. “That boy rides with the speed of an antelope!”
I followed the medicine man's eyes to find the horse that streaked fastest across the grassy prairie toward the wagons. For a moment, the rider and mount disappeared behind the ruins of old Fort Adobe, then reappeared on the other side, seeming to have gained even more speed. The pony was a shiny black with a flowing tail and a mane that must have brushed the boy's face in the wind. Even at this distance of a half-mile
or more, I knew the rider was Quanah, the Fragrant One, son of the great Chief Peta Nocona and the white woman, Cynthia Ann Parker.
Quanah was fourteen now, and on the verge of manhood by Comanche standards. His first raid would soon come, and by the looks of the way he rode, he was ready. Mind you, I myself could ride in those days. I could hold my own against most of the warriors in races and feats of equestrian skill, for I had trained with them as an adopted member of Kills Something's band. So for a rider to fill me with awe was rare. Quanah, even as a boy, was such a rider.
As he charged toward the wagons, he threw himself first to one side of the horse, then the other. He whirled and sat the thundering black steed backward, his arms raised, his voice yelling, “Yee-yee-yee-yee!” loud enough to be heard all over the valley. He faced forward again and circled the first wagon at a speed that seemed impossible for a horse making such a tight circle. The antics of the horse and rider enlivened the mule teams, increasing the grind and rattle of the big wagons. They trundled to the north edge of camp and drew to a stop, with Quanah and other boys circling on fleet ponies.
Westerly ran to meet her sister, and I walked to the lead wagon, driven by John Prowers.
“How'do, Greenwood?”
“Fine, John. You?”
“Got here with my hair.” John watched Quanah ride away with the speed of a hawk. “Who is that kid on that black pony?”
“Chief Peta Nocona's son. His name's Quanah.”
“The one that's half white?”
“That's him.”
“Some rider. Even for a Comanche.” John climbed down from the wagon, clearly relieved to have his feet on solid ground. He pushed at the small of his back. “How's the mood here?”
“Good. The whiskey's all gone. I don't expect any trouble. How are things back at William's stockade?”
John frowned. “The wagons came from St. Louis. Word has it that William's boys, George and Charles, have joined the Confederacy.”
“Charles?” I said, remembering the little boy who had once ambushed me with a toy arrow. “He can't be more than fourteen.”
“Lied about his age.”
“Good Lord,” I muttered.
“Yeah, William's worried plumb silly. I've got a letter for you.” He reached into a vest pocket and produced an envelope folded twice to fit into the pocket. “I was told to protect this with my life, and burn it if I couldn't get it to you on time.”
I unfolded the letter and saw Kit Carson's name on it. Back at Boggsville, I had begun to teach Kit to read and write, but I didn't recognize the handwriting on the envelope as his. He had apparently gotten some soldier or clerk to pen this letter for him. I tore open the envelope and read the missive. It was rather formal, as I might have expected, having been dictated to a scribe. The gist of it was that Kit was practically begging me to join him with the New Mexico volunteers as a scout, scribe, and courier.
The great Kit Carson was calling me to arms. What man could refuse such a charge? My eyes stared at the page I had already read. I felt filled with everything from pride to sorrow. I looked up, straight into Westerly's eyes, though she stood some distance away at the next wagon with her sister. The smile melted from her face, and sadness filled her eyes. She sighed and forced herself to smile at me as if to say she understood. Then her eyes looked downward as she pretended to listen to some story Amache was telling, though the joy of her sister's arrival had drained from her heart.
The irony scalded. The very paper upon which the letter had been written seemed to strike my fingertips with lightning that jolted my soul like the bolt that had scarred Burnt Belly years ago. These consonants and vowels, verbs and nouns, sentences and paragraphs, the very things that had brought Westerly and me together, were now calling me away to war in a letter from an illiterate man.

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