Far Bright Star (5 page)

9

H
E CALLED FOR THEM
to follow and made a nicking sound and the Rattler broke for full gallop, hocks beneath, forehand lightened and body extended. The surge was instant and if he’d not called it up himself it would have left him sitting in the dirt.

The horse seemed to turn of its own accord into the canyon wall and down a long stony corridor overhung with cliffs. It was a giant space they were entering, but he knew it was not as it appeared. He knew they were being directed and it was by intention they were riding into this place and any slim hope for escape in the storm was gone.

To his right was a first outcropping of rock and then there was one to the left and behind it were armed men. Then the right wall began to rise and even more abruptly the left wall shot up from the desert floor and the corridor began to narrow. The trail twisted and wound among the rocks with high rock walls necking and rising overhead and seemed a strange, critical entrance into another world. The shadows deepened and joined as they continued into the funnel’s spout, the storm raging down its walls.

There would be no escape. They continued on into the canyon and the canyon walls closing on them, as if into an hourglass they were blown with the sand by the wind. He knew at the next turn or the next there would be no opening but a wall of stone, and no way out. He looked back with bewilderment into the storm of wind and sand. Where did it go wrong? What should he have seen that he did not see? He was angry with himself. Try as he might he could not have turned the advantage. If he’d attempted to break through they would have been shot to pieces. His only course was to hold off death as long as he could. He set his teeth.

By now there was not much left in man or horse. He’d held off as long as he could and he could not dwell on possibility any longer. It was time for the coming conclusions. Already the horses were tightening up, their loins and croups stiffening with agony after so extended and fast a trip they’d endured. Soon they would have difficulty moving and stop and collapse, or they would trip, or their legs would buckle and they’d go down, their eyes mystified by the dull hollows of pain.

Either wall would serve as a strong point, but the west wall would deepen first and shadow the longest. It was tumbled where boulders had fallen from its heights and strewn the desert floor. This was their best advantage. It was also their only one. He made his decision to anchor their thin line at the west wall and extend it out from there. They would hold this way as long as they could and then they would close on the strong point at the west wall and dig in.

Get closer to the ground, he told himself. Get under the storm.

He dismounted the Rattler horse while it was still moving and tried to gentle its shivering and trembling chest. Its hide was dark with sweat down to its flanks and withers, its mouth a torrent of white combings.

There was nothing left in any of the horses. They were blown and jaded and fogged from every ounce of flight wrung from within them. They’d gotten everything out of them they possibly could and truth be told they were broken and they would never be fit again. He commanded the Rattler horse to lie down at the center of his forming line and it did so promptly. The air began to crackle again and he saw a flicker and the flash of a spark and soon they were bathed in the glow of long blue lights again. Then his troopers emerged from a cloud bank of dust, riding knee to knee, and were so close he could hear the drumming of the horses’ lungs and they too were similarly lit in blue, their bodies made luminous and for the briefest moment they were as if firedrakes.

As the rest staggered in, one after another, rearing and plunging, trails of dust and sand devils catching up with them, he directed them into position. He did not give their green minds an inch of leeway. In one hand he held the Springfield and in the other he held bandoleers of clipped ammunition.

“Get them down,” he yelled. “Get them down,” and when Turner’s horse would not go down where he directed it, he stepped forward, unholstered his .45, and shot it through the ear.

“You killed him,” Turner said, his horrified words torn off in the ferocious wind.

“We kilt these horses two hours ago,” he said.

His blood was blunt and his voice clear and cold. He commanded Extra Billy to his right and to his left he placed Preston, Stableforth, and Turner in order. He posted Bandy at the wall by a steep declivity with sheltering rocks a short climb away.

There came a great cracking sound, as if a rifle discharged, and a horse screamed. He whirled on the sound, the Springfield at his shoulder. The gray Preston rode had broken a leg where it stood and fallen to the hard ground. Jagged white bone tore through the animal’s shoulder and stabbed out at the light. Without hesitating, he drew the muzzle of the .45 to the horse’s ear and ended its life.

“We have some work to do today,” he told them, as if what just happened hadn’t happened at all. “It will require some courage.”

He felt the heat flow emanating from his belly and a blood thrill traveling his arteries and returning veins. He called down his darker nature and was contemptuous of the awes and terrors of his history.

Then he told them, “I wouldn’t have no other company for it, not for all the tea in China,” and their spirits soared and they smiled and laughed for how businesslike he’d suddenly become and how much in that moment they loved him and feared him. His eyes caught the look and the smile on the boy’s face, the haunt in his eyes. He turned to Preston and looked into him. By Preston’s own account he’d already killed about one of everything that crawled, walked, slithered, flew, or swam. Except a man. He’d hunted, but he’d never hunted a man or been hunted by one. He knew he was anxious for his chance at distinction. Now it just might come.

On the ground at his feet the Rattler horse blew big sighs, making the creak of leather. He reached down with his knife blade and cut the horse’s bellyband and it sighed again with the release and stretched and pawed in the dirt. He kneeled down and touched the horse’s shoulder. It was fine and flat and in the Rattler’s eye he could see it knew his touch. This horse’s bones, tendons, blood, muscles, and nervous substance had given him all it had that day and now it lay in the dry crackling dust in blue flame ready to stop bullets for him.

He opened his tobacco pouch and took a mouthful. His life seemed strange and silent and deathlike to him. He experienced a certain looseness in mind and thought. His earliest memories were of riding in the saddle in front of his mother. His grandfather had fought in old Mexico with Thomas Jackson and so too his father and now it would kill him and these men with him and this fine horse that lay at his feet.

He thought, It will require courage to die, and launched a brown smear of tobacco juice into the sand in response to his own thinking.

After the storm came a deep suspended silence and the dust it raised softened the horizon.

The day’s protracted light was diminishing. The east wall painted red and gold and the west wall deepened in shadow. Present time was fading. Soon it would be dark and darkness would favor them. This day’s distance did not amount to much in actual miles, but they’d been turned so many times he’d lost track of their immediate location. He wondered if there was a possible conclusion without consequence, a conclusion without truth or meaning. He didn’t try to answer his wondering questions.

The weaving channels of dust blew away, the light wavered and behind it, somewhere, the orient sun was a ball of fire burning out the western sky and in the distance before him there were riders and they were coming out of that slant sunlight.

10

H
E TOOK THEM
to be a stray band of Villistas, soldaderas, broken and maimed Dorados, the shock cavalry who charged willingly and with such elan at the battles of Celaya and Agua Prieta and were mowed down by the Maxims and thrown onto the barbed-wire entanglements where they experienced slow and potting deaths.

Of the men and women, the women were always the hardest of the band. They knew what the men knew but they also knew what the men would never know. They knew hard work and hunger, but they also knew childbirth and they knew the death of those children. They knew rape and the death of their men. They knew hatred and no one returns hate like a woman.

They were armed with a variety of Winchester and Remington carbines and rifles and some carried Mausers and all manner of bladed weapons: knives, swords, and machetes. If indeed they were Dorados, they would attack. They always attacked.

Napoleon was kneeled and readied, awaiting the furious onslaught. But then he stood and faced his men. He stood straight as a ramrod, the stock of the Springfield tucked to his right side and the weight of it riding in the crook of his arm. The new men had not had the occasion to see him in battle and they were braced by what they saw.

“Gentlemen,” he said, turning to face them. “We have discovered the enemy,” and at this they laughed.

He wasn’t scared. It wasn’t that he was brave or smart or stupid; it was just it wasn’t worth a damn to be scared. Being scared killed you again and again before you died from what finally killed you. At least that’s what the poets and the old heads had to say on the subject. He lifted the field glasses. He recognized one of the men as the horse trader who was speaking to his brother that morning.

“What is your thinking?” Stableforth called out.

“I think pr’aps it could be time for us to die.” At this they laughed again.

“Right now?” Stableforth asked.

“Pretty near,” he said. Having been outwitted and out-flanked he understood how consequential his mistakes.

“Can we not do anything about it?”

“It’s too late.”

“Why?”

“It just is. If they pass against us, we lose,” and this time, if they thought him funny, they did not laugh.

“It looks like we have gone and gotten ourselves into a pickle,” Extra Billy chuckled.

He turned away from his men to face their pursuers. He lifted the field glasses and studied them again as he awaited their onslaught. He found the one woman and far distant he found the other. But they did not attack. They gathered within gunshot range and seemed to be deciding what to do. Although they had the overwhelming advantage, he trusted they knew they would pay a fearful toll in uprooting their fixed position.

“Now what’s entered your mind?” Stableforth called out.

The trouble right now, he thought, is that there is no trouble.

Napoleon watched them intently as they held their council. He could not divine what their game was. They fought or they did not fight. It was not like them to play around this way. Patience in battle was not one of their traits and the reason their ranks were so winnowed. They struck and they struck hard. He stepped out in front of his thin line of men and then raised a hand and stopped. He waited and they made the sign that they would talk.

Three riders came forward and he walked out to meet them. One of them, the horse trader, stopped and then it was two that came forward, a man and a boy. The man wore the gold insignia of the Dorados. He was an old man and wore an eye patch and silver conchas adorned his belt. There were so few of these men left in their ragged uniforms, their dirty Stetsons, their ranks broken and diminished by their audacious method of battle.

The boy was an American. He wore leather cuffs and batwing chaps buckled up the backs of his legs. He wore a vest and beneath his vest he wore an orchid-colored shirt with a placard front. A silk bandanna was knotted at his neck. Napoelon figured him a swamper on some remote and desolate ranch living alone in a line shack and fed up with the life and come south to seek his fortune. The boy had sharp clean features and maybe at one time a sweetness of nature, but in his face his eyes were those of a schemer and this he could not mask.

“I would speak a word with you,” the boy said.

“How’s wages?”

The boy leveled on him with a flat stare. His cheeks and lips reddened and his head suddenly seemed uncomfortable on his neck. The boy wasn’t much older than Bandy, but already he was ruined.

“I know my price,” the boy said.

“It’s some bloody business you’ve taken up,” Napoleon said, but he felt no particular hatred for the boy.

“That ain’t none of your business,” the boy said.

“I was just asking.”

“I follow myself,” the boy said.

The man said something to Napoleon and made a gesture, pointed to the .45 he wore in his shoulder rig. Napoleon knew some words in their language but he would not speak them. The man was interested in how the harness was strung that carried his holster. He then unholstered his own .45 and held it out. Its grips were inlaid with mother-of-pearl. He wanted Napoleon to take it in his hands and hold it and admire it.

“Very nice,” he said, nodding his head, and the man nodded his head, pleased with their agreeing. Napoleon admired the inlay and sighted down the barrel. Then he returned it to the man who was still nodding.

“It ain’t what you think with me,” the boy said.

“I have eyes to see.”

“Maybe you ain’t seen what I seen.”

“Maybe I ain’t,” he said. “Maybe I seen worse.”

“If you’re waiting for me to fall down on my knees and beg your forgiveness, it ain’t going to happen. I ain’t going to beg you. There’s nothing you have that I want from you.”

“I don’t want anybody begging.”

“That’s good because I have begged all my life. Begged men and begged God and begged the land.”

“Who are they?”

The boy looked back over his shoulder at those he represented and then back at him.

“They are their own selves,” he said.

“What do they want?”

“They want him, the tall one,” the boy said, pointing with his slow unmoving finger at the position in their line held by Preston.

“Him? What do they want him for?”

“I don’t know.”

“Ransom?”

“That’s what I’d do.”

“I can’t see myself doing that.”

“I already told them you wouldn’t.”

“Tell them I ain’t giving up nobody to them.”

“Like I said. I already told them.”

“Then tell them again,” he said, and turned and walked away from them.

He had little doubt the boy was capable of shooting him in the back, but he did not think he would do so. The boy answered to others and he took him to be realizing he’d gotten in over his head when he signed on with the company he traveled in. His life would be a short one.

“What do they want?” Stableforth asked.

“Surrender,” he barked.

“What are we going to do?”

“Not surrender,” he said with all serenity.

He did not know if it were now to die, but like the ancient Greeks they would man their small citadel of wind-guttered rocks and congregated sands. They would stand and hold to the end. There was no alternative.

He went to the wall where Bandy was positioned in the rocks. The boy’s eyes were enormous and filled with ghosts. He was gripping his collar and his thumb was in his mouth. A band of white freckled skin showed at his throat.

Napoleon thought to explain their situation but knew how long the explanation would have to be before the boy understood. It needed to be understood by instinct and even with time he knew the boy was incapable of acquiring all that was necessary. He knew how grave and that was enough. Whether or not he’d do as he was told, that was another matter. He took the boy’s rifle as if to inspect it.

“Have you quit yourself?” he asked him so only he could hear.

“I’m praying.”

“What are you praying for, or can’t you tell me?” He spoke softly to the boy lest he should come unstrung and fly away in pieces.

“Prayers ain’t wishes,” Bandy said, and began to hiccup.

“Then you can tell me?”

“Peace and quiet,” Bandy said, trying to arrest the spasms. “I’m praying for peace and quiet.”

“I sometimes wonder if heaven is open to our kind. Do you have any thoughts on that you’d want to share?”

“They’ll take you,” he said. “They take everyone.”

“They don’t sound too particular,” he said. “I don’t know if I’d want to be in such company as that.”

To this, Bandy’s face colored and he smiled, an emotion suspended in time and then he asked, “What’s going to happen?”

“I think things could get bad very soon,” he told him.

“What are they going to do?”

“Well, there’s going to be some noise real quick and then we are going to be in trouble.”

He held the boy’s attention with gentle eyes the boy had not seen before. He spoke quietly, softly, adamantly. In almost a whisper he told him if he saw an opportunity he was to go up that wall and over the top without being seen. He was to run some but not far and then he was to burrow down inside the earth and rock and hide until the stars came out and even then he was to wait a good long time. From his trouser pocket he removed the compass and handed it to the boy. He told him to follow the needle north by northeast.

“Don’t look up,” he said sharply. He did not want anyone to see him do that and draw conclusions. “It ain’t easy, but I have already looked up there and I know it can be done. I know you can do it.”

“What about you?”

“If I am not back before you then you will come look for me.”

“Yessir.”

“Don’t let me down.”

“Nossir,” the boy said, and with his swollen mouth he made a crooked grin.

Then he returned to the boy his rifle. The boy nodded and Napoleon let him back into the rocks where they would all close after the first skirmish.

“Don’t kill no one yet,” Napoleon told them when he returned from the wall.

“I will if I can,” Turner said.

“No you won’t,” he said. “You will god damn kill when I tell you to god damn kill and not before.”

Then they waited.

His concern was not that these men would shoot, but that they wouldn’t shoot when the time came. Getting a man to shoot another man, however much he was threatened, was not a thing you took for granted. If men could kill with their mouths, there would be a lot of dead, but when it came to pulling the trigger on another man, Napoleon had seen men stare in awe as they were run over and slaughtered.

He kneeled on one knee in the sand, the Springfield resting in the cradle of his arms. He could hear the separable sounds of their gathering in the silence. The deal was he could give up one man and save four. Given the circumstances, it was a good deal. But how could he trust the deal and if the deal was trustworthy, who would ever trust to ride with him again?

Eventually we all die, Napoleon thought. Sooner or later, what does it matter? The moment of death is not important. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He told them there’d be a show, there was always a show, and to keep their heads down. At that correct moment a confirming bullet cut the air above him and then he heard the all but silent report of the distant gun. From long distance, a desultory fire began. He knew if they wanted him dead they would have shot him by now.

The Rattler horse raised its head and eyed him. It sneezed, convulsing its body and then it lay back down and blew a gust of breath scattering the sand and grit at its nostrils.

Another bullet passed him by. There is a sound a bullet makes when it cuts through the air. It’s a zip that sings and whoops and each is different. That one was a Spitzer, a round fired from a Mauser. Napoleon knew because he had heard them before. To hear them you have to be very close. Having been that close, close enough to hear, he never forgot what he’d heard.

“Those bastards,” Turner said.

“Keep your god damn heads down or you’ll stop one for sure.”

“But the bastards are shooting at us.”

“You are not being shot at personally,” he told the man. He could not remember when he stopped hating those who were trying to kill him. After all, he was trying to kill them too. He’d abandoned hatred somewhere on the plains of Montana or the jungles of the Philippines. He wasn’t sure, but no matter, it wasn’t good to hate. It always seemed to get in the way of doing the job, always seemed to take more than it ever gave back, always seemed to get the hater killed sooner than he otherwise might have been killed.

Time passed with sporadic and errant fire but without any sign of them. He cast an expectant look in their direction and as if called forth they suddenly appeared. Riders shook out and began working their way in. They paused to fire and then moved closer. They were not in a killing mood. There was something they wanted and would rather not die in getting it. He set his jaw and held his position. Keep a good heart, he told himself, an eye full of light. Show no fear. Be free of dangerous passion. Let nothing confuse the natural instinct toward violence.

The skirmishers moved closer, a Dorado on a magnificent white horse out in front. He wore pistols at his waist and rode in a graceful position, as if standing upright in his seat. The hilt of a saber showed from a scabbard on the right of his saddle. He wore cartridge belts strapped across his chest. That he was holding himself and his horse in reserve was clear to see. The horse was uncommon and he could not help but admire it, the arched neck, the swing of the back, the flexion and extension of the hindquarters. The horse moved as if touching the earth was not necessary, but pleasure and whimsy, as it danced from one diagonal to the other.

Kill the brave one, he thought, and let the others go home. The mere presence of his death in the ranks would sew discontent and they would learn fear.

The men who rode with the Dorado spread out to fill the canyon ground but followed close behind. Their horses were compact, not tall and leggy like his but full form and set low on their legs. Their pace was that of a forced walk. The men shot across their horses’ necks but placed their shots so as not to kill. They plowed the earth and chipped stone and flattened their lead against rocks and ledges. The bullets hissed by like spit into a fire, and still he did not move his exposed position.