by Aaron Gwyn
Then why is your heart galloping? Why do you tremble?
Do it, the voice inside her wheezed. Cut him quick and deep.
She tightened her grip on the knife handle, angled the blade along her thigh. Should she stab him or should she slash him? She watched the light flicker across his pulsing throat, arguing with herself.
When he spoke, it startled her so badly she nearly dropped the knife.
“What is it?” he said.
She stood there. She didn’t think he could see the knife, but she tucked the blade farther behind her leg.
“Did you hear something?” he asked, though he didn’t make any attempt to get up. His eyes were like pools of blue light. She could stop them from ever shining again.
“What do you want with me?” she said.
He didn’t say anything, just lay there staring up.
“Must you own my body to become someone? Am I the start of this for you?”
He blinked a few times. The firelight flickered.
He began speaking in a low voice, almost a whisper. It was never his intention to own anyone.
“It was not your intention, but what did you take me for? Why did you steal me from that man?”
“I never planned it,” he said.
Her frustration with his answer felt like it would split her skull.
“Here I am, Samuel, whatever you intended. You say I’m free, but where is the proof of it? I won’t be someone’s property. I won’t live that way again.”
He closed his eyes and said: “I saw you that day, being pulled down the street. I didn’t know what I was going to do about it, but I couldn’t let it be. I asked a man, and he told me where you’d be offered for sale. I loitered around, and then a few days later, there you stood.”
He’d said all of this before. She was getting nowhere. She’d end up opening his throat just to keep him from talking.
He told her how sad and lovely she’d looked. He started to nudge his way through the crowd, but by then they’d led her away.
“I asked someone what’d happened to you, and this one man pointed to that dandy and said, ‘He’s what happened, mister.’”
So, Samuel had approached this man—Childers, she reminded him.
“Childers,” Sam said. “And I asked the same question you put to me.”
“Which?” she said.
“What he meant to do with you. He looked at me like he didn’t know what I was talking about. By the time we got back to where they had you, it was all picking up speed, didn’t seem like there was any price—”
“And then you took me,” she said. “You say I can go anywhere I like, but here I am with you. It doesn’t matter if you paid twelve hundred dollars or no dollars at all. Don’t you see that?”
He stared up at her. He had no idea how close he was to getting murdered.
Then he rolled off the pallet, stepped over to the table, pulled out the little drawer in it, and removed a folded sheet of paper. He walked back to the pallet, handed it to her, then lay back down.
“There,” he said, as if this settled everything.
She didn’t need to unfold it. She knew what it was.
It was such an odd thing, holding the deed to yourself. She’d never seen such a thing before, much less held it, and she had the sense that reading it would only make it more powerful.
“What do you mean for me to do with this?” she said.
“You can do whatever,” he said, and there was a despair in his voice. “You want me to chaperon you into Mexico, I’ll chaperon you into Mexico.”
“You’d do that?” she said.
“I’ll take you anywhere you want. Lord took everbody ever meant anything to me, so why wouldn’t He take you too?”
She shook her head. It is always the Lord with these people. They can’t see they are the ones.
She was about to tell him this when a thought presented itself. It made her feel very strange.
But then she was moving, inching toward the fire, watching Samuel all the while. The light flickered in his eyes, and she bent over and set her bill of sale on the coals. It caught instantly, tongues of orange flame curling up the corners—like a spider shriveling—but still he lay there, his eyes sad or hopeful, she couldn’t quite decide. Her hands were still shaking. She’d forgotten she still held the knife, and now Sam nodded to it.
“Did you feel like you needed to kill me?” he said.
“I don’t know,” she told him. “I don’t know what I thought. If I am to live here, it will be because I truly choose it.”
“Yes,” he told her. “Because you choose.”
DUNCAN LAMMONS
—TEXAS, 1844—
’44 was another bad Indian year, though the next one would be even worse. I’d been hearing of Captain Jack Hays for a while now, and that winter I finally met the gentleman, a short, spare man who looked more like the barrister he’d been than the fearsome Indian fighter folks remember.
I have heard it said that the Rangers never had much difficulty dealing with the Comanche, but I am here to tell you that we had quite a lot. The ranger companies were bested by them again and again. A good deal of the credit goes to the courage and horsemanship of that tribe, but there is a share that can rightly be attributed to the sheer idiocy of our tactics. The Texians had defeated the Mexican army by relying on the rifled musket, so when it came time for us to fight horse Indians, we fell back on that trusted weapon.
And that was our mistake. You cannot fire a long rifle from horseback, and you certainly can’t reload one in the saddle. Early scrimmages all had a murderous similarity. The rangers would encounter a war band on the plains, dismount, stake their horses, and then prone out on the ground with their rifles. Putting a ball through a target you don’t know the exact distance of is no easy thing but doing so on a moving target is nigh unto impossible. And the Comanches were a target that did not just move: they swung and zagged about at a gallop, nimble as dancers, sometimes shifting to the offside of their painted ponies and using them for cover.
The Texans would fire a volley with the Indians wheeling out of range, and then, as they set about reloading, the Comanches would close the distance quicker than any white man ever dreamed, and ride right over the anxious Anglos. Entire companies were rubbed out this way, with bow and lance and club. On seeing a band of Comanche on the prairie, I used to turn and tell my troopers, “Any man dismounts, I will shoot him myself.”
All of that changed in ’43 when a peculiar piece of weaponry fell into the hands of Jack Hays. A northern ne’er-do-well by the name of Samuel Colt had managed to produce a five-shot revolver at his factory in Paterson, New Jersey. These days, it is all Sam Colt this and Sam Colt that, but I’d remind such talkers that when the man manufactured that first batch of pistols, he could scarcely give them away. I don’t think he made more than a thousand. Somehow, he gulled the United States army into buying these, but the army considered the weapons too temperamental for service, could not contrive a use for them, and they in turn unloaded the bulk of the guns on the short-lived Texas Navy, thinking they’d rooked our Republic into buying so many paper weights.
When General Houston disbanded the Navy, those pistols found their way to Jack Hays and his rangers, and that shrewd man saw what others hadn’t—here was the weapon that would end the threat.
And so, we began to hear how Captain Jack took the fight to the enemy. Each of his troopers were armed with two Colt pistols, and whenever they encountered a Comanche war band, the brave captain would order his rangers to charge. If the men in his company thought better of it, they kept it to themselves, though there were surely some who reckoned that anyone who’d charge mounted Comanches on the open prairie was a fool.
But they were too afraid of Hays to say so, and the captain led them toward the Indians at a gallop, telling them not to
discharge their pistols until they were riding among their foe. The Comanche, expecting they were about to collect a fine crop of vouchers from these white fools, rode right into the Texans, whereupon ole Jack issued his famous orders, “Powder burn’em, boys!”
Well, the Indians had never seen firearms that did not have to be reloaded after every shot, and each ranger let loose five rounds quick as he could cock the hammers and squeeze. Those braves rode into a curtain of death, the rangers not losing a single man in that engagement, and thus the tactics of the ranging companies were changed forever, and the course of our Republic’s history as well.
Two of these Colt Patersons came into my possession, and as I was the captain with the most terms of service at the time, I was able to procure a pistol for each of my troopers. I was seldom sober in those days, and with a courage born of corn liquor, we rode against the Comanche, and Apache, and the Caddo, and any other poor devils we happened across. My entire impulse in those days was to ride and shoot and drink. I told myself I was doing service to the Republic I’d fought to establish. Encountering the hot swarm of our pistol balls, the Indians moved west, and the line of settlement with them. New territory opened, land that months earlier no one dared venture into, as the ranging companies pushed the Indians toward the sunset.
* * *
We were camped one starless night just north of Austin, when our scout, Isaac Casner, came trotting in, circled the main fire and began calling for help. Uncle Isaac was a plump man who tipped the beam at two hundred pounds and was not easily spooked. Up to just that moment, I’d hadn’t seen him spook at all.
I’d been sitting on my bedroll, visiting with Juan as had become my custom of an evening. I stood up and cleared my throat.
“Over here, Isaac. What’s the trouble?”
He walked his horse over and when he got close I saw an arrow protruding from the animal’s flank.
“Captain,” he said, “I think we’re fixing to get ambushed.”
Hearing this intelligence, I ordered the fires doused and the horses brought in. The troopers began to rouse and see to their weapons and soon we were gathered in an enormous ring, ready to fight or flee, whatever was required.
“What happened?” I asked Isaac.
Isaac said, “I was out on yon ridge when I seen shadows moving in the grass and then that arrow hits Little Billy.”
McClusky, who had begun to consider himself an expert on the Indian, said, “What kind were they, Ike? Waco? Comanche?”
“I don’t know,” Isaac said. “I never stopped to ask. I took off riding and here I am.”
It wasn’t like the Comanche to loose an arrow before they had stampeded your mounts and it wasn’t like them to miss a rider and hit his horse. Horses were a currency for them, and to some bands they were outright family.
We spent the night waiting for our camp to be overrun and by the time morning rolled round, our nerves were frayed and we were jumpy as cats.
Or most of us, anyway. When the sky paled, I looked over and saw that Juan had lain down at some point and gone to sleep.
I walked over and toed him with my boot.
“You get a good rest?” I said.
“Muy bien,” he told me, smiling.
“That’s good. You feel up to a little Indian fighting this morning, or would you rather sleep a little more?”
“I am at your service, Captain. What would you have of me?”
Well, I wasn’t entirely sure. I wondered whether we ought to just let the previous night’s attack go unanswered. A certain type of man might have thought Uncle Isaac had gotten off rather cheaply. But as the purpose of our company was to stop depredations before they occurred, I decided we’d best go take a look.
And so, I made one of the worst decisions of my captaincy—perhaps of my life. Which is saying something: it is a long, lurid list.
“What do you think?” McClusky asked.
“Well,” I said, “I reckon we ought at least ride out and see how the cat jumps.”
Which suited the Irishman just fine. Course, he didn’t need a reason to hunt Indians, would’ve killed any one of them for a fid of tobacco.
We debouched along a cattle trail that led up through the scrub. The ground was wet and you could see the narrow prints of prairie wolves, but the Indians we were looking for knew better than to ride over bare dirt when they didn’t have to and it took us the better part of the morning to cut their sign.
It was Juan who smoked them, finding the tracks of unshod ponies at the bottom of a gulch, then a twig stuck in the dirt with one of its forks pointing west—a sign the Comanche used to guide members of their band who’d fallen behind. We gathered round for a council of war. All agreed we were looking at Indians, but as to whether they were the same Indians who’d attacked Isaac, we were divided.
“It’s them,” said McClusky. “I’ve no doubt of it, Cap’n.”
Juan knelt in the grass, inspecting the tracks more closely. He looked up at me. “I do not know,” he said.
“I do,” said McClusky.
Juan shook his head. “They might belong to many riders.”
“But white ones,” said McClusky. “What Christian rides a barefoot horse?”
“Could it not be Apache?” Juan asked.
McClusky snorted. “You’ve no more sense than a little nigger with a big navel. There’s not an Apache north of the Colorado. The Comanche cleared them out ages ago.”
I stood listening to them bicker, staring at the ground. I was unsettled for reasons that were mysterious to me, then and now, and should have broke off and led everyone back to camp. But in those days my greatest fear was not showing my troopers courage and a willingness to pursue the enemy.
So, whoever the tracks belonged to, we followed them the rest of the day.
It was long about the shank of the afternoon when we saw two riders sitting their horses in a cedar grove, two hundred yards out. I fetched up and the men stopped on either side of me. The Indians—for Indians they were—sat there studying us. We studied them right back.
I looked over at Isaac. “You see anyone you recognize?”
“I don’t know, Captain. I never got a look at the man. Those are likely his cousins, though.”
“Doesn’t seem to me like these boys are on the prod,” Levi said.
As he spoke, eight more Indians emerged from the woods, their painted ponies blending with the trees behind them so that their riders seemed to hover above the earth.
“Not on the prod, my arse,” McClusky said. His sneer would’ve cut through marble.
“Cap,” said Levi, “What are they doing?”
“Making me nervous,” I said. “Hush and let me think.”
But the Indians did nothing else, and as they’d yet to make a hostile demonstration, I was reluctant to initiate one myself. I was about to suggest we move to higher ground when all ten riders turned their horses and, slick as a whistle, began walking back to the tree line. And once they’d done so, I saw what I’d been unable to see before: each horse bore two riders on its back. Our foe had doubled right in front of our eyes and I was suddenly very proud of my indecision; we’d been outnumbered and hadn’t known it.
“We’re just going to let them mizzle on us?” Levi said.
“You bet we are,” I said. “In case you hadn’t noticed—”
I was interrupted by the sound of a gunshot. My horse started and when I got control of her, I looked over and saw McClusky lying in the grass with his rifle to his shoulder, a blue cloud drifting over him. I glanced back toward the Indians and saw several of the men had dismounted and were kneeling round a brave that McClusky had blown down.
The Irishman stood and began measuring out powder, just as casual as could be.
My hat felt too tight for my head. I was so angry I was shaking. I booted my horse over and st
ared down at him.
“You fool!” I barked. “Those men offered us no threat.”
He just shrugged. “We’ll be fighting them sooner or later, Cap’n. And I for one vote for sooner.”
“You have no vote,” I told him. “I ought to have you whipped.”
“For what?” he said.
I started to tell him exactly what for, but then Levi got my attention.
“Cap,” he said, “look yonder.”
I looked. Nine of the Indians were approaching at a lope, and following behind them, seven braves on foot bearing lances. There had been a few hundred yards between us, but quick as you could blink, the riders covered half that distance. I thought if these weren’t Comanches they were doing an awful fine impersonation.
“Be Jaysus,” McClusky said, and the smug warrior from several moments before had vanished like smoke.
I had been in enough fights over the years to know the advantage an attacker had. Once I knew a snarl was unavoidable, I had one rule and that was to be first: first to fire a volley, first to order a charge. You wanted to avoid a posture of defense at all costs.
These types of scrimmages were won or lost in a heartbeat, and in the time it took for my heart to kick the wall of my chest I saw our whole strategy go completely to blazes. The men grabbed their rifles and began to dismount—they seemed to have forgotten the new revolvers stuck in their belts. Besides me, the only man still in his saddle was Juan, all the others were already on their knees drawing aim with their muskets. One gun went off. Then several more. They’d failed to lead their targets, of course, and they’d missed them, of course, and Indians went wheeling around our flanks, four riders one way, five the other, and in a matter of seconds we were in a ring of shouting enemies. There was no immediate danger from those circling to our right—they were merely cutting off the possibility of our escape and couldn’t use their bows from that side—but the four Indians moving left of us began popping arrows into our little band, holding their bows level with the horizon, calm as saints in a cemetery.
I yelled for the men to mount their horses, but they didn’t hear. Jimmy Elkin dropped to his knees with an arrow jutting from his throat. Then Tom Cunningham went down.