All God's Children

by Aaron Gwyn

  “Colonel,” I said, “they’ve always acquitted themselves well. I’ve never known them to steal. I don’t know what they’ve been up to the last few days, but if they’ve disobeyed an order, I’d say it’s out of character.”

  Hays nodded. His eyes wandered around the room. He’d been a lawyer before coming west. Perhaps he’d be one again.

  “Captain,” he said, “let’s you and me speak in private.”

  * * *

  When I stepped back into the hall, all the rangers were gone except for Juan, McClusky, and the grizzled man assigned to guard them.

  I walked over, dismissed this gentleman, and waited for him to get out of earshot. I turned and looked at Juan.

  “The colonel is discharging you from service,” I said. “You and Felix both. He wants you out of Monterrey pronto and on the trail north. You can keep your arms and horses.”

  “Tonight?” said McClusky.

  “Tonight,” I said.

  McClusky said, “We’ll rendezvous in Bastrop then?”

  I looked at him. “What rendezvous?”

  “Our company,” he said. “Where do you want us to reform? If we head out tonight and you all light out tomorrow, we’ll lose track of one another for a few weeks, at least.”

  I shook my head. “There’s no more company. Not for you and him. You’re discharged from service altogether. If you try and muster into another troop back home, your life won’t be worth dog’s meat.”

  “They’d keep us from signing on, Cap’n?”

  “They’ll hang you,” I said.

  Juan just stared at me. I couldn’t tell how much of what I said was registering.

  “How do they expect us to find for ourselves?” McClusky said. “Are we supposed to go live with the savages?”

  “I don’t know,” I told him. “But for the nonce, you and him need to saddle your horses and jump up some dust. The time for palaver is done.”

  Juan had already turned away, but McClusky just stood there.

  “Cap’n,” he said, “this ain’t right.”

  “I understand you feel that way. But ever since you’ve been down here, the two of you have been standing in your own light. You have to know that.”

  Of course, you could take one look at him and see he didn’t know it. By his way of thinking, he’d conducted himself as cleanly as you could ask for and it occurred to me that perhaps he and Juan would ignore Hays’s new order like they’d ignored his previous ones and I’d have to stand by and watch as they were executed.

  But then he turned and started for the door. The sadness of the whole affair finally hit me and I knew I would be seeking a bottle that night. There just wasn’t any way around it.

  So far, it had been McClusky who’d protested; Juan hadn’t spoken a word. The two of them reached the doorway and were starting through, when Juan turned back and said, “What about our headrights, Captain?”

  It was a question I’d have expected McClusky to ask.

  “There’s not going to be any land payment, Juan. You defied the colonel and wouldn’t speak a word to defend yourselves. Jesus—headrights? You’re lucky to have a head.”

  He glared several moments at me out of his dark, brown eyes. I found myself wishing I hadn’t dismissed the guard.

  Then he turned and walked out the door and the two of them went off into the night.

  CECELIA

  —TEXAS, 1846—

  And so, Lammons went to Mexico and left her Sam alone. She knew the man might die down there, but the more she thought about it, she wasn’t sure she cared.

  “Can you not see it?” she asked him one day. “The way he looks at you?”

  Sam was working on the cabin. It’d been several weeks since Lammons left and Sam was fidgety as a spider. He was convinced the Kiowa would ride against them. Or that the Comanche would launch raids into Bastrop County. They rarely ventured east of the Balcones Escarpment anymore, but now that the ranging companies had headed south to join the army there was nothing between the settlers and Indians but cedar logs and chinking. Sam seemed bent on turning their little cabin into a fortress. He’d taken the door off its frame and fixed it to swing outwards so no one could kick it in.

  “Course,” he said, “they could always just fire the dratted thing. This cedar burns up awful quick.”

  He’d ignored her question. She walked outside and sat with Robert on her lap, watching Sam work. He was opening the door back and forth on its hinges, shaking his head doubtfully.

  “Are you listening to me?” she asked.

  “I’m listening.”

  “What did I say?”

  “You were talking about Duncan.”

  “Yes. About the way he stares at you.”

  “That’s just the way he is,” Sam said.

  “I know it’s how he is. That is my point.”

  He began stomping at the dirt until he’d kicked loose a stone the door was catching on its new path.

  “Well,” he said, “he’s not staring at me now.” He turned and made his wolf face at Robert, snarling his nose up and curling his fingers into claws.

  “Woooooooooooooolf,” he growled.

  Robert began to squeal with delight.

  “Wus!” he shrieked, and Sam reached down, grabbed the boy, tickling him and howling.

  Sam wouldn’t hear a single word against Lammons.

  And why not? She understood the man had been his captain, but Sam had no captain now.

  “Do you not know that?” she asked him the following day.

  “I know that,” he said.

  “And he’s not your family either.”

  “I never said he was.”

  “We are your family,” she said.

  * * *

  Sam could hardly sit still. It was one thing after another: first the door, then a new bullet mold, then he went into Bastrop and returned with a second rifle.

  One morning, she woke to find him out in the yard, splitting lumber to cover up her window.

  She stood in the door watching him a while.

  “Samuel,” she finally said, “I enjoy to see the sunrise.”

  He turned and looked up at her like she was speaking Dutch. “You can come out to see the sunrise.”

  “I like to see it as I cook. And we’ll have to burn our lamp or candles during the day to even see by. What’ll that tax us?”

  He stood there very still. He always got still when he was thinking. His eyes went unfocused.

  Then he said, “Fair enough.”

  He contented himself with building shutters on the inside of the window that could be closed up and barred. She was glad she’d be able to watch the world while she cooked, but she really wished he’d settle down; he was making her nervous. Ten years they’d lived here and no Comanches had attacked. Two summers ago, fetching water from the creek one morning, she’d been kneeling on a shelf of sandstone, filling the bucket, when she glanced over and saw an Indian watching her from the trees. She didn’t know if he’d been there the whole time or if he’d just crept up, but he was motionless as a statue, studying her out of his calm, curious eyes. She felt her heart speed up, but she wasn’t exactly frightened.

  “Hello,” she said.

  He said nothing back. His eyes blinked. She took the pail by its rope handle and began walking up the hill, thinking, Do not run. It is bad if you run. And when she reached the hilltop, she looked back and the man was gone.

  She never saw him again and she never mentioned the incident to Sam. He actually seemed to believe it was the Rangers keeping them safe, that men like Lammons were the only reason they’d been able to live in peace.

  She didn’t think that was true at all. She thought the Indians left them alone because they’d kept to themselves, though she’d never have been able to convince Sam
uel of that. He didn’t understand there was another way—the way of subterfuge—something she’d learned from Odysseus when she was just a girl.

  She was free this day because of trickery, not carnage, and she was grateful she’d never stained her soul with blood. Her freedom came from determination and cunning.

  But is that true? she wondered. It was the threat of violence that freed you, Sam cuffing that planter, Childers.

  I might’ve gotten away eventually. Childers might’ve made any number of mistakes.

  But that wasn’t what happened. Sam struck him so hard it knocked all notions of mastery from his brain. You are free now because of fear.

  And yet, if she hadn’t run from Haverford; if she hadn’t slipped out the window of that house in Natchez; if she hadn’t escaped the cotton plantation or strolled out the front door of that grocer’s home in Natchitoches she’d never have been sitting on that buggy next to Childers. Sam would never have been blocking the road with his big bay horse.

  So it was will and cunning and cruelty, all three. And perhaps a hundred other things combined.

  * * *

  Sam had once slept soundly, though he’d committed many vicious acts in the Revolution with Lammons—Lammons whose face was etched by the violence he’d done the Mex­i­cans, the Indians; that was another thing about that man: she’d never seen anyone so haunted. There was a time when she’d have thought Sam was exempt from all he’d done, that he was too simple a creature to be hounded by conscience. Was a mountain lion troubled when it pounced upon a deer?

  So, wasn’t it strange that, having laid aside his panther cap, that his sleep was troubled? Something was happening to him. He seemed to smell blood on the breeze, whereas she smelled nothing but cedarwood and sunlight, the clean scent of Robert’s skin after she scrubbed him down. Sam worked dawn to dusk and then went to pacing around the cabin. Or he stepped outside to check the sky. Or he woke in the middle of the night and sat with door open, his rifle on his lap.

  “Here,” she said when he kept getting up one night, “come to me.”

  She thought he’d argue with her, but instead, he crossed the room, stepped over Robert on his pallet, and lay down. She stroked his hair, brushed her fingers through his beard, slid her hand down and put it on his chest.

  He was a wild, sweet soul, the most beautiful man she’d ever seen. She loved him so hard she ached. He’d had to do many savage things to make it to this very moment, his head on her lap, heart beating under her hand, his blue eyes blazing up at her.

  “What is it?” she said. “What is it you think will happen?”

  He didn’t say anything. He closed his eyes.

  “Tell Suss, now. Or do you think it will scare me?”

  He gave a slight shake of his head.

  “Nothing’s going to happen,” she told him. “We’re safe out here.”

  When he opened his eyes, she saw they were wet.

  No, she thought. It is just the moonlight.

  But a tear left the corner of one eye and streaked across his cheek. She leaned down and kissed it, tasting the salt on her lips. She’d never seen him cry and it frightened her so she never wanted to again.

  He said, “We should have kept moving. Paw always said men were meant to hunt and move.”

  “We couldn’t live like that,” she said. “We wouldn’t have a family.”

  “The Comanches have families. They raid and hunt and follow the buffalo. For a hundred years, they’ve done it. And the Apache before them.”

  “We do not have a hundred years, Samuel.”

  “That is true,” he said.

  DUNCAN LAMMONS

  —TEXAS, 1846—

  We crossed the Rio north of Matamoros to find autumn waiting for us. On the American side of the river sat Fort Texas and here I bade farewell to Levi English, Uncle Ike, Joel Ramirez and the other fine boys who’d served under me, tendering my resignation to Colonel Hays himself.

  For every year of service with the Rangers I’d been given a handwritten voucher, each representing a quarter-league of land. Having taken Noah’s warning about property titles to heart, I’d traded most of those vouchers for horses or supplies, as did many rangers of that time—McClusky, for instance, handed several of his to ladies of the town, plying their avocation. Lord knew what they did with them.

  Now, needing a place to hang my hat, and determined not to end up in a lawsuit, I had the adjutant general write me out an affidavit which I carried straight to the land office in Austin. It was a 350-mile ride and I made it in just under a week—hard riding, but I hardly seemed to notice. Something had happened to me down in Mexico: I felt twice as old and half as smart. Sometimes, a panic touched off in me like a cannon and I would feel precisely as I had that day on the cramped streets of Monterrey, Hirsh examining my pistol, and then his brains slapping the wall behind him, a new red mouth grinning at me on his cheek where the rifle ball had torn through.

  As to when these spells would come over me, there was no timetable I could discover. I felt like a rabbit being chased through brambles; I’d turned to glance behind me, but no dogs were bearing down. I was hunted by my own thoughts, just as I’d once pursued Indians and other enemies of the Texan Republic. Now there was no Republic, just another state in the slave nation I’d fled twenty years before.

  After scouting the country and hiring a surveyor, I was deeded 1,400 acres in Bastrop County just north of Sam’s headrights and twenty miles south of the Smithwicks’ claim up on Webber’s Prairie. No coincidence, of course: it was the exact title I sought.

  I didn’t rest from my journey. I went out, located my acreage, and began to construct a little cabin. I had no great desire for a home, but meant to keep my thoughts from strangling me, and the busier I kept, the better my chances. Some days, Noah would leave his gun shop in his nephew’s care and ride down to assist me.

  I had time to reflect on my life. In fact, I did little else.

  There were all these notions I’d developed that had become rather dear to me, precepts I’d held about the merits of hunting versus hoeing Mother Earth, about frontier-living versus city life, about the nation I’d been born in and run away from only to be engulfed by despite my best efforts. They were not just ideas to me: I’d stepped onto them like the planks of a bridge, following them step by step to this place where the planks fell away and a great chasm opened at my feet.

  What I couldn’t seem to decide was whether I’d formed these opinions before Pap suggested I clear out of Kentucky or afterwards—and it mattered quite a lot which it was. If the principles that had directed my course for the past twenty years had come to me naturally, that was one thing.

  But if all my clever beliefs were merely things I’d told myself after Pap turned his back on me, they were simply a salve I’d applied to my conscience as a man might smear a poultice on a wound.

  And for the life of me, I couldn’t seem to settle the matter one way or another. I tackled my horse and rode down to Bastrop, went into Amos Alexander’s store and bought several sheaves of paper and a brand-new inkwell. Evenings, I’d sit on the porch of my sad little cabin, scribbling down everything I could recall about my life in Kentucky, about my notions concerning civilization and society that had once seemed so important. Now they didn’t. In truth, they seemed rather flimsy, rather frail. As a young man, I’d been so certain my beliefs were bedrock. Now they seemed like shifting sand.

  The loneliness that descended on me was like a thousand of brick. I could feel the weight just as heavy as you might a saddle on your shoulder.

  Mister Lammons, I told myself, if you keep on prodding at yourself like this, you’ll end up putting one of those shiny pistols in your mouth some morning.

  And so, I swallowed my pride and rode down to call on Sam.

  When I rode up to the cabin, I heard little Bob wailing inside. I lighted and tied
my horse, stepped to the open door, and saw Miss Suss kneeling beside a chair and airing her paunch into a bucket. Sam had Robert on his hip and the boy was bawling like he’d lost his best friend. Samuel was trying to calm the child and see to Cecelia both.

  I knocked on the door to announce myself.

  Sam turned and glanced at me and I saw, for the first time, an alarmed look in his bright, blue eyes.

  I gestured to Cecelia. “Is she poorly?”

  “Seems to be,” he said, crossing the room to slap my shoulder, then nodding down to Bob. “Could you take him a moment?”

  It wasn’t a request I received very often. Fact, I’d never received it at all.

  “Give him here,” I said, and when he passed the boy to me, Robert drew a deep breath and stared up at me with his tear-streaked little eyes.

  “You’re all right,” I told him, and the novelty of my moustache seemed to provide a distraction. I stepped outside and sat down in the grass. I stood him there in front of me, made a face at him and got the hint of a smile.

  His nose was running. I swiped at it with my sleeve.

  “How old are you, little ranger?”

  He didn’t know what to say to that. He turned and looked at my horse. Then pointed at it and said, “Hoss!”

  “Yessir,” I said. “And a pretty good one. Would you like to sit on him?”

  He scrunched his nose and looked at the ground and seemed to consider it.

  “Hoss,” he said, somewhat contemplatively.

  “Well, come on,” I told him, and picking him up, carried him over to where my mount was tied and set him on the saddle. Old Roger was an easygoing gelding, didn’t mind a bit.

  Robert’s face lit up and the sulk he’d been in when I’d arrived was a hundred years ago. That tickled me some.

  I said, “Well now, Bob, how about it?”