by David Xavier
He spent a full week mending fence and hinge, and he rode in sunrise and sunset across his land, studying ground and horizon for sign of rider. There was none. He skirted the creekbanks and found the remains of an old fire, kicked and scattered, the coal powdered white and papered under the huge prairie moon. He squatted over the water and looked through to the sand below, swept clean and bare. Flecks of white peered back at him from the blackness. The view from the top of the nearest hogback showed a land without visitors on all sides.
He shoved his pistola in his waistband, and left Juana with his rifle and the promise of a quick return. In men’s thoughts wars are uncomplicated. And women believe them. There are no screens, or none that work, that a man can hide behind. He told her he would return shortly and she could see in his eyes it was true. In women’s minds men are the decent or vile pictures that men set before them.
Juana watched her husband grow small in the saddle. Several times Salomon looked back, and each time Juana was there with hands clasped at her chin, until he looked one last time and he could see only the outline of the little hacienda low to the ground, sinking beneath the rising curve of his land.
Day and night he rode, retracing the cattle drive to the Mission San Fernando. When he arrived, the cattle had been halved and driven elsewhere, but the remaining herd idled about the wallshade or dragged their hooves toward it. Indian children still stood with their arms dangling through the fence. The mission was empty of soldiers apart from posted guards who picked at the mission walls in boredom or tossed their legs in front of them in slow, aimless steps. A priest stood in the yard, reading to a small group of neophytes. They sat expressionless under colored quilts and serapes, some of them looking with black eyes across the yard to Salomon.
One of the guards asked him, “You are his brother?”
“Cousin.”
“I remember you here.” The guard set his rifle butt on the ground, lifted his hat and ran a hand over his head, then set his hat back. He touched it around the edges, fitting it just so. “He led his regiment south. The Lancers Los Galgos. Are you a horseman?”
Salomon looked at him. “I ride a horse.”
“The capitán’s lancers are some of the finest horsemen in the country. In the world. He has made them so.” He looked Salomon down and up. He sucked his teeth.
“I am not joining his lancers. I am to be his scout.”
The guard smiled.
“He wants me to scout ahead for him,” Salomon said. “When the war comes.”
“The war is already here,” the guard said.
Salomon looked at the guard, then looked out into the dust and sun. “I know.”
“You are not a soldier. You are not a soldier, and you are not a lancer.”
“I told you, I’m a scout. I have land, so I’m joining. What about you, have you ever shot at a man?”
The guard smiled again and shook his head. “No. No, I am not even really a guard.” He stepped back and pulled his rifle up and leveled it at Salomon, cocked the hammer back, and pulled the trigger. Salomon blinked and flinched at the click. The guard smiled. Salomon did not.
“What do you do if someone tries to come in those doors?”
“Nobody comes here. They know there are guards here. We stand on the walls in plain sight. What business would a man who does not belong here have here? And there is no reason for the United States military to take this mission. Maybe, but we are too far.”
“What would you do if they did?”
The guard rubbed his jaw. “We would speak out and warn them. Myself and the other guards.”
“And then what?” Salomon mounted his horse. “And then throw your guns at them?”
The guard shouldered his rifle. “He went south.” And he walked away, toward no place in particular.
Wearing a serape he bought from one of the mission indians, Salomon set off south, following the deep tracks the Lancers Los Galgos had made, which had sunk in the earth, dried, and now crumbled at the edges. They had ridden single file from the mission gates, into untouched lands. He rode among sage and weed and twisted joshua trees, lush grassland cut wide by creeks, and through rock ribs that hallowed red, until the light died away and with it all hint of a trail to follow. He led off the trail and backtracked to a short ridge of weeds, a lump in the flat prairie, and he staked his horse and built a fire against creosote so it gave only a glow of existence before dissipating into the reaching hands of shrubs and became a secret. A burrowing owl repeated his question to the night, seemingly from different spots in the blackness, and field mice scampered between holes. Salomon spread himself beneath the chaparral to watch the night sky and listen to the dark. He soon found himself among the stars, levitated to where he could touch each one brightly burning, and there he found Juana.
In the morning he woke to frost on his saddle, and above him drifted frozen clouds that looked as distant as the sky until his horse nickered over him and the clouds filtered. He was riding before the sunrise, picking up the trail, and when the sun appeared he rode with his face turned to watch it, a silhouette against the amber, riding on that cold, emerging land.
At midday he came upon their first camp, several small fires kicked to death days ago and spread so thin they were almost unnoticeable. They were moving fast. Salomon put his horse to a trot. In the evening the wind drove so hard all he could hear was the roar and whistle of it past his ears. He crested a ridge and saw a homestead built among joshua trees. Horses circled in a corral. The trail kept going, Pico’s lancers had gone on, but Salomon turned off. He descended the ridge, into the wind, and circled the homestead, pausing to watch from almost two hundred yards out, but putting the few horses in the corral on nerves. A dozen hens darted around the sage. He shouted a greeting but nobody answered. He circled again, gaining ground.
When he was a hundred yards out he shouted again, still circling in a trot. The wind seemed to take his voice from him before it even made it out of his mouth. The house was built like a fort, with defense in mind. The adobe was as thick as any mission walls he’d seen, and the windows were shuttered with heavy planks, a small rifle notch in each one. He could feel someone inside looking out at him. He circled again to where the wind would carry his voice to the house. A man emerged from a joshua to take his bridle, already holding it in hand by the time Salomon saw him and could react. His horse resisted but did not raise or run.
“What are you shouting for?”
The man held a rifle in the crook of his arm, in an easy manner. He was dressed in clothing made of burlap and he wore riding boots. His old eyes were yellowing around dark edges.
“I just wanted to make myself known. I didn’t want to be thought of as a threat.”
The man looked at him. “I might have shot you just to quiet you.”
“Alright then. I’m done with it.”
The man looked Salomon’s outfit over. He leaned and spat. “No need to make yourself known. I can see everything that comes over the ridge.”
“Yes, sir.”
A boy came toward them, seemingly from the plains, a rifle in his arms much the way the old man carried his. He stopped and stood off to the side and did not speak. The man looked at the boy and the boy lowered his eyes. He spoke to him in a language Salomon did not understand. The boy just nodded, his head still low.
“We’ve been trained on you for the last three hundred yards,” the man said to Salomon. “You’re the first person we’ve seen to circle the place the way you did.”
Salomon nodded.
“Riding light,” the man said.
“Yes, I am.”
Inside they ate beans and rice and tortillas stuffed with beef. The wind howled through the house as the man told a woman to hurry with more food. The woman, whom Salomon guessed to be the man’s wife or daughter, brought a steaming plate piled high with tortillas to the table before sit
ting herself. The boy sat by the man at the head of the table with his head down, eating quickly. The man ate with both hands over his plate. He reached out and chopped the boy’s elbows off the table, and the boy sat motionless for a spell. The man spoke to Salomon between bites.
“If you want to stay on after tonight, I will pay you what you earned at your last outfit.”
“I am going on.”
The man looked up. “To where?”
Salomon shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m joining the army.”
“Mexico is at war.”
“I know that.”
They ate for a moment in silence, apart from the wind. The man finished and the woman was quick to refill his plate. She sat eating quietly.
“To join the army, one should go where the army is.
“I am.”
The old man looked up. He spoke with a smile and shook his head. “There is no army out here.”
“I am following a specific regiment. Capitán Andrés Pico.”
The man raised an eye. “Pico?”
“Yes.”
“And where are they going?”
Salomon shrugged. The old man reached for another tortilla and began mopping his plate. “Pío Pico owns all the land you have been riding on for a hundred miles.” He raised his tortilla. “Except this land. This land is mine. He wants to buy it from me. What does he want with so much land?”
“I don’t know. And I’m not following Pío. I’m following his brother.”
“And this land is crawling with Comanche. We could use an extra hand. This house is a good defense, but we could use an extra man to fight. They come in waves and not often. Once last year. They stay away from us, but we have learned to smell them. They come for the cattle. What would a man do with land like this?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know much. You know that you want to join the army.” He ate the last bite of tortilla and clapped his hands together. The boy had finished his plate already and sat silently. The woman sat as if waiting for a sign from the man. The man spoke with a mouthful of tortilla for the boy to get up and get back in the yard. The boy did so, pushing his chair back and moving quickly from the table. The man hit the boy’s ear with a cupped hand as he went by, making him yelp as he ran out the door, but not complaining otherwise. The man looked after him, then turned back. He sat with his hands on the table, chewing. He moved just his eyes to the woman and said something to her. She stood and gathered her plate and the boy’s, but when she reached for the man’s plate, he grabbed her wrist and twisted it so she dropped it. She hurried away with the other dishes. Salomon watched her kneel at a low sink and pour a pitcher over the dishes. When he looked back, the man was looking at him.
“The regiment you are following passed here two days ago. If you follow them, they may be headed to Mission San Jacinto.”
The man stood, pulling suspenders over his shoulders. “You are welcome to stay here. If you do, let’s start now.”
The woman packed the tortillas for Salomon in a tight wrap. She brought them to him as he was saddling his horse in the yard. He looked down at her and took the outheld wrap.
“Thank you.”
She smiled. Silent.
“Is he holding you here?”
She did not answer him. Salomon looked to the house and back again. He spoke low.
“Is he watching? Just give me a nod. Do you want to be here?”
The woman was still for a moment, then she gave him a slight nod. Salomon’s horse stepped about, anxious. He looked again to the house and back to her. “Alright then.”
It was dark when he left, and he rode half the night against the wind to reach the regiment’s second camp. He made his fire under a joshua and set out again before sunrise. The wind had blown itself out. He rode hard through Yucca Valley, along the rock outcroppings and red land. The ground swelled and rolled where the rock broke through and created cliffs along the valley. He skylined himself at the height of one cliff and found the faintest coils of dust, miles in the distance. He picked his way down the cliff talus, the broken slabs of rock like axe blades piled high. At the base he set into a run. The trail broke off at the base of a mesa, and he followed it to a pool in the sandstone. There he stripped his horse of its saddle and rubbed it down with dry grass. He watered and fed it grain from his pack. He climbed the red slabs to higher ground and found he had gained time but the regiment was again on the move.
He picked up the trail and rode through the night, passing their last camp. He reined in and stomped around in the old firesites, wheeling his horse before picking up the trail and riding through several hours. It would be midday that he caught up to them. The hills rose up and rolled higher here, and he built his fire between the folds, guarded from sight. In the night, he woke to his horse stomping and blowing nerves beside him. The night was silent but he lay listening. His horse startled a step and blew again, and Salomon rolled from his blanket with pistola in hand. He crouched in his socked feet, pressing himself against the thorns of a dying soapweed. After several minutes of silence a ground owl spoke up in the darkness. Salomon gathered his things in snatches and saddled his horse and rode on, through the crags in the hills and scruboak that shook in the night breeze and made him look each time at the sudden movement. Climbing a small rise, he turned in the saddle and saw them behind him, stalking close.
Three Comanche, painted black from face to torso with red handprints and few white hash marks. Black as night, stalking on white blotched ponies and carrying lances tied with withered scalps. They carried crude axes at the ready, their ponies’ manes and tails were tied. They moved about like haunting ghosts behind him, and when Salomon turned in his saddle they came on quickly, screaming a war cry that spooked Salomon’s horse beneath him and nearly dropped him. Running all out with white eyes and bared teeth, the horse gave Salomon little chance of turning to fire. He went low in the saddle and gave the horse free rein. The horse stayed on the trail, finding safety in the path of other horses. The Comanche continued to holler, evil cries, menacing and hoarse, of death incarnate, and Salomon stayed low. He glanced left and right to see one indian was riding fast beside him at five paces, his axe raised at shoulder level, shown in the moonlight. Salomon pointed his pistola but the indian slid from the back to ride sidelong on his horse, disappearing in an instant. The Comanche pony closed the gap, hurling forward, and Salomon could see the indian’s leg gripped over the back. Salomon put his gun barrel to the pony’s head and fired, putting the weeds in sudden light and flashing shadow and filling the moonlight with a black froth seemingly shot forth from its far ear, dropping horse and rider in midstride. He glanced back to see the indian had fallen headlong in a surge of sand and lay twisted and unmoving, half buried, the pony broken and dead on its legs before it fell.
Before he turned to locate the other riders his horse went out beneath him and he rolled in the sage, pulling up sand as a wheel does. He rose with his knife in hand, blade up, the Comanche already past him, riding fast into the pitch. His own horse lay kicking in the sand behind him, a lance sticking from its shoulder. The other Comanche rider came at him, the unshod pony hooves muted in the sand, and he spun himself out of foot of the passing movement, a breathing, riding nightmare, going out into the black to join the other. Salomon crouched in the soapweed. A pony stood riderless, shapeless in the near distance, shaking its head and trotting a few paces. All became still. He put himself low to the ground to try to put the indians in shape, their figures to blot the stars, but he saw nothing. Mice had burrowed and bird had flown off. There was nothing moving, and nothing to move apart from the shrubs fastened to the earth and joshuas growing from it. To his right he heard hoof beats and he raised his pistola as the other pony emerged in shape and trotted to a stop. He looked closer, a wandering animal, drifting without rider. When he took his eyes away,
the Comanche were already near him, running at him from the darkness with black eyes. Silent they came on foot, just steps away with axes raised when Salomon rose from the weeds with his knife hand outstretched, taking the Comanche under the ribcage before he could swing. A yelp in the dark weeds, a wicked cry, half evil, half something else. He tore his knife hand away bloody and let the warrior fall at his feet, spraying his face red before he fell away breathless. He blinked away the sting and rich odor of blood straight from a beating heart. The other warrior stood before him. Salomon crouched, one hand out. The Comanche looked to the fallen warrior, and past Salomon to the night beyond his shoulder. Salomon wiped his eyes. He heard himself grunt through grit teeth. The indian spoke low and hollow like some soothsayer’s prediction, then turned his back. He swung onto his pony and rode away without looking back.
Salomon backed away, stumbling into yucca spears and ragweed, his legs working backward like some vile vaudeville act. He scrambled and ran, leaving the bodies where they fell, sand bursting beneath his feet with each step, his legs carrying him out of sight into the darkness where he could find some veiled outcropping where he could hide and clutch himself.
The next morning, Salomon staggered cold from the talus to find it. He had run farther than he remembered, and with the dead blot of his horse in the sand he could see a figure crouching. It hunkered muttering over the horse carcass, shoulders working, and when Salomon came near, it looked up and stood. He was a bearded white man stitched in buffalo hides, his hat low on his brow so he had to tilt his head back to see. He held a large knife in one hand and a hunk of horsemeat in the other. Behind him stood his horse and a pack mule, a string of dark scalps, including three fresh ones, dangling from its back. A rifle stuck from the saddle scabbard. The one indian pony stood back of them, tied. The man did not move for his gun. He pointed with his knife at the dead horse.
“This here yours?”
Salomon nodded, understanding the question by gesture.
Any expression the man wore under beard and hat. After a moment, he jabbed a thumb over his shoulder. “I buried them. I’m taking the scalps. That’s fair.”
A fresh mound of dirt lay yards away where the man had buried the indian bodies together. It was a hasty job done, with limbs bared, like wind had blown dirt over them.
“I cut your saddle,” the man said, pointing. Salomon looked and saw his saddle bare and discarded in the dirt. The straps had been stripped and the buckles salvaged.
“But I found a pistol yonder. Yours? What do you have by way of money?” the man asked. “I have a pony to sell.”
Salomon looked at the man but did not speak.
The man hung his head for a moment. He nodded. “I suppose I owe you for the saddle. And for saving me the killing of these scalps. That’s fair. I will not leave a man on foot.”
Wind had all but blurred the regiment trail. Salomon followed what was left of it on the Comanche pony. He sat bareback, a crude stirrup system made from cut and tied rope that the scalphunter had given up. He had managed to talk the scalphunter by way of gesture into letting him keep his pistola, saddlebags, and halter, however the pony did not take to the bit in his mouth. He rode without it, grasping the mane and fighting the pony in the right direction. It ran well, a graceful, fluid effort. He was nearly bucked twice, but hung on.
A day later he caught the regiment camped at midday among boulders in a hillside. He called out and announced his name, and he came into camp with his hands in the air as guns trained on him partway. A soldier stepped forward and reached for reins but found none, and the horse shied and bit the soldier’s hand. He lost his glove but kept his fingers.
“I was expecting you earlier,” Andrés Pico told him, fireside.
“I was held up some.”
“Did you trade for that pony?”
“Somewhat. Three of them came at me night before last. They killed my horse.”
“We may see more.” He put a hand on Salomon’s shoulder. “I am glad you’re here. War is an ugly thing, and it has been ugly since the beginning of time. But it is beautiful too. It is a thing that will never go away. Men will never be able to settle peacefully. Those who try will be cut down. Men are built for war inside and out, and there is something beautiful that happens to a man when he fights in uniform. When he fights for his country.”
Salomon stared at the ground, unblinking. “I killed the three. Comanche.”
Andrés Pico leaned in. “It was you or them. It is a strange thing to kill a man in war.”
“I’m not at war with them.”
Andrés looked at him. “They are damn well at war with you. It is different, an American and a Comanche. Soldiers have faces and voices like any man you’ve seen. But there is something a Comanche doesn’t possess. I don’t know what it is. It is not dignity, for they possess that in great amounts. There is no pride in watching another man die, doing the same thing for his side that you are doing for yours. But there is a necessity in it, and that necessity that you filled is the beautiful thing. In its strange way. So the men, women, and children can live behind you and not be afraid.” He shook his head. “I cannot explain it.”
Then he added, “The Comanche don’t give any hints. Their faces and eyes are secrets. I don’t think they fight the way we do. They don’t fight so they can live in peace. Maybe they do.”