Come Sundown

by Mike Blakely

  Thirty-Four

  Finally, I relieved myself from General Carleton’s service, and rode north for a long-overdue reunion with my wife. I put some tracks behind me on the last day of my ride to Boggsville. I wanted so badly to see Westerly. When I crossed that last divide between Boggsville and everything south, the sun was just setting beyond the Rockies, whose peaks loomed far to my left. My reins were swinging in a steady pendulum rhythm. My tired horse lifted his head as he came over the rise and saw the trees and lodges, the houses and smoke trails. He seemed to know we would end our journey here.

  Two Cheyenne lodges stood in the usual place, between the town and the Purgatory River. I angled toward them. Out came Westerly and her sister, one from each lodge, having felt my hoofbeats through the ground. John Prowers stepped out behind his wife. When they recognized me, Westerly left the lodges and walked to meet me. Then she ran, wanting to put some distance between us and the others.

  Before I reached her, I reined in my horse, swung my leg over the pommel, and dropped from the saddle, landing flat-footed. In seconds she was there, her embrace virtually clashing with mine. The horse circled at the end of his reins, stepping between us and the lodges, as if he wanted to provide us with the privacy we desired.

  She kissed me, somewhat out of breath, cupping her hand around the back of my neck to pull my mouth hard against hers. Her lips and tongue and hands shot excitement and desire through my body. She broke away, panting.

  “I have missed you, husband.”

  “Oh, I have missed you, Westerly. For four hundred and thirty-two nights my heart has howled in my chest, like a coyote.”

  She smiled. “When you are away, my heart sinks like the moon setting behind western clouds. But now you are here, and my moon is rising.”

  I glanced over the seat of my saddle. “I should greet them at the lodges, I suppose.”

  “No. They can wait. I want to be alone with you.” She looked up. “The sky is happy. You have your blankets. Let us sleep on the open ground tonight.”

  I smiled. I was famished, but my lust for my wife and her body and her lovemaking skills outshone all other hungers. I mounted and cocked my foot so she could step on it like a stirrup and swing onto the saddle skirt behind me. My mount let out a huge sigh. As I turned I saw Westerly’s sister making protests. John Prowers stood with his hands on his hips in the twilight. He looked to be chuckling.

  We rode a short distance, just over the ridge to the south. I unsaddled and let the pony go. Westerly spread the blankets. The thatch on the ground was thick, like a corn-husk mattress. She pulled off my boots, laughing as she fell backward on the ground with the second boot. I helped her back to her feet and we undressed standing up, watching each other. The horse rolled, and we both paused to watch.

  “If he rolls all the way over, he’s worth ten dollars,” I said.

  She had heard this droll axiom among white horse traders. “And if he rolls all the way back, he is worth twenty.”

  The horse indeed made himself worth twenty dollars as he tried to rub the lingering impression of the saddle from his back. Then he struggled to his feet and walked toward the river for a drink, snatching stalks of grass as he left us there alone.

  Naked, we lay down on the blankets and her body fell against mine like a breeze that touches a still pool of water and enlivens the surface. Electricity raced from every place her cool little hands touched me. We kissed and groped each other everywhere. She seemed to have thought about what I would like, what would surprise me, what would make me gasp with pleasure, what would make me moan. There is nothing like love on a Navaho blanket spread on the thick grass of the high plains on a spring night. There is nothing akin to the embrace of a woman who has lost all of her inhibitions for you and you alone, and revels in watching you ache for more of her pleasures. No love surpasses the love of a man for a woman when she pleases him with such physical ecstasy and yet also fills his heart with yearning for her voice, her glances, her smile, her very presence.

  We made love every which way we could think of, sometimes sleeping for an hour and waking to renewed passion. We rolled off the blankets and onto the grass more than once. She challenged me, wordlessly, to try anything I wanted, rewarding me for new experiences. At last we had to quit, collapsing in fatigue, pulling blankets over us against the chill night air.

  I slept hard until the morning sunlight and the birdsong woke me. Westerly was gone. So were my clothes. I’m sure she thought this was very funny. Not too much later, she returned with breakfast in iron pots and pans which she carried in a big round basket covered with a newly tanned golden deerskin.

  “And my clothes?” I said.

  She giggled. “You don’t need clothes to eat your breakfast.”

  “Westerly …”

  “Eat your breakfast. If you are good, I will bring your clothes back.”

  I sat and ate with the blanket wrapped around my waist. Her smile was devious. She had brought thin antelope steaks fried in lard, scrambled eggs, biscuits with butter and honey, cow’s milk, and coffee. Westerly loved coffee, though she knew I didn’t drink it. She had gone to a lot of trouble to cook all this and carry it to me. I ate everything she gave me, and finally she retrieved my clothes, which she had hidden not far down the trail.

  Dressed again, full and happy, I lay back on the blanket, using my saddle as a backrest. “Did you see my horse?”

  She nodded. “He stands near the corral, where the other horses are penned.”

  “The town has grown.”

  She nodded. “A little. Mary and her husband moved from the stockade and built a new house there. John and Amache are building a log house, too. Tom and Rumalda are building a trading house. Sometimes the wagons come here on the way to Santa Fe and there are many good things from Missouri, if you have money to buy the things.”

  “Maybe you and I should build a house here,” I suggested.

  The shocked expression on her face made me realize what I had said. I was a drifter and an Indian trader. Westerly had grown up wandering with her Cheyenne villages in a buffalo-hide lodge.

  “A house?” she said.

  “If you want one. We wouldn’t have to stay in it all the time.”

  “Could I keep a lodge, too?”

  “Of course. We could still keep moving to trade with the tribes. But a house would be warm and comfortable in the winter. You could be close to your sister and friends here.”

  “I would like that. Of course, I want to ride with you, when you go trading.”

  “Of course. I have silver and gold coins cached in a dozen places in the mountains. Kit and Josepha keep some money for me in Taos, and Lucien Maxwell holds a large sum for me at his ranch. We could buy a parcel of land from Tom and Rumalda, and purchase many of those fine things from Missouri.”

  “We could live here when we want, and wander when we want.”

  “Yes.” I felt a strange, wonderful sensation, making plans with my wife. “We will camp in the mountains when the summer heat comes here on the plains.”

  “Yes, and camp with your Comanche family when the buffalo hunts begin.”

  “We will trade for many horses.”

  “I will help you herd them back to the corrals here for the winter.”

  “And in spring, we will break horses, and sell them to the army. And to the settlers.”

  “Even if we spend all of your gold and silver, we can hunt and fish and be happy. And perhaps we will make babies.”

  I grinned. “Surely we will.”

  “But I hope not too soon. I will use some stone seed. I want a few seasons with just you and me, my husband. I am in no hurry for children. But someday …”

  “Yes, someday.” I returned her smile and reveled in the glow that shone all about her, the sparkle in her eyes, the beautiful curves of her cheeks and graceful jaw. Her lips were wet and full, her hair undulating on the cool prairie breeze. Then her eyes turned on me and pierced my heart and soul. A Cheyenne wo
man—even were she your wife—did not often look directly into your eyes. Her face became expressionless.

  “Tell me about the battles,” she said.

  “You’ve heard?”

  She shook her head. “No. I felt it. I saw things in a dream. Tell me, my husband.”

  I took a long drink from my canteen and proceeded to tell about Valverde and Glorieta Pass. I told it as a warrior should. I recounted my exploits, and those of my friends, Kit and Blue Wiggins, and the others. Then came the story of the Mescalero massacre. Westerly realized my shame at having been used in the Graydon-Beach conspiracy.

  “The dishonor is theirs, not yours, my husband. You could not have known the hearts of those men were bad.”

  I shook my head. “I was a fool. I saw Charlie Beach and Paddy Graydon together more than once before the ambush. I should have known.”

  She caressed my face. “No. They might have been talking about anything. You were betrayed by someone you trusted. A fellow warrior you had fought with before. There is no shame in this for you, and even the spirits of your enemies know what is true.”

  I sighed and sank deeper into her healing embrace. “Well, it won’t happen again. I’ve resigned as scout for the army.”

  “I am happy that you have now broken with the soldiers. The war between the white nations has made them all crazy for killing, and they have turned their thirst for blood on the Indians. The white fathers in the East have forgotten about the treaties they signed. Of course, some Indians will retaliate and this just makes things worse. It is happening everywhere, not just with the Mescaleros. I fear it is just the beginning.”

  “Yes,” I said. “I am afraid, too. And in the midst of my fear over it, I had a vision.”

  “Tell me.”

  “It was odd. A number of hoops were rolling across an endless plain. But not just rolling. Whirling at different speeds. Sometimes floating. Sometimes one within the other. And they changed in size, sometimes gradually, sometimes all at once.”

  “What color were the hoops?”

  “Different colors. Some had angrily colored spots on them, like red and black, and when those spots touched the plains, the grass would burst into flame. Some were colored like the sky and the spring leaves, and they could put out the fires on the plain where they touched.”

  “What does it mean?”

  “I cannot say for sure, but I have been thinking about it. I think the plains are all of creation, and the blades of grass are people—different kinds of grasses for different nations of people.”

  “And the hoops?”

  “The hoops pick up and carry things that happen between peoples.”

  “Hmmm,” she said, a wonderful moan of understanding. “What happens does not just go away. It comes back around on the hoop and touches the people again—touches all of creation.”

  “You understand.”

  “I understand the vision,” she said, “but not what it tells us to do. One hoop, rolling steadily along, would be simple, yes? But many hoops? Different sizes and colors, always changing? It is complicated.” She shifted her body so she could lean against me.

  “Yes.” I snuggled into our new position, my body molding to hers. “It is complicated.”

  “What happens between you and me, my husband, always makes a beautiful color where the hoop touches. May it come around often.”

  I had no words to answer her, and needed none.

  WE DID FINALLY walk back to the lodges along the Purgatoire. John Prowers was sharpening an axe with a file. He looked at us and said, “You two appear rather flushed.” He grinned. “I heard the strangest howling of coyotes last night. Or maybe wolves. No, it was more like a barking of a prairie dog, or the yelps of a couple of mating porcupines.”

  “All right, John,” I said, blushing.

  He laughed and shook my hand. “Good to see you back among us, brother.”

  I MADE THE rounds in Boggsville that morning, then, after lunch, Westerly and I rode the short distance down the Purgatory to its mouth on the Arkansas to visit William at his stockade. The stockade seemed sadly quiet as we rode nearer. I remembered days at Bent’s Old Fort where, even in the dead of winter, all kinds of industry and amusement continuously ground out a daily routine. Now the fur trade was long gone, and the Indian trade had dwindled to a few buffalo robes and ponies. Still, William hung on here at the stockade. I saw smoke trailing away on the north wind, and a tattered American flag flapping at the top of a tall lodge pole.

  Westerly and I found the gates open to the east and rode in. I heard the familiar sounds of a hammer beating an iron horseshoe on an anvil. “Hello, Colonel Bent!” I shouted as we drew rein and waited at the gate. A Mexican laborer with a hammer in his hand looked around a corner of the stables about the same time William stepped out of the door in his shirtsleeves, a shotgun leading his way. When he recognized us, he broke the double-barrel open and smiled.

  “Come in here, Mr. Greenwood! Bring your wife and light for a spell.”

  We tied our ponies and gladly entered the warmth of William’s cabin. Westerly and William’s wife, Yellow Woman, were fast friends, and quickly withdrew to their own end of the cabin as they carried on in their native Cheyenne tongue. As I watched them walk away, arm in arm, I thought it odd that Westerly, though younger, had retained more of the traditional ways than Yellow Woman. The elder woman had been married to William so long that she dressed mostly like a white woman, except for her moccasins and leggings.

  William lit his pipe and poured himself a fresh cup from the pot on the woodstove. We talked for a long while about mutual friends and happenings all across the frontier and in the East, with the war. Finally, William began to broach the subject of his sons, Charles and George.

  “You got my letter,” he said.

  “Yes, sir. At Fort Stanton.”

  “In times of peace, I wouldn’t let it worry me—the boys going into camp with their Cheyenne kin.”

  “Has there been fighting between the Indians and soldiers?”

  “Just a skirmish or two, so far. But I’ve lived away out here for a long time, Mr. Greenwood. I can scent trouble like a trail hound.”

  “What do you smell on the wind?”

  “The Confederates have sent agents out among the southern plains tribes. All of them. The Comanches, Kiowas, Apaches, Cheyennes, and Arapahos. They’re trying to recruit the Indians to their side.”

  “White agents?” I asked.

  “No, they didn’t have the cojones for that. They sent white agents to the territory first, to persuade the civilized tribes. The Cherokees, Choctaws, Creeks, Tonkawas, and some others have gone over to the Confederacy. The agents who went to talk to the plains tribes were mostly Cherokee and Choctaw.”

  “Are the plains tribes going over to the Confederacy?”

  “Oh, hell, no. They want no part of it. You know, a lot of rich Choctaws and Cherokees in the territory have big plantations and African slaves. That’s why they’ve gone secesh. They want to hold on to their slaves. But the plains people have got all they want as long as there’s still buffalo to hunt. They don’t want to have any truck with the Rebels whatsoever.”

  “Then why should you worry about trouble?”

  “Because word is already out in Denver that Confederate agents have visited Indian camps on the plains. That’s all some hotheads need to convince themselves that the Indians have turned Rebel.” He puffed hard on his pipe, clearly excited and uneasy about the prospects.

  “Why don’t we ride to Denver and tell them the truth?”

  William blew an angry cloud of smoke out of the side of his mouth. “I’ve written letter after letter to the governor, telling him the Indians want no part of the war and ought to be left alone to hunt. But these politicians have got their own schemes in mind. They want an Indian war.”

  “Why in God’s name would they want that?”

  “The regular troops have all gone east to fight. It’s a volunteer army out here,
and they all want Indian-fighter reputations. They want to force the Indians off the land so they can settle it up with white farmers who will vote for them for killin’ off heathen redmen. It’s politics of the worst kind, Mr. Greenwood.”

  “You’re afraid George and Charles will get caught up in it.”

  “Yes. I’m afraid in general that the whole Cheyenne nation will be wiped out by zealots. I’m afraid my wife’s people will be slaughtered in ambushes and massacres. But I’m particularly concerned about my boys. They both fought for a time with the Confederates back East. They’ve already absorbed an ill view of a Union uniform.”

  I nodded. “If fighting breaks out, they’ll side with their Cheyenne kin.” I was thinking of my adoptive Comanche relatives, and knew I would also help them defend their rights to their own hunting grounds if soldiers should attack. For the Bent boys, the bond was even stronger. Half their blood was Cheyenne.

  William leaned toward me, his chair squeaking. “Can you find them, Mr. Greenwood? Can you bring my boys home?”

  I sighed and rubbed my chin. “I have no doubt that I can find them. Convincing them to come home is a different matter.”

  “Of course, I’ll pay you, and I’ll outfit you with whatever you need. Will you try?”

  “Of course I’ll try. The pay doesn’t matter. I’ll do my level best. I’ll take Westerly with me. We’ve already talked about it. She’s handy on the trail and she’ll help me move more easily among the Cheyenne.”

  “Yes, that’s good. You know I’d go myself, if I could. But I’m getting old, and I’m needed here to keep things calm.”

  “I understand. I’m glad you called on me. I’ll handle it as best I can.”

  With that, our business was over, and William seemed somewhat relieved. I knew the feeling, and I’m sure you do, as well. When a problem festers in your mind, it can rob you of sleep, haunt your every waking hour, distract you from your business. It perches on your shoulders like a corpulent vulture, its dull, troublesome plumage looming dark over your head. But, having taken the first step toward solving your problem, do you not feel as if a burden has flown from your shoulders? Even though your problem may remain unsolved, you have sent it off to soar elsewhere for a while, for you have begun to rid yourself of it. Do not let the talons of trouble cling long to your flesh, my friends. Take action, like William Bent. Perhaps he could not solve all the problems of the plains, but he was never one to stand long at a buzzard roost.