Come Sundown

by Mike Blakely

  “Drop it now!” Kit ordered.

  I stood in defiance of the order.

  “Come on, Mucho,” said Toribio. “You can’t win against so many. Don’t be loco.”

  I barely heard all these words through the roar of the fury inside my skull. I had just enough sense left to let the hammer down easily on the revolver. It seemed like someone else doing it, as if I floated above my body, watching it happen.

  “Good,” Kit said, his voice like an echo in a cave. “Now drop it.”

  The rumble around me reached a plateau that was almost calming. It was the moment that makes the back of your neck crawl before the lightning bolt strikes. The crouch of the cat before the leap. Instead of dropping the revolver, I flipped it in my hand, making a club of the walnut grip.

  “If you want my weapons, you come take them like a man!” I said, my voice building to a shout. I yanked my knife from the scabbard and flipped it all the way around in my palm, the blade ending up pointing downward the way it had come out of the sheath. I did not intend to cut anyone, but they didn’t know that, and the knife would keep them back for a while. “You murdering sons of bitches!” I yelled. “You horse-killing bastards! Goddamn every one of you to hell! You come take my weapons like men!” I was screaming with such maniacal ire that I could feel the words tear my throat.

  A moment passed and Kit said, “Take his weapons.”

  No man moved.

  “I am ordering you men to take his weapons from him now, goddamn it!” And he did not use such language lightly.

  A brave but foolish private made a dash at me and grabbed at my knife hand. I easily avoided him and clubbed him to the ground. Another couple of men rushed me, but I whirled and hacked with my blade, hitting one in the nose with my pistol grip and kicking the other in the testicles.

  “Oh, hell,” Kit growled, and he stalked toward me, one hand in a fist. I was so mad that I didn’t care if it was Kit Carson, I was going to crack his head open like any other man. Something passed before me like the shadow of a vulture and I felt a noose tighten around my chest. It was my own rope, taken from my saddle back in camp. I was pulled backward as Kit rushed me. He grabbed the wrist of my knife hand with a bone-crushing grip and with his other fist he thumped me on my broken nose. With both hands now, Kit twisted my knife out of my grasp and I fell back roaring and thrashing. I got in a kick at Kit’s bad shoulder, but the rope pulled me far enough away that the force was taken out of the blow.

  Soldiers jumped on my arms and legs. One lost his balance in the fracas and fell close enough for me to clench his ear between my teeth. He screamed as a fist pounded my eye, but I tore at that ear until blood spurted and a piece of it came off in my mouth, which I spat at the bastard who was pounding my face with his fist. More blows hit me all over, and Kit yelled, “Enough, boys!” but some youth had already begun to strike with his rifle butt. The last thing I remembered was a racking blow to my head above the right temple, then all was lost.

  Forty-Six

  I dreamed that I could fly, so I went to visit my wife. Yes, I could fly in this dream, but I was wounded somehow and my head ached and now and then a drop of blood would fall from my face like a colorful tear and spiral away under me toward the earth. Flying was painful and difficult, but I wanted to see Westerly, so I flew north across country I knew well, until I saw the towering cottonwoods of Boggsville looming beside the Purgatoire.

  And I saw Westerly by the river, looking south, just standing there, staring, her hands embracing her belly where our baby grew ever larger inside her. She looked so sad and lonely that shame filled me for ever having left her. I swooped over and around her, but she did not see me. Finally, a drop of blood fell from my battered face and spattered on her hand like a red raindrop. She looked at it, then looked up, fearfully, dreadfully. I tried to speak to her, but couldn’t, and her mouth gaped and her eyes bulged and she screamed in terror at whatever shape she saw in me.

  A gust of wind caught me and carried me away from her as she fell onto the grass and tried to hide from the horror of me. The wind carried me west, along the Arkansas, where I saw something spread upon the plains, lifting a cloud of dust like a herd of buffalo. But this was no herd. It writhed like a bed of dark maggots on a carcass, and as I got closer, I saw column upon column of cavalry soldiers, and then I could hear them, their horses’ hooves stomping in rhythm like the chug of a huge steam engine about to explode with excess pressure. The soldiers rode the trail that came out of the mountains and led to Boggsville and William’s stockade. They were marching step by step closer to my Indian wife, and I could not stop them, for I was just a bird caught in a gale that carried me high up into a storm cloud where hailstones pelted my face and lightning threatened to rake my flesh.

  I WOKE WITH a gasp and found myself horizontal on the ground, shivering. A fire burned before me, but I was too far away from it to feel much warmth. A flake of snow fell on the side of my face, melted, and ran tickling across my nose. Two soldiers sat across the fire, closer to its warmth. I squinted to bring them in view, and felt dried blood crack on my cheek. My head felt as if it had a large rock on it, and my stomach roiled with nausea. When I tried to move, I found my hands restrained behind my back and felt the cold steel of shackles. With some effort, I sat up, and found the soldiers staring at me. One was white, the other Mexican. Neither looked happy.

  “It’s about time,” the white soldier said.

  I looked at my surroundings and found myself in the place where Kit and his men had camped, but all the troops were gone now, save these two. I chose to speak in Spanish, saying, “Looks like you boys will be left out of the fight.”

  The Mexican soldier answered in his native tongue: “No mierda, genio.” No shit, genius.

  “What did he say?” the white man asked.

  “He said you were the ugliest damn gringo he ever saw in his life.”

  The white man frowned at me and said, “He ain’t as dumb as he looks, is he?” He looked suspiciously at his Mexican comrade. “What did you say back to him?”

  “I said, ‘No shit, genius.’”

  The white man chuckled, then glared at me. “You speak English from now on, you hear? If you don’t, I’ll take and tap you on the skull where that rifle butt hit you.”

  I struggled to my knees and crawled closer to the fire to warm myself. “I need water.”

  The Mexican took my canteen and held it to my mouth so I could drink.

  “Let’s get his sorry ass in a saddle and get the hell out of this godforsaken place.”

  There were three horses saddled, one with my rig, the others with army tack.

  “What are your orders?” I asked, as I struggled to my feet.

  “We’re taking you back to Santa Fe to have you hung as a spy,” the white soldier said. He stared at me with a poker face for a couple of seconds, then doubled over with laughter, slapping his knee. “You ought to have seen the look on your own face just now. No, we’re to take you back to Fort Bascom and hold you for a few days then turn you loose.”

  I looked at the Mexican for confirmation, and he nodded, his eyes revealing his disdain for this whole business. I asked for my gloves, hoping they would unshackle me, but they put the gloves on for me behind my back. We went to mount and I told them I should have the shackles in front so I could rein my mount.

  “Shut up and put your foot in the stirrup,” the soldier ordered. “You ain’t gonna be reinin’ no horse nowhere for a few days.”

  So I had to mount with my hands shackled behind me. I had not intended to make a break for it should they have removed the cuffs. I only wanted to get them back on, one click looser over my gloves, so that I could later slip out of them. But the two men were taking no chances with me, having seen my most violent behavior only a few hours earlier. We rode off to the west at a walk. My head pounded, and I felt close to vomiting any second, though my stomach held no food. My one goal now was to escape and ride back to Adobe Walls to warn the C
omanches and Kiowas camped there that soldiers were coming. I knew I probably wasn’t going to accomplish this today, however, so I decided to strike up a conversation.

  “I don’t remember you boys from Valverde.”

  “You wouldn’t remember me unless you’d have found me behind the tree I’s usin’ for cover. I wasn’t about to let no Texan get a shot at my sorry ass.”

  “I joined the army for the Navaho war,” the Mexican said. “They killed my mother and father years ago.”

  I asked about the Navaho campaign and got the two men telling stories and pretty soon we were just like old friends, except that I had to wear handcuffs behind my back. Still, I had befriended my captors, who really had nothing personal against me. Sam, the white soldier, who was from Kentucky, seemed pleased to be relieved of duty in the Comanche campaign and claimed he had had some pretty bad dreams about what was going to happen to him out there if he went. “I haven’t lost no Comanches, so I don’t see the point in huntin’ any.”

  Francisco said he wasn’t afraid of Comanches, but he had signed on to fight Navahos and would just as soon go back to his farm on the Rio Grande now that the Navahos were all rounded up at the Bosque Redondo. Everyone suspected that Kit’s regiment was going to disband after the Comanche campaign, and the two men were eager to get back to their civilian lives.

  We stopped that night where the invading force had made camp two nights before on its way east. My escorts finally unlocked my cuffs so I could accomplish some necessities which they didn’t care to help me with, but they kept me guarded at gunpoint the whole time. When they went to lock the shackles again, I held my hands in front of me, but that wouldn’t do for Sam. He insisted I keep my hands behind my back. And he gave his weapons to Francisco while he locked me up, so I couldn’t grab them away from him.

  “Put the irons on over the gloves, if you would,” I said. “They’re cutting into my flesh around my wrists.”

  Sam checked, and sure enough found the raw marks I had purposely made in my skin to trick him into putting the cuffs over my gloves, thus making them one click looser. I could have slipped those cuffs off that night and made a run for it, but my body was exhausted and I needed a day or two more to get over the beating the soldiers had given me. I also needed to eat, and regain my strength. So I spent three days riding west with Sam and Francisco, slowing our progress as much as I could so I would not get too far away from Adobe Walls. I regaled my captors with my finest stories of my exploits on the frontier, and they came to like and respect me.

  There comes a time in the night when men and even dogs fall into a state of sleep so deep that nothing short of a touch or a loudly spoken word will wake them. And though I am usually immune to the mystic powers of this time, and though it varies from one night to another, I always know instinctively when the time comes, for my cerebrum and viscera operate in accord with the moon, the planets, the tilt of the earth on its axis, the fires of the sun.

  So it was that on the third night—at 2:38 in the morning—I slipped my gloves off in the dark. Then using the grease from a piece of salt pork, I oiled my wrists and the shackles decorating them. Years of using my hands to accomplish card tricks and other illusions allowed me to make the span of my knuckles almost as small as my wrist, so by relaxing one hand and methodically working the circle of steel past my knuckles, I was able to slip the cuff off in less than a minute. The second hand proved even easier, as I could now hold my arms in front of me. I left the cuffs on the ground as a symbol of my freedom and rose silently to my feet.

  I took all the food and water in camp, leaving Sam and Francisco their weapons with which to protect themselves. I would have taken a weapon, but the soldiers had wisely fallen asleep with their guns in their hands, or under their heads. They were only a day’s walk from Fort Bascom. I left the saddles on the ground and, taking one saddle blanket to ride Indian-style, I led the horses away from camp. I tied the tail of one horse to the head of a second with a lead rope. I would lead two spare horses and ride the third.

  I threw my saddle blanket on my mount and tied a rope loosely around the girth of the gelding, and over the top of the blanket, making a Comanche loop. For hard riding in rough country, a rider could slip his bent knees under that rope, between the rope and the horse, the thickness of the rider’s thigh tightening the rope. The rope would then hold the rider firmly to the horse, yet the rider could easily come loose by straightening his knee. Why no other nation of equestrians in the history of horsemanship had come up with this simple means of riding is a mystery. I suppose the spirits saw fit to give it only to the True Humans.

  LET ME TRY to describe to you a long, desperate ride beginning in the middle of the night, when the moon has moved on and the sun has yet to breathe light across the cheek of the face of Mother Earth. You begin this way: You choose a star in the east that comes and goes between the inky masses of clouds—clouds that are visible not because you can see them, but only because they blot out the specks of light in the sky as they float ominously overhead.

  You choose your star and trust your horse. You wonder how your horse can see anything in this blackness. Then you wonder if he can see, or if he can somehow divine his way over the rough terrain in total darkness. As you ride ahead at a trot, leading your spare mounts, you scan the horizon—a place where the stars end and black nothingness begins—straining for a glimpse of a starlit silhouette: a mesquite limb that might rake you from the saddle, or a landmark that might help you know your place.

  You ride on, trusting your horse and your luck. You follow that star, ever rising. You ride an hour on faith alone. Two hours. Then, in a blink, you notice that pale hint of a glow in the east, and hope rises like your star. You ride on, humming tunes to the steady rhythm of the horse beneath you, and your way grows ever brighter.

  Now the sun appears, molten red, over the rim of the world, and you nudge your tired horse to a lope. You relax a little, for you can at least look for trouble now, and the faster gait is smoother on this pony. But you worry still, for your haste prevents you from watching properly for danger, and you have four sleeps of travel yet before you.

  You ride into the morning. You switch horses and stand with your own feet upon the ground for a precious few minutes before mounting again to ride on. You’re tired already, but your ordeal has only begun. You reach into the pits of your resolve, summon your Comanche stamina, and go to save your people. The sun blinds you, then warms you, then casts your shadow before you, and you see your shape in silhouette on the ground, so you sit taller astride your loping pony and play the part of the hero you hope you will live to become.

  Another night. A few hours of sleep between the setting of the moon and the rising of the sun. Another mount, another day. Your stomach is empty, your canteen dry. No food, brackish water. Exhaustion. Antelope dash across the trail in front of you, and you wish you could ride at such speed. You cut the trail of the legions that grind along ahead of you and you remember the peril to come. They are riding with cannon down upon your village at the Crossing. You shake the doubts away and grit your teeth, feeling like rawhide and sinew a-horseback, and you ride. And ride. Ride … A spring of sweet water. A piece of hardtack discarded by some bluecoat. A jackrabbit bolts from right underfoot, but you have no weapon with which to bag him, no means of making fire, no time to roast even a morsel of meat.

  A siesta in a patch of good grass for your ponies. Astraddle again, riding. Gaunt now, like your poor stolen nags. You accept the stiffness turned to aching throbs all up and down your frame. It hurts to crane your neck to see the beauty of the sunset behind you. The moon, the dark, the sunrise. You hate riding. You never want to ride again. You’d rather cross the ocean on a yardarm than ride one more step. But you kick at the ribs between your heels and read the sign left plainly by wagons replete with provender.

  A flock of cranes circles overhead, fluting a pretty symphony—a musical warning of the norther that has pushed them toward warmer waters. And
the blue cloud descends from the frozen reaches of the North Pole. Snow falls on your miserable beasts and makes you shiver in great convulsions. You must hide overnight in a cave you carve out of a cutbank on the north side of a creek. You rise at dawn, stiff and weak. You ride through drifts and thank the spirits for sending just one night of snow.

  You ride, and you take heart, for you are closing ground. The sign becomes fresher upon the new-fallen snow. Your ride is almost over. You welcome even the prospect of chaos on the battlefield over this damned riding. You know where you are. Just miles from the Crossing. The old Adobe Walls stand waiting. Your people do not know the danger that descends the valley. You turn loose the two poorest mounts and make one last push. It is time. The sun crouches behind the horizon ahead of you, poised to rise on what could be your day of glory, your day of great failure, or your last day on Earth.

  Forty-Seven

  Before dawn, I came upon the supply train, the wagons having been left in the rear under guard. I had expected this. Darkness prevented me from actually seeing the wagons, but my mount, fatigued as he was, lifted his head and perked his ears at something down the trail, so I drew rein to listen. I heard two sentries in conversation. In that frosty, rarefied atmosphere, a spoken word could travel a long way. As I had not heard human voices in days, these knifed through the natural sounds of the valley like an alarm. Kit would have been furious had he known his sentries were conversing in anything more than a whisper.

  Having first heard the voices, I waited to listen for more. I heard a mule stamp a foot. I heard a loose corner of canvas flapping against the side boards of a wagon in the brisk north breeze. The wind shifted on an errant gust and I caught the faint odors of gun oil, manure, and salt pork. This was when I surmised that I had ridden upon the supply wagons and that Kit’s main attacking force had ridden on ahead. I reined my mount away before he could nicker to the mules at the camp.