Redeye

by Edgerton, Clyde

  “Can you get your people to leave the mesa now?” Cobb Pittman asks me in the low voice. “If not, bad things will happen.”

  “I can try.”

  “Do that. But wait until I say to.”

  Bishop Thorpe shouts and promises the white people safe passage down the mountain. He tells them things have gone bad, but that they can trust him, can follow him down the mountain on foot, but that they must give up their weapons.

  “Never,” shouts Zack out of a cliff dwelling room where the tourists hide.

  Pittman turns his head and looks at me. “They’re unarmed, but Thorpe don’t know that. Go and try now to get your people to leave. Now. Tell them the army will be after them if they don’t. Cause that will happen, you know. There has been the shooting of a tourist. A white man. Hurry up. Then come back here.”

  I go and tell White Deer of the danger of war with the U.S. Army if we continue to follow Bishop Thorpe after the shooting of a white man tourist. He says Bishop Thorpe shot the tourist. I said that the U.S. Army would not believe that. He agrees but says some of our people are afraid of Thorpe. We all talk together very hard talk about the U.S. Army. We argue about whether to leave the mesa. White Deer says that killing was not part of the understanding with Thorpe and my people then agree to leave the mesa by the back trail, which is not so steep and dangerous. I believe the spirit of our fathers is with us.

  I return to Cobb Pittman where he waits beneath the crooked tree to watch Bishop Thorpe. I tell him that my people now leave the mesa. Pittman’s nose and lips are red. He looks at me. The smoked glass on his eyes has in it a picture of the snow on the mesa. Then in a smooth motion he stands, brings his rifle to his shoulder. He yells with all his voice, “Thorpe.” Bishop Thorpe sits on a rock behind another rock so he cannot be seen from Eagle City. He stands and turns and looks our way. He has no place to hide. He brings his rifle to his shoulder while he looks very hard for us. The canyon is full of the blast of Cobb Pittman’s rifle. Thorpe falls to the ground, shooting his rifle into the air. He drops the rifle and falls and holds his leg while he looks for us. Pittman goes with his dog to be with Bishop Thorpe.

  I go down into Eagle City to lead the tourists down the mesa the safe way—by the Indian trail. They are happy to leave. We take the dead man in a sled, down to White Rock Campsite. But Cobb Pittman will not leave and will not let Bishop Thorpe leave.

  Cobb Pittman and Bishop Thorpe, with the wounded leg, and Redeye, the dog, remain alone up in Eagle City.

  REDEYE

  my job grab front the head taste lock into it. shake it. this another one. i sit. i move up. i noise. “Hush, you son of a bitch. He’s got to dig his grave.” i sit. i sit. i sit. i sit. i wait. i sit. with the shine. it opens and the warm dark and light spills out. i race forward with all my might. i jump. i clasp. i am partly in the bones of the point it comes off i clasp shake. i will hold on forever. it is down. it tastes sweet.

  STAR

  The day is done. Day is dying in the West. I am sitting by a warm fire at White Rock Campsite. My Andrew sits beside me. It is late. No one can sleep.

  Today has been the most horrible day of my life, last night the most lovely, and I must say that the light of the lovely shines through and mixes with the darkness of the horrible.

  Everyone has told what he saw and so it is very confusing and hard to figure out. Two of the tourists saw Bishop Thorpe fire the rifle that killed Mr. Pemberton, so that will be testimony at the trial that is sure to come once we are all back safely in Mumford Rock.

  Cobb Pittman remained up in Eagle City with the wounded Bishop Thorpe. He promised to bring him down tomorrow.

  Hiram is sitting at a small fire over by his tent with his hands tied behind his back. No one knows exactly how he was involved in all this. Bumpy is sitting with him.

  BUMPY

  Everybody was down from Eagle City except Mr. Pittman, Bishop Thorpe, and Redeye. Hiram and me was sitting at a little campfire over beside his tent. His hands were tied behind his back. I asked him if he wanted a smoke. He said he did, so I rolled him one, lit it, and stuck it in his lips. Then I rolled me one and lit it.

  “I didn’t think Mormons smoked,” I said.

  “I feel pretty bad.”

  “Why did your daddy want to do all that?”

  “I don’t know. He thought he was doing right.”

  I looked into the fire. “Do you believe all that stuff he believes?”

  “Yeah.”

  His smoke was smoking up his eyes. I took it out of his mouth and held it.

  “Don’t you believe what your daddy believes?” he asked me.

  “I don’t know where he is.”

  We sat there for a minute. Then I said, “A one-armed Mexican taught Zack to roll a smoke. And he taught me. I can teach you sometime.”

  He didn’t say nothing.

  “Did you ever hear about the Mountain Meadows Massacre?” I said.

  “Yeah, I heard about it. Why?” He looked at me.

  “If the Mormons really done it, and you’d been there, you think you would of helped them?”

  “The Mormons didn’t do it. The Indians did. Or if we did we had a reason.”

  I put his smoke back in his mouth.

  “But sure I would of,” he said. “You would too. If your father told you to.”

  BLANKENSHIP

  Matter of fact, now that I think about it, P.J., it couldn’t have gone any goddamned better than if I’d planned every minute of it. What might look like a problem to you is in fact a Golden Opportunity. You ain’t seen nothing yet. We got a man killed up there—a man from Denver—killed by a group of Indians and a Madman Mormon and once I get that advertised and we get the Indians settled back down, and get Geronimo or Buffalo Bill, or hell, both of them, in some kind of show up there in Eagle City—dress it all up—why hell, we’ll be sucking them in from the East like flies to dead meat. And from the West, too. Hell, from all over the world. Foreigners love the idea of a Wild West.”

  . . . and that’s the story of the Eagle City Shootout of ’92. As it turned out, neither Cobb Pittman nor Markham Thorpe emerged the next day from the mighty Mesa Largo. Stories will be written for ages to come about what happened in the mesa that last night after the last spring snow of April 1892. Although Thorpe was eventually found in a shallow grave, disfigured, Pittman and the mysterious canine Redeye were never found. Some say they still roam Mesa Largo in the dark night. So watch for a tiny red glow in the dark, and if it starts after you, you’d better climb a tree . . .

  And we see that in the end, careless passion and wrong were caught in the jaws of defeat, right prevailed; the shortsighted and greedy failed, and those with foresight and wisdom (Blankenship, &c.) mounted the throne of victory and justice, proving once and for all that decency and fair play will always . . .

  ATTENTION!! ATTENTION!!

  WHILE A NEW, UPDATED, 2ND EDITION

  of our famous

  WRITTEN GUIDEBOOK

  to

  THE MESA LARGO TOURIST EXPEDITION

  goes to press,

  we offer the following three-page

  BOUND INSERT

  (addenda)

  FOR YOUR INFORMATION!

  COPELAND & COPELAND ENTERPRISES

  3RD STREET

  MUMFORD ROCK, COLORADO

  TELEPHONE: 75

  Star Copeland returned to North Carolina in 1903 and became an advocate for higher education for women.

  Bumpy Copeland (born Clayton Eubanks) became a rancher and amateur archaeologist and remained in Colorado. He sold a very fine collection of relics, mostly jet frogs, to the Smithsonian in 1906 for four thousand dollars, which he invested in a partnership in Blankenship Enterprises.

  Abel Merriwether lost his ranch to debt, sold his business interests, opened a trading store, and continued excavating ruins in Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico.

  Zack Paulson left Colorado for Texas in 1894, where he served for many years as a ra
nch hand on the Circle Square Ranch near Austin.

  Cobb Pittman was revealed—in a book published in 1922 by Terrance Meacham called The Lives of the Last Bounty Hunters—to be the man who, along with Calvin Boyle and Christian Boyle, carried white flags into the immigrants’ corral at Mountain Meadows in 1857. Twenty-two years old at that time, his real name was Jacob Bailey Lawrence. Meacham reveals that Lawrence (a.k.a. Pittman) committed suicide in Salt Lake City in 1907.

  Libby Merriwether studied Indian weaving in her spare time and discovered a link between Mescadey and Eskimo weavings.

  Mudfoot (Oiewjo Efintarna) became chief of the Colorado Mescadey Indian tribe. He later worked for the United States Bureau of Indian Affairs, from which he was fired for insubordination.

  Lobo (Duwinec Toe Naiehn) became a tourist guide in Yellowstone National Park, and then at Mesa Largo National Park.

  William “Billy” Blankenship ran unsuccessfully for the governorship of Colorado in 1904, successfully for the United States Senate in 1906. He sold his interest in the tourist company at that time, and after retiring from the Senate under questionable circumstances in 1912, he opened Colorado’s first automobile dealership in Denver, Colorado.

  P.J. Copeland discovered a cure for a rare skin disease. The discovery was accidental—a consequence of a skin application for corpses that he invented—but it made him and his family wealthy. He remained in Mumford Rock and joined his adopted son in business. The skin application was called Tree Balm.

  Grandma Copeland gained a limited ability to speak before one afternoon in late summer, at the age of ninety-four, she died at her stove.

  Ann Copeland started the first successful florist business in Colorado.

  Brother (Durant) Copeland was a guide for the Blankenship-Merriwether Tourist Company, then became an attorney and worked for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Salt Lake City, Utah, Washington, D.C., and Mumford Rock, Colorado.

  Sister (Mary Ann) Copeland became a nurse and served in the Spanish-American War.

  Hiram Thorpe died of typhoid in 1914, but not before researching the Mountain Meadows Massacre and revealing his father’s part in that event to Jack London. London went on to write an account of the massacre and various other events in his 1915 novel, The Star Rover.

  Andrew Collier returned to England and died in London of tuberculosis at the age of twenty-eight. His book, The Cliff Dwellers of Mesa Largo, was published posthumously by his father.

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  ROOMS 93-94 TABOR OPERA BLOCK,

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  ENTRANCE ON CURTIS STREET.

  DENVER, COLO.

  OFFICE HOURS: 9 TO 12 A. M., 2 TO 5 P. M.

  Also by Clyde Edgerton

  Raney

  Walking Across Egypt

  The Floatplane Notebooks

  Killer Diller

  In Memory of Junior

  Solo: My Adventures in the Air

  Published by

  Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill

  Post Office Box 2225

  Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27515-2225

  a division of

  Workman Publishing Company, Inc.

  225 Varick Street

  New York, New York 10014

  © 1995 by Clyde Edgerton. All rights reserved.

  Map Illustration by Pamela Marsh.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  The author wishes to express his appreciation to Frank McNitt, the Benjamin Weatherill family, Gustaf. Nordenskjiold and family, the National Park Service at Mesa Verde, Colorado, the Ute Nation, the citizens of Mancos, Colorado, Buster Quin, David Harrell, Ivan Denton, Juanita Brooks, Vic Miller, Gordon McGirt, Mark Higgins, and George “G.W.” Terrl.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

  E-book ISBN 978-1-56512-819-4