The Sundown Man

by Jory Sherman

  Lizard, in a few words and many signs from his hands, told a harrowing story of how the Ota had doubled back, chased him and Gray Snake, then forced them into a small box canyon, or steep ravine. I had to imagine most of it from Lizard’s few words and his quick hand signs. The Ota had left two braves to guard the entrance. The Ota who were left behind carried the new Winchester repeating rifles. Lizard and Gray Snake waited until the sky ate the sun, then climbed out of the ravine, leaving their horses behind.

  They snuck up behind the two Ota and killed them with their bare hands so that they would make no sounds for the other Ota to hear. Then they went back and got their horses. Gray Snake had the two rifles with him, for they had tracked the Ota to one of their sacred places. Gray Snake also had the two horses they had taken from the Ota they had killed.

  One Dog was elated at this news, and we broke camp right away and followed Little Blue Lizard into the mountains. My chest burned from the pace Lizard was setting, and I was amazed at how tireless the Arapaho seemed to be. They trotted at a pace that looked easy, but my legs ached and my chest was on fire. In less than two hours, we came upon Gray Snake. I didn’t see him right away for he was so well hidden in a copse of fir and spruce trees, just below a rocky ridge.

  Sure enough, he had three ponies with him, and two Winchester rifles, a handful of cartridges. The rifles were just like those that Cassius Hogg had showed me and my father.

  “I will look at the rifles,” I told One Dog.

  “Why will you look?”

  “I may know the white man who gave the rifles to the Ota.”

  “You speak our tongue well,” One Dog said.

  “I listen.”

  “Good. You look at the rifles. Quick, quick. We must go. We must kill the Ota.”

  Gray Snake showed me the two rifles. Both looked brand-new, the bluing on them still shiny. My heart almost stopped when I looked at the mark on the barrel. When my father had dropped it, the barrel struck an exposed nail on the wagon. It had made the tiniest scratch, but Hogg had been angry about it. Now, as I looked at the metal scar, I could tell that someone had rubbed it with some material to dull it down so that the raw silver of the metal no longer showed through. But the mark was there, and it was the same rifle Hogg had shown us and that my father had accidentally dropped.

  If Hogg had traded these rifles to the Utes, then he was nearby. And from the tracks and the accounts told by the Arapaho, there had been only one wagon. Where were the other two? What had happened to the families of David Prentiss and Giacomo Bandini? Had Hogg abandoned them to a fate similar to what had befallen me and my family?

  I handed the rifles back to Gray Snake. One Dog took one, the one without the scratch.

  “What do you see on the rifle?” he asked me.

  “Nothing,” I told him.

  He didn’t call me a liar right then and there, but I knew he didn’t believe me. But he was in a hurry, and after giving the other braves a sign, we all followed Gray Snake. One Dog was now riding one of the Ota ponies and, to me, he looked tall and fierce.

  We moved slowly and quietly through the pines, the spruce, the fir, and the juniper. The scent of the pines and the soft loam was heady in my nostrils, the fragrance almost a reminder of my dear mother, but oddly exhilarating because the essence of the aromas was something wild and savage. It was thrilling to me just to be with these strange men who were so at home in the wilderness, and I can only say that I felt then that I was closer to home than I’d ever been, closer to the feelings that lay buried deep in my heart, perhaps deep in my own ancestry. It’s difficult to try and explain such a thing, but right then, I knew that I was no different from those savages around me. I was like them. They were like me.

  It seems a man does not know who he really is, or where he comes from, or even where he is going, unless he somehow returns to his savage roots and discovers the savage inside himself, the wildness that has been there all along. And from that thought, another came to me. We, none of us knows what life is until we have faced death. When I killed the Ota, there was one moment when I felt something rise up in me, something that had been long hidden, and in that single moment, there was the feeling of eternity. There was fear too, but my own desire to live overcame that. No wonder such things are kept secret from us. That knowledge, bursting in on a man in one single moment that is eternal, is a terrible cross to bear.

  I lost all track of time. I was caught up in the wonder of the woods and the mountains and the quiet men all around me who seemed to be part of the woods, like moving trees themselves, strange, almost mystical, dreamlike. But then, One Dog held up his hand and we all stopped, standing like statues, so like the trees around us, we might have been mistaken for them by animal or man. He made signals with his hands, and some of the braves slunk off in two directions as if they were encircling something I could not see. Then, Little Blue Lizard touched my arm and put a finger to his lips when I looked at his face. He beckoned for me to follow him, which I did.

  One Dog stepped down off his horse and tied it to a pine tree. So did the other mounted warriors.

  It was very quiet.

  One Dog, Lizard, and I hunched down like lowly beggars and walked straight forward. I could smell something then, something that stung my nostrils.

  Smoke.

  We were on a low grassy ridge stippled with wind-stunted pines and thick with brush. One Dog moved through the tangles with ease as Lizard and I followed.

  There, below us, was the Ute camp. A small fire was blazing, and some of them had small animals on pointed sticks, cooking them over the fire. There was the smell of roasted meat, and my stomach roiled with a sudden splash of digestive juices.

  One Dog signed for me to look at everything, really see what was to be seen down there.

  One Ute was lying beneath a tree, on his back, an arm flung across his face as if he were asleep. Another stood at one edge of the small meadow, peering into the forest. Opposite him, on the other side, another brave stood watch.

  The horses were hobbled in high grass at one corner of the flat, each nibbling, a sea of spotted hides that looked like a child’s finger painting, the sort a man might paint when his mind was idling and he had only two or three colors on his palette, white, black, and brown, with perhaps a tinge of russet.

  The fire burned beneath a spruce limb so that the smoke splattered against the needles and disappeared before it rose above the small valley. There were worn paths in several places, and a small brook, virtually noiseless, coursed through the center. High bluffs rose up on three sides, affording protection from attack in those directions. There was a narrow ravine just below the meadow’s edge on one side, so that anyone riding up could be heard from some distance by those inside the small box canyon. I counted eight Ota, but there could have been more in the forest that rose up to the bluffs and beyond.

  I nodded to One Dog. His lips parted in a brief smile, which he quickly extinguished.

  The quiet rose up around me. Not so much as the chirp of a bird. I looked up at the sky, and saw an eagle floating high above the highest rimrock, silent, majestic, free, riding the air currents with outstretched wings.

  Then I heard what I thought was a frog croak. My skin jumped. It was just a brief sound, but it startled me. I realized it had been voiced by One Dog. Such a simple sound. So innocent, so natural, in such a quiet setting.

  My hair stood on end as One Dog and Lizard rose up and started shooting down at the Ota. In a blur, I saw the other Arapaho braves stream into the meadow from all sides. I saw both guards go down, with arrows jutting from their backs.

  I scrambled down the slope, behind One Dog and Lizard, my heart lodged in my throat like a lump of lard. The high-pitched shrieks of the Arapaho tortured my eardrums and set my blood to boiling. Arrows flew all around and rifle shots reverberated off the bluff walls.

  A Ute warrior rose up out of nowhere off to my right, and he had an arrow nocked to his bowstring. He was behind One Dog and L
izard, so they did not see him.

  He stared at me and pulled the bowstring back to his ear. The arrow was pointed straight at me and my arrow was loose in my hand, my bow in the other.

  The Ute was no more than twenty yards away.

  Again, I faced eternity in that one single solitary moment when death stared straight into my very soul.

  Ten

  Something ticks in your mind.

  Like a clock.

  Tick, tick, tick.

  You don’t hear it, but your mind measures it. Sometimes there is only a half tick, or a quarter tick.

  Then, when time is so measured, you know how much time you have to do a thing. To run, to kill, to save your life.

  In that instant, when the Ute brave was pulling his arrow back to his ear, I could almost hear the string getting tight, growing tauter and tauter with each fraction of a second. And since I had no arrow nocked to my bowstring, or aimed at him, I made a decision that could have cost me my life.

  Or it might have saved me.

  Just before the Ute shot his arrow at me, I dropped my bow and arrow, lunged myself straight at him, and bent my back low to the ground. I ordered my feet to keep moving. The soles were hardened from walking in moccasins and the rocks beneath me didn’t hurt at all. I scurried toward that Indian as I had seen quail scurry through the brush, moving my feet very fast as though I were working the treadle on a sewing machine.

  As he loosed his arrow at me, I drew my knife from its scabbard, murder on my mind.

  There was the whir-whiffle of the arrow as it passed over my head. My gaze was fixed on the Ute, my legs and feet working like pistons. The Ute made a big mistake then, and I felt a gloating warmth in my chest. Instead of bracing himself for my charge, or reaching for his knife or war club, he reached back over his shoulder to draw another war arrow from his quiver.

  I raced even faster, my knife held low, pointed at him for an upward thrust. I ate up yards like a racehorse, closing the gap between us. Just as his fingers touched the fletching on his arrow, I leaped at him, pushing off from the ground with a mighty heave. The Ute’s face seemed to turn pure white as the blood drained from it.

  My body struck him full force. I reached up with my left hand to grab him by the throat. He fell backward under my weight and I tried to drive my knife into his side. But he squirmed like a slippery eel and bent his head backward, twisted it sideways. He struck the ground, with me on top of him. A rush of air exploded from his lungs. His foul breath bathed my face with its fetid odor.

  The yelling and the cries of the other combatants turned dull and distant in my ears as I grappled with the Ute. His hands seemed to be all thumbs as they gouged at my eyes and throat. My right hand seemed fixed to a knife that was unusable. I struggled with my left arm and hand to subdue the Ute. He was short and stocky, but he seemed a bundle of muscles. I could feel his strength as I warded off those blinding thumbs, those gouging appendages that were attempting to put my lamp out.

  He grunted as I dug my elbow into the hollow of his shoulder and brought up my right arm to plunge the knife in him. He turned his head and stared into my eyes. I cringed at the animal intensity of his gaze, the ferocity of the light that shone out of the blackness of those feral eyes.

  I forced his head back and realized that I could draw my knife across his throat and end it. End him. So quick. So easy. So final. But something in me rebelled against cutting his throat. I don’t know what it was, but I just could not part his flesh with the blade of my knife and watch his red life gush out like a crimson fountain. No, there was something too final about finishing him off that way. The man would have no time to reflect on his life or his god. I could not take that away from him. It seems stupid to me now. The man was trying to kill me, trying to wrest the knife from my hand, but I could not kill him in that way.

  Instead, I jabbed the knife into his arm, the one that was fending me off. Blood squirted from the thin ragged wound and his grip did not loosen. I jerked my arm away from his grip and pushed on him. I rammed the blade of the knife into his side. It went in so easily and there was a hideous sound of the blade scraping against one of his ribs, the hiss of his flesh parting as it opened to the blade. My hand became drenched with blood and I pulled the knife out quickly, held it poised for another thrust.

  The Ute shuddered and a sound escaped from his lips. It was not a gasp, but a word of some sort, perhaps the beginning of a final prayer. I do not know. But he twisted and turned back to me, and there was a knife in his right hand. He held it up as a priest might hold up a crucifix to ward off devils. It seemed a final act of defiance or duty, but when I saw the blade, an anger in me boiled over and I pounced on him, jabbing my knife into his belly until the smell of his intestines floated from the wounds and assailed my nostrils. He slashed weakly at me with his knife, and then I plunged my own into his chest, sliding the blade between ribs into his heart. He shuddered once and blood gushed from his mouth. His eyes closed and the animal light disappeared into the darkness of death.

  I rose up from the Ute, panting for breath. My energy seemed spent, but I was strangely exhilarated, as if I had gotten a second wind. I drew in deep breaths and stepped back, looked down at the fallen brave with a mixture of complex feelings. There was blood on my hands and, looking at them, it seemed as if they belonged to someone else. Surely, those were not my hands, so saturated with blood, like a butcher’s hands. I moved my fingers and discovered that they did indeed belong to me and no other.

  My stomach fluttered and I began to visibly shake. The enormity of what I had just done gripped me and I had a bad case of buck fever. I turned away, my head swimming with giddiness. I walked back to my bow and the arrow I had dropped. It was automatic, that walk, done without reason or purpose. Later, I would become absorbed with that movement and come to believe that it was born of some survival mechanism inside me.

  But it was silent in the meadow, except for odd sounds that I could not, or would not, identify. Whacking and cutting sounds. Animal grunts. Guttural whispers.

  I picked up my bow and placed the arrow on it, then slid the nock onto the string as if I was ready to do battle once again. My giddiness vanished as my lungs filled with fresh air. Then I was swarmed over by Arapaho braves who had come up behind me. They slapped me on the back and nearly knocked me down. They went to the dead Ota and jabbed at him with their bows and rifles.

  One Dog stayed with me, one of his arms draped over my shoulder.

  “You have done well, White Man,” he said. “You have taken the spirit of an enemy.”

  I said nothing.

  “There is much food here. We will feast this night. Do you want the hair of the Ota you have killed?”

  “No,” I said.

  One Dog spoke to Gray Snake. Gray Snake knelt down and, with his knife, made a circular cut on the scalp of the dead Ute. He lifted it from the dead man’s head as easily as if he had just skinned a squirrel. My stomach revolted at the sight, but I kept everything inside by gulping in more air.

  I was in a daze for several moments. My shakes had subsided with the touch of One Dog’s arm on my shoulder. I did not dwell on what I had done, but I heard the others talking about my deed. At least one of them had seen the Ute rise up and point his arrow at me, and then had seen what I had done to avoid death. They all said that I was very brave for a white man.

  A few moments later, I looked down at the body of Little Blue Lizard. He had been killed by an Ota. There was a small blue hole in his chest, from a bullet. He looked even younger in death than he had in life. I felt saddened by his death, almost as if he had been my own blood kin, a brother, or a cousin.

  Gray Snake showed me the path to the bluff beyond the meadow. He showed me the outcroppings where the Ota had quarried flint for their knives and arrowheads. He showed me the flat stones on which they had worked at knapping, chipping off flakes of flint until the edges were sharp and lethal.

  I walked around that place and saw many broken
arrowheads, picked up some to examine them. They looked like pieces of velvet, and some were as black as ebony wood. Some were covered with dirt and looked very old.

  “Holy place,” Gray Snake said. “Place where the Great Spirit gave gifts to the Ota.”

  After that, standing below the towering bluff, I felt as if I were in some kind of open-air chapel. I could almost feel the reverence that the Ota must have felt when they came there. Even Gray Snake seemed subdued and respectful. And I noticed that he did not pick up any broken arrowheads or knife blades. Nor did he touch anything that was there.

  “Come,” he said to me. “We go.”

  Little Blue Lizard was wrapped up and lying on a scaffold just inside the fringe of trees when Gray Snake and I returned to the glade. One Dog stood by the little stream that ran through the center, a stream that moved so slowly it scarcely made a sound.

  “Ota no sleep by water,” One Dog said. “This water good.”

  “Why do the Ota not sleep by water?”

  “Noise. No hear enemy come.”

  “The Ota are wise then,” I said, wondering if my words would offend One Dog.

  “In some things,” he said.

  We left that place, taking the food the Ota had stored there. We stayed in the trees, though, which disappointed me. I thought that now that we had bested the Ota, One Dog would return to the plain where we could see the wagon tracks again.

  The Arapaho seemed to know where they were going. We followed a game trail through the pines, past giant boulders and deadfalls lying in the solemn hush. Sunlight splayed golden shafts of light through the needles high in the trees, and we crossed through dark places where the sun was hidden. None of the Arapaho spoke, and we all had ponies to ride.

  We came to an open place, a place protected by rocks and bluffs, in a low spot. There, we stopped and made camp. Some of the braves struck a fire and laid out Ota blankets and goods to admire them. I smelled meat cooking.