The Sundown Man

by Jory Sherman

  “Maybe he’s too young to have done one of them Sun Dances,” Clete said. “Might have to be a certain age.”

  “Might,” Hall said.

  More silence. Then Freddie stood up straight and looked out the window.

  “Here comes old Jim now,” he said. “He’s got an eagle eye. He’ll know right off if you had a hand in killing Pawnee Bob.”

  They all turned to look at the door. It opened and a man in elk skins strode through the door. He was carrying a flintlock rifle just like the one I had taken, curly maple stock and all. It looked exactly like mine.

  He was a big man, with a full snowy beard, and wore a fur hat, beaded leggings, moccasins. His shirt was beaded too, and he wore a necklace of bear claws.

  He was the most fearsome white man I had ever seen, and his blue eyes glinted with fire as he stopped right in front of me and looked me square in the eye. He put a hand on the hatchet handle jutting from his belt.

  I was sure he was going to split my head wide open right then and there.

  I stopped sweating and my skin turned ice-cold.

  Twenty-one

  Time seemed to stand still for me.

  Tiny spiders scurried up and down my spine until I almost shivered. The knot on my head began to throb again, just like a beating heart. There wasn’t a sound in the room until I let out my breath, not realizing I had been holding it.

  “Well, Big Jim,” Hall said, after what seemed like a million moments had passed by. “Is this one of the bucks that rubbed out Pawnee Bob?”

  Cameron startled me then with what he said. He spoke in irregular Arapaho.

  “One Dog has the pizzle of a mouse. He has the heart of a worm. He eats buffalo shit with the dogs. Do you sit at his fire and smoke the pipe with that black coward?”

  I didn’t know whether to answer the man in English or in Arapaho.

  Either way, I felt that my life hung in the balance.

  Finally, as Cameron drew air through his nostrils, giving him the sound of a fire-breathing dragon, I replied. In English.

  “One Dog murdered my folks, Mr. Cameron. I hate him worse than you do.”

  “Christ,” Cameron said, turning to Hall. “What you got here, Frank? A damned captive white kid?”

  “I don’t know, Jim. You tell me.”

  “He ain’t one of the ones,” Cameron said, and I breathed a sigh of relief.

  “Are you sure?”

  “It was Speckled Hawk’s father what kilt Pawnee Bob. I seen him plain as day. I was outnumbered, so I stayed hid, but I seen the red nigger what put Bob’s lamp out. Warn’t this boy here. Look at his damned skin. He’s black from the sun, but there ain’t no red in it.” He grabbed one of my braids and yanked it. “You ought to cut these off, sonny, start lookin’ like a white man.”

  “He says he stole Pawnee Bob’s rifle off’n Speckled Hawk,” the sheriff said. “Reckon we ought to believe him?”

  “That’s up to you, Frank. He ain’t no redskin and he didn’t rub out Pawnee Bob.”

  I heard a clumping sound from the jail and a moment later, Jesse entered the room. He was carrying some items in his arms that I recognized.

  “What you got there, Jesse?” Hall asked.

  Jesse dumped the items on Hall’s desk.

  “They’s a Bible here, all right. Some letters and stuff. Bible has the name Sunnedon in it.”

  “That’s my ma’s Bible,” I said. “I recognize it.”

  The sheriff picked up the Bible, flapped the cover open, read the inscription on the flyleaf.

  “What’d you say your ma’s name was, Mr. Sundown?” he asked.

  “Hilda. Hilda Sunnedon,” I said.

  “That’s what it says here. Got your pa’s name here, yours and your sister’s, I reckon.”

  “That’s our family Bible.”

  I was desperate to convince the sheriff that I was who I said I was. I got the feeling that he didn’t want to believe me, no matter what proof I had.

  “Well, I got things to do, Frank,” Cameron said. Then he looked at me. “You aim to keep that rifle?”

  “I do.”

  “Well, you come by it honest, I reckon. I got its mate right here. Both made by the same gunsmith back in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. It shoots true, you know how to use it.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “It’s stolen goods,” Clete said.

  “Shut up, Wilson,” Hall said.

  So, now I knew Clete Wilson’s full name.

  “Jim, he’s got him a squaw. She’s back in the jail.”

  “Oh?” Jim’s eyebrows arched like a pair of inchworms.

  “Want to talk to her?” Hall said.

  “What for?”

  “I don’t know. She don’t speak no English.”

  “You leave Blue Owl alone,” I said.

  The sheriff reared back in his chair and looked at me as if I had just soiled his entire office.

  “Well, now,” Hall said, “that ain’t no call for you to get sassy, Mr. Sundown. Clete, bring the squaw out. Maybe we can clear up this mess once and for all.”

  I glared at the sheriff. I blamed him for the terrible throbbing in my skull. I was hungry and tired and scared half out of my wits. The people in that room were not friendly, and now they wanted to drag Blue Owl into my troubled life and make us both victims of their suspicions and downright prejudice.

  “Clothes make the man,” my mother used to say, and now I knew what she meant. Because I looked like an Indian, all of these white men took me for one. I was the lowliest of the low in their eyes. And even if by now everybody knew I was as American as they were, as white as they were, and my name was Jared Sunnedon, I was dressed like an Arapaho, with braided hair and dark skin. Therefore, I was still an outsider, a pariah, an outcast from my own tribe.

  I kept my mouth shut. I heard a commotion in the jail. A few seconds later, Clete wrestled Blue Owl into the room. She was fighting against being manhandled and Clete had his hands full.

  “You don’t have to hurt her,” I said to Clete. “She’s just not used to white folks.”

  Clete released her. She saw me and ran over to stand beside me. Her lips were quivering, but she didn’t cry. In fact, she didn’t let out a sound.

  Cameron looked at her, rubbed his chin.

  “Well?” Hall said. “What do you make of the squaw, Jim?”

  “I don’t know,” Cameron said. “She looks like a damned Rappyhoe, but they’s somethin’ different about her.”

  “What do you mean?” Hall asked.

  Cameron didn’t answer the sheriff. Instead, he spoke to Blue Owl in Arapaho. He didn’t speak it very well, more like a man speaking pidgin English, but I got his meaning.

  “You girl,” he said, “you people squaw?”

  “I am Tsis-tis-tas,” she said.

  I had no idea what Blue Owl meant. I had never heard those words before.

  “She ain’t no Arapaho,” Cameron said. “She says she’s Cheyenne.”

  “Cheyenne?” Hall said.

  I turned to look at Blue Owl, as dumbfounded as they were.

  “You tell story, girl,” Cameron said. “You no One Dog woman?”

  “I am Tsis-tis-tas. One Dog steal me when I had ten summers. I am prisoner like Sundown.” She made the sign of the setting sun.

  “Looks like you got yourself a pair of runaways, Frank,” Cameron said. “This squaw was captured by One Dog and his band when she was ten years old. She ain’t no Rappyhoe.”

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” Hall said. Then he looked at me. “This your squaw, Mr. Sundown? I noticed you two got horn rings on your fingers, like you two was married.”

  “In her eyes maybe,” I said. “She might think I’m her husband. She helped me escape from One Dog’s camp.”

  The men in the room all cleared their throats. I could almost see their evil minds working. Clete and Davis both wore looks of disgust on their faces.

  “Well,” Hall said, “I don’t reck
on these two committed any crimes. Leastways, not here in Fort Collins. I reckon I’ll let ’em go their own ways. But there’s another matter I got to take up with you, Mr. Sundown. Jared.”

  “Yes?”

  “I know this Hogg and his partner, Truitt. You’d best stay clear of them two. They’re bad medicine. I don’t have enough evidence to arrest them, but I keep my eye on them when they’re in town. They come and they go and I suspicion they’re up to no good. Both of ’em been jailed for fighting and drunkenness.

  “And that family you mentioned, the ones who you say have your sister with them, Pettigrew.”

  “Yes?” I said, leaning forward in my chair.

  “They’re a bunch of no-accounts, and left town a day or so ago. Headed north, I heard, owing money all over town.”

  “Do you know where they were going?”

  Hall shook his head. “I don’t know and I don’t care. Good riddance. That Amos Pettigrew is one mean sonofabitch from what I’ve heard. I wouldn’t put it past him to buy your sister from a bastard like Hogg, if that’s what he did.”

  “I’ll be looking for her,” I said. “If you let us go.”

  “Well, I guess that might settle it. I took a pouch of money off you. Where’d you get it?”

  My heart sank. I didn’t know where the money Blue Owl gave me came from, but if I told the truth, they might keep her in jail. It was probably stolen off white people that the Arapaho killed.

  “It’s money my pa gave me,” I said. “I hid it from One Dog. He never knew I had it.”

  “Well, you keep the rifle and I’ll give you back your money and those ponies we’ve got in the livery. You and the squaw can go on your way. No hard feelings?”

  “No hard feelings.” I stood up. I looked down at Blue Owl and smiled.

  “We are free,” I told her.

  “We’ll give you an escort out of town, Mr. Sundown,” Hall said. “Just in case the white folks here still think you’re a redskin. But if I were you, I’d take Jim Cameron’s advice and get rid of them pigtails.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said. “I’d like my knife back too, and our pouches and such.”

  Hall smiled and got up from his desk.

  “You’ll get back everything we took offen you, Jared. You just stay out of trouble, hear?”

  “Yes, sir, I will.”

  A half hour later, Blue Owl and I were on our ponies. The sheriff and his two deputies flanked us as we rode through town. At the northern edge, he reined up.

  “That road there is the Cherokee Trail,” he said. “If the Pettigrews were going anywhere, they’d probably head north. I wish you good luck, Jared. What’s your squaw’s name anyway?”

  “She’s not my squaw. But her name is Blue Owl.”

  “Well, this is as far as we go. You two are on your own.”

  “Thank you, Sheriff Hall. I’m much obliged.”

  “I’m sorry about your folks. I think somebody buried them. I put that Bible in your kit, case you wanted it as a memento.”

  Blue Owl and I rode north to the two rivers. I looked around for the pile of stones and found it, well off the trail.

  “What you do?” she asked.

  “I look for something.”

  She held my pony’s reins while I slid off him and walked over to the pile of stones. I pushed them away and saw the hole in the ground. I smiled. Ormly House had left me a large powder flask, which was full, and a pouch full of lead balls. I held them up and showed them to Blue Owl.

  “For my rifle.”

  She smiled.

  We drank at the river and rode on.

  “Where we go?” she asked.

  “I look for my sister.”

  “Blue Owl go where you go, Sundown.”

  I got back on my pony, put the powder and ball in the pouch slung over my shoulder. It was getting right heavy.

  That night when we stopped, well off the trail, I brought out the Bible that had belonged to my parents. Memories of them flooded through me as I held it in my hands.

  This was all that I had of them, but it was enough. When I found Kate, my life would be full and complete.

  That night, I cut off my braids.

  Twenty-two

  From where we camped that night, I could see the lights of La Porte. They winked on, one by one, and I realized that the settlement was larger than I had thought when we rode through it the night before. When we hunted the elk, we had been higher up and I hadn’t realized there was a settlement there.

  “Why you look?” Blue Owl asked.

  “There are people down there.”

  “Yes. White eyes. They make trade.”

  A trading post? I hadn’t known.

  “How do you know this?” I asked.

  “One Dog trade there.”

  As I watched, I saw riders come into the little village that lay on a hill across from the junction of the two rivers. Men from Fort Collins, I supposed.

  When the wind was right, I could hear laughter and the tink of a piano. It made me very homesick, and very lonely. I knew then that I longed for companionship, the company of people I could converse with in my own language. There was a longing in me to go down there and perhaps buy a beer, join in the singing.

  “Why you cut hair?” Blue Owl asked.

  “I am no longer one of the people.”

  “Blue Owl cut hair.”

  “No,” I said. “Your hair pretty.”

  “I cut hair,” she said, and pulled my knife from its sheath and ran off.

  “You bad girl,” I called to her.

  She giggled in the darkness, and I turned back to my fascination with the activities around the little village of La Porte.

  It was odd, I thought, how quickly human beings can adapt to an environment. When I was with the Arapaho, I lived that life and developed habits that allowed me to adapt to their ways. Now, I longed for a different life and I suppose memory played a part, because when I looked at the little cabins and the trading post, a longing arose up in me to walk down there and announce that I had returned to my own kind after being lost in the wilderness.

  But I knew better than to do anything like that. I was still a stray cat, half wild, not yet ready to fully accept the white man’s civilization. I had had a taste of it in Fort Collins, and when I looked back on that recent experience, I realized how it could have turned out differently if I had not been able to prove my identity. Clothes did make the man. And a whole lot else. Yes, I could be shorn of my Indian braids, but my garb shouted Indian, wild man, untamed outcast.

  What kept me fascinated for so long was that I knew Kate was somewhere nearby. Perhaps not in La Porte, but somewhere near there. Were some of the Pettigrews down there at that very moment, drinking ale, or whiskey, or wine? Was Amos Pettigrew sitting at a table with his friends bragging about the bond servant in his household? I was almost desperate to know exactly where Amos Pettigrew was at that moment, and consequently, where my sister was on this chill spring night.

  There was a deep sadness in my heart as I gazed down at La Porte. I thought of Kansas City and how different it was from a small frontier settlement like this one. My feelings were all mixed up. I wanted something that was just out of my reach. And I really didn’t know what it was just then.

  Blue Owl returned, slid my knife back in its scabbard. She sat down next to me and I strained to see what she had done to her hair.

  “You like?” she said, patting her shortened hair.

  “You look like a boy.”

  She giggled.

  “Am I not pretty to you?”

  “Yes. You are pretty. But you are scalped.”

  She laughed, and the sound of her laughter made me realize what a special person she was. I don’t know if I loved her or not, but I was grateful to her. She had made my nights with the Arapaho pleasurable, and had helped me escape without thought of her own safety. She had risked her life for me, and there was no higher calling in life. I put my arm around her waist, and s
he snuggled up close to me.

  “Look,” she said a few minutes later. “To the river.”

  Riders streamed away from the South Platte, heading toward the trading post. Their silhouettes were dim and hard to see, but there was something about the way they rode and what they rode.

  Spotted ponies.

  I felt Blue Owl’s body stiffen.

  “Who are they?” I asked.

  “Ota,” she breathed.

  “Ota?”

  “Yes. They go to buy the firewater.”

  The hairs on the back of my head prickled my skin.

  On the ride out of town with Sheriff Hall and his men, we had spoken some about the Pettigrews and now I remembered that conversation.

  “Is this Amos Pettigrew a farmer?” I had asked.

  “He claims to be a farmer.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Let’s just say that I’ve heard that Pettigrew is an enterprising man. He buys and sells goods over to La Porte. He and his boys get a lot of packages from the stage that comes here once or twice a month from Santa Fe.”

  “What kind of goods?” I had asked.

  The sheriff shrugged. “We don’t pry into people’s lives much, Mr. Sundown.”

  “Does he sell things to the Indians around here?”

  “Not that I know of. It’s illegal to sell whiskey or guns to the Indians. I don’t know for sure what was in those packages besides grain. Could be he buys grain for his stock. The man keeps pretty much to himself.”

  “Seems to me you don’t like Amos Pettigrew much.”

  “I don’t know the man that well.”

  “Well, you don’t think much of him,” I said.

  “I don’t think of him much at all.”

  I thought of that conversation now and wondered if I had missed anything.

  Amos Pettigrew claimed to be a farmer, yet he was buying and selling merchandise he had shipped to him from Santa Fe. What could that be? Guns? Whiskey?

  I turned back to Blue Owl.

  “Did One Dog ever buy firewater from the trader here?”