The Sundown Man

by Jory Sherman

  “I kept the hat from one of the men I killed. It fit me better.”

  She looked at the hat in her lap, and tears began to seep from her eyes and flow down her cheeks. She grabbed the crown and squeezed it into a crumpled mass. Then she looked up at me.

  “T-tell me,” she said, “the names of the men you killed.”

  “Cassius Hogg and Rudy Truitt, ma’am. They were sure as hell trying to kill me. And the one named Rudy, he killed Blue Owl, who never hurt a fly.”

  “I knew he was no damned good,” she said.

  “Ma’am?”

  She didn’t say anything for several moments.

  “Do you know the name of the man who has your sister?”

  “Yes’m. Amos Pettigrew. He bought her from Hogg and Truitt, I figure, who traded with the Utes for them.”

  “Do you know what happened to the two little Indian girls the Utes stole when they captured your sister?”

  “No, ma’am. I never heard what happened to them.”

  “Are you curious about that?”

  “Why, yes, I am. I thought maybe they had been sold to somebody in Fort Collins.”

  She shook her head. She was still crying.

  “Jared, I know your sister Kate. She told me much of the same story. My heart cries out for that girl. I wasn’t much older than she is when I married Velma’s father. I was fifteen. That man made my life miserable. He was never home much, and when he was, he was drunk. He beat me and treated me like dirt under his feet.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that, ma’am.”

  “Will you quit calling me ‘ma’am’ like I’m an old lady? My name is Rebecca Truitt. Rudy was my husband.”

  You could have knocked me down with a hummingbird feather when I heard that.

  “In fact,” she said, “my name is Rebecca Pettigrew Truitt. Amos is my father, and he’s cut from the same bolt of cloth that Rudy was. They’re both bastards.”

  I just sat there, stunned. The world I had fashioned in the past few days whirled and spun around, turned topsy-turvy, flew off into unfathomable space. Scrambling everything in it, turning me upside down, and emptying me out like an overturned pitcher of water.

  And then I wondered when Rebecca Pettigrew Truitt was going to shoot me dead and hang my hide up on her living room wall.

  Twenty-six

  With the sun going down fast behind the high peaks, it was getting chilly inside the cabin. My nerves were shredded raw, like carrots my mother used to fix for boiling. Rebecca sat there with the rifle next to her, my hat in her lap, its crown wadded up like heavy paper. Her blue eyes glistened with tears, and she stared at me as if I was a man already condemned to death.

  Then her eyes softened, and the tenseness went out of her face. Her shoulders relaxed and she drew in a deep breath. Her breasts pushed against the cloth of her simple, homespun dress, pert and perfect. She was a beautiful young woman who had just learned that her husband was dead and the man sitting in her front room had done the deed.

  “I—I wasn’t prepared for all this,” she said, her voice soft as spun silk. “I—I’m trying my best to get over the shock.”

  “I’m sorry I killed your husband. I had to, or he would have killed me.”

  She shook her head.

  “No, no, I understand that. I always thought Rudy was living on time borrowed from the devil. He was a wicked, wicked man, with no regard for the law or the rights and freedoms of others. I married him to get away from my family and I’m still trying to get away from them. I will get away from them someday if it’s the last thing I do.”

  “Why are you living up here, so close to them?”

  “Rudy and Cassius, with some help from my brother and my father, built this house for me. Before that, I stayed with my mother and father. I was miserable. When my father brought your sister Kate home, I stood it as long as I could. I told Rudy that I wanted a house of my own. I couldn’t stand to see what my mother and father were doing to Kate. But I couldn’t help her either. You must understand. Before Kate came, I was treated just like she was, or worse. So I moved here. This last winter was the most peaceful I’ve ever spent in my life.”

  “You stayed up here all winter?”

  “Yes. You didn’t see the cordwood outside? Have you seen my larder? You saw the springhouse.”

  “I thought it was a storm shelter.”

  She laughed.

  “Not up here. There are no twisters. Just snow. Blessed, peaceful snow, all winter long. Velma and I enjoyed our time alone together. We played games, I taught her to sew and knit and how to boil water. It was a lovely time, Jared. Rudy was gone and I almost forgot he even existed. I dreaded the day he would come back and beat me in front of little Velma.”

  I said nothing. I couldn’t imagine a young woman and a little girl spending a hard winter in the mountains, cut off from all human contact.

  “Come,” she said. “I want to show you something.”

  She got up, leaving the rifle on the divan. She handed me back my hat, but I dropped it on the chair. I looked past the chair at the back wall and saw a bookcase filled with books. I couldn’t help myself. I walked over to it and began looking at the titles.

  There was Ivanhoe and The Count of Monte Cristo, works by Shakespeare, Coleridge, and Dante, The Vicar of Wakefield and novels by James Fenimore Cooper, and many others. Seeing those books almost made me drunk.

  “You read, Rebecca?”

  “Yes. I read to Velma all winter, and I read myself to sleep at night.”

  “These are wonderful books. Mine were all burned up by the Utes.”

  “You must read some of mine. Come.”

  We walked into the hallway. Velma emerged from a bedroom.

  “Mommy, it’s dark.”

  “I know, sweetie,” she said. “Mommy’s going to light a lamp. Then, after a while, I’ll fix us some supper.”

  Rebecca went into the dark room while I waited outside. I heard movements, then saw a flicker of light, after the scrape of a match. Light streamed through the doorway.

  “Thank you, Mommy.”

  “You wait here. Mr. Sunnedon and I are going outside. We won’t be long.”

  “Yes, Mommy.”

  I heard the sound of bed slats as the girl sat down on the bed. They creaked with her weight.

  We walked to the kitchen, where Rebecca lit another lamp. She kept the match lit and in a little room just inside the back door, she lifted the chimney on a lantern and lit it. She reached up to a shelf and took down a key, held it in her other hand. She walked outside and I followed her, wondering where she was taking me.

  The sun was down and there was a furnace blazing just below the high mountain peaks. Small, salmon-hued clouds hung motionless in the afterglow, their bellies pulsating with the feeble saffron rays that slanted upward like the ribs of a Japanese fan. A stillness hung in the thin air like the hush before a storm. It was still light enough to see, and the lantern seemed incongruous in the eerie glow of dusk. The radiant sunset appeared destined to last forever as Rebecca made her way to the springhouse.

  Then, as Rebecca reached the door of the springhouse and put the key to the lock, the clouds turned to ash and the colors in the sky paled to a dusky gauze and disappeared into a stygian darkness. The lantern sprayed us with golden light as the tumblers in the lock splayed open and the lock parted. She removed it and opened the twin doors, held the lantern high.

  “Gray Dove,” she said. “Spotted Fawn. Come out. Quick, quick.”

  Rebecca stepped back from the door, and two small red-skinned girls came out, their faces solemn with fear, their dark eyes gleaming like black agates in the lantern shine.

  The girls looked at me. I smiled, recognizing them, even though they wore blue and white gingham dresses and little shoes and stockings.

  I spoke to them in Arapaho, while Rebecca closed the two doors and reattached the lock, closed its curved bar with a dull click.

  “Do you remember White Man?” I
asked.

  “Gray Dove remembers you, White Man. Did you come to take us home to our lodge?”

  “No. I am hiding like you, like a little mouse. There are many Ota in the mountains.”

  Both girls giggled and put their hands over their mouths.

  “Inside,” Rebecca whispered to me, and we followed her back to the house, went in the back door, where she blew out the lantern and latched the door.

  “Play with Velma,” she told the girls, pointing to the bedroom where her own child lay on the bed with her doll, I imagined.

  “You have taught them English.”

  “A few words. They are very bright. Like new pennies.”

  “How . . . ?”

  “When I left my father’s house, I took them with me. When he came up here after them, I told him I would kill him if he laid a hand on them.”

  “You would kill your own father?”

  “To protect my girls, yes. I would kill my brother too. The girls were no more than house dogs to my folks, Jared.”

  “But your own flesh and blood . . .”

  She struck a match and lit the kindling in the firebox of the small stove. The room became warm as she lit the main fire to the oven. She handed me a knife as she pulled a bowl of turnips and another of potatoes from a pantry below the kitchen counter. From another, she took a chunk of fresh meat.

  “You cut up the vegetables,” she said, “while I put a kettle on the stove.”

  The kettle was already full of water and sprinkled with spices. She set it on one of the griddles, then began cutting up the meat.

  “Fresh venison,” she said. “I shot a muley yesterday.”

  “What’s a muley?”

  “A mule deer. You know, the ones with big ears. They look like giant mice.”

  “I did not know they were called that.”

  “Well, they are.”

  “About your pa and brother . . . How could you even think . . . ?”

  “Jared, there’s no love lost between me and my parents, my no-account brother. They’re evil people, every one of them. There’s not an ounce of kindness in my mother, nor my father, and my brother is just plain mean, without any conscience whatsoever.”

  “But they’re your kin, your own flesh and blood, Rebecca.”

  She turned to me, the knife poised in midair just above the venison. She compressed her lips in a tight rigor of anger. All of the softness vanished from her face as if it had been wiped hard with sandpaper, taking all the smoothness away, leaving a stark-lined etching of an inner hatred.

  “I don’t know if people become bad, or if they are born bad. But my mother and father, I think, were born plumb bad. I’ve lived with their greedy, scheming, devious ways all my life. They never showed any love toward me or my brother, Jasper. But my brother took to their ways like a duck to water. He’s a weak, spineless, heartless demon, just like they are. I loved my parents, despite their cruelty and deception, but when I saw what they were doing to your sister and those two little Indian girls, I vowed that I would fight them to the death before they’d harm another child. I wanted to take Kate with me too, but I couldn’t fight all three of them. They would have killed us all, including Velma, and never batted an eye. That’s how damned evil they are. I loathe the name Pettigrew and what it stands for. I loathe everything about these people, and no longer call any of them kin.”

  I sucked in a breath, shocked by Rebecca’s revelation. I had never heard anything like it before, and her feelings were difficult to grasp. I could not imagine a child, a girl no less, turning against her parents. But I had no doubt her feelings were genuine.

  “You know why I didn’t shoot you when I first saw you, Jared? Do you know why I let you keep that pistol on your belt?”

  “No. Why?”

  “Because I recognized you from Kate’s description, from that look of kindness on your face. I knew, in my heart, that you would come for her someday, and so did your sister. When she got that note from you, I noticed the change in her. And do you know what she said to me?”

  “No.”

  “She said, ‘Becky, my brother Jared always read to me of heroes. He is my hero. And he will come and rescue us both.’ ”

  “Kate said that?”

  “Yes, she did. You’d be surprised at what’s inside the minds of children.”

  “I reckon so.”

  “Now, go out and get your rifles and bring them inside. I’ll finish up the vegetables. And after supper, we’re going to talk about how you can get your sister away from those evil people. I can’t go with you, but I hope I can help you find a way to become her hero.”

  “You—you don’t want me to kill your folks and your brother, do you? I don’t know if I could do that.”

  “Jared, you will do what a hero would do. Your sister is in dire peril. If my brother or my father, or even my mother, knew you were here, that you wanted to take Kate away from them, they would shoot you dead and never shed a tear or have a twinge of conscience.”

  “But . . .”

  “Go get your rifles. We’re alone up here, Jared, and there are two dozen Utes camped right across the river from those damned Pettigrews. None of us here in this house are safe right now. So, git.”

  I walked out to the stable in the dark, stars gleaming like diamonds on black velvet. It seemed I could reach up and touch them, they were so close. I realized that I was on a strange journey, like Odysseus, like my hero.

  And all about me, darkness and invisible gods.

  Twenty-seven

  It may not have been the best supper I ever had, but it ranked right up there at the top. I think the taste of the food was enhanced by being with a family, unusual as that family was, I admit. Becky knew how to cook venison and put a meal on in a hurry. While her pot was boiling, she seared the meat in a fry pan. When she put the venison in the water with the vegetables, she put the iron lid on, and when you put a fork in the meat, it just about melted before you could get it into your mouth.

  Velma was a talky little girl, and she had those Arapaho girls giggling all through the meal. They had learned to communicate with each other somehow, and all three girls spoke a combination of English, Arapaho, and sign language, much to the delight of Becky and me.

  “Vel, don’t talk with your mouth full,” Becky admonished her daughter. “You’ll choke on your food.”

  Little Velma made the sign of talking, choking, and then acted it all out. Gray Dove and Spotted Fawn both mimicked her, until Becky’s face turned red with embarrassment. But she didn’t scold the girls for making fun of her. Instead, she said one word: “English.”

  All three little girls replied in chorus: “Yes, ma’am.”

  They sounded like baby birds cheeping.

  I sat in the front room while Becky and the girls washed the dishes. I had brought one of my tablets in with my rifles, along with two pencils. I sharpened one and began to write. That was something I had done all my life before I went to bed, even when we all were in the wagon train, and sometimes when I was with One Dog.

  The soft laughter coming from the kitchen was a soothing sound to me that evening, and it felt good to have a pencil in my hand again.

  I was so absorbed in my writing I didn’t hear Becky put the girls to bed, nor did she stir me when she entered the room.

  “What are you writing?” she asked.

  My whole body galvanized at the sound of her voice. I felt as if I had jumped inside my skin and it had stretched to the tautness of a drumhead.

  “Just some thoughts.”

  “You should be thinking about Kate and how you’re going to get her away from my father.”

  “I am thinking about Kate. Tomorrow, I’m going to scout the cabin down there and watch for Kate. When she comes to the river for water, I intend calling to her so she’ll know I’m here. If there’s a chance, we might be able to get away unnoticed.”

  Becky shook her head. “That woman watches her every minute.”

  �
�That woman?”

  “Myrtle Pettigrew.”

  “Your mother, you mean.”

  “She’s not my mother. Not my real mother.”

  “She’s not?”

  “My father murdered my mother. Myrtle is my step-mother.”

  “You don’t mean your father actually . . . ?”

  She sat across from my chair, at one end of the divan. She looked down at her hands, then back up at me.

  “One night, when I was about five or six, there was a terrible row. I had been asleep. My brother and I woke up. We went out to the kitchen, but didn’t go in. My father had my mother backed up against the wall and was beating her with his fists. There was blood coming out of her mouth, her nose, and her ears. She fell down and he kicked her until she stopped screaming. The next day, we buried her in the woods. This was back in Tennessee. My mother’s name was Lorelei. She was only twenty-two when she died.”

  “What about your brother? Does he hate his father for what he did?”

  “He fears him. He was possessed by the power in my father’s fists. To this day, all my father has to do is raise his voice or clench his fist and my brother cowers like a cur dog and tucks his tail between his legs.”

  “I don’t know what to say, Becky. I—I’m sorry. What a terrible thing for a child to witness.”

  “I fear my father too. He’s a very dangerous man. You must be very careful if you go down there tomorrow. He won’t hesitate to kill both you and Kate if he catches you trying to take her away from him. He’s very possessive.”

  “If I can talk to Kate, maybe she can sneak out at night, after everybody’s asleep.”

  “I’ve been in that cabin, Jared. The floors squeak. And both Myrtle and my father have keen ears. It would be very difficult, if not impossible.”

  “Well, I’ll think of something.”

  Becky laid out a bedroll for me in the front room. I had a hard time trying to go to sleep. I kept thinking of Kate being with those people and what Pettigrew had done to Becky’s mother. When I did sleep, my dreams were filled with stark images of horror where I faced down a man and my guns melted and wouldn’t shoot. The man had no recognizable human features, but his face was shaped like a giant ear and his fists were as big as hams, all covered with blood.