“You habla English?” Odell asked.
“Sí, I speak a little,” the Mexican said through his broken and rotten teeth.
“You look like you’re having maybe a harder time than me and could use a little something to eat.”
Odell thought the Mexican was a poor sight indeed, and it was not just the fact that the man was a cripple that gave him that impression. The Mexican was obviously shoeless, but he was also hatless. His long black hair hung over most of his shriveled face, and it was so interwoven and tangled with grass and prairie debris that it might not have even been hair at all. It reminded Odell of the mat of wooly tangles covering the shoulders, neck, and head on a buffalo in winter prime.
The Mexican’s woven wool serape was soiled and torn and unraveled to what had to have been half its former size. Beneath that, the man wore a rotting sheepskin vest, wool side out, that smelled just like it looked, and a pair of thin cotton pants that might have once been white a hundred years before. Odell was cold even beneath his heavy buffalo robe, but the little Mexican didn’t have so much as a single goose bump showing on the portions of his bare shoulders that were visible before his arms disappeared under the cover of the serape.
“Do you have a pot to boil this tongue in?” Odell asked as he hunkered down before the fire between the Mexican and the burro.
The Mexican shook his head somberly, and one of his skinny arms withdrew from the serape to wave dramatically around him at his lack of possessions. Odell saw nothing that the man might own other than the burro, who had finally awakened long enough to swap the hind foot he was resting on before closing his eyes again.
“I reckon I can just cook this tongue over the fire,” Odell said. The Wichitas he’d lived with had considered the tongue a prime cut of meat, as did many a frontiersman. But Odell had no squaws to chew on the tongue and tenderize it, nor a pot to boil it in long enough to soften the dense muscle.
A little trickle of drool leaked out of one corner of the Mexican’s mouth while Odell skinned the tongue with his butcher knife. He crosscut it into thin slices, going against the grain of the muscle. There were no sticks available to roast the meat on, so he laid it out on the ground while he went to fetch the ramrod from his rifle hanging on his saddle. By the time he got back to the fire the Mexican was already chewing on a raw chunk of the tongue. He seemed extremely happy with the taste of it from the rapturous look on his face.
“I take it you ain’t picky about your cooking,” Odell said while he poked holes in a couple of pieces of the tongue and slid the brass end of his ramrod through them.
“I haven’t eaten in four days, maybe five,” the Mexican managed to say while he gummed around on the tough meat.
“Cuántas dias? Cinco?” Odell thought the Mexican dangerously skinny, but five days without food seemed a little unbelievable for a man still alive, even a walking skeleton with most of his legs missing.
“I ate a scorpion and a little green beetle I found while crawling to my donkey yesterday, or maybe it was the day before.” The Mexican seemed a little bothered by the measuring of time.
“I admit provisions are scarce in these parts, but I take it you aren’t much of a hunter.”
“I have no gun, and as you can see, I’m not swift enough to run down a buffalo or an antelope. I don’t even have teeth enough to hang on if I were to catch one.” The Mexican had managed to swallow his raw meat and was looking longingly at the remaining tongue at Odell’s feet. Odell pitched him the pieces one at a time, and the Mexican caught them one-handed. Before Odell could offer him the use of his ramrod to cook them with, the man stuck another raw chunk in his mouth with the utmost pleasure.
“I sometimes find a dead carcass, but I can’t always whip the wolves off of it,” the Mexican added.
“These plains are a hell of a place for a man in your condition,” Odell said. “What brings you out here?”
The little Mexican considered the question for a long time while he worried his meal around under the jaw teeth in one cheek. “I gather honey and sell it to the traders in Santa Fe.”
Odell looked at the empty prairie surrounding them and thought the man was as crazy as he looked. There wasn’t a tree anywhere for miles, and not even a single flower blooming amidst the dry grass. “I don’t know where you’d find honey out here. Bees are bound to be as rare as water.”
The Mexican started to laugh but seemed to run out of energy before he could. “Oh, no, I did my hunting in the mountains west of the Pecos. There are lots of beehives in the rocks there.”
“Well, what brought you out on this godforsaken flat?”
The Mexican did laugh at that. “God is here too.”
Odell looked around them again. “I’d say he ain’t. If he was, he’d be real easy to spot.”
“He is here, it’s just a matter of knowing where to look, like spotting a single bee flying to or from the hive. A man can get caught up looking at all the nothing and miss what is right before him and all around him.”
“Well, I’d say that’s a funny way for a God to operate.”
“The greatest mystery is why He even bothers with us at all.” The Mexican crossed himself three times and muttered something to the Virgin Mary in Spanish.
“You ain’t said how you ended up out here if you’re a bee hunter.”
“The bees disappeared above the Pecos, and I had a dream there was a canyon of honey to the east.”
“You came across the plains in your shape because you had a dream?” Odell held his meat over the fire and tried to keep from scorching it.
“Dreams are not to be taken lightly. Sometimes I’m not sure if this is the dream, and the lives we live in our sleep are the reality.”
“You must be a man of great faith to venture out here with nothing but a donkey and two little stubs for legs,” Odell said. “Why, you don’t even have anything to carry water in. How’d you make it this far?”
“I crawl to my burro every morning and then ride until I fall asleep. Sometimes he carries me while I dream, and sometimes I fall off and that is where we camp.” The Mexican was already sticking another piece of buffalo tongue in his mouth. He started off again in Spanish, but saw the confusion on Odell’s face and swapped back to his broken English. “Gracias a Dios y sangre de Cristo, he leads me to water when I need it. I drank yesterday evening from a buffalo wallow that still held a little water from the last rain.”
Odell took his own breakfast from the fire and set it aside to cool. He himself had once tried following a herd of buffalo to some kind of water, but the stagnant, bug-ridden mudhole he found made him sick and worse off than he’d been before he discovered it.
“God provides if we have but a little faith,” the Mexican said.
“He doesn’t seem to be too generous with you,” Odell pointed to the terrible scars where the Mexican’s knees had once been. “What happened to your legs?”
“Iron Shirt broke my ankles and then gave me a knife to cut off my feet.”
“Iron Shirt?”
“He’s a medicine chief. I’ve been long on the Llano, but he’s the meanest Comanche I’ve run across. I once had some sheep and a woman at Bent’s Fort on the Arkansas, but Iron Shirt carried them away. I once hunted buffalo with the men of my village, but he killed many of us, stole my horse, and took my weapons. And when I decided to gather honey he caught me and roped me by the feet and drug me out on the Llano to die.”
Odell tried to take a bite of the meat on his ramrod but it was too tough, and he had to stuff a whole piece in his mouth. His jaws were strong and his teeth in far better shape than the Mexican’s, but they were no match for the tough tongue. The juice was at least satisfying, and he spat out the piece for a new one once he’d worked it dry.
“I thought you said Iron Shirt gave you a knife so you could cut your feet off. How come he didn’t just do it
himself?”
The Mexican laughed in a way that was a little disturbing. “He and his warriors sat around and watched to see if I could cut my feet off myself. They were already rotting before he gave me the knife and I would die if I didn’t do it. It was more fun for Iron Shirt to wait and see if I would suffer more to live as a cripple than to torture me anymore himself. Comanches have strange senses of humor.”
“So you cut your own legs off?”
“I did. My calves had already started turning black by the time I found my courage, and I wanted to make sure I cut high enough to get above the poison. After that, I stuck my stumps in a fire to stop the bleeding. I screamed until I lost my voice for many days.”
“Well, I ain’t no lover of Comanches, but I’d say you’ve got a grudge to top mine.”
“Iron Shirt was impressed by the fact that I would cut my own legs off and then live through it. He didn’t expect my medicine to be so strong, and he assumed I would lay there until I rotted and died or bled to death.”
“Yeah, he sounds like a swell fellow.”
“He brought me this burro and a bag of water the next day.”
“I reckon he thought he was just torturing you more,” Odell said.
“There is no knowing what a Comanche is thinking. I once thought I knew them, but I was a fool.”
“They sure played a dirty trick on you.”
“It was my own fault. I was vain and full of too much pride to think I belonged on the Llano. It asks a price of every man.” The Mexican crossed himself again.
Odell hadn’t slept at all the night before, and the warm meat juice in his belly was causing his eyes to droop. He wrapped his robe tight about him and lay down on his side in a faint patch of sunlight near the fire. He was asleep almost as soon as his shoulder touched the ground.
A noise woke him hours later. It was the sound of something dragging on the ground. He sat up groggily and it took him a moment to locate the sound. It was the Mexican crawling on his belly to where his donkey had grazed away from the fire.
“Hold on there, and I’ll give you some help,” Odell called out.
The Mexican just kept crawling. The burro was fifty yards off and grazing farther away. The sun was shining like the blizzard had never even been, and Odell tied his buffalo robe behind his saddle and checked his gear. He gave Crow half of the remaining water in his buffalo bladder canteen, pouring it in the crown of his hat for the gelding to drink. When Crow had finished, Odell squeezed the wet felt in his fist above his upturned face and let a few drops of liquid trickle into his mouth. He took one swig from the water bag and mounted and went to help the Mexican catch his burro.
He rode alongside the burro and caught hold of the hemp hackamore and lead the little animal was wearing. He led the gaunt long-ear to where the Mexican bee hunter was crawling through the short grass. He dismounted and brought the burro close to its crippled owner.
“Here, let me help you. You’d be in some shape if you let this old jackass get too far away.”
The Mexican never looked up at him and shook his head vigorously while he continued to crawl. “No, I don’t travel anywhere fast, but I eventually get where I’m going.”
“I could just pick you right up and set you on him,” Odell offered. It made him highly uncomfortable to see a man crawl like that. The bee hunter wiggled his torso like a snake and his arms pulled him along in a fashion that reminded Odell of an insect—as if the Mexican were no man at all, rather some new kind of animal alien to the world as it should be.
“No, this may be my penance and I wouldn’t want to prolong it by taking your help.” The Mexican had reached the burro and pulled himself up to a sitting position by its tail. He was breathing raggedly, but there was a smile on his face. “We all must crawl at some point in our lives. If we are lucky, we start out that way, but some come to such an end.”
Odell went to his horse and retrieved the buffalo robe. He spread it across the burro’s back. “Here, take that. It will give you some padding and keep you warm at night.”
“Gracias, senor, but how will you keep warm?”
“I’m headed south, and besides, I think spring is here and I’ll have plenty of time to kill me another one before next winter.”
Both of them gave the empty distance an unsure look, bonded for a brief instant by the uncertainty that was the Staked Plains.
“Senor, you never said what brings you out onto the Llano.”
“A Comanche tortured my pappy to death and scalped a neighbor of mine. He stole all our stock, burned our house, and killed my dog.” Odell was getting to where the thought of that night wasn’t as bad as it had been, but any mention of it still brought the pain back. “He wasn’t much of a dog, and I guess they just killed him for pure meanness.”
“That sounds like Iron Shirt.”
“He was a little Comanche with big muscles and not much older than me.”
“I don’t know him. Iron Shirt wears Spanish chain mail and is an older man.”
“Then he ain’t who I’ve been after.”
“I’ve heard about a small warrior they call Little Bull. He’s supposed to be a great horse thief and war leader. Maybe that’s the man who raided you. He is said to live far to the northeast along the Canadian. Maybe you can find him there.”
“I’m about hunted out, and there ain’t enough black powder left in my horn to blow the hat off of my head. I think I’ll go back home and see if my girl will marry me.” Odell didn’t mention how tired he was. What he needed more than anything was rest away from all the worries of trying to keep himself alive in a land that didn’t seem to want his company.
“See, the Llano has already given you wisdom. Go back to your home and marry your novia,” the Mexican said.
“You wouldn’t happen to know the quickest or best way to Austin would you?” Odell could only guess that the town lay somewhere to the southeast, or maybe it was just due east.
“No, I’ve never been there.” The Mexican looked perplexed for the first time.
“Maybe you could just point me to the Colorado River.”
“There is a supposed to be a big spring a day’s ride to the east of here. It’s in a little canyon just off of a big draw, and the Comanches use it enough that you ought to find it if you’re careful. Angle southeast from there and in another day or maybe more you should come to the San Saba somewhere close to the old presidio,” The Mexican offered a little tentatively.
“Thanks.”
“Don’t thank me. Thank God if you get there. I’ve never been east of the Llano, and what I tell you is only rumor. Your journey may be far from over.”
“Well, that’s more than I’ve had to go on since I left Old Star and those Wichitas last winter,” Odell said.
The Mexican gave the burro’s tail a couple of quick jerks, and to Odell’s surprise, the little animal lay down docilely. The bee hunter crawled on his back and chucked until the burro rose back to its feet.
“Now that’s a neat trick. How long did it take you to teach him that?”
The Mexican seemed a little perturbed at another question that regarded the consideration of time. “Maybe two years, maybe more.”
“How’d you get on before that?”
“It wasn’t easy.”
“Well, I guess I’d better be riding,” Odell said.
“Vaya con Dios, caballero.”
Odell reined away, but pulled up short. “I didn’t even catch your name. I’m Odell Spurling.”
“I just saw a bee. Andale, burro.” The Mexican swatted the burro’s rump with his hand and rode off in a trot with his eyes madly searching the horizon to the east.
Odell followed along, as the bee hunter was going in the direction he needed to travel. They trotted a distance of two or three miles in an arrow straight line, until the Mexican suddenly tu
rned and came back in the opposite direction. He passed by Odell as if he weren’t there, blind to anything but the bee he thought he’d seen and the fevered vision that had led him out onto the Llano Estacado.
“Where are you going old man? Your canyon of honey is supposed to be to the east.”
The Mexican didn’t answer him. Odell thought about going back and leading the Mexican to water, but something told him that wasn’t the thing to do. The Llano was a crazy, endless place, but he couldn’t think of anywhere else the mad bee hunter might belong.
The two men traveled in opposite directions until they were diverging and vanishing specks on the plain who might not have ever even met. The only sign of their passing was the dust that rose under their animals’ feet, but even that was short-lived and soon gone under the expanse of sky.
Odell finally quit looking behind him and cast his gaze homeward, or at least in the direction where he thought home might lie. He was whisper-thin and weather-cured, with the scraggly beginning of a man’s beard hanging from his chin and the faint hint of coyote wisdom showing in his eyes. The hurt and turmoil within him had all but been boiled, frozen, and starved away by the wild country like the slow erosion of soft, red sandstone exposed to the elements. Lost as he was, something told him he was riding toward Red Wing, and he kicked Crow up to a lope with the sweet south wind cutting across his right cheek.
Chapter 12
Three days of monotonous travel had only deepened Red Wing’s depression. The Peace Commission rode hard from sunup to sundown, and every mile they put behind them brought her that much closer to no longer being who she had become, to losing all that she had come to cherish. Every time she turned to look back behind her, a little bit of hope floated away from her like the faint smoke from coals banked beneath ashes. She hated the fear and cowardice that turned her cold and numb on the inside and made her feel like the wretched little squaw in a filthy rag of a dress she had been so many years before.
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