by Tim Tingle
“But what do I do tonight?” Danny thought. “The flag is already at half-mast. We planned my escape for tonight!”
The line of prisoners marched slowly through the gate and to the barracks.
“When do we eat?” asked a prisoner.
“You will shut up and eat when I say you can,” replied the new officer. “Take them to their beds,” he shouted to the guards.
The men sat on their beds while six guards, with shotguns handy and ready to fire, stood watching. Two guarded the door.
An hour later Rick and Susan appeared.
“I heard the men had no time to eat,” Rick said to the guards by the door. “I brought some dried meat. At least they’ll have something in their bellies. After all, this killing’s not their fault.”
The guards took the bag and reached inside.
“You don’t have to look for a knife or gun,” Rick said with a smile. “I’m just a delivery man, you all know that. I ain’t causing no trouble.”
“We have to be careful,” said a guard. “We already left a prisoner alone today and look what happened.”
Rick rubbed his forehead, covering his eyes. While the guards examined the bag, he searched the room for Danny Blackgoat. When their eyes met, he quietly nodded at Danny, then spoke loud enough for all to hear.
“Tonight is some night, huh? And it’s not over yet.”
“He is telling me something,” thought Danny. “Something about tonight. If he was warning me, he would not be nodding. Tonight is still on!”
“Seems safe,” said the guard. “All right, men,” he shouted. “Stay where you are. We’ll bring you supper.”
“My wife can make coffee, enough for the guards and prisoners, everybody,” Rick said.
“I could use some coffee,” the officer replied. “Sounds good to me.”
While Susan boiled water over the wood stove, Rick helped the guards pass out the meat. As he approached Danny, he looked over his shoulder. The officer watched him closely.
“Here you are, Fire Eye,” Rick said. “And no trouble from you tonight!” Then he rubbed his hand across his lips and whispered, “Escape, Danny. Tonight.”
Danny kept his eyes to the floor, nodding to let Rick know he understood.
Soon the coffee was served, but no one spoke. Instead of the usual talking, the prisoners looked at each other without saying a word. Danny knew something was very different about tonight.
“They knew of Mr. Dime’s plan,” Danny thought. “But they don’t know of mine.”
Soon the prisoners climbed into bed for the night’s sleep. A guard put the lanterns out. Darkness and silence settled over the barracks.
Chapter 16
Life Inside the Coffin
Danny rolled over in his bed till his eyes faced the door. He curled into a ball as if he were asleep.
An hour later the officer motioned to the guards, who gathered at the door. As Danny watched, the officer whispered orders. The guards quietly left the barracks, leaving only two guards in chairs on either side of the door.
“They will be there till morning,” Danny realized.
Danny’s bed was near a window, but he knew the guards would hear the creaking window if he lifted it.
“If I stay alert and wait, the time will come,” he thought.
After midnight, a prisoner started shouting. “Help! Help me, somebody! There’s a snake in my bed.”
Both guards ran to his bedside.
“Don’t pay no attention to him,” said another prisoner. “He’s been having nightmares since the rattlesnake bit that Fire Eye boy. He don’t know what he’s saying!”
The other prisoners sat up in bed, all wide-awake. The guards took the prisoner by the arms and stood him by the bed.
“Stand here and don’t move!” said a guard. He flung back the covers of the prisoner’s bed.
“See,” said the guard. “No rattlesnake. Now, get back in bed and shut up!”
They prisoners laughed and eased back into their own beds.
“Look at that,” said a guard as they passed Danny’s bed. “All that noise and he slept right through it.”
“Dumb Indian,” said the other guard. The two laughed as they returned to their chairs by the door.
But Danny never heard him say it. The prisoner’s nightmare was the moment Danny was waiting for. While everyone turned their attention to the hollering prisoner, Danny carefully rolled his pillow and sheet beneath his blanket, so anyone would think he was still curled up in bed. Then he lifted the creaking window, crawled outside, and slowly closed the window behind himself. By the time the guards passed his bed and called him a “dumb Indian,” a very smart Danny Blackgoat was standing at the back door of the carpenter shop.
As Jim Davis had promised, the back door to the shop was unlocked. Danny entered and paused at the door. The sky was cloudy and no light flowed through the windows.
In a few minutes, after his eyes adjusted to the darkness, Danny saw the shapes and shadows of the carpenter shop. His eyes settled on the coffin ten feet to his right. He shivered and wrapped his arms around himself.
“There is a body in the coffin,” he said in a whisper. “A dead man. Please, Grandfather, stay close to me.”
He was more afraid than when the soldiers had burned his home. He was more afraid than when they had shot Mr. Begay. He was more afraid than when they had slaughtered his sheep while he watched. He was more afraid than ever in his life.
Danny cast his eyes around the room. He spotted what looked like another body. It was wrapped in a sheet and lying near the coffin.
“Who is that?” he asked himself. “No. If Jim Davis was dead, if Mr. Dime had killed him, Rick would have warned me.”
Danny was jerked into the present by voices outside the shop.
“Where could he go?” a soldier shouted.
“No telling,” said another. “But if he’s left the fort, he’ll soon be dead. If the wildcats don’t get him, he’ll die of thirst.”
“Those soldiers are talking about me!” Danny thought.
“Sure is a lot of dying tonight,” the soldier said, passing twenty feet from where Danny stood.
Danny walked slowly to the coffin, as if he were taking the last steps of his life. He gripped the lid of the coffin and slowly lifted it. The hinges creaked.
He closed his eyes tight, never looking at the body. With his feet he scooted the legs to one side and stepped into the coffin. He sat on the body and felt a man’s stomach sink under his weight. He eased himself back, lying down on the body but still holding the lid over his head. With one final look around the carpenter shop, almost hoping Jim Davis would appear and tell him not to be afraid, Danny Blackgoat slowly closed the lid over himself.
“Now,” he whispered, “I wait.”
Danny fought sleep, shaking his head back and forth when he felt himself nodding off. Today had been the longest day of his life. Soon he drifted into a deep and dreamless sleep, on top of a dead man.
An hour later he woke up with a shock, banging his head on the lid of the coffin! Two soldiers entered the carpenter shop.
“There’s the coffin,” a soldier said.
“Careful not to step on that other body,” said the second soldier.
“Yeah,” replied the first. “Never thought I’d see the day. He was a tough man, but not tougher than a shotgun.”
“Where’d he get the shotgun? That’s what I want to know.”
Danny felt the coffin move as the soldiers dragged it across the floor.
“Man, this is heavy!” said one of the soldiers.
“So is the man inside!” said the other.
Danny’s head jerked up and down as they pulled the coffin out the door.
“Go get us a horse,” said one of the soldiers. “This thing’s too heavy to carry.” While he waited for the horse, the soldier sat on the coffin and whistled a song.
“How can he be happy,” thought Danny, “so close to death?”
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When the soldier returned with the horse, he tied a rope around the horse’s neck. Then he lifted one end of the coffin while the other soldier looped a rope around it.
“Now,” he said, “it’s a long way to the graveyard. Let’s get started.”
The horse dragged the coffin through the gates of the fort and up a steep hill. Danny slid to the rear of the coffin. He stayed completely still and didn’t utter a sound. Half an hour later, they came to a halt. The soldiers removed the rope from the coffin.
“I’m ready for breakfast,” one shouted.
They walked down the hill, leaving Danny and the body lying beside an open grave. Danny lay still and listened. When he was certain the soldiers were gone, he shuffled till he lay in a more comfortable position.
“Jim Davis said the funerals are always in the morning,” he recalled. “I shouldn’t have long to wait.”
At the thought of his friend, Danny remembered the extra body in the carpenter shop.
“Whoever it was, it wasn’t Jim Davis,” he told himself. “Rick would have warned me.”
Soon he heard the sound of wagons approaching. A few mourners stepped from the wagons. A soldier, serving as a preacher, carried his large black Bible to the graveside. The loud voice of the preacher boomed across the mountainside. The funeral was short. No tears were shed.
Soldiers dragged the coffin to the edge of the grave. With little ceremony or respect, they pushed the coffin into the shallow grave. Danny’s body slammed against the side of the coffin. He felt a sudden pain as the belt buckle of the dead man stabbed him in the ribs. He wanted to scream, but instead flung his hand over his mouth.
“That’s all I need,” he thought. “To come this far, to be so close to escaping, and a pain in the ribs gives me away!”
Danny felt the sharp edge of the buckle cut through his skin.
“I can’t move, not yet,” he told himself.
He lay as still as a stone. Something landed on the coffin, catching Danny by surprise. The soldiers were shoveling dirt and tossing it on top of the coffin.
“They are burying the body,” he thought, “and me with it!”
A cold shiver went through his body. He had not allowed himself to think of this moment.
“If I had known what this would be like, to be buried with a dead man, I would never have done this!”
Dirt and rocks pounded on the coffin lid. Soon the sound was muffled. Then the sound was gone.
The wagons creaked on their way down the mountain, but Danny did not hear them. He was buried in the quiet, dark world of the dead.
As he lay awake in the coffin, Danny remembered his family. He thought of his favorite sheep, of Crowfoot. He smiled, but not for long.
Once more, the memory came alive. He felt two soldiers hold his arms tight. He struggled and called out, but they were too strong. They held his face and made him watch. They called him names he did not understand. And when he grabbed Crowfoot and tried to run, they shot Crowfoot. They shot his favorite sheep as he held him in his arms. They laughed when the blood spurted from Crowfoot. The blood made a puddle on the ground. It flowed like a stream. It flowed in Danny Blackgoat’s mind, even today.
“How can they do this? How can they be so mean?”
That is how Danny spent his first hour beneath the ground, buried alive. He remembered the day the soldiers came. He wrapped his arms around his chest and let the tears fly.
Suddenly, Danny heard a voice.
“Danny, you are in the Land of the Dead. You will be cured. Stay strong.”
Danny slapped his palms against the roof of the coffin. He flung his arms and elbows against the side of the wooden box.
“No!” he called out.
The voice was that of his grandfather.
“You cannot be dead,” Danny whispered. “Please. You are not a ghost, tell me you are not.”
The smiling face of his grandfather floated above him. Danny relaxed. His chest heaved and his heart pounded, but he took a deep breath and relaxed.
“It is a vision,” he whispered to himself. “My grandfather has come to me in a vision.”
He covered his face with his hands and closed his eyes tight.
“How long have I been waiting?” Danny asked out loud.
Less than an hour was the answer, but Danny would never know it. Time crawled by, like memories on the back of a bug creeping across the desert sand.
“I must remember the good things,” he told himself.
He thought of his grandmother’s thick corn soup. He smiled and his mouth watered, wanting a taste.
“Soon I will taste her soup again. Soon.”
He remembered helping his grandfather in his leather shop, cutting the cowhide and making clothes and leather carrying bags. He sniffed the air and smelled the leather.
“You are here, Grandfather,” he said. “I smell the leather from your shop.”
Danny didn’t let himself think of the body below him. His mind flew from one thought to another, always about his Navajo home.
Though he fought to stay awake, Danny nodded off to sleep. When he woke up, he was more scared than ever.
“What time of day is it?” he asked himself. “No sun, no sky, no moon. How can I ever know?”
By early afternoon, Danny began to worry about Jim Davis.
“He should be here by now,” he thought. “He should be digging me up. I should be riding a horse on my way home.”
Danny sang Navajo songs, all the songs he knew. By early evening Danny was convinced he had been underground for more than a day.
“Something has happened to Jim Davis,” he said aloud. “He was caught stealing a pony. He was stopped by the soldiers. They wouldn’t let him leave the fort.”
Then the air turned cold.
“He is sick,” Danny told himself.
A terrifying thought crossed his mind.
“Maybe he is dead.”
Danny remembered the smell of leather whenever he thought of his grandfather.
“Maybe the smell is real.”
He took a deep breath. The smell was real. Danny Blackgoat smelled the thick aroma of leather inside the coffin.
For the first time, he allowed his mind to think of the body below him. His fingers crept across his chest. Like tiny insects, they crawled across his ribs. Soon his fingers felt the chest of the dead man.
For the first time in his young life, Danny Blackgoat felt the fear of his own death. His fingers felt the vest, the leather vest of his friend Jim Davis.
“Jim Davis will never come to rescue me,” Danny said aloud. “He will never dig me out of the ground. He can’t. He is dead. My friend Jim Davis is dead and we are buried together!”
Danny took another breath and the smell of leather was stronger than ever. Danny closed his eyes. He whispered the prayer his grandfather had taught him.
When morning casts its light on the canyon walls
A new house is made,
A house made of dawn.
Before me everything is beautiful.
Behind me everything is beautiful.
Above me everything is beautiful.
Below me everything is beautiful.
Around me everything is beautiful.
Within me everything is beautiful.
Nothing will change.
But change came to Danny Blackgoat that day. The air in the coffin grew thinner and thinner.
Chapter 17
Good-bye to Jim Davis
The moon shone yellow and bright, casting long shadows over the graveyard. A few feet above the coffin, a horse whinnied and stomped the ground. An old man picked up a shovel and began to dig.
From inside the coffin, Danny heard a loud scratching sound. A shovel scraped across the wooden lid of the coffin. He held his breath and waited. The lid of the coffin flew open, and there stood his friend Jim Davis!
“Sorry it took me so long, Danny, but I couldn’t find a pony,” Davis said.
D
anny Blackgoat couldn’t think of a word to say, but he didn’t have to talk. His face reflected the bright yellow moon. He closed his eyes and a grin crept across his face.
“Please tell me you are not a dream, Jim Davis,” he said.
“No, Danny. I am not a dream,” Davis said. “Oh, how did you like my surprise?”
“What surprise?’ asked Danny.
“My leather vest,” said Davis. “The one from your grandfather. I put it on Mr. Dime so you wouldn’t be afraid.”
“You put your vest on Mr. Dime?” Danny asked. He slowly turned and cast his eyes on the body. Mr. Dime lay stretched out in the coffin, looking more peaceful in death than ever during his life.
“I’ll tell you what happened someday,” Davis said, “but no time for that now.”
He stepped back and gripped the reins of a pony.
“It’s not as big and strong as I had hoped for. But this young pony is like you, Danny Blackgoat. He’s quick and he’s smart. You two will get along fine.”
“What is his name?” Danny asked.
“Well,” said Davis, with a sly grin on his face. “I’ve been feeding him for about a month now, and I gave him a new name. He’s already answering to it. I call your pony Fire Eye! How do you like it?”
“I like it,” Danny said. “Thank you, Jim Davis. You are a good friend. Ahéhé.”
“We better get you out of here, Danny, before they catch on to us. Here’s the plan. Follow the road to Fort Sumner, the one Rick brought you here on. Understand?”
“I understand,” Danny said.
“Good,” said Davis. “Ride as far from the fort as you can today. I don’t know if they’ll send any soldiers after you or not. More likely they’ll say, ‘Let him die,’ and be done with it.”
Danny hung his head.
“Hey, Danny, that’s a good thing! They’ll leave you alone. Now, about your pony. Fire Eye’s already been fed. Ride him fast but let him rest when he’s breathing hard. Around noon you should come across a spring of water. Let him drink, but keep a real close eye out. Everybody that takes the road drinks at this spring.”