Code of the West

by Aaron Latham

  Jimmy, acting by reflex, tried to get off his pony to help his aunt, but the leather rope tied to his ankles held him fast. He kicked against the rope but only succeeded in making his horse bolt in the wrong direction. When he looked back, Jimmy saw that Aunt Rachel had stopped struggling. She was being dragged along, seemingly lifeless.

  At last, the rope went slack. The Comanches waited to see if Aunt Rachel would regain consciousness.

  When she began to stir, a brave pulled on her rope to make her get up again. Slowly and awkwardly—without the use of her bound hands—Aunt Rachel rose to her feet. Then the rope went taut and the bleeding body began to run again.

  Mounting a ridge toward evening, the Sun Chief called a halt. Jimmy, glad for a rest from the constant motion, studied a landscape that was beginning to flatten out and lose its trees. The feminine countryside of East Texas was starting to give way to the masculine country of West Texas, but at the moment it was neither one nor the other, neither round nor flat, neither soft nor hard, androgynous. Like a boy who had been cut.

  The Comanche band was ready to divide again. Aunt Rachel was led off like a newly purchased brood mare toward the southwest. The Sun Chief and his followers turned northwest with Jimmy and Little Billy.

  “No, my baby!” cried Aunt Rachel.

  But a brave raised his whip and signaled her to be quiet. Dumbly, she followed her rope at a trot. Her nephew noticed that the un-clouded sun had burned away the outline of her corset.

  • • •

  On the third day, Jimmy was carried into a new world. The land was more than masculine, flatter than a man’s chest, harder than a man’s muscles, even more unforgiving than most men. It seemed unable or unwilling to nourish anything. In this harsh place, the last harsh division took place. The Sun Chief and a dozen warriors rode north with Jimmy, while a dozen other braves carried the baby Billy due west.

  “Goodbye, Billy,” Jimmy whispered. “Be good.”

  76

  After more days and nights on the trail, Jimmy found himself on the brink of a vast canyon with steep red cliffs, decorated with diminutive cedar and chinaberry trees. He had never seen anything so big, had never heard of anything so enormous, had never imagined that such a marvel was possible. He couldn’t help wondering: Was he the first white man or boy to see it? The huge hole, appearing so suddenly, reminded the boy of something in a fairy tale. It was so unexpected as to be almost unbelievable. Somehow this landscape seemed incredibly old: he expected to discover dinosaurs patrolling the canyon floor. The white child stared down at what appeared to be a toy village with many hundreds of toy tepees. Comanche dolls were walking about among the toy tents. The village followed a stream for miles and miles, a vast river of tepees. In the wilderness, Jimmy gawked at the largest city he had ever seen in his life. He never knew that many people existed.

  The mounted warriors began their descent of the canyon wall single file. Even they—with all their experience and ability—were careful. Eventually, Jimmy was signaled to join the line of descent. As he began his journey, moving lower and lower, he felt as if the earth were swallowing him, which, for all practical purposes, was what happened, for the village was so well hidden in the canyon that the chances of white men finding it or him were very small. Jimmy continued down into the red bowels of the earth.

  As the returning band neared home, the boy grew more and more nervous as he sensed a growing excitement in the warriors and a reciprocal agitation in the looming village. Relatives and friends came rushing out to meet and escort the successful marauders. The noise and size of this welcoming multitude frightened Jimmy. He started crying, but through his tears he couldn’t help noticing that all the little Comanche boys were completely naked. The little girls wore buckskin dresses, but their brothers wore nothing at all. Jimmy couldn’t imagine what his new life was going to be like in this new half-naked world. He wondered if they would try to take his clothes away from him and turn him into a naked savage. Jimmy began to shake as the crowd grew larger and larger. They were all singing songs that sounded to him like the kind of songs bears and wolves would sing. The boy was fascinated and scared to death.

  Random red hands reached up and touched him. He flinched in fear but was relieved to find that the touchers did him no harm. They seemed more interested in satisfying their curiosity than their blood lust. They rubbed his skin. They pointed at his pale hair, which was luckily out of reach. Jimmy seemed to be something new in this village buried deep in the earth. Villagers thronged around him as if they had never seen a white boy before. He apparently amazed them just as they amazed him. Each was evidently a new world to the other—a new red world, a new white world.

  Up ahead, Jimmy saw the sun-yellow leader of the raiding party holding high a scalp pole. On it, Goodnight hair seemed to dance for sheer joy. His grandfather’s grey locks were more animated in death than he had ever seen them in life. And his father’s brown hair was just as active, jumping, spinning, whirling, leading the parade. And long red hair danced as if to make up for all the barn dances and hoedowns and two-steps and skip-to-my-lou’s it would never have a chance to enjoy.

  As the band entered the village, Jimmy saw what looked like clotheslines stretched beside almost every tepee, only these lines supported not clothing but strips of meat. Flesh had been hung out to dry. Buffalo jerky stirred in the slight wind.

  Dogs ran along beside the horses, barking. There seemed to be more dogs even than people, and they were even louder than their masters. They helped to give the Comanche camp an overwhelming sense ofnoise. The captive boy, who had always lived a quiet life by comparison, was overwhelmed by the racket here in the wilderness.

  Jimmy rode at the center of a huge red dust cloud raised by thousands of feet: Comanche feet, dog feet, horses’ hooves, bare feet, moccasined feet, a vast multitude of beating feet that turned the earth into a drumhead. The white boy found it hard to breathe, which made him feel all the more trapped. It was as though this noisy throng had used up all the air. He was suffocating, drowning in dust.

  As they passed through the village, the warriors dropped out of the procession one by one as they reached their tepees. Each departing warrior handed over his trophies to his woman and then disappeared inside his tent. Jimmy kept wondering where he would stop and what would happen to him when, at last, his journey was over.

  When the Sun Chief finally reached his tepee, he turned over his pint-sized white captive to his wife. Then this magnificent yellowstained warrior, like the others, disappeared into his tepee. Jimmy had the sense that he was being deserted. He feared his owner and yet had somehow come to rely upon him. While a crowd gathered around, the squaw carefully examined the white boy. She opened the captive’s mouth and checked his teeth. She turned his head this way and that. She looked closely at his pale hands and stared into his blue eyes. A dazed Jimmy submitted passively to all this manipulation.

  While she was probing him, Jimmy naturally studied her. She had short hair like her husband. The boy wondered if chiefs and their families got regular haircuts as a mark of distinction to set them apart. Her hands, which were busy exploring him, were rough and calloused. Evidently, chiefs’ wives were expected to work like everybody else. Jimmy hated being touched this way, so a part of him hated the woman. But another part of him was touched in a different way by her profound sadness. He wasn’t sure how he knew that she was sad since he couldn’t understand her words, but he did know. In her unhappiness, she reminded him of his mother, not as he had known her, but as she must be now, having lost her twins, the daughter dead, the son carried away to who knew where. He wondered what this woman would look like if she were not so sad? He sensed beauty beneath the ravages, but he was still afraid of her.

  Suddenly, a Comanche boy only slightly older than Jimmy rushed up and started beating the ten-year-old captive with a cedar stick. Nobody seemed surprised except the victim. Jimmy fell to the ground and attempted to cover himself against the blows.

&nb
sp; 77

  Atall scalp pole stood at the center of a great circle of frenzied Comanches. By the light of a great bonfire, made of logs stacked like a tepee, Jimmy again recognized familiar hair. The white captive was led toward the scalps by his yellow-painted master. As the pole drew nearer, it seemed to stretch up taller and taller, a menacing giant that kept growing and growing. It appeared to shake its awful hair down at the boy. When he reached the pole, his hands were pulled behind him and bound around the great upright hair tree. Jimmy was a living scalp displayed on the scalp pole. The Comanches danced around their quick-and-dead trophies, their dance and their song building in intensity and feeling and speed. Jimmy stared at this moving circle. Then he looked above his head at the hair and the stars. He was afraid, horrified, terrorized—but also embarrassed. Jimmy had never in his life been the focus of so much attention, and he didn’t like it. He wondered if he was blushing.

  A young naked boy, perhaps six years old, broke from the circle and came running toward Jimmy, brandishing a flint knife. The Comanche child rushed right up to the white boy and thrust the blade at his stomach. The bound captive flinched and expected to feel an end-of-life agony, but the knife only made a small dimple in his stomach without breaking the skin. Standing on tiptoe, the Comanche boy reached up and grabbed the white boy’s yellow hair and pulled it hard as his scalping knife came up. The blade grazed the pale forehead, but the child warrior was only pretending to scalp the towhead. It was a deadly rehearsal for raids and murders to come. The red boy kept on slashing again and again at the blond locks, his knife scratching the pale forehead harder and deeper, finally drawing a drop of blood. Jimmy glanced down at his distorted shadow, which looked as if it were really being scalped.

  When the boy-brave retreated, another came out to take his place and then another and then more and more. All the boys in the village seemed to take a turn at the game of stab-and-scalp. They were all having a wonderful time. Jimmy began to relax a little as his yellow hair survived one scalping after another.

  Then Jimmy saw the Comanche boy, the one who had beaten him when he first arrived, approaching him with knife drawn. The red boy walked with the kind of swagger that frightened the white boy even though none of the other boys had really hurt him. Suspecting that the games were over, Jimmy struggled against his bonds in earnest. He thought the Comanche boy was staring at his crotch. The white boy was even more frightened when red hands started unbuttoning his ragged, homespun pants. His trousers dropped around his bound ankles. The Comanche boy reached for his balls. Jimmy was embarrassed and terrified at the same time. It also tickled. The stone blade bit into his scrotum. The white boy closed his eyes and tried to pass out, but he couldn’t.

  “Kee!”shouted a familiar voice.

  Jimmy opened his eyes: The Sun Chief was standing behind the red boy who was busy cutting off white balls. The Comanche boy stopped sawing. A painted yellow hand reached down and took the knife. Feeling blood running down his leg, Jimmy prayed he was still intact.

  78

  Jimmy limped, head down, beneath the red walls of his prison. His crotch was still sore, but it was healing in one piece. He had been sent out to gather firewood and now carried a few dry mesquite twigs in his arms. From time to time, he would daydream about running away, but then he would look around him and despair. Not only were the canyon walls steep, but they were covered with slippery sandstone scree. All around, the canyon reared up great promontories that looked like red or violet or deep purple watchtowers. From time to time, he scratched his wound and then wished he hadn’t.

  Squinting, searching for wood, Jimmy saw something move in the buffalo grass. He stopped, afraid. Staring, he expected to see a snake, but instead he discovered a friendly monster. A baby horny toad was looking for bugs to eat. The boy bent down and started to chase it.

  When he caught it, Jimmy held up his prey in his right hand and studied it. The horny toad was so small that it covered only a part of his palm. Gazing back at him, it looked like classroom drawings he had seen of dinosaurs. Or perhaps it looked more like a toy dragon. This tiny prehistoric animal, with its armor-plated head, seemed to belong here in this ancient place. Horns rose like thorns from its skull and back and tail.

  “Hi,” Jimmy said.

  The age-old animal blinked scaled eyes.

  “Horny Toad, do you talk English? I’m lookin’ for somebody who talks English.”

  He carefully stroked the horned back. The thorns tickled the tip of his finger.

  “You do. Good,” he said brightly, wanting the monster to like him. “By the way, my name’s Jimmy. Who’re you?”

  The horny toad seemed to look at him curiously. It didn’t appear to be afraid of him. It had lasted as a species too many eons to be easily alarmed.

  “Oh, you’re Freddy. That’s a right pretty name.”

  Hearing somebody coming, Jimmy closed his hand over his new friend. Then he put the baby horny toad in the pocket of his rough, tattered, homespun pants. He still wore what was left of the clothes he had been carried off in. To his relief, he was considered too old—just barely—to run naked like the younger boys in the village. He felt the horny toad squirm and then relax in the warmth of its new nest.

  Looking around, Jimmy saw his young tormentor, the one who had tried to cut off his balls, coming toward him. The Comanche boy, who served as the boy slave’s overseer, looked disapproving. He wore a breechclout, fringed buckskin leggings, fringed moccasins, and a scowl. He had a long nose, which seemed too heavy for his face, for he carried his head tipped slightly forward. The habit gave him a scheming look.

  Jimmy knew this pint-sized slave-driver better now, but he feared him no less. At first, the captive had thought the Comanche boy must be the son of the Sun Chief, but the sadistic little overseer didn’t sleep in the master’s tepee as a son would. So Jimmy figured the boy was probably the Sun Chief’s nephew. The white boy wondered if this nephew might possibly be jealous of the slave’s place in the Sun Chief’s tent. After all, the white boy had always been jealous when his sister got to sleep in his mother’s bed. But he mustn’t think of his sister. Those thoughts made him too sad. He could stand being a slave. He could stand being separated from his people. He could even stand serving the cruel Comanche boy. But he couldn’t stand to think about what had happened to her.

  Drawing closer, the Comanche boy began telling the white boy to get back to work. Jimmy couldn’t understand the words, but he understood the meaning. And he moved to comply, bending over, picking up small sticks. But Jimmy didn’t move quickly enough to suit his young overseer. The Comanche boy hit him in the stomach and he fell. On the way down, Jimmy remembered to turn so that he wouldn’t crush the dinosaur in his pocket.

  Afew weeks later—it was summertime and hot by now—Jimmy knelt rubbing buffalo brains into a buffalo hide. He felt sick as he watched the grey jelly ooze through his fingers. He hated this leather tanning more than any other job. He had done harder work but never messier work. He could not stand the feel or the smell or the look or the idea of brains clinging to his fingers. He was sunburned brown all over and dressed in animal skins, but he was still a white boy at heart.

  Since he hated the task so much, Jimmy paused for a moment, dogging it. He looked around to see if anybody was watching him steal time. He saw lots of villagers, but they all seemed to be busy with their own chores, paying no attention to him. He tried to wipe the brains off his fingers, not succeeding very well. Then he reached into a skin bag that he kept tied to the belt of his breechclout. His hand closed around Fred, the horny toad, and he pulled him out to take a look. This archaic baby animal blinked in the bright sun for a moment. Then it started licking Jimmy’s fingers. Fred loved the grey jelly. As Jimmy watched his friend enjoy the feast, he began to feel better about the brains, too.

  Since he was so preoccupied with watching his pet eat his lunch, Jimmy didn’t see his young overseer charging toward him. Fred saw the danger coming, turned his head for
a better look, and then nestled down flat against the palm of his master’s hand. His pet’s curious behavior made the white boy look around just as the whip came whistling toward him—a hissing snake.

  The whip was made of buffalo skin that had been cured by rubbing brains into it. Then it had been cut into strips and woven into an instrument of torture. It could be used on a balky horse or a lazy slave. The whip, rendered supple as a snake by the tanning process, came down on Jimmy’s bare back. It laid a track from his right shoulder blade to his left hip.

  The slave instinctively rolled into the protective ball that he had learned in the womb. At the center of his body ball, he made another ball out of his right fist. And at the center of this ball within a ball, he cradled his horny toad. As the whip blows fell, his soft flesh struggled to shield a small animal that wore plates of strong, prehistoric armor.

  At last, the boy overseer seemed to grow weary of whipping the slave boy. The Comanche stopped the blows but now lashed the white boy with his tongue. The slave couldn’t understand the language, but he knew that he was being ordered, on pain of even worse punishment, to be more diligent in his work.

  With his pet still hidden inside his right hand, Jimmy dipped the hand into the brains again and once more started rubbing the goo into the hide. He was surprised to discover that he was crying. Tears spotted the buffalo skin. He didn’t even look up as his tormentor walked haughtily away. When he felt no one watching, Jimmy decided to take another chance. He paused in his labors long enough to raise his hand, open it, and check on Fred.

  “Don’t cry,” Jimmy whimpered to his friend. “He won’t hurt you. I won’t let him.”

  The horny toad went on contentedly licking brains.

  79