Code of the West

by Aaron Latham

  “You must take your turn,” the Sun Shaman commanded. “You must lie on her.”

  “My mind does not cry to,” said the son, glancing at Lifts Something, then glancing away again.

  “You must prove that you are Human,” his father explained. “If you do not lie on her, much Humans will say that you are still inhuman. They will think that you are only pretending to be Human. They are watching you.”

  Crying Coyote felt only the eyes of Lifts Something watching him, but her eyes were worse than the eyes of the whole tribe. He longed to meet her gaze, but he was afraid to. He studied the beads on his moccasins.

  “Your father is right,” Lifts Something said. “You must prove that you are Human. If you did not have yellow hair, you could saykee. But you must do it. You must.”

  Crying Coyote heard Lifts Something’s moccasins beating on the ground. Looking up, he saw her running away into the night. He was angry with his father for embarrassing him in front of the girl he loved. At the same time, he felt a stirring of sexual excitement inside his breechclout.

  “But, father, I have never . . .” He hated the Sun Shaman for forcing him to make such a confession.

  “Do not worry,” his father reassured him. “It will come naturally.”

  The Sun Shaman led his son back to the woman staked out on the ground. Crying Coyote got in line. He felt everybody looking at him, whether they were really looking at him or not, and the excitement inside his breechclout began to wane. Oh, no, this was terrible. What if he couldn’t penetrate the inhuman female? What would the Humans think of him then? They would say he wasn’t really a Human, wasn’t even a man. The more he worried, the more he shriveled.

  “It is your turn,” the Sun Shaman said.

  Crying Coyote stepped forward, feeling lonely and at the same time crowded, surrounded, stared at. His hopeless hand loosened the knot of his breechclout and it fell to the ground. The cool night air caressed him and his moon began to wax. Of course, it might start waning again at any moment without warning.

  When Crying Coyote lay down on top of the bound woman, he felt an excitement beyond anything he had ever imagined. He entered her and was proud. He was proving himself a real Human Being and a real man. But as he continued to move, he was overcome by a crushing sadness. Why? What was wrong with him? He hoped he wouldn’t cry.

  88

  Two armies, one Human and the other inhuman, were drawn up facing each other. The Comanches had ridden into an ambush, which was just what the Sun Shaman had feared. He had been worrying aloud to his son about how all their loot was slowing them down. Normally, raiding parties were able to escape back to Human lands before their enemies could assemble their forces to oppose them. But not this time. As they moved sluggishly north, they found their way barred by an impromptu army of regular U.S. soldiers, Texas Rangers, and armed settlers.

  The Writer line was filled with grim-faced men mostly in work clothes. They wore faded blue and dirty brown. And they seemed to approach the coming battle as a job to be done. The Human line was arrayed like a war party on its way to the opera.

  Suddenly, a warrior in a top hat and tails broke out of the line and charged into the no-man’s-land between the two armies. Crying Coyote stared at the daredevil who pranced up and down, waving his high hat with one hand and his lance with the other, challenging the Writers to single combat. Crying Coyote was jealous of the warrior who was proving his bravery in such dramatic fashion. He longed to change places with him. He wished he were the one out there putting on a dazzling riding show, dropping over one side of his Goddog, then over the other, then pulling himself back into the saddle and tipping his top hat. When the Writers did not respond, did not pick up the gauntlet so gaudily thrown down, the warrior returned to the Human line where he was greatly admired.

  Soon another Human warrior charged out into no-man’s-land, screamed a challenge to single combat, put on a show of masterly Goddogmanship, and finally galloped back to the Human lines. One after another, the young braves rode into no-man’s-land to prove their bravery, but the Writers continued to prove themselves running-hearts who would not fight.

  Crying Coyote leaned forward and said to his Goddog, “Let us go, Old Friend. Be brave . . . be brave . . .”

  Then he surprised even himself by charging out between the red and white armies. Once again, he felt all the Human eyes staring at him. He even thought he felt her eyes admiring him. From time to time, he looked contemptuously at the blue eyes across the way and screamed at them. He had become what he envied, and he wondered if the other warriors now envied him. As a finale, Crying Coyote stood up on the back of his Goddog, stood up straight in the saddle, and shook his lance at the slouching Writer soldiers. He knew he was a superior being and they were his inferiors. He felt such scorn for them all. Did they have no pride? Giving up on tempting a running-heart to fight him, Crying Coyote returned to the Human army. Now nobody could doubt that he was a real Human Being. Or so he hoped.

  The next Human warrior to come charging into the space between the armies was wearing gleaming white armor: a whalebone corset. Watching her, Crying Coyote was afraid and proud and a little embarrassed all at the same time. What was she doing out there, anyway? What was she trying to prove? Why couldn’t she just stay back with the other women in a woman’s place? And yet his mounting irritation couldn’t entirely smother his mounting pride.

  Crying Coyote was relieved when, at last, Lifts Something turned her Goddog back toward the Human line. As she drew closer, he tried to lecture her with his good eye, but she saw something else as well.

  “You should not take such chances,” Crying Coyote scolded.

  Lifts Something pointed her thumbs at her whalebone corset. “I have much medicine,” she said.

  “Lifts Something!”

  “Do not speak to me in that tone!”

  The couple seemed on the verge of having a lovers’ quarrel in the middle of a war.

  “I am sorry,” Crying Coyote said. “You frightened me.”

  “Do you think Chief Iron Jacket is jealous of my battle vest?”

  “I am sure.”

  As if he had heard his name, Chief Iron Jacket galloped forward jingling merrily. Lifts Something and Crying Coyote and all the other Humans whooped and cheered and uttered terrible war cries. Riding up and down between the red line and the white line, Chief Iron Jacket shook his war shield and lance and shouted his challenge for a white warrior to come out and fight him. But as before, no inhuman ventured out to meet him.

  The Texas Rangers’ unchivalrous response was to force the Human knight to joust against a rifle: a short spear against a long bullet. Crying Coyote glimpsed a small cloud of smoke and then heard the explosion. He saw the Goddog and its bright rider stagger, as if struck by an unseen lance, and then resume prancing. Iron Chiefwas immortal.

  Crying Coyote saw another gust of smoke and heard another explosion. And then another. The old knight just laughed at the bullets. He was eternal. He inspired the Humans and discouraged his inhuman enemies.

  Then Crying Coyote heard a volley of shots and saw the Iron Knight fall from his prancing Goddog. The magic metal jacket lay dull in the dust.

  Lifts Something and Crying Coyote stared at each other. Not only had the Human Beings lost a great war chief, but the young couple had lost some of their faith in her medicine jacket. They now knew that the Writers had magic bullets that Human medicine couldn’t stop. They couldn’t help taking the tragedy personally.

  Crying Coyote saw the inhuman army surge forward. The Writers came screaming and firing big Henry rifles and Colt revolvers and even old muskets. Crying Coyote was concentrating on the charge of the white army when he was attacked by a danger closer at hand. A frightened pack mule, heavy and clumsy with loot, crashed into the side of his Goddog. Crying Coyote felt himself falling, thought he was going down beneath trampling hooves, but he finally regained his balance, only to be hit again. Looking around frantically, he saw that he
and many others were caught in a stampede of pack animals.

  Before the Human army could regroup, the Writer warriors came charging into their ranks. The white men began gunning down red men and women who could neither fight nor flee because they were trapped in a whirlpool of stolen goods and terrified animals. The looters were being destroyed by their loot. Crying Coyote saw one friend after another fall from their Goddogs. They disappeared, like drowning victims, sucked down into the fatal depths. Some were killed cleanly by bullets before they fell, but many more died dirty deaths beneath muddy hooves. Human voices cried their pain above the bellows of the animals. Crying Coyote was afraid he was going to throw up.

  And then he once again felt himself falling, but this time he couldn’t save himself. He lurched toward a grimy extinction. His Goddog went down and he went down with it. Hooves were churning all around him. Scrambling to his knees, he started to crawl as fast as he could, crawling fanatically, crawling as if he himself were a stampeding animal. As he was jostled and bumped and splashed and bruised, the boy on all fours seemed to have lost all his Humanity. Crying Coyote crawled over a body that slowed him down. Then another fell on top of him. His enemies seemed to be trying to bury him alive under dead Humans.

  “Where are you, Old Friend?” Crying Coyote called to his Goddog. “Old Friend, I need you. Where are you? Help me, Old Friend. Please, help me . . .”

  Then Crying Coyote saw a hoof and fetlock that he recognized. He hadn’t known how well he knew his Old Friend until that moment when so little meant so much. He started climbing the Goddog’s hind leg as if it were a tree trunk.

  “Easy, Old Friend,” Crying Coyote said. “Stay calm. Do not kick me. You would not kick me, would you?”

  In the midst of chaos, the Goddog remained still and calm until Crying Coyote could vault onto his back. Then the animal reared and plunged ahead.

  “Good work, Old Friend,” said Crying Coyote. “Now find Lifts Something. Find her, Old Friend . . .”

  When he saw Lifts Something running in the mud up ahead of him, Crying Coyote credited his Old Friend with finding her. He knew it might have been a coincidence, but he didn’t think so. Lifts Something was limping badly. Crying Coyote rode toward her, caught up with her, bent low, and plucked her off the ground. He swung her up behind him on the back of his Old Friend. Then he started to whip his Old Friend with his bow.

  Looking back, Crying Coyote saw a Texas Ranger chasing him. The Writer held a Colt revolver in his right hand. The Humans had learned to fear these repeating guns. In the old days, a Human mounted on a Goddog wielding a compact bow and arrow had been more than a match for a Writer on horseback trying to control a musket. But the coming of the Colt revolver had changed all that. Now the Rangers had a weapon that was even more compact than a bow and it could shoot faster. Crying Coyote, who knew enough to be frightened, kicked his Goddog to go faster.

  “Run, Old Friend,” he shouted. “Run! Run! . . .”

  Glancing back, Crying Coyote saw the revolver explode smoke and felt the bullet strike the girl his mind cried for. He felt her lunge forward against his back, felt her arms grip him harder than ever, felt himself being pulled from his Goddog’s back. Crying Coyote and Lifts Something landed in the mud. They rolled in the mud as if they were wrestling.

  “Are you hurt?” Crying Coyote asked, although he already knew she was. “Talk to me.”

  Sitting in the mud, he held Lifts Something in his arms. He cradled her head and shoulders.

  “I feel-missing you,” she said.

  “Kee, kee,you’ll be all right,” he protested.

  “I am sorry,” she said. Then staring up at the sky, she began singing her death song.“Aheya aheya ya-heyo, Ya eye heyo aheyo. O Sun, you live forever, but I must die. O Earth, you remain forever, but I must die.”

  When she finished her song, she closed her eyes and did not speak again.

  “Say something,” Crying Coyote begged. “Do not go. Talk to me. Please do not go.”

  Hearing hoofbeats approaching him, he did not even look up. He heard the metallic click of a hammer going back, but he still didn’t look. He had lost the girl his mind cried for and he was ready to sing his death song, too.

  “O Sun, you live forever,” Crying Coyote began, “but I must—”

  “Don’t shoot!” shouted the harsh voice of a Writer. “He’s got yeller hair! He’s white! Son of a bitch.”

  89

  Crying Coyote thought the campfire was too big. Why would they need such a conflagration? Were they planning to cook and eat him? He could imagine no other reason to waste so much wood. He had a lot to learn about Writers.

  He wondered what they were saying. He wished they wouldn’t talk so fast. What was their hurry? Their hands flapped around when they talked like the wings of dying birds, but they didn’t make any intelligible signs. Why not? He decided they weren’t very bright.

  When a Writer warrior put another big log on the much big fire, Crying Coyote decided he couldn’t wait any longer. He scrambled to his feet and made a break for it. He ran low, crouched forward, to present as small a target as possible. He headed for the bushes, the night, the wilderness, home. He heard shouts and loud boots behind him. He couldn’t believe how much noise Writers made. He felt superior to these noisy creatures, but at the same time he was afraid of them. His name had come true: he was a hunted animal who wanted to cry.

  Looking back, Crying Coyote saw dark shapes struggling with the night. They looked not only less than Human but even less than inhuman. They had ceased to be Writers and had been transformed into something else even more terrible. They appeared to be monsters that had sprung up out of the dark earth. Their fathers could have been boulders. Their mothers might have been bears. They sounded like a rock slide. Who was after him? No,what was after him? Thank the Great Mystery, he could run faster than these heavy-footed ghouls of the night.

  Looking straight ahead, Crying Coyote increased his speed. Listening hard, he heard his own lungs getting louder and louder as the monsters’ steps grew softer and softer. He was pulling away from them. He was winning the freedom race. He would see his red canyon again. He would be reunited with the Sun Shaman. He would—

  The sound was getting louder, not softer. A Goddog was chasing him. He normally loved the music made by Goddog hooves as they pounded on the earth, but not now. Not here. The drumbeat grew deafening.

  When he looked back over his shoulder, Crying Coyote saw a lasso striking at him like a black snake uncoiling. He tried to dodge, but the snake was too quick. Snakes generally were. It coiled around his body and pulled tight. It bit hard into his flesh. Crying Coyote was jerked off his feet. The Writer’s Goddog, trained for calf-roping, began backing up, dragging along the roped boy.

  Then the heavy monsters of the night descended upon him, pulled him to his feet, tied his hands behind him, put a rope around his neck, and led him back to the too-big fire. They shouted and waved incomprehensibly at him and at each other. He was not too surprised when they tied his feet as well as his hands and knotted one end of the rope around an oak tree.

  The second captivity of Jimmy Goodnight had begun.

  Crying Coyote hated the cage. He walked up and down from one end to the other all day and most of the night. He wished they had cooked and eaten him. At least it would be over by now. Instead, he was dying slowly. No Human Being could survive in an inhuman house like this one with bars. He could see and feel that he was already wasting away toward death, losing weight and strength with every step, with every meal he wouldn’t eat, with every day that passed. It wouldn’t be long now.

  He looked up when the stranger came in, but he didn’t stop pacing in his jail cell. The Writer was dressed in a black suit, was tall and thin, and had a mop of white hair that would make a handsome scalp. The captive tried to ignore the newcomer—to lose himself in his pacing— but he couldn’t completely. He was drawn to this inhuman by a sense of familiarity, but that was impossible. Still
there was something about that long face, that strong nose, those sad blue eyes. The old creature studied him and he studied the ancient one. While one paced and the other stood still, they looked each other up and down. The Writer said something to Crying Coyote, but he couldn’t understand. The inflection of the voice indicated questions, but they were as incomprehensible as always. What did this white-haired man want to know?

  Who was the old man anyway? Crying Coyote almost recognized the old one’s features, but not quite. There was something wrong. They were familiar, and yet they weren’t. He had seen them before but not arranged in quite this way. They were like a reflection seen in troubled water.

  That was it. That inhuman face reminded him of a Human face that he had often seen reflected in streams and ponds. The old face reminded him of a young face that he knew well. He might have been looking at his own future, at the way he would look many summers from now. Was this old creature a ghost? Humans feared almost nothing, but they did fear ghosts. He shivered and stopped pacing.

  Trying to make sense of the apparition before him, Crying Coyote pointed at his own strong nose, then at the old one’s nose. The ancient one smiled and nodded and copied him, pointing at his nose, then at the boy’s. Crying Coyote pointed at his single bright blue eye, then used two fingers to point at the old one’s pair of faded blues. The old mouth laughed and wrinkled hands clapped. Crying Coyote recoiled. His aged double stopped clapping and started asking questions again.

  Concentrating hard on the sounds, Crying Coyote finally thought he recognized something. It set up a distant echo in his mind. He decided to try to give voice to this echo.

  “Juh, Juh, Juh,” he tried to copy what the old one said.

  The white-haired one got excited.

  “Juh, Juh, Jim—”

  The ancient one waved his arms all over the place. He was so lively that he looked younger.