Return to Sundown Valley

by Cole Shelton

  The Apache brave halted his pony twenty paces away, looked directly at the cottonwoods and levelled his gun. Luke stepped into the open. Two rifles fired in unison, breaking the mesa silence. Luke’s bullet bored into the Apache’s ribs, blasting him clean out of his cloth saddle. Simultaneously, the warrior’s slug splintered into the cottonwood, less than an inch from the white man’s face. Clutching his wound, the Apache charged him on foot.

  Luke held his ground, levelled his rifle a second time and pulled the trigger, this time shooting him high in the chest. The Indian pitched sideways, sprawled over a clump of bluegrass.

  With the gunshot echoes fading over the mesa, Luke dragged the body into the cottonwoods. The Apache’s pony had already run off.

  Luke remounted Buck and rode out of the cottonwoods. He was sure the gunfire would have been heard by other Apaches, but he reached the far side of the mesa without seeing more raised dust.

  There, with dusk falling, he made night camp in an arroyo. Again, he lit no fire. He listened to the nocturnal sounds of the wilderness – the bark-like grunts of squirrels, the rustle of lizards in grass, the eerie hooting of a couple of horned owls high in their cottonwood trees. Luke had heard stories that Apaches never fought at night but he was taking no chances. He would keep awake all night, which wasn’t difficult. He’d learned to live without sleep during the war.

  Luke was back in the saddle when first light showed. He rode down from the mesa and gave an Apache village a wide berth. The red butte towering over canyon country loomed larger, much closer, as he followed a dry wash. He was riding easier now, with only the occasional prick of pain coming from his back.

  Twice he saw Apache riders. He’d been expecting them. By now the old Indian nursing a sore head would be back at his village and barking coyotes would have lured angry warriors to the body in the cottonwood trees. They would be looking for him sure enough.

  And so Luke sheltered in a jumble of rocks as three rode by and later, mid-afternoon, he glanced at his back-trail and glimpsed over a dozen others combing the western rim of the mesa he’d crossed. They were closing in on him.

  It was almost sundown and the red butte he was headed for was wreathed in crimson shadow. There were other shadows too, shadows that moved along the crest of a lonely ridge within rifle range of where he was riding. He reached the gaping mouth of a narrow pass that spilled over a slope leading right down to the big butte. Riding swiftly in the dusk through the passage, he heard the hooting of owls, human owls calling to each other. One was real close, from a cave in the wall of the pass. Next moment a bullet sang past Buck’s head and ricocheted off a boulder. Another winged wide, a third whined overhead.

  Luke urged his bay horse into a lope, racing down the long slope. The gunfire died on the wind but as Luke headed for the butte, he turned in the saddle and saw a line of mounted Apaches. One of them was the renegade chief, Blood Knife, whose Mexican clothes he could see plainly in the last light of day. The Apache leader brandished his rifle in a show of furious defiance and Luke knew that any journey back through Blood Knife’s country would now be very dangerous indeed.

  For now, though, Luke simply put distance between Apache territory and himself, steering Buck around the base of the big butte. Below him stretched the Navajo canyons. Even from here he could see the glow of lamps and fires.

  Less than one hour later Luke reached a long adobe brick building with a string of lanterns across its front. The sign announcing MORMON MISSION GENERAL STORE painted in dark blue hung over the open door, reminding Luke that Honani once told him church missionaries had come to these canyons with high hopes of converting the Navajo tribes to their religion.

  Luke slowed his bay gelding. Burros and a single horse stood patiently along the tie rail while a mangy dog barked incessantly, warning those inside that a visitor had just ridden in out of the night.

  He emptied his saddle as a bald, pot-bellied man in a check shirt and wide pants loomed large as Goliath in the doorway. The storekeeper scrutinised Luke through his dark-rimmed glasses and decided it was unlikely the stranger was of their faith. However, the Mormon seemed friendly enough.

  ‘Welcome to our mission, gentile friend. You’ve come a long way?’

  ‘From Sundown Valley,’ Luke told him, securing Buck to the rail.

  ‘Ah, one of my sweet wives came from the town of Spanish Wells, near that valley,’ the Mormon said amicably.

  Luke didn’t need to be reminded that many of Brigham Young’s Mormon pioneers who’d come west to Utah were indeed polygamists. He didn’t hold with having more than one woman himself but he wasn’t here for a religious argument.

  He decided to come straight to the point. ‘I’m looking for Navajos who probably arrived here and settled in Na Dené Canyon a couple of years ago. They belong to the Armijo clan.’

  ‘Yes, I know them,’ the storekeeper said immediately. ‘Chief Nastas and his people. Fine folk!’

  Luke felt both elated and relieved when he heard the name of Honani’s father. The Armijo clan might have been driven from their village in Sundown Valley but at least they were here, in their ancestral canyon. He was at trail’s end. Now he could let the family know the grim news of Honani’s terrible death and in addition he would also be able to deliver the Medal of Honour. It was the least he could do for a fellow soldier.

  ‘I would like to see them,’ Luke announced.

  ‘You are a friend of Chief Nastas?’ the Mormon asked.

  ‘Yes, I rode with his son, Honani,’ Luke informed him.

  ‘The Armijo rarely come into our general store,’ the Mormon said, adding regretfully, ‘and none come to church.’ He paused before saying, ‘Chief Nastas is ageing but he’s still alive and well. Sadly, not many of his family arrived here with him – I’d say ten, maybe a dozen, that’s all. I seem to remember one squaw had twin boys several months ago.’

  Hearing this, Luke merely stared at him. When he’d ridden through Sundown Valley on the day he’d left to fight in the civil war, there had been at least eighty men, women and children living in their Navajo village. Had smallpox struck them? He’d heard of entire frontier communities wiped out by the disease.

  ‘I’ll ride to Na Dené,’ Luke decided.

  ‘Come inside first,’ the storekeeper invited amicably. ‘We offer hospitality to all. We Mormons do not hold with coffee drinking, as you may know, but we keep Arbuckle for gentile riders passing through. You can have a drink on the house while I explain where Na Dené Canyon is.’

  ‘Thank you, friend,’ Luke accepted his offer.

  The smiling Mormon did more than offer him a drink.

  While the youngest of his three wives, a buxom young girl in her mid teens, brought him a cup of Arbuckle on a tray, the Mormon storekeeper, who introduced himself as Elder Micah James, used pen and ink to sketch directions on parchment paper. The mission church, he explained, was just down the road from this general store, although he admitted not many Navajos had been converted, preferring their tribal beliefs. To get to Na Dené Canyon, Luke had to take the southern fork behind the church and negotiate a labyrinth of canyons to reach Na Dené. There he’d find a camp with just two hogans. This was where the last remnants of the Armijo clan lived.

  ‘It’s a long trail to Na Dené,’ Elder James told him as his second wife, heavily pregnant, brought Luke chilli bean stew, which she assured him was also ‘on the house’. Micah James added, ‘Would it not be better to stop here for the night? We have rooms for travellers. Two dollars a night includes bath, breakfast and a copy of the Book of Mormon by our founder, Joseph Smith, included.’

  The elder’s first wife, an elderly grey-haired woman dressed in sombre black, who stood like a holy stature behind the store counter, held up their sacred book for him to see. Luke was tempted, not by the book, but by the notion of a bed. He’d come a long way without any rest and he could see these Mormon missionaries really wanted to chat. In this remote, far-away mission, they rarely met up wi
th white folks. However, Luke decided he wasn’t going to rest until he came face-to-face with Chief Nastas and his family, even if it was after midnight.

  ‘Appreciate the offer, but I need to ride.’

  All the same, he insisted on paying for his soup and drink.

  With the Mormon’s map in his pocket, Luke rode away from the general store, passed the small stone chapel and schoolhouse and headed into the night. He threaded through some empty stockyards and rode by the first Navajo village where he counted over thirty brush lodges dotted around a large cooking fire. The aroma of roasting venison wafted to him on the rising wind. Following the Mormon’s map, Luke probed deeper into canyon country. Many of the walled-in valleys were small and easy to cross in mere minutes; some were wider, home to more than one Navajo village. The rising moon cast ghostly shadows over the trail as he followed the northern wall of a twisting canyon with a floor of gritty sand. Still he rode while the cold wind moaned like a dying man.

  Finally, one hour to midnight, the trail narrowed through a steep-walled pass and followed a twisting slope down to a sheltered canyon.

  The map showed him this was Na Dené.

  Luke saw a solitary fire in this canyon. It wasn’t blazing like some of the others he’d seen, but burning low, only just glimmering bravely in the night.

  He rode across the valley towards the small fire where two brush hogans were huddled close together in its glow. He passed half a dozen goats by a water trough in their fenced corral. Looking past the corral, he saw four figures hunched over the dying fire. He heard no talk and he saw no movement. One of the Navajos, an old man sitting cross-legged, smoked a long pipe.

  Luke knew him. He was Honani’s father, Nastas, grey-haired, wrinkled, his hooded eyes shut tight as though he was asleep. Right alongside him was another elderly Navajo whom Luke recognized as the one-eyed medicine man he’d once known in Sundown Valley. He didn’t know the other two but they were both old. Three squaws sat together out front of the smallest lodge, watching children play quietly in the dust. Another woman stood alone drinking from an earthen cup. He could smell redeye whiskey, the scourge of many Indian communities. The woman looked up from her cup as Luke rode in, but she hardly gave him a second glance.

  Luke told himself there was little real life in this community. It was as if a sombre cloud had descended on the men and women who’d once been living happily in Sundown Valley.

  The medicine man saw Luke’s approach. He poked Nastas who responded by opening his eyes wide as the white man from the past rode unheralded into their fire-lit circle. Even as Luke halted his bay horse, Honani’s youngest brother, Shiye, came running like a deer from the large hogan. At least he had some life! He was now twenty years old, a muscular, bare-chested young man wearing a blue tunic and patched cotton pants bought from the Mormon Store.

  ‘Luke Dawson!’ Shiye welcomed him in a booming voice that echoed over the canyon. He stood there impatiently as Luke dismounted. He kept looking into the darkness Luke had just emerged from, expecting another rider to loom out of the night. He demanded, ‘My brother, Honani?’

  Chief Nastas was helped to his feet by two of the other men while Honani’s mother emerged limping from her domed hogan.

  Luke waited for Nastas and his wife to join them.

  ‘Honani is dead,’ Luke told them.

  Honani’s mother let out a high-pitched wail, then buried her head in her hands while Nastas and his surviving son, Shiye, stood in the flickering firelight. The chief’s face was impassive, drained of blood. Shocked at the terrible news, Chief Nastas swayed on his feet, in danger of toppling over, but Shiye managed to hold his father steady.

  ‘My son . . . killed in . . . in white man’s war!’ Nastas said hoarsely, shaking his head in disbelief.

  ‘He wasn’t killed in the war,’ Luke said quietly.

  ‘What do you mean, Luke Dawson?’

  ‘He survived the war, like I did,’ Luke explained.

  ‘Then what happened?’ Shiye demanded.

  Luke told them, ‘Honani was murdered, shot in the back soon after he came home from the war.’

  Honani’s mother wept bitter tears as the other women gathered around, attempting to console her.

  Chief Nastas, visibly shaking, addressed Luke hoarsely above his squaw’s cries. ‘Come, sit with us at the council fire.’

  It was an honour to be asked to join the elders and Luke left the bay gelding for the women to tether. Out of respect for the Navajo chief, he waited for Nastas to resume his place before sitting opposite him. At his father’s bidding, Shiye joined them. Knowing Navajo custom, Luke maintained his silence, waiting until the chief spoke first.

  ‘Tell me what happened,’ Nastas said, his tone laced with grief.

  ‘We rode first to Spanish Wells, then to Sundown Valley where we expected to see your village,’ Luke recalled their homecoming. ‘Honani was distressed when he saw that his people had gone.’ The Navajo elders were silent, staring disconsolately into the dying fire as he told them about the confrontation with the Triple Z men just over the creek. ‘Rancher Zimmer said he’d taken over your land because you’d just abandoned your village and vanished. That’s when we parted. I rode to Wild Wolf Ridge, and Honani decided to come here, to Na Dené, to see what he could find out. Later in the night I heard shooting. Together with Wishbone – you’ll remember the old trapper sure enough – we found Honani dead with bullets in his back. The filthy back-shooters had murdered him. They had their reasons for killing him and they also stole this. . . .’ Luke lifted Honani’s medal from his pocket. ‘General Ulysses S. Grant presented this Medal of Honour to your son, Honani, for extreme bravery.’ He handed the medal to the Navajo chief who clutched it to his chest.

  After Chief Nastas thanked him, Luke recalled how subsequently he’d retrieved the stolen medal and then tracked across Apache country to find the Armijo people.

  ‘We are all who are left,’ Shiye told him.

  ‘The last of the Armijo tribe,’ Nastas lamented.

  ‘So what in the hell happened?’ Luke asked them bluntly.

  Nastas called for drinks and food to be brought for the elders and their visitor. Luke knew better than to press him for immediate answers, so he waited. One old squaw left comforting Honani’s mother and brought them corn cakes and white man’s Arbuckle mixed with goats’ milk.

  ‘Our enemies, Blood Knife’s Apaches, came out of mountains, attacked us,’ Nastas told him. ‘We killed three of their raiding party but as they rode away, they snatched two of our women. One was Johona, my wife of many years. You see her weeping now. She often weeps.’ He added, ‘I rode after the kidnappers with my son Shiye and six braves.’

  Shiye took up the story from his father. ‘For two moons we hunted our Apache enemies deep inside their territory. Finally, there was a battle. We killed ten of the enemy before Blood Knife and the rest of his spineless snakes escaped. Four of our Navajo warriors lost their lives but we rescued our squaws. As we were returning, we heard much shooting, the sound of many, many bullets being fired in Sundown Valley. But we were a long way from our lodges. We hastened but we were too late. When we arrived back in valley, our homes were burning, our people were gone – all of them, warriors, squaws, children. That is, all except Medicine Man Kachina, who saw it all.’

  Kachina lowered his eyes, saying nothing, remembering.

  ‘I was there when white men came by night, attacked our village.’ The medicine man spoke mournfully, looking deeply into the dying embers of their fire. ‘Most of us were asleep. Paleface Zimmer was there with many riders.’ He held up two hands, fingers extended, signifying the number ten. ‘They had big gun in wagon. Very, very big. I had not seen this gun before. It took four men to work this gun. It shot many bullets, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, very quick!’

  ‘Goddamn Gatling gun,’ Luke figured. ‘Started to use them in the war. They fire five bullets a second.’

  ‘Many Navajo braves die, slaughtered in
their beds. I had been sleeping with the spirits of our forefathers in sacred cave. A white man, the one called O’Neill, came into the cave with his rifle. He shot me in the neck. Look!’ Kachina ran his finger along the length of a deep puffy scar that made a slash under his jaw. He excused himself. ‘I could do nothing. I was wounded, I had no weapon. I pretended to be dead.’

  Luke glimpsed the hint of a sneer crease Shiye’s face. Along with his father and others, Shiye had always reckoned that Kachina laid low to save his own neck, but despite their contempt for him, the coward was the tribe’s medicine man with healing powers, so nothing had been said out loud. Kachina, however, had been fully believed when he described the brutal, bloody massacre of virtually the whole village: men, women and children. There was no reason for him to lie about that, and besides, three squaws who’d hidden in the creek reeds backed him up. They were here tonight in Na Dené Canyon.

  ‘After big gun stopped firing, Zimmer’s riders went from lodge to lodge, shooting everyone in them, even the very old,’ Kachina recalled.

  Luke Dawson felt sick in the pit of his belly, sick and angry, as he imagined screaming children and terrified women being ruthlessly gunned down. He was sure the Navajo warriors would have fought bravely but they’d faced overwhelming odds. Not only had Zimmer’s men attacked while they were mostly asleep but they’d procured a deadly Gatling gun to pump hot lead into the helpless village. What took place had been the indiscriminate massacre of virtually a whole tribe. All because of Dallas Zimmer’s greedy lust for more land.

  ‘When killing was over, the white eyes carried bodies to wagon, took them away,’ the medicine man said. ‘Then they set fire to our homes.’

  There was silence around the Navajo fire as Luke struggled with the very notion of white settlers murdering a whole clan of Indians and then burning their village to the ground. He could imagine sidewinders like Zimmer doing this, but what about the other men? Maybe they’d just gone along with it all. He’d seen what war could do to normally decent men, but no soldier he’d fought alongside, or even against, would stoop to slaughtering women and children in their beds. It must have been a night of terrible evil. Surely some of those killers at least would be living with dark guilt? Or maybe not. Zimmer had hired ruthless outlaws like the Scurlock bunch to shoot war hero Honani in the back, so maybe he’d mostly paid scum like them for the massacre.