“I thought he might’ve gone home by now,” Carlos said.
“He’ll stick around as long as I feed him,” I said, more out of hope than conviction.
After we ate we continued down the Spanish Trail. Brother Jude flew off again.
“Why you figure Brother Jude was half out of the ground?” I asked, thinking about the raven’s namesake.
“Been wondering that myself. Looks like they roped him to a horse and ripped his head off. I’m guessing the other monks were screaming. Not Jude. He was the toughest of us. His silence probably enraged them.”
A few minutes later Brother Jude landed in a piñon beside the trail, exercising a considerable vocabulary.
“Your compañero’s trying to tell us something.”
“Where’s Mangel?” I said.
I leveled my Winchester. We stopped walking. Visibility was good. A few junipers but mostly sagebrush. Some of the sagebrush was tall as a man. If trouble was near it was well hidden. I called out to Mangel. In a few minutes he slunk out of the sagebrush. His eyes were large, his ears back, his lips tight against his teeth. The hairs on his spine from the withers to his tailbone were erect.
“Let’s hold up a bit,” I said. “Mangel’s about as bad upset as I’ve seen. If trouble’s out there let’s give it time to move on.”
I gave Carlos my Winchester. We stood back to back. I rested my hand on my six-shooter. Brother Jude kept up the racket, then went silent. Mangel’s hackles settled and he was standing more upright. A few minutes later Brother Jude flew off. Mangel headed back into the sagebrush. Carlos handed me the Winchester.
“You keep it,” I said. “Our compadres want us to be more vigilant.”
We continued on toward Abiquiu, walking in silence. Dust devils rose on the trail ahead in the late-afternoon sun and spun toward the canyon walls. I was surprised because I’d only seen them before in the summer.
“I’m still wrestling with this love-thy-neighbor notion,” I said when we started talking again. “If I found one of them Comanche devils helpless in a ditch I’d cut out his eyes and chop off his privates before putting a bullet in him. Not a moment’s hesitation. You don’t feel that? Even a little?”
“In God’s eyes the Comanches are our neighbors. But there’s the question of justice. That’s a separate issue.”
At heart Carlos was a gentle man. Everything about him was against killing. He was a crack shot with a rifle, but he told me once that the last thing he killed was an antelope, when he was fourteen. Did it only to feed his family. He ate meat if he had to but he ate beans and corn and greens when he had a choice. If he found varmints in the monastery he’d chase them out. He wouldn’t kill them. He’d done an about-face after the massacre though. He was moody and withdrawn.
“I don’t know what to tell you about justice,” he said. “I’ve always known there was evil in the world. But nothing prepared me for the brothers buried to their necks in that fire pit. Their contorted faces. What was left of them.”
The Spanish Trail followed along the Río Chama. At times the trail was beside the Chama. Other times the river was a quarter of a mile away across the sagebrush flats. The canyon walls rose on both sides, sometimes several dozen feet, sometimes several hundred. We were entering an area where the closed-in walls were hidden in shadows when Brother Jude flew toward us screaming.
He was too late. The grizzly was quick behind him. He was huge. Bigger than any grizzly I’d ever seen before or since. He looked near as tall as me when he was charging. Must of weighed every bit as much as Buck. Buckskin colored, streaked with gray. Figured it must be Moze.
He covered the distance near as fast as I could draw, his head barely off the ground. He was snorting, his ears laid back, his jaws popping like a six-shooter. I got off two rounds before he hit me. Carlos was behind me. Don’t know if he got off any. The grizzly went right over me and into Carlos. I hit the ground flat on my back. My six-shooter flew into the sagebrush. I rolled over, gasping for air. When I looked up, the grizzly had Carlos on the ground. Carlos’s head was in the bear’s mouth.
I didn’t see a gun anywhere. I pulled out my knife and I leapt on the bear’s back, driving the blade into his hump. Hoped to hit the neck but couldn’t reach far enough.
The grizzly dropped Carlos and reared up, flipping me off. I tried to scrabble backward but he swatted me across the chest with a paw the size of my head. He grabbed me by the butt in his jaws as I rolled over, trying to stand. I figured my luck had left me. He was shaking me like a willow branch when Mangel crashed through the sagebrush, sinking his teeth into the nearest hind leg. The grizzly dropped me and spun around. Mangel leapt backward and attacked from behind again. I glanced at Carlos. He’d rolled onto his side. The Winchester was under him. I grabbed it and emptied the magazine into the grizzly’s head. Don’t know how many rounds I fired but the grizzly fell with the third or fourth. Mangel turned loose when I levered the last case from the chamber. It was Moze alright. He was missing toes on his front foot.
My vest was ripped to flitterjigs. My chest was furrowed like a plowed field. Blood was flooding my pants from ugly gashes in my butt and legs. But as near as I could tell nothing was broken. Carlos was a different case. His head looked like it’d been in a hay press. One eye was gone. His nose was hanging by a thread. His jaw was crushed. At first I thought he was dead. I took off my shirt to clean his wounds and stop the bleeding. After I’d wiped off the blood, his teeth showed through his cheek. I got most of the bleeding stopped, then wrapped his head in my shirt, covering all but his good eye. The rest of him was okay.
When he came around he tried to pull the shirt off his head but I stopped him. He didn’t know why his head was wrapped like a mummy.
“What happened?”
The words came out but they didn’t sound like Carlos. They gurgled up from his belly, barely coherent. Blood clotted the shirt where his mouth should have been.
“Ole Moze. Mangel saved us.”
“How bad is it?”
Carlos held his jaw, more to free his speech than to assess the damage. His words were slow. He seemed no more upset than if he’d broke a finger.
“Moze gnawed on your head. You’re chewed up pretty good. How you feeling?”
“My jaw’s shattered. Except for this head wrap, I don’t feel much of anything.”
“You will. Need to get you to a sawbones quick. Can you walk?”
“I think so.”
I helped Carlos stand, then I looked in the sagebrush for my six-shooter. I recovered it and my knife and I reloaded my Winchester. Mangel was nosing around my pack. I pulled out a strip of jerky and gave it to him. I looked around for Brother Jude but he was nowhere in sight.
“You did good, boy,” I said as I rumpled Mangel’s head. “Stay close.”
My leg was stiff but I could walk. Carlos could walk too, at least for a bit. We looked like a pair of ragged wraiths too long in a coffin as we headed down the road to Abiquiu.
CHAPTER 23Ojo Caliente
Treat every living soul with kindness.
Life is harder for them than you can imagine.
—BROTHER CHARLES, Diary,
THE SOLEMNITY OF ST. BENEDICT, 1880
THEN WE GOT A BREAK. We hadn’t gone far when we met a patrol from the Abiquiu garrison. Carlos was light-headed and in pain and couldn’t of walked much farther. It was getting dark and we’d of had to camp soon. I doubted Carlos would make it through the night. I told the troopers about the fight with Ole Moze. A few stayed with us while the rest rode back to the post to get a wagon.
The moon was rising when the wagon arrived. Carlos had blacked out. Soldiers lifted him into the back and me and Mangel crawled in beside him.
During the ride I mentioned the massacre. Carlos’s head was wrapped and no one recognized him, but when I said “Brother Charles” a couple of troopers knew the name. I told them I was Bill Roberts. Figured they might know the name Billy Bonney.
We ha
dn’t gone far when the ruts in the road shook Carlos awake. His pain was bad and he could barely talk, but he didn’t seem to mind. I told him about my new name. He nodded and patted me on the knee.
Then he said, “When Moses led the Israelites to freedom he begged God to show him his glory. God told him no man can see his face and live. Billy, I have seen the face of God. Moze set me free.”
The moon was near its zenith when we arrived at the post. It wasn’t much. Four log buildings, a stockade, a couple of dozen men. No doctor. The nearest in Santa Fe. Carlos could be there in two days in an ambulance. I feared he wouldn’t survive the trip but it wasn’t like we had a choice.
A couple of troopers bundled him into an ambulance and took off for Santa Fe. I couldn’t chance going with him. Besides, I had work to do.
The officer in charge was Captain James Boyer. Most of his career was fighting Indians. Snakes, Yavapai, Sioux, Chiricahua. He knew you. Who you were anyway. He didn’t know Carlos but he knew the abbot and Brother Jude. I told him Carlos was your brother. He figured me for a flannelmouthed liar, but when I described the massacre he sobered. I told him the Comanches were holed up at Ojo Caliente. He said he’d send a detail to round them up. That was good news. I told him I’d go with them. He said no, but I said that the butchered monks were my amigos, I had a horse to recover, and I was going regardless. The next morning me and eight troopers saddled up for the hot springs.
Before we left, Captain Boyer reminded us of the prohibition against fighting at the springs. He said the land was sacred and we should honor it. The loss of face with friendly tribes was too high a price. We were to bring the Comanches back alive if possible. Sergeant Macgregor was in charge. Macgregor assured the captain we’d respect the custom.
“Stay out of the way, Roberts,” Captain Boyer called as we rode off. “Let Sergeant Macgregor handle this.”
Mangel started to follow us. I rode back to the post and gave him to a corporal who said he’d tie him up until we returned.
By early afternoon we were within half a mile of the hot springs. We left the road and turned up an arroyo along the backside of a ridge leading past the springs. We tied up our horses and walked in silence the last hundred paces to the top of the ridge. Below was a Comanche kohgwa in a grove of cottonwoods. A ridge blocked their view of the settlement. Four of the devils were sitting around a campfire. A fifth, the biggest Indian I’ve ever seen, was returning from a string of ponies grazing in the high grass beside the spring. He was wearing a black monk’s robe. Around his waist was a belt holding a sword and scabbard. The robe would of reached the ankles of any of the brothers but it didn’t much more than cover his knees. We squatted below the ridgeline.
“It’s them,” I said. “The sword that big bastard’s wearing cut off the abbot’s hand.”
“We can’t attack here,” Sergeant Macgregor said. “You heard the captain. ’Tis sacred ground.”
“Sacred, my ass! The monastery was sacred.”
Macgregor was a round-faced pudgy Scot with a big heart but not a thought in his brain. I marveled that Boyer’d picked him to lead the detail.
As the troopers talked tactics I heard a familiar nicker. Peered over the ridge and saw the sixth Comanche riding Buck. He was coming up a path from the settlement. I slipped over the ridge and worked my way down an arroyo. When I was within fifty paces I raised up with my Winchester and blew him off Buck. Then I raced toward the camp firing my six-shooter. The Comanche strutting in the black robe fell first. Three more fell in the next twenty paces. The last devil got to a rifle leaning against a tree and turned to face me when I plugged him twice, once in the chest, once in the forehead. The troopers dropped to the ground when the firing began. By the time the sergeant stormed over the ridge I was nuzzling Buck.
“Roberts! What in hell!”
“I plum lost my head,” I said, trying to mollify Sarge.
“You done it now. The last thing Captain Boyer said was don’t crap on the sanctity of this piss pot.”
“If we hightail it now no one’ll know who done it.”
“You think they won’t find us? They’ll hunt us through eternity.”
He was right. I’ve knowed Indians to track a man across the malpais.
“Your horseshoes don’t say US Government,” I said. “If we split up they won’t know which way we went.”
I jumped on Buck and raced toward the mustangs. Macgregor waved his men back over the ridge. The mustangs’d scattered like quail when the shooting started. When I had most of them I herded them through the woods where the troopers had been. I fired my six-shooter a couple of times and the mustangs raced toward the hot springs road with Buck and me close behind.
Buck ran hard, passing the mustangs, hardly slowing till we got to the Abiquiu road. We turned east and headed toward Santa Fe. After we’d gone far enough to mix our tracks in the maze of other hoofprints, we headed back toward the post. I doubted I was fooling anybody but at least I had something to throw at Captain Boyer while he was roasting me.
Mostly I was satisfied at the way things turned out. If Carlos was alive I hoped he’d get some peace if he knowed the killers were dead. At least I figured they were. In the confusion I hadn’t checked. A mistake but I wasn’t going to chew myself over it. Had a bad feeling all along about Carlos. He believed he should of died with the brothers. I figured there was a good chance he wanted the Comanches to kill him. If that was his plan and the grizzly got him first, well, that was better in my book. Maybe in God’s too.
While I was chewing this over I heard a raven overhead. I looked up and here he came, doing cartwheels and somersaults as he dropped out of the sky. I figured he might crash into me but he skittered off at the last minute. Then I heard Mangel barking. He was racing toward me, a short rope flapping behind him like a second tail.
I pulled up the reins and skidded off Buck. Mangel leapt and caught me in the chest as my boots hit the ground. The two of us fell to the dirt. If anyone’d seen us they’d of figured we were drunk. Mangel stood on my chest licking my face, pawing the ruts Moze’d clawed into my hide. My chest and butt were throbbing. I rolled onto my side. Brother Jude was jumping at the rope dragging behind Mangel as it made sidewinder tracks in the dirt. I’d swear he was laughing at us.
It was dark when we got back to the post. Captain Boyer asked about Macgregor and his troopers. I told it like it was. If I’d downplayed it Macgregor would of made it worse when Boyer questioned him later that evening. I told Boyer I lost my head when I saw that devil riding Buck, but he saw through me.
“When you rode out of here I knew I should’ve thrown you in the stockade.”
He was right of course. There wasn’t much the captain could do but order me off the post. If I ever came back, he said he’d have me shot. I left about the time Macgregor showed up. Told him he might want to let Boyer cool off before he reported in.
Next morning I went to Gonzales’s and bought a few supplies. I told the storekeep about the massacre and the fight with Moze. Believe he was partial to the bear. I said I was staying nearby a few days and asked him to tell me if he heard anything about Brother Charles. He knew all the monks. Couple of days later he told me your brother died on the way to Santa Fe.
In my heart I already knew it. I was thankful Carlos hadn’t been at the hot springs. I was comfortable with the killing. It would be on my head. Carlos was different. He had a powerful conscience. If he’d knowed about the killing, he might of felt as much responsibility as if he’d pulled the trigger. But I wondered if Carlos’d somehow knowed. Maybe that’s what really killed him.
CHAPTER 24Amigos Perdidos
What you truly love will always be with you. Nothing else really matters.
—BROTHER CHARLES, Diary, OCTOBER 10, 1876
AFTER CARLOS DIED I WENT back to the monastery and laid up a few days to keep vigil over the brothers. Figured it’s what Carlos would of done. The toolshed was the only building that hadn’t burned. It would keep
out the weather. The cot in Padre Romuald’s room survived. I moved it to the toolshed. The Comanches piled most of the furniture and things in the church and set it afire, but they left a retablo of St. Anselm that Brother Thomas had painted. It was still hanging behind the alcove where the monks sat. It hadn’t been scorched. I took it to the toolshed and hung it above the cot.
Took me a week to clean up the debris. I raked the rubble out of the buildings and burned it. What didn’t burn I buried. Even the ashes. The Comanches’d burned most everything, including Brother Charles’—Carlos’s—books. The only books that survived were his diary and a science book by an Englishman, Charles Darwin. Carlos’s tin of Ceylon tea survived the fire too.
I leveled the ground where the monks had been burned, raking it and sweeping it with a broom of pine branches. The monastery was a ruin but most signs of the massacre were gone. Mother Nature would grind off the rough edges throughout the winter. If other monks ever wanted it they could build it back.
I hunted to feed me and Mangel and Brother Jude. Went to Abiquiu twice. Bought cartridges, coffee, flour, frijoles. A saddle and saddlebags. I had no money of my own but I’d found some pesos in Padre’s room. He kept them in a small metal box in his closet. Surprised the Comanches missed it.
The storekeep at Gonzales’s said a couple of Kiowas showed up asking questions a few days after the killing. I ran into Sergeant Macgregor on the second visit. He wasn’t sore at me but he said I should avoid Captain Boyer. He said another band of Comanches had jumped the reservation and were in the area. Soldiers were looking for them. Said I should lay low, not tell anyone I was at the monastery. That was good advice. Wished I’d heard it earlier. It was time to leave.
When I went back to the monastery to gather my gear I cleaned out the toolshed and burned all sign of my presence. The only things I kept were Brother Thomas’s retablo of St. Anselm, Carlos’s diary, his tin of tea, and the science book. I walked Buck to the Chama. Tied him to the willows, then went back for a last look. I swept the tracks on the monastery grounds and the trail leading to the river. Another rain or snow would wash out most of the evidence that we’d been there. Buck and me waded into the Chama and headed toward the Spanish Trail. Brother Jude flew on ahead. Mangel followed.
The Gospel According to Billy the Kid Page 14