by R. Kent
He always needed someone to hurt.
McKade leaned across the bar with a leer at my crotch. “Is that all? Maybe you want more than the milk,” he stated. “I saw the way you looked at Rose.”
Rose was a blond-haired beauty to be sure, but it was Lily, McKade’s golden-haired daughter, who had caught my eye. I wasn’t about to mention that though.
Lily McKade was too proper to be permitted into this establishment during business hours. I wouldn’t have figured Jack McKade as a family man, but Lily was proof positive. And she was very fine. Very fine indeed.
The girl was about my age. Maybe seventeen? Her sunny yellow hair bounced in long coils from under a tiny cap decorated with netting, ribbon streamers, and flowers. Fresh flowers. She always wore fancy finery. I’d seen the likes in a big city.
Her silk dresses were full-skirted, relying on crinolines and hoops, and displaying a bulging bustle at the rump. The dresses were hemmed ankle-high to show off matching, tall, buttoned boots. Lily carried a parasol of lace that wouldn’t hold water off her head, and doubtful gave much shade.
I sighed. On her dainty hands were pristine white gloves. They were all the rage for sophisticated ladies. I had seen gloved hands clinging to gentlemen in the big city too.
I wanted Lily’s gloved hands hugging onto my arm. I wanted to be her gentleman.
McKade eyed me suspiciously. A squeak of his hinged leg brace brought on a childhood memory. A monstrous man atop a huge beast of a horse and a blinding glint of sun off of steel.
Two hired guns sidled next to me. It was best to ignore them. I stuffed the glass to my lips, much preferring the smell of clean milk to their hovering foul odor.
I wasn’t fond of Jack McKade. There was something too familiar about the big man—not in a good way.
McKade slapped the bar with a filthy towel. When he spoke, his bushy black eyebrows took on a life of their own. “Austin, you’re a good, upstanding boy.” His ears were muffled with nests of dark, curly hair. A woolly mustache hid a pair of thin lips to a mouth that was more of a severe knife slash. “A young man should have his place looked after.” His face reddened with the edge of anger. “He ought to have his meals warmed. Not to mention his needs met, if you know what I mean.”
I didn’t know exactly what he meant. But I wasn’t about to ask either.
He leaned his bulging forearms on the sticky bar’s surface and looked me in the eye.
A gunslinger named Seth draped about my shoulders uninvited. His cohort, Jeb, slapped me on the back. Others laughed. Their guffaws were grossly punctuated by sucking breaths of snorting. Reminiscent of pigs.
I glanced toward the tables at the calloused hands, raw fingers, and blackened nails of the prospectors. They had probably been good men once. They weren’t much of anything now. Empty skin bags. I doubted their whiskey expenses left a nickel to patch a tent or put much in a cook pot. Not with McKade’s inflated prices.
None of them could afford to live. The greater sadness was that they couldn’t afford to leave.
Jack McKade moved off to fill glasses. I shrugged Seth from my shoulders. Men poured their attention back into their drinks.
My celebratory mood soured. I swirled what was left of the milk, watching its rich, creaminess lap smoothly around the inside of the grimy glass. A wife? Absurd. The saloon setters didn’t know me at all.
Rose loitered at the back of the room. I felt her eyes linger on me. There was a flicker of melancholy in her stately bearing. In the next moment, she beamed a smile and collected abandoned drinks from the tables, tossing half of a neglected shot down her gullet. She chugged the contents of another deserted glass, then upended a bottle to poke her tongue at its last dribbling drops.
I gulped down the rest of my milk and shoved the empty glass across the bar. The bottle of whiskey sat waiting. I swooped it up then silently left.
Outside, a small dust devil kicked to spinning. I stood in its gritty, twisted wind on the board walkway, hoping the air movement would break the oppressive heat. My clothes clung to me. My scarf felt as tight as a noose.
I untied Charlie Horse from the hitching post then pulled at the kerchief hiding my scar.
Charlie Horse. He was a loudly marked Appaloosa stallion. The blue roan over his front was the color of an angry sky. I sat him bareback where a dark bay line separated the blue from startling white. Decorating his rump were large bay egg spots. His unique coat stuck out against the reds and browns of the surrounding landscape. Charlie Horse was the kind of horse revered by warriors. Stout and square built. But his small pig eyes cautioned he was cagey, fearless, and quick-tempered. Charlie Horse’s parentage had seen a mix of modern ranch breeding that I didn’t hold against him…most days.
He had come up lame the last mile into town. It was likely a hoof festering on gravel. He’d stay sound with shoes. If I could afford them. I couldn’t. Not yet.
I’d have to walk him home. I tugged the brim of my felted hat low over my eyes to peek at the blazing sun. The day was getting on.
A shotgun blasted from within the Watering Hole.
A body flew from the swinging doors to lay lifeless on the dry road. Its belly bloated within moments in the blistering heat. Blood burbled from beneath, quenching the cracked patch of earth.
Charlie Horse sidestepped.
Lily strolled the boardwalk in front of Percival’s Mercantile, at the other end of town. She twirled her frilled parasol, eyeing me from beneath her gay bonnet.
A wife? I had enough trouble keeping myself alive.
From inside the saloon, I heard glasses chink, an empty whiskey bottle rolling across the wooden floor, and cards slapping on tables. Conversations droned. Business went on as usual in the saloon.
I led Charlie Horse into the middle of Main Street and headed out of town.
Behind me, McKade bellowed to his audience, “Boys, Austin’s perfect for a wife.”
Chapter Two
October 24, 1864, Arizona Territory
The colorful October evening descended into darkness. I jabbed at the fire illuminating an ancient stone corner beneath a rock overhang.
Early last spring, I was seeking shelter as a fierce storm rumbled in. The skies had blackened as dark as a petered out mine shaft. Cold, fat raindrops pelted my skin. So, I took refuge in a thicket of mesquite and shivered while the air sizzled. Thunder crashed about an angry sky. Water sluiced in a flash flood down the arroyo beside where I squatted.
Charlie Horse had run off. Again. Hungry and alone, I slumped my shoulders toward my chest, wrapping my arms around my skinny legs. My teeth chattered. I was thankful for my wide-brimmed hat. It added to the scrub’s meager attempt at breaking the watery onslaught.
Sucking on my discomfort, much like a sorry, sopping, house cat, I watched the rolling storm from under my hat. That’s when I saw it. The next flash of lightning sent a jagged spear pointing to the flat top of the overhang, illuminating the corner weather break. The solid rock formation had long ago split, as if the two sides had had a lover’s spat.
I ran toward that near-hidden alcove, dodging hunkering shadows and jumping over wild runoff. The spacious shelter proved dry and vacant, though scattered bones and broken branches attested to a recent occupant. I’ve bedded down in the huge hideaway ever since. Even after I built a sizable hogan nearer to a dug well. I liked the company under the overhang.
Charlie Horse and I watched the last reds and oranges of the day’s setting sun shake its fist in defiance at evening’s reign. Fall blazed bright with beautiful colors. And in the darkest of the night, light from the firepit danced a picture show on the looming stone walls. Beneath the overhang, I didn’t feel so alone.
The hogan was a dark hovel. I’d be glad of its closed warmth come snow, but—
I whirled around. My gun leveled at the intruder’s midsection. Hammer cocked. Trigger finger snuggled against steel.
“TwoFeathers.” I grabbed the hammer with my thumb and gently squeezed t
he trigger, easing the firing mechanism back to resting. “One of these days you’re going to get shot,” I squeaked without my practiced pitch.
“One day I won’t tell Os-ten I have come. I will take the gun.” His timbre was enviously low. He shrugged. “I like to look at this.” TwoFeathers touched the corner of his eye then twirled his finger in the air.
I spun my gun, fancy-like, then flipped it into the air. When I caught the revolver with my other hand, I twirled it with equal dexterity, before seating it back into the holster. “All you need to do is ask, brother.”
TwoFeathers jerked his fingers up as a gun. “This more fun.” He laughed and rolled his head forward to pop a fat deer from across his massive shoulders. “You bring the killing thunder faster than the lightning in the sky.” The carcass slammed with a thud that kicked dust into the air. “But this one?” TwoFeathers pointed. “Already dead.” He moved to the fire and rubbed his hands over the warmth.
TwoFeathers had been a young shaman before his tribe, too, was rounded up by the White soldiers. He escaped their forced march. Like many young braves, he fled to the Apaches to fight. He was now a fierce warrior. He was still the best healer I’d ever crossed paths with.
A single-shot, muzzle-loading .53-caliber Hawken rifle hung slanted over his back. The massive, long-range plains rifle could drop a full-grown bull buffalo from a considerable distance. TwoFeathers also carried the biggest Bowie knife I’d ever seen.
He laid the powerful rifle, its powder horn, and several rabbit skin pouches on the ground. Then he shed a rolled and tied wool greatcoat from his back. The insignia told of its previous owner having been a Union officer. He shook out of a thigh-length deerskin smock that had probably been worn since the second he liberated it from the animal. Ick. And lastly, he kicked off his moccasins.
TwoFeathers always painted half of his face. This time in red. Which made him appear to have blood gushing down one side of his head. I asked him about it once. Why one side was solidly painted and the line so sharply defined along his nose, splitting his lips in two and dribbling through the center of his chin?
“Walks with two spirits,” he answered.
The skirt of a lady’s dress encircled his stringy waist where a traditional breechcloth would have hung. My White ma had had a dress of similar flower print, but it was blue, where TwoFeathers’s was the palest of yellow. Sometimes I’d think of Ma when I saw him. Not that his man’s muscular physique could be mistaken for a woman. It was more from the way he gracefully moved and how he fiercely beautified his world. Ma had been like that. Chock full of grace and fierce beauty.
The shortened hem of his floral-printed skirt was lightly weighted by adorning quills. He had foregone leggings to adopt the White’s pants. His were made of a very supple deerskin. A slit over each bronze ankle was decorated with intricate, colorful beadwork. His low moccasins were also elaborately ornamented.
“Now we trade.” TwoFeathers plucked a copper band from his wrist. The hammered band was etched with a border pattern of spirals, symbolizing the never-ending cycle of growth, change, then eternal life. A polished turquoise stone peered from the center like one giant blue eye.
TwoFeathers pointed at the stone. “Os-ten,” he said in low guttural tones that swallowed the “au” sound backward. Then he touched the corner of his eye.
I didn’t know exactly what he meant, but I knew what he wanted.
I filled two sugar sacks with different colored rubble that fell inside the crevice at the back corner of the formation. On the exchange, he secreted a small round ball the size of a large pebble into my palm. It was a .53-caliber copper ball that went to his massive Hawken.
Trading done, we both set upon rendering the deer carcass. TwoFeathers was faster, taking long swipes that deftly shed the meat of its hide. As he bent over the work, black hair bound in crisscrossing rabbit skin ties never strayed from the middle of his back.
TwoFeathers had deep, powerful eyes, like windows to an old soul. I heard stories that a man could see his own death if he stared too long into the eyes of a shaman. It’s not a tale I was willing to verify. I had already known that looking in TwoFeathers’s eyes was akin to peering down a dark well as a drop of sweat plunged to smack endless ripples into motion. The thought of it sent the crawlies up my arms.
My eyes were blue. My White ma used to say they were the color of the sky after a long-awaited summer storm had purged the oppressive air. My adoptive Navajo mother saw blue eyes as sickly. She had covered them for several days with strips of soft, thin hide slopped with a thick, porridge-like goo. She sang and chanted and wafted smoke around me, hoping to drive away the malevolent spirit that paled my eyes. To no avail. The evil was there to stay.
Most had thought I was “touched.” Not just for my eyes. Regardless, my adoptive mother loved me. She took me in at nine years of age and raised me to be Navajo. This “daughter of Whites” was one of The People, one of The Dineh.
TwoFeathers threw gristle onto the fire. It sizzled, breaking me from my thoughts. I chunked into the haunches, splitting sections away from the skeleton. With my knifepoint, I thrust through the stifle and hock joints. The massive hindquarters were skewered on hooks and hung from a rack over the fire.
My fascination with TwoFeathers appeared akin to a moon-eyed girl with a crush. But I wasn’t in love with him. I did love him. I considered him a brother. But I wasn’t in love with him. I wanted to be him. Parts of him. The parts that were strong and rugged and all man—virile, potent. And the part that embraced his different nature and was revered for it. Everybody wanted to be somebody else at some point in life.
The Bible-thumping pastor in town would say envy was a sin. I didn’t trust the pastor. There was something off about him, as if he preached to convince himself, not others. He was milquetoast too. I couldn’t trust a man without a spine.
I placed thin strips of meat on the hot stones surrounding the blaze. We gnawed on slices before they were fully cooked. The juices drooled down our chins. Feast or famine. I was planning to stay on the feast side.
The fire popped. Mesquite smoke trailed in thin wisps toward the rock slab overhead, flavoring the hanging chunks of haunch. “Come winter, food’s going to be scarce.”
“Mm,” TwoFeathers said, nodding. He looked off into the darkened night, outside the fire’s ring. “Miners hunt much. Leave meat for coyotes to feast.” His shoulders slumped. It was the first glimmer of defeat I’d seen in any Apache.
After the stillness grew stale, TwoFeathers stiffened. “Could eat horsemeat,” he said with a toothy grin.
“A warrior needs horses,” I replied.
“You could make a good Apache. You could fight.”
“I’m not a warrior.” I’ve killed before. Gun fighting doesn’t sit well with me. The dead man is always someone’s father or brother. I just haven’t learned not to feel bad about that.
“You should have sheep.” Bright white teeth gleamed from his two-colored face.
I threw a hunk of fat. It smacked onto his unpainted cheek.
He peeled the goo from his skin and sniffed at it. When he threw the mess into the fire, it sizzled and crackled. TwoFeathers jumped to his feet, scenting the air like a hungry wolf.
He waved in front of his nose. “Horse?” His face wrinkled at the foul odor, like a prissy girl smelling a bad fart.
Charlie Horse nickered. His hoof had been festering on another abscess.
TwoFeathers hefted the lame hoof. With his big Bowie knife, he carved the gravel track open. As he pushed on the sole of the hoof, a bubble of acrid pus erupted.
Per routine, I pulled the cork from a bottle and handed it to him.
TwoFeathers swigged a gulp of whiskey, wrinkling his face into amusing contortions, then splashed the liquid into the open, oozing track.
The horse blanched at the sting but didn’t pull his hoof away.
From inside his skirt, TwoFeathers took out a pouch containing a moss poultice wrapped in wet
rawhide. The rawhide would dry, harden, and tighten, holding the drawing poultice in place and protecting the tender toe.
When he was done, TwoFeathers ran his hands over Charlie Horse’s head, staring into him as if he could see his soul. Charlie Horse was so entranced that TwoFeathers could have stolen off with the bay egg spots on his rump.
“Warrior’s horse. Spirit guide.”
I dug back into the work of rendering the deer. Their conversation was their conversation. That horse and I had a different understanding, mostly built on too many differences of opinion.
My hands were slick with lard as I stacked hunks of meat, and some of the bones, in piles on the outstretched hide. There was still much to do in preserving every tiny bite for the harder season. The raw cuts required heavy salting, and there were more chunks to roast, smoke, or salt. Then everything needed to be tightly bundled for cold storage.
These past weeks, I had dug and mounded a considerable cellar hole. The earthen roof disguised its whereabouts. A wooden door in the side of the hillock made it easily accessible. The few vegetables I was able to grow were already stockpiled inside. The added meat would be a welcome addition. Winter was coming. I was nowhere near ready.
I had built my hogan among bursts of erupted stone making it difficult for visitors to quickly advance on. The octagonal shelter was sealed with clay and tightly packed in the seams. The cedar logs kept out inclement weather, bugs, and rodents. Instead of a center firepit, I built a stone fireplace and chimney in one wall, like the Whites. A strong, domed roof of brambles and clay was weatherproof. The heavy earthen material guaranteed that the temperature stayed cool in the summer and warm in the winter.
The dwelling had no windows. The fireplace lit the entire cavity. I tried to convince myself it was homier than the overhang. I tried to live inside. I couldn’t. The gnawing sense of being trapped, alone, in the blackness, drove me back beneath the open shelter of the outcrop.