by R. Kent
The door popped open as I gained my feet. Sahara slammed into my arms. Her red-streaked, puffy face buried into my chest.
“They’re gone.” I hugged her. Her smaller arms wrapped around my midsection in a vise-like grip. She sobbed.
“They’re gone. You’re fine.” I pushed Sahara to arm’s length in making sure. “You are fine, aren’t you?”
Sahara twisted her shoulders away, turning from me. “I’m fine,” she snapped.
I jerked the peeking handle of the lit torch from the roof and stomped the fatigued flame to nothing. Her back was still to me. “You can’t be here.” My voice croaked lower than it had ever been. “I never asked for a wife. I never wanted a wife. I’m not a man. You just can’t be here.”
When my anger burst, it rushed like an uncontrollable flash flood. “I can’t feed the two of us. I can’t work the trap lines or hunt or capture horses, knowing that you’re here alone. Knowing that those men will keep coming for you.”
I turned my back on Sahara with a finality I didn’t feel. I wish I did. But I didn’t.
I wanted Sahara here. I had grown accustomed to her presence. More like, I needed her here. Even though she was annoying.
I enjoyed her antics. She was funny. Maybe she hadn’t meant to be… She was smart. Not a frontier wilderness survival smart, but she knew things. She was always surprising me. I looked forward to seeing Sahara every day, and she was the last thought on my mind each night.
Damn it. The girl had to go!
The lathered horse stood stock still. Exhausted and resigned. I took hold of his hanging rope and tried to act as if Sahara meant nothing in my life. “You’re going on the next stagecoach,” I said much more calmly, though my jaw was tight.
“I told you I can’t. I won’t.” She screamed and cried at the same time. New tears flooded down her already streaked and swollen face.
I spread my arms and rotated. “There isn’t enough of anything here to get us both through the winter. Look around.” Posts and split rails were scattered as if a tornado tossed them. There was no livestock of worth. I had few tanned pelts. My traps were in ruins. My coin was spent. My coat… My hat…
“It’s gone. It’s all gone. And I can’t let you stay in this territory. Not in this town—knowing what they’ll do to you. And knowing I’m not a man. If anyone were to find out—men would come after me for the reason they chase you.”
And all of that came out all wrong. It sounded self-centered. Insensitive. I didn’t think I was either of those. Maybe I was.
I led the exhausted horse toward the rock overhang, leaving Sahara behind.
Being alone was hard enough. Being alone and a woman was downright dangerously impossible. And I wasn’t a woman. I’d face any peril if it meant I could be with Sahara. But I wouldn’t be a woman.
I’m a boy. My mind had always and ever been a boy’s. I hoped to learn to become a man. I wanted to be a good man. Never a woman. I wasn’t a woman. Not here. Not anywhere. Not for anyone. Not even for Sahara Miller.
Beneath the overhang, I rubbed the horse with scrub grass, fed and watered him. He was sorry looking. I tossed my woven wool blanket over his spiny back, just while he cooled.
The temperature was dropping fast. I kicked the cold coals inside the stone ring and built a fire that roared to life. It devoured the kindling and chips, then licked at a fat log.
“Here’s your damn cow.” Sahara flung the rope lead at me. It fell short, landing across my moccasins.
I didn’t know what to say. How? I tied the cow next to the buggy horse and tossed her an armful of loose feed. The greedy calf poked at her empty bag. I stroked her brown furry neck and watched the calf, unable to look at Sahara.
My hair fell into my face. I prodded the strands to sit behind each ear. Blood had crusted on my cheek. I swiped my arm across the mess. The hide shirt scratched the scabs off. Warm, wet blood drooled from the wound again. And all I wanted was for Sahara to leave me alone.
If I ignored her, maybe she’d go away.
Fences needed rebuilding. I scooped water from the horse’s bucket to dab at my face. If I could gentle a colt to ride… If I could pack one behind Charlie Horse… I’d be able to ride my traps again, then spend next winter tanning pelts. It felt like a step backward. But my trapping and trading had bought this land, my land. I could start over. I could always catch wild horses.
“When Rose insisted on heading back to town, I brought the cow to the sod hut and tied her just outside the door,” Sahara said, breaking into my thoughts. “I knew I couldn’t carry the bucket of milk that far.
“I had stolen milk when I was a kid so I knew how to milk her. I had the bucket filled and was going to bring her back. That’s when those nasty men came.” Sahara sniffled. “I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t leave the cow and calf alone. They would have been scared. The calf might have gotten hurt.” Sahara walked over to the heifer calf and placed her hand lightly on its tail head. “I led them through the door, shut it, then bolted it.” Sahara dug through her pockets until she found what she was looking for and approached me.
She dipped a lacy handkerchief in the bucket of water then dabbed at my cheek. Her surreal eyes stared into mine.
“You can’t stay,” I said quietly. It wasn’t without regret.
“Because you’re not a man?”
“I’m a boy.” I rubbed the back of my neck. “Inside…inside a girl’s body.” I could feel a tightness between my shoulder blades. “I’ve always known.” Of a sudden, I felt chilled. I moved to the fire and squatted to prod it. “I think the Whites’ God made a mistake when he put me in a female body.” I stood.
Sahara stepped close again.
Absentmindedly, I pulled at the silk kerchief tied tightly around my neck, poking with my finger to scratch at the scar. “Boy. Girl. The Navajo believe it doesn’t change my soul. It doesn’t change who I am. And The People revere those of two spirits.”
I stuffed three fingers under the neckerchief, digging at the damaged flesh. “I don’t want to be revered. I just want to be a man, working my own land.” When my skin was sore, I smoothed the hanging silk tails down my hide-covered, bound, flat chest.
“The scar on your neck? Is it from a hangman?”
I loosened the four tiny squares unified to create one large square. The knot symbolized the elements of earth, wind, fire, and water, coming together to create life. I allowed the neckerchief to slacken. Slowly, I slid it open, exposing the deformed mess.
Her eyes widened. Her hands flew to cover her gaping mouth.
Sahara screamed.
Chapter Ten
I twisted the silk back around my neck faster than I’d ever strung it before.
Thunk.
I spun my gun into action. TwoFeathers dropped to the ground, covered in blood. His .53-caliber Hawken crashed against the stone wall. The pup slammed into my shins. Sahara continued screaming like she would never run out of air.
“Os-ten.” TwoFeathers held out a flour sack with holes.
“Sahara. The horse.” I hollered through her piercing screams.
I slammed my revolver into its holster as Sahara scrambled toward the munching animal. The woven wool blanket fell to the dirt floor when she hauled him away from his feed. I shoved Sahara onto his bony back. The tired buggy horse came alive with a bug-eyed look.
“Ride to Molasses Pond Livery. Go to Justice.” I didn’t know anyone else. He was a McKade, but—
“What about you—”
I turned my attention toward aiding TwoFeathers. He had a sack in his grasp. It had slits for eye holes. I took it from him and shredded it to bandage his oozing bruises and staunch the flowing cuts.
“Austin.”
“Ride.” I snapped at Sahara, fishing tobacco from my pocket and pressing it into TwoFeathers’s facial wounds. I saw the horror in her eyes as I helped him to the fire. I saw her disgust and fear.
I slapped the horse on the rump and sent him running i
nto the dying daylight. The pup barked and nipped, keeping pace at his heels.
Sahara watched me as she clung tooth-and-nail to the galloping animal. She was chewing on her lower lip, but her eyes were squinted into slashes. She might have started to cry. The accusing look on her face broke my heart.
I hadn’t told her about TwoFeathers. I thought she was too citified, too pampered, too weak. I thought she was too judgmental, too narrow-minded. I believed she was too White.
That look on her face said I had betrayed her. I hadn’t trusted her. I had no faith.
I had too many secrets to ever let her in.
The sun had completely set as TwoFeathers and I crept around boulders and peeked down on the long-abandoned ruins of a rustlers’ campsite. Below, a dilapidated fenced corral surrounded by looming saguaros and rattling tumbleweeds, was aglow from a huge fire of twisted mesquite and brambles. The angry flames lit the vicinity in a furious circle of blazing oranges and reds.
Apaches huddled in the corral, their hands bound. A daisy chain of hangman’s nooses secured their necks to one another.
Of a sudden, my head pounded. I pushed at my temples with the tips of my fingers. The sun blinded me, but it was dark. I heard the harsh crack of a bullwhip but knew TwoFeathers’s quiet breathing was the nearest interruption to this night’s hush. And behind my open eyes, I glimpsed the long line of noose-tied Navajo dragged ahead of me.
I shook my head, clearing the flashbacks.
A man with a Winchester strolled the line of tied Apaches below us. He stopped to thump one Indian with the butt of his rifle, then kicked another. Three other Whites knocked a warrior to his knees and jerked his head back by his loose braid. His arms were cruelly held behind him with a pole thrust across the middle of his back, above his elbows. One of the Whites tipped a bottle of whiskey to his own lips before upending the contents over the Apache’s mouth and nose.
The warrior stared at his torturers. The burning liquid splashed into his unblinking eyes. He didn’t look away. Hate radiated from the Apache.
TwoFeathers plucked a copper ball and wadding from the pouch at his waist. He tipped a powder horn to the mouth of the barrel before packing in the wadding and ball. With a ramrod, he jammed the works down. I noticed his face had swelled. The cut on his forehead gaped from the growing goose egg underneath. The bruise on his cheek changed the color of his yellow paint to a sickly brown. And his lip hadn’t stopped bleeding.
To the rhythm of gun blasts and rifle bursts, liquored Apache Indians stumbled in a dance around the beastly fire. A collapsed Apache laid in his own vomit. Spittle drooled from his mouth. Feathers woven into his hair had been shot short. He hadn’t moved.
TwoFeathers rammed the wadding and ball and more wadding into the Hawken’s barrel. He snapped at me. “Told Os-ten. The White man is the same. Our enemy is the same. White enemy man is the same.”
I still didn’t exactly understand. We didn’t speak the same languages fluently. Until recently, we had managed fine. But yeah, there was always that something missing.
TwoFeathers thumped his chest with his fist after sliding the rod under the long barrel. “Told Os-ten,” he growled in broken English. He fluttered his flat hand away from his body in a motion meaning time having flown by or time past.
The White enemy is the same. But what does that mean?
All Whites weren’t the same. All Indians weren’t the same. There was good and bad in every bushel.
With the barrel of that buffalo gun rested on a rock, TwoFeathers dropped a prime on its pan, and took aim. His deliberation was keen. His patience long. Just before he shot, he slowly exhaled his breath through pursed lips like blowing out a candle.
I covered my ears and crouched behind him, sighting over his right shoulder. My clenched fists brought out recollections of other brutal times, in past brutal incidences. Massacres. Murders.
Those recollections of scenes came in horrid bursts of red. Sharp explosions of gunfire ripped the oppressive heat. Indians rained down on lodged Conestogas. Running women collapsed midstride. Lost sunny bonnets fluttered on a stifling breeze. Blood spurt and splattered. Crying children climbed into wagons or clambered beneath. Fear. Huddling. Hiding.
Horsed men shot rifles from high above.
Returning fire came from behind the wagons.
Indians circled, screeching their horrid wails. Spears were thrown. Bows plucked. Arrows hit their marks as deadly as any bullets.
I hid in the shadow of a boulder, slapping my tiny hands over my ears, crushing hard enough that my small head should have burst.
TwoFeathers squeezed the triggers. The report from his Hawken was deafening. It jolted me to the present in time to see the guard buckle from the smacking impact of TwoFeathers’s copper bullet. He hadn’t fallen off his horse.
I had seen a man fall dead from his horse once. He slapped the earth, limp and lifeless. I had seen scars of rope burns then too, on his bronze wrists and neck. I had smelled the whiskey from his last gurgling exhale. His open eyes stared blindly at me in apology as his killer sat watching from the top of the ridge. Only now did I remember these details.
TwoFeathers was up and running before that horse knew his rider slumped dead in the saddle. Screeching bone-chilling whoops, he ran through the camp. I trailed after him as fast as I could.
With impressive strength and proficiency, he reloaded the massive barrel on the run. I’d never heard of any White buffalo hunters capable of that feat. He cocked the hammer, smashed prime onto the pan, and set the rear trigger. The Hawken would blow on a hare’s whisper.
Angry, cursing Whites attempted to muster as we wallowed into their string of tied, screaming horses. We cut every tether. The herd of saddled mounts high-tailed it toward town. Even the horse with its dead rider fled with them.
Bumped in their rush, I dropped my skinning knife.
I pulled my revolver. Flames coughed from its barrel as I shot the ropes binding Apaches to looming saguaro cacti.
TwoFeathers’s Hawken blasted too closely behind me. Sound vanished that instant. I pounded at my ears. They felt full of wool. I was dizzy. I put my hands out to steady myself.
TwoFeathers wrestled with a bloody corpse that clung to his waist. The Hawken had exploded its head clean off. He was yelling at me. TwoFeathers was yelling, but I couldn’t hear him. His lips opened and closed like a fish out of water, gawping for air. I shook my head and kept slamming my ears. I felt woozy. My sight grew fuzzy.
My eyes glazed.
Blinding sun. Hearty laughter. Shod hooves rang against stone. Gunfire. Navajo dropped in fleeing poses. Flames. Smoke. Gunfire. A blue dog’s limp body draped over my arm as I hugged him to my chest. Gunfire. I tripped on bronze legs peeking from the fringed hem of a deerskin skirt. Mother. Gunfire. Her face was a bloody mess. Gunfire. She had had the most beautiful long, black hair. A rope snapped closed around my throat. I dropped my lifeless dog to claw at the burning noose jerking me from my feet.
I shook my head. The glimpses retreated. Tears gushed over my cheeks, though I’d sworn as a child never to cry again. TwoFeathers came into focus. His lips were drawn into a thin line. He reached out with a muscular arm to crush me to his broad chest. I struggled the huge Bowie knife from its sheath at his waist and pushed myself from his grasp.
He bobbed his head in a nod. I took off running.
In the split rail corral, I cut the ropes binding the wrists of an Apache. With freed hands, the Indian tore the noose from his neck. He jumped to release his brothers.
I sawed at the restraints of the next, then the next.
A warrior lunged toward me, his lips formed a feral grin. His teeth gleamed in the dancing firelight. I glanced at the Bowie knife in my gun hand and awkwardly yanked my six-shooter with the other palm.
I didn’t hesitate. I grabbed at the trigger as the nose of the barrel cleared the holster. Pull the gun. Pull the trigger.
Click. The gun was empty.
The Apache war
rior sailed past me, slamming his shoulder into one of McKade’s men.
McKade’s man. McKade.
I saw McKade now, atop his massive horse, flanked by hired guns.
It wasn’t the first time I’d seen him murdering and massacring from the back of that big black horse. Clearer memories flooded my mind. McKade was the man on the ridge inciting the wagon train massacre. He had also orchestrated the murder of my Navajo tribe.
McKade, The scourge of the West. Lightning Jack McKade, the killer. Murderer.
White soldiers had laughed. They had made sport of chasing down the mothers, tormenting the grandfathers, and corralling the fleeing Navajo children. The soldiers set flames to our hogans, our crops, and our pampered peach trees. They shot our dogs, our horses, our sheep. Young boys and little girls were set to running for target practice. Older boys, not old enough to become warriors, were tied by the necks and dragged in a line like livestock.
I was in that line.
That huge man on his enormous black horse had ridden next to me as the hangman’s noose ripped at my neck. The steel hinge of his braced leg had constantly squeaked with the motion of his mount. McKade.
I stared at him. His brace glinted from the fire’s light. I was sure he was staring back at me, with recognition.
I pointed my revolver. Click. My weapon was empty.
One of his henchmen leveled a rifle at me. McKade pushed the barrel downward. He posed his fingers as a gun and dropped his thumb-hammer down. Bang, he silently mouthed. Lightning Jack McKade whirled his massive steed on its haunches, then launched toward Molasses Pond.
I blundered into the night, following his retreat. That’s what it was: McKade’s retreat.
Behind me, Apaches swarmed over the dead bodies of White gunslingers. They whooped and hollered in earnest. Shots sang in celebration. They had won this battle.
I plodded toward town. The night had grown as dark as a pocket. I stubbed my moccasin covered foot on a fist-sized rock. Damn. It had been hours of stomping in the dark. It would take me hours more. I no longer heard whooping or gunshots. But visions of shattered faces and torn flesh tormented my mind with every step.