Come Sundown (31 page)

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Authors: Mike Blakely

BOOK: Come Sundown
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“That lanky buck behind Manuelito's got to be Long Joe,” Paddy whispered.
I nodded.
Paddy's palm was still turned to the troops. He waited until Manuelito had reached the bottom of the draw and the whole party was within view on the slope facing us, all of them between two hundred and three hundred yards distant. They made easy targets for good marksmen. My heart began to sink with dread. I knew our orders all too well. I expected Paddy to order a charge at any second, but instead he motioned to his men with his fingertips, as if to say, “Step forward, boys.”
I was dumbfounded at this order. The entire company moved ahead at a walk. He was going to show himself to the enemy, spoiling the element of surprise.
“Paddy!” I hissed, between my teeth.
He silenced me with a fierce glance, placing his trigger finger to his lips.
The line of troops stepped to the ridge, each man turning his mount a little to the right, as if preparing to fire his carbine.
Manuelito pulled the reins of his war bridle when he saw us deployed before him. I expected him to turn tail and flee, his warriors guarding the retreat of the women and children. To my surprise, he did not. He simply raised his hand to stop the advance of his party. The Mescaleros all sat proudly but calmly on their mounts. The terror I had expected to see among them failed to materialize, and I was confused by their nonchalance. Manuelito lowered his hand, then raised it again, this time in a sign of greeting.
“Ready!” Paddy yelled.
Carbines rose for action all along the line.
“Paddy,” I said. “Manuelito wants to talk.”
It was José Largo—Long Joe as the Americans called him—who understood first. He wheeled his mount and tried to warn the party. Manuelito sat his claybank with his hand raised in peace.
“Fire!” Paddy shouted.
Gunfire rumbled like a bad drumroll. A line of white smoke balls blossomed as bullets hummed across the draw. Manuelito took a rifle ball in the stomach and crumpled, his palm still open and empty. José Largo pitched forward from the impact of the shot that hit him between the shoulder blades. Three other Mescaleros jerked unnaturally in their saddles and fell. One of them was a woman. I will never forget the horrible image of all that human flesh and horse flesh and the surrounding earth taking the impact of invisible missiles. It was like firing both barrels of a scattergun into the surface of a calm pool.
The Indians fled in terror now, some of them obviously wounded, judging by the way they swayed on their mounts.
“Charge!” Paddy screamed.
I glanced at him and saw a terrifically maniacal look in his eye as he leapt forward on his mount. The men, drilled in his kind of volley and charge, slipped the barrels of their carbines into the leather rings fixed to their saddles, drew revolvers, and charged, each trying his best to catch up to Captain Paddy Graydon.
I loped along to the rear, having lost my stomach for the fight. I rode by the body of Manuelito, reposed in an uncomfortable
position on the ground. He had signed for a parley and had been answered with lead. Something, I now realized, was wrong with this whole encounter. The Mescaleros had not been prepared for trouble. The two scouts I had slain earlier had died too easily. My stomach twisted with nausea and guilt. What
was
this? I couldn't explain what had just transpired in this lonely draw, but I knew one thing for sure. This was not honorable warfare from any fighting man's point of view—white or Indian. I had just witnessed a massacre.
I came to the Indian woman who had been shot from her horse as she fled. As she lay on her back, eyes closed, I saw her chest lurch in a gasp for breath. Jumping from my mount, I approached her, noting the bloodstained ground beneath her body and the bloody tear in the front of her dress where a bullet had left her body. I could hear pistol shots in the distance.
“Puedo ayudarle,”
I said in Spanish. “I can help you.”
She lay with one arm pinned behind her back, as if she had fallen on it. But as I approached to look at her wound, her eyes flew open and the hand lashed out from under her, grasping a knife that almost cut my throat before I could leap back.
“Please,” I continued, in Spanish. “I want to help you.”
She spat on me, and winced in anguish from the pain that the exertion of spitting had caused her.
“Drop the knife. Please. I want to save your life.”
She glared at me with all the hatred and anger a small Mescalero woman could possibly contain. “You are
him,
aren't you?” she hissed.
“Whom?”
“The one who killed Lame Deer's son. The trader who lives with the Snake People.”
“I am called Plenty Man among the Comanches. Yes, I trade with them. The killing of Lame Deer's son was an accident, a long time ago.”
She shook her head. “Now you have done this. You are with the other one.”
“The other?”
“The other trader.
Beach.
You are with him in this.” She was weakening. Her elbow slipped out from under her and she fell
back on her shoulder blades, but she still watched me and she still held the knife.
“What of the trader—Beach. What did he tell you?”
“You
know.
”
“I do not. I was told by Carson—Little Chief—to seek battle with your warriors. My own Comanche spirit-protectors instructed me to go to battle and fight. That is all I know of this.”
“You lie.”
“I did not fire into your people. The soldiers did. You must tell me what you know.”
She looked at me with confusion. “Manuelito wanted peace. This he told Beach. Beach said we must ride to Santa Fe to talk with the big soldier chief. Beach said he would help.”
“Help how?”
“He would send soldiers.
Friendly
soldiers.”
I looked at her with astonishment. “An
escort
?”
She grimaced and nodded. “To Santa Fe.”
Now my head spun in realization of how stupidly I had been used by Beach and Graydon. A cold shame gripped my heart and my stomach to think of the cowardly way I had ambushed two unsuspecting scouts seeking an escort; how I had stood and done nothing as forty-two soldiers poured lead into a peace party.
“I must save your life,” I said. “Please, let me. You must tell what you know to Little Chief and to the big soldier chief in Santa Fe.”
“
You
tell them. I am ready to die.”
The guns had faded now in the distance. I knew she was right. I had to tell Kit and General Carleton about this. The woman's head fell back on the sand and her grip slackened around the knife. Quickly, I grabbed the weapon and used its razor-sharp edge to cut open the front of her blouse. The wound was bad. The bullet seemed to have passed through her stomach and intestines, and perhaps through her liver, as well. Blood oozed up from the bullet wound in swells. I cut away a corner of a blanket she had been wearing about her shoulders and pressed it as hard as I dared on the wound, trying to stem the blood flow. I covered her with the rest of the blanket as I
did this, trying to keep her warm. But there was no saving her. Her body began to tremble and breath rattled in and out through her throat. Her breathing stopped first, but her heart beat for a minute or two after that. Mercifully, it ended at last. I closed her eyelids and covered her face.
I checked the bodies of the slain men. All were dead. I laid them on their backs and crossed their arms over their chests. I covered them with blankets, as well.
By now, the soldiers were returning, driving captured horses and mules before them. There were sixteen mounts in all. The tall claybank of Manuelito and the big red mule ridden by his wife were among them, the travois having been cut away from the mule. Some of the soldiers brandished scalps. One in particular rode to me and said, “Lookee, here, Greenwood. I got me one, too!”
I simply looked away with disgust and guilt.
Paddy rode up. “What happened to you?” he asked.
“I tried to save that woman.”
He nodded, a bit of concern in his eyes. “Too bad about her. Stray bullet. I told the boys before the fight to avoid that.” Now he pointed with pride over the ridge. “You missed it. We killed five more warriors in the chase. Wounded some others. Got some good horses.”
“No prisoners, Paddy?”
He glanced at me and shook his head. “They ran like skeered rats. There was no catchin' 'em with anything but bullets.”
“Any of our boys killed?”
“No casualties. Excepting your knife wound.”
I sighed. “I'd just as soon bury the dead Indians and get the hell out of here.”
“
Bury
'em? Their people will just come dig them up.”
I knew he was right about this, so I let the argument go.
“What's got into you?” Paddy said.
“I just didn't like the way it happened. They didn't have a chance.”
“Given a chance, they would have killed some good boys.” He paused. “That squaw say anything, Greenwood?”
“Yeah. She wondered if I was
him.
”
“Him? Who?”
“Never mind. It happened a long time ago.”
Just then I noticed a soldier pulling the blanket off the body of Manuelito. He drew his knife and grabbed the dead chief's hair.
“Hey!” I yelled.
The soldier looked at me, confused.
“No! You didn't earn that!”
The soldier looked at me, then at Paddy, then back at me. “Well, you took a scalp. Hell, you took two!”
“I shouldn't have. It wasn't right.”
“No scalping,” Paddy said. “That's an order. There's no time. You men have performed well, and now it's time to ride hard back toward Stanton. You've all earned some rest and some hot grub.”
This seemed to satisfy the men, and we all began to prepare to leave the scene of the slaughter. I rode to the place where the bodies of the two dead scouts had been hidden after I killed them—behind some bushes down the draw. I got down and removed the scalps from my saddlebags. It was too late, and it didn't make up for anything that had happened, but I gave those gory trophies back to the Mescalero warriors, tucking them into their shirts so they would find them there in the Shadow Land and put them back on their poor, naked skulls.
T
he trail back to Fort Stanton was bad. I was hungry. I couldn't sleep much, for I had run out of the roots of moccasin flower and dogbane. When I did doze, I witnessed night terrors such as I hadn't experienced since I was a lad in France. I would lie down and stare at the stars, and constellations would come to life as grizzlies or rattlesnakes or mountains lions gnashing at me with fang and claw from the heavens. I would suffer all this with my eyes open, yet I could not move. And I could
hear
the beasts as well. Their growls and hisses drowned out all other strains until I would suddenly scream, so that I
could move, and I would find myself at the edge of camp, among the normal nighttime sounds. The soldiers surely thought I had gone mad. Even when I did indeed truly fall into slumber with my eyes closed for even a few minutes, I would have nightmares of dead Indians walking about in search of their scalps, and I would cry in my sleep out of shame and guilt.
During the day, I began to have unreasonable fears about being murdered on the trail. I kept forgetting that Luther Sheffield was in another unit of the volunteers. I would ride for hours with my hand on the butt of my revolver, watching for him to leap up from behind some bush to shoot me. Then I would remember that he belonged to E Company, and was probably back at Fort Stanton peeling potatoes. In these lucid moments, I would tend to my leg wound, which throbbed and ached fiercely. I would limp about collecting medicinal plants along the way, and replacing the bandages. I would cock my head, trying to listen to the voices of the herbs, like a bird listening for a worm crawling through the dirt. The soldiers avoided me, for I'm sure my behavior bespoke insanity.
Then it was Captain Paddy Graydon whom I fancied my assassin. Paddy knew that I knew about his conspiracy with Charlie Beach to lure the Mescaleros into what they thought was a friendly escort. Paddy would surely attempt to kill me before we reached Stanton, to prevent me from telling Kit. I was convinced of this. I would ride within sight of him all day long to watch for his move. Then, at night, I would sneak away into the dark to make my bed, so he couldn't find me and murder me in my sleep, should I happen to chance upon a moment of sleep.
Apparently, I rode all the last day of the return to the fort in the grip of one of my peculiar trances, for I don't remember a thing about that day. Had anyone wanted to murder me, that would have been the time. All I know is that I awoke in my bunk in Fort Stanton. As chief scout for the regiment, I had my own room. It was small, but comfortable. When I woke, I was lying on my side. I saw a fire that someone—probably Kit; maybe I, myself—had kept going in the fireplace. My eyes could blink, but I could not move the rest of my body. I looked around the room as much as possible by moving my eyeballs.
There was a big bucket filled with ashes where a man could attend to his bodily functions without going outside in the cold night, for the ashes would smother all odors. My clothes were hung neatly on pegs on the wall. The lid of my writing desk was open, as if I had endeavored to pen a letter to someone. The stool that went with the desk, however, was upside down, and my hat was hung on one of the upturned legs. This was the kind of foolishness I engaged in when in my trances. The deerskin was pulled over the window, but the light of day peeked in around the edges. I blinked and blinked until I could move my eyebrows, then twitch my face. I turned my head on my neck and the mobility slowly came back to the rest of my body.
I sat up on my bunk and rubbed my face. I could hear men chopping wood outside. I saw a small pile of jerky on the mantel, and a canteen hung on a peg below. I got up, found my knife and carved away a few chunks of jerky. I ate as I thought. I drank some water. I made use of the bucket full of ashes. I knew, in my instinctive way, that I had slept for two days, and that it was now ten forty-four in the morning. One thing had come clear to me in my sleep. I could no longer serve Kit as chief scout for his regiment. I could not lead Indians to slaughter and extermination—not even enemy Indians like the Mescaleros. I would have to tell Kit about Charlie Beach and Paddy Graydon, and I would have to resign my post as chief scout. Neither one would be easy.
Then, a happy thought occurred to me. I could find Westerly at Boggsville and make the winter trading run to Comanche country. I could camp again near the ruins of old Fort Adobe, where the army dared not venture. I could snuggle with my wife through the long winter nights in our hide lodge. I could hunt buffalo with my brother, Kills Something, and my Kiowa friend, Little Bluff. I could seek the spiritual wisdom of good old Burnt Belly. It would be hard telling Kit what I had to tell him, but then everything would get better.
 
 
I ATE THE rest of the jerky, cleaned myself up with water from the washbasin, put on laundered clothes, gathered my resolve,
and stepped outside. I looked across the parade grounds to the commander's quarters and saw one of Kit's favorite ponies tied to the hitching rail. Kit always saddled a horse first thing in the morning and kept it handy, just in case he might need to mount and ride at a moment's notice. I knew he was in his quarters, so I cut across the parade grounds to speak with him.
I passed a couple of soldiers who touched their hat brims in respect or awe or fear of me—I could not tell which. Just as I stepped up on the gallery of the commander's quarters, a motion to my left caught my eye. I glanced, then stopped to take a better look. About eighty yards away from me, I saw the Mescalero trader Charlie Beach leaving the grounds of Fort Stanton. There was no mistake about it. He rode the late Manuelito's claybank horse, and trailed the big red mule on a lead rope. These were the two finest animals taken from the Mescaleros during the chase that followed the massacre. My audience with Kit suddenly seemed a far less ominous task.
Kit looked up from his desk when I knocked on his door. Since he had endeavored to become a man of letters, he had taken to wearing spectacles with little round lenses, which he had bought at a trading house in Santa Fe. He smiled and waved me into his office with a piece of paper he held in his hand.
“Come in here, Kid, I need you. What in the hell does this say?”
I took the single sheaf of paper from his hand and glanced over the handwriting on it. “A Corporal Evans is requesting that you approve his purchase of a bottle of whiskey from the sutler's store. For medicinal purposes.”
Kit rolled his eyes to the ceiling. Then he began to chuckle. “These boys! A week ago, some private from Company A came with a written request to buy some molasses to cure his cold. Molasses is skeerce, so I have to approve the purchase. It said ‘molasses,' Kid, and I'm sure of it. I read it hard enough to see the
m
and the
o
of ‘
mo
lasses'.”
I shrugged. “Molasses can soothe a cough.”
“But since then, three other boys have come in here tellin' me they needed to buy molasses, too. They had the written orders from the sutler, and hell, I just took 'em at their word and signed
off on it without the trouble of readin' every order. They all sneezed and coughed a little. Come to find out, only the first order really said ‘molasses,' and the other three said ‘whiskey'!” He laughed out loud and slapped his knee. “The sutler mentioned it to me, and I went back to dig out the orders. These boys will test a man at every bend in the trail, Kid!”
“I guess they will,” I said. “Sometimes it isn't so funny, though.”
The smile melted from Kit's face, and he took the glasses off. “Sit down, Kid. Tell me what happened out there.”
“You've got Paddy's report?”
He eased into his chair behind his desk. “I want to know what
really
happened.”
I told the whole story to Kit. How I had too easily killed two scouts, how Manuelito had signed for a parley, how the dying Mescalero woman had told of an escort, and how I had just seen Charlie Beach ride out with the two finest animals captured from Manuelito's herd.
Kit frowned as he placed his chin on his interlaced fingers. “Paddy said you might have some wild things to say. He said you'd gone plumb crazy after the fight. Said you'd scream in the night and ride all day like a dead man in the saddle.”
“I can't deny that. I had one of my spells. But I was all right until after the fight, and I know what I saw and heard. You can get on your horse right now and overtake Charlie Beach and see what he's riding.”
Kit raised his hand to settle me down. “I saw him saddle the claybank this morning. I believe you, Kid. The question is, what's the right thing to do about it? A thing like this, you've got to have enough evidence to make a charge. More evidence than just a yaller hoss and red mule.”
I nodded. “The word of one screaming crazy man doesn't count for a whole lot, does it?”
He scoffed. “I know your ways, Kid. You can't help that.” He stood and walked to the window, an aging legend in a uniform that was using him up like fuel in a flickering lantern. I wished Kit had never allowed himself to get caught up in the workings of the military machine. I imagined him briefly in some beaver camp or trading post, wearing his drab civilian
garb, telling stories by the fireside, laughing with his friends. I sat silently for a while, wondering how I would begin to tell him that I had to resign as chief scout of the regiment. I had decided to start by saying,
Kit, I've come to a difficult decision,
when he turned to me and looked me right in the eye.
“Kid,” he said. “You need to get shed of this place.”
“Sir?”
“Don't take it personal, now. I'll miss you. You know the country better than most. Some parts you know better than me. But you're in danger here. It was one thing when it was just that crazy son of a bitch Luther Sheffield wantin' to kill you. I could handle that. But now, I don't know who might be after your scalp. I don't know how rotten this whole thing with Charlie Beach is.”
“You want me to clear out?”
“For your own good, Kid. But that's not all. I want you to ride to Santa Fe and give a written report to General Carleton about what you saw and heard on this affair with Paddy and Charlie Beach. And there's one other thing.”
“Something else?”
He opened a desk drawer and pulled out three sheaves of parchment. “I got this letter from William Bent. I picked through it, word by word, like you've been tryin' to teach me. I think I get the gist of it.”
“And?”
“It looks like young Charles and George Bent have run off with the Indians. William wants you to go find them, and bring them back to Boggsville. I think you ought to go.”
The wind fell out of the speech I had prepared, but the relief was welcome. I pretended to think it over for a while, and replied, “Whatever you say, Kit.”
“Good. I'll have some dispatches for you to carry to General Carleton, but if anybody asks you where you're going, tell them I've sent you to Albuquerque for supplies.”
I got up. “I'll be ready in an hour.”
Kit came around the desk to walk me to the door. He put his hand on my shoulder. “I will look into the affair with Charlie Beach, Kid. I promise you that. If what that squaw told you is right, it was a bad piece of soldier work, and I won't stand still for it.”
I shook his hand and thanked him. An hour later, I was on my way north.
 
 
I HANDED MY report to General James Henry Carleton in person at his office in Santa Fe. Unvarnished fact made up the whole of the document. I included neither speculation nor analysis. I would let the general draw his own conclusions. He took the report, and the other dispatches from Kit, and tossed them on his desk. Then he asked me a lot of questions about conditions at Fort Stanton. I answered all his queries, but when he asked about the episode with Manuelito, I simply said, “It's in my report, sir.”
“You were there?”
“Yes, sir, as scout for the company.”
“That was some stroke of warfare, killing two enemy chiefs and nine warriors in one battle.”
“Eight warriors and one woman.”
Carleton looked at me with surprise. His only view of the fight had come from Paddy Graydon's pen.
“It's in my report,” I repeated.
He seemed puzzled, yet intrigued.
I did not know General Carleton well, though I had known him a long time. Years ago, he had given me my favorite pony—the paint horse named Major. He was a small yet impressive man with a big cavalry mustache. I considered him smart and energetic. He was unwavering in his harsh stance against the Indians. He struck me as the quintessential soldier, and I respected him, though I disagreed with his severe tactics. He was also very persuasive, for he talked me into serving as his courier for a couple of weeks before I rode on to Boggsville. I missed Westerly fiercely, but I agreed to carry dispatches for a while, partly because I wanted to see what would become of the Graydon-Beach affair.

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