A forgotten evil, p.18
A Forgotten Evil, page 18
He paced back and forth to work the stiffness from his body and watched as the warriors strung their bows, or cleaned their rifles, or painted their horses with colors of war. The women, too, were busied in all manner of fussing, astir with the excitement of the day. Even the children, playful in the most difficult of situations, circled and jumped and shot blunt arrows at each other’s feet.
When the old lady came, she brought a blood sausage cooked in the rennet of a buffalo calf and a bowl of boiled and salted cornmeal. The food was delicious, and life-giving, and Caleb ate with abandon.
“What are the men preparing for?” he asked, finishing the last of cornmeal.
At first the old lady said nothing, looking to the south, and then she bent low on her haunches, her breath smelling of sour, her hair falling dirty and heavy about her shriveled face.
“Soon the warriors will ride to the Santa Fe Trail,” she said, pulling her skirt about her knees. “They will take a wagon train that has come from over there.”
“How do you know this?”
She pushed the hair back from her face and looked up against the sun, squinting her eyes. “They’ve been blowing their bugle for days, Woodcutter, like a rutting bull bellowing for a cow. How could one not know of their presence?”
“I haven’t heard anything.”
Shrugging, she said, “A man must listen to hear.”
By noon the warriors were readied, their horses with their streaks of color prancing in anticipation of things to come. Mounting up, Little River rode to where Caleb waited.
“I saw wood while hunting,” he said, “a few miles west, enough for the night’s fire. Make certain it is ready for our return.”
“You go to make war on my people again, Little River.”
“There is a horse tied at my lodge,” he said. “He is old and toothless but will serve to gather the wood. Afterward, you can bask in the sun like the cat to heal your wounds.” As he started to leave, he stopped, turning his horse about. “You have earned the respect of the other warriors with your fight against Red Nose,” he said, “but do not mistake it, Woodcutter. In the end, you have killed a Cheyenne.”
Little River joined the other warriors, circling the fire, their painted and fierce faces, yipping and howling and quirking their horses, weapons held high over their heads. Satisfied with their show, they circled one last time before riding off into the prairie.
The sun rose high overhead. Caleb waited, warming away the tension of the knife wound and the swelling in his face. When it was time to gather wood, he took up his axe and made his way to Little River’s lodge. The horse was old, as Little River had said, with swayed back, protruding hip bones, and hooves split beyond repair. Its head hung inches from the ground, and as Caleb approached, it neither moved nor acknowledged his presence. A pitiful pair they made as Caleb led him across camp, both shuffling along in all their infirmity.
As they worked their way up the hill, the old woman sang out to Caleb, her hand shading out the sun from her eyes. “Woodcutter,” she called, “bring plenty of wood because tonight the Cheyenne will celebrate their victory.”
He acknowledged her with a wave and turned, looping the cold weight of the hobble over his shoulder. Using the axe as a walking stick, he gave the old horse a tug, and they moved up the hill, a tired and decrepit pair. Maybe the old woman was right. Maybe tonight they would celebrate their victory around the light of their fire, but this much he knew, this much he’d decided in the darkness of the night: they’d do it without him, because Caleb Justin was never coming back.
How long he walked he wasn’t sure, nor did he know the direction he must take, whether it was south or west or straight ahead. If he were to intercept the wagon train before them, he would have to cut more north, at least that’s what it seemed, and so that’s what he did, keeping the sun over his right shoulder as he plodded along.
But in the end it was not to matter. As the sun dropped low in the western sky and the shadows stretched black and silent across the prairie, the old horse refused to go farther. Exhaling, it spiked both feet into the earth, lowered itself into the grass, and that was that. No amount of threatening could convince it to rise from that resting spot. Giving up at last, Caleb took off the old horse’s bridle and tossed it into the grass.
“It’s all right, ole friend,” he said, rubbing it between the ears. “I’ve a good idea how you feel.”
Caleb turned due south, determined to reach his destination. There was too little time for backtracking now. For hours he trekked across the plains, his wounds raw and agonizing under the relentless scour of buckskin and the weight of his hobbles. Evening descended upon him and, with it, all sense of direction. He wandered from hill to hill, lost and hopeless in the immensity of the plains. Falling to the ground, he buried his head into his arms. Like the old horse before him, his spirit was broken, and he could go no farther.
It was the smell of smoke, that unmistakable trace of peril, that brought him out of his stupor. There on the vista, flames flickered in the low-lying clouds, their bellies churning with the heat and devastation from below them. It was the wagon train, of that he was certain. With all his trying, he was too late, too late for himself, too late for the poor souls whose fate he could not imagine. So into the twilight he struggled, throwing caution aside as he navigated prairie dog holes, and ravines, and prickly pear cactus.
He stopped at the top of a hill and listened to the soldiers, their screams rising from the inferno, and the pitiful whicker of horses trapped in the carnage, innocent and helpless with cries like the screams of children. Gathering himself up, he ran on into the fray, because there was no turning back now. Whatever was to happen would happen down there with his own kind.
The heat from the fires burned his face and cast their hellish glow on the slaughter about him. There in a sage brush Sergeant Wins lay coiled in death, his jaw bulging with fresh tobacco twist, his denuded skull leaking into the prairie sand. Caleb dropped to his knees and brought about his carbine. Cheyenne circled all about, riding and whooping in a frenzy of death, firing again and again into the dying and convulsing bodies.
Death reeked in the clean dusk air as Caleb worked his way up the ridge, dragging his hobble behind, slipping and sliding in the viscera and gore of his comrades, searching in vain for ammunition among the bodies. The evening whined with bullets, and arrows, and cries for mercy, and there was a great sadness within him.
When once again his hobble caught up in the brush, he despaired, dropping to his knees to wait for the end. A moonless night descended in that moment over the battlefield, a dark and sallow shroud. From all directions the fires glowed as the Cheyenne burned the wagons and dragged the mutilated bodies into the flames for a final humiliation.
It was but a matter of time before they found him. His death would not be easy, this he knew with all the certainty of his experience, nor would it be fast. He heard the rustle of feathers above him and prayed for a bullet, for that sudden flash of light that would sweep him away. But it did not come, as he’d feared, and when he looked up into the yellow light of the flames, Little River stood over him.
“Woodcutter,” he said.
Struggling to his feet, Caleb said, “I can’t go on as it is, Little River. I’m dead sick of this hobble, and of standing by while my own are being kilt. Reckon you know how it is. I think you know better than anyone. I saved your life once, and I figure you owe me. That bow of yours can stall a two-ton buffalo at a hundred yards. I’ve seen you do it, so if you’d just kill me, swift and clean like that, we’ll call it even for this world.”
Little River nocked an arrow and brought about his bow, aiming it at Caleb’s chest, his arm trembling with the power of his draw. Light from the fires flickered in his eyes, and in the red streak of grease across his face. Moments passed as Caleb waited for the flight of the arrow, swift and irrevocable, into his defenseless body, but it did not come.
Lowering his bow, Little River looked down on the slaughter and then back at the white man who stood waiting for death before him. He reached into his pocket and brought out the hobble key, tossing it at Caleb’s feet, and then moved off into the smoke and misery of the battle.
When Caleb unlocked the hobble, it was as if the world fell away, and he ran into the darkness, for his life, for freedom regained at last, for that small flicker of hope so long extinguished in desperation. Neither the sting of thorns nor the uncertainty of his path nor the twist of his damaged foot could stop him from his flight. Not until the death fires faded behind him and the stink of smoke gave way to the clean night air did he rest, and then but for a moment, long enough to relieve the burn of his lungs before running on once more.
And when he could go no farther, he fell to the ground, the earth warm beneath him, its smell of decay and renewal in the night. The stars, still gallant and untouched by the evils of man, hung hopeful in the black expanse of the universe.
He slept then, even in his fear, and when he awakened, a full moon dangled overhead. The silvery orb lit the crevices and crannies of this alien land and cast shadowed specters in the night.
The cry was small in the vastness. Bolting upright, he listened, his ears ringing in the silence. It couldn’t be Cheyenne. He’d come too far in the dark of night and in the heat of battle for them to have found him.
Rolling onto his hands and knees, he listened again, and it came as before.
“Who are you?” he called. And then he saw something, a bundle curled in the shadows. He moved forward with axe in hand. “I have a weapon,” he said. Lifting the axe above his head, he waited to strike. “Ain’t taking no more hobbles,” he said, “not in this life.”
But when she lifted her head, he could see the fleur-de-lis of rosewood and gold about her neck, the green of her tear-filled eyes, and the pale beauty of Joan Monnet’s face in the moonlight.
Chapter 17
Scrambling into the darkness, she stared up at him. “Miss,” he said, dropping onto his knees, “it’s me, Caleb Justin.”
She drew her legs in and shook her head. “I’ve got a gun,” she said.
“Miss,” he said again, “don’t you know who I am? It’s me, the woodcutter. The feller what brought wood to your railroad car. Don’t you remember?”
“Woodcutter?”
“Caleb Justin,” he said again, realizing what he must look like in the darkness with his long hair, buckskins, and blackened eyes. “I cut wood for your pa and the track crew. Don’t you remember?”
For the longest moment she looked at him, as if he were from some distant world.
“Did you bring my book back?” she asked.
“Book? Why, yes, Miss, I did.”
“People never bring books back.”
“I swear it,” he said.
“You scared the life out of me,” she said.
“I was took captive by the Cheyenne,” he said, “and hobbled like a jack mule for the whole of the summer.”
“You can trust a person who returns books.”
“Yes, Miss.”
She looked past him, searching the darkness. “It was horrible, you know.”
“Yes, Miss, I know. There weren’t nobody left alive, nobody at all, and now here you are, just like a miracle.”
“Corporal Fitz saved my life,” she said.
“Fitz from the railhead?”
“They killed him, but not without a fight. I loaded while he fired, and when there was no ammunition left, we threw rocks, and when there were no more rocks—” She looked up at Caleb. “But they just kept coming, over and over, and the dying was everywhere, and the cries, I’ll never forget the cries.”
“I’m sorry,” Caleb said.
“We just stood there cursing, as if somehow we could stop them with the anger of our words, but we couldn’t. Important things are never changed with words, Caleb, not things that matter. One minute Corporal Fitz was alive, and then he wasn’t anymore.” Folding her arms, she rubbed the backs of them as if a chill had swept through her. “You can’t hear arrows when they come, and when they do come, things are never again the same.”
He reached for her. She hesitated, then took his hand, her fingers still cold.
“What did you do then?” he asked.
“I fell to the ground, into a dry creek bed or buffalo wallow, I guess, and pulled Corporal Fitz’s body over me. He was warm and heavy, I remember, and smelled of shaving soap. It was shameless of me, and there were the awful sounds of the arrows going into him as the Cheyenne circled and took their coup. I lay there waiting, but it never came. They never saw me.”
“You did what you had to in order to stay alive. There’s no shame in that. Now you and me better get out of here while we can. It’s a rare opportunity we got. Take hold of my belt so we don’t get separated in the dark.”
“Are you taking me home?”
“I don’t have a notion where we are,” he said, “but I do know it’s too close to where we’ve been. Now, come on.”
Like hunted animals they moved into the night, the cool of her hand against his back. And when they could walk no more, they fell to the ground, where they slept, exhausted from their flight. In the early morning hours, the dew fell, and moisture gathered in their hair, and from the ridge a bitch coyote watched on with wheat-colored eyes. Squatting, she marked her territory before loping off into the sunrise.
A grasshopper, torpid with cold, clung to Caleb’s brow and sat him upright in the morning sun. Flinging it away, he cursed its audacity and struggled to orient himself.
When he saw her curled in the grass, the night’s events rushed back, and a great sickness welled up within him.
“Miss,” he said, shaking her shoulder.
Covering her mouth with her hand, she gasped. “Who is it?”
“It’s all right,” he said. “We’re safe, at least for the moment.”
She wrapped her arms about herself, shivering. “Where are we?”
“As far away as we could go, Miss.”
“I want to go home now, Caleb. I’m cold and hungry, and nobody knows where I am.”
He turned about and studied the horizon, the blue haze of the plains. There was the smell of fall in the air and the coming of winter not far behind.
“I ain’t all that certain where we are,” he said, “and we ain’t got that much to get by on. There’s this here axe, but that’s about all there is.”
“We’ll starve, or freeze, or—” she said, “or be taken by the Cheyenne. Now, maybe woodcutters don’t mind that, but I find it a considerable inconvenience.”
“We won’t freeze, Miss, not so long as I can chop wood.” Taking her hand, he helped her up. “We best figure us a place to hide until we can come up with a plan. Right now there ain’t nothing between us and the Cheyenne but clear sky and flat land.”
She spiked her hands on her waist, her eyes bearing down.
“I’m going to use that axe on you if you call me Miss one more time. I’m not some old lady, and I don’t appreciate being talked to like I am. Now, call me Joan or just don’t bother talking to me at all.”
“All right, Joan,” he said, testing out its sound.
So, ragged and lost, they struck out once more, the burden of the trail magnified with the uncertainty of what might await them. Even though Joan’s endurance was weak with privileged living, her determination was strong as she followed behind.
Against his better judgment, Caleb would stop, “to check the sky,” he said, or “to watch the horizon for movement,” but he knew too well the Cheyenne’s capacity for the hunt. They could rise like wolves from the prairie floor, leaving little but bloodstains in the grass to mark their passing, and so taking her hand, he would move out once more.
It was dusk when Caleb spotted the ravine. Carved from limestone, it cut into the belly of the prairie, a refuge and haven from the watchful eyes about them. If there was water, it would be there, and fuel for a fire.
“Come on,” he said, “we can reach it before dark.”
As they worked their way into the canyon, the winds fell away, and the shadows dropped about them like black curtains. Near the bottom of the ravine was a small alcove, sculpted by winds and floodwaters. It promised cover, and so they made their way down the tumble of rock and into its protection.
Trembling, Joan curled against the wall. “I’m so cold,” she said.
“You wait here,” he said. “I’ll see if I can find something to start a fire.”
She grabbed his hand to stop him. “You will be careful?”
“I’ll be back before dark,” he said.
And so he left her and searched the scattered trees for downed wood, finding an aged elm half-buried under a rockslide near the canyon entrance. He cut away the bark with his axe, stripping off the dry paper beneath it. After that, he cut a stick, fuzzing its end with the blade of his axe. Already the canyon darkened, and he worked as fast as he could to gather an armload of wood.
By the time he returned, the night had fallen black about him, and for one frantic moment he thought he was not going to find the shelter where he’d left Joan, but when he called out, she answered a few feet from where he stood.
He crumpled the paper in the darkness, spinning the fuzz stick against the bark with the palms of his hands. Again and again he worked at the stick, blowing into the bark paper as he’d seen the Cheyenne women do. When a curl of smoke rose, and the smallest red coal glowed, he yelped with gratitude and nursed the coal into a flame.
Never had fire been more welcome. Gathering about, they held their hands to its warmth and huddled against its flicker. The slightest hope returned in their hearts, the barest possibility that the world was not, at least for this moment, so desperate and dangerous.
