January, 2012

Issue #28

Night Visitor
by Larry Payne

Pulling the collar of his Mackinaw up around his neck, Marshal Cooper Smith stepped out from the doorway of his office onto the boardwalk. It was Christmas Eve and, except for a small gathering at the hotel, the town of Sweetwater had shut down early. One more turn around the town and he would head home himself.

Locking the office door, he strolled down the boardwalk checking doors, looking in windows as he passed. Coming to the end of the alleyway, he noticed a fresh set of tracks in the light falling snow leading to the back of the General Store. Drawing his Colt, he stepped off the boardwalk into the large, fluttering snowflakes and followed the tracks to the small alcove at the back of the store. The crunching snow under his boots was the only sound he made as he peeked into the alcove. Huddled tightly in a corner was a young boy.

"Whaddya doin' here, boy?" asked the marshal, holstering his Colt.

The blond-haired youngster looked up at Cooper, noticing the badge pinned to his coat. "You the marshal? Am I in trouble?"

Cooper shook his head. "Not unless you stole somethin'."

"I was just tryin' to get in out of the snow."

Cooper reached in the alcove, taking the boy by the arm. "Why ain't you at home?"

The lad shrugged his shoulders. "Don't have one."

The marshal put his arm around the boy's shoulders. "Well, come on, it's Christmas Eve. You'll come home with me tonight."

They walked together while the marshal finished his rounds, finally reaching the edge of town where a tidy white house, surrounded by a picket fence, stood in a small pine grove. After unlocking the door, Cooper lit the lamp on the table. The boy looked around the house as the marshal ignited the logs in the fireplace.

"It's the day before Christmas and you don't have a tree," exclaimed the boy.

"I haven't had a Christmas tree in a long time," replied Cooper, warming his hands next to the fire.

The boy's face suddenly lit up. "You have Christmas trees all around you. Let's go cut one."

With a slight hesitation, the marshal followed the boy out the door. Passing the woodpile at the side of the house, Cooper grabbed a hatchet. They hadn't gone far when the child pointed and ran to a tree, spotlighted by the moon, among the tall pines.

"It's perfect," said the boy, when Cooper caught up. It took him a few minutes to cut down the tree and they dragged it by the trunk back to the house, standing it up against the wall next to the door.

"Where are we gonna put it?" asked the boy.

Cooper hung his coat and hat on a wall peg next to the door and, holding up one finger, disappeared into a bedroom. He came out a few minutes later carrying a wooden tree stand and set it on the floor to the left of the fireplace in front of the window. Next, he took the waiting tree and slipped it neatly into the hole in the top of the stand.

"A perfect fit," said Cooper proudly.

"We need something to put on it," advised the boy. Cooper held up his finger again and disappeared back into the bedroom, returning with a big red and green wooden box. He set it on the floor next to the tree, unhooked the small latch and opened the lid.

"I haven't done this in a long time. I'm gonna need some help," explained Cooper.

Together they hung hand-painted wood ornaments on the tree until only one remained in the box. The boy lifted the sleigh ornament with the name TIMMY painted in gold across its red side.

"Who's Timmy?" asked the boy, examining the small, hand-made ornament for a moment.

The question made Cooper hesitate. "He was my son. He died about five years ago from the fever. He was about your age. It took his mother, too."

"That why you stopped putting up a tree?"

Cooper nodded and his young friend held up the ornament. "Can I put it on?" he pleaded.

Cooper nodded again and the boy hung the sleigh on the only empty space left, right in front. "Perfect," he said with a big grin.

"There used to be an angel that set on top of the tree," Cooper remembered, " I'd lift Timmy up and he'd set it right on top. I buried it with him."

"It looks perfect anyway." exclaimed the boy. The marshal and his new friend sat on the sofa to admire their handiwork.

The sound of wind whined and Cooper opened his eyes, realizing he'd nodded off. He looked over at the sleeping boy, took a blanket from the back of the couch and covered his young friend. Remembering he hadn't asked his name, Cooper stroked the youngster's head, then walked over and blew out the lamp on the table. He would ask his name in the morning.

Cooper woke with a start and looked around the moonlit bedroom. Swinging his feet to the floor, he rose and slowly opened the bedroom door to a quiet house. He walked to the sofa to check on the boy and found a rumpled blanket. In the flickering firelight, he looked quickly around the house. His gaze settled on the angel sitting on top of the tree.

Hurrying to the table, he lit the lamp. Lying next to the lamp was a folded piece of paper. On the outside was a Christmas tree, drawn with a child's hand. He opened it and it read MERRY CHRISMAS MARSHAL.

A single tear rolled down Cooper Smith's cheek. He knew of only one person who spelled Christmas that way. Walking quickly to the door, he looked out into the night. He found no footprints in the fresh fallen snow.

Just then, a stiff breeze blew through the pine grove jingling the riding bells hanging from a red ribbon on the porch. Cooper remembered something his grandmother told him a long time ago. "Every time a bell rings, an angel gets his wings."

"Congratulations, Timmy," he whispered.

Far out in the grove, he heard a child's laugh.

A Good Day at Black Ridge
by David Jacob

The New Mexico sun blasted his lean, wind-burned face, But he ignored the heat, the dank air, and the trickles of running sweat on his damp forehead. Even the gawking faces that peered out from the store front windows blurred in his sight. Instead his focus was sharp as a saber, steel-grey eyes fixed on the wanted fugitive who stood like a mirage in the middle of the empty dirt street.

The outlaw wore dusty trousers, a cotton shirt, was half a hat shorter, lanky built, and fidgeted, changing his weight from one scuffed boot to the next. A floppy farmer's hat was perched jauntily on his straw-colored blond head. But, he was packing costly shooting irons — twin silver-plated revolvers. The grips peeked out from the leather belted holster that was strapped snugly around the lawbreaker's narrow hips.

"You're gonna die," the fugitive called.

"The name is Joshua Barlow," he answered. "Yah ought to know who's fixin' to kill you."

"You know who I am?" the gunslinger asked.

"Don't matter nairn," he said. "What matters is that yah're wanted by the law. You can come peacefully, or over the back of a hoss. It's your call."

The young lawbreaker spat tobacco juice on the street. "I'm the crack shot from here to the Cimarron. When I'm done, there won't be enough left of you to snore." The gunslinger's lips curled up into a crooked smile. "And after your stinking carcass is dead meat, you know what I'm gonna do? I'm going to...."

He ignored the taunting remarks of the young outlaw's last words. The youth's obscene rant didn't disturb him. He had heard similar threats before. They all acted alike, airin' the lungs with brave words to appear tough in front of their good-time friends. When the gunplay ended and the smoke cleared they all looked alike too — with shocked, opaque stares on their pain-riddled faces.

Instead he stayed focused on the gunslinger's hands. He saw the way the outlaw flexed his fingers before his hands strayed near the twin pistols. He noticed a change from the gunman, a swagger of self-confidence. The gunslinger's slitted eyes betrayed the spot as he glanced to the right at the shadowed alleyway that led to the livery stables.

Barlow's eyes followed and he spotted the dark silhouette of someone crouched behind the buckboard wagon. The bushwhacker held something in his hands, and it was long and thin.

As Barlow moved his actions were spontaneous, honed by the war, and by the countless hard-fought battles he'd survived in the intervening years. He smoothly drew the heavy Colt revolver from the leather holster, and as the barrel centered on the target's white-shirted chest — he fired. The pistol bucked upwards from the recoil but he held it steadfast in a tight grip. Smoke and the hot flash of ignited gun powder briefly hid the gunslinger from his sight. Then the wounded outlaw staggered backward as a crimson flood covered his punctured chest.

Barlow kicked up the dust as he sprinted toward the safety of a large brown saddle horse. Reaching the chestnut's rear flank, the smell of fresh horse dung and sweaty horse flesh hit his nose. He moved forward to the front of the big animal. As he moved the strident voice of Sergeant Struck echoed in his head. "Never presume the enemy is dead until they are buried under six feet of dirt."

He emerged out from the front of the four-legged shield with leveled, cocked revolver at the ready. He steadied the pistol and the large barrel spit out angry fire and death.

The second bullet caught the wounded gunslinger high on the right shoulder, whirling him upon wobbly legs like a spinning top. He collapsed on his face upon the street.

"One down," Barlow thought.

By moving swiftly behind the horse he had positioned himself in a parallel line across from the concealed ambusher, well to the side of the killer's line of sight. But, with the armed bushwhacker still protected behind the wagon he knew that he would have to flush the gunman out or risk taking a bullet in the ensuing gunfight.

He took careful aim and fired.

The bullets ricocheted against the buckboard wagon's wooden planking, spitting sharp wood splinters into the surprised man's face and eyes. As Barlow had expected, instead of staying behind cover the startled man rose up and exposed his large torso. The heavyset man spotted him beside the horse and whirled, leveling leveling the Winchester rifle, and fired. But, caught by surprise, his shots were well off the mark.

In answer Barlow's bullets struck the big man's large skull. And in a violent red spray of blood, flesh, and bone the man's hat-covered head disappeared. The force of the impact pitched his heavy body backward. He struck the side of the livery stable and the rifle in his plump hand fired. But, the stray bullet ricocheted harmlessly against the building's wooden planking.

Barlow steadied the pistol, sweeping the area, as he watched for any more threats But, the horrified, fearful faces that peered out the store front and upper story windows told him that all the fugitives had been killed. As he relaxed his previous tense, high- strung demeanor faded away. His breathing slowed and the pounding in his chest quit.

Out of habit he reloaded the Colt revolver before sliding it back into the leather holster, He adjusted his kerchief, retied the holster strap around his trousered thigh then stood to his full standing height. He patted the solid, muscular neck of the chestnut mare. Her big black eyes looked unmoved by his gesture of gratitude. Instead she snorted then dipped her nose into the water trough and took a long and noisy drink.

Sergeant Struck had taught him that the emotions that gripped a man during times of extreme danger hit him the most after the danger had passed. What the learned man had called "the nerves" affected his body, although he wasn't beset by the wobbly knees or the onset of trembling fingers as in the past. Still, it took a lot of effort to stop the churning in his belly from spilling out on top of his worn boots.

Removing his hat he dipped it into the water trough then bowed his head over the water and dumped the hat's contents on his exposed head. He ran a calloused hand through his shock of wet, coal-black hair. Then he stood straight and used his palm to wipe the remains of water from his rugged, beard-stubbled face. He resettled the hat back tightly upon his head and studied the near-empty street.

As he stared at the sprawled body of the dead gunslinger he removed a yellowed slip of paper from his shirt pocket. He unfolded the paper and glanced down at the artist's sketch of the dead outlaw. The poster also had a short description of the fugitive's many offenses.

But, what caught his interest was the amount of money he'd recieve after the lawbreaker's body was delivered to the town's sheriff. It would be enough to purchase more supplies. And maybe, just maybe if he watched his spending, enough to buy into a high stakes game of poker. He had always been lucky with cards, so stood a good chance to double the money he'd earned that day.

~Remembrances~

The creaking of the leather saddle mixed with the steady gait of the slow-moving pack horse as he led the burdened animal by a loose rein. He glanced backward to ensure the dead outlaws were still secure. Their tightly bound bodies, trussed up like trophy bucks, swayed with the rhythmic movement of the pack horse.

He guided his horse and the trailing chestnut mare toward the front of a squat, crudely-built lumbered building. A star-shaped sign hung under its shadowed wooden roof. The sign swayed gently in the light breeze. He dismounted, tied the two horses's reins to the outside hitching post and then walked up to the front door.

He had slung the dead outlaw's fancy cowhide pistol belt over his shoulder. His intention was to sell the belt and twin silver-plated revolvers, then use that money to buy some shells for the rifle he'd pried from the fat man's lifeless fingers.

He knew of other hunters without any respect for the dead. They acted like vultures, stripping the corpses of anything they could sell. Afterwards they left the bodies as bare as the day they'd come into this world. But, he firmly believed that regardless of how many offenses a man had against him, he still deserved to be buried with his boots on his feet.

As he stepped inside the room a shaft of yellow sunlight streamed through a back window. The natural light helped his eyes to adjust to the semi-darkness of the small room. After his eyes had adjusted he studied the interior of the cramped space. It was hard to believe the small room could function as a jail, but, pidgeon-holed off to the right side of the room stood the vertical steel bars of the holding cell.

Inside the tiny cell sat a narrow cot with a worn, thin mattress stuffed with straw. Pillows were not provided to cushion a prisoner's sleeping head, but only a musky, threadbare horsehair blanket was given to ward off the cold night air.

The strong odor of stale piss hit his nose. He spied the slop bucket that sat on the wooden floor. By the smell that still lingered in the cell, it hadn't been emptied in a while. He had to admit the living conditions were not pleasant. But, compared to some jails he'd seen, this one was a luxury hotel. He recalled one town he'd visited had became so fed up with prisoners escaping from custody that they'd constructed a new type of jail. Using dynamite they placed charges to blow a series of deep holes along a nearby mountain's cliff face. Then they fitted the hollow holes with steel bars, confining the criminals inside the escape-proof solid rock cells. Riding out of town he'd seen them. The tattered-dressed prisoners were standing inside their dark, tomb-like cells. Underfed and sick with disease their bone-thin fingers gripped the vertical steel bars. He had felt uneasy as the entire mountainside of gaunt, black-streaked faces stared at him as he rode past the cliffside jail.

~Revelations~

He still stood in the room when the door behind him opened. He whirled around with his ready hand near his revolver as he faced the open doorway. But he was surprised to see a crippled man hobble inside. The hobbling man seemed practiced with the crutch, manuevering it easily upon the planked floor. With his free hand the heavy-built gimp-legged stranger carried a wooden bucket. As he moved across the floor the water inside the bucket sloshed and spilled out upon the wood-planked floor.

"Howdy," the stranger said.

He relaxed his hand from the side of his Colt revolver, raised it upward to tip a finger against the brim of his own hat. "Afternoon," he said.

"Sorry," the man said, "but I didn't see you ride up. I had to step out and fetch somewater so I could clean the place up. Hanged the last feller this morning ... horse thief. Shame too, 'cause he was just a boy — hadn't grow'd a full beard yet."

The man motioned toward the open doorway with his hat-covered head. "Them your horses outside?" he asked.

"Yep."

The crippled stranger's blue eyes met Barlow's own. "You done the world a lot of good, mister, sending them Reed boys to their rightful reward."

"I come for the bounty," he answered.

"Sure, you earned every cent," the man said. "And as soon I can find a spot to set this bucket down I be might obliged to sign all the paperwork — make it all nice and legal — so you can get your money."

As he continued to talk the big-bellied man balanced his heavy weight upon the support of the forward-leaning crutch. To Barlow's appraising eyes the fat-bellied, one-legged man did not look or act like a lawman. Lawmen were expected to be lean, ornery, and unfriendly. Hard-as-nails hombres who were tough as wet-leather and mean enough to fight a rattler and give him the first bite.

When a man put on the badge of a town's peacekeeper he risked his life every day. Cattle-rustlers and dangerous gunslingers were a daily hazard of the job. In addition to dealing with that extreme danger, he could be assured that knife-wielding whores and drunken, gun-happy cowboys would always pose a threat. So, to his way of thinking it seemed natural that lawmen would develop an unfriendly disposition when dealing with a untrustworthy public.

In contrast the one-legged man acted too friendly. His full, well-fed face was out of character — and his gut too soft. And his bushy moustache bucked upwards like a frisky white colt when he talked.

But, as the fat man sat the bucket of water down Barlow noticed the glint of metal shine from a badge pinned to the man's broad chest. Shaped like a star, that thin piece of metal carried a lot of weight, giving the wearer the full authority of the position — regardless of his appearance, any physical limitations, or strange, friendly ways.

The Sheriff stuck out his hand. "Didn't get your name, mister."

"Joshua Barlow." he answered.

"Well, Joshua," the sheriff said, "as I was saying you saved me a heap of paperwork. You would be surprised how much paperwork is involved just to give low-life scalawags like them Reed boys a proper necktie party. "

The sheriff then motioned to a small desk tucked in a far corner. "I'll be right happy to sign the death certificates, and then I will give you a legal note. In legal terms, it's a promissory note, good as any money — you can take it to the bank. See Charlie, he's the bank president. You give him that note and tell him Sheriff Joe gave it to you. He'll pony up the reward."

"Much obliged, Sheriff," Barlow answered. He settled his large brimmed hat tighter upon his head, readjusted the dead cowboy's pistol belt hanging from his shoulder then walked toward the open doorway.

"And Joshua," the sheriff said.

He stopped and turned to face the crippled lawman. "Yeah, somehing else yah wanted, Sheriff?"

"After your finished with your business at the bank, I'd be mighty obliged if you came back to see me. "

"Why?" he asked. "Way I see it, Sheriff, I suspect our business would be done."

Sheriff Joe said. "Yes, normally that would be true. But, the way you handled them Reed boys, Joshua, I think you're just the sort of man I've been looking for."

"What for?"

"I got a job offer for you," the sheriff said. "I"ll tell you all the details later. But, you stand to make a fistful more money than bounty hunting could ever bring. And just to sweeten the offer, there's a nice room up at The Silver Dollar boarding house. The owner keeps it empty for me. It's clean with a real bed. Beats sleeping on a horsehair blanket on the cold, hard ground. Or sharing a two-bit room with a bunch of snoring cowboys. I'll throw it into the deal too. Whatta you say, Joshua? You interested?"

Barlow rubbed a calloused hand over his beard-stubbled cheek. His mind whirled in thought as his strong fingers made a fist and scratched beneath his firm, sunbaked chin. "Sheriff," he said, "I make it a point to never fold my hand till I've first peeked at my cards. So, I'll listen to your offer and will give yah my answer."

Sheriff Joe's full, white-moustached face broke into a wide, happy smile. He stuck out his free palm to shake the deadly hunter's hand. "I knew it!" the sheriff said. "Second I laid eyes on you, had you pegged as a right smart fella."

Barlow hesitated to meet the lawman's outstretched hand. "Now wait a minute, Sheriff," he protested. "I didn't say I would agree, only that I would hear you out."

Sheriff Joe's inviting hand didn't budge. His blue eyes twinkled as he stood there patiently waiting for the bounty hunter to grip his outstretched hand. "But, you will, Joshua. You will agree. Of that I have no doubts," he said with a knowing smile.

"Sheriff, I've got a mind to turn yah down," Barlow said. "I don't cotton to any man think'n he's got me figured out. Way I see it a man's future should be left for him to decide. Not for a feller, no matter the properness of his intentions, to decide such matters for him."

If he expected his harsh words to have any effect upon the crippled man, he was sorely disappointed. Instead the lawman was grinning like a weasel in a hen house. The sheriff suddenly broke out into a conniption fit. As he howled his peals of laughter echoed off the cramped walls. Laughing, the paunch-bellied, red-faced lawman swayed back and forth like a drunkard upon the point of his planted wooden crutch. Finally, the fat man was able to constrain his emotions. He dug out a large handkerchief from a pocket and wiped away the traces of spit from the ends of his wide white moustache.

"He said you was full of piss and vinegar. That you'd most likely tell me to mind my own business. Not in those same words, mind you. But, the meanings the same." As he spoke again the sheriff's blue eyes twinkled.

"Who said?" Barlow demanded.

"Struck."

"You know of Sergeant Struck?"

"Know of him, Joshua? Why he and I served in the same regiment in '61 — the start of the great war. He told me you served under him when he was later transferred to the 19th."

"Yes, sir, the 19th Kentucky Infantry. I owe a lot to Sergeant Struck. More than I can ever repay. If not for him, our regiment would never had made it through those bloody battles alive. I survived that war, but only by the skin of my teeth —"

"Yes, Joshua, I know," the sheriff said. "Struck told me. I received a telegram from him two weeks ago. He told me to be on the look out. That you'd most likely be riding this way. He also said you was right handy with a Peacemaker. Seeing's how you licked them Reed boys, I reckon he was right."

The crippled lawman paused and used his arm to point toward his missing leg. "And now that I got myself busted up, Struck said you could be a valuable asset to me, should our paths cross."

"If yah don't mind me asking, Sheriff? How'd that happen?" he asked.

"Horse crushed it. I was uncorkin' a Bangtail, when the dang thing went loco and ran my leg into the side of the corral. Doc Penny tried to save it, but infection set in and he had to cut it off at the knee. Funny thing, even though I know they're missing I still get a hankering to scratch my toes now and then. Anyway, all my cards are on the table. My offer stands. Whatta you say, Joshua? You interested?"

For the first time Barlow smiled. The expression helped to soften his granite-hard grey eyes. He gripped the lawman's outstetched hand. "Sheriff," he said, "if you'd told me all this before, you'd have saved us both a good deal of misunderstandin's."

"What, and miss a good ribbing?" the sheriff asked. The happy lawman looked down at the sight of their two hands joined and smiled. "I take it this means you've decided to incline reason to my very generous offer?"

"Sure do," he said. "Any man Sergeant Struck would call a friend I would be right proud to work for."

The sheriff interrupted. "Way I see it, Joshua, even though I wear the badge, we both got our parts to do to keep peace in this town."

"Sounds about right as rain to me, Sheriff," he said. He walked toward the open doorway and called over his shoulder. "Time's awasting. I'll see to unloading the horses, then finish my business with the bank. Afterwards, I'll return and yah can fill me in on the particulars of yahr proposition."

The sheriff started to move across the room. "I almost forgot, you will need me to sign those death certificates so you can collect your reward." The big-bellied peacekeeper hobbled toward the small desk that sat in the far corner of the room. Reaching the desk, he propped the wood crutch against the wall before plopping down upon a tall wooden stool.

The sheriff dug a match from his vest pocket and used it to light the oil lamp sitting on the desk. A warm spreading glow of yellowish light lit up the room, casting long moving shadows upon the adjacent walls. He tossed the spent match on the floor. "Did Struck ever tell you what he did before the war?" he asked.

Barlow stopped in the open doorway and turned to face the sheriff perched in the corner. "What?" he asked.

"He was a teacher, a professor at Boston College. Apparently, he's a Big Bug back east, 'cause he signed the telegram all proper."

Sheriff Joe paused to rifle through some papers lying upon his cluttered desk before selecting a small crumpled slip of paper which he held up in his large hand. The lawman studied the telegram, silently lip-reading the words before finally reaching the desired part. "Here it is," Sheriff Joe said, "Professor Charles Abijah Struck."

"Abijah?" Barlow repeated. "I don't recollect him telling me that name."

Sheriff Joe waved the telegram he clutched in his hand. "I must confess, Joshua, to my way of thinkin' Abijah's not rightly a fit brand for a man like Struck."

"It surely taint, Sheriff," he said. "Just goes to show, that no matter the degree a man reckons he knows the other. He can always slip the loop."

The lawman paused with a pen in his hand. He glanced over toward him. "There's a lot of weight behind them words, Joshua," Sheriff Joe said.

He tipped his hat toward the sheriff, turned and walked through the doorway. Once outside he paused under the swaying star-shaped sign. Removing his hat he scratched the back of his head. He'd ridden into town thinking he knew the lay of the land. But, the transpired events betwixt the sheriff and him had proven he was still acting like a tenderfoot when assaying the true worth of a man.

He fished out his makings from a pocket and quickly rolled a cigarette. He struck a lit match to the end and drew the smoke deep into his lungs before letting it roll out his nose. As he stood on the planked sidewalk enjoying his first smoke of the day, the pungent white cloud drifted across the dirt street and was carried away by the hot, blowing Santa Ana winds.

Renegade
by Gary Ives

The two orphans left behind after Slap Stone shot dead their father, the Rev. Tobias Jarvis, in front of the Badger Creek Indian Agency were called Sally and Ruth. Later Ruth came to be called Tishi by her Sioux relatives, tishi being their word for mockingbird. This was due to her innate ability to mimic sounds. Her stepmother sometimes watched her flap her arms as if she were imitating a grouse or prairie chicken, and sometimes at night the little girl would scrunch up on her hands and knees, rocking her head back a forth like a buffalo. She had difficulty learning words and as she grew it became clear to Amos and Keya Merriweather, her adoptive parents, that her view of the world was peculiar. She was loath to speak, became easily fixated on objects and would stare at rock or a tree for long periods of time. The little girl showed no affection either toward people or dogs or horses, and Amos, who believed the girl’s natural father to have been crazy, reckoned the girl to be slow of wit. However Keya believed her to share spirits of wild animals, a special and a good thing, a kind of magic.

Sally easily folded into the new family and was happily accepted by Molly, the Merriweather girl, as a sister. Initially Keya insisted that the girls include Ruth in all their chores and play, however Ruth’s silence and her staring at objects isolated her in a solitary world.

At the end the summer, the Hunkpapa band chief Crow Face, at his woman Nani-tak’s bidding, asked Amos to allow Tishi to live among the Hunkpapa, adding that her sister Sally was welcome too. However by her own request Sally would live with Amos, Keya and Molly .

Although Sally chose to live at the Badger Creek Station, she and her stepmother spent summers at the Hunkpapa camp. All three girls quickly became fluent in Siouan. As adopted granddaughters to the Hunkpapa band’s chief, the white girls were accepted as equals by the adults of the band. Foreigners were not uncommon as captive slaves or adoptees. Keya, the girls' stepmother and adopted daughter of Crow Face, had herself been a Cheyenne captive from the age of five. The familiarity and even tolerance of strangers by adults did not, however, reach down to their children. Initially the Hunkpapa children saw the white girls as foreign, despite the girls’ Siouan language, dress, and custom. They looked different. Hunkpapa boys tended to ignore them because they were, after all, girls, but the Hunkpapa girls initially fought or engaged in trickery and name calling.

In time Molly and Sally toughened up, fought, returned the name calling and eventually integrated with other girls of the band, making friendships, but not Tishi, strange little Tishi, who cared not for others preferring things to people and solitude to company. It was Crow Face’s woman Nani-tak who took Tishi under her wing and became the first of only a few people to establish a rapport with this strange person.

Once the placement of the two orphaned girls was decided, Amos dug two fresh graves at the Badger Creek Station beside the Jarvis graves. In these he laid bones from a small antelope. Crude wooden crosses bore the penciled inscriptions “Dau. Sally 6 and Ruth 5 died of fever. RIP” Sally’s place was with them, Keya and Molly. Ruth’s with Nani-Tak and the Hunkpapa, of this he was certain. No one would take these girls from their rightful places which circumstances had so forcefully ordained. In his semiannual report, Amos falsely noted the deaths of the two girls and included a penned letter for the bureau to forward “To Jarvis Relatives.” In this he set down his version of the four Jarvis’s deaths. The family’s movables in the unfinished cabin were available to any legitimate claimant.

Of great concern was Sally’s understanding. She had grown close to the Merriweathers and especially to Molly. But at six years old awareness of the tragedy attending her father was likely fixed in her memory. She never spoke of her parents and avoided the area of the graves and had no inkling that one of the graves purported to be hers. Would she at some future time reject the frontier? Keya said that, in time, the memories of her parents would become fog and dissolve. Such had been the case with her own captivity at five years old. She and Tishi had been adopted by kind, accepting families. Still, the worry that a settler could assume that she was in fact a Jarvis troubled Amos, as did the idea that some white would identify Ruth among the Hunkpapa.

On the frontier, a Sioux wife was commonplace. A man needed the comfort of a woman and children and if a white man was willing to acknowledge his half-breeds then his neighbors were usually inclined to accept them too. But this was the only recognition of acceptable miscegenation. Any white man, woman, or child who had lived among Indians bore eternally a stigma of the savage. Especially women. A woman freed from Indian captivity was an anathema to a white community. From the earliest days of confrontation between whites and Indians these “freed” women often chose to flee the hypocrisy of the white world, returning to their former tribes.

Similarly, half-breeds and freed captive children seldom integrated successfully into the white man’s world. The idea that a white Christian child would be voluntarily handed over to heathens was unthinkable. And that the district Indian Agent would engage in such a travesty was beyond imagination. The imbalance of these two worlds generated untold misery. Amos had seen it before during the war. Whites who had given sustenance or comfort to those bands of roaming, homeless and starving Negroes had been shunned by neighbors as traitors to the cause. These so-called civilized men treated their animals better than people and out here it was the same damned hateful way, in his opinion. And despite his strong bias toward the redskins, he was the best Indian agent on the frontier. In the earliest days of his commission as he’d thought, “By God they made the wrong man Indian Agent, and I’m sure glad it’s me.”

The years of his commission had seen no organized resistance within his district, only seven murders and the lowest incidence of crime on the frontier. Most settlers in the 850 square miles of the Badger Creek District felt reasonably secure from Indian attack. Pioneers heading west across the district passed unmolested. Amos Merriweather’s insistence on fairness in justice and trade, his friendship with the whiskey and rifle trading Pierre Pardieu, and his kinship with the Hunkpapa band of Sioux had kept this peace.

Deliverance of the strange little Jarvis girl to the Hunkpapa however, broached a vulnerability. Despite all goodness, and reason, and despite the clear realization that Tishi’s place was with Nani-Tak and Crow Face, the white community would never tolerate any Christian girl’s place among godless savages.

When beings encounter one another for the first time they use their eyes and their ears and their sense of smell to sort and place one another in their respective worlds; perception is mostly physical. However, sometimes a special aura envelops an initial encounter and the beings are able to feel the spirit as well as the body of one another. This happens more often between a man and his horse but sometimes between two people. So it was with Nani-tak and Tishi. That invisible nimbus of understanding enshrouded those two and a strong knot of understanding and affection immediately bound them together. For Nani-Tak, who had seen sixty winters, Tishi arrived as a blessing. The old woman’s sight had dimmed but the strength of her inner vision remained and in this child she sensed the agency for continuance of The Spirit.

Increasingly Whites had been like grasshoppers coming across the plains and she knew there was no stopping them and that they would destroy The People by force, by magic, or change. This white girl was surety and perhaps hope that there were whites who were also endowed with vision and understanding. Little Tishi perceived those unseen entities that decided the fates of people, animals, and all things. Nani-Tak would guide her, teach her to listen to wind and clouds, to feel the urges of the earth and waters, to appreciate the commonality of The People with all things. It was already within the child, she need only be led gently to learn to draw from the cosmic font of wonder. Nightly the child slept curled snugly against Nani-Tak and daily trotted by her side through daily chores of gathering, cleaning, and cooking. While Tishi seldom chose to speak, she became a marvelous listener, enthralled by Nani-Tak’s endless stories and explanations of the world’s doings. Early one morning the two encountered three wolves feasting on the carcass of an elk calf.

“You see, the three wolves look at us. Now the black one looks at you Tishi. Can you hear him?”

“He thinks ‘She is white.’ I think to him ‘I only look white.’ He fears whites.”

“He is wise to fear them.”

“Am I still white, Nani–Tak?”

“Yes, but only a little.”

“Is black wolf true, am I too much white?”

“The answer is both yes and no. Only your skin and hair are too white. That is all black wolf sees. Because the rest of you escapes this whiteness is how you come to hear this wolf. In time you will hear many animals, but also trees, rocks, and even the wind. But some white will always be in you.”

Later, walnut husks would darken the child’s skin and hair and the tiny image of a bird, her totem, tattooed between her left eye and ear rendered her Indian to most eyes, white and Indian. And as her superficial whiteness dissipated, the little girl’s perceptions sharpened. Something within her compelled her to imitate living creatures. After hearing it sung two or three times she could accurately duplicate any birdsong. This had earned her the name Tishi, and the totem Little Mockingbird. She also mimicked with her body the motions of deer, elk, beaver, and jackrabbits. She could call across a meadow clearly as a coyote, wolf, raven, hawk or owl. Once while gathering firewood with several women in a copse of oaks she was seen by the others from afar standing still staring down at her feet. When the women called to her she did not respond and when they went to her they were astonished to see two rattlesnakes silently coiled before her.

“Come away, Tishi, come away slow,” they whispered to her.

“They are asleep, they dream now,” she replied as she turned and joined the others, leaving the snakes motionless where they lay. At times she would sit silent and still staring at a distant point for as long as an hour without moving. At other times she flapped her arms like wings while staring at the fire or some object close by, cooing or uttering a low whistle sound and sometimes drooling, proof to Nani-Tak of her link to the spirit world. These incidents, her ability to mimic, and her peculiarities added to her a special status among her band of Hunkpapa. Old Mishtana, the shaman, took notice, and with Nani-Tak endeavored to ensure the little girl was present at all sings, blessings, and dances.

The fall powwow in August of 1875 was dismal. For the second year there had been no treaty rations nor had Amos received his pay for the past two years. The Panic that had begun back East two years before had quickly blanketed every state and territory. Pardieu confided to Amos that the Sioux to the west had negotiated large purchases of rifles from other Canadian traders. “Over dar all de brave talk to make war. Beeg trouble she’s come over dar soon. Now dar’s beaucoup talk of steenkin’ railroad come t'ru.”

The chiefs were reluctant to speak openly but a palpable anxiety had descended over the plains. Amos and Pardieu mulled over how the fears had steadily mounted since the terrible massacre at Marias where soldiers had killed nearly two hundred Blackfeet. General Custer had passed through Badger Creek Station the year before with a cavalry troop headed west to protect a Northern Railroad survey crew. The Sioux would never allow the railroad to cross their territory. But the absolute worst was the news of a gold discovery at Paha Sapa.

“Nothin’ will stop ‘em now, Pardieu. The handwriting is on the wall, mon ami.”

At the powwow’s final big dance Tishi huddled wrapped in a blanket alongside Nani-Tak with a buffalo robe across their laps and feet. The drums and flute fascinated the girl who began a fierce rocking motion from side to side. Nani-Tak placed her hand on the child’s shoulder to calm her but the little body resisted. Soon little Tishi’s eyes glazed then rolled upward and she commenced to sing “ama, ama, ama, ama” to the rhythm of the music. Nani-Tak shifted her arm and placed it around the girl’s waist as she followed the trance. This went on for a long time, until at last the dance ended. Then Tishi’s eyes closed as she slipped quickly into deep sleep.

In the morning Nani-Tak and Crow Face were awakened by Tishi’s little voice speaking in English above the patter of rain on the teepee. Staring up through the smoke hole at the gray skies they listened to the unusual voice of the little girl who seldom spoke now making such strange speech in commanding tones, emphasizing phrases and words by increased force and volume. When at last the girl fell silent Nani-Tak pulled her close and asked the meaning of the strange speech. “My white mother, Nani-Tak, spirit of my white mother talked to me. Oh Nani-Tak and Crow Face, I am afraid. She says very bad things are sure to pass here. She tells me we should all of us, Hunkpapa, Daddy Amos, Keya, EVERYONE, all of us must go from this place north some place called Can-da-da”.

This was the first of several visions Tishi would relate to Nani-Tak, each foretelling of some unnamed ominous tragedy to be avoided only by moving north. Mishtana the shaman urged Crow Face to consider the warnings seriously for he, like Nani-Tak believed Tishi’s link to the spirit world to be fortuitous. With the troubles to the west a sense of urgency had pervaded the band of Hunkpapa. They were sure that “Can-Da-Da” must be Canada to the north. But Crow Face staunchly refused to consider wintering in Canada. “All the signs show this will be a winter of very deep cold. We will go south and east to our safe winter camp. Canada we will reconsider in the spring.”

Crow Face was reluctant to discuss this with Amos said to Keya, “In her vision the spirit always tells little Tishi, that you, Amos, and the girls, all of you must come along with us to Canada. Talk to Amos. Make him understand that in the spring we may strike north for new hunting grounds. We must do this. Pardieu says the whites in Canada are like the whites here but they do not have killing blue coat soldiers. No one wishes to be killed by the white men or whatever great sickness that is coming. If Amos will not listen, leave him and come with us.”

Now a strange thing happened. When Amos Merriweather and his family returned to Badger Creek Station from the powwow at Elk Creek they encountered a man camped on the porch of the station.

“You Captain Merriweather, sir?”

“I’m Amos Merriweather, late of the U. S. Army, yes sir.”

“My name is Louis Ford, Captain Merriweather. I been deputized by the Sheriff of Stone County, Missouri to fetch two little girls, the Jarvis girls, back to Missouri. Are them the Jarvis girls there? Hey, honey? Sally? Ruth?”

“No sir. Keya take the girls inside. No, Mr. Ford, the Jarvis girls are dead, dead of fever, Come along with me, sir, I’ll take you to their graves. I’m afraid you’ve come a long way for nothing. All this was reported two years ago.”

“Well, sir, a Mr. Jensen, homesteader here abouts, has wrote a letter claims them girls ain’t dead but is been taken – one by you, the other by injuns. I have already spoke with him and his missus. Him and his missus says they’s ready to swear to it in a court of law.”

“Then Mr. Jensen is either a liar or crazy.”

“Them girls I jist seen look ‘bout the right age. Let’s see Sally would be nine or ten years old and Ruth ‘bout eight.”

“Those are our girls.”

“Then you won’t mind if I question the girls.

As they entered the station, Keya speaking Siouan quietly told the girls that the stranger was a skinwalker, come to trick Sally and Ruth into going away. Her best protection would be to tell the man that Keya was her mother and to make no mention of Ruth.

After a very brief interview with the girls. Ford faced Amos Merriweather and said, “Well sir, somebody’s sure ‘nuf lyin’. On one side I got the word of the United States Marshal and Indian Agent, his wife, and two little girls and I seen two graves. On the other hand is the letter and the word of that square head been livin’ out here. Captain Merriweather, you got any reason could explain why this Swede would wanna stir up this hornet’s nest, . . . write that letter, tell tales?”

“Well could be that him and Jarvis did not get on very well. He’s still sore at me about the Jarvis’ moveables. He claimed Jarvis had welched on a deal they’d made. Jensen helped Jarvis roof his cabin and he figured Jarvis to sell him an ox as part of the deal, but when the roof was up Jarvis said no mention had ever been made of the ox. They both come to me. There was nothing I could do. Far as the movables are concerned they belong to any heirs.”

“What was the outcome?”

“Someone stole Jarvis’s ox one night. A band of Crow come through here about that time and I reckon it could have been them; poor devils looked half starved. Then after Mrs. Jarvis died and Mr. Jarvis was shot dead, Jensen and his missus tried to claim the two little girls like chattel. I wasn't haven’ any of it. Those poor little girls were bad sick and staying with us while I was trying to locate any relatives back East. He put up an ornery fuss and after the girls died he claimed he was owed the Jarvis wagon and movables. I had to order him off the station, Mr. Ford. Jensen is the only white man ever ordered off the station. He’s a sore head and a drunk. I don’t reckon he told you any of that, did he?”

Amos, like most folks, often lied. A lie told to evade a responsibility or for some gain or edge always unsettled him, but these lies, heaped on the deputy sheriff from Missouri, were thrilling and made him feel good inside like a successful bluff at poker.

“No sir. And that ‘bout settles this shit. I’d be obliged if you could write it up mentionin’ my interview with you so’s I can get my pay for this damned wild goose chase. "

The deputy spit tobacco juice expertly over the rail of the porch onto a grasshopper. " I got half a mind to ride over and kick that Swede’s ass.”

“Now don’t go doin’ that. I don’t need any more trouble. You stay the night, have supper with us, Mr. Ford. You can sleep in the Jarvis cabin down the hill; I’ll have your statement ready when you ride in the morning.”

The next morning, as Amos saw Louis Ford off, Keya rode her pony south to the Hunkpapa encampment to warn Nani-Tak and Crow Face to hide Tishi in case the skinwalker should appear.

At the Sioux camp, news of Tishi’s vision permeated all talk. Some were ready to head north to Canada immediately, but Crow Face’s will prevailed — the band would winter at the place they called Elk Valley to the south then move to Canada when the spring melt began. Crow Face did send his son Spotted Turtle north with instructions to winter with the trader Pardieu and to scout for a safe summer camp site.

That winter, Mishtana, shaman for the Hunkpapa band, recorded two visions of Tishi on the buffalo skin that served as the band’s chronicle. A depiction of a small bird with an outstretched wing pointing north to a plain of elk and buffalo, while behind, to the south, blue coats with rifles, and prairie fires. Rather than black, the figures were done in blue dye, signifying a vision. Later that winter, Tishi would endure several more powerful trances. The second vision in blue depicted Sioux riders overwhelming dismounted blue-coated soldiers.

At Badger Creek Station, the incident with Louis Ford had moved Amos Merriweather. While he had fended off the attempt to take the girls, he felt insecure. “What's next,” he wondered. ’74 and '75 had seen a marked increase in traffic at Badger Creek. Three army units had passed through headed into the Dakotas. Two Army topographic units and a small detachment of Custer’s Seventh Cavalry had penetrated Sioux lands supposedly protected by treaty. Now in 1875 with news of the gold strike at Paha Sapa, a flood of prospectors and spoilers looking to get rich quick would tramp through bringing nothing but trouble.

Amos knew the good days at Badger Creek were behind. The deleterious effects of the Panic had stopped the flow of all treaty goods. In the past two years Amos had received one single bank draft for $100 to cover expenses of the station and not one penny in salary. His heart told him that Crow Face and Keya’s advice to go north to Canada was the right thing to do for his family, for indeed his family was Keya, the girls and the Hunkpapa band. He couldn’t imagine a life in St. Louis or any city for that matter, and each year’s facing of problems as Indian Agent had turned him further and further from the injustices and betrayals of his government and even his race. Yes, he’d gladly strike north but he lacked funds.

The dream that evolved was to homestead somewhere near the Hunkpapa summer camp, to farm, keep livestock, and to hunt and fish while watching the girls grow, hopefully with two or three brothers beside them and far away from the whining, hateful settlers, away from the unenforceable rules transmitted without end from Washington. Away from the fictional semi-annual report he compiled for Washington. Away from being asked to solve the greed-driven problems of lesser men. Away from the responsibility of judging or punishing anyone. He would need funds, however, and he had no money nor prospects.

Pardieu introduced the idea. “Look, my good friend Amos, all dis weel soon be turn to shit, eh? Now dose Lakota Sioux plenty mad an’ dares two, three ‘undred young braves only ting stop dem to make war rat now dey got no rifle, no cartridge. Las’ two year Sioux, Crow, Cheyenne buy all de gun available. You wan’ buy rifle across de border in Canada now cost tree times more dan two years ago. Merriweather, eef you can find rifles, we can quick be rich men. Eef you can buy for ‘tirty dollar, we can sell for ‘undred, eh?”

The thought soon consumed Amos Merriweather and for weeks he turned various schemes in his head. Shipments of rifles for the army came through Badger Creek Station, sometimes two or three wagons of weapons and ammunition.

“Pierre, supposin’ I can get rifles, how in God’s name can we turn ‘em into cash? Tell me that, will you?”

“Eef you secure rifles I promise I can dispose of dem in no more dan one week. Ever’ mont’, de gold mined at Paha Sapa day ship de smelted ingots east with army escort. I tell Dakota, I tell Lakota. I tell Ogalala, Hunkpapa, Cheyenne . . . all Indian nations. Maybe Crazy Horse he attack, get de gold for us, so we give to heem rifles and cartridges.

Later Amos would show Pardieu the letter he’d crafted. “Pierre — this is one huge lie, but if it works we just might make this happen.”

CONFIDENTIAL AND PERSONAL

From: Capt. Amos Merriweather, Ret. Superintendent, Indian Agency, Badger Creek, Dakota Territory

To the Hon. Senator XXXX, Washington, D.C.

My Dear Senator:

You may be aware that this station has failed to receive funding, salary, or annual treaty provisions and rations for two years. The Department of the Interior has announced that the moratorium is likely to continue for some time. I am sure you are also aware of the unrest among the various and several Indian nations, particularly in the Dakota Territory. Another winter without the promised treaty provisions will assuredly lead to violence. Should violence occur within the Badger Creek reserve, a situation similar to or worse than the 1862 Wisconsin uprising is a very liable threat. I have a proposal which if effected will restore the peaceful and cooperative association between the United States and the Indian nations here. This plan must needs be unconventional, secret, and must bypass bureaucratic morass. We cannot afford even one day’s delay.

The newly formed the Royal Canadian Mounted Police with nearly 300 recruits training at Ft. Macleod, Alberta needs rifles. Hudson’s Bay Company representatives have ventured to supply Badger Creek with blankets, beans, corn flour, salt pork, salt horse, coffee, various smalls and trade goods in numbers far exceeding three years quantity of treaty goods and rations, this in exchange for 144 Winchester Model 1873 rifles and 25,000 cartridges. If Model 1873s are unavailable, Model 1866 will suffice. The rifles must be of the repeating lever action design. The gist of this irregular three-way negotiation is this: RCMP gets badly needed rifles without the four to five year delay dealing with the crown; Hudson’s Bay receives the exclusive government contract to supply the RCMP; Badger Creek receives promised treaty provisions to distribute, thereby assuaging the various Indian nations.

Hudson’s Bay representatives demand complete secrecy in this matter and will deny involvement if challenged by American or English authorities. I propose that the rifles be shipped to this station from the Springfield armory. This will appear normal as three such shipments have recently passed through this station en route to Army units further west. Hudson’s Bay will ensure safe transport from Badger Creek to Ft. Maleod. I have heard from reliable Army sources that the Springfield Armory desperately wishes to clear much of its present stock in anticipation of the new Remingtons. I strongly urge you to employ all resources within your power to propel this into motion. Viewed amid the larger frame of events, this is a small action, but an action with the capacity and potential to prevent widespread violence and bloodshed.

I thank you, sir for your help and understanding is this urgent matter. May God bless and protect you.

I remain your humble, ob’t svt, . . . . . . Amos Merriweather, Capt. Ret.”

As the unpaid, unfunded Indian Agent holding one of the vital points of the Western Frontier, his irregular request was pushed through secretly by the same congressman, now United States senator, who had appointed Merriweather to his post as Indian Agent. He received no word from the senator, however in May 1876 an Army escort delivered 144 Winchester model 1866 rifles and 25,000 cartridges to the station.

In early June, an Army escort of six soldiers guarding the Paha Sapa gold shipment was ambushed near Carrick Flats. All soldiers were killed; the shipment of seventy-five gold ingots went missing.

On 25 June at the Little Big Horn River in eastern Montana Territory a large force of Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho well armed with repeating rifles attacked and defeated a U. S. Army cavalry unit, killing 255, including General George Armstrong Custer. Two weeks later the Badger Creek Indian Agency was burned to the ground at night. The Indian Agent Captain Amos Merriweather and his family presumably taken prisoner by the raiding band of Sioux warriors, was never found.

Chigger Boom and the Night the Devil Broke Loose
by Tom Sheehan

Lots of folks down in south Texas still tell the story of the relentless search for one most prized horse stolen down Rancho Lobo way. They tell the story even years after the horse was stolen during the night of one of the greatest storms that ever roared in from the Gulf of Mexico. Like Hell was shot out of a cannon, they said of that storm, and calling it "The Night the Devil Broke Loose." The winds, roaring like wild steam engines, ripped inland from the Gulf and cut a scandalous path of devastation more than eighty miles wide. Roofs of barns sailed in the air like wings of ungodly giant birds, windows in meager huts imploded before their scanty roofs came free. One small settlement not very far from Rancho Lobo saw every one of its buildings blown apart the way dynamite could do it. And the horse, a six-year old stallion, a prized animal from the first day, went by the name of Chigger Boom and belonged to sixteen-year old Chuck Curtin, the son of a small rancher.

That's going too fast for some folks, I'd guess, so we'll have to go back to just about the beginning when Chigger Boom came into the world of Texas, near the grass town called Rancho Lobo that lasted almost fifty years, but folded up one night and died a sudden death in another weird storm from the Gulf.

But that's beside the real story.

So, we go to the very beginning of the tale of Chigger Boom: On the wobbliest legs imaginable, resembling a bean pole ensemble, the foal managed to stand erect for the first time, and on the first attempt this day, with a bare breath in the air coming right off the grass as if it was squeezed directly from a flask. The excitement, so alive, climbed right up the two walls of the barn, and could have ignited the dry wood. Chuckie Curtin, barely grown himself, he too rail-slim from a meager diet of beans and bread and coffee thin as spit, marked the character of the colt with a demonstrative question, leaping in the air as he said to his father: "Ain't he something, Dad?" They were standing in the idea of a barn, open on two sides to the weather, and not a nail left for pounding on the entire property.

The colt, on this first day, made tears come to Chuckie's eyes. "He's all mine, Dad? All mine? I ain't never been so lucky. Call me Lucky Chuckie if you want. I'll answer." His father said he was growing the way he had, "like being eleven one day and forever old the rest of the way." It was him saying a whole passel of lessons were picked up in one day of the worldly classroom.

Hollis Curtin, who had brought the colt through a difficult birth, smiled with appreciation and pride in his son and in his own good luck with the colt on this early morning. All troubles seemed insurmountable at first, but Curtin was further graced with simple patience born of a harsh beginning, his own birthright; he'd do what it would take for his only son, his only child, to keep an edge on the tough world, even if it was tenuous at best.

And do the same for the colt. Out here a man's best friend was his horse. Some of his days his memory was long and then short; on other days, it was short and then long. He knew the difference at dawn.

On an early morning of another day, all the way back in the hills of Kentucky, his father had walked over the hill with his rifle over one shoulder, to go off to war. He never returned. That morning came back to him in one vision as clear in his mind as if it was earlier this same day. He had turned and waved, his father, and it was the way some men say goodbye for a long weekend, or goodbye forever. "Long as you can count, it keeps coming," he heard him say.

"What are you going to call him, Chuckie?"

"Chigger Boom, Pa. His name's Chigger Boom."

"Where in tarnation did that name come from, son?"

"Well, Pa, I turn things over in my mind all the time, funny sounds and strange sounds and things that sound like music to me but really ain't music. I just heard myself saying "Chigger Boom," and that's his name. Can I name him that?"

"He's yours to name, raise, saddle in time, ride forever, if that's what you want, Chuckie."

Hollis Curtin remembered the day, in the back of a wagon on the edge of the grass, when Chuckie was born, and lucky to have someone who loved him from then on. It would be this way with the colt. Here, in the west, on the edge of the wild world, a man and a horse were closer than twins. The pair, when treatment and respect abounded, were abided in both directions, which a man could not get by without a good horse. The sooner a man learned that, the better off he was . . . and with the horse of his choice. Selection was important as the weapons he chose; one day, or more than one day, such possessions would save his life.

The way things were in the growing west, Chuckie was bound to face such a circumstance. He'd make sure the boy was ready, and the colt, this Chigger Boom, was a grand start for him.

He'd keep his eye on the boy, though he knew well beforehand the care that Chuckie would devote to Chigger Boom. With good care the young horse would be with Chuckie for twenty years and perhaps more. Some cowpokes of his acquaintance, the older gents of the herd crowd, said they heard of good horses with good care living into their thirties and early forties, though the latter were not working horses for that long. With good care at all times, good food without stinting on it, proper rest at work, some horses were as good as sons, as good as fathers, to their riders. Curtin held that image for his son.

As for Chuckie he saw that spindly foal of the caricatured birth, stride into the colt, always moving toward that target of a stallion from that first day.

"Pa," he said on his own thirteenth birthday, "ain't Chigger coming along like we knew he would? Some of the boys over at the X-Bar-X have offered to buy him anytime, and each one of them have said it to me secretly like they don't want the others to know they got a real interest in buying him."

"You've done a great job with that horse, Chuckie. He stands out in the whole area. Someday they'll be naming foals after him, like Chigger Miss or Chigger Jack."

"Won't that be something, Pa, and you were the one that brought him through that tough night right at the beginning. It's like he was born by you and given to me and that's as good as it gets for horses."

"The part I like as much as anything is the way you can shoe him. You learned that like you were taught in school from the first day. I know you have something going on there that I haven't picked up yet, but I'm working on it."

"Oh," Chuckie said, sort of surprised and yet excited, I got it fixed, Pa, so that I can find Chigger no matter where he goes. I could trail him right over Mount Constable and down the other side to the river."

"Long as someone don't have to change his shoes, huh?"

"Oh, Pa, you knew all along."

"I knew something but I haven't picked up the sign yet, though I sure did study it for a spell. It's got to be pretty tricky, like you invented something new." For a long moment he studied his son, and then he said, "You worried about stealing, Chuckie? Like somebody stealing Chigger?"

"It scares the heck out of me, Pa. Chigger's like my brother, he's my pard, and we're best friends. It's the way it's supposed to be and I'm doing what I can to keep it that way. He's almost five years old now and he's all horse. I swear he is." He stared at the horse across the corral and loved the great lines of strength and muscle that moved under his black coat. Chigger snickered as if he knew the attention being paid to him. The sun bounced in waves off his coal black coat like sheen off a pond face. In turn, the fence line beyond Chigger Boom seemed miniature in comparison to the great horse like he was a blaze of quiet energy.

"Do you see what I mean, Pa? Or hear it?"

Impressions were all over the elder Curtin as he studied this son of his. "You've won me over on all this, Chuck." It was probably the first time Curtin had called his son by the grown-up version of his name, as if it had been earned, and wondered if the boy had missed it.

But Chuck Curtin looked at his father and said, "Thanks, Pa."

A few nights later, as the story goes in most all quarters where it's been told, Hell came right up out of the Gulf and dropped itself on the whole area, with Rancho Lobo in the middle. The storm rode in with the darkness at the end of a nice, peaceful cowboy's day and the beginning of a night of terror and destruction, the wind roaring like the very demons it called upon, a howling and a force loose upon the land the way curses are administered, man and his property as fair game for the furies loosed.

The full bang of the storm hung over the land for the longest twelve hours in some people's lives. Five people were lost without any trace of their departure, and others were hurt so badly it took months to get well again. Cattle herds were driven far apart, some never fairly reclaimed, and many barns and homes sustained damage that would take weeks to repair, if at all possible.

With the weariness of knowing that a bad element was always about in quick, new towns, there came at the same time of the storm those thieves and scoundrels of all makes and types looking for "the free stuff," things gone loose somehow in the storm and therefore up to claim, as if "the free stuff" had been abandoned at sea like a foundering ship, with any interpretation of claim due for argument.

People in the town of Rancho Lobo started calling that night "The Night the Devil Broke Loose," and that name stayed in the memory of a lot of Texas folks, even to this day, partly because of what followed it.

That night took an additional twist for the worse for Chuck Curtin, as some horse thief, bound for hanging for sure, cut Chigger Boom loose from the small barn and stole away in the night with him.

The Curtin barn, small to begin with, presenting smaller target to the powerful wind, sustained little damage, but it was clear to see that someone had slipped Chigger Boom loose from his stall, along with the bridle reins to handle him and a saddle to ride on.

That day started a long and sustained search by Chuck Curtin for his stallion, Chigger Boom.

Chuck's father spoke first as the search was about to begin, the devastation and ruin evident in much of the area about them, "What's all this gear piled beside your saddle bag, Chuck? You going someplace?"

"I'm going out to bring my horse back, Pa. He's waiting on me, looking for me to hurry up and find him. I think he's getting lonesome."

"You be careful out there, Chuck. I can't go with you. I have too much work to do here, but it's okay for you to go. I know what's working on you, but we have no idea the type of man who stole Chigger Boom."

"Oh, Pa, that kind of man deserves what's coming to him. That I know."

The look in his son's face had said it all for Chuck's father. Out and out it all said confidence here was a two-way road.

The trail, as Chuck suspected it would, went away from the ranch in a direct northerly direction and died out almost as soon as it started. The horse thief was obviously dependent upon the storm to hide his tracks. He was right, of course, but Chuck Curtin had thought about the situation at a significant length. He had studied the land and all its characteristics and discounted certain routes of escape and promised he'd check out all others no matter how long it took him. Pursuit, his kind of pursuit, would leave no trace unturned and no chance not looked at. That's why his saddle bag was filled with the necessities for a long trail ride. And other than what he carried, he could live off the land, or find sustenance as providence might supply.

The Saffron Hills were out in front of him, almost due north. The hills were a conglomeration of canyons, caves, narrow passes, and natural culverts that provided water release from small tarns in the higher cliffs. Tree lines came and went at the sign of earth ravage thousands of years earlier where rocky outburst and promontories came from deep eruptions.

The ride was a difficult one, his eyes always looking for a special sign in horse tracks. He found some tracks on crossing trails here and there, but none he was looking for. He was on the search for over a week. On two different occasions he had meals with mountain men who were on their way down to a town or on the way back. They were very solicitous of a lad looking for his horse.

"How'll you find the right track, son?" one old trapper said as they sat before a late fire shooting the breeze. "That corker of a storm even raised the devil up here in the mountains. I damned near didn't sleep the whole night through in my cave, the whole mountain sitting up as my umbrella. Only place to be in a storm like that one, deep inside."

"I fixed it so I could find the track my horse would leave."

The trapper, who called himself Jigger George, over which they had a good laugh, nodded. "Like you had worries before they came on you about this here animal you call Chigger Boom. That's about the strangest name I ever heard for a horse, but of course I'm guessing at that. It's different though. Like maybe it is up there in the high mountains and it's just up to you and your critter and the cool air."

He stopped talking practically in mid-sentence, and said, "You got yourself all prepared for what might come, like looking upstream on yourself and your horse and the mean sons a bitches you run into every now and then. That's good on you, son. I had a dog I loved once, my last one, and believe it or not I called him Pal-O-Mine. Just like it sounds. Lost him on one half of a mountain. He'd a found me, that old Pal-O-Mine, if he was able to scramble, but I guess something got him. Bear or wolf or wild peccary at full hunger. Mean they is, so you keep all them critters to mind. It pays you in the end."

With Chuck taking a first watch at the open fire, Jigger George was sound asleep in five minutes.

Later the next afternoon, well after Jigger George started back on his own trail, Chuck caught his breath under the lee of an overhanging cliff. The mountain rose like a palisade straight up making him dizzy to look up, which he did, hoping when he looked back at the ground he'd see what he thought he saw. The core of excitement was lit up inside him and he wanted to believe everything good around him, including what he thought he had seen on the ground.

Yes. There on the small piece of gravel and loam mix, the way you see a lone star sitting in the dark sky, was the marked shoe of his stallion Chigger Boom. His mount wanted to slip into the shade of the cliff and Chuck pulled him up short, wanting to make sure of the marking, not let it get distorted in any manner.

He hobbled his horse on a loose rock on the canyon floor after sliding off the saddle to check the sign closer.

It was Chigger Boom's right rear shoe, with one shoe nail in a different spot than usual, where Chuck had positioned it himself. His breath caught up in his throat and acceptance sounded in his chest with a pleasant thrill. Up the canyon he looked and saw nothing, and noted the solid rock floor that Chigger Boom must have used passing through this way. But he had found the sign after this long search. The longing for his stallion mushroomed in him, and he remounted.

But portents abounded that day for Chuck Curtin, and it may be argued that he did not see them in his anxiety and excitement of getting near his stallion after a long search. Sight and sense may be interchangeable in one sector, but may also be disparate in another. Though he didn't see anything, he might have sensed something, about himself or his surroundings.

The differences were working on him, as was foreboding, for Chuck Curtin did not know that this day he would kill a man for the first time.

As he started out of the canyon, away from the overhang, he suddenly caught himself, and began thinking out loud: "You're rushing now, Chuck boy, rushing too fast. You found the sign you were looking for, so don't rush without thinking. It's late. They, whoever they are, or him, whoever he is, are not going much further on this day. They too have to pull up and sit down for rest. Just get some rest yourself, and get a start ahead of them in the morning. They have not found out about the shoe, so that looks like it will lead you right to Chigger Boom. Pack it in for the night, and rest this new mount of yours . . . he's brought you this far in your search."

He unpacked his gear, tied his horse off on a rock, and set about lighting a small fire. Heated coffee lifted its aroma and he ate a biscuit and a piece of dried meat heated in the fire, and set up his bed on saddle and blanket with his weapons near.

It took him a long time to get set for sleep, as it evaded him many times thinking about finding his horse. The fire dwindled down, a bare ember the final sign of its heat, and a single star showed itself over the ridge of the mountain wall opposite him. A mixture of contentment and excitement rearranged their forces within him and he felt the sleep at last begin to descend upon him. He closed his eyes against that lone star and let his body relax.

The single sound he heard, a loose pebble, a small stone dislodged from some position, brought him stiff on his blanket. The rifle, without any effort, came up in his hand and he rolled away from his bed as silently as he could. He heard another sound, like a boot scraping on a stone surface. His horse snickered and a hoarse whisper, born of darkness, settled into his hearing, as it said, "Shush, boy."

His horse was a slight way down the canyon from where Chuck flattened on the canyon floor. He could picture the intruder with his hand, as kindly as possible, settling on the horse's snout. The horse snickered once more and a hoof touched at a hard surface as he must have shifted his weight. The "Shush" came again, not quite as cautious as before, as though its rider, bedded for the night, was still asleep and had not heard any noise.

Chuck heard the slight click of a weapon as though a trigger was set, a safety released. Darkness leaned on everything, the whole night swallowed up.

It was providence then, that in a simple flicker of a last spark from the last ember of the fire, coupling with the light of a lone star overhead, that Chuck Curtin saw a dim shadow within shadows creeping near him. Chuck shifted his rifle into position, the sound sending a sense of danger back at the intruder, and the intruder swung his weapon into position where he thought Chuck was still on the ground. Chuck Curtin fired his rifle at a man for the first time in his life. The man screamed as the shot hit him, and in turn his weapon was fired. The bullet ricocheted harmlessly off the palisade. The next sound was the gurgle of blood in the man's throat and mouth as blood spilled from him.

"We knew you were on our trail, kid. We seen you two days ago, but thought we'd lose you."

"Where's my horse? Who's got him? Where's he headed?"

"I guess I can't hurt anymore, kid. My boss took that horse of yours. Loved him from the first time he saw him one night we went to town." He coughed, spat blood. "I'm going to die, kid. I didn't want any of this, but he's hungry, the boss. Thurman Cosgrove's his name. He's headed for The Gloser Hills. Has a place up there."

He coughed again, the strain wracking his body. "I guess I've paid him all I owed him, from way back. Just don't let them wild pigs get me, kid. I know I can count on you for that. I didn't want any of this. I knew it when we were at your ranch. That was a devil of a night. Some terrible screaming when we came across the prairie like the world was going to end."

He spat again, the pain obviously growing. "I hope you don't ever have to gun somebody else, kid. It hurts on your end, don't it? It did for me the first time. I'm still sorry."

In a twisting spasm that shook his whole body, he moaned again, gurgled again, spat again. The pistol fell to the rocky ground at his side with a sharp click. Out of the whole of night, sounds or silence came either at odds or associated with each other. A wolf howled from some dark recess elsewhere in the mountain range while Chuck's horse snickered. And overhead a shooting star was silent in its sweeping trajectory, as if balancing all of life.

Chuck Curtin, caught up in the moment, said, "What's your name?" He still held the rifle in his hands, waiting for an answer.

There was no response. The man's name stayed with him, and Chuck Curtin buried man and name under a pile of rocks and stones. On a stake planted in the pile, Chuck Curtin scratched a message. It read, "He helped steal Chigger Boom and was sorry."

The young stallion seeker, after saying due words over the body of a stranger, set out after his horse, his target the Cosgrove place in The Gloser Hills, a day's ride away. He hoped that his second killing was not at hand, but he'd do anything to get his horse back.

He rode with intensity tying together all his energies, but at times knew the horse needed his rest too. Water from a stream and dry jerky was Chuck's lunch. The sun was over his right shoulder for the earlier part of the day, and then, after hunger spoke its name at or near mid-day, rested on his back until he stopped to study the foothills leaning upward to The Gloser Hills.

To the end of his days Chuck Curtin swore that Chigger Boom, in a small corral with a rail fence, smelled him on the wind. The stallion snorted and snickered and raised such a clamor among other horses that three men came out of the small cabin to check on the disturbance.

"Hey, Boss," one voice said, "it's that new one you roped in. He must smell a cat out there or a bear or something he don't like."

"Yeh," came a reply that Chuck could hear from his place behind a few trees. "I knew he was special the first time I saw him. We can go back in. It's good he'll let us know if anything gets close to the cabin. He's better than a watch dog. Knew he was special all the way."

The three men went back into the cabin, where a thin plume of smoke with aroma showed a cook stove was working. Darkness deepened and stars came out. A candle flickered in a window, then a lantern glowed and the window turned a pale orange. Once in a while a shadow passed its image across the window.

Later, well after midnight, with the cabin quiet, the lantern shut down, the orange glow gone, Chuck Curtin slipped into the corral and walked straight to Chigger Boom who seemingly stood at attention . . . horse and beloved master together again, his feeder, his trainer, the one who rubbed him down and kept him healthy, the one who fed him carrots and apples from his hand.

With that reception the three other horses stayed quiet as if under Chigger Boom's spell. Beneath overhead planking Chuck found Chigger Boom's saddle and saddle blanket. He cinched the saddle on the horse, mounted him and slowly lifted the bar at the gate.

Thoughts of the earlier killing came at him. He did not want to repeat that deed. To avoid one he leveled his rifle at the cabin, fired a single round that smashed the window and drove the horses out of the corral. Chigger Boom and his rider went ahead of their rush.

All animals were well out on the prairie before any of the men dared come out of the cabin.

Three days later, after a comfortable and happy ride, Chigger Boom and Chuck Curtin showed up at home. His father had already heard about the burial sign up in a canyon of the Saffron Hills, as had just about everybody in Rancho Lobo.

Many people in the next few years read that last testament for a man. The sign helped carry the tale wherever it was mentioned, in a saloon or barber shop or general store throughout Texas, and all the way to California and Montana and the other territories, about Chigger Boom and the Night the Devil Broke Loose.

Blue Sky and Grey Smoke
by Chad Strong

A barbaric yawp surging from his throat, George charged the creek with his rifle, bayonet affixed, clutched tightly in both hands. From the other side of the creek the cloud of grey charged him, itself a screaming, dagger-clawed beast. He was certain it would rake him, tear him. But he was charging forward regardless — the company had their orders.

He heard the captain call out something but he could not discern the words through the chaotic cacophony and commotion about him. Men shouted and screamed. Everywhere, from within their ranks and without, bullets sped from the smoke and the forest like insects on a wild and deadly spree. Mortars boomed and shells soared for the sun. Always, always they fell short and plummeted to earth, whistling their eerie swan songs.

George didn’t know which one sang for him, but one of them did. The blast of soil, water, and shrapnel shoved him yards beyond his own stride and slammed him face down on the bank. The ground shook beneath him as another shell exploded nearby. Mud and water sprayed his blue uniform from head to foot. He flung his arms over his head.

The captain’s voice came to him through the din somehow, “Who’s firing those? Who in blazes is firing —”

His words were cut off abruptly. George hoped the captain hadn’t been as well. He didn’t have to release his head and look up to know that the shells were killing both sides. Somebody was making a big mistake.

Something — he didn’t pause to consider what — made him look up. A confederate soldier was coming for him, splashing through the shallow creek with his bayonet ready. With tunnel vision George watched him. Where was his own weapon? His right hand reached around, frantically slapping the mud for the feel of wood and metal. Rocks, mud, reeds. The rebel was only four steps away. Panicking, George twisted and tried to stand.

Searing pain ripped through his left leg and he wailed in shock. Dropping to his knees he spotted his rifle, fell toward it and yanked it upright just as the reb’s bayonet slipped through his sack coat and into his left shoulder. The new pain ignited a rage that compelled George to thrust his own bayonet up into the enemy’s belly. The blade in his shoulder jerked and in reflex George yanked his to the right. The rebel soldier cried out and fell beside him in the creek.

The greycoat’s blade ripped out of George’s shoulder as he fell, but George’s blade stuck and was nearly yanked out of his hands as he fell forward on top of the other. For a stunned moment George could only lie atop him. Then he saw the red blood oozing from the greycoat’s belly and pooling on the surface of the creek water next to him. With a grunt George shoved himself up and off the enemy soldier.

The movement sent pain raging through his shoulder and leg again. He pressed a hand to his bleeding shoulder and looked down at his leg. About halfway below his knee it was gone.

He lifted his face to the smoke-choked sky and screamed. He screamed until there was no breath left in him to scream. He stared down at his severed leg, certain it must be someone else’s he was looking at, certain that it was only the grime in his eyes, certain that once he blinked it would be there again. He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand and blinked deliberately. Once, twice, three times. Still the leg was gone. Panicking, he splashed around as far as he could reach, searching for it. It had to be here. But what to look for? Would his foot and ankle be intact or in itty bitty pieces that he would never find scattered all over the creek bank? He’d been wearing red socks, red socks that his mother had knit him and sent at Christmas to cheer him. He was still wearing one.

“I still got one, Ma!” he cried aloud.

The other sock should be easy to spot. He searched up and down the creek with his eyes until his vision blurred and he wavered and slumped into the muck, sobbing. But his sobs ended quickly as he became aware of his lightheadedness. He was losing blood from his wounds. He had better do something about it. Fast.

He removed the bayonet from the reb’s forgotten weapon and slit his trouser leg. Tearing off strips of fabric, he bound his wounds as best he could. Exhausted from the effort, George leaned back against the creek bank and closed his eyes. Sleep tugged at him. Sweet, peaceful blackness beckoned. It would be so easy …

A sound startled him — a sound so close beyond his silent sweet blackness that George sat bolt upright. He hadn’t even realized how quiet it was before the sound. He looked around. The trees seemed quiescent after the turmoil, their young spring leaves still and silent, half-cloaked in the mist and smoke. Nothing stirred on the battlefield. George saw bodies of men littering the grassy meadow. No one walked among them, checking for fallen comrades they might save. Perhaps he should do that.

George attempted to stand but collapsed back down with a cry of agony. Maybe with a crutch. He could use the rebel’s rifle as a crutch. He reached for it. Just as his hand closed over the slippery wet wood stock, a pale hand closed over his. George froze, sucking in his breath. Snatching back his hand he realized the reb was still alive. George yanked his own rifle from the soldier’s belly and raised the bayonet to finish him.

But the boy’s cry stopped him. Fresh blood brightened his grimy white shirt and soaked darkly into the wool of his grey sack coat. George’s eyes scanned his surroundings. None of this soldier’s mates were rushing to save him, to kill George for him. Nobody moved. Grey uniforms and blue lay still and silent.

In a sudden flash of panic George cried out,“Johnny! Ted! Burtie!”

He waited. No answer. “Cap’n Tay!” No answer. Not even an attempt at an answer. And still no grey uniforms moved to silence the remaining bluecoat.

George’s eyes fell to the soldier he’d stabbed. He was a private, like George. Except for the bayonet he’d stabbed George with, he appeared unarmed. George’s arms suddenly cramped beneath the weight of his weapon. He grunted, trying to steady his aim, but the boy moaned softly and George couldn’t complete the thrust. He let down the rifle and sighed. For safety he tossed both firearms out of reach of the rebel soldier.

The reb suddenly began thrashing about in the creek, not becoming still until he had flopped, exhausted, onto his stomach. He would drown in moments if George didn’t right him.

Fighting the pain in his own wounds George shimmied across the muck and grasped the rebel’s coat in both hands. His left arm didn’t want to work, but he got enough out of it to haul the boy’s shoulders out of the water and lay him on his back on the bank. The reb’s cap fell off his head. George retrieved it and laid it next to him.

The boy was blond, a soft mellow blond, except where the mud caked his hair. His eyes opened and closed intermittently and were a bright crystal blue. Fine yellow hairs spread across his lean cheeks like down. His face and hands were fine-boned and he was handsome in an almost pretty way. No doubt he had the girls all over him back home, wherever that was. Unlike George who was short and stocky with coarse dark hair and mud brown eyes. The girls in Massachusetts had rarely looked at him twice. George guessed the boy was barely eighteen, if that. George himself was twenty-two.

If he let the boy live, he’d have a prisoner. If the reb died, George could walk out of here the only survivor of this battle. Except he might not be able to walk out of here at all. He might need the boy’s help.

He cut off the sleeve of his own sack coat and pressed the thick wad against the confederate’s oozing belly. The boy moaned and kicked briefly. George felt suddenly sorry for having stabbed him. But what else could he have done — knelt there and allowed himself to be killed?

He lay back as comfortably as possible and held the pressure on the boy’s wound. He stared up at the smoky mist hovering over the meadow and drifted towards peace. In his bliss he woke nestled in deep spring grass and a bright blue sky and his brother’s face smiling down at him.

“Come on, Georgie, it’s time to go.”

“Okay, Peter.”

George struggled to sit up and the pain brought him sharply back to the creek. The smell of sweet April grass fled before the acrid stench of smoke and the comforting warmth of that spring sun shrunk from the chill of the murky creek water that saturated him.

He blinked back tears. He had never found his brother. They were supposed to meet in the river meadows at Independence, Missouri, and make that their jump-off point for Oregon. Peter had gone ahead with his wife and two children and George had followed after helping their father clear one more field. George was unprepared for the sheer vastness of the site and the multitudes of people and animals and wagons. He had wandered for three days amongst the crowds and finally lay down one afternoon in a patch of grass, turned his face to the sun and hoped that if he stayed in one spot long enough, Peter would find him. They couldn’t go anywhere, anyway, until their guides determined the grass had grown enough to sustain their livestock along the way.

Then the announcement of the war had reverberated through the camp. By the end of the day George had decided to enlist. He would fight for his country and get to Oregon when it was all over. If men like him didn’t fight, there might not be an Oregon to go to.

The confederate boy stirred. George looked over at him and watched the crystal blue eyes flutter open. They darted about with a confused and helpless expression. Then they came to rest on George. They stared at him quite a while before they showed a flicker of comprehension.

“Am I a pris’ner?” he asked with a soft southern drawl.

“Yep. You’re my prisoner, seeing as it’s just you and me and I got the guns.”

The reb’s eyes flashed around in astonishment. “Nobody alive but me and a dad-blamed Yankee?”

“That’s right,” George replied. “Nobody alive but me and a cotton-pickin’ reb.”

The blue eyes narrowed and glared at George. “If I’m gonna die, I ain’t dyin’ next to no Yankee!” He slapped George’s hand away from the wad of coat sleeve pressed against his belly and struggled to move away, to shove himself up the creek bank on his back.

George bristled. “Well, maybe I’m not so pleased with your company, neither!”

The boy gave up his squirming, his face contorted in pain.

“Besides, it doesn’t look like either of us can do much about giving the other some room, does it?” George replaced the wad of sleeve on the boy’s wound.

The reb pushed his hand away again and pressed on the cloth himself. “Oh, my gut hurts! Like fire! Whadya have to do it for?”

“What’d you have to stab me for?”

“’Cause yer a Yank — the enemy!”

“Well, you’re the enemy, too.”

They scrutinized each other’s faces in silence. A moment later George asked: “So what’s your name?”

The reb looked like he wasn’t going to answer at first. Then he said, “Ethan. Ethan Langford Pitt.”

“That’s some name, Ethan Langford Pitt.”

“Well, I like it, so don’t y’all be makin’ fun of it!”

“I’m not. I just said it was some name. Mine’s dull. Just plain old George Dunn. I got a brother named Peter. You got any brothers or sisters?”

Ethan merely grunted.

After another moment of awkward silence George said, “What do you say we get out of this creek and dry off? There’s so many of us in it, it’s not even running anymore.”

“Okay.”

With his good leg and arm, George pushed and shoved his way up the bank. Every few inches he stopped to drag Ethan’s shoulders up while Ethan pushed with his feet. The blond boy grimaced and bit back cries of pain. At last they were clear of the murky water and lay, exhausted, side by side on the soft green grass.

The smoke was lifting gradually and George’s nostrils didn’t burn so much from the sulphur hanging in the black powder. The low clouds from last night’s rain were breaking up and George could see patches of blue sky way up high above the layers of smoke and mist and cloud.

“D’ya think someone’ll find us, George?”

“Sooner or later.”

“And they’ll take us home?”

“I’m sure of it. With wounds like this, we won’t be fighting again any time soon.”

Ethan was silent a few moments, then asked tentatively, “D’ya think I’m gonna die, George?”

Startled, George replied, “I dunno.”

“I don’t wanna die. I promised my ma I wouldn’t.”

George didn’t know what to say to that. “I didn’t promise anybody anything,” he said finally. “I just joined up and went. I was in Independence, trying to find my brother and go to Oregon. But I couldn’t find him. So for a while nobody knew what became of me. I wrote home soon as I could, so my folks would know and they could get word to Peter.”

“That’s good.”

Ethan was silent for a while. George thought he might have heard a bird or two twitter in the nearby trees. That was a good sign, when the birds came back.

“Do y’all believe in God, George?”

“Yeah. Of course I do.”

“What do ya think heaven’s like? Is it just like they say — all beautiful and perfect and no troubles and no pain?”

“I suppose, since that’s what the Bible says.”

“It sure’d be nice if it were true. It sure’d be nice if it were true for right here and now on earth, wouldn’t it? There wouldn’t be this stupid war. I shouldn’t oughta be here a-dyin’ and neither should you.”

“I suppose. My mother always said she’s happy things aren’t so perfect. Think how dull life would be if everything was always perfect.”

Ethan gaped at him with those blue eyes of his big and round like his mouth. “She figgers heaven’s dull?”

“She never said that exactly.”

“Sho’nuff sounds like it!” The exclamation left Ethan cramped and breathless with pain. When he finally spoke again, his voice was weaker. “I think you oughta pray for your mamma’s soul.”

“I haven’t prayed since my folks made me go to Sunday school, except when it was my turn to say grace at dinner. Once I read about Mr. Thomas Jefferson’s point of view, that a man can be a good man without him having to be religious. I cottoned to that right off. Even called it quits with church-going. My folks weren’t none too pleased, but I was a man by then, so they couldn’t force me. The way I figure it, if I was to start praying now because I’m in trouble, I’d have to be a hypocrite. If God is what the Good Book says He is, I figure He’d rather have me honest than trying to fool everybody just for looks. I sure couldn’t fool Him.”

“But how’ll you be saved if you don’t believe? I want you to be saved, George, so we can be friends together in heaven. I’m afraid to go by myself. I’ll pray for you, if you want I should.”

George felt a lump form in his throat as he watched the earnest moisture make Ethan’s blue eyes shine. “Thanks, Ethan. Go ahead, if you want, I don’t mind. But no amount of praying will save a man God don’t want in heaven, our preacher told us. I’m just a man, and no matter how hard I try, I’m gonna mess up now and then. So I can’t ever be good enough. I have to rely on His grace to get me into heaven. So I’ll just be the best man I can be and leave the rest up to Him.”

“I guess I never thought about it quite that way before.”

George noticed the fading energy in his new friend’s voice. He remembered what the camp doctor had said about shock. He had to keep Ethan talking, keep him from passing out. He swallowed hard, fighting back a sudden surge of pain from the stump of his leg right up to his spine.

“Well, just think,” he began. “If my ma’s right, if heaven’s perfect, wouldn’t you get tired of having everything you want all the time? There wouldn’t be anything to wish for. I like wishing.”

“God’d keep it in’erestin’, wouldn’t He?”

“I dunno.”

Ethan tried to lift his head to look at his belly. “I don’t think I’ve stopped bleedin’ yet, George. And I gotta pass some water.”

“Go ahead. I won’t look.” George turned his face away while Ethan struggled to turn on his side. He could hear him grunt and suck air through his teeth. He knew Ethan was in agony and he hated himself for being the cause of it. His shoulder didn’t bother him that much, but his leg throbbed and burned constantly. “I wish I could jump up and run away from the pain,” he said as Ethan turned back, finished. “But I suppose that would just make it worse, huh?” He chuckled with self-mockery.

“I wish I could sleep or pass out or somethin’. At least I wouldn’t feel nothin’.”

“Our doc said not to sleep. Because that’s when you go into shock and die.”

“I’m startin’ to wish I would die. It hurts so bad. And everythin’s all turnin’ and spinnin’. I’m scared I might throw up.”

“I hope you don’t. It won’t do your gut any good. Maybe just hold your head still and close your eyes.”

Ethan tried it.

“Any better?”

“Yeah. Better. It’s all black. Nothin’ there to spin around. I’m just floatin’.”

George brushed a fly from his cheek and raised his eyes to the sky. There was a lot more blue now. Only a few white cotton ball clouds drifted slowly along. The smoke was gone from the meadow, but it hung still as death in the trees.

“That’s what it’s like after you die,” George said softly. “Just like sleeping in pitch black silence. No explosions, no fire flashes, no bad dreams. Nothing. You don’t even know you’re sleeping until somebody wakes you up. Except it’s not your mamma this time. It’s God.”

“How long ‘til He wakes you, George?”

“I dunno.”

“Then what?”

“Then heaven, I suppose. Or the eternal fire, depending on what He’s got written in the Book about you.”

“I think I’m goin’ to hell, `cause I feel like I’m on fire already.”

“Naw, you’re not goin’ to hell. You haven’t done anything so terrible. You’re just a kid.”

“I’ve kilt people in this war. I tried to kill you.”

“I tried to kill you, too. Wherever you’re going, I’m going.”

“Well,” Ethan said with a brave smile, “at least we’ll have good comp’ny.”

George laughed. “Who wants to go to heaven anyway? Too gosh-darned boring! We’d have nothin’ to do but sit around and have our every wish granted every second of every day.” “

Yeah,” Ethan agreed, sliding like a canoe into the stream of George’s vision. “Pretty soon we’d run outa wishes.”

“Yeah. Then what? Boring eternity. Forever bored.”

“Heaven’s so perfect, we’d be perfectly bored!” Ethan howled with laughter even as he clutched his belly in agony.

George crowed in near hysteria. Their laughter died down gradually, like applause for a delightful play. They lay together, chests heaving until their giggles dribbled away.

Drained, George allowed his eyes to close and rested. He slipped in and out of sleep for how long he did not know. He dreamed that the spring grass had grown long and lush about him. He blinked at the ripened seed heads waving in the breeze above him and squinted at the sun hanging high and bright in the clear blue sky. Then his brother’s face was smiling down at him and his hand was reaching for him.

“George. C’mon, George, it’s time to go.”

Smiling, George answered, “Okay. Just let me get Ethan.” He reached his arm out and tapped Ethan’s outstretched hand. “Come on, Ethan. It’s time to go.” When he got no response he pulled himself from the dream and tapped Ethan’s hand again.

Still Ethan did not respond. George struggled to lift himself up onto his good elbow and look more closely at his friend. Ethan’s crystal blue eyes were wide open, staring at him unblinking. His peach-fuzzed jaw was slack, and his lips were parted slightly as if he were about to speak.

“Ethan?” George squeezed the soldier’s arm and shook it. The blood-soaked wad of sleeve rolled off his belly and onto the grass. He pressed his hand against the chest. There was no rise and fall of breath. He found the artery in the boy’s neck but no blood pulsed there. He waved a hand in front of the pale face. Ethan was already gone. “Aw, Ethan . . . .” George slumped back into the short spring grass. The blue sky above blurred and shimmered as tears filled his eyes and ran down his cheeks to his ears.

It was April now, he was sure of it. He wondered how long it would take for them to be found. He wondered if the grass would grow long and lush around their bodies before anyone came.

With a start he realized that he had never asked Ethan where he came from or what his life was like before the war. Sighing, he figured it didn’t really matter anymore where Ethan was from. It only mattered where he had gone. George didn’t know how long it would take, but he knew that from this battlefield jump-off point, he would follow Ethan there.

Leave the Stone
by Robert Lowell Russell

Momma always told us our father died a hero in a place called Goliad. When I was older, Momma told me the rest, sending Jess and Sam out to play before she spoke. My sisters pestered me after, wanting me to share the secret.

I told them — trying my best to smile — "When you're older."

I was five when Daddy died, about the same age he was when he planted the peach tree on his family's land. The tree had lived for thirty years now, me fourteen, Jessica and Samantha nine. The tree's bark was worn, some of its branches torn and twisted by the wind, others with green leaves sprinkled here and there, like wisps of hair on an old man's head.

The tree bore fruit each year — barely. Hadn't been more than a couple dozen peaches last year. Still, Momma wouldn't begrudge a peach to those who'd come for a taste. But she'd ask, "Leave the stone, please." Momma said it was important to extend the proper courtesies — whether folks deserved it or not.

Every sapling Momma sprouted from the stones of the old tree stayed sickly and small before dying altogether. Undeterred, Momma would plant trees on a different part of the farm, looking for the right sort of soil, sometimes moving saplings two or three times.

While peach trees wouldn't grow — except the one — everything else did just fine, and we had plenty of coin for what we couldn't farm ourselves — Momma coming from a moneyed family. We could have lived extravagantly, but Momma said it was more important to live well.

Still, she bought us books and baubles from town, and said she'd hire hands for the farm when my sisters and I were grown.

The Panaderos owned the farm next to ours and sold pies and cakes in town. They kept to themselves for the most part, but I knew Mr.Panadero from sight.

I was surprised to see him and his family crossing our fields one day. They took care where they stepped, making sure we could see them coming. When they came near the house, I could see they were dressed well. The father might have been a bit older than Momma, the mother a bit younger. A young boy toddled behind them, holding hands with an older girl in a green dress.

Momma said, "Francis . . . were you intending to greet our guests?"

I snapped my mouth shut and shook my head, trying clear my thoughts of long, dark hair, big, black eyes, and the sweetest smile I'd ever seen.

I extended my hand to the father. "Hola. Mi nombre es Francis Reynolds."

Mr. Panadero took my hand with a firm grip. "I'm Eduardo Panadero. This is my wife Katrina, my daughter, Rosario, and my son, Tomás." His English was accented, but he spoke well. "We've brought your family a gift."

Mrs. Panadero took a cloth off a pie she held in her hands. My mouth watered at the sight of cherries peeking from the golden crust.

I said, "It smells wonderful. These are my sisters, Samantha and Jessica." They attempted to curtsy, like they'd read. "And this is my mother, Elizabeth Reynolds."

"Mrs. Robert Reynolds," Momma corrected from the porch.

The boy pulled away from Rosario and jumped, trying to reach a peach in the tree. I fidgeted my hands, looking from Mr. Panadero, then to his wife. I blushed when I glanced at Rosario. She blushed right back.

Momma said, "Francis . . . ?"

"Oh . . . of course! Help yourselves to a peach."

The girls scrambled from the porch to help Tomás reach the fruit. The boy put the huge peach to his face, trying to take a bite, but couldn't manage more than a nibble.

Mr. Panadero laughed, took a knife from his waist, and started to cut slices for his son.

I expected Momma to ask that they leave the pit, but she went inside the house instead. She returned to the porch, and I froze when she clicked the hammers back on my father's pistols.

Momma said, "You will drop that peach." Her voice was cold, like when she told me to cut a switch.

Mr. Panadero went pale. "We thought . . . . Our son did not understand. I'll pay for the fruit." He held the peach before him.

My ears screamed from the blast, and the peach flew from his hand. The pie fell, smashing to the ground, smearing the soil red.

Momma stalked forward, aiming the second pistol. Tomás and my sisters started to cry, Rosario huddled with her mother.

Momma said, in the same cold voice, "Let me see that knife."

Mr. Panadero's hand shook as he extended the blade.

Momma took the knife and nodded. "Mexican Army. Hard to part with good steel. Get on your knees."

Mr. Panadero wobbled to the ground. "Please . . . I was a cook."

Momma put the pistol to his head. "Do you know what your people did to the men at Goliad?"

Mr. Panadero crossed himself. "I was not there. I swear it."

Momma stood very still. At last, she reached to take a peach from the tree, then handed it to Mr. Panadero. She said, "I'm keeping the knife, but a blade should only be bought or bartered, never gifted. Now get off my land."

As we watched the Panaderos disappear from our fields, Sam said, "Momma, I didn't know you could shoot."

"No point in keeping tools you don't know how to use."

Momma forbade us to see the Panaderos — which of course meant we'd try to see them as often as possible.

Rosario and I leaned on a cottonwood tree that bridged our farms, watching as Sam and Jess stuffed wild flowers into Tomás's shirt until he looked like a scarecrow. My sisters giggled as the boy spun in place, trying to smell the flowers.

Rosario said, "I'm sorry about your father."

"Nah, I'm sorry about my mother."

Rosario smiled, glancing at me, then looking away again. I walked my fingers across the bark of the cottonwood until I brushed her hand. I took a breath, then took her hand. I stood there, heart thudding away, palms sweating, thinking this was the best day of my entire life.

Rosa and I saw each other as often as we dared, but Momma caught on pretty quick. One windy day, Tomás and the twins were off flying his new kite. Tomás had gotten the kite stuck in the cottonwood, but even before he could start bawling, Rosa had scrambled up the tree to get it. I'd brushed the leaves and twigs from her hair, then Rosa and I sat on the grass holding hands, looking for faces in the clouds.

When a darkness came over us, I heard Momma say — in the voice — "You will stay away from my son, you Mexican whore."

I leapt to my feet, as angry as I'd ever been. "Goddamn it, Momma! You know that's not right!"

Momma slapped my face as Rosa ran home in tears.

"You will not use that language with me, Francis Jackson Reynolds!"

I stood my ground, refusing to touch my reddening cheek. "And, Momma, you will write that girl a letter of apology for what you said, because you know that wasn't right."

Momma made me cut a switch, but she wrote that letter.

The girls and I worked out how we could see the Panaderos when Momma was in town, making sure one of us kept watch for her return. Momma kept her relations with the Panaderos polite, if not friendly.

At least once a month, we'd receive an invitation from the Panaderos to come to a Sunday dinner, and the twins received a birthday invitation from Tomás that was stuffed with wildflowers.

Each time, Momma would get out her ink, smooth out some paper and write in a careful hand:

_We regret that we will be unable to attend. Sincerely,_

_Mrs. Robert Reynolds._

I wanted to invite Rosa to my fifteenth, but had to settle for a gaggle of my sisters' friends. They held a tea party in my honor.

The girls in attendance spent most of their time giggling, whispering, and making eyes. I drank tea, sitting next to a doll, while I glumly chewed the soggy cake Momma had made.

I snuck out that night, meeting Rosa under the cottonwood in the light of the moon. She gave me a package wrapped with a bit of yellow cloth, then stretched up and gave me a peck on the cheek before running home. I stood in the moonlight grinning, sure the glow from my face could be seen for miles.

Rosa's gift was an old pamphlet on grafting trees. Momma stared at it when I showed it to her, then just said we'd give it a try, saving me the lie of how I'd come by the pamphlet.

There'd always been talk of annexation, so we didn't pay much mind to all the chatter, but a couple of weeks after Christmas, Momma returned from town to tell us that we were Americans.

Jess asked, "What does that mean?"

Momma looked at me. Something crossed her face. She said, "It means that there will be a war, most likely."

There were six saplings that spring — grown from the old tree's stones. As usual, they didn't thrive. Momma's one attempt at grafting had ended with a deep cut on her hand and a string of words I hadn't realized she'd known.

Rosa's Quinceañera was coming up, and I pleaded with Momma to let me go, just this once. She took out the ink and paper. We regret . . . .

Still, I wanted to tell Rosa in person that I wasn't coming. Jess and Sam sent word through Tomás, and the twins said they'd tend the hogs and chickens while I met Rosa at the tree. As I headed across the fields, cottonwood puffs floated in the air, dancing in the breeze. I didn't see Rosa waiting for me, but we had some time before Momma returned.

A puff flew into my face, and I blinked, wiping it from my eyes, then Rosa stepped from behind the tree. She wore a light pink dress and had a white ribbon around her throat. Her hair was up.

She said, "I wanted to show you . . .  since you won't be able to come. How do I look?"

A thousand words ran through my head, but I couldn't string enough together to say anything — "beautiful" wouldn't do. Rosa stood waiting, smiling, the anticipation clear on her face. As I stood, speechless, her expression changed: first to confusion, then to worry.

"Francis, what's wrong? Say something."

"You . . . you don't look like a girl."

Hurt washed across her face. "You don't like it?" Her hurt changed to anger. She repeated, "You don't like it."

I went to her and held her. I said, "No . . . that's not what I meant at all."

There was frost on the grass the day of Rosa's celebration. Momma had got me up before dawn to help put blankets around the roots of the saplings. My breath clouded before me when I asked Momma if I could go into town.

The threat of a spring freeze and rumors of war had filled the town with more faces than I'd ever seen. Young, hard-looking men carried guns and knives, farmers carried supplies and worry.

Momma bought bales of burlap and lengths of rope. I bought a silver locket. Momma had given us money for our work on the farm — not much, but enough so we'd learn to plan and save. She'd told us we could spend it how we wished. She wanted to say something when she saw the locket, but she held her tongue.

Back home, I cut poles for Momma to tie together while the twins gathered pine needles and green branches. We used the burlap to make something like an Indian teepee, placing one over each sapling. As dusk fell, we lit small, smoky fires under each teepee and lit more fires around the old tree, hoping to protect its growing fruit from the cold.

We took turns minding the flames. I could hear music coming from the direction of Rosa's home. I had the locket in my pocket, and I'd told Rosa I'd try to meet her by the tree that night.

When Momma and the twins were abed, I saw to the fires — making sure they didn't burn too hot or too fast — before setting off across the fields. Clouds moved swiftly across the moon's face, forcing me to slow at times to find my way through the dark. I held the locket in my hand, careful not to drop it, admiring the way the moon glinted on the metal.

I heard a muffled noise as I approached the tree.

"Rosa?"

A shadow loomed, and I was slammed to the ground. Dazed, it took me a moment to realize the cold on my neck was a blade. A man hissed into my ear, "Sorry, boy. You weren't invited."

I heard fabric rip. The moon came from behind the clouds. Another man was on top of Rosa, pushing her legs apart with his knees. He held his hand over her mouth.

Her eyes were wide with fear. The locket I'd brought lay in the grass near my hand, its chain twisted. I struggled until I felt the knife cut into my neck.

The man holding me said, "Get on with it, Mason!"

More fabric ripped, and Rosa thrashed as the moon went behind the clouds, then Momma said from the darkness, "Let my boy up."

She'd followed me!

The knife at my neck pulled away.

The man holding me asked, "Who's there?"

Momma said again — in her cold voice — "Let my son up. Now."

I scrambled to my feet. I could hear the men moving and Rosa sobbing.

Hammers clicked back on pistols.

The man who'd held me said, "We weren't going to hurt your boy, ma'am. Y'all are free to go."

The other man said, "We're just going to spend a little more time with the señorita . . . . You know how they are."

Tears sparkled on Momma's cheek as a shaft of light came from the clouds. The pistols gleamed in her hands.

Momma was always digging up her saplings, moving them around, trying to find a place where they'd grow. We moved two that night, shoveling in the darkness. Later, those two would thrive. Likely it was the moonlight.

My sisters and I must have made a strange sight, wearing our Sunday best, holding the peach pie Momma had baked, as we crossed the Panadero's fields — Momma had sent her regrets.

It was the most god-awful looking pie I'd ever seen. It tasted worse.

We'd eat every bite.

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