by David Xavier
“No. They tried to hang me in San Luis Obispo.”
“Was it your cousin who freed you?”
“It was the man beside me now. The Butcher.”
Arturo nodded to Milton with a chewing smile.
“You have another cousin. Generalissimo Andrés Pico. You rode with the generalissimo at the Battle of Pasqual.”
“He was a capitán then, but yes. I was his scout.”
“A scout?” Milton’s brow had furrowed. “Not a sharpshooter?”
“I had not fired a weapon so much at the time.”
“Yes. I see. It was under the generalissimo that you gained your skills.”
“Capitán.”
“Both of your cousins are now United States citizens. They have both served in the Senate of the state of California. Surely, you can tell me they have influenced your survival against American law.”
“My cousins uphold the law in everything they do. They would not last long as United States officials if they freed a wanted man, or were connected in any way with a man responsible for the murders of American lives.” Salomon crossed his arms. “My cousins stay away from me and I do not blame them for this. There is nothing to write about there.”
“There must be some instances where they–”
“There’s not.”
Charlie Milton sat quietly, then set his writing tablet aside with the pencil atop and folded his hands before him. “May I see the gold?”
They walked from the hideout the four of them inline out upon the rolling hills and sunlight, Charlie Milton looking about as they went. Salomon paused a moment to study the lush rolls and flowing creekbed in the distance. He changed direction slightly and continued until he came upon a hole in the ground. A hollow groped beneath a stone by clawed efforts.
“Stick your hand in there.”
Charlie Milton stood over the hole and drew his hands together at his chest. “It looks like an animal is burrowed there.”
“At one time, maybe. Yes.”
Milton looked down at the hole again. “I stick my hand in there I am liable to come back up missing a finger.”
Marquez moved forward and collapsed to his knees over the hole. He plunged his arm into the earth up to his shoulder and felt around with his ear to the ground. Salomon looked out upon the grassland dark with vegetation. There were hundreds of other holes like these across the land, many forgotten. Marquez sat up and brushed his hands together. “There is nothing in there.”
“Let me try,” Arturo told him. “My arm is longer than yours.”
“My arm is long enough.”
Arturo looked at Charlie Milton. “What was the name the newspapers called him?”
“They called him The Shor–”
“Here.” Marquez moved aside. “Try it all you want. There is nothing to find in there.”
Arturo did. He pulled his arm out empty and flattened from his knees to his belly to try again. He hauled out a canvas bag leaking by a small hole in the side. Marquez scoffed and turned away. Arturo undid the tie and reaching in pulled out a falling fistful of gold dust. Charlie Milton knelt over the bag and the bandits watched with plain faces as the newspaperman handled the dust with the wide eyes of a man looking upon ancient secrets.
“This is real,” he said. “This is real gold.”
The men stood over him in silence. Milton looked up. “And there is more just like this?”
“I have told you there is. All over.”
“May I?”
“Go ahead.”
Charlie Milton held a small amount in his hands as he gathered to his feet and searched his inside coat pocket with his free hand for a handkerchief in which to hold the dust. He poured carefully and folded the cloth several times and replaced it in his pocket, then dusted his hands and dabbed his sleeve to his forehead.
“It is one thing to hear you say it.” He spoke with his spectacles in hand, ready to reset them. “It’s a whole other thing to see it up close.”
Charlie Milton led the way back to the firepit in a sort of jog, repeating a phrase to himself for copy. As he reached for his pencil he stopped and fell backward in a scream. Tsunipu was there by the fire, chewing stock-still in a meditative position with meat from the sage hens held by his thumb against his knife blade. Large as he was, Milton might not have seen him at all but for a breeze that set the indian’s hair to swaying. The writer crawled away on all fours as the bandits passed him going the opposite way to take their seats. He turned and looked back with his arms holding him up behind him. Salomon motioned to him.
“This is Tsunipu,” he said. “You have questions for him.”
Tsunipu looked to Salomon for a moment and turned back to Charlie Milton without change to his expression. He continued chewing. Milton scrambled forward and searched the ground. He came back to the firepit with spectacles in hand. He sat and fumbled with his things, never taking his eyes from the indian, and finally he sat leaning forward with eyes still wide behind round reflections.
“You are the Demon Comanche.”
Tsunipu held still, a stone-carved head like the work of great sculptors of the past. He swallowed. Holding black eyes upon the writer he raised his knife and thumb and tore another bite without a word spoken. Milton wet his lips.
“You are the Demon Comanche. I only half-believed in your existence, and I was beginning to doubt even that.”
Nobody spoke, so he continued.
“You are a master of pain and violence. You can cross the widest canyon by flight, and run your fingers through the tops of the tallest redwood. You can direct lightning bolts at will.”
“You believe all that?” Marquez said.
“It is just what people have said.”
“Well, as you can see, there is nothing mystical about him. Except maybe his height. His lack of expression. Try and make him smile.”
Tsunipu spoke, his voice seemingly coming from all directions of the wind. “There is no shame in believing stories. A story is when one man sees what others cannot. A mind sees what the eyes cannot. But when the eyes see the unbelievable, there can be no doubt, and his certainty spreads the story and strengthens each time the story come back to him. For what sane man would believe I am the ruler of hell come to earth unless he had been influenced by some vision? Even this man Marquez believed me to have walked the jagged floors of the underworld at one time.”
“Can you cross to the spirit world?” Milton asked.
Marquez stirred the fire and shook his head whispering.
“You are a man of books,” Tsunipu said. “A man of knowledge. Do you believe a man can ignore the rules of the earth and step from daylight to darkness? Can he turn the sun at will and change the world around him?”
“No. No, he can’t. But the right man could. A man who came from the spirit world could return at will.”
“We all pass to the spirit world unconsciously. Even you. Are dreams not visions of that world? It is a dangerous world. We can go there and not return. It is where we can speak to those dead and gone before us. But what sort of man could appear in memories and speak to souls of the past in the daylight as he does in his mind?”
“A man who can control his mind.”
“A man’s mind is influenced by what happens on this earth, and what it thinks will happen. It is impossible to break from that power. Can a man control his own future?”
“He can. Certainly he can.”
“A future is what he says it is.”
“Yes. Certainly a man can do as he wishes.”
“What will happen is only an idea. It can change at any time. A man going west can turn and go east as he wishes. Then I say to you, if a man can control his future, can he not just as easily control his past?”
Charlie Milton sat still and blinked. “Sir?”
Tsunipu moved forward with bared teeth, seizing Milton’s hair in one hand before the writer could draw back. The indian yanked him screaming from his stone seat and held him close. Marquez dropped the
tin cup he held and stood, taking a step back. Arturo and Salomon eased away. Milton’s knees scrambled for ground beneath him and he went to grip the indian’s wrist, but he could not bring himself to touch him. His clawed fingers he held suspended near his own face and scalp, which held his weight below Tsunipu’s hand. The screams continued as the indian placed the tip of his blade beneath the man’s eyeball. The eye began to bulge from its socket.
“Stop screaming.”
“You’re going to kill me, oh God, you’re gonna kill me.”
“A man without eyes can often live in sight, seeing more than the men with both eyes still circling in their heads.”
Tsunipu pulled the knife back and a small droplet of blood built up on the man’s skin. The indian waved the knife before the man’s face and Milton followed it with his eyes.
“If mankind never grew ears, would he believe in the songs of bird? Would soundless lightning frighten small children or dazzle them? If man could only see in black and white, could he believe in the colors that arc the rains? The earth would keep these powers. Things exist beyond man’s understanding. Beyond his knowledge. What else has the earth not revealed to man’s limited senses?”
“Please let me live, please don’t kill me.”
He pried the man’s eyelids back open with the delicate touch of the knifetip.
“In the dream world, when you come at a man from either side with a knife, his head always falls to the east. Why is this?”
Charlie Milton shut his eyes and began to cry.
“Why is this?”
“I – I don’t know. Oh God, please.”
“If the breeze can come from any direction, it should fall any direction, but it only does so to the east, why is this so?”
“Please, I don’t know.”
“If he is facing any direction, you can count on his head falling to the east. Tell me why.”
“Please, I don’t – because of the turning of the earth.”
Tsunipu stopped the movement of the knife and slowly cocked his head with a blink. He pushed Charlie Milton back to where he sat, and the man fell backward over the stone seat. He gathered himself up to a sit and could not run or cry, but only look back with mouth agape, his spectacles crooked on his face and the front of his hair frozen upward as if in an invisible grip.
The indian sat composed as before and continued chewing. Charlie Milton touched the blood drop from his face and looked at the red on his fingertip. No man spoke, and there was a long silence. Charlie Milton swallowed.
“It is getting into the afternoon. I should take a photograph while there is light yet for it.”
The bandits stood straightbacked and expressionless with Salomon sitting at the center. Pistolas in hand and riflebutts at their feet, sombreros on their heads and coats buttoned. Marquez cradled his rifle across his chest, and Arturo held his knife flat against his heart. Tsunipu stood with his hands fallen at his sides like a huge child.
“Now.” Charlie Milton looked up from behind the camera. “Hold still.”
The story ran in the Los Angeles Star the next month. People read over each other’s shoulders in the streets. Crowds crouched forward to glimpse the photo on the backs of the newspapers as men read aloud on the boardwalks. Charlie Milton strolled among the readers and shook hands. Extra copies were printed. Hands pulled at the papers from different directions.
Gold seekers ran home and saddled their horses. Even young boys rode out of town with shovels over their shoulders and nothing else but the clothes they wore.
The story painted the true picture of a good man whose life changed under brutal circumstance, pushed to vengeance further by the violent men with whom he rode. But men in the street shouted its faults and yelled the names of men murdered at Salomon’s hands, tearing the paper in pieces. Hoping to make a name for himself, Charlie Milton was instead tarred and feathered the way a medieval liar would have been and run from town naked.
Vigilantes loaded their rifles and pistols and coiled lengths of rope. They kissed their wives and gathered pacing in the streets.
Many returned home within a week’s time, not knowing where they were going or where to look. Some lost themselves in the California hills and were not heard from again. Bodies of gold seekers were found starved to death in the wavering shrubs and wildflowers, clutching shovels. Some were found alive and thin, muttering to themselves in circles. Vigilantes soon dropped their chase and returned to their homes, the reward forgotten, the outrage quieted.
One man returned months later swaying naked in his saddle. He reeked of blood and death and sobbed in wild shouts. His eye sockets were empty and black, and blood stained down his face like candlewax. He flailed about the streets and clung from wall to wall. Women and children fled from his approach. Men stood quietly and watched with horrified faces as this man called out and grasped about the air in blind floundering. He finally moved toward one voice and flung his arms around the sheriff’s neck, and it was his story in the hands of the Demon Indian, spoken inches from the sheriff’s face, that again renewed the search for the Salomon Pico Gang.
A bird flittered with song from branch to branch in the dim morning. Salomon lay by the coals with his feet crossed and his hands clasped at his belly and watched as the bird twitched its beak between notes. All was quiet in the new day’s light but this songbird’s tittering. The leaves overhead waved like a thousand tiny flags in the breeze. Last night’s coals lifted white from the firepit like a dusting of snow. A second bird came to perch alongside the first and proved to be equal in song. A boot went sailing overhead and the birds took flight. Salomon lifted his head to see Arturo propped on his elbow, pulling his blanket back over himself.
“What?”
Salomon put his head back and closed his eyes. “I didn’t say anything.”
They lay without words for some time. The birds did not return. Arturo broke the silence.
“When was the last time you saw her?”
It was awhile before Salomon answered. “It’s been a few months.”
When their camp filled with light Arturo threw back his blankets and put the coffee on. A small fire was already crackling. Tsunipu was there on the ground with his legs butterflied beneath him. He was again chewing, a tin cup in one hand.
“There are other people in the world besides you,” Arturo said over the fire.
Tsunipu looked over without turning his head.
“I mean it would be all right to put some coffee on for more than just yourself.”
The indian did not answer. When the grounds were boiling, Arturo poured a tin cup full with coffee and exchanged the hot cup back and forth between hands as he sat back. He took a sip and sucked wind with his teeth showing. Tsunipu was looking at him.
Arturo swallowed. “Burned my tongue.”
Tsunipu turned away in a blink and sat chewing again. Arturo lowered his steaming cup.
“Did you sit there all night?”
Tsunipu did not speak. Arturo sucked his teeth and took a sip and sat blinking over his cup for a time. They ate breakfast all of them and sat about the fire and smoke in silence like cavemen.
“Why are birds the only animal’s that sing?” Arturo said.
“Ladies sing,” Marquez said.
Arturo shook his head.
“Are people not animals just the same?” Marquez said. He lifted his cup but stopped short of taking a sip. “People are more animal than birds are.”
Arturo looked at Marquez a moment and looked away. He raised his chin to Salomon. “Are you going to see her again soon?”
Salomon looked up. He rolled a whittled toothpick to one side. “I don’t know. The next time I’m in Santa Maria, I suppose.”
“Go to her. Your head is too full right now.”
Salomon nodded.
“A good woman stays with a man wherever he goes,” Arturo continued. “Soon a man can think only of her. That’s a good thing. That’s when you know. That’s when you need to se
e her again.”
“I had a good woman once,” Marquez said.
Salomon sat staring at the fire. Arturo took another sip.
“It was in San Felipe and she was very young and very beautiful. I think I was in love with her, and I know she was in love with me. I know this because she told me so many times. She used to ring the ceremony bell at the church and run to meet me in the barn while everyone gathered to kneel in prayer.”
“When was this?” Arturo said.
“This was only a couple of years ago.”
“And how old was she?”
“She was old enough to know better. She was eighteen or nineteen, but you must understand, in San Felipe – hey, where are you going? I am telling a story here.”
Arturo slung the dregs of his coffee as he walked away. Salomon looked over his shoulder the opposite way and held still, listening. He then stood and walked off. Marquez crossed his ankles and looked through the thin smoke. Tsunipu was looking at him.
“You want to hear about my good woman?”
Tsunipu looked away. “No.”
“I bet you have not heard a good story in a long time. Maybe that is why you are not smiling today.”
Salomon crouched his way through the boulder walls and aspen cover of their hideout to where the rocks divided and gave a clear view of the hills below. There was a group of riders spread about and moving through the brush like a search party, circling thickets or dismounting and shouting into small caves with guns pointed. They carried their rifles upright in hand, the stocks on their thighs. One man in the center called out and circled a hand above him in signals. The riders spread out further.
When Salomon came down from the walls, Marquez was leaning forward in his story, talking with his hands while Tsunipu sat unmoved. Salomon pointed as he moved past.
“Cover that fire.”
He took up his rifle and went past Marquez’s following eyes back to the boulders. Marquez stood kicking at the fire and reached for his things. He belted his pistola on and crouched with his rifle at the ready. He held his breath and watched the boulders where Salomon had disappeared. Nothing moved but the red leaves flapping overhead like streetpaper. In the distance he heard voices and scattered shouts drawing near. He stretched and bobbed his head but he could not see Salomon among the boulders. He held his breath. A figure came running at his left through the trees and he spun with his rifle pointed. Arturo dropped to one knee and spoke from behind his hands.
