by Aaron Gwyn
But be assured, it made no odds how terrible their fortunes had been up to the time of their enlistment: you’d have been hard pressed to find a more spirited bunch. We sang songs round the fire or played elaborate jokes on each other. It was a brotherhood for all of us, a second childhood for many. As captain, I became their father.
I can recall when Felix McClusky mustered in—he was an Irishman who’d come over from the old country and spent exactly one week in Boston before deciding to drift west. How he ended up in Texas I’ll never know. He had a shock of bright red hair and his brogue was so thick he’d have to repeat himself to be understood.
Some talked very low of the Irish in those days, but I was inclined to have special sympathy for them—my own dear mother was a Gillespie by birth; her father had come to Kentucky from the Emerald Isle in much the same way our new recruit had travelled to Texas.
But McClusky—he stretched the seams of sympathy to bursting.
He stood five foot five and a more aggressive man I’ve never met. He imagined slights everywhere, mostly against the Irish, always against him. He’d fight a man at the drop of a hat and he’d drop it himself. He fought big Isaac Casner this one time and, I swear to you, it was like watching a mouse whip a wildcat. McClusky could hardly reach high enough to punch poor Ike in the face; he’d jump up in the air to strike him, land and then leap up to hit him again. After he’d walloped Ike five or six times, Ike turned to me and said, “Captain, will you get this snorter off me? This is starting to hurt.”
The boys all liked McClusky, but they decided he needed some gentling. This one day we were headed down into a field of grama when we spied a polecat ambling along. We reined up, meaning to keep our distance.
Well, being untutored in the ways of wilderness creatures, McClusky didn’t know a skunk from a barn door.
“What a lovely little cat,” he said.
A scheme occurred to Levi English; I saw the look pass over his face.
“Oh yes,” he said, “and they are easily tamed.”
The wild Irishman needed no more encouragement. He slid right off his saddle and made a run for the startled critter, thinking to make a pet of it, no doubt. He wasn’t six feet away when the skunk lifted its tail and doused him in scent. It looked like McClusky had struck a wall. He fell backwards and began scrambling and screaming for help.
Of course, we were near falling off our horses with laughter.
“What’s wrong?” Levi called. “Can you not catch it?”
But the joke turned on us rather quickly when we realized we couldn’t get the scent off McClusky or abandon him either one, and after the second night of trying to sleep with him in camp, I walked over to Levi and booted him in the leg.
“Why in tarnation did you set him on that thing?” I asked. “I can barely stand to eat.”
Levi looked up at me out of his watering eyes. The odor was so pungent it was like something had crawled inside your head.
“Captain,” he said, “I wish I hadn’t done it.”
“I wish you hadn’t either. The amusement we got was hardly worth the penalty we’re paying.”
Young Levi was always one to look on the bright sight.
“Maybe it’ll keep the Indians off us a few days,” he said.
Which proved to be the case: we encountered no Indian for nearly a month. By the time McClusky aired out, he was no less vicious, but his lack of aroma improved his personality for us considerably.
CECELIA
—TEXAS, 1837—
They crossed the Sabine at Gaines Ferry and went riding along the King’s Highway into the Republic of Texas. The country was flat as a coffin lid and the horizon leveled out into a light blue haze. There was so much sky Cecelia wanted to cower. At night, she’d lie on her blanket, staring up and gripping the ground on either side of her, thinking she might slide off into the stars.
But after a week, her body seemed to settle. I have stopped falling, she thought. I’ve stopped that for now. She reached and smoothed her hand along Honey’s neck. Samuel had taught her to use the reins, to shift her weight back or forward. To push up to a lope. Riding was new to her, but she suspected she might be good at it.
“Don’t you think?” she asked Honey. “Don’t I ride you good?”
They made camp that evening in a ring of live oaks. Samuel started a fire by spinning a stick between his hands—rubbing it faster and faster until smoke rose from his kindling—and she sat there studying him as he prepared their supper, watching his face above the flames. She couldn’t decide what on earth he was after. He didn’t seem to want a servant. Didn’t want to beat or bed her.
She cleared her throat and he glanced over at her.
“Can I ask you something?” she said.
He nodded for her to go ahead.
“What made you take me from that man?”
“Childers?” he said.
“Yes.”
He sat a few moments. Then he said, “I never seen a woman treated that way—led down the road on a rope.”
“You’d never seen slaves before?”
“Not till I came to Texas, I hadn’t. It wasn’t any slaves where I was raised.”
“And where is that?”
“Arkansas Territory. Or, that’s what they used to call it. Suppose it belongs to the Cherokee now.”
“And that’s why you had a mind to steal me: you’d never seen women on a rope?”
“I reckon so,” he said. “It riled me, is all.”
“Is that why you wouldn’t pay him?”
“Pay who?”
“Childers,” she said.
He gave an exasperated laugh. “Twelve hundred dollars! I ain’t got that kind of money!”
She wondered why he’d offered it, then—was he only feeling the planter out—but she didn’t ask. Another question had occurred to her instead. She pulled her legs to her chest, wrapped her arms around them and rested her chin atop her knees.
“What do you mean to do with me?” she said.
Samuel’s brow crinkled. “Do with you?”
She nodded.
“Don’t mean to do nothing.”
“You don’t consider yourself my owner?”
He snorted. “I ain’t owned anybody yet.”
“You’re saying that I’m free?”
He shrugged as if it was no great matter. “Free as any of us.”
Yes, she thought. And yet you took a deed off Childers. Slipped it in your saddle bag.
“So,” she said, “I can just ride off whenever I have a mind?”
“Well,” he told her, “not ride, I don’t reckon—that pony don’t belong to me. I’m headed to see the man it does belong to, but far as being free, you’re welcome to go wherever you like whenever you like it. I might try and convince you to pick a better spot than here, though.”
He was right about that; she had no idea where she was.
But there was something in all this more pressing than their whereabouts and now was her chance to confirm it.
She said, “You’re being straight with me? I can really go wherever?”
“I ain’t going to stop you,” he said.
That next morning, they traveled through a valley, hills on both sides, a low mist hanging in the air. It parted to let them pass, then closed swirling up behind.
The sun was slanting in, coloring the mist a bright copper. She reached out to touch it and felt something open inside her chest. For years, there were no possibilities. For years, everything was locked down tight. Now, there were all sorts of prospects, things she never considered. She certainly never considered crossing paths with a man like this.
Samuel slowed his horse and stopped. He sat there, staring at the hillside to the north.
She followed his gaze. High on the hill, a man sat astride a magn
ificent paint.
That is an Indian, she thought.
She didn’t know how she knew that, but her heart was pattering. The man was bare-chested and slender with long blue-black hair; he wore a feather in it, and there were glass beads around his neck. No saddle on his horse. No weapons she could see.
“What’s he doing?” she whispered.
“Watching us,” Samuel said.
She sat there. Samuel’s hands were on his pommel, though he wasn’t relaxed. Not tensed, either. He’s just alert, she thought: very alert. She wanted to say something, but her mouth was too dry. Samuel’s blue eyes were bright. He lifted his head slightly and his nostrils flared. Did he smell something? He seemed older to her again, like he’d seemed at the auction: he was younger when it was just the two of them, but older in the presence of other men.
She looked back at the man on the ridge. He was an Indian, all right. She didn’t know anything about Indians, though she’d heard about Indian attacks all her life. She’d heard this from white people, who were the only ones she’d ever seen attack anything. She thought there were all these gears grinding, like a gristmill at work, gears you couldn’t see, but they linked her to Samuel, linked both of them to the Indian on the hillside. They were all caught up, grinding together.
The man followed them the rest of the day. They’d lose sight of him for an hour as the road wound down into the rocks, and then the trail would crest out, and there he’d be on another hill: silent, motionless. She’d not seen him move so much as a finger. The breeze stirred his hair, but that was all the motion there was.
“He’s making me nervous,” she told Samuel.
“They’re good at it,” Samuel said.
When they stopped at dusk, she couldn’t see the Indian anymore. They made a fireless camp in a sandstone basin, and Samuel took all his pistols out of their bags and lined them up on the blanket beside him, sitting up against a rock. She was very tired, very frightened. She lay down on her blanket and closed her eyes.
Then she opened them.
“I can’t sleep knowing he’s out there,” she said.
“Try to,” Samuel said.
She shut her eyes again, and then thought about offering to wake and watch with him or let him sleep while she watched; they could take turns. She wondered if he’d trust her to do that, and she was thinking probably not. Her mind began to wander, and she remembered all the books in Mistress Anne’s library, how she’d worked her way through the shelves, volume by volume. She was imagining all the words that had passed before her eyes, all the letters, and then the print began to blur, and she drifted off to sleep.
* * *
She woke with a start. It was dark, but the eastern sky was paling. Samuel was sitting exactly as he’d been when she’d closed her eyes, and she felt embarrassed that she’d been able to fall asleep. It was like she’d admitted to something shameful.
Samuel was quiet and sullen all day. Ever since they’d been travelling, he’d started his morning with coffee, but this morning there’d been no fire to make coffee on. She didn’t even know if it was the coffee he was sulled up about.
Perhaps he was just tired. He’d sat up all night, watching for Indians who hadn’t appeared.
Then she realized she was preoccupied with his moods, whether or not he was angry or tired—Lord knew he wasn’t preoccupied over hers. If he’d just deal with her fairly, she might be able to help him, but he didn’t want to deal fairly. He was another man who thought he held all the cards, thought she was incapable of holding anything at all. He’d deny her talents just like all the others, and she was furious with him. She was furious with herself for ever thinking he was different.
She glanced at him.
“You’re not a bit different,” she said.
Samuel looked at her.
“What’s that?” he said, and she said, “Never mind.”
Later that afternoon, they were winding through a thick forest of juniper when she heard a sharp, snorting sound and then four Indians on painted ponies started out from the trees and passed just in front of them in a gust of horseflesh and the musk of their lean bodies. It happened so suddenly, she didn’t have time to blink or breathe. Samuel booted his gelding forward, and then they were in a clearing surrounded by oak trees and ash. Samuel reined up and stopped. He had her horse’s lead line in hand, and he turned it around his saddle horn three times very fast, then pulled a pistol from his belt and cocked the hammer. His chin was tucked, and he was watching the Indians who were now circling them—hair and horses and feathers, two of them with clubs in hand, though she didn’t know if these were implements for riding or weapons of war. Samuel had the pistol cradled to his chest, barrel pointed at the sky. He was turning very slowly, trying to keep her behind him, himself in front, but the Indians were circling so quickly he might just as well have kept still. She had the sense Samuel was trying to defend her and that was a strange feeling indeed.
Then she felt a hand reach out and tug at her dress, but Samuel was turning them again. One of the men made a yipping sound—a high chirping noise, playful and threatening all at once—and an awful corkscrew feeling climbed her backbone.
And still Samuel hadn’t pointed his gun. It occurred to her that there might be other Indians in the woods. So, maybe Samuel was hesitant. And things were not yet hostile, or not entirely hostile—there was the sense of a game about it—though she wished the Indian hadn’t touched her. He shouldn’t have done that. She felt these men were testing Samuel, that they wanted him to fire his pistol: if he fired, maybe they could do more than just touch. There seemed to be rules to this encounter and she knew nothing about them. Samuel was doing very well, she thought. Didn’t seem to be afraid, just responsive, waiting for the moment to point his gun.
He hadn’t said a word. He made a clucking sound with his tongue to direct his horse. Everything was getting close and tight—the Indians were riding closer, their circle was getting tighter—and then one of the Indians broke off and went riding for the trees, making the yipping noise as he went. One broke off, then they all broke off. They were not fleeing, just trotting toward the tree-line. And then they all disappeared in a shimmer of leaves and quivering branches. Dust rose in the air like smoke.
Samuel glanced at her, and she saw a tremor of nerves pass across his face.
“Can you ride?” he asked. “If I give you the lead, can you keep up?”
“I’ll keep up,” she said.
Samuel uncoiled her lead line from his saddle horn and handed it across.
Then they were pounding down the wagon trail, both horses at a gallop. She had never ridden this fast, and she had no idea the toll it took on you. She broke out in a sweat and gave the horse its head. The wind stung her eyes. The tree limbs were blurring by. She was scared, but there was a thrill to it. She almost felt like yelling. Then she did. She released a yip, an imitation of the Indians who’d grabbed at her, and she was surprised to hear Samuel yip back. The two of them were galloping along the trail, yipping, and then the woods fell away and they slowed their horses and went trotting out onto the wide pastureland.
Samuel reined up, and they stopped. They were looking at each other, their horses blowing. Something had changed, but she wasn’t sure exactly what.
“Yip,” she said, and they started laughing.
They made camp that evening among some live oaks beside a stream, and when Samuel climbed down from his horse, he was limping.
She watched him several moments.
“What’s wrong with your leg?” she asked.
“I think I mashed it,” Samuel said.
“With those Indians?”
“When our horses bunched up.”
She stood there while he limped around gathering brush for the fire.
“Let me look at it,” she said.
He didn’t answer, just ke
pt limping around. She watched him hobble, pretending he wasn’t hurt.
By the time he’d got a fire going, and the guns lined up on his blanket, his ankle was so swollen he couldn’t get his boot off. He lay there tugging on it. He’d broken out in a sweat and the boot seemed to be some opponent he was grappling.
And still he wouldn’t ask for help.
She walked over, squatted beside him and put her hand on his shin. He stopped pulling on his boot and looked up at her.
“It won’t come off,” he said, and suddenly, he was like a little boy. Young and old at the same time.
He allowed her to take his boot heel in one hand and the toe in the other. She pulled very gently and his blue eyes came welling up out of their sockets.
“Does it hurt?” she said.
He shook his head. He was biting down on his lip and trying to keep the pain out of his face.
Which was silly, she thought: it hurt or it didn’t, and it was plainly hurting him something fierce.
“I’m going to pull harder,” she said.
He stared at her like he didn’t know what she was waiting on. She wondered who he was pretending for? If he wanted to show someone his brave face, he could ride back and show the Indians.
She used the force of her annoyance to yank the boot harder, but the boot wouldn’t come, and the muscles were flexing along Samuel’s jaw, blue veins standing out on his neck. He wouldn’t say anything. He’d sit there clenched up till he cracked a tooth.
“We might have to cut it,” she said.
Samuel reached over, drew his knife from its scabbard, and handed it across.
She squatted there with the blade. Samuel was leaning back onto his elbows, his eyes glazed over. She began to cut along the seam where the leather was stitched together, up the shaft of the boot toward his trousers’ leg.
The pale flesh of his ankle looked like it might burst; there was blood underneath the skin. She sat there examining it in the firelight.
The first thing he said was, “I just bought those in New Orleans. Cost me twenty dollars.”
