In the Shadow of the Hills

by Madeline Baker

  For a moment, no one moved. Then Wade cleared his throat.

  “You killed him,” he said flatly. “You bury him.”

  In less time than it takes to tell, Wade and his bunch were riding for home.

  I knew then that I was going to have to kill the big man himself, or ride on. No words had been said, no threats made, but Wade knew we’d meet again.

  And so did I.

  * * *

  The Coopers were uncommonly quiet at dinner that night. Neither of them liked the killing that had taken place in their front yard. They had hoped that just having a gunfighter of their own would keep Wade at bay and somehow solve their problems. Now they had to face the fact that killing was inevitable, that there would be more killing until Cooper agreed to sell out, or Wade was dead.

  The next day, Cooper started finding dead cattle out on the range. Three that first day. Six the next, then twelve. They’d all been shot. There was plenty of sign, and it all pointed to Wade’s place.

  It was an open invitation to fight or run.

  I rode out early the following morning, before the Coopers were out of bed, bound for Red Wade’s Slash W Ranch.

  It was a pretty morning, all green and gold and still. Here and there brightly colored wildflowers turned their faces up to the rising sun. Away off on a hill, I saw a pair of deer grazing beneath a windblown pine. Closer at hand, I spied a dead cow and calf, both freshly killed, both wearing Cooper’s brand.

  I rode slow, savoring the peaceful quiet of a new day, knowing that before the sun had reached its zenith either Red Wade or myself would be lying dead on the ground.

  I felt no twinge of guilt, no compunction, at the thought of gunning Wade. He represented everything I hated in the white man. He was greedy and sneaky, smiling out of the side of his mouth while his hands were stealing you blind. Most of the politicians I’d met in the east, and most of the Indian agents on the reservations, were cut from the same cloth as Wade. I hated them all.

  Sure, there were good decent white folks, just like there were rotten Indians, but at least the Indians were honest. If they hated you, they let you know it. They didn’t pretend to be your friend while they knifed you in the back.

  I thought of Wade, smiling his empty smile at Cooper while he offered to “buy” his land for a paltry hundred bucks, knowing all the while that Cooper would never sell at that price. Or any price. I thought of all the men who had made treaties with the Indians, smiling empty smiles while they promised the Indians peace and plenty if they would just move over and give the settlers a little more room. And the next thing you knew, the Indians were confined to a reservation, and the white man owned the land.

  I guess I looked pretty grim when I rode up to the big white house that sprawled in the center of Wade’s land. Three hardcases idled on the wide veranda, their legs crossed, their hands hanging close to their gun butts.

  One of them sang out, “Hey, boss, we got company!” as I drew rein near the porch steps.

  Wade must have been expecting me, because he was out on the porch before the words were out of his gunny’s mouth.

  “Cooper send you?” Wade asked.

  “No. I came on my own.”

  Wade nodded. “Changed your mind about working for me, huh? Smart.”

  “No.”

  He knew then why I was there, and he took a step backward.

  Immediately, his three hired guns slapped leather. I was moving, too, falling out of the saddle, rolling as I hit the dirt at the foot of the stairs.

  My first shot took out the man on the left, my second drilled into the one in the middle, but not before he put a slug in my left shoulder.

  The third man had the fastest draw I’d ever seen, but he was a piss poor shot. He fired five rounds before I put one into him.

  But that one was enough. He hit the floor hard and rolled down the steps.

  Surprisingly, Wade was unarmed. I guess he’d figured one man, even the infamous John McKenna, wouldn’t stand a chance against his three killers. Now, seeing his men go down, Wade grabbed a gun and dove for cover.

  There was a heavy silence as all firing ceased. Motionless, I crouched at the foot of the steps, waiting for Wade to show himself. The wound in my shoulder throbbed dully, and I could feel blood trickling down my arm, but I didn’t move.

  A minute passed. Another. Five minutes.

  In the distance, a cow bawled for her calf. A rooster crowed, wings flapping as it chased a hen across the yard.

  Still not a sound from Wade.

  Another minute ticked by, and I had not moved a muscle. Long hours of training to be a Cheyenne warrior stood me in good stead now, and I knew that the first man who moved would likely end up dead.

  And I was right.

  Wade shouted, “Damn you!” and reared up on the veranda, his face mottled and dripping sweat, his finger curled around the trigger of his gun. “Damn you, you dirty redskin, where are you?”

  “Here,” I called softly, and shot him dead.

  * * *

  The Coopers were sitting on the swing, holding hands, when I rode up. Jed Cooper took one look at my face and knew Wade was dead. He squeezed his wife’s hand, then, seeing the blood dripping down my arm, he jumped to his feet and hurried toward me.

  “Good Lord, you’ve been shot!” he exclaimed.

  “It’s nothing, just a scratch.”

  “Well, it looks like something to me. You let Edna take a look at it while I see to your horse.”

  Edna Cooper proved to be a capable nurse. She had my arm washed and bandaged in nothing flat, and I was sitting on the sofa, drinking a cup of coffee liberally laced with whiskey before you could say scat.

  She didn’t say a word the whole time she was fussing over me, but I didn’t need words to know she thoroughly disapproved of what I’d done.

  Pretty soon the silence was so thick you could have cut it with a knife. “Go on, say it,” I suggested. “You’ll feel better if you spit it out.”

  “You killed him, didn’t you?” she accused.

  “Wade? You’re damn right. You sorry he’s dead?”

  “No, but I can’t condone murder.”

  “It wasn’t murder.”

  “Not legally, perhaps, but it amounts to the same thing. If we hadn’t hired you to protect us, he’d still be alive. IN a way, it’s our fault.”

  “The man was no damn good.”

  “That’s not for you, or for us, to decide.”

  “Would you rather it was your husband lying dead in the dirt?” I snapped.

  The color drained from her face. “Of course not. But I feel so guilty. Don’t you?”

  “No, ma’am, not one little bit.”

  Edna Cooper stared at me for a full minute, her expression thoughtful. “Tell me, Mr. McKenna, are you happy with your life?”

  “Happy?”

  “Yes. Are you happy with the man you see in the mirror when you shave?”

  “I don’t use a mirror,” I retorted, but I had to admit, she had touched a sore spot.

  “You know what I mean,” she persisted. “Why haven’t you ever married and settled down?”

  “I tried it once,” I said flatly.

  “Didn’t it work out?”

  “It worked out fine while it lasted,” I answered bitterly.

  Edna Cooper’s eyes were filled with sympathy as she crossed the room and patted my arm. “I’m sorry, Mr. McKenna. I didn’t mean to stir up unhappy memories. But why haven’t you ever remarried? I wouldn’t think a good-looking man like yourself would have any trouble finding a wife.”

  “You think the love of a good woman would make me mend my wicked ways?”

  “Stranger things have happened,” she replied saucily. “You can’t go on hiring out your gun forever, you know.”

  “Believe it or not, I’ve never hired out my gun before.”

  “Really? Why did you start now? Do you need the money so badly?”

  I had to laugh at that. “No, ma
’am, I surely don’t. In fact, I don’t need it at all. Thanks for patching me up,” I said sincerely, and ducked out of the house before he could ask any more questions I didn’t want to answer.

  Outside, I found a quiet spot beneath a shady tree, hunkered down on my heels, and rolled a smoke. Edna Cooper’s words kept running through my mind: Are you happy? Happy? Happy....

  The answer was no, though I was reluctant to admit it, even to myself. Oh, I’d had some good times and seen a lot of the country since I left New York, but I wasn’t happy. Not in the way Edna Cooper meant. I hadn’t been happy since I lost Clarissa and my daughter. I’d learned to live with the hurt, but that didn’t mean it was gone.

  I rode out of Blue Valley late that night, no richer than when I’d ridden in. I’d never collected the money Cooper had offered me. Hell, they needed it a lot more than I did.

  With no particular destination in mind, I gave my horse its head and we wandered into Arizona.

  I was there, playing penny ante poker with a couple of local cowboys, when one of them accused me of dealing off the bottom.

  I wasn’t.

  He insisted I was.

  You know how it goes. One thing lead to another, and the next thing I knew, he was reaching for his gun. Naturally, I pulled mine. As it turned out, I was faster, and he was dead.

  Self-defense, right? Wrong! Some man at the bar, a man I’d never seen before, claimed I killed his friend in cold blood. The sheriff arrested me for murder, and I spent the night in jail.

  Next morning, before breakfast, I was standing in front of a judge. There was a lot of talk about justice at my trial, but that’s all it was talk.

  The judge sentenced me to ten years in the Yuma Pen.

  Chapter 14

  The cell was dank, dreary, and small. A narrow iron cot topped by a paper-thin mattress and a much-mended blanket occupied most of the cell. The inevitable slop jar with its inevitable stench stood in the far corner. The walls were cold and gray and bare, the floor was hard-packed earth. There were no windows. The only view was the one afforded through the iron-barred door.

  I flinched as that door slammed shut behind me.

  Ten years.

  I’d been bathed and shaved. My hair had been cut short, but that was fitting, for I was no longer a warrior.

  They had taken my clothes and issued me an ill-fitting pair of dungarees and a rough cotton shirt, as well as a forage cap, which I refused to wear, and a pair of scruffed brogans, minus the laces.

  Ten years.

  I scowled as I stared out into the cheerless prison yard. Blocks of windowless cells faced each other across the barren ground. Across the way, I saw one of the other new cons glumly viewing the same dismal scene, and I knew my face reflected the same hopeless expression as his.

  Ten years.

  Armed guards patrolled the high walls; others swaggered through the compound swinging clubs, their unfriendly faces molded into permanent scowls. In their own way, the guards were prisoners, too.

  Ten years, ten years, ten years. The words pounded through my head. Ten years in this hellhole. It sounded like an eternity.

  It didn’t take long to learn that prejudice was just as strong inside a prison as out. In that first month, I was singled out for every dirty job that came along, until it seemed that all the soap in the world, assuming I was ever allowed to bathe again, wouldn’t be enough to wash away the stink of sweat and horse shit that clung to me like some rank perfume.

  Yet it was not the hard work that tormented me, but the fact that I was forcibly compelled to obey rules and regulations that were brutally strict, inhuman, and often ridiculous. Obey, or suffer the consequences.

  Punishment came hard and fast in Yuma and the slightest deviation from the rules: an angry retort, even a cross look, was enough to incur the wrath of the guards. They were a law unto themselves, answerable to no one but the warden, who cared little what happened to the prisoners.

  It didn’t take long to see the wisdom of obeying quickly and without question, but, try as I might, I couldn’t keep my rebellion from showing in my eyes, nor could I bring myself to cower before the guards like a damn dog.

  In those first few weeks, my back was a constant throbbing mass of pain as first one guard and then another plied the lash in an attempt to drive me to my knees. Night after night, I lay belly-down on my bunk, unable to sleep for the searing ache in my back and shoulders, telling myself that, come the dawn, I would do better. I would bow my head and grovel, I would say “yessir” and “no sir” and grin like an idiot if I was chosen to fetch and carry for one of the guards.

  And every morning, all my good intentions dissolved like smoke. I couldn’t make myself stand passive, head bowed and shoulders slumped in submission, while the guards mocked me. I guess I had too much pride, too much anger churning inside me, too much bitter frustration just waiting to explode into violence.

  It was the guard known as Fargo who finally triggered the explosion.

  “You, McKenna,” he called one morning. “What tribe you from?”

  “Cheyenne,” I answered tonelessly.

  “Shy Ann? Sounds like a sissy bunch to me,” Fargo mused scornfully. “Guess your old lady was one of those fat old squaws that used to hang around the fort servicing the soldiers, eh?”

  “No.”

  “You don’t mean she was white, like me?” Fargo exclaimed incredulously.

  “She was white,” I replied in the same flat tone, “but not like you.”

  “Hey, Fargo, I think that redskin just insulted you,” snickered one of the other guards.

  “Shut up, Hogan!” Fargo snapped. “So you ma was a white woman and your old man was Shy Ann. I guess he sold her to every buck in the camp, didn’t he? Everybody knows how Injuns love to hump a white woman.” He laughed loudly. “But who can blame them when all they’ve got is those greasy squaws?”

  Greasy squaws? I thought of Quiet Antelope, who had loved me like a son, who had taken care of me when I was sick. I thought of Snow Flower, and how I had loved her, how sweet and gentle she had been.

  I stared at Fargo and felt the hate rise up within me. It had been men like Fargo and Hogan who had killed Quiet Antelope and Snow Flower, who had killed my father.

  Muttering an oath, I sprang forward, grinning exultantly as my hands closed around Fargo’s throat.

  I guess I would have killed him then and there if two of the guards hadn’t pulled us apart. Fargo really tore into me that night. There is no pain that compares with that of a whipping plied by a man who knows how to wield a lash.

  I had endured the Sun Dance, I had stood dumb while Polanski lopped off a part of my hand, old man McKenna had whipped me, but nothing had ever been as bad as the whipping I received that night.

  The lash danced over my naked back, spreading liquid fire from my shoulders to my buttocks. Every muscle in my body was drawn tight, like the head of a war drum, as I fought down the urge to scream.

  The pain and humiliation of the lash were more than I could bear and I felt an animal-like cry of pain rising in my throat, begging for release, when I heard Fargo laugh. The sound was sharper than the whip, and I clenched my teeth, trapping the cry deep in my throat.

  Abruptly, it ended. Someone cut me down, and I fell to the floor, lost in a red haze of pain that grew suddenly worse as Fargo threw a handful of salt over my lacerated flesh.

  With a groan, I tumbled into merciful darkness.

  I was in solitary confinement when I regained consciousness. Quivering with pain, I huddled on the damp earthen floor, filled with a bitter hatred that grew more intense with each passing day.

  I had never been cooped up before, not like this. The hole was no bigger than a small closet, as dark as the bowels of hell, and just as hot. I felt like I was going to suffocate, and I longed for the sight of craggy, snow-topped mountains and wild rivers as I had never longed for anything else in my life. I think I would have sold my soul to the devil for one breath of ai
r that smelled of earth and sweet grass instead of my own stale sweat and excrement.

  There are no words bad enough, vile enough, to describe what it was like to be confined in a small dark hole day after day except to say it was like being buried alive, and I resolved then and there to do whatever I was told, when I was told, because I knew I’d go crazy if they put me in that little black hole again.

  I spent ten miserable days in that hole, and when they finally returned me to the general prison population, I was determined to keep my temper in check, to close my ears to Fargo’s childishly taunting remarks, to accept orders in mute obedience if it killed me.

  And it worked, for a while.

  The days ran together, each one the same as the last. Work, eat, sleep, work, eat, sleep, an endless chain of dreary days and restless nights. I dreamed of being free, of seeing a piece of ground that wasn’t surrounded by high walls, of riding across a sunlit prairie with the sun in my face and the wind at my back.

  Sometimes I dreamed of Clarissa, of holding her in my arms that last time before she died. I heard her voice begging me to make love to her, and then I’d wake to find myself in a cold dark cell, my cheeks damp with tears.

  I kept to myself, making no friends, speaking only when spoken to, obeying orders like some creature without a mind or will of its own, a soul of its own.

  I guess I’d been out of solitary about three months when Fargo started in on me again. We cons were sitting in the sun, taking a well-deserved rest, when I felt Fargo’s gaze. Glancing up, I found him staring in my direction, an expectant grin on his ugly face, and I knew I was in for trouble.

  “You know, Hogan,” Fargo remarked idly, “I’ve heard it said that Injuns never laugh, but that they crawl real good. On their bellies, just like snakes. You reckon it’s true?”

  Hogan shrugged as he struck a match on his thumbnail and lit a cigar. Hogan was always ready to play along with whatever mischief Fargo suggested. “Only one way to find out, I reckon.”

  Fargo nodded. “I reckon. McKenna, haul your ass over here.”