Come Sundown

by Mike Blakely

  “Mr. Greenwood, I’ll get to the point,” William said. “It’s about that young squaw.”

  “Westerly?”

  “Yes.” He sat in the only chair in the tiny adobe room, and Kit leaned against the door frame, smoking his clay pipe. “It’s your business, and none of mine, but I urge you to think things through. Kit agrees.”

  “I had me an Arapaho wife once,” Kit said. “Name of Grass Singing. Pretty name, pretty gal. She gave me my daughter, Adalaide.”

  “I know all that, Kit. What’s it got to do with me?”

  “Everybody knows you’re sweet on that Cheyenne girl. But think about it, Mr. Greenwood. Think down the trail a piece.”

  “William, you’ve had a Cheyenne wife as long as I’ve known you,” I said.

  “That’s how come me to butt my nose in your business. Once was the day when every white man out here had him a squaw wife. Now things have changed. I’ve got five half-breed children who don’t know if they’re white or Indian, and don’t fit in anywhere they go.”

  “I’m just teaching her to read. We’re making words and sentences, not half-breed babies.”

  “Be honest with yourself, Mr. Greenwood. She’s a fetching young gal, and you’d share a blanket with her tonight if you could.”

  “William, with all due respect—”

  Kit raised a hand as a peace offering. “Kid, you’re a grown man, and you’re gonna do what you want to do. Me and William just wanted you to know what you’re up against. Poor Adalaide, back in St. Louis. When she was goin’ to school, the other rotten little kids made sport of her terrible. It ain’t easy for a half-breed child in the white man’s world. And I’ll tell you something else. Proper women in polite society will scorn a squaw wife, and her squaw man, too. It happened to me when I had me that Arapaho wife. I like to never lived it down. It embarrassed me fierce to admit to a real lady that I’d laid in a lodge with a squaw. I’m surprised sometimes that Josepha would have me at all, knowing I’d once been a squaw man, and her from a good family.”

  “I don’t have much to do with polite society,” I argued.

  “You will,” William said. “It’s comin’ . In your lifetime, you’ll see schools and churches on these plains. Your wilderness won’t last forever.”

  I sat in silence for a moment. Had I not respected William Bent and Kit Carson with every fiber of my heart and mind, I might have been angry. I knew they were only trying to spare me some pain they had themselves lived through. “I’ve had a Comanche wife before.”

  “Didn’t work out, did it?”

  “No. But this is different. I don’t know that I’ll marry Westerly, or if she’d even have me, but if I do, I’ll make sure it’s right. I’ll think through everything you’ve said. I’ll give you my word on that. But I make my own way and make up my own mind. You gentlemen know that.”

  William nodded. “I’ve said my piece. I won’t bring it up again.”

  “If we didn’t give a damn for you we never would have brought it up in the first place,” Kit said, a kind smile on his leathery face.

  “I know that, Kit.”

  William rose from the chair. “Listen, Kid, it’s been a long time since I heard you saw that fiddle. Why don’t you play a song or two for me and ol’ Kit. We’ll roll up the rugs and get the gals to dance with us.”

  With my mind whirling around the warnings of my frontier mentors, and my heart aching for another moment with Westerly, I was hardly in the mood to entertain. But music was scarce out there in the wilderness, and the bearer of it carried with him a responsibility to share it for the public good. I pulled myself up off my pallet, got my left-handed Stradivarius out of its deerskin case, and began tuning up. At least no one would talk at me while I played, and I could think. And perhaps some of my angst would vent from my soul through the music, like steam from a pressure valve. Then there was one further thought. Perhaps Westerly would come around and hear me play. She probably did not even know that I possessed the gift of music. I craved her attention.

  “It’ll do me good to play a few,” I said.

  William smiled—a rare expression for his face these days—and left to make arrangements for my impromptu concert. Kit remained behind, watching William go. Finally, he turned back to me and said, almost in a whisper, “Kid. There’s somethin’ else … Somethin’ I wanna …”

  “What is it?” I replied, sensing the gravity in his tone.

  “That girl. That Cheyenne girl …”

  “Yes?”

  “You been teachin’ her to read and write?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Kid, you know I … Well, they mean to make me a lieutenant colonel.”

  “I know that, Kit, you told me.”

  “Well, the hell of it is, I cain’t even spell ‘lieutenant colonel. ’ I cain’t spell much of nothin’ at all. My name’s about it, and a few leetle-bitty words. I know I’m just a volunteer, but those boys in the regular army … You ever heard of an officer who couldn’t read or write his own orders?”

  “You’ll have an adjutant for that. A scribe.”

  “I know that, but … An officer ought to be able to read his own.”

  I had never seen such fear in Kit’s eyes. “Don’t worry,” I said. “We’ll start tomorrow evening.”

  The worry melted from his brow and poured into his smile. “You reckon you can open an ol’ rusty trap like mine?” he asked, tapping his temple with his trigger finger.

  I tucked my fiddle under my arm. “Colonel Carson, by end of this war, I’ll have you reading and writing like a West Point graduate.”

  Nineteen

  I slept only about an hour after the last dancer tired and drifted away to bed. When I awoke before dawn, I knew I would sleep no more that night. Too many uncertainties about the future writhed in my brain. Surely you have lain in your own bed and pondered and worried and fretted over the vagaries of human existence yourself. Silence and darkness can sometimes amplify the disquietudes of love, money, pride, fear, heartaches and ailments, angers and regrets, until a body attempting to lie in repose will twist and sweat as if undergoing calisthenics. You have experienced this as well as I—that is certain—but though you know now that you are not alone in this, that does you little good when you are the one tossing sleeplessly. Now you know how I felt when I awoke early that morning, worried with war, romance, and my doubts over my own personal value to humankind.

  I will tell you this: there is no sense in lying about in your own self-pity and wallowing in your own bed of anxiety. Get up! Wash the dishes. Organize the clutter. Fold the linens. Sweep the floor. Write a letter. Stack the wood. Light a fire and look around. You’ll find what needs doing.

  Me? Luckily, I had horses to ride, so I rose from my pallet and pulled on my clothes. It was still dark, but I lit a candle, made my breakfast, and gathered my tack.

  Of the twenty horses I had brought from Comanche country, only two had been ridden when acquired from the Indians, and even they were green. In order to get top dollar for these mounts, I had spent many a long day training them at William’s stockade. Actually, the money meant less to me than the pride I took in training a horse that would neither fear nor hate a man, but would partner up with a rider and carry him with willingness and dignity. Initially, I had broken them the Indian way, riding them in deep water, mud, or sand. This tired the horses quickly, and I could work several horses in a day if I stayed at it hard enough.

  Once each horse had been saddled three times and ridden the Indian way, I had started taking them on longer rides on solid ground. Each needed many a mile, so I could ride only two or three a day. My job was to make each horse responsive and obedient to the bit and the reins, and to pressure from my knees, heels, voice, and even the slightest variation in posture in the saddle.

  To accomplish this, I had to repeat the commands and cues scores of times—turning, stopping, changing from walk to trot to canter—always with consistency. And I had to outlast the anima
l’s resistance to my control, for most horses would test my ability to dominate them. A green horse with only its fourth or fifth saddle on might kick, paw, or rear even before the rider mounted. After I got aboard, the horse might buck, ramp, or bolt recklessly away—anything to get rid of me. I found all of this highly invigorating.

  That morning, after my breakfast of leftover cornbread and beans heated over the coals of last night’s fire—I decided to take on the least willing of the mounts I had been training, and confront her problems. She was a black-and-white pinto filly—not too pretty, but built for long rides. She was a true Indian pony of mustang blood, not some long yearling stolen from a Mexican ranch. Her head, which was too large for her body, sported a moose nose and eyes that walled white with suspicion and fear. Her neck tied in too high at the withers, and her tail set too low to suit me, but she was sound and could be made to ride.

  It took some time to get the filly caught, bridled, and saddled, but finally I was ready to go.

  I mounted, pulled her head to the right, touched her with my spurs, and got her to walk. Immediately, she tried to put her head down and buck, but I yanked her head back up and pulled her hard to the right to turn her in a tight circle. This was a method I had seen good trainers use among the Comanches and the Mexicans. A rider could usually exert his control over a pugnacious mount by pulling the animal’s head around and making it turn in a small circle. This almost always daunted the animal and taught respect for the hard metal bit in its mouth.

  Within a few minutes, I had the pinto filly trotting and cantering around the pen fairly well, though she constantly lurched and shied at nothing, and forever tested and protested. Whenever her protests became too disrespectful, I would muscle her head around this way or that, cut her in a small circle, and reassert my impression of control over her. Now she needed about two hours of hard riding at a steady trot and canter. I got down to open the gate and begin that very endeavor.

  I had been so focused on this filly that I had lost track of almost everything else around me. So it was that I was quite surprised to look into the adjoining pen of horses to find Westerly throwing a saddle on one of the better horses in the bunch—a four-year-old bay gelding with a Mexican brand. This four-year-old was smart and agreeable and had been among the easiest to train. Westerly had chosen well, though I could not quite fathom why she was saddling one of my horses.

  “What are you doing?” I asked, a smirk on my face.

  “You have too many horses to ride. I want to help.”

  “You don’t have to. I will manage.”

  “I want to. You have helped me learn. I want to do something in return.”

  I smiled. The prospect of riding with Westerly was even more appealing than the thought of riding alone. “It is going to be a hard ride. These ponies need lessons.”

  “I will help you teach them, as you have taught me. I can ride as hard as you.”

  I opened the gate and got on the filly. It would be well to make the horses ride together for a change, I thought. Westerly was opening her own gate and leading her bay gelding out. The bay had learned well, and did not protest much when she mounted. He hadn’t bucked since the first time I saddled him. I nodded the crown of my hat toward the west, and we took off at a trot.

  For three hours we rode the plains around Boggsville and William’s stockade, trotting, loping, galloping; turning and stopping; crossing trickles of water and fallen logs in the Purgatory bottoms; introducing the horses to new experiences. For three hours we did not speak. We simply rode. Sometimes side by side. Sometimes one ahead of the other. For three hours we communicated with our smiles and our eyes. My filly jumped a jackrabbit once and almost bucked me off. Westerly laughed, then covered her mouth at my mock glare. On we rode, until our green mounts were lathered with sweat and holding their heads low in fatigue.

  “I’m getting hungry,” I said.

  Westerly smiled. “We can take these horses back and saddle two fresh ones. Then we can ride them to my lodge and tie them to the trees there. My sister and I will make some food. My sister’s husband killed a stray buffalo yesterday. After we eat, we can ride the two fresh horses as we have ridden these this morning.”

  “I would like that,” I said.

  We rode on for another half-mile, both of us feeling comfortable in our silence.

  “I am happy,” Westerly said then. “I am happy that my sister and I will go with you to trade with the Comanches.”

  I nodded. “Yes. I am happy about that, too.” We rode until William’s stockade came into view over the ridge. “Your father, Chief Lone Bear,” I said, leaving the comment half finished.

  “Yes?”

  “Where does he camp?” This was practically a wedding proposal, and we both knew it. If Westerly wanted to share a lodge with me, she would tell me where to find her father.

  “Big Timbers,” she said, her eyes cast down toward the mane of the horse she rode. She glanced toward me, and smiled. “He goes there to collect the treaty gifts from the fort.”

  I nodded. “I will go see him.”

  By the time we rode into the stockade, we were both quite flushed. William happened to step from his house as we rode by to turn the tired horses into the corral. He watched us pass for a few seconds, then put his hands on his hips and shook his head. I could only shrug at him and smile.

  A FEW DAYS later, I took seven green-broke horses to Chief Lone Bear and told him I wanted to marry his daughter. I told him that I could speak Cheyenne, that I could hunt and ride and fight, and that I would always see that Westerly and her family were taken care of. After he looked me and the seven horses over, he agreed.

  I kept the bay gelding Westerly liked, to give to her as a wedding gift. For my own mount, I kept that hardheaded pinto filly. I don’t know why. She didn’t like me very much.

  William chided me when I returned to the stockade. “You could’ve got top dollar for those horses from the army,” he said. “Now all you’ve got for all your work is a wife and a bunch of in-laws.”

  Kit Carson was there, too, laughing and shaking his head stiffly. “You can’t talk no sense into him, William. Just look at his face. That young man’s love-struck.”

  The ceremony was simple. Westerly’s sister and the other women of Boggsville carried the bride to me on a blanket whose edges they all held. They eased her down to the ground in front of the porch to the Boggs cabin, where I was staying at the time. I came out of the cabin and Westerly rose to her feet to meet me at the bottom of the porch steps. John Prowers draped the blanket upon which Westerly had arrived around both our shoulders at once, and we went away to a lodge my new Cheyenne wife had raised up the Purgatory.

  She was nervous that night. Cheyenne women prided themselves on remaining chaste until marriage. Westerly had rarely touched a man before, much less felt her bare breasts pressed against a man’s chest as they pressed hot against mine. I treated her with all the patience and gentleness I had, and introduced her to many new pleasures I’m sure she never knew existed.

  Later, in the faint moonlight that filtered in through the smoke hole of the tipi, she lay on her side, her body warm against mine, and for the first time stared long into my eyes, a faint, bewitching smile curling the very corners of her mouth as her fingers explored scars she found on my body.

  Twenty

  Burnt Belly let his open palm brush across the stalks of the cattails at the edge of Adobe Creek. “Ah,” he said. “Here is one.” He stooped and pulled the stalk from the creek bed, finding the root swollen with starch, ready for crushing into a fine white flour. He handed it to me to rinse. “Now, you touch the plants, and find another good one,” he said.

  I tried to listen, but the stalks were not talking to me. Finally, I chose one at random, hoping for a lucky pick. “This one,” I said, wrapping my hand around the stalk. I pulled it, finding the rootstock conspicuously thin.

  Burnt Belly laughed at me. “That one is not ready yet. You do not know how
to listen.”

  “I’m trying to listen, but I hear nothing.”

  “Stop trying,” he replied. He tilted his head up the creek bank, urging me to follow him. He led me to a Yucca plant perched at the edge of the cutbank, its roots holding the soil together. “What do you feel from this plant?”

  I wrapped my palm around one of the many bayonetlike daggers that protruded from the center of the plant. I shook my head, unable to feel it say anything to me. “I know that the fibers can be stripped and twisted into a strong cord. I know that the young bloom is good to eat in the spring. The new seed pods can be boiled and eaten.”

  “You have seen the women use the plant in these ways. You are not feeling anything.”

  “You told me to stop trying.”

  “Do not try. Just listen.”

  I must have been trying, because I didn’t hear a thing from that blasted plant.

  Burnt Belly frowned. With his first two gnarled fingers, he gently touched one of the daggers, stroking it, feeling the point. “The roots. She tells me the roots can be made into a tea that will ease pains in the joints of old people like me. You do not hear that?”

  “Maybe I did not touch it in the right place.”

  “It does not matter where you touch it! Come. Try this one.”

  The old shaman led me to a weed growing up from a place where the creek bank had washed out. The weed stood three feet high. It had coarse stems and rough, misshapen leaves. I detected a slight acrid scent when I got close to the plant. Weary of my failures as a shaman, I absently reached out and touched the weed at the base of one of those flowers, and when I did, I felt a sudden pang that made me draw my hand back.

  “Tell me,” Burnt Belly said. “Quickly.”

  “She is dangerous.”

  “Yes! Poisonous. Almost any part of this plant can kill you. It has been used to murder people. Now you hear, but you are only listening for danger. Listen for the good things, as well.”