by Mike Blakely
It was a tough blow to lose my friend that way at the time, but now I can’t help thinking that that bullet through the heart spared him from suffering the ravages that time takes on a human body. I have watched decades carve my face and twist my frame while Luther rides a flawless shadow horse beyond the Great Divide. Sometimes, on those frightfully lonely nights before the moon rises dark, when I hear the demons clawing at the cracks of my shanty to get at me with their merciless talons—sometimes I can’t help wishing I had taken Luther’s bullet that day in Trinidad, and that he had gone unscathed.
Forty-Five
Orion went to bed with his sword on, lying down ever so slowly on the western horizon, his head to the north. When he slipped beyond the skyline, Kit stepped from the tent. I startled him a little at first glance, for I stood very close to the tent flap. Then he recognized me in the pastel glow of the coming day and smiled.
“Kid,” he said, taking my hand. “You showed up after all.”
“I promised I would.”
“Yes, you did. I should never have doubted.” He looked toward the commissary wagon. “Coffee!” he ordered.
“Yes, sir,” came the reply as a cook, lying under the wagon, kicked off a blanket and crawled out of bed. “Give me five minutes, Colonel Carson.”
Kit tilted his head toward something to his right. “Come with me. I want to take a look at something.”
We began walking, Kit moving stiffly, for the night had been cold and his body had ridden more hard miles than all the men in his cavalry combined. We passed by something I had failed to see last night in the dark. A battery of two twelve-pound howitzers stood against the stark light of the eastern sky.
“Have you been out there among them?” Kit asked.
“Some,” I said. “I passed through. I went down to Texas for a while.”
“See any big camps?”
I shook my head, because I knew he was judging my face out of the corner of his eye. “They’re all out moving around in small bands, following the buffalo.”
“Maybe that’s better,” he said. “I know we can whip a bunch of them at even odds.”
“You want my advice?” I said.
“I’ll sure listen to it.”
I walked eight slow steps without speaking, then said, “I know you’ve got to go hunting Comanches and Kiowas, because you’ve already come this far. But just because you’re hunting them, doesn’t mean you have to find any.”
Kit chuckled. “You know that would never float. My men want a fight. I’ve got Ute scouts who can read a trail better than you and me together. Everybody would know if I went dodgin’ instead of houndin’.”
“You could lose every last man, Kit. You’ve only got fourteen officers, three hundred twenty-one men, and seventy-five Ute Indian scouts.”
He stopped and glared. “How do you know that?”
I frowned at him. “You know me. My mind can’t help but count everything my eyes see. You had a thousand men against the Navahos, and they were easier prey up in that canyon. Their fortress became their own trap. You won’t trap the Comanches or Kiowas. They’ll scatter in a dozen directions unless they’ve got you outnumbered, then they’ll ride circles around you and pick your men off one by one until you’re all dead.”
Kit shrugged and motioned me onward with a nod. “Like as not, I guess. No man lives forever. But I aim to give it my best and punish those devils for the raids and murders. I’ve asked myself time and time again if this is right, and I know it is, Kid. It may not be purdy, and it may not be fair. But it’s right. Those poor savages have got to be whupped into takin’ the white man’s road. If they don’t, not a one of them will be left alive.”
He stopped on a little rise and looked down into the Canadian River Valley. “There it is,” he said.
I looked, but didn’t see anything other than the river and some crooked arroyos. “What?”
“The place I wanted you to see.”
“Why?”
He pointed. “See those flats down there by the water, just upstream of that draw? That’s where it happened.”
“What happened, Kit? What are you talking about?”
“The murder of Mrs. White. Fifteen years ago. She was traveling with a caravan on the trail to Santa Fe when her fool husband decided to go on ahead with his carriage, since it traveled faster. Some Apaches attacked them in camp. Killed Mr. White and four other men, and carried away Mrs. White. When word finally got back down the trail, Major Grier went out to track ’em, and I signed on as scout, hoping to rescue Mrs. White. By that time the trail was hard to follow. It was a week old, and covered by some snow and by buffalo herds crossin’ over it. And you know how them Apaches can doctor a trail when they know they’re gonna be followed.”
Kit smiled, though his eyes remained sad. “But that Mrs. White. She was helping me. At every camp, she’d leave a little bitty piece of cloth off’n her dress. Maybe just a thread or two sometimes, so’s the Indians wouldn’t see it. Still, even with her help, it took me twelve days to catch up to her. By then, she’d been a captive almost three weeks.”
He paused and looked down at the flats below, yet his eyes were really looking back fifteen years. He sniffed some good, cold air and blinked once, slowly. “That twelfth day, I seen a blue norther comin’ and knew if we didn’t find them Apaches come sundown, we’d lose Mrs. White. The blizzard would cover their trail for good. So we whipped it up as best we could. Then we rode up over this rise, right here. I was out ahead of Major Grier, and I spotted the Indian camp down there on those flats. He rode up beside me, and I said, ‘Major, we must charge that camp now!’
“Well, Kid, there was another scout in the party name of Leroux, and he didn’t know coons from ringtail cats. He said we ought to wait a minute and reconnoiter. Major Grier was a good officer, but he was green and he didn’t know which of us to listen to. I told him, ‘They’ve already spotted us, Major, order the goddamn attack now!’ and you know I don’t use such language lightly. He was drawing breath to say something, and I think he was gonna make the order, and I believe we still could have saved that poor Mrs. White. But just then a bullet struck the major in the chest and he fell off’n his horse and landed right where you stand—right under your feet. The bullet come a long way from down in that camp and maybe didn’t have too much powder behind it. It just bounced off the major, but it stunned him bad and knocked his wind out.
“The soldiers wouldn’t charge on my order and I couldn’t take the camp alone. By that time the Indians were scramblin’, taking what they could to run. When I finally got the major mounted and the order given, it was too late. We charged, but the Indians had already carried Mrs. White outside of camp and shot an arrow through her heart.”
Kit bowed his head and pinched the bridge of his nose. “That poor woman was starved and beaten by them savages. And mistreated in every way. You know what a savage will do to an enemy woman. And yet she’d left those signs along the trail, still hopeful until the moment that arrow pierced her heart.”
“Sounds like plain bad luck,” I said. “That other scout and the bullet causing the hesitation. Wasn’t your fault. Like you said, you couldn’t take the camp alone.”
“That ain’t what bothered me worst. There was somethin’ else.”
“What?” I asked, trying to imagine what else could have gone wrong.
“After we buried Mrs. White we went back to the camp to burn it. One of the soldiers found a book. I couldn’t read it, of course, so the major showed it to me with a big ol’ grin on his face, and read some of it to me out loud. It was what you call a novel. A storybook. And that there storybook writer who writ it had made me the hero in it. Me. Kit Carson. Oh, you should have heard tell of the way I could slaughter redskins in there. I could follow a cold trail by the dark of the moon. There was not a thing in the world I could not do. I was some hero in that there novel, Kid.”
“Where’d they find the book, exactly?” I asked.
&nbs
p; Kit looked me in the eye, knowing I already understood him. “In one of the lodges. The signs were plain that it was the lodge they kept Mrs. White in. That book was hers. She’d been readin’ about me. She must have prayed I’d come rescue her. She might even have seen me mounted right here when we hesitated and got her kilt instead of rescued. That haunted me a long time, Kid. The more I thought about it, the more I fretted over her disappointment in me when that arrow flew and I didn’t come to save her.
“The trip back to Rayado was bad. The norther hit and it was the worst blizzard I ever saw. One of the dragoons froze to death in his sleep and other boys lost fingers and toes. It was miserable. But my misery was all in my heart. Colder than that blue norther. I have never in my life failed so bad. I just kept thinking about what might have happened if we’d charged that camp at first sight and saved that poor woman. If I could have been the Kit Carson she’d read about instead of just the fool I am. Time has eased it some, but I still regret it to this day. Especially here, looking down on where it happened.”
“What happened to the book?” I asked, not really sure that it mattered.
“It’s at Maxwell’s Ranch. I go look at it now and then to remind myself of the two things Mrs. White taught me. Never give up hope, and don’t hesitate when you know you’re right. She did her part. She didn’t give up. I failed. I hesitated. For her sake, I will never let it happen again.” He turned back toward the wagons and campfires, turning his back on fifteen years of regret. “Renegades have got to be punished, Kid. Swift and sure.”
The bugle sounded reveille back at the camp and Kit nodded toward the cook’s wagon. “I bet my coffee’s ready. Come on.”
We walked back to the camp in silence. I felt gloomy, and had begun to think that maybe I should not have come at all, though I was only keeping my word to Kit. I glanced over toward All Horse. After my arrival last night, one of the soldiers had unsaddled him and tied him to a stake pin driven into the ground. He recognized me as we walked nearby, and gave a low nicker, perhaps complaining about the stake rope.
We got to the cook fire and Kit took his tin cup of hot black coffee from the cook. He seemed to have forgotten all about Mrs. White, for he slurped the coffee with pleasure, and smiled. “Kid, my plan is to march upstream to Adobe Walls. We’ll leave our wagons there and go north with pack mules. I’ve heard tell that the Indians are camped on Paladora Creek. I need to know what you know about the enemy out there. You could save lives.”
Though Kit’s intelligence about Paladora Creek was highly flawed, his plan of storing supplies at Adobe Walls was going to lead him right to the Comanches and Kiowas by pure luck. In an instant I knew that I bad to bluff my way through this interview with Kit and escape back downstream to warn Kills Something and Little Bluff of the coming attack. “I haven’t heard of any big camps on Paladora Creek. Other than that, I don’t know what to tell you, Kit.”
“You mean you won’t tell me.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You’ve got to know something that would help. My Ute spies reported to me last night. They’ve backtrailed you coming up the Canadian River Valley. I know you’ve been out there with the enemy, Kid. I only want to know what I’ve got ahead of me. I’ve got a lot of good boys to take care of here.”
I had never dreamed that I would be interrogated by my friend this way, and I felt suddenly foolish and naïve. Kit was going to do his duty, and not even my friendship with him would interfere. His was a singleness of mind a man had to admire even if it violated the trust between us. I had underestimated him once again.
“I have nothing to tell you, Colonel.”
Kit smiled. “Thought you might say that.” He put his coffee cup on the wheel of the cook wagon. “Well, I can’t let you go back out there.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know too much, Kid. I’ll have to send you back to Fort Bascom and keep you under guard until this business is done.”
My mood darkened and my anger boiled up like a thunderhead. “You told me to come in for a talk, Kit, and I did. You said I could tell you all I wanted to or I could tell you nothing at all. Those were your words.”
“I didn’t make any promises about what would happen after that. I’m not a fool, Kid. I know what you’re gonna do. You’re gonna go back out there and warn your Comanche brothers that I’m comin’, and I can’t have that. You’ve counted heads. You know our strength.”
“I’m a free trader, not your spy. Did you think I was going to lead you right to the Indians so you could slaughter them? This smacks of the Charlie Beach and Paddy Graydon affair.”
Now it was Kit’s anger that flared. He pointed his finger at me in a warning. “You’ve got no call to associate me with that business. This is nothing like that. I haven’t offered to pay you for setting up an ambush like those two scoundrels. I haven’t offered you anything at all. Your loyalty to the government is in question, Mr. Greenwood, so I’m placing you under guard and taking you out of the way. Now, I’ll have your weapons, please.”
I took a step backward and swelled up like a mustang stud about to battle a rival. “The hell you will. Not without a fight. I am loyal to what is right, not to a white man’s government. And you have no authority to arrest me.”
“I’m not arresting you. I’m detaining you. I’ll have your weapons now. We have no time for foolishness.”
I stood there defiantly, my every muscle wound tighter than a steel spring. I shook my head. “No, sir, you will not have my weapons.”
“Then we’ll have to take them from you by force.”
Kit looked away from me toward the nearest mess of soldiers and I chose that moment to bolt like a rabbit toward All Horse. I sprinted with every morsel of energy I had. Kit began to shout orders to the astonished men to stop me. All Horse saw me coming and threw his head up in alarm, but did not pull against the stake rope. I drew my knife as I ran and made one slash at the rope about eight feet from the leather U.S. Army halter some soldier had put on All Horse. With my next bound I was on Tu Hud’s back and we instantly thundered north toward the Canadian breaks. At one leap we were at full gallop, using all the Comanche horse-and-rider skills we had learned together through days and days of training.
“Get him!” Kit was screaming. “Get that man!”
A soldier angled in to my right to grab my leg, but I nudged All Horse in the right flank and he darted away so quickly that the solder fell flat on his face as he made his dive and grabbed thin air. Another couple of soldiers rushed for my halter, bravely stepping in front of the galloping steed. I grabbed mane, tucked my legs under the curve of my mount’s ribs, and made a kissing sound that was All Horse’s command to jump. He slowed his gallop just enough to gather himself and made an enormous leap right over the heads of the two stunned soldiers, who fell back in fear of the hooves that flew inches from their faces.
The silence of the leap ended with the drum of hooves falling heavily on the desert, and I knew we could make our escape if we could just get by the sentinels. The arms were stacked and I had made my break so quickly that no one had had a chance to grab a rifle and take aim. I looked over my shoulder and saw Kit Carson sprinting toward me, shouting something I could not make out over the rumble of hooves and All Horse’s snorting for air. But the men nearer to me began to pass the shouted order out to the sentinels, each man in sequence cupping his hands around his mouth to yell at the next. Finally the order came to the men nearest to me and even though I raced ever farther away from them, I heard one shout in a high, boyish voice:
“Shoot the horse! Shoot the horse!”
No! Not Tu Hud! Not All Horse! No, please, God, no …
A sentinel rose from a rock he had been sitting on not thirty paces away. I had failed to see him sitting with his back turned to a cholla cactus, which had concealed him. He heard the order and began to shoulder his rifle. He looked young, tired, and scared. I angled away, toward the head of a draw I hoped would conceal
me if I could reach it. Over my shoulder, I glared at him and pointed, saying, “No, by God! Do not shoot my—”
The white smoke spewed from the muzzle and Tu Hud squealed in frightful agony. He was all horse to the end, trying for the draw, but his knees buckled and he fell hard on his nose, spilling me over his head. Dirt hit me in the face and broke my nose, but all I could hear were the horrible sounds of All Horse grunting and thrashing on the ground in pain. I sprang to my feet and turned in panic to see him cough a spray of blood into the air. I ran to him, but his eyes rolled and he could only beat his head against the ground. My teeth gritted and my eyes filled with tears as I drew my revolver. I walked around him as he thrashed piteously on the ground. I aimed instinctively, waiting until the great head rested for a moment on the dirt. I shot Tu Hud behind the ear, ending his pain.
The sentinel was reloading, looking fearfully at me as I walked away from the carcass of as fine a horse as a man would ever care to straddle. My revolver remained in my hand and blood from my broken nose ran down my face. My thumb clicked the hammer back as more soldiers came sprinting toward me on foot. Behind them, some cavalrymen had mounted and were coming to surround me. Kit was running behind the first row of soldiers and I recognized some friends—Toribio, Blue Wiggins, and Luther Sheffield—coming to keep me from being killed.
“Drop it, Kid!” Colonel Carson was shouting. “Drop the gun!” Soldiers came and made a half-circle around me, their rifles shouldered and aimed in front of wild eyes. My revolver still pointed downward. One upward flick of the barrel would create an instant firing squad. My anger was so intense that I almost did not care. I shook with rage. My ire blasted blood from my nostrils. I have been known to go berserk in battle—like the legendary Viking warriors who gave rise to the word—the berserkers who would fight as if possessed by demons and kill and maim with unnatural strength, scarcely to remember their deeds later. I was on the verge of going berserk right there and then and it scared the hell out of me, on top of the wrath that fueled it.
