by Tim Bryant
My Spanish wasn’t fluent, but I knew what gordo and gorda meant. Even though I was the youngest kid, I wasn’t a mama’s boy. There was a younger woman two doors down on Concho that had taken me in, given me her books and taught me to read. Still, mama was blood, and, especially with Ira Lee being gone, there was a bond. I took his words—or that specific word, anyway—personally.
I had a little four-shot Remington pepperbox pistol that the neighbor lady had given me for protection. I pulled it from my waistband and stuck it right between Gallo’s eyes. He didn’t even blink.
“Johnny, mi amigo, what are you doing?”
I felt like crying, and I wanted to kill him before he saw.
“You don’t talk like that about my mother,” I said.
He pushed the barrel of the gun away from his face like he was shooing a fly.
“I don’t mean no trouble now, Johnny,” he said. “You understand. Give me about an hour with that sweet mama of yours, I think everything will work out, muy bueno.”
I understood all too well. The second time I brought that pepperbox up, I wasn’t trying to make any lasting impression. I pulled the trigger once and hit Gallo square in the chest. It was enough to startle him, but he didn’t go down. I pulled my aim up and shot again. The second one caught him right under the chin, and it must have lodged somewhere in his brainpan because I never saw it come out anywhere. I fired one final shot right between his eyes as he lay in the dirt looking up at the stars and seeing me in between. I watched as the lights turned off inside of him. I remember them all glowing brighter that night for me, like my eyes couldn’t take it all in.
I was surprised what happened in the aftermath of that first killing: nothing. Nada. I never heard anything about it, never heard Gallo’s name mentioned again. It took me a few weeks to gather the nerve to walk back through that alley, and, when I did, it was as if nothing had ever happened. It had all been cleaned up and washed away. I went by twice, thinking maybe I had gone down the wrong alley. I even began to wonder if I had dreamed the whole thing. Maybe Gallo wasn’t even real. I asked people if they remembered seeing him around. They shook their heads and said no. People did go missing around the District like that though. Like Ira Lee did, and later I did too. Maybe someone remembered seeing me hanging around the cribs, in the bars and gambling halls, outside the Army barracks. But, other than mama and the lady with the books and one other girl named Ginny Hay, who will come into the story later, I suspect not.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Long Gun and I finally got our chance to get out of the kitchen. Hanley put us both on the horse escort taking the Lusks and two other families the seventy miles from Fort Griffin to Buffalo Gap. It wasn’t a long trek. A couple days there, a couple more back. Hanley undoubtedly had multiple reasons for changing our orders. He was getting tired of Long Gun asking to be given the assignment. He may have been equally tired of both of us and looking for a few days’ respite. More than that, though, he wanted to punish us.
Lieutenant Lemuel Yost was in charge of the trip to Buffalo Gap, and he was less than thrilled to find out two tenderfoots were taking positions from more experienced soldiers.
“Granville, surely you’ll rethink this,” he said. “We’re going straight into Comanche country. I need my best men. Not two unproven boys.”
We had been called into the front office, which was a one-room stone building with two big windows that looked like they’d been created by shooting cannonballs through the walls. Inside, Lieutenants Hanley and Yost were doing their best to ignore our presence.
“The Indian knows Comanche, and he’s handy with a rifle,” Hanley said.
Yost looked unconvinced.
“I know Comanche,” he said.
Neither could pull rank over the other, but Hanley had the comportment of an older brother to the younger looking Yost. This may have been because he had a full beard which lent him a more dignified look. It may have only been because we were better acquainted with him.
“The Indian has the added bonus of looking like an Indian,” Hanley said.
Yost stopped and looked over at us, measuring Hanley’s words against the shadow of a man standing next to me against the wall.
“And does he speak English as well?”
I looked at Long Gun, expecting him to answer. He looked at Hanley, unsure whether he was clear to speak or not.
“Well, of course, he can speak English,” Hanley said.
“What is your name, boy?” Lieutenant Yost said.
We had been issued wool coats and hats—secondhand uniforms that were too hot to wear except when instructed, as we had been before the meeting with Yost. The uniforms made him look more like me and me look more like a Yankee. Long Gun had also trimmed his hair with a machete since our arrival. In the unlit room, I’m not sure Yost knew for certain who was who.
“The short version of my Apache name is Dohoson Tay-yah. I am called Long Gun.”
My first reaction was to think he was fooling around. I had never heard him mention an Apache name. Then again, it seemed only natural he should have one. Yost didn’t seem impressed. He walked right up to Long Gun who managed to avoid looking him in the eye. I wasn’t as successful.
“And what’s your Apache name?” he said to me.
I might have momentarily considered a better answer if I could have slowed things down a bit. I would live and learn to regret hasty decisions. This was one of them.
“Liquor Man,” I said.
Hanley thought it was pretty funny. Yost didn’t seem to agree.
“Long Gun and Liquor Man,” he said. “You boys have some kind of minstrel show or something?”
Long Gun was keen to get onto Lieutenant Yost’s escort team, so he tried to steer the conversation back toward that end.
“I’m a Kiowa Apache Indian guide.”
By that point, I knew the script.
“He can pick off a rabbit at a quarter mile,” I said.
You could see the lieutenant’s gears turning, and it seemed to tax his brain enough that he had to shut his eyes to see what he was looking at. We stood there like school children awaiting our fates, until finally Yost turned to his friend.
“I can’t take both of these boys, Granville. We’re dealing with rabbits that shoot back out there, with rifles and arrows and God knows what.”
Hanley was quick to concede.
“Pick one of them. I’ll put the other on mill duty.”
I wasn’t looking forward to them separating us up. I was used to being alone—that didn’t bother me none—but I knew we put up a stronger defense against the lieutenants as well as the older soldiers when there were two of us.
“Give me Dohoson,” Yost said.
Dohoson sounded more like Wilkie John than it did Long Gun, so, for a minute, I wasn’t sure which of us had received the call. I knew I wasn’t much of a rabbit hunter, and I only knew the few words of Cherokee, but it still stung that I wasn’t chosen. I was already itching to get out of Fort Griffin. What I was really itching for was a little more time with Greer Lusk. If I could connive my way into the Buffalo Gap trip, I would be guaranteed a couple more, and they wouldn’t be under the nose of Hanley.
“Okay,” Hanley said. “I’m giving you the Liquor Man there along with him. You complain, I’ll pull one of your boys and give you the whole minstrel show.”
As it turned out, me and Long Gun both stayed in the same barracks as before, and nothing changed for another day or so. One night after dinner, two of the soldiers brought out little guitars and serenaded us with “The Bonny Blue Flag” and “Aura Lee” and “The Ship That Never Returned.” It was one of those nights where the stars seem to shine a little brighter. I was sitting between one of the guitar players, a blond guy from Tennessee, and Jacobo, and looking straight across a crackling fire at Greer, hoping her daddy didn’t think it was him I was staring down.
Later, I walked down to Mill Creek to do a little business, and when I was coming
back, I saw that Bricky was up and singing something about the girl of his soul being in tears or something. With his accent, it was hard to prove that it was English. What wasn’t so hard was to see that Greer was no longer in the light of the fire. I decide to make a wide path around the circle and head back to the barracks. Maybe Greer would be somewhere in the vicinity, and I could talk to her.
I walked along practicing what I would say if I ran into her.
“It’s a beautiful night, and you make it more so.”
“I love the way your accent plays with words.”
“Come with me to Amarillo.”
I hadn’t quite worked that last one out yet. I’d pretty much decided I was leaving Buffalo Gap for Amarillo to join up with Ira Lee’s cattle drive. I knew there was no room on a cattle drive for Greer Lusk, but if I asked her, and if she said yes, I also knew I was quite inclined to give up my career as a drover and become a farmer or a blacksmith or whatever was needed in Amarillo.
I was contemplating this possible change of direction when I turned the corner behind the Lieutenant’s office and ran straight into Greer herself, coming back across the campground in the direction of the river.
“Oh, Wilkie John,” she said.
She must have seen me jump straight up, scaring me like she did, but she only smiled. I was in love at that instant, mostly because I loved the way my name sounded rolling off her tongue.
“Wilkie John,” said just right. No one could have said it any righter. Part of my shock, other than running into her in the half dark in a place I hadn’t expected, was for the fact that she actually remembered my name.
“You gave me a start, Greer Lusk,” I said. “You shouldn’t jump out of the dark at people like that.”
We walked down to Mill Creek again, which became slightly uncomfortable when she led right up to the very spot where I had pissed only minutes earlier. Had she been spying on me?
“Is it true, what you said about Buffalo Gap being no place for a girl?” she said.
It was true that I had said it, though I had no idea if the statement was true. I had never been there. I only knew what I’d heard. That it was a stopover for people traveling to and from Mexico. That everybody was doing either one or the other. No one stayed in Buffalo Gap, except for maybe a day or two to rest horses.
“It’s no place for anybody,” I said. “That is, unless maybe you’re an Indian.”
In the background, I could hear Bricky launch into another song. Its melody line twisted and turned like a snake, and part of me wanted to shut up and admire the way he handled it.
“I’m planning on going to Amarillo,” I said. “I expect you would love Amarillo.”
I knew no more about that city than I did Buffalo Gap, but I was naturally optimistic, at least most of the time. She stepped closer to me. Close enough that I could see her pale freckles in the starlight. She touched her finger to her lip.
“Did you mean what you said the other day, about me traveling along?”
I never felt my heart beat inside my chest like I did at that moment. Not before, and not after. Not when I kissed a girl, not when I killed a man. I wanted us to go get Roman and leave then and there. My Army career was finished.
CHAPTER TWELVE
“Guess that explains why you’d find refuge in a place like The Black Elephant.”
I didn’t like the way Kitch Howard looked at me like some kind of puzzle he’d just solved. I knew what he was getting at. It was something I had mulled over myself on the first day or two in Fort Worth. I remembered a preacher passing through Fort Griffin talking about how a dog would return to his own vomit. I didn’t care to think of Madam Pearlie’s fine establishment as dog vomit, but, truth is, I don’t suppose the dog thought of his vomit as dog vomit either. If he did, would he return so predictably?
“Madam Pearlie is good to me,” I said.
Not the most enlightened utterance. Pearlie was the one who found Kitch and talked him into taking my case. If he’d thought she was no good, he wouldn’t have been standing there. Come to think of it, he had never said anything equating her place with dog vomit either. Maybe I was being too hard on him.
“Jack is going to make you look like the biggest scoundrel that ever hit town,” Kitch said. “For most of the white folks around here, all he has to show is that you associate with negroes. As a negro myself, I won’t do you any favors, standing up there next to you.”
I mentioned the fact that Gentleman Jack was also of that persuasion.
“And Jack will swear he frequents your company as well, if it helps to achieve his goal.”
His tongue lolled out of his mouth and he made the sign of being hanged by a rope. I got the point. He looked at Madam Pearlie, then at me.
“You know any damn white people, kid?”
I thought for a minute.
“Most everyone I know is dead,” I said.
I thought he was going to have a spell. Sunny, of all people, came to the rescue.
“I think I know somebody.”
We looked at her as if she’d just materialized before us.
Fort Worth was, by and large, a Confederate town, and it had paid the price for it. By 1882, things were starting to turn around, but it had been bleak. Slaves had been freed and moved along, and most white folks had too. The only businesses that hadn’t gone under were the ones that appealed to the basest of desires—saloons, gambling houses, brothels. The only kinds of people to stick it out were the type you’d find there. Hell’s Half Acre had been born, and it received everyone with open arms when they started coming back.
Still, the whites and the coloreds mostly kept to their own, except for a few who dared step across the lines into the other side’s brothels.
“Why does that not surprise me?” Kitch said.
I knew what he was getting at. It was often the upper crust whites—doctors and lawyers and even lawmen—who could be found slipping down the back stairs and out of the Black Elephant. It was those lawmen, for the most part, that guaranteed that the saloon remained open for business. The girls kept quiet, and so did they.
“There’s a man named Elijah Caliber,” Sunny said.
Madam Pearlie sounded like she’d sat on a spur, she let out such a raucous sound. It took a moment or two to even identify it as laughter. I wasn’t sure what the joke was, but I wasn’t in the mood for it.
“Good lord but that man can talk,” Pearlie said.
Kitch looked at me as if to ask if this was a good idea. I knew nothing about Elijah Caliber, but I was open to learning.
“Well, it’s Reverend Elijah Caliber, to be specific,” Pearlie said. “He was with the Methodist Church until they kicked him out for spending tithe money over at the White Elephant. He left town for a spell. Next thing you know, he’s back at the Baptist Church.”
“And he spends his time and money here now,” Sunny said.
When the late High Sheriff of Hell’s Half Acre had first come snooping around, trying to pass new laws to put places like the Black Elephant Saloon out of business, Madam Pearlie impressed upon Reverend Caliber to go into court and argue the saloon’s case. His verbiage was of such a high degree that it was said he could even talk a little bit of the devil out of a saint. Of course, he had refused to take up the saloon’s cause on account it would ruin his career with the Baptists too. But he’d promised Pearlie he would make it up some other time. It seemed his chance to repent had arrived.
“He’s white?” Kitch said.
Sunny nodded.
“He’s a preacher?”
Sunny and Pearlie both nodded.
“And you think he’ll do it?”
This time, even I nodded, and I had no idea what I was talking about.
“Madam Pearlie, send out for this man, and tell him to come at once,” Kitch Howard said. “If he will agree to do this, I will walk down the aisle of the Baptist Church my own self and drop a most generous offering into the plate.”
I wa
s so excited about the prospect, I almost forgot what was on the line.
“And tell him, if he can out-talk Jack Delaney and save the neck of our young Wilkie John here,” he added, “I’ll double the reward.”
“Hallelujah!” I shouted.
I was ready to put my life into the hands of a preacher and trust that he would save me. Surely, Sunny had just delivered a small miracle.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Greer Lusk’s mistake was in standing up to Bricky. At eighteen, she considered herself an adult. Ready to get on with a life of her choosing. Bricky wasn’t so easily swayed.
I told her I’d been selected by Hanley, against all odds, to go with the group to Buffalo Gap. It had to be a sign that our plans were unfolding according to fate. We would travel to Buffalo Gap, and then, before her family left for the Mexican border, we would head north for Amarillo where we would be married and start a whole new life together.
“I’ll go on a cattle drive with Ira Lee, just to get something started,” I said. “We’ll use the money to open a store. Maybe even a bank. There’s always money in money.”
Greer wondered if she should talk to Bricky.
“He might be willing to help us get started,” she said. “He has two daughters, Arabel and myself. I’m sure he would be relieved to get rid of one of us.”
Arabel, at thirteen, was the youngest of the three Lusk children, so it seemed logical Greer would be the one. Still, I wasn’t so sure and thought she should wait at least until we made Buffalo Gap before bringing up the subject. She left on the final night in the fort with plans to see me at sunrise. I had, by then, met with Yost’s men, all five of them, and been given my orders. As much as they doubted my abilities, they admired Roman. It was decided we were to ride along behind the families and keep check on anyone following our trail. I would ride alongside Yost himself, which gave me both some relief and some trepidation. I knew he preferred Long Gun.
I tossed in my bunk that night, unable to stop my mind from thinking of Amarillo, of Ira Lee, of Cherokee Indians lying in wait along the hard trail to Buffalo Gap. Mostly of Greer Lusk. I finally fell asleep long after a restless silence fell over the fort and awoke just a few hours later. I looked over to see Long Gun’s bed empty. Thinking he’d gone out to take a piss, I hurriedly dressed and saddled Roman and then stepped out into the night. I was greeted by a stiff wind and widely scattered raindrops coming from the north.
