by Win Blevins
A hell for them, Smith thought. A hell of the past, a hell of the present.
A hell for us.
Smith was startled when Sings Wolf woke him out of a deep sleep around midnight. After days of hard pushing, Smith needed to sleep, and he was surprised that Sings Wolf didn’t. “I’m leading a pony raid,” said the old man, “and I would like you to go.”
Smith nodded, ready to listen. He knew how it was done. One man felt called to go on a pony raid. It was a weighty responsibility. That man made medicine and listened to what his medicine said—how it should be done, where, in what way it could succeed, and what might cause it to fail. Then he chose companions, and in choosing took responsibility for them. He was saying that his medicine promised success—that the party would get horses and everyone would come back alive. If his medicine failed, he would accept some responsibility for the dead man’s family.
The men chosen could accept or refuse. Acceptance indicated confidence in the leader’s medicine. Refusal simply indicated that their own medicine told them to stay home or do something else. Embracing the leader’s medicine meant embracing the way the raid was to be done.
Sings Wolf said he had heard of a big ranch with many horses to the northeast. They would steal the horses at dawn. The whites would respond slowly, but might follow. The raiders would return without shedding anyone’s blood, white man or red man. Nothing would be stolen but horses.
Smith listened to Sings Wolf’s revelations carefully. He needed to understand what to do. What he didn’t understand was why Sings Wolf was doing this. The old man seemed listless about it, unenthusiastic—he was a warrior now, but it seemed to mean nothing to him. After leading the one war charge, maybe Sings Wolf would have liked to become Calling Eagle again. Nevertheless, Smith would not have refused his grandfather.
Smith was glad when he saw Wooden Legs, a son of the old-man chief Little Wolf and a leader, join them. And Little Finger Nail, the painter and singer. He nodded at Raven, a man who’d spoken at councils for killing, but a longtime friend of Sings Wolf.
Then Smith saw Twist coming. He wanted to speak irately to his grandfather. He wanted to back out in anger. But he knew Sings Wolf had considered Smith’s feelings and had strong reasons for ignoring them. He couldn’t refuse to go.
Twist was smirking about the situation, damn him.
Why had Sings Wolf picked out Smith’s enemy? Why had Twist, known for his bloodthirstiness, accepted a raid that was to be bloodless?
Smith was awake now, and nettled. But it was not for him to challenge his grandfather’s medicine. He wished his eye wounds didn’t hurt, and itch.
Question marks, Nelly Burns had said—question marks around the brain. Got any questions about yourself, Smith?
It was no ordinary western-Kansas ranch house. No soddy, Smith saw in the predawn light, not even a log cabin. A house framed out of saw timber, and a big house. The saw timber the homesteaders usually had was the timber in their wagons. They trundled their wagons out from the nearest railway stop full of household goods, to the spot they claimed as home.
Daring imaginations, these homesteaders had, to eyeball a vacant, dried-up stretch of prairie and imagine it as what they meant by home, a place fenced and irrigated and full of fat cattle and hay and growing kids and a vegetable garden and even flowers in what they called a yard. Smith had to admire them, in a way.
When they got to their spot, some place like this on a creek or with a good spring, they unloaded the household goods and stripped the wagons for saw timber to build a house. This house was substantial—this rancher must have hauled more saw timber out from Ogallala. What looked like another home stood across the driveway. Plus half a dozen outbuildings—sheds, barns for stock and feed—all of saw timber. A man of big dreams, this rancher. Smith bet his kids had homesteaded the adjacent sections. That was the way the smart ones did it.
Well, after today, these folks would have to tend their cattle on foot. The Cheyenne nation was about to requisition their horses.
Smith finished his face paint—red forehead, broad band of verdigris on the nose—and walked down behind the ridge to get his mount. A big bunch of white-man horses was in one jingle pasture, just waiting to be requisitioned.
There behind the ridge, before they started the raid, Sings Wolf reminded them again that no one was to be killed.
Twist said softly, and with a bitter smile, “Remember the Sappa River!”
The warriors were taken aback at this rudeness, this defiance.
Sings Wolf looked at Twist somberly. “No blood will be shed,” repeated Sings Wolf, “either ours or theirs.” It was not an order, but a statement of the right way to do things, the medicine way. It was powerful.
Smith thought his grandfather’s medicine must be convincing. Smith had seen the foul mood (the foul spirit, the Tsistsistas-Suhtaio would say, meaning something different) descend on Sings Wolf as they came down the Sappa River. He had seen Sings Wolf congratulate the young men who brought white scalps into camp. He could see murder in Sings Wolf’s eyes even now. It was not policy that stayed his grandfather’s hand—it could only be medicine.
So Sings Wolf and Twist started down the hill on foot. It was their job to make sure the horses were unguarded, or to take care of the guards. If Sings Wolf’s medicine was good, the whites would not be watching their horses. Then the two would cut the pasture fence and yell and wave their blankets and stampede the horses into open country. Twist had a prized pair of wire cutters for the purpose. Stolen, Smith assumed, and probably from a dead man.
It was the job of the others to bring Sings Wolf and Twist their mounts and get the stolen horses running back toward camp, fast. Smith and Sings Wolf would guard the back trail, to make sure no one followed the stolen horses too closely. An occasional rifle shot would be plenty to put the fear of ambush into the hearts of any followers.
The plan came apart, in a roundabout way, because a teenage girl had to pee.
That dawn was the dawn of a fine Sunday morning in early October of 1878 in western Kansas. Western Kansas was then much too sparsely settled for most ranchers and farmers to be able to go to church. But they did like to use Sundays for get-togethers. In this case Eric Sunvold had decided to organize a stockman’s association, a group to register brands, cut down on mavericking and rustling, get some control of predators and Indians, and advance the interest of cattle raisers against sodbusters. So he had invited neighboring cattlemen for miles around to his home for a big get-together on Saturday night, some talk, a vote on officers on Sunday morning, dinner, and a lot of long wagon rides home on Sunday afternoon.
Eric Sunvold was the man to do the organizing—he was a natural leader, prosperous, ambitious, and he had the room to accommodate a half-dozen neighbors and their families, the women and younger kids sleeping in the house and the men and older kids in the wagons and barns. He expected to be elected president of the new association.
He was a middle-aged man with a thick, drooping mustache, a roll of hard belly, and a huge, leonine head. He had three surviving children, and was fiercely proud of all of them. Max had built his own house right there on the place, and his wife Kate had a start on a family. Jacob lived at home but would start to work at the bank in Ogallala next month, learning the business. Alene was a pretty, vivacious thing, just fifteen years old.
Eric Sunvold didn’t know that his daughter Alene, at the moment of dawn when Sunvold got out of bed, was out by the creek making the beast with two backs with Benjamin Halstead. Ben was just seventeen, and a nearby rancher’s only son. He and Alene had discovered this intensely pleasurable activity last summer, without the permission of their parents. Alene was bold at finding opportunities to repeat it—this dawn meeting was the third she’d found since Ben arrived with his folks yesterday noon.
Even though Alene was a romantic, when she completed that vigorous act she felt an unromantic need. She had to pee. Now. Ordinarily, she would have deemed this time and place
fitting—she certainly had no secrets from her parents and brothers. But Ben was not family, not yet, and she felt shy. Besides, she’d better gather some eggs pretty quick and get into the kitchen to get breakfast started. So she wrapped the blankets she’d brought around her and headed toward the barnyard and the privy at a trot.
That’s when she saw Twist sneaking into the barn, and started screaming bloody murder.
Two days ago Twist had discovered coal oil. White people kept coal oil around their farms and ranches as a fuel. Twist had found some in a barn. Yellow Nose had shown him what it would do. Burn down the barn. And the house. And all the other outbuildings. The ranch people were already dead, so Twist and Yellow Nose took their time and made a thorough job of it. Ordinarily, it was hard to get a building started burning. You had to work at the fire steadily for a while. But with coal oil it was quick. And it looked so fine.
As they crept toward the jingle pasture, Twist told Sings Wolf he was going to create a little diversion with fire. Give the white folks something to think about. So much to think about they wouldn’t have time to worry about their horses.
“No,” Sings Wolf said simply.
Twist sneered at him, tossed the wire cutters onto the ground, and headed for the barn.
Sings Wolf berated himself for following Twist. He could have gone to the pasture alone, cut the fence, and turned the horses loose. He could have just gone back to his companions. He could have stuck to what he saw with his medicine foresight. But he didn’t, and he didn’t know why.
He wished he could get out from under the blackness that came on him this morning when he came to the Sappa River. Black memories, black thoughts. Bloody, murderous thoughts. Sings Wolf kept pushing them away, and they kept coming back, like something alien seeping into his mind, body, spirit. But it was not alien, he knew—it was the anger of a man at the killing of his relatives and friends here. It was natural, human. Yet he needed to set that anger aside.
He had seen this pony raid clearly, a glimpse of the future. In his foresight it was bloodless. It included no burning, either. But burning wasn’t killing, yet, was it?
The way he saw it had been simple. He saw small pictures of it happening—the approach, the stampede, the triumphant return to camp—in the commonplace way that he foresaw Lisette cooking dinner tonight, the way he remembered his veho son Mac, the way he imagined Smith saying good-bye to Elaine in Dodge City. It was clear and simple, as such glimpses usually were. It was medicine foresight.
Sings Wolf fell farther and farther behind Twist. Twist walked quickly, almost openly, making only brief use of obstacles and shadows. He was bold and sure of his medicine, that one. Also bullheaded and stupid as a buffalo.
Sings Wolf moved cautiously, staying hard to see. He crept into a position on a little bench above the yard full of buildings and lay down in the grass with his old flintlock rifle. He got into firing position. He could slow down the whites if they discovered Twist.
At that moment he saw what would happen. A white girl came from the creek wrapped in a blanket. Twenty steps behind her came a young man. Sings Wolf smiled to himself—the whites did not watch after the chastity of their young women carefully. The whites were coming openly into the barnyard, perhaps headed for the house.
Twist was easing around the barn toward the door. When he came around the corner, the three would see each other, right in the open.
Sings Wolf could do nothing. He willed Twist to stop, to peek cautiously around the corner of the barn, to see the girl and the boy following her. Sings Wolf knew his willing would do no good. Something inside him said, It is inevitable.
The girl started screaming.
Twist smiled to himself and said out loud, “It is a good day to die.”
He sprinted toward the girl, knife held low and ready. The boy was closer to her but not nearly as quick. It would be a great coup, to kill the woman in front of her man.
The girl screamed crazily, filling the air with the dung of her fear. Twist would cut off her scream and her throat with a single swipe. He felt fiercely happy.
Matthew Long swung the barrel of his shotgun just like he would follow a duck on the wing, catching up with the red nigger. Just when he was ready to cut loose, he saw Alene, too. At fifteen, Matthew was a poised and laconic youngster, hard to rattle, and a good fowler. He lowered the barrel toward the nigger’s legs and pulled the trigger. He knew he’d missed.
Alene went down and clutched at her throat with one hand. Blood ran down her arm.
Matthew ran for the Injun—the bastard was up. If only Matthew’s dad had bought him a side-by-side, he could have shot again. But the Injun was all tangled up with Ben Halstead anyway.
Matthew swung his shotgun by the stock. The muzzle bounced off the Indian’s shoulder. Bastard swung to face Matthew. The fool grinned like a madman. Out of the corner of his eye Matthew got a glimpse of Ben Halstead—his guts were hanging out. Matthew swung the shotgun again, roundhouse. On his follow-through he saw the Indian thrust forward, and knew he was about to die.
A rifle cracked, and the Injun went tumbling at Matthew’s feet.
Eric Sunvold stood on the back porch with his Winchester still held on the Injun. Matthew made a mental note to thank Mr. Sunvold later for saving his life. Meanwhile, he jumped on that goddamn Injun’s bloody back.
Another rifle shot sounded, with a different sound—Mr. Sunvold hollered out. Matthew rolled onto his side and held the Injun in front of him for cover. Peering over the Injun’s shoulder, Matthew saw black-powder smoke rising from the bench behind the yard. Black powder probably meant an Injun, and an old flintlocker or percussion-cap weapon. One shot. But just in case, Matthew would keep the Injun in front of him. Bastard stank. And he was about half-dead, from the feel of him. Matthew was getting blood all over him from the Injun’s back.
Matthew’s dad fired twice up toward the bench—Matthew knew the sound of that rifle. He was in the barn loft, a good position.
An Injun on the bench jumped up and ran left, out of the angle Dad had. Dad fired again, but the Injun didn’t go down. Matthew wondered if the skunk was alone. Must be, considering that one shot. That redskin would find out that a single-shot, black-powder weapon didn’t hold a candle to a Model 1873, center-fire, .44-caliber Winchester with a magazine that held fifteen cartridges. Much less six or eight or ten Winchesters.
That savage needed to catch up with the nineteenth century.
He would also discover that it didn’t pay to attack a ranch house with damn near forty white people in it, half a dozen of them men and another half-dozen young men like Matthew, fellas that wouldn’t be fooled with.
Damn savage.
Matthew’s Injun wriggled, and Matthew held the bastard tighter.
Now Sings Wolf had shed blood. His medicine was gone—he had abandoned it.
He lay behind the thin cover of a sagebrush, ramming a bullet into his old rifle and smiling an ironic smile at his own foolishness. In his mind he told the powers that he was only a human being, that he could not throttle his anger. And he acknowledged that he probably would die like a human being today.
He stretched out and hunted for white flesh with his sights. Twist was still down, still being held by the white boy. He must be alive. The middle-aged man Sings Wolf had shot was hidden behind the back porch and yelling out at people vigorously—he must not be shot bad. The girl and boy lay in the middle of the barnyard, the girl writhing and moaning. The man from the barn loft must be getting into a better position. So must the other two men who’d run out of the barn and darted back in.
Sings Wolf wondered how so many whites could be here, flying out like bees from a hive. He shrugged mentally. That was the way whites were. You couldn’t fight them because they were too many. The Human Beings had thought the buffalo beyond counting, but now the whites had killed the buffalo and the whites were beyond counting.
No matter. Though it was getting difficult for a Human Being to live well, it
was still possible to die well.
As long as Twist seemed to be alive, Sings Wolf would not leave him. He could have left the warrior. He owed no particular debt to the man who cast away Sings Wolf’s medicine like a triviality. But maybe it was the fault of the older men like Sings Wolf that the younger men disregarded medicine. Besides, staying felt like the Tightness of the day. Sings Wolf would surely die, and that was right, too.
He chuckled to himself. For this moment it was calm. Sings Wolf enjoyed the calm.
Suddenly four white men dashed out of the barn and around the corner, away from Sings Wolf’s line of fire. No sense wasting a bullet on a running target. Two of the men started working their way up the creek through the trees. No point shooting at them. If Sings Wolf let his rifle get unloaded, the whites were organized enough to rush him now. But the whites headed up the creek would get behind Sings Wolf, with a good angle on him.
For a moment Sings Wolf saw one man at the peak of the barn roof. The man didn’t have an ideal shot—he wasn’t above Sings Wolf—but it would be good enough.
So. It would not be long. Sings Wolf looked about at the white-man buildings and fences and cattle, and thought of the white-man rifles that now surrounded him. He pondered this place, this alien place, for a moment. Then he let anger sweep through his body, mind, and spirit, a flash flood of rage, violent, unstoppable, scourging him, reaming him out like dry, cracking gullies.
Then Sings Wolf began to sing. He lifted to the dawn his death song, a mournful and melismatic farewell to this world, a preparation for his journey on the starry path through the skies:
Nothing lives long—
Except the rocks.
Smith had the uncanny sensation that his fingers had suddenly turned freezing. Then, and only then, did he realize that he was hearing his grandfather sing his death song.
