The Sundown Man

by Jory Sherman

  The land turned gently rolling and we saw furrows lined with rocks and brush, devoid of trees. I looked atop every butte and majestic mesa, wondering if I would see an Indian scout, but there was only the sweep and sprawl of a land basking in the sun like some sleepy landscape a painter might put to canvas from a palette rich with burnt umber, cerulean, cobalt blue, white, brown, and black.

  We stopped at noon, when the sun was straight up overhead, so Ma could make us lunch. She parked our wagon in the shadowy lee of a small bluff, so we had shade. She shooed off a rattlesnake before she laid out the tablecloth. You would have thought she was swatting at a pesky fly. But that was our mother. She wasn’t afraid of anything. And when she could, she let critters be, saying they had as much right to life as we did. But we all knew that if any critter went to bite her, she would not shrink from exterminating it from the face of the earth. She had a kind of inner balance that I envied. Pa called it common sense. I called it uncommon sense.

  Kate helped set out the foodstuffs, while Pa made himself scarce with his rifle, saying he might get us some fresh meat for supper. Kate and I tried to hide our snickers. Ma gave us dirty looks. I combed through my books and got out Homer’s Odyssey, a book I never tired of reading. It seemed to me that we were on a journey like Odysseus, into a strange world where nothing was familiar. The prairie was our sea, and the gods were watching.

  I leaned up against the rock wall of the bluff. The stone was cool on my back, a blessing in the heat of that day. I opened my book and started reading the poet Homer’s words. They transported me away from that place and all others, into his world of peril and adventure. I lost track of time, and failed to hear the pounding of my father’s foot-steps as he ran back to the wagon from wherever he had been.

  I heard Kate scream. And then Ma called out to me, and my pa yelled something I couldn’t understand.

  “Be quiet,” Pa said to all of us. “We’re not in any danger.”

  “But those are wild Indians,” Ma said.

  I got up, still holding Homer in my hand, and ran over to where my father and mother stood holding Kate between them.

  “They’re hideous,” Ma said as the painted warriors rode up.

  “That’s war paint,” Pa said. “But we’re not at war with them. Whoever they are.”

  The Indians started yelling and brandishing their weapons, old Army rifles and lances. They surrounded us, and one of them stepped his pony up close to all of us and looked down at us. He spoke in a guttural, halting tongue, and made sign with his hands. He pointed to his head and made a circular motion with his index finger. He then held his empty arms up as if he were carrying a rifle and pulling the trigger with his right index finger.

  “What’s he saying?” Pa asked me.

  “I think he’s asking if we shot those two Indian boys and scalped them.”

  “No, no,” Pa said, and shook his head.

  Ma held Kate tight to her. I looked up and saw that her face was drawn, her eyes bright. But she was not afraid. Kate was afraid.

  The leader spoke some words to the other braves. Some dismounted and held rifles on us, while three others went to our wagon. One crawled inside; another climbed up into the seat and bent over, searching for something with his fingers. The last crawled under the wagon on his back and looked underneath.

  “What are they doing?” Ma asked.

  “They’re searching our wagon for something,” Pa said.

  “Well, they won’t find anything,” Ma said. She drew herself up tall and glared at the Indians surrounding us. She had a defiant look on her face, while my insides were squirming as if they were swarming with oily red worms. Kate shook as if she had the ague and her lips were quivering in fear.

  There was a cry from inside the wagon. None of the Indians around us moved, but we prisoners looked over to the wagon. So did the leader, who still sat his pony, his face scrawled with paint, red, white, and black. His dark brown eyes flashed with what looked to me like both a warning and a look of satisfaction.

  “Hunh,” the leader grunted as the Indian in the wagon scrambled out, holding something in his hand. Something that danced as he ran over to the man on horseback. Something that shimmered and shimmied, flashed silver streaks on the dangling black hair of the scalps in his hand. Two scalps.

  The Indian handed the scalps up to his leader and spat out some words that sounded as if they were hacked up from an afflicted throat. The leader grunted as he held up the two scalps and looked at them.

  Ma gasped.

  Pa swallowed. I could see his Adam’s apple move up and down as if he had a chicken bone in his throat.

  Then the Indian looked straight at Pa and said two English words.

  “You kill.”

  Pa shook his head. So did I.

  “Two boy,” the leader said, and he held up two fingers. “Shoot dead.”

  “No, that was Cassius Hogg who did that.” Pa pointed back in the direction we had come. “That bastard must have planted those scalps in our wagon.”

  I could see that the Indian didn’t understand what Pa was trying to tell him. So I spoke up.

  “The wagon boss shot those two Indian boys,” I said. I made what sign I knew, swelling out my chest to imitate Hogg’s size and bulk, holding an imaginary rifle and pulling an imaginary trigger. I made the sign of Hogg cutting my own scalp and pointed back to where Pa had pointed.

  The leader spoke to the men in front of us. I didn’t know what he said, but one of them laid his rifle down on the ground and drew a hatchet from his belt. Then he walked up to my father and struck him with the hatchet, splitting his head and face. My father’s head spurted blood and he dropped like a sack of potatoes. My mother screamed and started to bend down to help my father. The Indian brought his hatchet down as she bent her head. The blade severed her spine and she stiffened. He hacked again, very hard, and separated her head from her body. It rolled away, Ma’s mouth still working, but no sound coming out, her eyes glazing over with the frosty mist of death. Kate screamed a high-pitched sob of hysterical proportions that sent a shivering chill down my spine.

  I heard my father gurgle and then his body went limp. There was a pool of blood around his head that soaked into the ground but left a crimson pool that quickly attracted flies.

  The Indian with the hatchet stood up and looked me in the eyes without showing any visible emotion. I felt my stomach swirl with bile and knew I was going to be sick in a minute. The horror of the previous several seconds had me in its grip and I felt rooted to the ground, lifeless, while still barely breathing. Kate crumpled in a heap next to our mother. She was sobbing with uncontrollable grief, and I felt an invisible hand squeezing my heart. I dropped the book in my hand. It just fell out as my grip on it relaxed. It made a clattering sound as it landed on its spine and the pages rattled with a gust of breeze. The Indian on horseback, who seemed to be some kind of chief, looked down at it and his eyes glinted, even in the shadow of the towering bluff behind me.

  The leader barked another guttural order to his braves, and three of them moved toward me. I stepped over to Kate and pulled her up, clasped her in my arms. I knew I couldn’t protect her, but I didn’t want her to die alone. She was still crying, and I felt her trembling body pressing against mine. I tightened my arms around her. The swirling sickness in my belly evaporated and turned to iron. I glared up at the leader.

  Just before the painted warriors reached us, I took a deep breath and turned coward. I closed my eyes so that I would not see my death coming. I heard the whispers of their moccasins as they came for us. I waited in the darkness of my mind for certain, violent death.

  Three

  Rough hands grabbed me, and I felt Kate being snatched away from me.

  I opened my eyes.

  The Indians jerked us roughly over to the wagon. One of them carried the book I was reading with him, and he shoved it into my hands. I looked up at the leader, and he had a strange look on his face.

  “You
bring talking paper,” he said in English. I heard a shuffling inside the wagon, and a brave emerged carrying my other books and an empty grain sack. He put the books inside the sack and handed it to me in a triumphant gesture. Two men held Kate’s arms so that she could not run away, but none of them laid a hand on me after they gave me the sack of books.

  I stood there as the braves swarmed over our parents with drawn knives and hatchets. They castrated my father and cut off his penis, the same way that Hogg had mutilated those two Indian boys. They took his scalp and the scalp of our mother. They cut away her private parts, but I couldn’t look. I turned away when they cut away her drawers after hiking her dress up to her belly. It was a sickening sight, one that I will never forget.

  The last thing the Indians did to my parents made me sick to my stomach and I doubled over and heaved my breakfast. Two of the Indians picked up clumps of grass and dirt and stuffed them into our parents’ mouths, chanting some unintelligible gibberish as they did so. I came up for air and noticed that Kate’s eyes were closed so tight, her eyelids were the color of pale alabaster. I started to say something to her, and just got her name out of my mouth when one of the braves backhanded me across the mouth so hard I tasted the salt in my blood.

  I was nearly numb after that. The leader signed for us to get on our two horses, Kate and I. I had the bag of books with me, which, for some reason, the leader considered important. While we were mounted and waiting, the other Indians ransacked the wagon, stuffing food and other items into flour and gunnysacks. Some of the Indians peed on the bodies of our folks during all this pillaging. I heard the plunk plunk plunk of my mother’s piano, and then something smashed into the keys, producing one last discordant chord. And then silence as the last of the thieving Indians emerged from the wagon and carried their ill-gotten loot to their ponies, which they mounted so expertly, I marveled at their litheness and agility.

  The leader of the Indians made sign with his hands and we all followed him. There were Indians in front of Kate and me, and some behind and on both sides. We would not escape if these painted copper-skinned men had anything to say about it. Which, of course, they did.

  We rode a long way toward the mountains, closer now, but still a long way off. There was lots of buffalo sign, hoof marks, snubbed grass, and cow dung. Finally, we came to a stream that meandered across the prairie. There were cottonwoods growing along its course. We were so close I could smell the bark and the must of their leaves, and now could see unshod pony hoof marks in the soft dirt alongside the creek.

  Much to my surprise, we did not go to the mountains that day. Instead, the land sloped beneath us and we came upon a small lake, perhaps ten acres in size, where a dozen teepees glistened white in the sun. Silver ripples gleamed in the waters of the lake. There was the smell of drying meat and fish wafting our way on the afternoon air.

  A rider on the ridge above the camp raised his arm and waved a spear toward us. One of the Indians in our party shook his spear, and the people along the shore and in the teepees streamed toward us, men, women, children. They lifted a joyous shout when the leader of our small caravan held up the scalps of my parents. My stomach turned.

  The name of the leader, I learned, was One Dog, Heth Casey in his native tongue. The Indians were of the Arapaho tribe. Kate and I were not beaten, but she was given to a family, while I was taken to One Dog’s lodge, where I was stripped of my clothing and provided with only a breechclout made of deer hide and a pair of unbeaded moccasins. When next Kate made an appearance, that night by the fire when the warriors danced and bragged about their victory and our capture and told of the death of the two young boys, she was wearing a deerskin dress, also unbeaded, and moccasins similar to mine. The women keened and their tongues made trilling sounds over the reenactment of the murder of the two boys, while Kate and I were subjected to many hostile stares from the children and the women. The men seemed to ignore us. Kate looked frightened, and I knew she was, for she cringed between two girls about her own age and seemed to shrink back away from the dancing fire.

  Kate was lodged with a family who treated her as a slave. She was made to do the washing and help with the cooking, hunt for firewood and buffalo chips. She was taught how to skin an antelope and do beadwork, make dresses out of elk skin and deerskin, moccasins, breech-clouts, leggings, and such. The woman who ordered her about was called Biikosiis, or Moon Woman.

  Yes, I was learning the spoken language of the Arapaho, who called themselves Inuna-Ina, which I learned meant merely “our people.” But I soon realized why One Dog wanted me in his lodge and why he had made me bring my books. He wanted to learn how to decipher and write English words.

  “Teach talking paper to One Dog,” he told me the next morning. I soon learned that he spoke, besides some English, fairly fluent French, of which I had only a smattering, taught me by my mother, who told me that it was a dignified language, spoken all over the world.

  I taught One Dog how to write, and later, to read. He was not dim-witted, but the symbols of the alphabet were difficult for him to grasp. When I realized this, I devised a way to relate the letters to him that formed the words.

  I started with the word “tree.” I drew a tree on my tablet, a crude tree at that. As he watched, I added leaves and fruit. He understood this. Then I drew a “T” and showed him how it related to the tree I had drawn. I made a small “r” and said that was like one of the branches on a tree. The two “e” letters, I showed him, were like the fruit. One Dog responded with glee when he was able to write the letters himself and say the word “tree.” I showed him the “I” explaining that it represented a man, tall and straight.

  We began to put simple sentences together, starting with “I am.” I made the letter “A” as a capital letter and explained it as a teepee when it was standing as a lodge. Then I showed him the small letter “a,” telling him that this was the teepee when it was balled up and ready to load on a travois. I explained to him what “I am” meant, and told him the “m” was a symbol of his shoulders. I made him see pictures in his mind, and he seemed never to tire of learning new letters and new words. And even I became fascinated with the process, finding new magic and mystery in the words, in language.

  I taught him to write his name in English. I also showed him numerals and told him our counting system was based on the number 10. This was difficult. He did understand how to read and write the word “dog” very easily, however, when I told him the “d” was a dog sitting down with its paws held up. I demonstrated a sitting dog with my own body. The “o,” I explained, was how the dog looked when it was lying down with only its butt showing. And the “g” was its curly tail. With the word “one” I had to be more creative, and told him the “o” was the circle of life, which he had explained to me one day when he first saw the “o.” The “n” was a horse’s track, signifying that the circle was connected to the horse. And the “e” was the “fruit” the horse left behind, what we called “horse apples,” and which One Dog understood perfectly. Teaching him to read and write was not difficult, but just thinking up ways to come up with symbols that he could relate to was taxing, and I was worn out every night just from the effort of using hand signs and coming up with solutions One Dog could understand. In this way, however, I began to learn his language while he was learning mine.

  But all the time I was teaching One Dog, I was planning on my escape, knowing how difficult it would be for me and Kate to escape the watchful eyes of the tribe. I learned too that one of the boys who had been killed was One Dog’s only son, and he told me his wife had been killed by Utes, somewhere up in the Medicine Bow Mountains, which he told me were far away from where we now were. He drew me a crude map in the dirt, to show me where the mountain range lay from our camp by the small lake.

  Other Arapaho bands joined us, and the teepees along the shore became more numerous. One Dog said they would all soon leave to hunt buffalo, but the added numbers gave me the chance to plan my escape. I began to stea
l small items that I would need to survive. I realized that if they were all kept in one place, there was a likelihood that one of the Arapaho would discover my cache. So I selected several hiding places, scattered all over, under rocks, buried carefully in the ground, in places where children, women, and braves seldom walked. I left a chunk of flint in one place, striking steel in another. I filched rifle balls and powder, small amounts that I hid in various places.

  I saw little of Kate, who was kept busy, but one day we had a chance to talk for a few minutes when Moon Woman came by to see One Dog. As the two Arapaho were talking together, I whispered to Kate.

  “We’re going to escape, Kate, you and me. Just give me time.”

  “They will kill us if we try and do that.”

  “A day will come when our chances are good. Can you make extra clothes for us that I can hide somewhere?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

  “Try, will you?”

  “I’ll try,” she said, and then we had to stop talking.

  The Arapaho made preparations for the buffalo hunt and I learned that afterward, they would all journey to a place where they would hold their annual Sun Dance, a sacred ceremony that I knew nothing about.

  One morning, the camp emptied of men as they all rode off to the hunt. The women and children began to strike the teepees. They loaded all their belongings onto travois, using poles they had cut from wood I never saw long before Kate and I had been captured. We left the lake and followed the pony tracks.

  All of the things I had stolen and hidden had to be left behind, but I knew I could find the place again when the time came for me to grab Kate and make my escape. I would have to keep my wits about me and remember every stretch of that journey to the buffalo hunt, not an easy task in such vastness as I saw along the way.