The Sundown Man

by Jory Sherman

  “Enough white man talk,” One Dog said, interrupting.

  I wanted to talk more with these men, but One Dog scowled at me and the two Frenchmen deferred to his authority.

  Pierre and Jacques stayed the night, then left early the next morning before I got the chance to talk to them again. But I had a name. Pettigrew. I knew where I might find Kate if I could ever escape from the Arapaho. I was excited, so I went to One Dog that day and came right out with it.

  “One Dog, will you hear me?” I said.

  “Speak.”

  “I would like to go to the fort and look for my sister.”

  He didn’t answer right away, and I was somewhat encouraged by his silence. When he did speak, he dashed my hopes to the ground and trampled on them as if they were pests.

  “You are no more a white man,” he said. “You belong to the people. We are your tribe now. Do not go to the white man’s fort. They will put you in a cage like a wild animal. They might kill you. Do you not see yourself? You are one of us now.”

  “I am still me.”

  “Yes, you are you. But you are one of the people. You are of my tribe.”

  “I want to see my sister.”

  “What of the two girls of our people who were stolen by the Ota and taken by this white man? Do you not think we want to see them too?”

  “Yes. I could find them for you.”

  “No. Not at the white man’s fort. You will not go there. To the people, those girls are dead. To you, your sister must be dead. That is what your thoughts must say to you. Then you will live as you should live, with your people. This is your place. This is my place.”

  I wanted to kill One Dog right then and there. I wanted to curse him for being a liar. Kate was not dead. And those two Arapaho girls were probably alive, working for some farmer, like Kate was. I couldn’t understand the logic of One Dog when he said that we must consider those girls dead. If he would pursue and attack the Ota who took them, why would he not do the same with the white men who bought them from the Ota? I could not argue with him. He walked away from me, and I knew that I had to keep my thoughts to myself from that moment on. But I would have those thoughts. One Dog could not control those. He might hold me prisoner, but my thoughts roamed free as the eagle flying high in the sky.

  I figured that the fort the two French hunters were talking about was the one to the south of the Medicine Bow mountain range. They had called it Fort Collins. I figured they might pass through the Arapaho camp again on their way back, packing elk meat on their mules.

  So I used Yellow Water’s paints and wrote a letter to Kate on a piece of tanned deer hide. I lied to him and said I was writing something for One Dog, who was out hunting that day. When I finished the letter, I hid it under my buffalo blanket that I slept on at night. When I left the teepee, I kept the letter inside my elk-skin shirt so that One Dog would not find it in case he got suspicious and started searching through my bed when I was away from the teepee.

  Here is what I wrote:

  Dear Kate, I am alive. I will come for you one day. Be strong. Wait for me. Your loving brother, Jared

  I didn’t know if my letter had any chance of reaching her, even if I could give it to one of the hunters. But I had hope and that was one of the things that kept me alive, kept me scheming and planning to run away from the Arapaho and find my sister.

  The two French hunters did return, twice more that winter. When they rode up, I made sure I was within earshot.

  “Look, Pierre,” I said quickly, “I’ve got a letter written on deerskin that I’d like you to take back to Fort Collins with you. It’s to my sister, Kate, and maybe you can find someone who knows Pettigrew and can see that she gets it.”

  “You ask much, son,” Pierre said. “What is your name? One Dog said he called you White Man.”

  “My name is Jared Sunnedon. Just think of Sundown if you have trouble remembering it. I don’t want One Dog to know about this.”

  “Where is this letter?”

  “In my teepee. Are you staying the night?”

  “Just the night,” Pierre said. “And we shall return once we deliver the meat to the fort.”

  “I’ll get the letter to you. Later.”

  “Good.”

  One Dog walked up and I had to stop talking. My heart was in my throat, squeezed tighter than a fist.

  I was a little surprised when Jacques walked out of the teepee after eating. He had a lit pipe in his mouth. It was a cool evening, but the snow had melted. He was dressed in buckskin and had a buffalo jacket on, so he was not cold.

  “Pierre and One Dog are talking inside,” he said. “I will smoke the pipe and talk to you, Sundown.”

  “I have the letter inside my shirt,” I said. “Do you want me to give it to you? Then you can give it to Pierre.”

  “I will take it,” he said.

  I had the letter rolled up and tucked inside my trousers under my shirt. I slipped it out and handed it to Jacques. He quickly put it inside his shirt, out of sight.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “The fort, she is a busy place. The people, they come and they go. We do not know this Pettigrew, but we have heard his name. It is a large family, I think. From what I have heard of them. We will keep our eyes and ears open, but we will not be there long. We hunt again very soon.”

  “Even if you give the letter to someone who knows the Pettigrews. Just be sure that Cassius Hogg does not know about it. He is the reason I am a prisoner of the Arapaho.”

  “The Arapaho, they are a fine people. But One Dog would not like it if you tried to run away. He might kill you.”

  “I know.”

  “So, what do you do? You become an Arapaho? It is not a bad life.”

  “No, it’s a good life. But I miss my own kind, sir.”

  Jacques laughed.

  “You are better off with the Arapaho,” he said.

  We spoke no more that night. The next morning, he and Pierre were gone, and when they left it felt as if a part of my heart had been torn away and they had taken it with them. I missed Kate so much. I missed speaking English.

  I missed my parents and the life we might have had in Oregon.

  And I did not want to become an Arapaho and live with them the rest of my life.

  But I realized that I was already an Arapaho, and watching those two men leave was like being stranded on an island all alone and watching the last boat sail away into the morning sun.

  Fifteen

  One Dog moved our camp, much to my dismay. I was hoping to get some news from Pierre and Jacques when they returned from Fort Collins. I kept wondering if One Dog moved us deliberately so that I would not see them again. I fretted for days at the new digs on the Musselshell, trying not to show my displeasure. To calm my nerves and take my mind off of this latest disappointment, I worked on the two rings I was carving out of the elk antler. I had the insides nearly hollowed out, and planned to do a great deal of smoothing so that there would be no sharp edges when they were finished.

  You could feel spring coming. And there was much talk of it among the women and children. The men turned restless and they talked of the changing weather and watched the sky every day. One night, we held a council of all the men. One Dog spoke to us all.

  “The elk herd will be coming back,” he said. “On the next sun, we will ride to the place of the two rivers and watch for them. We will find much meat. We will hear the birds singing. We will see the arrows in the sky and hear the geese at night.”

  The next day, we struck the camp, hooked up the travois, folded the teepees. Everyone pitched in and it did not take long. It was still very cold, but I could feel a change in the weather. Warm winds blew off the prairie. The mountains were still white as far as you could see, and there was ice along the shores of the Musselshell.

  I felt a tingling excitement as we moved southward. I was trying to figure out where this place was that One Dog had talked about, “the place of the two rivers.” I was
reading the maps in my mind and could see the marks Yellow Water had made in the dirt, showing the forts and towns. And the rivers. There was a place just north of Fort Collins where a river joined what I took to be the South Platte, the Musselshell. My heart beat faster knowing we would be near where I believed Kate to be.

  The scouts ranged far and wide as we traveled southward. We saw a lot of scattered elk tracks, but not so many as to indicate a large herd. I was confident that the Arapaho knew of their migrations, however, and this place we were going to would surely see the return of the elk herd to the foothills, if not the mountains themselves. I felt the excitement of the other tribe members too. The women and children all seemed as if they were going to a fair or a picnic. They were chattering all the time, and the women would scrape the thin mantle of snow looking for signs of grass seeds sprouting.

  We camped some distance from the river, but not too far away that we couldn’t walk to it. I went with One Dog and the other braves to scout the place where the elk herd might pass by, and that’s when I saw the two rivers One Dog had mentioned. I learned from Yellow Water that the little river that flowed into the South Platte was called by the French Cache la Poudre. It was a place where the French trappers had cached their traps and furs, apparently when the fur trade was at its highest. The Arapaho had several names for the river, none of which seemed to stick for very long. But Yellow Water called it the River of Many Stones, saying that he had been up it once, hunting, but had been chased back down by a band of Ota.

  It was still cold, and it snowed very heavily one night and for most of the next day. I worked on the two antler rings and shivered next to the fire. The snow did not melt right away, and the weather stayed very cold for a couple of weeks. Then, gradually, the snow began to melt and young men went outside and put their heads to the ground, listening for the thunder of hoofbeats that would tell them when the elk herd was returning.

  We saw one or two elk venturing toward the confluence of the two rivers. One Dog let them pass by, waiting for the rest of the herd to come in as the days grew warmer.

  More and more elk began to appear, and then we heard shots farther south, downriver. One Dog, Yellow Water, a few other braves, and I went to investigate. We rode along the river, the braves looking down at the ground, checking for sign. We rode very slowly, just in case we might come upon a large herd of elk.

  Then we heard two sharp rifle shots from far away downriver.

  One Dog called a halt, as if there was something different about these shots. And when I reflected upon it during those moments, there was something different about them, something ominous. Those two shots would ring in my ears for many years afterward, as it turned out.

  “Who will ride to the sound of the rifles and be my eyes?” One Dog asked.

  “I will go there,” Yellow Water said.

  “Go. We will follow.”

  Several minutes later, Yellow Water returned.

  “Come see,” he said. He made the sign with his hands that spoke of two dead men. White eyes.

  There were a lot of tracks around the bodies. Two men lay close together, their heads clotting with blood. Each had a bullet hole in the back of the head. Their faces were distorted because the bullets had blown off their foreheads. And they had both been scalped. But I knew from their clothing who they were.

  Pierre and Jacques.

  One Dog and the others read the tracks while I stared at the two men lying there in the thinning snow, their faces all but obliterated. It was hard to take, having known them as strong men, eating, breathing, talking. Two bullets in the backs of their heads. My first thought was that they had been ambushed by Ota, or some other tribe.

  “Ota?” I asked One Dog.

  “No Ota. White eyes killed these two. My friends.”

  “But their scalps were taken.”

  “White man cut head, take hair,” he said. “You look tracks. See boots. Tracks tell story.”

  Yellow Water pointed to some hoofprints.

  “Mule,” he said. “Two mule.”

  “Their pack mules,” I said in English.

  “Shoot men, take mules, ride away.” Yellow Water gestured to the south, toward Fort Collins. I looked at the tracks and followed one set. Two men had killed the Frenchmen. I found where they had sat their shod horses and probably shot Pierre and Jacques. I rode their tracks back to the scene of the murders. I saw the tracks where the Frenchmen had come out of the foothills. Part of a butchered elk lay there, its head. The mule tracks were deep, showing that the mules had been loaded with meat.

  I went over the maze of tracks, pieced together the story as I could understand it. The other braves and One Dog were doing the same. Each Arapaho might have his own interpretation of what had happened, and I would have mine. Those two men were waiting for the Frenchmen, waiting to steal from them. They had shot them, scalped them to make it look like the work of Indians, and then taken the pack mules and ridden back to the fort with their booty, their ill-gotten gains.

  I dismounted and looked at the bodies. Their rifles and pistols were gone too. They still wore their knives. I wondered if Yellow Water had scared the killers off. It looked that way.

  I went through their pockets and was glad that I did. They both had currency on them, paper money and coins.

  The Arapaho were not interested in the money, so I set it aside on the ground. Then I felt something crinkle when I touched it. It was in a pocket of Pierre’s shirt. Paper. But not flimsy like the money I had found. I pulled it out. It was a single piece of paper, folded over. Someone had poured candle wax on the place where the folds came together so that it would not open by itself.

  I turned the paper over in my hands.

  There was writing on it.

  When I read the words, my heart jumped.

  To Jared Sunnedon.

  My hands began to shake as I pulled at the paper to break the seal. There was too much wax on the fold. I took out my knife and ran the blade through the wax. The sealed part opened. With trembling hands, I opened all of it and saw the familiar writing. It was a letter from my sister, Kate.

  Dear Jared, the letter began.

  I am sending this with the man who gave me your letter and told me about you. I am living with a family as their bond servant. They bought me from Mr. Hogg. My master is Amos Pettigrew. He is a farmer. We are leaving soon and going north to a place called Laramie, I think. I am glad you are alive. If you come, you may be able to buy me from Mr. Pettigrew. He is a very mean man. I can’t say much more. I hope you can find me. I love you, Jared, and cry for you every night.

  Kate had signed the letter.

  “What do you have there?” One Dog asked as I stood up, the paper in my hands shaking like an aspen leaf in the wind.

  “It is writing. From my sister.”

  “She lives then?”

  “Yes, she lives. She is a slave.”

  One Dog smiled. “Good. She is where she is.”

  “What do you mean by that?” I asked.

  He gave a slight shrug. “We are who we are.”

  “She is not a slave.”

  “You said that she was.”

  “I mean that she is a captive.”

  “Then, that too. That is her fate.”

  That was the first time One Dog had ever used that word to me. I knew what the word was because Blue Owl had used it and told me what it meant.

  “She waits for me,” I said, trying to hold down my anger.

  “Then, that is her fate too, White Man. To wait.”

  “Let me go, One Dog. Let me find my sister.”

  “No,” he said. “You have a different fate. Your fate is with the people.”

  I cursed One Dog under my breath. I wanted to strike him dead on the spot. Some of the braves were looking at me. All were armed. If I so much as raised a hand toward One Dog, they would cut me down like a stalk of corn.

  “Yes,” I said, trying to put timidity in my voice.

  “Good
. You good man.”

  I was in a daze for some time. The big herd of elk had not passed that way, but we found several tracks and we saw where the Frenchmen had killed elk, butchered them, and packed them on their mules.

  I wondered who had killed them.

  I had a pretty good idea who the two men were.

  Hogg and Truitt.

  Someday, I thought, I’d call them out for all they had done.

  But first, I had to escape the Arapaho.

  Somehow, I had to change my fate.

  Sixteen

  It was late afternoon on a warm sunny day when the elk herd began to drift into the foothills. Scouts, with ears to the ground, had heard the gentle thud of their hooves as they walked off the plain. We were all well hidden and the breeze was blowing toward us, so the elk could not see or hear us. We were all armed with bows and arrows. There were braves up above us and on both sides of the canyon where the Cache la Poudre flowed toward the South Platte.

  The women had kept all the dogs in camp, so they had not followed us. Our ponies were tied up, out of sight.

  Most of us were hidden in sight of shallow water, around a couple of bends. Above the bend, the water was swift and I could hear its roar as it came down the steep canyon. But this was a wide place where the elk could go to drink. And they would all be out in the open, within easy range of our bows.

  I took four arrows from my quiver, laid three of them out on the ground within easy reach, and nocked the fourth one on my bowstring. Elk drifted up the canyon in twos and threes, some singles. Some stopped at the first easy place to drink, but others kept on going. More and more elk began to appear. I started to shake with excitement. There were some yearlings among the herd, but many were large animals. The bulls had huge antlers and they looked dangerous.

  The elk were wary, but none of the Arapaho moved and neither did I. Finally, I heard, from quite a ways upstream, the whiffle of an arrow, followed by a soft whump. I saw a bull elk stagger and go down. Then, both sides of the canyon filled with flying arrows.