Paradise Sky

by Joe R. Lansdale

  When I was there, I said, “Who made that shot on the Apache?”

  “That would be me,” said the Former House Nigger.

  “Listen here,” I said. “I don’t want you calling yourself the Former House Nigger anymore. I don’t want no one calling you that no more. You’re a buffalo soldier, and a good one. I tell you another thing while I’m telling how the hoss ate the apple: ain’t none of us need to be called riding niggers, so we damn sure as hell don’t need to be calling one another that. I say we don’t. I won’t, and I’ll fight the man that can’t resist it. Rest of you men hear that?”

  They all heard me well enough, including Bill, up the hill between them trees.

  “You getting paid for that preaching, nigger?” said Prickly Pear, and everyone laughed.

  “This here is Cullen,” I said. “He ain’t nothing but Cullen, or Private Cullen, or whatever his last name is. That’s what we call him. You hear that, Cullen? You’re a soldier, a top soldier, at that. You saved my life.”

  “It was a good shot,” Cullen said, so only I could hear it.

  “Damn sure was,” I said.

  “What about the white man?” Cullen asked.

  “Dead. Apaches was making the noises we heard.”

  “That ain’t fair,” Cullen said.

  “It ain’t a card game,” I said.

  “Thing worrying me,” Cullen said, “is pretty soon we got to worry about when the sun goes down.”

  “That is a concern,” I said.

  I got my Winchester, stuck the service revolver in my belt, stretched out beside the Spencer, and took a breather, having concluded that I had the men positioned as best I could. We had a good view, and it would take some work for them Indians to come out of that grass and us not see them, but as Cullen had said, what about when the sun went down?

  9

  As the light faded, I began to fret. We had a lot of ammunition on hand, which was a good thing, but my feelings that I had the men well positioned dimmed with the sun. I rushed down our firing line and spaced the men along the creek in what I felt was better positions, having the last man on either end turn slightly to their side to protect from any kind of surrounding maneuver. I left Bill up there between them two trees, giving him strict instructions to watch carefully and not fall asleep, though I couldn’t imagine anyone nodding off under the circumstances, which would be a bit like finding a bear’s cave with a bear in it and being inclined to nap next to it.

  Night crept up on us. It turned blue over the top of the hill, then the blue spread, went black. Shadows tumbled over us and wrapped themselves in the trees like torn canvas. A piece of the moon rode up. Its light hit the top of the hill, caused the tips of the grass to gleam like sword points and the little run of water in the creek to shine. Mosquitoes buzzed, and not too far from us we heard a big frog bleat.

  I told Cullen I was going to check the line. I left my Winchester with the Spencer on the ground and hurried along, keeping low as I went.

  I started with the rear, which wasn’t no line at all but was Bill. I found him lying between the trees where he was supposed to be, but he was facedown, and the ground around him was wet. I turned him over and dug a match out of my soldier shirt, struck it on one of the trees. His throat was cut.

  My skin goose-bumped, and the service revolver sort of leaped into my hand. I eased away from him and back down toward the creek, my ass crack clenched up like a fist. Starting at the far end of the line, I found that soldier whose name I could never remember and now didn’t need to learn. There was an arrow through his head. It had gone in above his ear and come out the other side.

  I scrambled down the line, such as it was, came to Prickly Pear, and said, “You alive?”

  “Why, hell yeah, I’m alive,” he said.

  “There’s two that ain’t,” I said.

  “Oh, shit,” Prickly Pear said, and he followed me as I went at a stoop down the row and found everyone else alive, right up to Cullen. When I told Cullen what had happened, he said, “Jesus.”

  “They’re like ghosts,” I said.

  I turned to look at the horses. The remuda rope was still there, but two of the horses was gone. About then I heard Satan snort, saw him kick out, heard a slapping sound and a release of breath. I ran over there in a hurry. There was enough moonlight through the gaps in the trees I could see Satan had kicked an Apache in the head, one of his hooves cracking his cheek, causing the eye to roll out on its strings and hang there. I don’t know if that Apache was dead or not, but I seen then there was another darting away. I raised my pistol and hit him square in the back, and he went down. I shot the one on the ground for good measure, twice, then hustled back to the others.

  I had by now what you might call some serious misgivings about my leadership. I said, “What we got to do is get on our horses and try and ride for it. We ain’t safe up in here. This just gives them a way to get to us and us not see them.”

  “You don’t have to tell me twice,” Prickly Pear said, and he and the others started running for the remuda. I picked up my Winchester as well as my Spencer and followed Cullen to the horses in haste.

  I let everyone saddle up and mount, while I turned nervously this way and that with the loop-cock Winchester, the Spencer on the ground at my feet. When I was sure everyone was mounted, I got the bridle on Satan, loosed him from the remuda, and just as I got him saddled, he took that moment to rear up, jerk the reins from my hand, dart through the trees, and was gone.

  “Now, ain’t that something,” I said.

  Cullen said from horseback, “We’ll ride double,” and he held out his hand to pull me up.

  The boys was all sitting their horses, ready to go, when there was a whoop, and an Apache leapfrogged over the back of one of the horses, taking a soldier off of it with him. They went rolling on the ground, the Apache pounding the trooper a couple of times with a hatchet, then darting into the woods swift as a rabbit.

  The soldiers flurried like startled quail. Wasn’t no military drill about it. It was every son of a bitch for himself. I swung on the back of Cullen’s horse, hanging on to the Winchester but having forgotten the Spencer on the ground. We rode out of the wooded area and came out in the open. The partial moon was surprisingly bright.

  I looked back, seen those soldiers was still up in the trees, having lost control of themselves and their horses. I saw the shadowy shapes of horses and men go down, and we could hear them screeching like children. There was gunfire, probably from both sides, and then it all went silent.

  Did we wheel about and go to the rescue? Hell, no. There wasn’t any rescue to be done. We had been outsmarted, outmanned, and outfought. If we didn’t want to be down there among them, we had to ride faster than a blue norther blows. That’s when a shot came our way, hit our horse. It fell down, sent Cullen plunging. I was able to come off the falling beast and land on my feet, still clutching my Winchester.

  Then the horse got up, the wound not being a finisher. Cullen, like a grasshopper, leaped on its back and took the reins again. I grabbed the horse’s tail and said, “Go,” cause behind us those Apaches was coming, and though what they was yelling at us I couldn’t understand, I doubted it was compliments on the cut of our uniforms.

  I told you how Mr. Loving had taught me that horse-tail trick, but Cullen bolted off so fast I nearly got my arm jerked out of the socket. Still, I managed to hang on, and Cullen pulled back on the reins and let the horse lope, but nothing beyond what I could deal with.

  The Apaches was mostly on foot, but there was a few with horses, and they had gathered them up. Some had our horses, leading to a high number of them becoming mounted, and pretty soon they was all coming after us. Since I had managed a little space from them with that horse-tail trick, I yelled for Cullen to stop. He reined that horse so sharp it near sat down on me. I swung up behind him, knowing if that horse had anything left we were going to have to use it. That tail trick wasn’t going to work anymore, not with them o
n horseback.

  The critter was favoring the wound in its right hip, but we couldn’t let that stop us. We had to ride till there wasn’t any riding to be done. It was starting to look like we had us a chance, and damn it, all of a sudden the horse crumpled and tossed us over his head. When we got to our feet the animal was panting loudly, down on its bent front legs, its neck bowed, mouth wide open, the moon in its eyes.

  It was done for.

  I swapped the Winchester to my left hand, pulled my service revolver, and shot the horse through the head. It dropped dead, but it was still stuck there on its bent front legs, its ass in the air. I put a boot to its side and knocked it over. We hustled in between its legs and peered over its body at them that was chasing us. And believe you me, they was coming right smart. There was more of them than I figured, as I hadn’t exactly been able to take a head count before. They had been hidden out there in the grass, and then the trees, and now all of them was on horseback, bearing down on us like a dose of the flu.

  I had hung on to my Winchester, but Cullen had lost his Spencer when the horse tumbled. It was on the side of the horse where the Apaches was. He pulled his revolver, and we both laid up behind the horse, making a fort of the poor thing. I was stretched over the dead critter’s neck, and Cullen was hanging over its ass. I beaded down on an Apache and fired, then fired again. Two of them came off their horses and hit the dirt.

  My eyes was on their horses, as I was hoping to nab at least one as it ran by so we could make a run for it, but it was like the beasts knew what I was hoping. They spread wide to either side and run, disappearing into the night like it had swallowed them. Truth was, it was unlikely we could have snatched one before them Apaches come down on us.

  Cullen was firing his pistol, and though he didn’t hit any Apaches, he killed a horse, and that threw one of the riders pretty hard. The Indian lay there on his back a moment, rolled over, and pushed up with his hands. He was stunned and hardly knew where he was. I took that moment to shoot him in the top of the head. It was so easy I almost felt bad about it. I had killed three of them now. It had put a stop to their headlong ride. They heeled up their horses, leaped off, and pulled them over on the ground by biting their ears and dropping their weight. You get your teeth in a horse’s ear, you can pull it to the ground like it was light as a feather.

  When they got their horses pulled down, they shot them to make their own forts. I had been told that an Apache wasn’t like a Comanche, who would try and keep his horse no matter what. The Apache was a practical Indian. He’d run one until it couldn’t run, and when it fell over, he’d stick it with something sharp so that it got to its feet, and he’d ride it till it fell over and couldn’t get up no matter how much you poked it. After that, he’d cut its throat, drink its blood, build a fire and eat some of it, then he’d cut off its nuts and take those with him as something to nibble on.

  They had a half circle of horses out there, and they decided they was going to camp out and wait on us. It was a pretty good plan, considering we didn’t have nowhere to move that they couldn’t see us. We was two on foot and they was still six or seven at least, and that was a considerable number against us under the circumstances; though there was no doubt my shooting was whittling them down a bit.

  They was firing at us, and the bullets were plopping into our horse and throwing up blood and sweat, and that dead cayuse was fluttering farts out the back end and through them bullet holes.

  After a bit they tired of shooting and took to saving their ammunition, which was what we was doing. I reckoned their plan was to rest in shifts, and when we was tuckered out and needing water, they’d put the sneak on us. I offered to shoot Cullen if it looked as if we was about to be overrun and tortured.

  “I’d rather shoot you, then shoot myself,” he said.

  “Okay. You shoot me, then shoot yourself.”

  “What if I shoot you, then I make an escape?”

  “I’d rather it not work that way.”

  “But it could.”

  “Here’s the deal: you shoot me only if you have reckoned you’re going to have to shoot yourself, otherwise we’ll try for escape together. I don’t want no idle shooting going on, especially since one of those shots will be for me.”

  “All right, then,” he said.

  That wasn’t quite the end of it, though. We kept tossing this back and forth, wanting to make sure we was clear on these matters, and there wouldn’t be any willy-nilly shooting going on. When we felt we had it straightened out, we shook hands on it.

  It was a bright night and the land was flat and there wasn’t a whole lot of creeping they could do without us noticing, but they could still outflank us because they outnumbered us. If they made a mad rush, they’d have us. Then again, they knew we’d get a few of them, too. I was hoping that wasn’t an exchange they was high on making.

  After a while we seen a fire flare up from behind that curving wall of horses, and then we could smell horse meat sizzing. They had chosen one and dug into its insides and made themselves a nice, late supper. We, on the other hand, had one horse, and eating our fort didn’t seem like too good an idea. Still, I pulled my knife and cut the horse’s throat, and we took turns putting our mouths over the cut and taking in some of the still-warm nourishment, though there wasn’t any real flow to the blood anymore. It tasted better than I figured, but at that point in time I was so famished I would have eaten a buttered pile of buffalo chips and thought them tasty as apple pie.

  When we had all we could suck out of the drying wound, we lay there peeking over our horse, listening to the Apaches laughing and cutting up. There’s them that says they don’t have no humor, but I tell you sure as hell they was tickled about something that night. I figured we was a part of it. Or maybe one of them had told a good joke. If things wasn’t bad enough, after a while they began to sing in English, “Row, row, row your boat.”

  “Goddamn missionaries,” I said.

  “They’ve got some kind of liquor,” Cullen said. “I know drunks when I hear them.”

  We had to listen to that go on for a couple of hours without them tiring of it. They was so good at it, in good voice and well in tune, and having such a big time over there I almost wanted to join them. Now they moved to further humiliation by having one of them stand up, bend over, and pull up the little flap he was wearing and show us his butt. There in the moonlight that redskin’s meat was as white as an Irishman’s ass. I was about to pot him when he turned around and showed us his dangling business, humped at the air like he was doing a squaw. That was enough. I had taken all I was going to take. I lifted up quick from behind the horse’s neck and shot at him. I was aiming at his pecker, but think I got him in the belly. He let out a bark and fell back, and we didn’t see him again. I bet right then they was wishing they had moved those horses back a few yards before killing them and using them for protection.

  I dropped back down behind the horse.

  “Bad enough they’re going to kill us,” Cullen said, “but they got to act nasty, too.”

  “I gave him a bellyache,” I said.

  We watched for a long while, but those Indians was as quiet as the dirt. After a short time, I’m ashamed to say I was so exhausted I nodded off. When I awoke it was daylight and my throat wasn’t cut and I still had my hair.

  I looked and saw Cullen was awake. He had gone out and got his Spencer and had it laid across the horse. I said, “Damn it, Cullen. I’m sorry. I fell out.”

  “I let you. They’re gone.”

  I sat up and looked. There was the dead horses with buzzards lighting on them. A few of them birds was eyeballing our horse and us, but I didn’t see any sign of the Apache.

  “I been watching close,” he said. “They’re gone. They just picked up like a circus and left. Guess they figured they’d lost enough men over a couple of buffalo soldiers, or maybe it was like the lieutenant said: they saw a bird and figured it was a bad omen, and it told them to take theirselves home.”
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  “What I figure is they got too drunk to think straight, woke up with hangovers, and went somewhere cool and shaded to sleep it off.”

  “Reckon so,” Cullen said. Then: “You meant what you said about me being a top soldier and all?”

  “Consider it came from someone left in charge that got everyone killed but you and me. I got the horses wiped out as well, and on top of that I left a lot of army equipment back there and fell asleep on guard duty hanging over a dead horse’s neck. Only thing I didn’t do was join them and lead them on a raid to burn down the fort. Taking all that into consideration, it might mean a little less.”

  “Lieutenant shouldn’t have split us up in the first place. I am not Napoleon, but even I know that. It was his fault for leaving a private in charge. But I do appreciate what you said.”

  10

  The day turned off blazing hot. We made our way back to the trees and the creek to look about. No Apaches was hiding in there, and the soldiers was all cut up and shot up, except for Prickly Pear. We found him standing against a tree, or so it seemed, but he was just propped there, having fallen back against it. He didn’t even look to have been hurt. His eyes was open, and he had an expression like he was about to make some joke or other. I went over and touched him, thinking he might be alive and just stunned, but he wasn’t. He fell over, and I saw a wound right behind his ear, a bullet hole, and from the looks of it, the shot had been fired close. It was my guess he did it to himself. I found his pistol on the ground nearby, so that made it even more likely. Why they hadn’t cut him up like the rest I couldn’t be sure. He didn’t even smell ripe.