Kitt Peak

by Al Sarrantonio

  "Matty," he said, unable to say anything else, holding his hands out in supplication. His carpetbag lay at his feet on the porch. In Matty's arms, the baby cooed and twisted, following the flight of an early morning crow cawing through the air over the near field.

  "You say you'll be back before planting," Matty said solemnly.

  "Matty, I promise. You can get Jedediah and Marcus to help until then. Jedediah knows how to fix things, the pump and such, and if by any chance I was late he could start the early plowing." Seeing her eyebrows go up he continued in a rush. "Though I know that won't be necessary. But . . . if it is, he'll do it. He owes me big, I got him started last year. And Marcus is good with the baby, and can run chores to town. Oh please, Matty, don't be mad at me."

  "I'm not mad at you, Lincoln," she said evenly. "I'm mad at Thomas Mullin and the Army."

  "Don't be, Matty."

  "When the Army gets hold of you, it's the only thing can make you act like this. Everything else, you're your own man. I just can't understand why you have to drop your life and run. Especially to help some white man."

  ~ * ~

  He reached out to take one of her hands, but instead, she shifted the baby from the crook of her other arm and handed it to him.

  "Say good-bye to your papa, Washington," Matty said coldly. "Say good-bye to your papa who's leaving you to help some crazy old fool find a drunk white man's Indian daughter."

  The baby cooed, looking up into Lincoln's face and smiling. Lincoln looked at Matty imploringly.

  "Matty, I've told you. These are the only two men from the Army I would do this for. Sergeant Adams saved my life. And Lieutenant Mullin is —

  "Like a father to you," Matty finished. "I've only heard it a thousand times, Lincoln." Suddenly, as she saw him reach down for his bag, her tone softened.

  He straightened up, handed the baby to her. "I have to go, Matty," he said, turning away.

  "Lincoln —" She put her hand on his arm, gripped him tight, turned him around.

  He looked down at her. "Matty, I said I'm sor…

  "I know," she whispered, reaching up to kiss him. Suddenly she was crying. "I know, and I understand. But you have to be careful."

  "Of course I'll be careful," he said. He brought his lips down to the baby's head and kissed his crown. "And you be careful, too."

  When he looked back at Matty she was still crying. "Oh, Lincoln." she said, hugging him tight.

  "I know, Matty, I know."

  Gently, he pulled away from her, walked down the steps, and didn't look back until he was far away, across his sharecropped field, at the edge of the land that might one day be his or his son's.

  When he looked back he waved, and Matty waved back, and made little Washington wave, too.

  Chapter Three

  Steel your mind, Thomas.

  He hadn't remembered how truly tedious a long train trip could be. What at first began as an exciting excursion, a setting out for new places on a machine that traveled the rails faster than any man could run or ride, became, after the first few days, a boring series of embarkings and debarkings, facing an endless dull panorama of shorn trees and winter whiteness. What had at first been charming soon turned maddening, and Thomas was thankful for the thin stack of unread Strand magazines he had brought in his bag. He had particularly enjoyed Conan Doyle's most recent adventure, published in the December 1902 edition, recounting the "Adventure of the Speckled Band." Conan Doyle was back at his best, after a disastrous interlude where he had tried to kill Sherlock Holmes off, then, after an outcry which Thomas had only been too willing to add to, posting three letters in as many days to the Strand after they had dared to offer to the reading public the outrage titled "An Affair at Reichenbach Falls."

  But the present adventure was more up to snuff, with Holmes employing all of his deductive powers to great end, and Thomas knew this Holmes story was a fine one because he had been unable to guess its ending. That had only happened once in the last year, a sure sign that Conan Doyle had been losing his powers.

  Perhaps we're both coming back, Conan Doyle, he thought.

  He shifted his weight on his bag, and looked out the window. The baggage car was empty now, another Negro having gotten off in Fort Worth. Only twice in the past two weeks had he sat in the last passenger car, but that was back in the East, where segregation was more subtle, and now that he was back in the South, the more overt forms of racism were evident. But baggage cars could be made comfortable, and the Negro porter on this train had taken good care of him, and made sure that he was fed properly and allowed to use the men's facilities after the white passengers had gone to bed for the evening... .

  The window was small, and smudged, but it showed the same relentless vista of bleak winter, the same denuded trees, only mercifully shy of snow.

  Thomas tucked his Strand magazine away and drew out the papers in his jacket pocket.

  The first was the letter from Bill Adams, which he had been over numerous times. Always he came to the same conclusions. The second was a telegram from Lincoln Reeves, waiting for him in Kansas City, as he had instructed, with one word, Yes.

  These two he put away, finding no more interest in them. The third, however, still held his attention. It was another telegram, this one from Tucson, from the landlord of the hotel where Bill Adams had been staying. Though it was few in words, it told Thomas much:

  ~ * ~

  ADAMS BELIEVED DEAD STOP. INJUN BEING HELD STOP. MARSHAL SAYS NO ARMY IN TERFERENCE NEEDED STOP. CATES.

  ~ * ~

  Apparently Mr. Cates had misunderstood Thomas's own telegram, regarding his present status with the U.S. Army. That was fine, and irrelevant. Besides the fact that his friend might be dead, Thomas found he could read volumes from the short message.

  First, it was obvious that Bill had gone after his daughter and was missing somewhere on the Papagos Reservation. This did not change Thomas's mission, but only made it more urgent. Bill Adams, despite his alcoholism, knew how to travel and how to survive. Thomas would reserve judgment on his death until he had seen a body. Secondly, there was an Indian being held for Adams's supposed murder. This alone Thomas found curious, since Cates had stated that Bill was believed to be dead. And the Marshal who was handling this case had apparently decided that he didn't like Thomas already, based merely on the fact, however misinterpreted, that Thomas was an Army man. This implied friction with the local Army people. Nowhere had Thomas mentioned that he was Negro, and this fact was apparently not known. So the marshal, and Mr. Cates, would have a surprise for them when Thomas arrived.

  But the most telling piece of paper Thomas had was one that didn't exist, the reply to his second telegram, which Thomas had sent from St. Louis, and which had never been answered. So Thomas had already been cut out of the loop, and would be on his own when he arrived.

  Thomas put Cates's telegram away, and again looked out the smudged window.

  The shorn trees of winter had been replaced, not by snow, but by the beginnings of Texas desert. This was a place he knew. A mere two hundred miles west lay Abilene, and another hundred miles to the south and west of that lay Fort Davis, which had been his home in the Army for so long.

  He found himself sitting straighter, clearing the smudged window so he could look out. Already, west of Fort Worth, the trees were changing to desert oak, cottonwood, and mesquite brush. Winter had been left behind. Remembrance, and longing, flooded through him, and it occurred to him just how much he had missed this landscape. This land was like his soul, sparse and clean, and all the clutter of the East had only contributed to the crowding of his mind and the softening of his spirit. It was as if a spigot had been opened, letting out all the tarnish that had built up in him over the past five years, leaving only cold steel behind. He felt, if not young, then at least himself again.

  He was home.

  With a satisfied sigh, he turned away from the window and pulled out another copy of the Strand magazine from his bag. It was a sto
ry he had read many times before, the first installment of "The Hound of the Baskervilles," but he didn't care.

  In the next hours, as light turned brighter with noon and then dimmer with evening, obliging him to hold the pages of the magazine to the window as he read, he was lost in a world that he loved and knew, and the words steel yourself did not enter his mind, because there was no need.

  Chapter Four

  In the high mountain, the one known as OtoA-Pe, the sacred mountain, the eagle waited.

  The eagle was patient. Its eyes were sharp, and its mind clear. The eagle saw all from its perch, and all that it saw, it ruled.

  The eagle was a god.

  And the people worshipped it. And feared it, for the eagle was a vengeful god, one to take measures against those who invited its wrath.

  And the people below, the Tohono O'otam, whom the white man called the Papagos, had angered the eagle.

  The Tohono O'otam were a peaceful people, but this did not concern the eagle. It did not care that they were at peace with themselves. The white man preyed on them, as did the Spanish before them. The eagle cared little for the gifts they left for it, the coiled baskets of devil's claw and yucca sewn over bear grass, the horsehair miniatures they left as tokens at the foot of its perch. The food they left, from their meager cultivation of the flood plains below, it ate but did not taste. For the eagle had little but derision for the Tohono O'otam, whom it considered weak, and it had only anger for them in its heart.

  They had tried to talk with the eagle, to assuage it, but this was to no avail. It was when the eagle had clawed their headman, the Keeper of the Smoke, who had come to speak with it, and whose body it had hurled to the rocks below for the council of old men to see, that the Tohono O'otam knew that its wrath was great, and that its anger for them was vast. It was then that it had swooped down on them, and bloodied one of their squaws in the night as she slept, and gave them the sign that it would only be assuaged if this sacrifice was brought to it at each sign of the moon. In their dreams, the eagle knew that they saw what it wanted to curb its wrath. And though there was much sad singing in the reservation below, and many tears, this is what they gave the eagle.

  Tonight, on the night when the moon disappeared from the sky, they would give it to him again.

  The eagle saw them, with its sharp eyes, by the light of many sharp stars, climbing the rocks below to leave what it demanded at the foot of its perch. Even now they moaned and sang. The new Keeper of the Smoke led them, declaiming the visions he had, and behind him the old women circled the young squaw they would leave for the eagle. She was filled with dreams and smoke, the eagle saw. It wondered if they had given her white man's whiskey, for she stumbled in their midst, and spoke loudly, and even laughed. She did not act as she would if they had given her the doorway of dreams. This only made the old women moan louder, and the Keeper of the Smoke speak louder with his prayers, mixing the native with the prayers of the Catholic faith they had intermingled with their own beliefs, so that the eagle would not hear the squaw's laughter and become even more angry.

  Anger stirred within the eagle and with it the momentary wish to swoop down and claw them all, but it held back, and only watched with its sharp eyes.

  When they had come close enough for the eagle, it merely moved its feathered wings in the darkness, and they immediately halted below it.

  The Keeper of the Smoke looked up, and there was fear in his eyes as he searched the darkness, trying to see the eagle.

  The eagle, filled with loathing for the old man's weakness, waited quietly.

  "Eagle god, ruler of Oto-A-Pe, ruler of the high mountain, and the vistas, and skies surrounding it, we have come!"

  Though the old man tried to sound strong, the eagle could hear the trembling weakness in his voice.

  "Great bird," the old man went on, "whose wrath is great and mighty, we have brought to you the gift you desire. We ask that now, this time, your anger with the Tohono O'otam be melted as the quick snow in the desert morning, and that peace return between you and the Tohono O'otam! We have only peace for you in our hearts, and wish for your vengeance to fly as you fly, strong and mighty, above the clouds!"

  The eagle waited for a moment, hearing the old man's labored breathing at the height of the mountain and his fear, hearing the young squaw tittering, and the old women trying to quiet her.

  "Great eagle," the Keeper of the Smoke said, "do you hear me?"

  Now, the eagle merely fluttered its wings. "The eagle hears," the old man said to the squaws, turning away.

  The eagle relished the sadness in his voice. Again the eagle fluttered its feathered wings, and the Keeper of the Smoke said to the old women, "We must go."

  The old women turned away, but then as the young squaw fell to her knees, laughing, one of the old women fell beside her, crying and holding on to her. The squaw laughed, but the old woman held her tight, weeping, and crying to heaven.

  The Keeper of the Smoke tried to make her let go of the squaw, but could not. "You must come with us, the eagle is angry," he said, but the old woman continued to moan, rocking the laughing squaw in her arms.

  The eagle, relishing the moment, fluttered its wings in a wide arc.

  "You must leave!" the Keeper of the Smoke cried.

  But the old woman would not leave the squaw.

  The eagle made a movement with its claw on the ground, and suddenly the old man below stood up and turned away. The other old women were already making their way hurriedly down the path to the rocks below.

  The old woman continued to rock the squaw in her arms and weep.

  Angered now, the eagle spread its wings and moved forward.

  "For the last time, you must go!" the Keeper of the Smoke called out, stopping as he made his way down into darkness. The eagle thought with satisfaction of the bad night the Keeper of the Smoke and the old women would pass in the thin air below him, because they could not possibly make their way down the mountain in darkness.

  "Come!" the Keeper of the Smoke ordered, but the old woman ignored him.

  The squaw laughed, trying to push the old woman away.

  Giving up, listening to the moaning warnings of the rest of the old squaws, the Keeper of the Smoke retreated.

  The eagle waited, seeing with its sharp eyes the night, the sweeping plains far below, the hurrying figures of the Keeper of the Smoke and the old women, the dark moon, the thin, high clouds, the stars.

  The young squaw laughed.

  The eagle raised its wings high, fluttering its feathers and letting the cold air fill them, readied its claw, and swooped down.

  As the eagle reached them, the old woman screamed. But the young squaw looked up at him, laughing, whiskey in her eyes, reaching out to stroke the eagle's feathers, and said, "Look, it flies like the wind!"

  Hovering above them, the eagle looked down upon her with its sharp eyes for a moment.

  Then the eagle's claw came down from the night upon them both. And the night of the dark moon was filled with cries of vengeance taken.

  Chapter Five

  Tucson was similar to Fort Davis, but different in subtle ways. They both shared desert characteristics, both shared the dry, clean air that Thomas had so forgotten about in humid Boston, but they were different pages from the same book. For one thing, Thomas had never seen saguaro cactus before. They were a species unknown to West Texas, and, indeed, he was told, by a crusty Negro miner named Coleman he had shared last leg of his interminable train trip into Tucson on the Southern Pacific Railroad with, unknown to the rest of the world. Saguaro climbed up hillsides in ranks, stood like sentries at the sides of roads, and indeed seemed to grow wherever they wished in the arid climate of Tucson.

  The mountains, too, were different here. The Fort Davis area had been dominated by two ranges, the Eagle and Davis mountains, small chains that lay like dropped strings upon a table. Tucson itself lay at the curling bowl of a low mountain, and the area immediately surrounding was dotted by small
peaks; it wasn't until one rode thirty to forty miles of flat territory through Indian reservation land that the real mountains began.

  And the city of Tucson was, well, a city. Fort Davis had been little more than a few ranches and stores clustered for protection close around the fort itself; here was a growing, sprawling, flat expanse of construction that seemed as though it might never stop. The same Negro miner had pointed out the massive building, under construction, of St. Augustine Cathedral, and the cluster of buildings, like a child's unfinished block construction, of the University of Arizona. "Got to remember," the miner had said, "that ever since these here United States bought this piece of sand and rock in 1853, something called the Gadsden Purchase — they calls it the 'Godsend Purchase' around here — that they's been doing nothing but building. Prob'ly build right to the horizon 'fore they's finished. If they's ever finished." The miner held out, a final time as they stood on the platform of the station, his whiskey flask. "Sure you don' want a little? Gonna need it, being that color and not working for the white man 'round here. As for me, I sometimes wish I was back in Memphis, bad as that was."

  Thomas had waved him off yet again, and asked for directions to the hotel run by Cates, who had sent him one telegram and neglected to send the second.

  The man had told him where it was, then said, "You wants to be careful 'round them folks, friend." He clasped his hands tight around the whiskey flask. "They's tight 'round here, those white folks. And Mr. Cates is def'nitely one of 'em. Only white man I'd say you might trust is Marshal Murphy. Maybe."

  The man had unclasped his hands, held the whiskey bottle out. "Sure?"

  "I'm sure," Thomas had said, and walked toward the hotel, already feeling as if he had stepped into a nest of unknown snakes.

  Cates's Hotel proved to be a much more elaborate affair than Thomas expected, with a gilded front and new tiled roof above its third floor. Biting back his pride, Thomas went around to the side entrance as he was expected to, and asked for Mr. Cates at the kitchen entrance. The cook, a short man who responded to Thomas's Spanish, told him to wait. He was gone for a long time. When he finally did return, he went back to his vegetable block and ignored Thomas completely.