Gabriel's Story

by David Anthony Durham

  “It’s not worth the lives you took to get it,” he mumbled, just loudly enough to be heard. He looked off into the distance, toward the East, as he had done since they arrived at camp. His expression was so vague and distant that one might have doubted he’d even spoken, except that he spoke again. “And it’s sure not worth the time we’ll all spend burning.”

  All eyes turned to him, then cautiously moved back to Marshall, who found no insult in the statement but in fact seemed glad to hear it, saying, “That’s an interesting point, Dunlop, the whole question of God and Satan and punishment and that. Problem for me is that if I’m damned as a sinner, then I’m damned as a sinner and that’s that. If I’m damned, I was damned a long time ago. I’ve been living a damned life now for thirty-some years, and I can’t do a thing about it. If I was to drop down on my knees and pray, I’d be making God out a fool. I’d be trying to pull the wool over his eyes, so to speak. I’d be kowtowing to the Almighty just to get a bit of the good stuff in the hereafter. Now, wouldn’t that make me bout the biggest hypocrite you ever seen? If there’s one thing I hate, it’s a hypocrite. I’d rather share a mescal with an honest man in hell than drink wine with some brown-nose saint in heaven.” He seemed annoyed for a moment, bitter, as if he knew exactly whom he spoke of when he mentioned this saint. “Anyway, the world’s too damn complicated for any one son of a bitch to have made it up.” He stood up and heaved the brick onto Dunlop’s lap. “Here, feel the weight of a man’s soul.”

  Dunlop convulsed away from it, scrambling to his feet and looking back at it as if the metal were a living creature capable of great harm. He looked ready to lash out, but he didn’t find his voice again, and any words he might have uttered would’ve been drowned out by the men’s laughter. Dunlop sat again, turned his back, and continued his contemplation of the east.

  Marshall bounded over and snatched up the brick. He held it close to the back of Dunlop’s head, and for a moment Gabriel thought he was going to hit him with it. But instead he knelt behind the man and spoke close to his ear, with the soft voice of a friend.

  “Careful there, Dunlop, you gotta keep control of that temper of yours. Don’t go all soft on me and get yourself in trouble, you hear? I like you. We’ve blood of Scots, you and I. But don’t think I’d hesitate. I’d take you out of the world faster than your daddy shot you into it, and I’d enjoy it just as much.”

  Dunlop didn’t move. He showed no sign of even having heard, but Marshall backed off, satisfied. Gabriel felt James’s gaze hard on him, but he avoided the other boy’s eyes.

  Dallas spat in Dunlop’s general direction, accurately enough that a few flecks of the spit touched the man’s boots. “Never knew you were such a damn twat anyway,” he said. “Should’ve known, though, seeing’s how the so-called Scotchmen don’t even wear trousers.” He turned back to the group, having suddenly found humor in his loathing. “Did y’all know that? Dunlop told me so himself. Said they used to go to battle the whole lot of them half naked, nothing but a piece a cloth wrapped around their jewels.”

  Dallas amused the others for some time by dancing about in imitation of warriors in ball gowns, doing his best to mimic a Scottish accent. Something in it sent Rollins into hysterics. But when things died down again and Marshall began to hide the brick away, Rollins asked him seriously, “So you knew all along they had the gold there? I figured you were just being a vengeful son of a bitch. But you had a plan, didn’t you?”

  Marshall finished cinching up his saddlebags before answering. He looked up at Rollins and said, “You don’t think I’d kill them just for the pleasure of it, do you?”

  Something in the question seemed like a threat. At least, Rollins took it so. He backed away a step and shook his head. “Hell, no. I know you’re always up to something or other. I went along with it, didn’t I?” He looked down at the fire, dismissing the conversation with a wave. “I was just saying . . . just pulling your chain a little.”

  Marshall didn’t seem truly satisfied with this answer, but he let it sit. He found a bottle of whiskey and proposed a little drink, just a ration to ease the evening’s tensions. The others agreed readily enough. Gabriel watched them, Marshall’s question still loud and unanswered in his mind.

  NEAR THE END OF THE WEEK THEY TURNED toward the mountains of the Sangre de Cristo range. Throughout days of riding, they rarely spotted other people. Twice they saw Indians in the distance, Navajos according to Marshall, quiet travelers who appeared and disappeared with the stealth of coyotes. They only once passed within shouting distance of another group of white men. But neither group hailed the other, and they rode on without comment, into a land more and more remote.

  They wove their way through changing surroundings, finding cooler mornings and chilly evenings in the shadows of the mountains. The air thinned, becoming crisper and more variously scented. They were now in a country where each wood had its own distinct smell, where creosote and sage, mesquite and juniper and piñon, wafted on the breeze along with the drifting sands. The dry soil took on a reddish hue, somehow more earthen and richer than that of the plains, deep umber tones that clothed the mountains in shades as varied as that of human skin.

  Gabriel rode into the landscape only vaguely aware of its beauty. He looked at the rocks and cliffs and shrubs as if he feared that they had some malignant life hidden within them. In its various shapes and forms, the land seemed to be composed of living beings trapped in stone buttresses, frozen faces that would have whispered to him had not the land held them prisoner. With each look he found movement dancing just out of his vision’s reach. And although the movement was always explained by something—the play of the wind, the trickle of sand, the spiny back of a horned toad, or the grotesque progress of a scorpion— Gabriel couldn’t shake the suspicion that the world was no longer as he believed. The land was alive in a way he’d not known before, in a way made all the greater for the images of the dead, which still served as a screen upon which the world was cast.

  These feelings were made more concrete on the evening of their seventh day of flight. Having gone a little distance from camp to relieve himself, Gabriel came upon the half-decayed corpse of a mule deer entangled in the twisted branches of an old juniper tree. The smell of it hit him at once, entering his nose and pouring down into his guts like a foul liquid. At first it looked as though the deer had been captured where it stood, as if the tree had grown up around it and lifted it from the ground. It seemed somehow Biblical, some amalgamation of a burning bush and a living crucifix. What kind of land was this, he wondered, where trees set traps?

  As he stood staring, it became clear from the bloody and scuffed ground that something had dragged the deer into the tree by brute force, a creature with the strength, with the guile, and perhaps even with the artistry to build a statue of rotting flesh. The corpse had been gutted and cleaned of internals. Its two hind legs were broken at their midpoint and shredded, whether by teeth or claws was unclear. But most horrible to Gabriel’s mind were the deer’s eye sockets, empty depressions that crawled with insect life. Once more this journey had given him an image he’d carry ever after.

  He didn’t sleep that night, nor the next. And it was with weary, thankful eyes that he first beheld Santa Fe, nine days after leaving Three Bars.

  THE YOUNGER BROTHER BUILT AN ENCLOSURE in the barn to house the remaining chicken and protect it from the wolf. Three days later the beast returned. It was propelled by a hunger born deep within and of strange origins. It clawed at the door and sniffed around it and tested each chink and crack to see if it could pass through. It couldn’t, but it kept at it until the man appeared and shot at it once more. The wolf felt the bullet scorch past its left flank, so close it could smell the hot metal against its fur later that evening. Its hunger was unabated, but it quit the scene and retreated to the darkness and howled and planned its return.

  The boy asked his uncle if he had ever heard of a wolf behaving so. The man answered that he had not, although
he figured this meant little, as beasts will always surprise you when you least expect it. He thought maybe the wolf was an old one, maybe it was injured or sick and couldn’t hunt properly and so was seeking out a stationary food source. The boy responded that the animal he’d seen looked neither elderly nor sickly. The man nodded his head and said that was rightly so. Truth is, I ain’t got the faintest what to make of it.

  The boy asked his uncle if he might sleep with his rifle beside his bed. The man considered this and conferred with the boy’s mother and then agreed. Guess I done missed it twice. Maybe your luck’ll be better.

  The boy didn’t tell the others what he planned, but that evening he waited anxiously till his stepfather’s breathing fell into the familiar pattern of sleep. Then he waited longer, knowing his mother was slow to sleep and he must be patient. Eventually he rose and walked barefoot to the door, gun in one hand, boots in the other. He opened the door carefully, although he found that the slightest movement caused sound louder than reason would have thought possible.

  Once outside, he high-stepped around to the side of the house, pulled on his boots, and made his way to the barn. He had to speak to the animals as he fumbled with the door, as any motion in the dark now made them nervous. He soothed them and, once inside, stroked Raleigh and patted the mule and explained his plans to them all, asked for their blessing and strength to aid him. The pig alone seemed skeptical, grunting and watching him askance and making low, throaty sounds, a discourse the boy was fated never to understand.

  He sat opposite the door on a three-legged stool and laid the gun across his lap. He waited. Several times he checked the chamber. Several times he checked his pockets for more bullets, and each time he doubted he had done so and repeated the action. So passed the night, in silence save for the noises of the animals and the scurrying of mice and the friction of the sky rubbing past the world.

  As the sky lightened with the first signs of the approaching dawn, the boy crept back into the house and to bed.

  THE SCENT OF PIÑON HUNG IN THE OVERCAST AIR like a transparent blanket. Gabriel breathed it in through his nose, rolling the scent around on his palate and tasting it. There was something sweet in it, something clean and earthy. He had never seen a town like Santa Fe. The muted shapes and colors of the adobe buildings blended with the landscape as if they were a natural part of the earth’s architecture. The place bustled with people, mestizos mostly, brown people, some with modest faces and others with proud ones, many showing the features of empire, the clash of cultures betrayed in the shapes of eyes and noses, in speech and clothing.

  Once the horses were tied to a hitching post, Marshall proposed a quick drink. This was met with enthusiasm. “But we’re not here to get swizzled,” he added. “A drink or two is all I’m suggesting. No whoring. No fighting. Let’s just keep our wits about us.” With little more than a gesture, he assigned the boys to watch the horses. With his saddlebag in one hand, he threw the other arm around Dunlop and led him away, although the man seemed to sink under the pressure of the limb. Dallas cast a glance back at Gabriel and James before he entered the bar, some seventy yards away. He caught their attention, nodded, and pretended to shoot them with his finger.

  The second he was through the door, James grabbed Gabriel’s arm and said urgently, “C’mon, let’s make a run for it. Let’s do it now. This could be our only chance.”

  Gabriel looked at him sadly. There was little spite left in his countenance, but he could offer no confidence in such a plan. He leaned against the post and looked at the horses. The creatures’ eyes touched on the boys with the same indifference with which they looked upon the ground or the board to which they were bound.

  “There ain’t no use. They’d track us down just for the pleasure of it.”

  James seemed to know this was the truth, but he argued anyway, pointing out all the foot and horse and wagon traffic of the roads. He doubted anybody could track them through all that. “Study on it. They wouldn’t even know where to start. We could ride off in the wrong direction or something. Or ride straight back the way we came. Think of all the places to hide out there.”

  “I don’t know. You heard what he said. They won’t be long.”

  “Yeah, they will. You seen the way they drink.” James stared hard at the cantina. He squinted his eyes and looked as though he were trying to peer through the adobe at the men inside. “They’re probably drinking already.” He turned the same intense vision on his friend. “I see that dead woman all over the place, Gabe. Don’t matter if I’m sleeping or awake—all I can do is see her. Last night she came after me and got on me and started touching me all over. It wasn’t even no dream. I could’ve sworn she was on me for real, though. She was all bloody . . . Jesus Christ. This ain’t what I was thinking when I ran off from Pinkerd’s, and they’ll probably kill us anyway. Gabe, what else can we do? We gotta go.”

  Gabriel tried not to look at James, but the passion of his friend’s plea tugged at him. He met his gaze, saw the quivering hope and fear there, saw the horizon reflected in his eyes and his own distorted reflection. For the first time, a tingling sense of possibility crept into him. It was a big world, full of hiding places, full of vast spaces, and he was small, so small in comparison. He could be lost and never found. He could find his way home.

  Gabriel looked at his horse, her sleek muzzle and oily brown coat. His gaze moved down the reins to the hitching post. They weren’t even tied to it. They were only thrown over the board and wrapped around it twice. He could have them undone in less than a second. He slid his fingers around the reins and felt the dry texture of the leather.

  As if in answer to this touch, a man emerged from the cantina. The boy’s gaze shot to him faster than a bullet would have. Caleb. He stood in the doorway with his head tilted back ever so slightly, as if he were scenting the air. His face was nothing but a dark shadow beneath his hat, his eyes only the faintest points of substance against that black void. His head turned, and small and distant as his eyes were, Gabriel felt their touch as if they had a physical force, as if the man had reached out and grasped his chin between his fingers.

  Gabriel pulled his hand away from the reins. He held it out beside him for a moment, flexing his fingers, and then he passed the palm across his lips, exhaling a breath onto it as he did so. It was a strange gesture, and the boy wasn’t exactly sure why he did it. But only then did Caleb lean back against the adobe wall. He pulled a cigarette from his shirt pocket and lit it. The flare of the match illuminated the contours of his face for a second and proved that he was a man of flesh and bone, not a phantom in disguise. But if this was any comfort, it didn’t show on either boy’s face. They both stood tense and stiff, and try as he might, Gabriel could not get rid of the pressure that seemed to grip his jaw.

  THEIR STAY IN SANTA FE WAS SHORT, two nights and only one full day, which they spent supplying themselves for the journey west. They camped behind a livery that boarded the horses, shod, fed, and rested them. They set to the work of stocking up on things they’d found themselves in want of on their ride from Three Bars. They bought several boxes of matches, extra water bottles, and, at Rollins’s request, a new coffeepot. Gabriel was sent out with Rollins and Dallas to buy food. They returned with their horses laden with blocks of bacon, canned tomatoes, sacks of beans, flour, baking powder, bricks of lard, and, again at the Texan’s urging, more coffee than Gabriel could have imagined consuming. Marshall came back with a map, some sort of geological survey commissioned by the government. The men looked it over carefully, studied it from different angles, and even held it up to the light. All agreed they could make little sense of it.

  By the time they rode out of Santa Fe, something had changed in the group’s demeanor. The accumulation of days and miles in travel and their undisturbed passage through the city had lifted the men’s spirits. It seemed that some unstated boundary had been crossed and put behind them. The tension eased. Indeed, even Gabriel found it impossible to conceive of
somebody tracking them through the wilderness. He took little joy in this fact, however, for it had never seemed to him that the true danger would come from without. It was right here in the company of the men that he felt most ill at ease, and watching Marshall relax and joke with the others, listening to him spin schemes for a future lived in wealthy debauchery, he felt the rules and norms of society slipping further away. But still he rode in silence, still he and James shared long glances, searched each other without words, still the days passed and they moved ever deeper into the West, into a land that swallowed them without end.

  IT CAME ON THE THIRD NIGHT OF THE BOY’S VIGIL. He had fallen asleep, although he knew so only because when he opened his eyes the world was different from what he remembered. It was still just as dark. The animals were still near at hand. The gun still sat cradled in his lap. But something was different. He swallowed and was surprised at how loud the sound was. He’d never heard the world more clearly. It was as if he had woken as some new sort of being, one with ears that could float away from him and speed out into the night.

  He would have shaken his head to rid himself of the sensation, except it was thus that he heard the beast’s footfalls when they were still far away. Raleigh heard them too and lifted his head and neighed and watched the boy. But the boy just listened to the swish of paws through the grass, to the breathing of the life out there. He could even hear the saliva as it fell from the creature’s lips and splashed against the earth. He knew just when the wolf loped in from the cultivated fields, crossed the space between house and barn, and set its eyes on the barn door. There it paused. The boy’s fingers gripped the rifle so tightly they were white against it, but he didn’t notice. He noticed nothing save the presence on the other side of the door.