Mariana's Knight

by W. Michael Farmer

  We were less than fifty yards from that bush when the one-eyed man with the red beard stepped out from behind it with a rifle to his shoulder. Daddy had the reins in both hands. He dropped them as soon as he saw Red Beard and reached for the rifle on his lap. I heard Daddy say, “Oh, no you don’t, you son of a bitch!” Red Beard didn’t hesitate. He fired before Daddy had his rifle halfway to his shoulder.

  It was worse than any nightmare because I knew it was real. Everything I remember happened like time had slowed to minutes between clicks of a big clock. I heard Red Beard’s rifle boom and felt Daddy fall back against the seat. He managed to hold on to the rifle with one hand and throw the other up to his chest. The roar from Red Beard’s rifle and the loose reins made the horses rear up, neighing in surprise, then plunge forward. Red Beard stood where he was, coolly levering another cartridge into the rifle still braced against his shoulder.

  In a gurgling whisper, I heard Daddy say, “Henry, grab those reins. Get us out of here. Hurry.”

  I took the reins, slapped them down on the horses’ backs, and yelled, “Get up, Buck! Get up!” I saw the end of Red Beard’s rifle following us. He had another aim point on Daddy. Buck and Sergeant took off as if a mountain cat was after them and ran a little off the road to get past Red Beard. I could hear the air gurgling in Daddy’s throat. The wagon was bouncing across the ruts so hard I nearly fell out, and I was desperately afraid Daddy would fall out, but somehow he managed to hold on. Remembering what he’d told me, I dropped down into the floor under the seat and managed the horses as they charged up the road. All I knew was we had to get out of there and get away from the man with the rifle.

  The wagon had swept past Red Beard on the far side of the road. He was gritting his teeth in a carnivorous grin that showed snarling, yellow teeth against that big, red beard. It made my heart freeze in fear. I saw his rifle smoothly following us. He was steady and cool. It was an eternity before I heard the pounding roar of his next shot.

  The second bullet made a low whump sound when it hit Daddy in the back. He grunted like someone had smashed him with a heavy club, and the impact pitched him out the right side of the wagon. He did a complete roll, coming out of the wagon and landing faceup on the side of the road. The riders who had followed us all day were flying back down the road toward us.

  I jerked back on the reins yelling, “Whoa! Whoa, Buck!” The horses wanted to keep running, but I wasn’t about to leave Daddy. The riders’ lead man brought his horse to a skid, and, coming up beside me, caught the team within a few yards of where Daddy fell out of the wagon. Red Beard levered another cartridge into the rifle, put the hammer on safety, and casually walked over to Daddy, the rifle on his shoulder and a big grin on his face, enjoying every moment of the murder he had just committed.

  I jumped out of the wagon and ran over to Daddy. The front of his shirt had a big spreading bloodstain over his right lung where he’d been shot from behind, and a stain from a smaller hole to the left of his heart. Blood was practically pumping out of his mouth, but his eyes were open, and he was fighting for every breath. I wanted to cry, to hug him, to beg him not to die, but I couldn’t. I just knelt down by him and took his hand. I felt him feebly squeeze mine. He was able to turn his head and look at me as the light began to fade from his eyes. All he whispered was, “Henry. Go.”

  Red Beard walked up, squatted by Daddy’s head, looked him in the face, and said, “Reckon I’ve killed you, Fountain. You was easy. I’ve seen Meskins that was harder to kill than you.” He spat on the ground and wiped his mouth on the back of his sleeve. “Guess you won’t be puttin’ no more small operators in prison or helpin’ no more redskins and greasers, now will ya? I bet ol’ Oliver Lee will be happy to know I got rid of his problem fer him. Hell, he might even pay a little extry for the good job I done. You was easy money, Fountain. Easy money.”

  He turned his watery blue eye toward me and said, “Howdy, kid. Guess you remember me, don’t you?” He nodded toward the wagon. “You just go on over there and sit in that there wagon nice and easy whiles we see to yore old man. Ain’t nuthin’ you can do fer him, and he ain’t gonna live but a bit more. Go on now.”

  When I didn’t move, he grabbed my coat collar in a powerful grip that jerked me off my knees and shoved me toward the wagon. I stumbled back up onto the wagon and sat down as they gloated while Daddy drowned in his own blood. I didn’t doubt they were going to kill me, too, and I wished they would. I wanted to die.

  I slipped my hand into my coat pocket and curled my fingers around the horse head, the emblem of a knight, watch fob Mama had given me. What would she think of me? I had let my Daddy get killed. It was my fault. I’d been in the way, and I hadn’t protected him like I’d promised Mama I would. I wasn’t even her knight.

  I sat there shivering in the cold wind and felt like some wild animal was tearing at the inside of my throat. To keep back the tears, I looked up at the puffy, black and gray clouds in the sky. Those murderers weren’t going to see me cry before they killed me. I looked back over at Red Beard squatting by Daddy and grinning as he talked. All I could see was Daddy’s shirt covered with blood, and as the blood oozed out of the wounds, it had bubbles in it. Every gurgling breath I could hear was weaker than the last.

  Jack Stone was with the riders who came racing back down the road at the first shot. As he reined in his horse, he said to Red Beard, “By God, you did it. Red Tally, if you ain’t the damnedest son of a bitch I ever saw. You’re worth every penny we’re paying you. Shoulda brought you up here two years ago.” He had a piece of grass dangling from his lips as he talked. He pushed his hat back on his head as if he were at a church social. He was laughing, swearing, and slapping his knee. He and his riders walked their horses over to where Daddy was lying and just sat there looking at him. One of the other riders was Charlie Bentene, the hook-nosed man with the big mustache and bad teeth I’d seen with Stone in Tularosa.

  Stone studied Daddy with his wolfish blue eyes and said, “Look at that high and mighty bastard now, drowning in his own damn blood, sucking wind through a couple of holes in his chest. Damn if that ain’t a purty sight, by God. I know a bunch of people that’d pay money to see old Fountain sucking his last wind. Too bad Oliver ain’t here. Why, I bet he’d pay a thousand dollars just to see this.” He looked over at me with that snarling grin, and then gazed back down at Daddy. He said, “I hope, by God, you suffer a while before you die, you son of a bitch. We’re just gonna sit here and have us a little smoke while you do. You’re sure as hell not gonna put any more of us outta business.” Red Tally looked over at me with his one seeing eye that had no more life in it than the blind one. Stone continued to run his mouth as Daddy died.

  The cold wind picked up and brought me to my senses. I’d been shocked into a dreamlike state. Then I remembered Daddy’s last words to me. “Henry. Go.” And I remembered what he’d said to me earlier about getting away.

  When I couldn’t hear the gurgles in Daddy’s breathing anymore, Stone flipped the last of a cigarette he’d rolled off into the bushes and said, “Sounds like he’s done. If he ain’t, it don’t make no never mind. Charlie, you and Jake come on over here and take that piece of canvas you brought and wrap Mr. High and Mighty here up in it and throw him over a horse.”

  Charlie Bentene and the cowboy they called Jake had been sitting on their horses in front of the team. They walked their horses over to where Daddy lay. I watched them slowly and deliberately dismount and take a roll of canvas off the back of Charlie’s saddle to wrap around Daddy. Daddy stared at the sky with no light in his eyes. I knew he was gone.

  CHAPTER 16

  ESCAPE

  A voice in the back of my head told me if I was going to get away, it had to be then. I slid down on the floor in front of the wagon seat, grabbed the reins, slapped the horses as I yelled, “Get up, Buck! Get up! Hi ya!” The team jumped in the harness and took off straight up the road as if ghosts from hell were after them. They started so fast they
almost threw me out of the wagon, but I managed to hang on. I looked back as we charged up the road in a flat-out run. Stone and Red Beard were laughing, and Charlie and Jake were just standing there with their mouths open. I thought, Yeah, you’ll be laughing when my brothers and I get you. We’ll hang you in front of everybody. They’ll know you murdered my Daddy.

  They didn’t chase after me. I thought I might escape after all and get help after I got to Organ, but I didn’t know they had a man up the road as a lookout. The horses charged up the slight grade just before the hard pull up toward the pass. They had been trotting all day and were already starting to tire. When I saw the lookout sitting on his horse a mile or so up the road, I managed to turn the team off the road and headed straight out into the desert. I climbed back up on the seat and looked back. The lookout wasn’t following me, but I was leaving a trail my sisters could follow.

  In a few miles, the wagon sailed over a shallow little wash, took a tremendous bounce, and threw me out. Buck and Sergeant kept on running. I landed hard. My right forearm hit a big rock and snapped, and I felt something warm running down my face. I also had the wind knocked out of me. I lay there for a minute, choking to catch my breath. I knew I had to get off my back and hide because I’d be a goner if they found me. Finally, my breath came wheezing back.

  I rolled over on my left side and pushed myself to a sitting position, then to my knees. As I staggered up, I was shaking all over. My arm hurt and throbbed so badly I gagged as the bushes in front of me spun out of focus. When I finally got steady and could see straight, I felt a big knot on my right forearm halfway between my wrist and elbow. When I touched my face, the fingers of my mittens came away bloody.

  I took a deep breath, surprised I was still alive. I didn’t have the canteen or the quilt, but I wasn’t dead yet, either. Daddy would have been proud that I’d at least managed to get away and make them work to find me.

  As banged up as I was when I landed, where I landed was the reason I lived, because the spot was on a path cattle followed through the mesquite and creosotes. Their tracks had churned up the dirt everywhere. The men who searched for me would never see my tracks in that chewed-up dirt. I saw a big stand of mesquite up the wash and decided I’d run up there and hide. I thought maybe with a little rest, my arm would stop hurting as badly as it did and my face would stop bleeding.

  I ran for my life, holding my arm and getting blood from my face all over the front of my coat. I was already thirsty, and the wind was sharp as it swept down off the Organs. It was getting colder. My face felt like it was freezing, but I didn’t dare touch or cover it for fear it would start bleeding again.

  I made it to the mesquite thicket, lay down on my back, and slid up under one of the bigger bushes that had caught some tumbleweeds close to the ground. I managed to get positioned behind the bush and under one of those big balls of tumbleweed so I could peep out through a fork in the trunk close to the ground. I had a line of sight not more than a foot or two wide through the grass and overlapping bushes down the path to where I was thrown out of the wagon. I just hoped Buck and Sergeant had run for a long time so it would take the murderers a while to catch them. That way, I’d have more time to hide and get back to the road. In fact, I wished they’d just run all the way home, so my brothers would come running. I didn’t want the murderers to have Buck and Sergeant or my new pony.

  After a while, my arm settled into a steady, dull throb. I knew it would need to be set and bound in a splint if I was ever going to use it again. I remembered my brothers’ tales about pioneers alone in the wilderness who set their own broken arms, but I didn’t have the strength or knowledge to do it myself.

  The ground was still damp under the mesquite bush, and my pants were starting to soak up the moisture and get cold. My hat was still on the wagon. I was getting the shakes from the cold, and my face was throbbing and burning. It started to think maybe I was going to die. If those murderers didn’t catch and kill me, the desert weather would do it for them.

  I decided I should get back to the road, but just before I started sliding out of my hiding spot, I saw the four riders pass through my line of sight down the wash. One of them was leading a horse with a big roll of canvas tied over the saddle. I knew that bundle had to be Daddy. I chewed my lip until it bled to keep from crying out for him.

  The riders didn’t seem to be in any hurry to catch me. I figured out later that they’d felt sure they’d find me with the wagon, or, if not, close by. They thought I was going to be easy pickings, easier than finding a stray calf.

  I tried to think. It was amazing how clearly I could think, even as young as I was, when my survival was on the line. I had to figure out whether to run or to stay where I was until dark. I knew the killers were sure to come looking for me because I’d seen them commit the murder. They’d have to get rid of me, so I couldn’t identify them. I figured they’d believe I’d take the paths the cattle made moving around the range because that was the easiest walking, so that’s where they’d look first. If that was true, I might as well be sitting in the middle of the road waiting for a mail wagon to run over me. On the other hand, if I struck out off those paths, I’d leave a trail any granny could find.

  I had to hide under the mesquite until dark, and then make it down a cow path that led back toward the road. I thought that maybe a little rest would give me enough strength to get back to the road by morning even as cold and shaky as I was. If I didn’t make it, then I’d just hide out again until I got to the road or one of Daddy’s friends or my brothers found me, maybe, in a day or two. I burrowed further down under the tumbleweeds, sticks, and leaves under those mesquites as much as I could without disturbing them enough to draw a rider’s attention. Fortunately, my coat was colored about like the tumbleweed I’d wedged myself under, and, with a few leaves and sticks over me, I knew I’d be hard to see. I was still cold, but out of most of that icy wind. I warmed up a little and felt some better.

  When the wind passed through the mesquite, it made a low rumble, like a flag being whipped about. It seemed to say, Hey, he’s right here. I wished it would stop. Lying on my back, I could look up at the overcast sky and see occasional small patches of blue beginning to gallop past. I wanted to sleep, but my arm and face were hurting, and the images of Red Beard coolly murdering Daddy kept playing in my head. I thought I’d never sleep again.

  The stillness in the desert was my only comfort, and it was powerful. It opened my soul. In soundless whispers, I started praying. I prayed that Daddy was with Jesus and that Mama would be all right. I prayed that I might be rescued, and if I were rescued, I would do whatever Jesus wanted of me. Mostly I prayed for revenge. I prayed that God’s justice would be delivered to my daddy’s murderers, especially Red Beard and Jack Stone and that His power would burn their ashes to nothing. I prayed I’d see Oliver Lee get his reward, too. Most of all, I prayed that I’d be the instrument of God’s justice. With gun or knife, I wanted justice, and I wanted to be the one who made those murderers pay for killing my daddy.

  The patches of blue sky I could see were getting that rich, deep blue that comes just before dark when I heard horses walking in the wash, and, very faintly, men’s voices. My first impulse was to get up and run, but I didn’t rise more than two or three inches before the mesquite’s thorns grabbed my coat and held me fast. I could have jerked from them, but that would have raised enough ruckus for the riders to have found me for sure.

  Nighttime was coming on fast. I could only hope that if I were very still, the riders wouldn’t see me. I twisted my body just enough to look down the wash. Charlie Bentene and Jake were riding up the path through the wash and leaning over their saddles to scan the dirt, grass, and bushes for some sign of me. Bentene got to my mesquite thicket first and stopped. My heart was beating so hard I thought it was going to pop out of my chest as I waited for him to dismount and drag me out. But he stayed on his horse, looked all around, and then threw a leg around his saddle horn while he rolled a ci
garette. Jake came up, stopped, stood up in his stirrups and looked around the tops of the sea of creosotes and mesquites that surrounded them. A cow bellowed in the distance. Jake settled back in his saddle and started rolling his own smoke.

  Charlie cupped his hands and snapped a sulfur match with his thumbnail to light up. He gave Jake a light then flipped the hot match over in the mesquite almost right on top of me. He said, “Cold, ain’t it, Jake? Seen any signs of the little bastard?”

  Jake shook his head, pulled his coat collar up tighter, and said, “Hell, no. Kid that age is small enough to hide in a rabbit hole. Why, hell, he could be hiding in that there mesquite bush, and we wouldn’t know it.” He took a long drag on his smoke and blew it into the wind whipping around them. “Charlie, it’s gonna be colder’n hell tonight. If he ain’t by a fire, he’ll die, and we ain’t got nothin’ to worry about. If he don’t die, we’ll catch him in the mornin’, and Red Tally will have to take care of him because I ain’t killin’ no kid. Come on. I’m starvin’. Let’s go get some bacon.”

  Charlie took a last puff of his cigarette, flipped it in my direction, and said, “It is colder than hell, Jake, but if that kid survives and tells his tale, we’ll be in hell a lot faster’n we’re expectin’, by God. We gotta get out here in the morning before Barela gets to where that wagon run off the road. He’ll know something’s wrong and hightail it to Las Cruces and have half the town back here looking for Fountain and his kid. But you’re right. That kid ain’t gonna make it through the night, and I want to eat before Jack heads for Lee’s place. Jack said he knew just where to hide the body so nobody will ever find it. Come on. We ain’t gonna find that little bastard half-breed in the dark, and he ain’t gonna survive without no fire. That’s for damn sure.”

  They rode off down the wash, still leaning over their saddles looking for signs of me in the fading light. I decided the best thing for me to do was stay under that bush, maybe until midday tomorrow, then walk down the wash and back toward the road. I figured they’d be long gone by then and somebody from Las Cruces would find me. When it finally got dark, I noticed the ground losing its heat faster than even at sunset.