Mariana's Knight

by W. Michael Farmer

Somehow, I believe it was the fury I held inside that helped me get used to running the canyon in blazing heat. Each time I ran, Yellow Boy would say, “Rapidamente. Get stronger. Go faster, Hombrecito.” After a while, I had enough strength to run that distance as fast I could. At that point, Yellow Boy said, “Now you run in desert. Be fast as lion. Be steady as mule. Make mucho agua on skin. Make body strong.”

  I balked and said, “I can’t run in the desert. I look too much like an Indian. Somebody might shoot me if they see me.” Yellow Boy said, “Hombrecito, be from the land of grandfathers when you run.”

  It took me awhile to figure out that he wanted me to be ghostlike, transparent to anyone who might see me. He taught me how to be a desert ghost, starting with a few simple tricks. I ran when the light was bad in early morning, twilight, or even at night. I never wore anything that could reflect light and never silhouetted myself against the horizon. I stayed down below the top edge of ridges and hills. I moved so I didn’t disturb bushes. I knew where I was all the time and was prepared to hide at the first sign of detection.

  I knew Yellow Boy came and went off the reservation and crossed the Tularosa Basin as often as he pleased using those techniques, and he never got caught. Of course, he later taught me many other tricks that weren’t so simple.

  He had me run down the trail toward Las Cruces. He kept extending the distance: two miles, then three, four. Then he had me run all the way to Tortugas Mountain, which was close to ten miles round-trip.

  When I ran to Tortugas Mountain and back, Yellow Boy made me do a trial that’s used with Apache boys. He gave me a canteen one morning before I started and said, “Take water in your mouth, and hold it as you run. Spit it all out when you come back. Now go. Be fast.” Then he climbed up on a big rock so he could watch me as I ran. The first time I tried it, I had swallowed it all or lost it by the time I got to Tortugas Mountain. When I got back there wasn’t a drop to spit out, and I wanted water from the canteen.

  I’ve never seen him more disappointed. Looking at me he said, “No Apache aqui. Your heart isn’t strong. You weak. You must be strong or you die. If you Apache boy, I beat you. You must learn strength in your heart. Now I go por una luna en Mexico. I come back, you do this, si?”

  I was so shaken that he was so disappointed in me that I had to bite my lip to keep from crying. Rufus walked out of the shack and said, “He ain’t old enough fer those kinds of tests yet, and ye know it.”

  Yellow Boy shook his head and said, “Any Mescalero muchacho that tall runs two times distance and not lose agua. He have not lived like Mescalero boys, so he slow. He get better soon. I know this is true. He is Hombrecito.”

  It was then I realized that Yellow Boy didn’t expect me to do as well since I wasn’t an Apache. That made me angry and made me want to work harder to show him I was as good or better than any Apache my age.

  Rufus just shook his head, but he didn’t say anything else. The next day, after Yellow Boy had gone, I tried again. I made it back with a little of the water that time. I kept trying, and after about the fifth or sixth time, I made the whole route without losing very much. When Rufus saw I had done it, he said, “Good work, Henry. That there’ll show old Yellow Boy you have the heart of an Apache.”

  Upon Yellow Boy’s next return, I proved to him that I could meet the challenge, spitting the mouthful of water by our feet. He nodded and said, “Ummph. Bueno.” Though his reaction disappointed me, I told myself I shouldn’t have expected much more from Yellow Boy. After all, he’d claimed Apache boys my age could do the same after running twice as far.

  It wasn’t until after dinner that evening that I saw any evidence that he was particularly pleased with me. Rufus, Yellow Boy, and I were sitting on the porch in the cool of the evening. After Yellow Boy finished his cigar, he came and stood by me, smiled, and said, “Today, a warrior was born. Give your hand to me, Hombrecito.” I reached to shake with him, but he took my wrist in a strong, yet gentle grip. His big knife with the razor edge appeared in his other hand like magic. “We are same blood,” he said. “You now Hombrecito, brother of Muchacho Amarillo.” I felt the blade slice smoothly, but not too deeply, across my palm, the warm blood flowing freely. He put a slice in his own hand and held my cut against his. Again, he said, “We are same blood.”

  CHAPTER 26

  BEST IDEA EVER

  By the time I was fourteen, I had spent nearly six years helping Rufus carry twenty-pound rocks to the piles we made for his new shack and fences. I was very strong for my size, my muscles as hard as the rocks I’d carried. I must have weighed about a hundred and twenty pounds, and I could lift my body weight over my head. Rufus had trained me to be a sharpshooter. Even though the Sharps weighed close to ten pounds and kicked like a mule, I hit bottles or cans ten times in ten shots at four hundred yards, from a prone position, with the forestock resting on crossed sticks. At that distance, whiskey bottles were so small that about all I could see of them was an occasional glint.

  I’d read The Iliad and The Odyssey twice for Rufus, the Bible, and some of Shakespeare’s plays. I understood what I read, and that was even more important than just the reading. I was probably more literate at fourteen than ninety-five percent of the grown men in southern New Mexico.

  Yellow Boy had taught me to live alone in the desert and survive, to run miles in dry searing heat and do without water, and to be dependent only on myself. His lessons had made my mind tough and my body capable of extraordinary endurance. Rarely was an Anglo or Mexican, rancher or townie, able to endure the desert as I could. I knew I was tougher than most white men who worked the ranches and cattle, and, at fourteen, my hormones raged for a challenge to prove I was a man.

  Early one morning, I had already started down the trail on a run to Tortugas Mountain and back when I caught sight of a cowboy riding up the trail toward Rufus’s shack. He was jingling along with his head tilted back and his eyes closed, letting the rising sun warm his face. I swung off the trail and hid, perfectly still and close to the ground, just the way Yellow Boy taught me. As the cowboy rode by, never dreaming I was hiding within ten feet of him, his horse flicked his ears and snorted as if it had heard or seen something. I heard him say, “Damn, horse. If we was still fightin’ Apaches I’d have my hands filled with cocked guns the way yore a flickin’ yore ears around. What’re you seein’? A snake?” I recognized the voice of Buck Greer, one of the men who’d stopped by Rufus’s place right after Yellow Boy had found me and who paid Rufus a visit once in a while. Lucky for me, Buck never guessed why the horse was acting that way. He just kept riding.

  His old gray hair, like straw, poked out from the edges of his hat, and his big, bushy eyebrows lay under a forehead covered with wrinkles that looked like the network of dry washes up by Warm Springs.

  Following Buck back to the shack without getting caught was a game for me. I got within ten feet of the shack porch, where he and Rufus were talking, without Buck knowing I was there. I saw Rufus frown just a little when I crept into my hiding place behind some creosote bushes, and knew he probably concluded I was there even if he couldn’t see me.

  I heard Buck say, “Yep. Cap’n Van Patten’s a-usin’ three or four of his hands to drive wagons back and forth from Cruces carrying eastern dudes up to that hotel he’s a-building.”

  Buck chewed about as much tobacco as Rufus, and he sent a stream of tobacco juice towards Rufus’s creosote bush next to the shack porch. He was sitting on the porch steps, leaning back on his elbow next to Rufus, his hat pushed back, watching the morning shadows of the mountains creep toward them as the sun floated higher.

  Rufus asked, “What brought ye over this a way, Buck? Not that I ain’t damn glad to see yore ornery hide onct in a while.”

  Then Cody must have caught my scent because he lifted his head and cocked his ears. Looking straight at the bushes where I was, he gave a little woof. Buck looked at Cody and said, “What’s the matter with yore hound, Rufus?”

  Rufus rolled hi
s jaw a couple of couple of times before he spat and said, “Aw, they’s a wild bitch in heat he’s been after for the last three or four days. She’s out there in the bushes a wanting him to come out and play. I think she’s done wore the old fart out, and he don’t wanna get up this early to fool with her.”

  “Hot damn, Rufus,” Buck said and laughed. “Yore ol’ hound’s a doing better’n both of us put together. There’s yore old hound, and the ladies is a coming to him. Damn, if that don’t beat all. Best I’n do is ’bout a onct a month visit to Juanita’s place down to Juarez.” He paused and scratched his head for a moment, then asked, “Hell, I ain’t seen you down there in a long time. How’s you and that widow lady in Lincoln a-doin’?”

  Rufus, who had started whittling while they spoke, grinned big and put another brown stream on the creosote bush. Then he grimaced at me on the side of his face Buck couldn’t see.

  I smiled because I’d never before considered that Rufus and Mrs. Darcy could be lovers. I might have laughed aloud if Yellow Boy hadn’t trained me so well. I’d figured by the time a man was Rufus’s age the women would be after young men, not old-timers.

  Of course, Rufus had not done a thing to further my sex education. I had Yellow Boy to thank for that. He’d told me about the ways of men and women one evening when I was about eleven years old, after I’d asked him about two deer I’d seen rutting.

  Buck laughed again and said, “Still being discreet, huh, you old devil? Or am I wrong about that? I reckon she’s too proper for an old geezer like you.”

  Rufus said, “I don’t know, but I’d like to find out,” and they both laughed again.

  Then finally Buck got down to business. “Rufus, the reason I come by was old Cox, Jack Stone, and Oliver Lee is puttin’ a herd together to sell to the army. They plan to drive it down to Fort Bliss next week. Cap’n Van Patten is gonna sell a few head to ’em. We’re a little short on the number of cattle he promised to sell ’em and thought maybe you’d want to sell a few yoreself. We could round ’em up for you and drive ’em over to San Augustin Ranch with our herd if you want. Course you understand you’d have to wait until we was paid ’fore you got yore money. I believe Stone plans to pay us off when we deliver our stock on Saturday over to Cox’s corral, so I could bring yore money over on say Monday or Tuesday, if that’d be all right.”

  Jack Stone, Oliver Lee. The names hit me like a slap in the face. I grew sick and hot in the face every time I thought of them. Here Buck was wanting to sell some of Rufus’s herd to the men who’d murdered Daddy. Well, I thought, it’ll be a cold day in hell before that happens. Nevertheless, Rufus grinned and said, “Why, shore. That’s mighty neighborly of Van Patten and yoreself. If yore boys will take about twenty or thirty head, I’d be grateful. That money’ll keep me in beans fer another year or two.”

  I was madder than a stepped-on rattlesnake. Why was Rufus helping those low-down, murdering skunks? I couldn’t understand it. I wanted to shoot them, and here these two old geezers were selling them their stock.

  Rufus and Buck chewed and spat while they talked cattle and politics for nearly an hour. The sun was a quarter of its way to its zenith, and I felt the sweat rolling down my face when Buck finally got up and stepped off the porch. He tightened his cinch, climbed in the saddle, and, leaning over his saddle horn, said to Rufus, “I’ll send some boys over to get yore stock in two or three days. You just show ’em which ones, and we’ll take care of gettin’ ’em over to Cox’s place.” Rufus nodded with a grin and saluted, touching the edge of his raggedy, old hat with his left hand. He said, “That’s mighty neighborly of ye. ’Preciate it. I’ll be lookin’ fer yore crew. Ride kerful now. Adios.”

  Buck turned and rode off down the trail then called over his shoulder, “Get that old hound to teach you a trick or two, Rufus. Then I’m shore Juanita’ll be glad to see you and yore money.”

  Rufus laughed and yelled back, “Hell, he’s taught me too many tricks already.” He sat on the porch step and watched Buck disappear down the trail. In a few minutes he said, “Ye gonna stay hid out there all day, boy? You’n come out now.”

  I appeared from behind the creosote bushes and flopped down by Rufus on the porch step. Cody came over and stretched out beside me, yawned, rolling his long, red tongue, and waited for me to scratch him behind the ears. A flock of quail ran out of cover across the trail and disappeared under some mesquite. It was quiet and getting hot quick. I knew Rufus could tell I was mad. He wasn’t any too happy, either.

  He said, “Ye’re lucky, son. Ye hid well. But damn it, don’t ever try to hide when they’s a dog close by. They’ll give you away ever time. That’s why the Apaches always tried to kill the dogs around a house before they snook up to git the rancher living there. Ye’s this close”—he made a narrow gap between his thumb and forefinger—“to old Buck catching yore tail. Then, aye God, I’d a-had some fancy explaining to do about why some Indian kid was a-hidin’ on my place. It’s a good thing I’m a damn good liar.”

  Humbled by his review of my bush craft, I wasn’t too mad anymore about Rufus selling those cows, but I still asked, “Why’re you selling stock to Jack Stone and Oliver Lee? You’re helping the men who helped kill Daddy make money. That’s not right.”

  Rufus spat on the green bush and wiggled his nose to edge his glasses up. In a soft voice, he said, “I know how you feel, son. I need the money, and it’s time to sell. Buck’s offer couldn’t a-come at a better time. It don’t make no difference if I sell them cows to Stone or Mary the Virgin. They’s gonna be et all the same. Just get down off yore high horse now and get to runnin’. We got a lot to do to get ready fer them riders from over to Drippin’ Springs.”

  In my heart, I knew Rufus was right, but it still stirred anger and hate down in my guts. As I was runnin’ up the trail back to the shack that morning, I kept repeating to myself, Someday I’m gonna kill ’em, someday.

  I was nearly finished with my run when I thought I had just about the best idea I’d ever had. I couldn’t believe how clever it was. Rufus always got up early on Saturday to go down to Ellis’s barbershop, listen to the latest gossip, and pick up supplies at Lohman’s store in Las Cruces. As soon as he left, I decided I’d take the Sharps and, following the shortcuts over the Organs at the back of the canyon Rufus showed me, I could run over to San Augustin Ranch in two or three hours. Or I could even sneak around through Baylor Pass and still get there in four or five hours. Once I was at the Cox place, I’d pick me out a good spot where I’d hide and watch where the cattle were penned up. If I was lucky, I’d get a good sight picture on Jack Stone and put a .45-70 slug right through his head. If I’m real lucky, I thought, I might even get a chance to drop Oliver Lee.

  It occurred to me that what I’d read in the Bible about God delivering David’s enemies into his hands was the same situation I had. David was just a little boy, and he killed a giant. I was just like David. I was going to kill a giant, maybe two or three of them. God was about to deliver my enemy into my hands, and I meant to kill him just like David, who, when he was about my age, had hit a giant right on his temple with a rock. But I didn’t have to depend on rocks. I was going to put a bullet right between Stone’s eyes.

  CHAPTER 27

  LONG SHOT

  By Saturday morning, excitement was buzzing in my brain like bees around the hollyhocks growing behind the shack and it was all I could do to act my normal sleepy self. Rufus was usually up by four thirty every day. On Saturday mornings, he’d stoke up the fire, put some coffee on, eat a little something with me, and saddle up Sally. He’d tell me with a grin, “Now, Henry, don’t go a-gittin’ into any meanness, but if’n ye do, don’t git caught.” Then he’d stomp out into the cold, early, morning air, climb up on Sally, and disappear down the trail toward Las Cruces.

  I could hardly wait for him to leave. I told myself I’d been waiting six years for this opportunity and I was ready. I’d carried tons of twenty-pound rocks, shot hundreds of shells through the S
harps, and run hundreds—no thousands—of miles all over the Organs and Mesilla Valley, while getting strong and smart.

  Wasn’t I a crack shot? Didn’t I know how to hide and survive in the mountains and desert? Why, I’d be back before dark, and Rufus wouldn’t even know I’d been gone.

  After we’d had our beans and tortillas for breakfast, Rufus sniffed and spat before asking, “What ye thinkin’ so hard about, Henry?”

  “Oh, nothing, except some stuff Yellow Boy’s been teaching me about living in the desert.” That was the first and only time I ever lied to him.

  I felt the lowest of the low for lying to him, but I reckoned what I was planning to do was my destiny. I was going to do it regardless of what I’d promised about waiting until I was fully-grown.

  That morning, when he told me not to get into meanness, he gave me an evil-eyed squint that seemed to tell me not to do whatever I had in mind. I knew Rufus couldn’t read my mind, but it sure seemed that way.

  As soon as Rufus left, I climbed up on a chair and took down the Sharps. Rufus made sure I kept it cleaned and oiled, and it gleamed in the lantern light. I ran my hands over it, feeling the smooth, octagonal barrel and easy-to-grip stock.

  Scratching around the cabin, I put ten cartridges, an old brass telescope Rufus had found in a wagon train massacre years ago, and some jerky and roasted corn in the possibles bag he had given me. I filled a canteen only half full of water because I wanted to keep the weight down so I wouldn’t wear out with all the running I had to do. I tied my hair back and stripped down to just my breechcloth and Chiricahua moccasin boots Yellow Boy had given me. I knew it was going to be a long, hard run.

  I decided I’d take the long way around, over Baylor Pass, to the Cox place. I didn’t want to risk dropping the rifle while trying to get up the little trail of toeholds over the cliff at the end of Rufus’s canyon. When I started running, the cold air and darkness painted with black shadows made me feel as though I was in the nether regions of a womb, surrounded and safe. The trail along the western side the Organs toward Baylor Pass went by tall cliffs, making it hard to see for a while, but I had run it so often I could do it with my eyes closed. My feet knew every stone and pebble along the way. The Sharps’ weight was a bigger burden than I’d thought it would be, so I was glad I hadn’t tried to climb the cliffs with it. I was ready to rest when I topped Baylor Pass on a thin little trail through the piñon and yuccas that ran within several yards of the trail the cowboys used. The sun had been up a couple of hours, but, at this elevation, the air was still very cool and comfortable. I drank from the canteen and ate a little corn. Sitting concealed on a boulder back in the bushes, I used the telescope to find Cox’s cattle pens before I eased on down the trail toward the ranch.