Ford At Valverde

by Anita Melillo

Again there were tears, but these had no meaning. The confusion came and went like the whiffs of smoke that waved about his nostrils. It burned to breathe so that he choked from the aroma, but he couldn’t move. His hands were roped on his bared stomach and his hair had been cut and tossed into a pile beside the thick boned squaw. Her lips were pursed as she pulled at his pants until they slid past his ankles.

  “What do you think you’re doing to me?” he groaned as he rolled his head to one side.

  Something was missing, like a hole had been gauged through his chest where his heart once laid, but it was too hard to feel. There was the pounding rhythm of drumming beyond the hut and chanting that he wished would stop. He could barely move his legs, and his shoulders felt weighted, as though he was sinking beneath water with a solid cover that came down over him. The light grew dim and flickered between his eyelids, but there was clarity in the vision that intensified ghostlike into realities realm. He was being stalked by a hunter of men, where in his hand was a blood tipped spear and he was cloaked in skins, patchy and yellow from where the kill was still fresh. The stench was that of human flesh being marred by flames. He wanted to escape before it came too close and smothered him. He looked for the light with a maddening glare that caused his eyes to roll back into his head.., and in his thoughts appeared two doves, one smaller than the other with gentle eyes, and as quickly as they came, disappeared into the light.

  The pain was an unbearable heat that licked the base of his spine and heated his back as though over a cooker. The sensation was beginning to come back into his hands and feet that were bound by rope, and the strain to free himself was that of a stuck pig above a roast, only when his eyes flashed open, he was no longer dreaming.

  Around him stood the clan of Apache’s, in ceremonial headdress jutted with owl feathers, and their leathery dark bodies coated in white paint so that they appeared as spirits from the dead amused by the peril of his naked state. Some of their faces were covered by a black cloth, where their eyes glimmered in the hollows of the cut-outs. It was as if they had to mask the atrocity of that which they were inflicting upon him. As they pounded at their round leather shields that dangled more feathers, and waved them towards the moon and yipped an eerie song, he knew they were using it as a way to contrive more power, and the mood of the gathering only intensified with the heat.

  He yelled out from the pit of his stomach, a guttural cry and tried to jerk free, but he was secured too tightly, and adorned about the warriors were their weapons, in which there was little hope of escape.

  Then suddenly out of nowhere, a disruptive yelp was heard from a distant scout that flogged his horse with a stone threaded bola and whipped from side to side, with a fierceness to outrun the enemy. Then with the sand kicking up into a thick cloud behind him was the Federal Army, mounting the backs of a hundred or more horses. The gunfire was heavy as they blasted their way into the camp, torching the huts, taking anything of value and driving out the squaws and children, and forcing them to gather in an opening beside the camp as they gunned down the warriors.

  Daniel began to yell with what strength remained, as he writhed above the flames that lapped below him, “Help!... Help!”

  Within a matter of seconds, a soldier having spotted his predicament, stopped in his path and shielded his nose with his coat sleeve from the foul odor that arose with the smoke.

  “Do you want a bullet, or do you want down from there?” he questioned, ready to put him out of his misery if need be.

  Daniel had never been so glad to see a soldier in his life. His lips were blistered and his mouth was parched dry, but he replied, “Down Please get me down!”

  The soldier, a Spanish American, sitting high in his saddle, gave the horse a full turn and spoke in a domineering accent, “You’re Union now, or you’re a dead man. Choose!”

  “Union,” he moaned, and now thought privy to any undertaking other than his own.

  The soldier dismounted and kicked sand onto the pit until it diminished the flames. Then he drew out a knife and severed quickly at the ropes until first his legs were free and then his arms.

  Daniel stood again with his feet on the ground, as the flesh on his backside still simmered with blisters, and he winced in pain as he tried to make a show of ability. A rider fell beside him with an arrow to the back of his neck. Some of the blood splattered onto his shoulder as the fighting exploded around them. He needed to react, he was unclothed in battle and he pointed down to the soldier that was dead.

  “I need his clothes,” he questioned hastily, as though permission was required.

  “Go ahead,” the man nodded, as he speared an Apache elder with the end of his bayonet. “He won’t be needing ‘em anymore.”

  With every effort of his life, Daniel tugged at the dead mans boots until they came off, and then grappled to undress him and clothe himself. The hair on his head was in patches, but the navy uniform cap covered the signs of loss, with the exception of his face being stained from tears. Then he latched onto the weapons at hand, a bowie knife and bayonet and then caught a glimpse of the Spanish American, who was now in the trenches of losing his own life. He packed the barrel with a fresh cartridge and fired, having covered his back as the young scout buckled beneath his horse. There was a nod of appreciation for a job well done, and Daniel motioned towards the burning camp and the women and children huddled together in an opening, temporarily forgetting about his pain in the rush of adrenaline.

  “They took my wife and son!” he yelled, and wanted to search the camp while there was still time.

  “Go on then, and kill as many as you can!” The soldier gave his permission, while he went about the fighting and subduing the enemy count.

  It was later that night when they had traveled the bumpy terrain for miles, all the while pulling the clan of Apache squaws and children along behind, with their hands linked with ropes, that the sense of regret finally hit him.

  He had not been able to find them among the bodies within the camp, which only led him to believe something much worse was at hand for Annabelle and Emmett. Unless he was able to search them out, the bullet would have been better, because with the lump in his throat that wouldn’t allow him to swallow came the most bitter taste of revenge.

  Juan, the Spanish American soldier, had since introduced himself and rode alongside Daniel as though he was his own find from the raid. Having a sense of pride for adding to their accompaniment, he considered it his duty to fill him in on the details of war.

  “The fighting is better at night,” he said, as some of the children were crying as the women warned them to silence in their native tongue.

  However, Daniel only nodded his consent, for he absently feared having to look at the Apaches in the sunlight, as his hatred was welling deep.

  path of blinding sand