Thomas Eidson - The Last Ride

An aspen, its bark girded by the claws of a bear, stood dying beside the trail, its yellow leaves dropping silently in the breeze. He watched the sunlight shining on the tree, making it look like a sparkling, spiritual thing, the leaves floating in random patterns down towards the earth, drifting away on their separate journeys. At one time, the tree had been a whole thing, unified in life and purpose, now it was disassembling, its different lives dying different deaths, each alone. He felt much like that.

Only superficially had he sensed life’s essence, the unseen things which held its true meaning, which throughout the years had touched him like a soft breeze to the skin. Now they were drifting away, leaving him to journey on without them. He was truly alone.

The hills were still, making the sounds of the animals seem loud and intrusive. It didn’t matter. If there was trouble ahead, whoever was going to cause it already knew he was coming, and what he was carrying, and from what direction he rode. He thought again of the Indian face – the face he’d seen in the vision in the cornfield two nights earlier – wondering who he was and what he wanted … and why he bothered him so.

He picked up Baldwin’s and Lily’s trail in the red clay above the pines, then spotted the hoofprints of the old Mexican’s horse; the little man was riding to the side so he could read the signs without ruining them. In a couple of places, he could see where Mannito had turned off and sat watching his back trail to see if he was being followed. The Mexican knew some things, Jones figured.

As soon as Jones saw the cactus, he cocked the hammer on the Sharps, squinting his eyes and studying the path through the broken plants. He sat still, and listened. The gray felt tense under him, her ears pitched forward. Chaco whined. He raised a hand to silence him.

The steer had been skinned in some blue bunch grass; its hindquarters were missing. Jones sat squatting next to what was left of the carcass, ignoring the buzzing flies and the stink, while he counted footprints and pulled as much information as he could from their sign. There was a mix of them. All moccasins – badly worn; not a prosperous bunch. He looked for the one who had gone after Lily the night of the sandstorm, some dark echo in his head tugging at him.

He found his glasses and fumbled them onto his face, and leaned down closer over the dusty prints. Different breeds: Chokonen, Chihenne and Mescaleros, all Apaches, but an odd, motley bunch. They didn’t figure to fit together.

His eyes, focused now behind the glasses, moved carefully over the tracks. He studied the criss-crossing, the repeated circles, the back-and-forth patterns. He looked up at the sky and tried to visualize each of the men, committing their walk, size, weight and habits to memory. When he felt he had a good picture, he looked back down at the dirt. Then he saw the lone set of footprints and understood why the track had appeared strange to him that night.

Apaches were all dangerous. This one, he sensed, was somehow worse. Jones moved closer, studying the imprint, the right foot turned and dragging some. It wasn’t a fresh wound, maybe lame from birth. He wondered what bothered him about the man. He was big. Short framed. There were splashes of dust at the front of the tracks indicating the Indian’s heaviness. Jones guessed him to be over 200 pounds.

He reached down and closed his eyes and touched the track softly, reading its telltale characteristics, feeling the disturbances in the earth. The bad feeling stole over him again and he pulled his hand away.

He could smell fire and saw smoke drifting near the crown of an oak. He moved cautiously toward it. A dark shape was swinging grotesquely from a branch in the tree. He stepped closer trying to stay out of the breeze and the nauseating smell it wafted. The object came into a fuzzy kind of focus: the green cowhide. It had been sewn into a big bag and a fire built under it. Lily’s dress was in the dirt next to the fire. ‘ Bastardos ,’ he muttered in Mexican, as if the word might reach those who had done this. It was a language the Apaches knew well.

Thick smoke rose and shrouded the hide and made it harder to see; then a breeze came and the smoke cleared, and he saw a small blackened foot protruding from a break in the tightly stitched seam. Staring at that foot and thinking of Lily’s grandmother and mother, Jones vowed to find the cripple – and kill him.

He took a deep breath and then held it and slit the stitching of green thongs; the cowhide flaps spread wide, releasing a cloud of putrid smelling steam, and Jones gagged on it, turning away. Death, in general, had never bothered him much. But this one did.

The body was curled in a tight ball and disfigured to the point where it was almost unrecognizable. Nevertheless, he knew it wasn’t Lily. He picked up one side of the cowhide and rolled the corpse onto its back. Mannito. The little Mexican was naked and covered with thousands of tiny puncture holes; but those had not killed him. His death had come from the green cowhide. The fire slowly drying it, shrinking it, until it finally crushed his ribs and suffocated him.

Jones studied the little man’s shattered face and felt the bad sense creeping inside his guts. He had never had much truck for Mexicans, but this one had been somehow different. In just a few days, they had come to a silent understanding; and he felt that the Mexican would have honored it. There was something about the little man that he had trusted. He felt pressure building in his chest and he stood quickly. He’d been close to few people during his life. Hard as it was for him to understand, he believed the little man could have been one of them.

Now he was gone. The Lame One and the other Apaches had tortured him to death. Jones felt the beast in him stir and struggled to control it. Killing a man was one thing – torture another. The disrespect of it bothered him.

He brought his pipe from the gray and lit it and squatted in front of the body. He blew smoke over Mannito, and sang his death song. It was an honor he would never have guessed he would bestow on a Mexican. For a long while he sat and watched the body. Mannito had saved the gray, had stood up for him. And Jones knew instinctively the little man had fought to save Lily. Those things counted by Samuel Jones’ reckoning.

Jones shifted on his haunches, his eyes moving steadily over the ground. The rancher’s tracks weren’t anywhere around. He hadn’t made it this far.

Chaco sniffed at Mannito’s corpse, then flopped down beside it and whined. That surprised him. The dog had seen a lot of death in his nine years of life. He had ignored it. Even children. Ignored it up until this day. Jones blew smoke over the body again to purify it and chanted while Chaco whined. The little Mexican had been different. That was certain.

He moved away from the body and squatted again and smoked, thinking through what had happened here. They had the girl. He figured she was still alive; for a time. Baldwin – probably dead. Most likely they’d ambushed him and Lily, shooting the rancher and grabbing the girl, and then, later, been surprised by Mannito. Somehow they’d caught the little Mexican alive, stripped him naked, put a rope around his chest and dragged him back and forth through the prickly pear. Afterwards, with a thousand cactus thorns impaling him, they’d beaten him with clubs and then sewn him up in the hide and hung him from the oak like a giant cocoon.

If he had the tiny man figured right, he hadn’t let out a cry. He was different. He deserved better. Jones could see where they had squatted and lounged around, drinking and smoking. Lily had been forced to witness the killing. ‘ Bastardos ,’ he muttered again. The Aravaipa had sat off alone, pointed so he could watch her. Jones felt the beast shifting again, and fought the urge to ride after them. He had to know more. He was too weak to chase wildly after anything. And they were expecting pursuit. So he would wait.