Philipp Meyer - The Son

“Are you joking?” I said.

“There are no living people in this drainage except us,” said Toshaway. He gave me a cloth to tie over my mouth and nose.

“Then give me your pistol.”

“You won’t need it.”

“Let me have it anyway.”

He shrugged and handed over the revolver, then leaned to help me tie the cloth over my face. “Remember to lift it if you have to vomit. Otherwise you will be very sorry.”

A few of the buzzards flew off, others stepped aside to let me through, and the flies took off and landed in great black waves. The ground was covered with human bodies, whether hundreds or thousands I couldn’t tell; they were all pulled apart and rotted, partially eaten, blackened and contorted and uncountable. My horse stepped gingerly at first, but soon saw it was hopeless and began to tread directly on what was left of the people.

There were heads and sections of spine, feet and hands, rib cages, the muscle black and the bones very white, lumps of fat stuck to rocks, arms and legs wedged in the branches of cottonwoods where they had been dragged by cougars or bobcats. There were rifles and bows and knives scattered and starting to rust. There were so many dead that not even the wolves and coyotes and bears had been able to eat them. The sun had blackened everything but I could see that none of the people had been scalped. I could not think of who had done this to them.

Most of the horses had been driven off by the wolves, or eaten, but a few dozen of the most loyal or helpless grazed the periphery; there was a big dun mare still saddled, though the saddle had rolled all the way under her belly and she could barely walk. I nickered and rode up next to her and she stood resigned to whatever I might do. I cut the cinch and at the sound of the saddle hitting the ground the mare stepped away, then shook herself and broke into a trot. She had an army brand on her hip, though she had been wearing an Indian saddle, and I wondered about the things she had seen.

One of the tipis had been sealed shut, rocks and brush piled around it, and without dismounting from my horse I took hold of the flaps and cut the ropes. Inside there were two dead vultures and dozens of small bodies, carefully placed in rows and stacked on top of one another. Whoever had put them there was too weak to bury them, or maybe they had been dying too quickly; it was either smallpox or cholera or some other disease and I turned my horse and kicked him and went back to where the others were waiting for me.

“They still had their hair?”

“Yes,” I said.

“How many?”

“Hundreds. Maybe thousands.”

“I think around one thousand. Did you touch anything?”

“Not really. A tipi that was in the sun.”

He squinted and looked around. It was a pleasant little canyon. “I guess there are worse places to die.”

“Who were they?”

“I think that is Kicking Dog’s band. Tenewa Comanche. They are outside their territory so something was not going well when they put their camp there, they were running from something. Tasía, probably.” He dotted his face with a finger. “The gift of the great white father.”

I RODE MY horse into the middle of the stream and scrubbed his feet and legs with sand, then did the same to my own body. I slept by myself that night, a good distance from the others. A few days later, before we reached camp, I went to the river to scrub myself again and asked N uukaru to bring me a bowl of yucca soap and place it on the ground. I cleaned the horse again as well.

When I reached the village they were preparing a big celebration and scalp dance. One of the medicine men took me into a tipi and made me strip. He swallowed breaths of cedar and sage smoke, blew them onto me, then rubbed my body with leaves. I told him I had already used soap, but he figured the smoke was better.

A FEW WEEKS later a group of Comancheros came through the camp and said they had seen more Indians killing buffalo. Toshaway told me we were going on another scouting trip. I acted enthusiastic.

“Give me one of the Tonk rifles,” I said.

He must have thought something would happen because he handed it over without comment, along with a dozen of the paper cartridges.

At night we had fires but only in gullies and far away from any trees so there was nothing to show the light. Finally the scouts came back and reported a party of Indians cutting up buffalo: they appeared to be Delawares, who, though the Comanches would never admit it, were the best hunters of all the eastern tribes, good trackers and men to be taken seriously.

We decided to make a cold camp and sleep before we laid into them. The Delawares made a cold camp as well, though they did not know they’d been seen, and I thought of them out there in the dark, they’d once been the kings of the east as we were the kings of the west, but now they’d killed twenty buffalo and couldn’t even have a fire to celebrate.

THE LIGHT WAS flat and gray and a slick mist was rising from the grass. There were horses going in all directions and everyone shouting and I was staring at one man who had taken four or five arrows but stood calmly tamping a charge into his musket. Someone came from behind and pinned him with a lance. It was N uukaru. There was something about the man squirming on the ground but N uukaru didn’t seem to mind.

The rest of the Delawares were quickly unroostered, but one managed to make a clear swing. I had stayed on the outskirts and he went right past me; he might as well have been standing still, though he didn’t react to the shot and with the smoke I wasn’t sure I’d hit him.

I watched him ride off. I knew what I had to do. There was no time to reload the rifle, and even with all the fighting I knew Toshaway and Pizon were probably watching me. While I was thinking this, the two of them finished killing the man they had started to kill, saw the escaping Delaware, and took off after him.

I fell in behind. I had never whipped a horse so hard but the four of us were strung out in a long line across the prairie with the Delaware at the head. He was riding a legendary animal, putting ground on us with each step, he was nearly a half mile ahead, but there was nowhere to hide, no canyons, no forest, just open prairie, and we began to close. Then Toshaway’s pony stumbled and collided with Pizon’s and I went around them.

As for the Delaware, I could see a shiny slick down his back where my ball had gone in and I whipped the horse even harder, though I had no plan for what I would do if I caught him.

Then he was on the ground. There was a gulch he’d tried to jump and the horse had thrown him. He was lying in the tall grass.

I was on him before I knew it and I nocked an arrow but it went several feet wide. I tried to nock another but my hands were shaking and the horse was skittering so I slid off onto the ground.

The Delaware hadn’t moved. I felt better about everything, I was looking down at my string, trying to get the arrow set, and I looked up to see him spin and draw and shoot in the same movement.

There was an arrow sticking out of me. It seemed like I ought to sit down. Then I was looking at myself; then I decided there was nothing wrong. I grabbed the arrow and pulled it out.

Later I realized that the Delaware was so weak he hadn’t been able to fully draw his bow. My quiver strap had stopped his arrow — but right then I picked up my own bow, which I had dropped, aimed carefully, and shot the Delaware in the stomach. The arrow went to the feathers.

He was looking around for his quiver. It had gotten separated in the fall. I shot another arrow, then a third, which went between his ribs. He was tugging at the one where it was stuck into the ground and I knew he would send it back to me. I shot the rest of the arrows I was holding and he gave up, though he was not quite dead. I knew I should go and thump him but I didn’t want to get any closer, I was ashamed of his breathing and gurgling, of my bad shooting, of being afraid of a man who was nearly dead, and then someone kicked me in the backside.