Philipp Meyer - The Son

There was a shadow in the brush I had a feeling about; I put a shot into it, adjusted a half foot, put another shot in, adjusting and putting a ball here and there until the gun was empty. I had barely got the first cylinder charged when Lyons went running up the left.

It was quiet. The arrows had stopped coming and my ears were ringing and there were horses squealing and snorting. Someone was moaning and calling for his wife. Other than Lyons and myself, there were only three on our side still up and they were dug in way behind me. Lyons was way ahead. My horse was down and I was happily covered behind it, but I made a rush and closed six or seven yards. Then Lyons made a rush. I watched the pile of rocks where the Indians were, but I’d lost my hat and the sun was glaring. I made another rush. Nothing happened. I made a longer rush and an arrow came out of the willows and clipped my thigh. I saw Lyons charging in, heard him shoot his gun empty, then made myself get up. I was not sure where I ought to be aiming. Lyons came out of the bushes.

“Well, I think that’s all of them.”

“How ’bout down there?”

“Well, go look. But I counted five dead ones, plus the two that ran off.”

“There’s one more by the water,” I said.

“Then there’s your eight.”

I didn’t feel so sure. “Do you have any left?”

He shucked the pistol and pulled out his second and checked it. “Two. Should be enough for some dead Indians.” Then he turned around: “Hey, you fucking women.”

The other three were eighty yards behind us.

“Move up the right.” He pointed toward the river.

Though the two of us were standing out there in the open, they all made the shortest possible rush and ducked down again.

“Who the fuck is that in the way back?” said Lyons.

“I think it’s Murphy and Dunham. And maybe Washburn behind them.”

“What a bunch of cockchafers.” He looked over. “You might want to check that leg.”

I did. By miracle of a quarter inch, the spike had turned to the outside of the hip instead of going inside where the big artery was. I made a wide circle of the rocks. Lyons went overtop. I could feel the blood running into my boot. But there were no more Indians and their horses were grazing along the water.

“You want us to come in?” shouted one of the laggards.

I looked at Lyons. “Not yet,” I shouted back.

We moved carefully among the fallen Comanches, some lying in deep slicks of blood while others looked asleep, a lucky ball to the neck, a clean, dry end, we lifted their faces and checked them carefully and Lyons must have seen someone he recognized, because when we called the other three in, he didn’t share in any of the scalping or stripping; he went off by himself and didn’t talk to anyone.

Just when we were starting to gather the dead, MacDowell, one of the men we thought was down for good, stood up. He had been hit in the head by a fragment and after he collected his senses he was able to ride. I bandaged my hip — considered again what a miracle it was that the arrow deflected away from my innards — and got our five dead loaded. We took them to Fort Leaton, where they had shovels.

THE NEXT MORNING, three of the four remaining Rangers, Murphy, Dunham, and Washburn, turned their badges in to Lyons. “We don’t want none of the aborgoin horses,” said Washburn. “We just want to keep the guns and scalps and such.”

“Keep ’em,” said Lyons.

“You startin’ to miss your turpentine?” I looked at Washburn. He was a cross-eye from East Texas and he had stayed a hundred yards behind us during the fight.

“There ain’t pay enough for this,” he said. “Even a clay-eater like me can tell that.” He indicated the others: “Dunham had ran with Hinse Moody since he was eight years old. You even know that?”

“No,” I said. Dunham was already walking off. I didn’t know why I was taking the blame.

The three deserters went to attend to their packing, which left only me, Lyons, and the young horse thief MacDowell. He had a good nature and I was happy he had made it. Later we stood on the parapet and watched them ride off toward the mountains, but they felt us looking and put the gaffs to their ponies.

“Well,” said Lyons. “Looks like our take just doubled.”

We spent the rest of the day scrubbing guns and fixing tack. Two of the horses we’d got off the Comanches had U.S. markings; we traded them to Ed Hall so he could sell them in Old Mexico. I got a beautiful pumpkin-skin gelding, which I later lost in a card game.

Ed Hall said, “How many do you think got away?”

“Two.”

“You sure you boys won’t stay awhile longer?”

“You’ll be fine,” I said. “Just invite ’em for dinner in front of your cannon.”

He chuckled: “I don’t think they’ll fall for that one twice.”

Of course it was not his cannon; it was Ben Leaton’s. Leaton had died a few years earlier and Hall had married his widow but was having trouble filling his shoes. Leaton had been a scalp hunter extraordinaire and I’d always suspected he ran the party that had nearly got Toshaway and me. He was most famous for inviting a group of Indians to dinner, then slipping out halfway through the meal to touch off a cannon he’d charged with canister and hidden behind a curtain. The shot obliterated the unsuspecting Indians along with everything else in his dining room. No one stole his horses after that.

WHEN WE GOT up in the morning we found that MacDowell died during the night.

“I’m cursed,” Lyons told me.

“I think MacDowell was cursed worse than you.” I was in no mood for his antics. My leg was throbbing and I hadn’t slept and I was too tired to dig another grave.

“No,” he said. “I mean I’ve always known it, that everyone around me will die and I will never even get a scratch.”

“I’m the same way,” I told him.

He looked at me. “Just in the six months I’ve known you, you’ve been stuck with two arrows.”

“But not seriously,” I said.

“Still. There’s a big fuckin’ difference.”

I could not make him understand that there was no difference at all. He quit the Rangers a year before we mustered out to join the Confederacy. Then he moved to New Mexico and died despite his luck and good health.

AFTER SELLING THE horses and captured guns and saddles in Austin, Lyons and I split the money and he rode out again toward the border. I kitted myself out in a new shirt, pants, and hat, dropped my guns off to get the timing fixed, and went to pay the judge for the horse and pistol he’d given me two years earlier. He would not take it, but he was happy to see me, he said, looking and acting like a white man. I had dinner with his wife and three daughters, who were happy to see me also, and I could tell his wife was warming up to me.

“I just knew this would be good for you,” she said. “I knew it would help civilize you just a little bit.”

I didn’t tell her I was doing the same thing I’d been doing with the Indians. The oldest daughters were making eyes at me, and that was not bad, except that it put me in a certain mood and within a few days I’d emptied my pockets.

The city was above my bend. It was nothing but guttersnipes and gaycats, whoremongers and Sunday men. I sold my derringer pistol for a dozen doses of calomel, poured in both ends, as I thought I’d caught the French pox. Then I pawned one of my Colts and got the cheapest room I could find, waiting for another patrol to be funded by the Chosen Ones.

A man found me at the rooming house. He handed me a rawhide wallet like he was making a delivery I was expecting. I took the bag but didn’t open it, and I reached toward my back pocket until I remembered I’d sold my derringer. The man had a weak chin and four days of stubble and a rotting hat pulled to his eyebrows. He looked like a mortuarian’s assistant.