“That’s understandable,” I said.
“Do you think I did wrong as a woman to go out west with my brother and do things like I’ve done?”
“I hadn’t given it any thought,” I said. “I think it’s fine whatever you do, long as you don’t steal something or kill somebody doesn’t have it coming, be mean to animals, unless you have to kill and hide behind them or eat them. I think you do okay. You got sand. I can say that for you. You got more guts than a lot of men I known. Back there in that wallow, you was strong, girl, strong. You don’t buckle down and hope for the best. You fight your way out.”
“You have saved me twice, Nat. Both times I was being attacked by Indians and was with a dead horse. Once two of them.”
“Jack saved you the second time, saved me too.”
“I didn’t mean to sound like I’d forgotten him.”
“I know you haven’t. How could you? How could anyone?”
“He was brave,” she said.
“I’d have died behind that horse,” I said. “I’d have just bled out before I’d have done what he done. That took guts.”
“I think you’d have done it had it been you shot, Nat. I think you would have.”
“That makes one of us.”
She got quiet for awhile, said, “Do you think it’s wrong for whites and Indians to be together, you know, to marry?”
“I got nothing against it,” I said. “Jack had an Indian wife. I never met her, but he held her dear to him. Digging Wolf she was called. They wasn’t never married in an American way, but in an Indian way they was. She died of some kind of white man disease. He missed her everyday, talked about her all the time. I reckon he liked her just fine, and she was Indian. Course, I’m not sure if Jack might have been part Indian, or even colored. I don’t know.”
“Do you think it’s okay colored and Indians mix up like that?”
“You mean be together?”
“Yeah.”
“I can’t see no difference in that than in a white and an Indian or a mixed up blood like Jack. He once told me that somewhere along the line all our blood has mingled.”
“How about colored and whites, what you think about that?”
“It don’t bother me none, but it sure bothers some, you can count on that.”
“What about me and you?” she said.
“I’m going to ask you to explain that one.”
“What if I was to take off my pants and come over there and get under your blankets with you?”
“I think I’d have a hard time keeping my own pants on.”
“That’s what I was hoping for,” she said.
She got up then, standing there in the starlight, already barefoot, her boots beside her blankets. She went to unbuttoning her pants. I started to tell her I hadn’t meant what I said, and she ought to stop. I knew that was the right thing to say, cause no matter how much the color line didn’t bother me, it would damn sure bother whites. But I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t. My heart was in my mouth.
Well, she slipped off her pants, and her shirt hung down over her womanhood, and then she unbuttoned that and threw it open. I could see her breasts and I could see the darkness between her legs, and then she came to me. I threw back my blanket and she laid down. As I had predicted, my pants came off.
The next few days was a delight, and I remember them as clearly as if they happened this morning. Sometimes I think I can smell her. She had that sweet smell I talked about, and she smelled even better when she was hot and at it. That kind of wild animal smell dipped in mint and lilac water.
We traveled slow, moving everyday farther away from Indian country. That’s not to say we dropped our guard, but it is to say we frequently dropped our pants. I worried about getting her with child, and was careful as I could be not to, cause if ever I would have been creating a sad little bastard, it would have been that poor, little fellow. Half white and half black and not too popular with either crowd.
Considering all that happened to us, we was reasonably festive. Or more likely, we was that way on account of what had happened to us. I knew that was what most of Millie’s interest was about. We had come close to death, and now we was celebrating life, and doing it with all our abilities.
When we come to a town, there was some men who come up to us right quick, looking angry, wanting to know what a nigger was doing with a white gal snuggled up behind him. Nothing sets a white Texan off his feed quicker than the thought that a colored might be dipping his rope in a white woman’s well, which as I said before was one of my great worries. Things could have got testy, but when they started asking, rumbling about what we was doing, Millie slid down off Satan, praised the lord, said how glad she was to see them, said how I had been kind enough to help her, had given her a ride back from the Battle of Adobe Walls and fought Indians for her.
At first they didn’t believe her, but she went to telling about her brother, and how things had gone for us, about Billy Dixon’s shot. By this time all that news had already been heard, and they took her story to be true, which it was for the most part.
Millie told them too about the fight at the buffalo wallow, and how Jack had died. When she come to that part she tossed in some sniffles, which I like to think was sincere. If not, they was damn well convincing, cause men took off their hats, and women, who had gathered around us, wept. A young boy wanted to know if we got to see Jack scalped. I wanted to scalp that little shit, but held my tongue and held my piece.
She didn’t mention what we had been doing under our blankets the last few days. I was just a colored man who had been at the fight and helped her out. I was immediately branded a good nigger, got some pats on the back, and was offered a dinner, as long as I didn’t come in the house to eat it. It was a long shot from being out there on the prairie with men who lived by gun and knife. Coming back into civilization I found it had less civilized behavior. Them old boys out there in the wilds could be rude and smelly, forget to wash their hands now and again, but they at least stood back a bit and was willing to take a man’s measure. Here, though they took off their hats and didn’t spit in public and cleaned under their nails at least once a week, I was already measured, cut and folded. I was a colored man, and though I had done good, I was still a colored. Had I reached out and touched Millie, even on the arm, in a familiar way, I’d have had done to me pretty much what those Comanche had done to that hunter me and Jack found.
Millie got taken to a couple’s house to clean up. I had to take my horse to the livery, and then I was blessed to sit on the front porch where the family that had taken her in lived. I sat there watching the sun set with a yellow cat for a companion.
A woman brought me out a supper of cold cornbread and some warm beans. A moment later she came out with a saucer and a bottle of milk, and poured the cat some of it in the saucer. Now both animals were fed.
From the porch I could look through the windows. The lamps gave the rooms inside a nice glow. Millie sat at the dinner table with the family. She now wore a fine white dress, her black hair washed and combed, mounded up on her head and pinned. Her neck was long and slim, her shoulders narrow and straight. The light lay on her smooth face as if it was a thin coat of gold paint. She was very lovely.
When she moved her hands, shifted in her chair as she talked, she did so in a delicate way, like a woman that had never stepped one foot out of a parlor. Like a woman who had never shot a buffalo or skinned one, had never fought Indians, or nearly died in a wallow out on the prairie.
I could hear them talking. I heard the man and woman asking her about her family, and Millie telling them her brother had been all she had, and now he was dead and she was all alone. She talked about how she had to survive on the trail because that’s what her brother wanted. He was the one had her dress like a man so she wouldn’t be noticed as a woman right off. He had her do it as a form of protection. She said it was a hard thing, but her brother was all she had, and she had to do his bidding. She didn’t
mention what she had told me on the trail, about how she had gone off to be different. She damn sure didn’t mention what me and her did under them blankets. She spoke kindly of me, the way you might a stray dog.
I knew what she was doing. All that time in pants with a six-gun had worn thin to her. She was trying to find her way back into feminine graces and polite society. Some place where it didn’t rain on your head and the wind didn’t blow cold and you didn’t need to go hunting for your supper and maybe fight a bear or an Indian over it.
I looked at her for a long time, and then she happened to look toward the window. I think she could see me sitting out there in the dark. She looked briefly, then looked away, like she had seen something disturbing, and in a way she had. Now that she was among white people, and I was no longer a warm comfort on a cold, dark night, she felt she had to look at things different. I didn’t blame her. There was nothing to come of it, me and her, even if it had meant anything to her, and maybe it had at the time. She had been brave about the color line out there on the plains under the stars with no one to see us but the wildlife, but she couldn’t be like that now, not here in a well-lit house, wearing a nice, clean dress. Not where a couple might take her in and make her days more pleasant.
I didn’t know exactly how to feel, but in a strange way, I think I wished I was back in that wallow, fighting it out with them Kiowa. I realized I felt more at home there than here.
I finished up eating and left the plate on the porch, gave the cat a pat, and walked over to what served as the livery, which is where I had left Satan. It was one small building and looked to have been put up in a windstorm, way it sagged. It could house three horses and a couple of men if they didn’t swing their arms any. There was some covered sheds out to the side, and that’s where Satan had ended up. I had wanted to shoot him and eat him before, but now I was glad to have him back.
The livery operator asked that I tell him about the fight out there on the prairie, as he had missed the story first hand. I did the best I could to not be impatient. I told it, and I was sure to build up the white boys more than myself. He let me have my horse for free, including the grain Satan had eaten, and even gave me a bit for the road. He told me that the couple Millie was with had lost their daughter to the influenza. I told him they might well have found another daughter this very night.
I mounted up and rode away, and I never saw Millie again, though along the trail for many days after, I would think of her and our blankets out there on the trail, and those thoughts made me feel good.
12
Some years later when I was working as a Marshal for Hanging Judge Isaac Parker, I was walking along a boardwalk in Fort Smith, Arkansas, proudly wearing my marshal badge, and who do I see but Happy Collins. He looked up and seen me at the same time. He smiled, and I smiled, and we threw our hands out and shook.
“Why Nat, you black son-of-a-shit-eating dog, how you been?”
“Better than you, I Have A Hand In My Ass, you horse-humping excuse for a white Indian.”
We laughed and he invited me into the saloon for a drink, forgetting I wasn’t exactly welcome inside. As a marshal, even a black one, I had some perks, but I didn’t take advantage of them much, and besides, I didn’t drink. I was still a sarsaparilla man.
“Someone has let you tote a badge?” he asked.
“Judge Parker don’t care about color,” I said.
“I mean why would they let you tote a badge. That’s like asking me to be a banker.”
It was all lame stuff, but we enjoyed it. Finally he went in the saloon, got a bottle of whisky and a bottle of sarsaparilla for me, and came out. We walked off to where there was a big oak on the edge of town, sat down there and talked while we sipped from our bottles.
“So what you been doing all this time?” I asked.
“These last three years were what you might call eventful,” Happy said. “After Adobe Walls, I managed to brave up enough to go back to the Cheyenne. I mean, I waited until I heard they was near whipped in spirit, you know, and that White Shield, my father-in-law, had forgiven me. He had banished me because White Eagle said he should. Now on account of White Eagle being nothing but a lying asshole, he welcomed me back. You know, the Comanche and the Cheyenne gave White Eagle a new name after Adobe Walls. I ain’t exactly sure how it shakes out, even though I speak both languages pretty good, but it’s something like Wolf Pussy, or Coyote Ass, or Wolf Shit, Wolf Turd, maybe. Whatever it is, it’s not meant as a term of endearment. He gets kicked a lot and women throw horse shit at him. I seen them do it. Thing was, though, even having been welcomed back into the fold, I didn’t stay long. My wife, White Shield’s daughter, damn if she wasn’t humping the hell out of a brave in the short time I was gone. I think she had done him so good he had gone cross-eyed. I sure didn’t remember his eyes being like that when I left out of there on the run. Anyway, I got back into camp, I come to suspect it had been going on all along and I had been a fool. I rolled up my blankets and went back to white folks, and have been miserable ever since. I liked being an Indian. You know a thing I miss, though I don’t say it too much? It’s boiled dog. I guess anyone can kill and skin and boil a dog, but my woman could do it better than anyone I ever knew. I’ve whacked a few pups on my own, skinned them and boiled them, but it just isn’t the same. Shit, Nat. I ain’t nothing but a lazy scoundrel and secret dog boiler in white society. Out there among the Cheyenne I was respected for not stooping to woman’s work. Hey, whatever happened to Jack?”
I told him.
“Oh damn, Nat. I didn’t know.”
“He was a brave one,” I said.
“He was at that,” Happy said. “I knew him and knew of him for a long time. Lot of people hated him, but there wasn’t many didn’t respect him. Or if they they didn’t, they didn’t let on to his face.”
He drank more of the bottle, and we talked for awhile longer, until I realized all we had between us was that day at Adobe Walls. I made excuses, one of which was that it was best I not be seen with a drunk, and then I stood up and so did he.
While he was laughing at my joke about him being a drunk, I stuck out my hand, and we shook. He had tears in his eyes as we parted. I don’t know if it was the whisky, or memory of that day, or if Happy was just the crying type.
13
It was another two years before I pulled off my badge and rode out to Adobe Walls. I still had Satan, and he was still one hell of a runner, but he couldn’t run as long or as far as before. He had gotten old. But, in a short burst, there still wasn’t a horse alive that could beat him.
Took the old trail out there, come to where I thought was about where me and Jack had found that dead man, scalped and cut up. There wasn’t any more wild Indians about, least not in packs. The Comanche had all gone tame, or so it was said. I didn’t see a single buffalo. It was if that hunter and the Comanche and the buffalo had never been.
When I came to Adobe Walls, I tied Satan off to a broken pole sticking out of one of the walls, and went inside where we’d had the fight. A lot of people had camped there. There was all manner of things thrown around, piles of shit here and there, where lazy assholes hadn’t bothered to go outside. The roof was long gone. There was only the sky.
I stood at the window where Billy Dixon had made his shot. Over the years there was them that doubted it, and them that said he made it from the loft, but there wasn’t any loft. And he didn’t make that shot from the roof. I know. I was there and seen him shoot.
There was them among the Indians and the whites who said, yeah, he made that shot, but the Indian didn’t die. He got hit in the elbow, or just got the breath knocked out of him by that long shot, and he lived. I doubt it. I seen him fall, and I have seen too many dead things drop; that shot killed him, I am certain.
Looking out the window at that rise near a mile away, I was overcome with emotion. Had Billy not taken that shot, them Comanche might have worried us down like a dog nipping at a wounded animal, worried us plumb to
death. Thank goodness he took the shot. That shot had let them know White Shield’s magic was no good.
But I hadn’t really come out to see Adobe Walls. Oh, that was part of it, but there was more to it. I had ridden this way remembering those nights Millie and I had together. They hadn’t meant that much to either of us in the long run, but we had been young and bold and I wondered now if she was a school marm. Not that I planned to look her up.
But even those memories of her wasn’t why I had really come.
No.
It was Jack.
Shadows were growing long by the time I reached the wallow where the three of us had fought the Kiowa. Actually, the wallow had filled in a lot, mostly with grass. The grass was long and green there, and where Jack had fallen, not too far from it, there was a greater growth of grass, and there was blue bonnets and yellow flowers. The ground was rich there. Climbing off Satan’s back I looked over that spot, turned my head and looked to where we had seen that trail of Indians traveling along, defeated not only that day, but forever. The prairie went on and on except where it was blocked by great rises of red and rust-colored rock. The sky, though beginning to darken, was so blue it near made me weep. Clouds tufted like cotton balls against it and there was a flock of birds racing across it. A light wind blew. I took in a deep breath. I felt as if I was taking in one of the last free breaths there would ever be.
I let go of Satan’s bridle, because unlike in the past, he was now willing to stand and wait for me, having finally decided I was someone worth knowing and would supply him with grain. I strolled over to where Jack had fallen, got down on my hands and knees and plundered through the grass. I turned up bits of rawhide and finally a skull, or what was left of it. The top of it had been bashed in and where there should have been a left eye socket there was only a big hole that spread from socket to nose gap. There was smaller splits in the bone at the back of the skull—knife or hatchet strikes.