The Color of Lightning (36 page)

The Kiowa moved among the trees. Now he was very small, seen with the naked eye, and the oaks were a fussy gathering of indistin- guishable leaves and branches. But the man was clear enough. Britt breathed slowly and followed the Kiowa’s movements with the bar- rel. The sun was reduced to a red spreading light. He had another minute or two at the most.

Then the Kiowa came and stood near the paint and lifted his hands to firmly set the spray of hawk feathers on his head. Each feather took on a tip of luminous sunset light above his hair. The signature and promise of his guardian spirit. Britt drew in and held his breath. He fixed the V of the sights on the hawk feathers glow-

ing so brilliantly backlit. Enough to allow for drop. The man was very close to the horse.

He squeezed the trigger slowly. The explosion kicked the barrel into the air and made his ears ring. There was a short, wet, animal scream from the stand of trees. Gunpowder smoke drifted down the ridge in front of him. He flattened himself on the ground, the trig- ger guard under his hand.

Britt slid back downhill a few yards and jacked another round into the chamber. He moved westward along the ridge. He did not want to remain in the same place where he had taken his shot. Cajun stood alert and nervous, his eyes fixed on the ridge. Now the world was all black shadows and vagrant deep reds and only a thin arc of light showed above the horizon. In the eastern sky the shadow of the earth itself was cast into space. Then the light was gone and all was dark.

He waited. There was no sound from the distant group of trees. Still he waited. The major stars developed in the sky one by one. The wind sighed and sifted among the grasses. Now he was in the night world, which was another, different universe. He waited for the narrow moon to slide up out of the east.

As he lay there he saw in the remote distance, to the north, ahead of him, a point of red light. It was the burning rock oil at the edge of its ravine, leaking its black slime and burning perpetually.

There was neither movement nor sound from the island of trees. Britt decided to wait out the night. If he went downhill in the dark he would stumble. He might not be able to find his way back to his horse. He lay there with one hand on the Spencer and his revolver bulky on his hip. He was unable to find a comfortable place to lie but not very troubled about that either. He was sorry to leave Cajun tied and saddled with sweaty blankets, but that’s how it was. From time to time he woke up out of a doze and lifted his head to watch the trees. The moonlight was dim and overhead a powdering of uncounted millions of stars both small and large. Britt was hungry and thirsty. So was his horse. He woke when he heard a thin nicker.

The bay was desperate for water. He woke when he heard a click- ing sound and sat upright in the dawn light with the carbine in his hand and saw that Cajun had come to him, dragging the rock with his lead rope.

Britt turned. He could see the paint horse out away from the trees in a white blur. The horse was still hobbled and grazing in a desultory way. Often the horse seemed to stop with uneaten grass still in his mouth, which showed that he was very thirsty.

In a few minutes Britt could read the lettering on the barrel;
Spencer Repeating Rifle Boston Mass.
Britt left the carbine on the ground and carried his revolver in his hand and made his way down the slope. There was no cover between him and the trees. He ran the distance zigzagging and bent over, and at last reached the edge of the copse and slid down a layer of red sandstone that guarded the depression like a well curb.

The paint saw him and called out. The horse stood where it was, nodding, running his tongue out.

The Kiowa lay with both arms outflung and his hands slightly lifted and stiff. A large section of his neck and jaw was missing, and Britt could see the pieces of teeth scattered and the white puzzle of the man’s neck bones and all around his head a dark pool of dried blood. Britt stepped closer and saw the sun tattoo on the man’s chin, the deep, short scars from his self-torture at the Sun Dance.

So much for you,
Britt thought.

He walked around the man’s campsite, looking for signs that there were others. He did not expect to find any and he did not. The man had been alone. Why, Britt would never know. He was not on a raid, or there would have been others. He might have been exiled from the band, perhaps, for some infraction, like Tissoyo. Perhaps he had stolen the paint from someone else and was fleeing with it. At any rate, he had come to his end.

There was nothing Britt wanted from him other than the horse and his death.

He walked back upslope in the early-morning light to Cajun and put the bridle on and slid the Spencer into his scabbard. He tight-

ened his cinch and stood up in the stirrup. He rode down again and loosed the hobbles on the Medicine Hat and rode on. The paint fol- lowed. They could not be far from water because the Kiowa would not have made night camp too far from water. He would have wa- tered his horse and then ridden away a short distance to camp in case someone else came to the same source. Britt saw, from time to time, the tracks of the paint coming from the north but too scat- tered on the occasional patches of bare ground to follow. Then he smelled the odor of the burning rock oil and at the same time saw the paint’s tracks clearly leading down a small bluff of red stone that broke off in squares like thin bricks, and a patch of bright greenery. And there was a spring.

He stripped Cajun of his saddle and blankets and let him drink, and the paint thrust his head in beside the bay and drank as well. The horses sucked in vast draughts of clear water. Downslope from the spring a thin edge of grass grew, and horseweed and maidenhair fern. He let them eat and sat with his rifle between his two hands and watched and listened. Swallows darted around his head. Now he knew where the water was, between the Stone Houses and the Red. If he waited until nightfall and looked for the thin point of light of the burning rock oil, and caught its odor on the wind, he could always find it. This made him feel very good. And there was one down for Mary.

wh e n h e a r ri ve d
at the agency he removed his broad- brimmed hat and then put it back on. The agent was glad to see him again. He remembered him as the colored man who had re- trieved his wife and children and the other white woman and her grandchild from the Kiowa and the Comanche, whose boy Jube had translated for the Grandin girl. They stood at the prim white picket fence that surrounded the agency house. Hammond saw something in the light of Britt’s eyes and the way he carried himself that the man was deeply restrained. That he bore a hidden self. That some- thing had happened.

“I want to leave this horse for a man named Tissoyo whenever he comes in.”

“Tissoyo.” Samuel regarded the horse and its colorful markings. “You know him?”

“Yes. He’s a Comanche. I think he is with Esa Havey’s band.” “Very well,” said Samuel. “I will see to it. And maybe you would

like to come in and eat something? I could have some dinner made for you.”

“No sir, thank you.” Britt did not want to cause trouble for him- self or the Indian agent. The white soldiers or employees might see him walking in the front door of the house and sitting down at a white man’s table to eat, and then there would be resentment, an- ger, hard words. He had enough trouble as it was. One trouble at a time.

“You are welcome to stay all night, then,” said Samuel. “There is the wagon shed, I am sorry to say.” He paused. “Is there something I can do for you?”

“I started up freighting, Mr. Hammond. I come to see if I could carry loads for the agency.”

“Why yes, Mr. Johnson, I would be happy to place an order with you.” He smiled. Samuel’s hair blew in the hot June breeze and he wished he had put his hat on. “It’s dangerous. You know it is dan- gerous.” He put a hand on the hip of the Medicine Hat paint and stroked him. The horse shifted his feet and nodded. He was tired. His red forelock scattered over his white face.

“I can make it, sir,” said Britt. “I just been laying out my route.” Samuel considered this. “You won’t travel alone?”

“No sir. I got two men to come with me. We will be well armed.” There was still a shifting and restless air about Britt and the way his eyes took in every building and the shadows of these buildings at the agency and every object or person that stood in the shadows as if even here the present world were infused with lethal forces. He carried a heavy Smith and Wesson revolver in a holster that was slick with use.

Samuel held his hand over his eyes and looked up at Britt. “I

need tools, flour, horseshoes and ox shoes, those are the immediate things.” He thought for a moment and then said, “If you could bring several loads from Fort Worth it would be quicker than ever I could get it from Fort Leavenworth.”

“Yes sir, you just write me out a list.”

“I am happy to do so. And you’re sure you can cross the plains area between Fort Worth and here?”

“Yes sir,” said Britt. “I can pull a trigger as well as they can.”

Chapter 30
‌

W

I

n th e l ate
spring of 1870 Britt and Paint drove to the Graham salt works fifteen miles to the east of Elm Creek to

carry wallpaper and surveyor’s equipment and an entire box full of accountant’s ledgers plus the steel pens and a jug of ink to go with the ledgers and ten barrels of flour. It was unseasonable weather, a hundred degrees at noon. Dennis was in Fort Belknap taking orders and filling up their small storage shed behind Nance’s store. The shed was made of upright logs from the Brazos bottoms, and clean yellow rods of sunlight came through the chinks between them, swarming with dust motes, falling across Dennis’s long black spider fingers as he wrote carefully in the ledger. When people came in with eggs and butter and venison hams to be sold in Weatherford, he noted down each item. He checked to be sure the eggs were cov- ered with lime or grease so they would not be held accountable for spoilage. Then he presented the ledger to be signed and dated.

Sometimes Jube sat with him. His black horse was tied outside and sleeping in the sun. He had been sent away from the school in the warehouse for beating up the other boys. Jube had nearly be- come a warrior among the Kiowa, he would have ridden fast horses

into mortal danger, carrying weapons on raids to kill other men, and now he must sit quietly and chant his
AB
Cs in a mindless sing- song. Play gentle children’s games and hold hands and dance the schottische. He felt exiled. Even with his mother there in the dusty warehouse chalking sprawled letters on a board. When a boy imi- tated her confused speech, Jube drove the boy down with his fists, knocking over chairs. He kicked the boy when he was down, heavy solid kicks. Sergeant Earl took Jube by the front of his shirt and marched him out the door.

Dennis found it hard to make the boy go back to this and so instead he asked Jube if he could read what was written, and do the sums, and when he had difficulty Dennis taught him with great patience. Jube understood the figures more easily because there were the summer melons before him in a pile at fifty cents each, thirty melons equals fifteen dollars. They had to account for these fif- teen dollars and then subtract the haulage, which was seventy-five cents the hundredweight. And so there Jube, now you figure me that out.

as pa i nt a n d
Britt came along the Graham road across the flat country they saw ahead of them a wagon to one side and a man standing beside it. Another freighter. His team was unhitched and moving restlessly.

“What is it?” said Britt. They pulled up. The long Y-lines pooled at Paint’s feet. They came to a halt in the middle of their own dust. It rose into the air and hung there untroubled by any wind.

The man wore a broad-brimmed hat against the sun. He leaned against his axle-grease bucket and wiped his face.

“They are colicking,” he said. “Something they ate back there in Belknap.”

The horses were wet with sweat and yet cold to the touch. One snapped at his flanks in pain and the other was about to go down. Britt and Paint jumped off the wagon.

“Hitch on behind us,” said Britt. “Then tie the horses behind,

you got to keep them moving.”

The three men stripped most of the harness from the two grays and Paint walked them up and down the dusty road. Paint had to drag at their bits to keep them moving. Britt and the other freighter emptied his load of sacks of grain onto the roadside and then with great effort ran the wagon behind Britt’s wagon and shoved the tongue into the blocks and tied it there. It was a simple one-ton farm wagon or they could not have moved it. They threw the harness into the second wagon.

Paint tied the man’s team behind the second wagon and Britt got his own team moving at a trot. This concentration of wagons and horses filled the air with the dust of their passage that could have been seen miles away.

“What’d they eat?” said Britt.

The man sat backward on the mess box, watching his horses. “Some of that army grain,” he said. “Last year’s oats. They was

selling it cheap.”

The team of grays did not want to move because of the pain in their guts but Britt’s two sorrel leaders and the Fitzgerald bays bent to their collars and dragged them along the road in the stifling heat. Far ahead was the line of broken hills and the Graham salt works smoking the air in high pillars.

“That’ll shake their guts down,” said Britt.

The man stood up. “Bella is going down,” he said. “Keep mov- ing.”

The man jumped off the wagon and when his faltering gray mare came alongside with her knees buckling he took hold of her tail and cranked it to one side like a windlass. Her head fell forward and then her neck stretched out as she was dragged onward.

“God, don’t let her go down,” called Paint.

“What the hell do you think I’m doing?” said the man. His dirty whitish shirt was wet with sweat. Then she was down in an explo- sion of dust and was being dragged. The thick, square blinkers of her driving bridle scooped up the red dust of the road. “Stop!”