The Son

Chapter Fifty-two. Eli McCullough, June 1865

The Federals stuck to our tracks all winter and by Christmas we’d lost half our number. It was plain that if we didn’t leave Kansas we would all end up either shot or hanged; Flying Jacket and the remaining Cherokees decided to absquatulate west to the Rockies. The five RMN men — Busque, Showalter, Fisk, Shaw, and me — decided to go with them. The last we’d heard was Sherman had taken Georgia. If there were other bands of Confederates, we’d stopped running into them.

THE CHEROKEES COLLECTED a few Ute scalps but we avoided the Federals entirely, camping at tree line and generally sticking to the owl-hoot trail until one afternoon in the Bayou Salado we chassed into a small regiment. Normally this would have sent us scurrying over the next ridge, but there were two dozen wagons for only a few hundred men, and they all had eight-mule hitches, and this was not lost on Flying Jacket, either. We hunkered in the rocks and watched them.

“They are pulling something heavy,” he said.

I stayed quiet. I knew exactly what they were carrying but unless Flying Jacket agreed with me, it was pointless. He was near fifty and he’d insisted on being called a colonel and that’s why they made me one as well. He wore his jacket with the oak leaves even when it was a hundred degrees out.

“They’re going to the assay office in Denver,” I said. The war had been nothing like I thought — even the judge was nearly bankrupt — but the longer I watched the wagons, the more I wondered if something might yet be saved from the wreckage. I thought about Toshaway and the raid we’d made into Mexico and I could not see why this was any different.

“If they’re not carrying hides,” Flying Jacket was saying. “Or timber. Or, who knows, perhaps they’re simply that strong now. Perhaps they ride this way for fun.”

“Well, they won’t make the pass at that pace. They’ll have to camp on that bench.”

We continued to watch. The men riding the wagons got off to walk as the road got steeper. It was gold country and they were pulling something heavy. Of course, it could have been anything. But Flying Jacket was coming around.

“I hope we don’t go in and find it’s just a pile of rocks.”

“If we do,” said Flying Jacket, “it will just be a continuation of my entire life.”

He called a few Cherokees over and they talked. Then he turned back to me.

“This cannon they are pulling?”

“Probably a mountain howitzer.”

“With canister shot, if they are worried about being robbed.”

“Yes, but they only have one shot, and they will be firing into their own men.”

“And yet it is strange,” he said.

THEY MADE THEIR camp where we thought they would. There were butterflies in the grass, a hundred-mile view of the mountains, a cold stream running past them. We were at the tree line. It was rocks and dust. The Union men were relaxed, taking their time to set up their tents, making bets on the bighorn sheep, which were white dots on cliffs high above them. A few had Sharps rifles. Once in a while one of the white dots would come tumbling off the mountain, looking like a falling snowman.

ALL THE BOYS were against it. Except for Showalter, who was down with the Indians, we were on our bellies in the rocks, passing the field glasses back and forth.

“This might be a persimmon above our huckleberry,” said Fisk.

“Well,” I said, “it’s what the Indians want, and it’s what Jeff Davis wants, and it’s what we’re going to do.”

“Listen to the fire-eater. The living legend.”

Shaw said: “May I humbly suggest to the boss that his attitude is outdated. By about four years.”

I passed the glasses to Fisk. He was the oldest of us; he had a big family back in Refugio.

“This is a dumb idea.” He began to wiggle back down through the rocks.

“Where are you going?”

“I gotta write a letter,” he said.

“Same here,” said Shaw. “Let me know if y’all change your mind. Otherwise you’ll find me and my horse heading down that draw we came up.”

I looked at him.

“I’ll be back at the camp,” he said. But he wasn’t smiling.

Then it was only Busque and me.

“What do you think,” I said.

“I think it’s stupid.”

“It’ll be high livin’ if it goes off.”

“You know they’ll find some way to take it off us.”

“That is a sorry attitude.”

“It’s time to piss on the fire and call the dogs, Eli. For all we know, Jeff Davis is already a cottonwood blossom.”

I didn’t say anything.

We continued to watch the bluecoats, who had stripped down to their underwear and were lying in the grass, enjoying the sun, gambling on saddle blankets or writing in their journals. Others were skinning the sheep, getting a fire going.

“I feel sorry for those Indians,” said Busque.

WE WATCHED AS the Federals ate their supper, we watched them watch the sunset, we could still see them even as the first stars came out, passing around a bottle, enjoying their jobs, acting like there wasn’t any war.

Most of the tents were in a small depression, their wagons and horses on the outskirts. Around midnight we shot arrows into their pickets. Then we stampeded the horse herd through the tents and it became a proper massacre; the Federals were easy to pick out as they were all wriggling under collapsed sailcloth or looking about confusedly wearing bright white union suits. We came into the bowl from all sides, shooting with our repeaters while the Cherokees raced around, ululating and smashing heads with their flint axes. Most of the Yankees died before they even knew who was tormenting them and I began to feel sorry for them, it was not even an honest fight, and then Flying Jacket was trying to get my attention.

A dozen of the Union men, all in their underwear, had escaped to the rise where the cannon was parked. They were fetching things from a wagon, making no attempt to stiver off, and I thought they had lost their heads. Then their gun started up and I knew why they hadn’t run.

One aimed it while others worked to feed it or watched the flanks and the gun was popping so fast it was like twenty men shooting at once.

Some Cherokees made a charge on horseback and then there was a second charge. The gun had not stopped firing since it started and Shaw and Fisk and I hunkered in some scraggly brush on the other side of the meadow. The Federals were on a rise directly across from us and in the grass below were dozens of trampled tents and dead and dying men and horses and the sound of moaning like a cattle auction.

They ran out of targets. They began to work over the wounded. The moon was bright and Fisk shot a man standing near the gun and then the branches overtop of us were swaying and crackling and Shaw said, “Leon’s hit,” and went quiet.

There would be a shot from our side and the Federals would see the flash and put twenty or thirty rounds in and get their credit. Shaw’s face was dark and I reached for Fisk. He was wet. One of the Cherokees broke cover but the gun caught him, then came back to me. I pushed up against a rock no bigger than a saddletree and the bullets were slapping against it, something punched my arm, my face was stinging, and then they were working the bushes over my head. The ground all around me was flat and open and I knew my medicine had run out. I tried to remember the death song. I’d forgotten it.

The gun stopped again. Flying Jacket was yelling something. I looked for a ditch or rock or dead horse. There was a flipped wagon but it was too far, and there was an Indian behind the wagon shooting his bow nearly straight up, and then more Indians were doing the same and the air above the gun began to shilly and waver, as if there were heat from a great fire. The loaders were shrieking and calling out and then all the Indians were shooting and the gunner was alone firing blindly into the dark.

THE CHEROKEES WERE moving among the tents, finishing off the wounded with clubs. There was an occasional shot farther down the valley.

I bandaged my arm, then I found Busque and Showalter. We went to the gun. The ground around it was stuck with hundreds of arrows — the Indians had shot them almost straight up so that they would fall on the Federals from above and there were scattered bodies with the switches sticking into them at strange angles, into the tops of their shoulders and heads.

One of the bodies began to move. A man slid out from under it. He appeared to be unhurt.

“I surrender,” he said. He held up his hands. “Are you bandits?”

“We’re with the Confederate States of America,” I told him.

He looked at us strangely. Then he said: “I’m a civilian. I’m a sales representative.”

Busque said: “What does that even mean?”

“I represent the Gatling company. We’re not under contract with the army, but we offered a few production samples for their use, as I… as I believe we had difficulty contacting your government.”

The remaining Cherokees were beginning to gather.

“How does that gun work?” said Busque.

“It’s actually very simple. You take a standard paper cartridge, insert it into this carrier…” He picked up a small metal cylinder from the ground, where hundreds or thousands were littered. “The cartridge and carrier unit then fit into this hopper at the top of the gun, like so.”

Flying Jacket had come up.

“Who is he,” he asked. “A deserter?”

“He works for the company that made the gun. He says he is a salesman.”

Flying Jacket cocked his head as if thinking. He said something to his men. Six or eight of them rushed forward and stabbed the sales representative to death.

THE INDIANS ATTEMPTED to take the gun apart so that it couldn’t be used again. But they couldn’t make sense of it in the dark and instead began to bash it with rocks.

Flying Jacket took me aside and led me to the other wagons, where a crate had been pried open.

“This is heavy but it does not look like gold. It looks like wheat.”

“That’s gold dust,” I said. “That is gold for sure.”

“There is a lot of it.”

“How much?”

“Hundreds of sacks like that one. Hundreds at least.”

The sack looked to be about two pounds.

“We’ll have to bury some of it and come back later.”

“Why?” he said.

“It’ll be tough to move it all.”

He looked at me.

“What?”

“Eli, did the sight of that gun not convince you of anything?”

“No.”

“I believe that you are not telling the truth. Did you know of the existence of this type of gun?”

“Not exactly.”

“So you did.”

“I didn’t know they were in production.”

“But you knew the other side would eventually have them. A gun with which one man can kill forty.”

I looked off into the dark valley below us and the mountains beyond it. I wondered if we would make it home.

“Ah, Eli. Our band is nearly a thousand women, children, and old men. When we began this trip there were nearly two hundred warriors to support them. It was not enough. Now there are perhaps forty.”

“It’s a tragedy,” I said. “I am extremely sorry.”

“It is an even greater tragedy that we are on the losing side of this war. The land we have been given by the federal government, which was not very good, and which we hoped to improve by fighting, we may lose entirely. Just to see that gun fired it is clear.”

I shrugged.

“And these men! Look at how fat they are, and how good their horses, when we are starving and our horses starving as well. And the ammunition they carry…”

“It’s always been like this,” I said. “We were always the underdog.”

“We are done fighting,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

“That is a poor decision.”

“Your government will not even exist a year from now, Eli. You are five white men…”

“Now three.”

“Three. I am sorry for your loss of two men, but when this war is over, you three will be able to do whatever you like. But I will be stuck on the reservation, along with my family, paying the price for supporting the wrong side. As will all my men. Who, when they are finished burying their brothers, will likely come to the conclusion that the best action is to kill the three of you. Both because you led us to this gun, which you did not bother to tell us about, and also because when whites steal something, it is no problem — whites can steal from each other — but if Indians steal something it is another matter. Do you understand? Indians who steal gold will not be forgiven.” He shrugged. “And yet we need this gold.”

I didn’t say anything.

“This was a great battle, Eli. The last we will ever win. After this there will be only losing. And I think that if I were you, I would get off this mountain as soon as possible.”

“You’re their chief,” I said.

“Unlike your people, we are democratic. Each man is free. My word is simply advice, not law.” He patted my shoulder. “I am telling you this because you are the best white man I have ever known. The thought of you living gives me great pleasure.”

“Me too,” I said, but he ignored me.

“It will be best if you ride all day and all night, at least for the first few days.”

I turned to go. He had loaded sacks of the gold into a rawhide parfleche. “Magic will not touch you, Eli. I saw it from the first time I met you. But of course that is also a curse.” He handed me the bag.

“WHAT DO YOU think,” said Busque. Rummaging in the moonlight, he and Showalter had each found a clean Union uniform, which was not hard to do as most of the bluecoats had died in their underwear. They packed the uniforms into their saddlebags.

“We’re going to California,” said Showalter.

“I’ll report you as killed in action.”

“Asshole,” said Busque, “the action is over. Those bluecoat motherfuckers all had Henrys and Spencers and that fucking automatic gun. Not to mention those Yankee boots they were all wearing. I would have killed any one of them just for those boots.”

“And this fucking gold,” said Showalter. “Our guys are getting paid in scrip that’ll be worthless by the time the peaches come in.”

“I’m a colonel,” I said.

“Eli, very shortly we will have lost the greatest war in history; in fact it is possible we have lost it already, and that the news has not reached us yet. I don’t plan on being put in a Union prison camp, or shot by the Home Guard between now and then, or, even worse, dying in the final battle for a house of bullshit.”

I didn’t say anything.

“If you go back to Austin you’ll be shot for desertion. And the war will end anyway, whether you’re alive or dead. Come out west and send for your family.”

“I can’t.”

“You think we lived this long because of what great soldiers we are? Is that what you think?”

I didn’t say anything.

“You’re a real sonofabitch,” he said. “I always wondered about you.”

“Girls,” said Showalter, “you think these prairie niggers are gonna let us into any of that gold?”

THERE WERE OVER two hundred Union dead, mostly in their underwear. Usually the time after a fight felt like after a deer hunt, but now I began to get a terrible feeling.

Twenty-eight Cherokees had been killed outright and at sunrise, fourteen of the wounded would be shot by their friends. We buried Shaw and Fisk, whose faces were staved in. I thought of Fisk’s children, and the children of all the other men, they were all somebody’s darling.

From the supply wagons I loaded up on salt pork and cartridges for my Henry rifle. Flying Jacket allowed Busque and Showalter a bag of yellow dust apiece. They were happy and I decided not to tell them what I’d been given earlier.

His men wouldn’t look at us. They all thought we’d known about the gun and the three of us trotted off down the mountain, leaving the Cherokees with the gold and all the Federals’ weapons, ammunition, and horses. Just off the road was a dead man in his long underwear, and farther off the road, at the edge of the stream, was a second one.

I could not shake the feeling I’d stepped over some line over which I would never return, but maybe I’d crossed it years earlier, or maybe it had never existed. There was nothing you could take that did not belong to some other person. Whatever strings that held me had been cut.

“Stop fretting,” Showalter said. “As soon as the sun comes up and they see all their loot, they’ll want to take it and run. They’ll forget we exist!” He grinned at me.

“You’re probably right,” I said.

Busque stayed far ahead. He hadn’t looked at me since the burial.

AT THE BASE of the mountain, when we reached a long stretch of rock, I split off on my own, promising to see them in California when the war ended. It was the end of the RMN. I said a few words to distract from what was showing on my face.

We heard the shots as the Cherokees finished their wounded. I watched Busque and Showalter disappear to the west and then I pried the shoes off my horse and looped around the base of the mountain, staying under cover, changing direction every time I crossed a stream or patch of rock. I guessed Busque and Showalter wouldn’t be careful about their tracks. I hoped the Indians wouldn’t find them, but I knew better, the people around me did not live long, the Cherokees would catch the others, but not me, I was as sure of that as anything.

A MONTH LATER I got to Austin. The war had been over since spring.