The Son

Chapter Four. Eli McCullough

Spring 1849, the last full moon. We’d been two years on our Pedernales acreocracy, not far from Fredericksburg, when our neighbor had two horses stolen in broad daylight. Syphilis Poe, as my father called him, had come down from the Appalachian Mountains, imagining Texas a lazy man’s paradise where the firewood split itself, the persimmons fell into your lap, and your pipe was always stuffed with jimsonweed. He was the commonest type on the frontier, though there were plenty like my father — intent on getting rich if they could stay alive long enough — and there were the Germans.

Before the Germans came, it was thought impossible to make butter in a southern climate. It was also thought impossible to grow wheat. A slave economy does that to the human mind, but the Germans, who had not been told otherwise, arrived and began churning first-rate butter and raising heavy crops of the noble cereal, which they sold to their dumbfounded neighbors at a high profit.

Your German had no allergy to work, which was conspicuous when you looked at his possessions. If, upon passing some field, you noticed the soil was level and the rows straight, the land belonged to a German. If the field was full of rocks, if the rows appeared to have been laid by a blind Indian, if it was December and the cotton had not been picked, you knew the land was owned by one of the local whites, who had drifted over from Tennessee and hoped that the bounties of Dame Nature would, by some witchery, yield him up a slave.

But I am ahead of myself. The problem facing my father that morning was the theft of two scrawny horses and a conspicuous trail of unshod pony tracks leading into the hills. Common sense suggested the perpetrators might still be about — no self-respecting horse thief would have been satisfied with Poe’s mangy swaybacked mares — but the law of the frontier demanded pursuit, and so my father and the other men rode off, leaving my brother and me with a rifle apiece and two silver-mounted pistols taken off a general at San Jacinto. This was considered plenty to defend a sturdy house, as the army had come to the frontier and the big Indian raids of the early ’40s were thought to be over.

The men rode out just before noon, and my brother and I, both between hay and grass but feeling full grown, were not worried. We had no fear of the aborigine; there were dozens of Tonkawas and other strays living nearby, waiting for the government to open a reservation. They might rob lost Yankees, but they knew better than to molest the locals: we all wanted an Indian pelt and would have collected one at the slightest excuse.

BY THE TIME I was twelve, I had killed the biggest panther ever seen in Blanco County. I could trail a deer across hard ground and my sense of direction was as good as our father’s. Even my brother, though he had a weakness for books and poetry, could outshoot any man from the Old States.

As for my brother, I was embarrassed for him. I would point out tracks he could not see, telling him which way the buck’s head had been turned and whether its belly had been full or empty and what had made it nervous. I saw farther, ran faster, heard things he thought I imagined.

But my brother did not mind. He thought himself superior for reasons I could not fathom. Whereas I hated every fresh wagon track, every sign of a new settler, my brother had always known that he would head east. He talked incessantly about the superiority of cities and it would not be long until he got his wish — our crops were heavy, our herds increasing — our parents would be able to hire a man to replace him.

Thanks to the Germans in Fredericksburg, where more books were stockpiled than in the rest of Texas combined, people like my brother were considered normal. He understood German because our neighbors spoke it, French because it was superior, and Spanish because you could not live in Texas without it. He had finished The Sorrows of Young Werther in the original language and claimed to be working on his own superior version, though he would not let anyone read it.

Outside of Goethe and Byron, my sister was the object of most of my brother’s thoughts. She was a beautiful girl who played the piano nearly as well as my brother read and wrote, and it was widely considered a shame that they were related. For my part, I had a bit of a hatchet face. The Germans thought I looked French.

As for my brother and sister, if there was anything improper I never knew it, though when she spoke to him her words were made of cotton, or a sweet that dissolves on your tongue, whereas I was addressed as a cur dog. My brother was always writing plays for her to act in, the two of them playing a doomed couple while I was cast as the Indian or badman who caused their ruination. My father pretended interest while shooting me knowing looks. So far as he was concerned, my brother was only acceptable because I’d turned out so close to perfect. But my mother was proud. She had high hopes for my siblings.

THE CABIN WAS two rooms linked by a covered dogtrot. It sat on a bluff where a spring came out of the rock and flowed over a ledge to the Pedernales. The woods were thick as first creation and my father said if we ever got to where the trees didn’t rub the house, we would move. Of course my mother felt different.

We fenced and gated a yard and stock pen, built a smokehouse, a corncrib, and a stable where my father did blacksmithing. We had a wood floor and glass windows with shutters and a German-built stove that would burn all night on just a few sticks. The furniture had the look of store-bought; it was whitewashed and turned by the Mormons at Burnet.

In the main room my mother and father kept a canopy bed to themselves and my sister had a cot; my brother and I shared a bed in the unheated room on the other side of the dogtrot, though I often slept outside in a rawhide I’d slung thirty feet or so in the air, in the branches of an old oak. My brother often lit a candle to read (a luxury my mother indulged), which disturbed my sleep.

The centerpiece of the main room was a Spanish square piano, my mother’s sole inheritance. It was a rarity, and the Germans came over on Sundays to sing and visit and be subjected to my brother’s plays. My mother was formulating plans to move into Fredericksburg, which would allow my brother and sister to resume their schooling. Me she considered a lost cause and had she not witnessed my issuance she would have denied responsibility in my creation. As soon as I was old enough I planned to join a Ranging company and ride against the Indians, Mexicans, or whomever else I could.

THINKING BACK, IT is plain my mother knew what would happen. The human mind was open in those days, we felt every disturbance and ripple; even those like my brother were in tune with the natural laws. Man today lives in a coffin of flesh. Hearing and seeing nothing. The Land and Law are perverted. The Good Book says I will gather you to Jerusalem to the furnace of my wrath. It says thou art the land that is not cleansed. I concur. We need a great fire that will sweep from ocean to ocean and I offer my oath that I will soak myself in kerosene if promised the fire would be allowed to burn.

But I digress. That afternoon I was making myself useful, as children did in those days, carving an ox yoke out of dogwood. My sister came out of the house and said, “Eli, go out to the springhouse and bring Mother all the butter and grape preserves.”

At first I did not reply, for in no way did I find her superior, and as for her supposed charms, they had long since worn off. Though I will admit I was often murderous jealous of my brother, the way they sat together smiling about private matters. I was not exactly on her good side, either, having recently stolen the horse of her preferred suitor, an Alsatian named Hiebert. Despite the fact that I had returned the horse better than I found it, having taught it the pleasures of a good rider, Hiebert had not returned to call on her.

“Eli!” She had a voice like a hog caller. I decided I was sorry for whatever unfortunate wretch got roped to her.

“We’re near out of butter,” I shouted back. “And Daddy will be mad if he comes home and finds it gone.” I went back to my whittling. It was nice in the shade with nothing but the green hills and a forty-mile view. Right below me the river made a series of little waterfalls.

In addition to the yoke, I had a new handle to make for my felling ax. It was a bo’dark sapling I had found in my travels. The handle would be springier than what my father liked, with a doe foot on the end for slippage.

“Get up,” said my sister. She was standing over me. “Get the butter, Eli. I mean it.”

I looked up at her standing there in her best blue homespun and made note of a fresh boil that she was attempting to hide with paint. When I finally brought the butter and preserves, my mother had stoked the stove and opened all the windows to keep the house cool.

“Eli,” my mother said, “go down and catch us a few fish, will you? And maybe a pheasant if you see one.”

“What about the Indians?” I said.

“Well, if you catch one, don’t bring him back. There’s no sense kissing the Devil till you’ve met him.”

“Where’s Saint Martin?”

“He’s out fetching blackberries.”

I picked my way down the limestone bluff to the river, taking my fishing pole, war bag, and my father’s Jaegerbuchse. The Jaegerbuchse fired a one-ounce ball, had double-set triggers, and was one of the best rifles on the frontier, but my father found it cumbersome to reload from horseback. My brother had first claim on it, but he found its kick too ferocious for his poetical constitution. It got meat on both ends but I did not mind that. It would drive its ball through even the oldermost of the tribe of Ephraim, or, if you preferred, bark a squirrel at nearly any distance. I was happy to carry it.

The Pedernales was narrow and cut deep into the rock, and there was not much water most times, maybe a hundred yards across and a few feet deep. Along the banks were old cypresses and sycamores, and the river itself was full of swimming holes and waterfalls and shaded pools brimming with eels. Like most Texas rivers it was useless to boatmen, though I considered this an advantage, as it kept the boatmen out.

I dug some grubs from the bank, collected a few oak galls for floats, and found a shady pool under a cypress. Just above me on the hill was an enormous mulberry, so heavy with fruit that even the ringtails had not been able to eat it all. I took off my shirt and picked as many as I could, intending to bring them to my mother.

I began to fish, though it was hard relaxing because I couldn’t see the house, it being high above me on the bluff. The Indians liked to travel in the riverbeds and my father had taken the only repeating firearms. But that was not bad in its way because it made me watch everything, the water glassing over the stone, skunk tracks in the mud, a heron in a far pool. There was a bobcat ghosting through the willows, thinking no one saw him.

Farther up the bank was a stand of pecans where a cat squirrel was taking bites of green nuts and dropping them to the ground to rot. I wondered why they did that: a squirrel will waste half the nuts on a tree before they are ripe. I thought about teaching him a lesson. Squirrel liver is top bait; if the Creator was a fisherman it is all he would use. But it was hard to reckon a one-ounce ball against a bushytail. I wished I’d brought my brother’s.36 Kentucky. I began to graze on the mulberries and soon they were all gone. Mother preferred blackberries anyway. She viewed mulberries the same as sassafras tea, low class.

After another hour of fishing I saw a flock of turkeys on the opposite bank and shot one of the poults. It was seventy yards but the head came clean off. I was allowed to aim at the head, my brother was not — the poult flapped its wings crazily, trying to fly while the blood fountained up. A shot for the record books.

I braced my fishing pole under a rock, swabbed the barrel clean, measured out a careful charge, seated a ball and capped the nipple. Then I waded across the river to retrieve my prize.

Near where the poult lay in a fan of blood there was a purple spear point sticking out of the sand. It was four inches long and I sat examining it for a long time; it had two flutes at the base that modern man has yet to figure how to replicate. The local flint was all cream to brown, which told me something else about that spear point: it had traveled a long way.

When I got back to my fishing pole it was floating downriver and I saw a big catfish had stuck itself on my bait, another one-in-a-million chance. I set the hook, thinking I’d lose the fish, but it pulled out of the water with no trouble. I decided to think about it. While I was sitting there I saw something in the sky and when I looked through my fist I realized it was Venus, that I was seeing it during the daytime. A bad sign if there ever was one. I took the turkey and catfish and my mulberry-stained shirt and hightailed it back to the house.

“That was quick,” said my mother. “Only one fish?”

I held up the turkey.

“We were worried when we heard the shot,” said my sister.

“I don’t think it’s good being so far from the house.”

“The Indians won’t bother you,” my mother said. “The army is everywhere.”

“I’m worried about you and Lizzie, not me,” I said.

“Oh, Eli,” said my mother. “My little hero.” She appeared not to notice my ruined shirt and she smelled of the brandy that we saved for important guests. My sister smelled of brandy as well. It had gone to her head and she pinched my cheek sweetly. I was annoyed at her. I considered reminding her that Miles Wallace had been kidnapped not a month earlier. But unlike the Wallace boy, who had been taken by the Comanches only to be scalped a few miles later, I was not a walleyed cripple. I knew I would probably enjoy being kidnapped, as all they did was ride and shoot.

After double-checking our supply of patch and ball I went outside and climbed the tree into my rawhide hammock, where I could see out over the riverbed, the road, and the surrounding country. I hung the Jaegerbuchse from a nail. I had been meaning to shoot something while swinging in the hammock — that would be proper living — but had not yet been successful. Through the dogwoods near the spring I could see my brother gathering blackberries. The wind was calm and it was pleasant lying there with the smell of my mother’s cooking. My brother had his rifle with him but wandered far from it, a sloppy habit. My father was strict about those things — if a gun is worth carrying it is worth keeping within arm’s reach.

But that afternoon my brother was in luck, as we saw no Indians. Near sundown I spotted something moving in the rocks above the flood line, sneaking in and out of the cedar, which turned out to be a wolf. It was so far away it might have been a coyote, but wolves run with their tails straight and proud while coyotes tuck them under like scolded dogs. The tail was straight on this one and he was a pale gray, nearly white. The branches were in my way so I climbed down out of the tree, snuck to the edge of the bluff, and got into a good brace with the sights high over the wolf’s back. He had stopped with his nose in the air, picking up the smell of our dinner. I set the first trigger, which made the second trigger only a twelve-ounce pull, then squeezed off the shot. The wolf jumped straight up and fell over dead. My father had us patch our bullets with greased buckskin, and our balls carried farther and straighter than if we’d used cotton patches, like most everyone else on the frontier.

“Eli, was that you shooting?” It was my sister.

“It was just a wolf,” I shouted back. I thought about going down to get the skin — a white wolf, I had never seen one of those before — but decided against it, as it was getting dark.

Because of all the food being made, we did not sit down for supper until late. Seven or eight tallow candles were lit around the house, another luxury. My mother and sister had been cooking all day and they brought out dish after dish. We all knew it was to punish my father for leaving us alone, for being guilted into a wild-goose chase, but no one said anything.

My brother and I drank cool buttermilk, my mother and sister drank a bottle of white wine we had gotten from the Germans. My father had been saving the wine for a special occasion. Supper began with wheat bread and butter and the last of the cherry preserves, then ham, sweet potatoes, roast turkey, fish stuffed with wild garlic and fried in tallow, steaks rubbed with salt and chili pepper and cooked directly on the coals, the last of the spring morels, also cooked in butter, and a warm salad of pigweed and Indian spinach, cooked in more butter and with garlic. I had never eaten so much butter in my life. For dessert we had two pies: blackberry and plum, fruit my brother had picked that day. There was nothing left in the larder but hardtack and salt pork. If he wants to run with Syphilis Poe, my mother said, then he can eat like Syphilis Poe.

I felt guilty but that did not stop me from eating my share. My mother did not feel guilty at all. She wished for more wine. Everyone was falling asleep.

I carried the ham bone out to the springhouse, then sat watching the stars. I had my own names for them — the buck, the rattler, the running man — but my brother convinced me to use Ptolemy’s, which did not make any sense. Draco looks like a snake, not a dragon. Ursa Major looks like a man running; there is not a bear anywhere in it. But my brother could not abide anything so tainted with common sense and thus my effort to name the heavens was aborted.

I put the horses in the stable, barred the door from the inside, and climbed out through the gap in the eaves. It would take any Indians a while to get at them. The horses seemed calm, which was a good sign, as they could smell Indians better than the dogs.

By the time I got back inside, my mother and sister had retired to my parents’ canopy bed and my brother was lying in my sister’s cot. Usually my brother and I slept in the room across the dogtrot, but I let him be. After gathering my rifle, war bag, and boots to the foot of the bed, I spit into the last candle and climbed under the covers with my brother.

AROUND MIDNIGHT I heard our dogs rucking up a chorus. I had not been sleeping well anyway so I got up to check the porthole, worried my mother or sister would see what was sticking up under my nightshirt.

Which I forgot about. There were a dozen men near our fence and more in the shadows near the road and still more in our side yard. I heard a dog yelp and then our smallest, a fyce named Perdida, went running off into the brush. She was hunched like a gut-shot deer.

“Everyone get the hell up,” I said. “Get up, Momma. Get everyone up.”

The moon was high and it might as well have been daylight. The Indians led our three horses out of the yard and down the hill. I wondered how they’d figured their way into the stable. Our bulldog was following a tall brave around like they were best friends.

“Move over,” said my brother.

He and my mother and sister had gotten out of bed and were both standing behind me.

“There’s a lot of Indians.”

“It’s probably Rooster Joe and the other Tonks,” said my brother.

I let him push me out of the way, then went to the fire and poked it so we would have light. Since statehood we’d had good Indian years; most of the U.S. Army had been stationed in Texas to watch the frontier. I wondered where they were. I knew I should load all the guns, then remembered I had already done it. A rhyme came into my head, buffalo grip, barlow blade, best damn knife that was ever made. I knew what would happen — the Indians would knock on the door, we would not let them in, and they would try to break in until they got bored. Then they would set fire to the house and shoot us as we came out.

“Martin?” said my mother.

“He’s right. There are at least two dozen.”

“Then it’s whites,” said my sister. “It’s some gang of horse thieves.”

“No, it’s definitely Indians.”

I got my rifle and sat down in a corner facing the door. It was shadows and dim red light. I wondered if I would go to hell. My brother was pacing and my mother and sister had sat down on their bed. My mother was brushing my sister’s hair saying, Shush now, Lizzie, everything will be fine. In the dimness their eyes were empty sockets like the buzzards had already found them. I looked the other way.

“Your rifle has a nipple on it,” I told my brother, “and so do the pistols.”

He shook his head.

“If we put up a fight, they might just be happy with the horses.”

I could tell he didn’t agree but he went to the corner and took up his squirrel gun, feeling the nipple for a percussion cap.

“I already capped it,” I repeated.

“Maybe they’ll think we’re not home,” said my sister. She looked to my brother but he said, “They can see we have a fire going, Lizzie.”

We could hear the Indians clanging things around in my father’s metal shop, talking in low voices. My mother got up and put a chair in front of the door and stood on it. There was another gun port up high and she removed the board and put her face to it: “I only see seven.”

“There are at least thirty,” I told her.

“Daddy will be following them,” said my sister. “He’ll know they’re here.”

“Maybe when he sees the flames,” said my brother.

“They’re coming.”

“Get down from there, Mammy.”

“Not so loud,” said my sister.

Someone kicked the door and my mother nearly fell off her perch. Salir, salir. There was pounding. Spanish was the language most of the wild tribes spoke, if they spoke anything but Indian. I thought the door might stop a few shots at best and I motioned again for my mother to get down.

Tenemos hambre. Nos dan los alimentos.

“That is ridiculous,” said my brother. “Who would believe that?”

There was a long quiet time and then Mother looked at us and said, in her schoolteacher voice: “Eli and Martin, please put your guns on the floor.” She began to remove the bar from the door and I realized that everything they ever said about women was true — they had no common sense and you could not trust them.

“Do not open that door, Momma.

“Grab her,” I told Martin. But he didn’t move. I saw the bar lift and propped the rifle on my knee. The moonlight was coming through the cracks like a white fire but my mother didn’t notice; she set the bar aside like she was welcoming an old friend, like she’d been expecting this from the day we were born.

IT WAS SAID in the newspapers that mothers on the frontier saved their last bullets for their own children, so they would not be taken by the heathens, but you did not hear of anyone doing it. In fact it was the opposite. We all knew I was of prime age — the Indians would want me alive. My brother and sister might have been slightly old, but my sister was pretty and my brother looked younger than he really was. Meanwhile my mother was almost forty. She knew exactly what they would do to her.

The door flung open and two men tackled her. A third man stood behind them in the doorway, squinting into the darkness of the house.

When my shot hit, he windmilled an arm and fell backward. The other Indians sprinted out and I yelled for my brother to shut the door but he didn’t move. I ran over to shut it myself but the dead Indian was lying across the sill. I was grabbing for his feet, intending to pull him in and clear the doorway, when he kicked me under the jaw.

When I came to there were trees waving in the moonlight and one loud noise after another. Indians were standing on either side of the doorway, leaning to shoot into the room, then ducking back around the corner. My sister said, Martin, I think they’ve shot me. My brother was just sitting there. I thought he’d taken a ball. The Indians took a break for the powder smoke to thin so I jerked the rifle from his hand, checked that the hammer was cocked, and was swinging it toward the Indians when my mother stopped me.

Then I was on my stomach; at first I thought the house had fallen, but it was a man. I grabbed at his neck but my head kept chunking against the floor. Then I was outside under the trees.

I tried to stand but was kicked and tried again and was kicked again. Now a man’s feet, now the ground next to them. Now a pair of legs, covered in buckskin. I bit his foot and was kicked a third time and then my hair was being pulled like it would come out at the roots. I waited for the cutting.

When I opened my eyes there was a big red face; he smelled like onions and a dirty outhouse and he showed me with the knife that I would behave or he would cut my head off. Then he lashed my hands with a piggin string.

When he walked away, he did not look like any Indian I’d ever seen. The aborigines living among the whites were thin, light bodied, and hard wintered. This one was tall and stocky, with a square head and fat nose; he looked more like a Negro than a lathy starving Indian and he walked with his chest out, as if taking everything we owned was his natural right.

There were fifteen or twenty horses outside the gate and as many Indians against our fence, laughing and making jokes. There was no sign of my mother or brother or sister. The Indians were stripped to the waist and covered with paint and designs like they’d escaped from a traveling show; one had painted his face like a skull, another had the same design on his chest.

Some of the Indians were rummaging the house and others rummaging the stables or outbuildings but most were leaning on the fence watching their friends work. All the white men I’d ever seen after a fight were nervous for hours, pacing and talking so fast you couldn’t understand them, but the Indians were bored and yawning like they’d just come back from an evening constitutional, except for the man I’d shot, who was sitting against the house. There was blood on his chest and his mouth was frothing. Maybe he’d jumped sideways when the cap popped — they said the aboriginals had reflexes like deer. His friends saw me staring and one came over and said taibo nu wukupatu?i, then knocked me in the head.

I had a long dream where I was brought before a man to judge me for my sins. It was Saint Peter, only in the form of the teacher of our school in Bastrop, who had disliked me over all the other students, and I knew I was going to hell.

Then most of the Indians were standing looking at something on the ground. There was a white leg crooked in the air and a man’s bare ass and buckskin leggings on top. I realized it was my mother and by the way the man was moving and the bells on his legs were jingling I knew what he was doing to her. After a while he stood up and retied his breechcloth. Another jumped right into place. I had just gotten to my feet when my ears started ringing and the ground came up and I thought I was dead for certain.

A while later I heard noises again. I could see the second group of Indians a little farther down the fence but now I could hear my sister’s voice whimpering. The Indians were doing the same to her as my mother.

FINALLY I REALIZED I was in bed. I was having a dream. It was nice until I woke up all the way and heard war whoops and saw I was still in the yard. My mother was naked and crawling away from the Indians; she had reached the porch and was trying to make it to the door. Inside the house, someone was pounding on the piano and there was something waving out from my mother’s back that I realized was an arrow.

The Indians must have decided they did not want her in the house because they began shooting more arrows into her. She kept crawling. Finally one of them walked up to her, put his foot between her shoulders and pressed her to the ground. He gathered up her long hair as if he was fixing to wash it, then pulled it tight with one hand and drew his butcher knife. My mother had not made a sound since I woke up, even with the arrows sticking out of her, but she began to scream then, and I saw another Indian walking up to her with my father’s broadax.

I had been puddling and moaning but that is when I dried up for good. I did not look at my mother and I might have heard a sound or I might not have. I tried to find Martin and Lizzie. Where Lizzie had been I made out a small white patch and then another and I realized it was her and that she was lying where they had left her. Later, when they led us out, I saw a body with its breasts cut off and its bowels draped around. I knew it was my sister but she no longer looked like herself.

I was dragged over to the fence next to my brother. He was crying and going quiet and crying again. Meanwhile nothing was coming out of me. I gathered myself up to look over at my mother; she was on her belly with the arrows sticking out of her. The Indians were going in and out of the house. My brother was sitting there looking at things. I began to choke and air my paunch and when I was done he said: “I thought you were dead. I was watching you for a long time.”

It felt like a wedge had been stuck between my eyes.

“I was thinking Daddy might come home, but now I think we’ll be miles away before anyone knows what happened.”

A young Indian saw us talking and threatened us with his knife to shut up, but after he walked off Martin said: “Lizzie was hit in the stomach.”

I knew what he was getting at and I thought about how he’d sat there while our mother unbarred the door, sat there when I tried to get the Indian out of the doorway, sat with a loaded rifle while Indians were shooting into the house. But my head hurt too much to say any of it. I saw spots again.

“Did you see what they did to her and Momma?”

“A little,” I said.

The Comanches went in and out of the house, taking what they wanted and throwing the rest into a pile in the yard. Someone was attacking our piano with an ax. I was hoping the Indians would kill us or that I would pass out again. My brother was staring at my sister. The Indians were carrying out stacks of books that I thought were meant for the fire but instead they put them into their bolsas. Later they would use the pages to stuff their shields, which were two layers of buffalo neckhide. When stuffed with paper the shields would stop almost any bullet.

The mattresses were dragged out and cut open and the wind caught the feathers and spread them over the yard like snow. My mother was in the way. The feathers were falling over her. The ants had found us but we barely noticed; my brother kept staring at my sister.

“You shouldn’t look at her anymore.”

“I want to,” he said.

WHEN I WOKE up it was hot. The pile of everything the Indians didn’t want, mostly smashed furniture, had been lit. An agarito was cutting into me. The fire got bigger and I could see into the shadows where our dogs were lying dead and I wondered if the Indians meant to throw us into the fire. They were known for strapping people to wagon wheels and lighting them. Then I was looking down on myself as you would a lead soldier. Interested in what I might do but not really caring.

“I can already shimmy my hands,” I told my brother.

“For what?” he said.

“We should stay ready.”

He was quiet. We watched the fire.

“Are you thirsty?”

“Of course I’m thirsty,” he said.

The fire was getting bigger and the moss in the branches above us was flaring and smoke was coming off the bark. The embers of our own burned things were singeing our faces and hair; I watched the sparks climb up. When I looked over at my brother he was covered in ash like a person who had been dead a long time and I thought of how my mother and sister had looked when they sat together on the bed.

The Indians brought all my father’s tools to be examined by firelight and I decided to remember everything they were taking: horseshoes, hammers, nails, barrel hoops, the bucksaw, the broadax and felling ax, the barking iron, an adze and froe; all the bits, bridles, saddles and stirrups, other tack; my brother’s Kentucky rifle. My Jaegerbuchse they decided was too heavy and smashed against the side of the house. They took our knives, files, picks and awls, bits for drilling, lead bullets, bullet molds, powder kegs, percussion caps, a horsehair rope hanging in the dogtrot. Our three milch cows heard the commotion and wandered up to the house for a feed. The Indians shot them with arrows. They were in high spirits. Burning logs were pulled from the fire and carried inside the house; people were tying their bundles, checking their cinches, making ready to leave. Smoke was coming from the doors and windows and then someone untied my hands and stood me up.

Our clothes were thrown into the fire along with everything else and we were walked naked out of our gate, across the road, and into our field. A big remuda had been driven up, Cayuse ponies mixed with larger American horses. The Indians were ignoring us and talking among themselves, ums and ughs, grunts, no language at all, though they had words that sounded Spanish, and one word, taibo, they said to us often, taibo this and taibo that. We were barefoot and it was dark and I tried not to kick a prickly pear or be tromped on by the horses stamping and pacing. I felt better that at least something was happening, then I reminded myself that made no sense.

We were lifted up and our legs tied to the animals’ bare backs with our hands tied in front of us. It could have been worse as sometimes they just tied you over the horse like a sack of flour. My pony was skittering; he didn’t like the way I smelled.

The other horses were stamping and snorting and the Indians were calling back and forth across our field and my brother began to cry and I was mad at him for crying in front of the Indians. Then I began to blubber as well. We trotted out through our lower pasture, three months of grubbing stumps; we passed a stand of walnut I had picked for board trees. I thought about the men who had pushed us out of Bastrop, calling my mother a nigger and suing for our title. Once I had killed all the Indians I would go back and kill all the new settlers; I would burn the town to the bedrock. I wondered where my father was and I hoped he would come and then I felt guilty for hoping that.

Then we were going at a lope with the bluestem whipping our legs. We stretched into a column and I watched as the Indians disappeared into the woods ahead and then my horse passed into the darkness as well.

WE CROSSED GRAPE Creek at the only spot you didn’t have to jump, took a path through the bogs I had not known was there, came out at a gallop at the base of Cedar Mountain. Our cattle were white spots on the hillside. We were making ground in a long flat bottom with the hills all around, into the trees and out again, darkness to moonlight and back to darkness, the Indians trusting the horses to see, driving every animal in the forest in front of us. I looked for my brother. Behind me the riders were suddening out of the trees as if they’d been called out of the blackness itself.

Despite the dark and the uneven ground my horse hadn’t slipped and had plenty of wind. We were coming to the base of Packsaddle Mountain. It was the last piece of land I knew well. I could turn the horse into the woods, but I doubted I would make it and my brother had no chance alone. Farther up the white hillside, I caught sight of the mustang pack I had intended to rope and break. They stood watching as we passed.

TWO HOURS LATER we changed horses. My legs and backside were already raw and I’d been whipped by branches across the face and chest and arms. My brother was cut even worse; his entire body was caked with blood and dirt. We remounted and took up the same hard tempo. Later we came on a river that had to be the Llano. It didn’t seem possible we’d made it that far.

“Is this what I think?” said my brother.

I nodded.

We waited for the horses to cross in the dark.

“We are fucked,” he said. “This is a whole day’s ride.”

Sometime later we hit another river, probably the Colorado, after which we stopped to change horses again. I could smell that my brother had shat himself. When they stood me on the ground I squatted with my hands tied in front of me and the water dripping off and the horses pacing all around. My legs were cramped and I could barely hold a squat. Someone kicked me but I did not want to be riding in my own mess so I finished shitting and they stood me up by the hair. I doubted there was any skin left anywhere below my waist. I was put on another pony. The Comanches didn’t trust the horses raised by whites.

SOMETIME AFTER FIRST light we stopped to change horses a third time, but instead of remounting we stood around at the edge of a river. We were in a deep canyon, I guessed it was still the Colorado but not even the army ever went this far up. The sun hadn’t risen but it was bright enough to see color, and the Indians were standing around waiting for something. They were drinking from the river or leaning and stretching their backs, packing and repacking their saddlebags. It was the first time I’d seen them in the light.

They carried bows and quivers and lances, short-barreled muskets and war axes and butcher knives, their faces were painted with arrows and blooming suns and their skin was completely smooth, their eyebrows and beards all plucked. They all wore their hair as a Dutch girl might, two long braids on either side, but these Indians had woven in bits of copper and silver and colored beads.

“I can tell what you’re thinking,” said my brother.

“They look like a pack of mollies,” I said, though I didn’t really believe it.

“They look more like actors on a stage.” Then he added: “Don’t get us in any more trouble.”

Then a stocky brave walked over and pushed us apart with his lance. There was a dried bloody handprint on his back and a long dark smear down the front of his leggings. What I had thought were pieces of calfskin on his waist turned out to be scalps. I looked up the river.

Ahead of us was a high overlook and behind us the Indians were rotating the horses in and out of the grass along the banks. There was a discussion and then most of the Comanches made their way on foot toward the overlook. One of them was leading a horse and tied to the horse was the body of the man I’d shot. I hadn’t known he’d died and I got a cold feeling. My brother waded out into the river. The two Indians guarding us drew their bows but when I opened my eyes my brother was still in one piece, standing splashing himself — he was covered in his own waste. The Indians watched him, shriveled and pale and shivering, his chest caved from reading too many books.

When he was clean he came back and sat next to me.

“I hope it was worth getting shot just to wipe your ass,” I said.

He patted my leg. “I want you to know what happened last night.”

I didn’t want to know any more than I already did but I couldn’t tell him that so I stayed quiet.

“Momma wasn’t going to make it but I don’t think they meant to kill Lizzie. When they saw she was wounded they took off her shirt and looked over her gunshot pretty carefully; they even rigged up a sort of torch so this old Indian could give his opinion. They must have decided it was bad because they all went and talked for a while and then they came back and pulled off the rest of her clothes and raped her.” He looked upriver where the Indians were climbing up the canyon. “Lizzie Lizzie Lizzie.”

“She’s in a better place.”

He shrugged. “She’s in no place.”

“There is still Daddy,” I said.

He snorted. “When Daddy finds out he will likely ride straight for that woman he keeps in Austin.”

“That is low. Even for you.”

“People don’t go around saying a thing unless it’s true, Eli. That’s another thing you ought to know.”

The guards looked back. I wanted them to stop our talking but now they didn’t care.

“Momma knew she could save you,” he said. He shrugged. “Lizzie and I… I dunno. But you’re a different story.”

I pretended not to understand him and looked around. The canyon walls went up a few hundred feet and there was bear grass and agarito spilling out of the cracks. A gnarled old cedar stuck out of the face; it looked like a stovepipe and there was an eagle’s nest in it. Upriver were big cypresses with knock-kneed roots. Five hundred years was nothing for them.

When the sun hit the upper walls of the canyon a wailing and chanting went up. There was a shot and the burial party began to file back down to the river and when they reached us they knocked us down and kicked us until my brother shat himself again.

“I can’t help it,” he said.

“Don’t worry.”

“I’m worried,” he said.

Several of the Indians thought we ought to be marched to the burial site and killed along with the dead man’s horse but the one who was in charge of the war party, the one who’d dragged me out of the house, was against it. Nabituku tekwaniwapi Toshaway, they would say. My brother was already starting to pick up bits of Comanche; Toshaway was the chief’s name. There were charges and offers and counteroffers, but Toshaway would not give in. He caught me watching him but gave no more account than if I were a dog.

My brother got a philosophical look and I got nervous.

“You know,” he said, “the whole time, I was hoping that when the sun came up they would see us and realize they had made some terrible mistake, that we were people just like them, or at least just people, but now I am hoping the opposite.”

I didn’t say anything.

“What I am getting at is that the very kinship I had hoped might save us might be the reason they kill us. Because of course we are completely powerless over our fates, but in the end they are as well and maybe that is why they will kill us. To erase, at least temporarily, their own reflections.”

“Stop it,” I said. “Stop talking.”

“They don’t care,” he said. “They don’t care about a word we say.”

I knew he was right but just then the debate ended and the Indians who had been for killing us came over and began to stomp and kick us.

When they finished my brother lay in a puddle of water among the stones, his head at an angle, looking up at the sky. There was blood running into my throat and I threw up into the river. The rocks were floating all around me. I decided as long as they killed us together it would be fine. I caught a wolf watching me from a high ledge but when I blinked he was gone. I thought about the white one I’d shot and how it was bad luck, then I thought about my mother and sister and wondered if the animals had found them. I got to blubbering and was cuffed in the head.

Martin looked like he’d lost twenty pounds; his knees and elbows and chin were bleeding and there was dirt and sand stuck everywhere. The Indians were changing their saddles onto fresh horses. I was hungry and before they could put me on another horse I sucked water from the river until my stomach was full.

“You should drink,” I told him.

He shook his head. He lay there with his hands cupping his privates. The Indians jerked us up.

“Next time,” I said.

“I was thinking how nice it was that I didn’t have to get up again. Then I realized they hadn’t killed me. Now I’m annoyed.”

“It wouldn’t be any better.”

He shrugged.

WE CONTINUED TO ride at a good pace and if the Indians were tired they didn’t show it and if they were hungry they didn’t show it, either. They were alert but not nervous. Every now and then I’d get a glimpse of the entire remuda trailing behind us in the canyon. My brother would not stop talking.

“You know I was watching Mother and Lizzie,” he said. “I had always thought about where the soul might be, near to the heart or maybe along the bones, I’d always figured you’d have to cut for it. But there was a lot of cutting and I didn’t see anything come out. I’m certain I would have seen it.”

I ignored him.

A while later he said: “Can you imagine any white man, even a thousand white men, riding this easy in Indian country?”

“No.”

“It’s funny because everyone calls them heathens and red devils, but now that we’ve seen them, I think it’s the opposite. They act like the gods were supposed to act. Though I guess I mean heroes or demigods because as you have certainly helped demonstrate, though not without a certain cost, these Indians are indeed mortal.”

“Please stop.”

“It does make you wonder about the Negro problem, doesn’t it?”

AT MIDDAY WE climbed out of the canyon. We were on a rolling grassland thick with asters and primrose, ironweed and red poppy. Some bobwhites scuttled into the brush. The prairie went on forever; there were herds of antelope and deer and a few stray buffalo in the distance. The Indians checked their pace to look around and then we were off.

There was nothing to protect us from the sun and by afternoon I could smell my own burning skin and was going in and out of sleep. We continued through the high grass, over limestone breaks, briefly into the shade along streams — though never stopping to drink — and then back into the sun.

Then the Comanches all reined up and after some chatter my brother and I were led back to a stream we’d just crossed. We were pulled roughly off the horses and tied to each other back to back and put in the shade. A teenager was left to guard us.

“Rangers?”

“This one doesn’t look too nervous,” said my brother.

We were facing opposite directions and it was strange not seeing his face.

“Maybe it’s Daddy and the others.”

“I think they would be behind us,” he said.

After a while I decided he was right. I called the young Indian over. There were grapes hanging all along the stream.

He shook his head. Itsa aitu. Then he added itsa keta kwasupu and when he still wasn’t satisfied I understood, he said in Spanish, no en sazón.

“He’s saying they’re not ripe.”

“I know that.”

I wanted them anyway and I was so hungry I didn’t care. The Indian cut a section of vine and dropped it into my lap. Then he rinsed his hands in the stream. The grapes were so bitter I nearly aired my paunch. I thought they would help my fever. My lips were itching.

“They’re good,” I said.

“For tanning hides, maybe.”

“You should eat.”

“You are not making any sense,” he told me.

I ate more of the grapes. It felt like I’d swallowed boiling water.

I said, “Scoot over to that stream and lean over it,” and we did. My brother let his head rest in the water, as sunburned as I was, but I could tell he wasn’t drinking. Something about this made me want to puddle up but I kept drinking instead. The young Indian stood on a rock and watched. We sat up again. It seemed like my fever was going down and I could stretch my legs.

“What’s your name,” I said to our guard. “Cómo te llamas?”

He didn’t answer for a long time. Then he said: “Nuukaru.” He looked around nervously and then walked off as if he’d given away some secret and when I saw him again he was upstream, lying on his belly, sucking up water. It was the first time I’d seen any of the Indians eat or drink much of anything, except for a few swallows. When he stood up he arranged his braids and checked his paint.

“I wonder if they’re cockchafers,” my brother said.

“Somehow I doubt it.”

“You know the Spartans were.”

“Who are the Spartans?” I said.

He was about to say something else when there was a rattling of shots far off. There was a scattered return volley and finally the slow knocking of a single repeating pistol. Then it got quiet and I knew it was just the Indians using their bows. I wondered whose bad luck it had been.

Another young Indian came bounding down the rocks and then we were tied back on the horses and led out of the streambed. My fever had gone down and I didn’t mind the sun. After crossing a stony plateau we descended to a prairie that seemed to be mostly larkspur and wine-cup. A red dirt wagon road went up the middle and it was a pleasant sight with the blue sky and a few bright clouds and wildflowers everywhere.

The Indians were milling around a pair of ox-drawn freight wagons. A third wagon was far ahead in the grass, turned on its side, a mule team standing dumbly in front of it. Someone was screaming.

“I don’t want to see this,” said Martin.

There was something white at the edge of the road; a small tow-headed boy in a boiled shirt. An arrow shaft had stuck through his eye and a big red-headed woodpecker was tapping a branch over his head.

Farther up the road blood was dripping from the wagons as if someone had splashed a bucket. There were four or five Texans sprawled in the red dirt and another curled up like a baby in the back of the wagon. Off in the grass and larkspur the Indians were doing something to the last teamster and he was shrieking in a high voice and they were imitating him.

With the exception of the two dealing with the remaining teamster, no one was wasting any time. The mule team was cut loose but they didn’t move; they stood with their heads down as if they had done something wrong. A spotted pony was dead in the ditch, his neck covered with blood, the owner trying to free his saddle. Another Indian pony, a handsome strawberry roan, was standing blowing pink froth out of a hole in its chest. His owner removed his saddle, blanket, and bridle and set them carefully in the road. Then, while hugging and kissing the roan’s neck, he shot it behind the ear.

Everything was pulled from the wagons, including two more bodies we hadn’t noticed. It was hot and the red dust was settling over the flowers. The dead men’s pockets were searched, those who hadn’t been scalped were scalped; the last teamster had gone quiet. One of the Indians had a poultice applied, a pear pad split and tied with cloth; most of the hide shields had fresh lead streaks and a tall brave with Karankawa blood was cleaning his lance with grass. Others were going through the cargo, mostly flour sacks, which were cut and dumped in the road. A keg of whiskey was tomahawked and smaller kegs of gunpowder were strapped to horses along with several small crates, which from their weight must have been lead. Knives and blankets were taken, plugs of tobacco, bullet molds, a pair of axes and a handsaw, some calico fabric, a few repeating pistols. The locks and mainsprings on the rest of the guns were checked and the ones still good were taken. There was a brief debate over a scalp. Two plum pies were discovered and divvied up with the bloody knives.

The younger Comanches were combing the grass for stray arrows, the mules were put into the horse pack, a few quick circles were made to be sure nothing and no one had been missed, a piece of interesting fabric recovered, then all the guns were recharged and the quivers repacked, straps and hitches tightened, mouths rinsed. The oxen bellowed their final protest as someone cut their throats; by then the rest of the blood in the road had turned black and the bodies covered over with dust. They looked like they’d always been there.

The Indians split into three groups and left a wide set of tracks leading toward civilization, opposite the direction we were actually headed. Everyone was in a good mood. One of the braves rode up and slapped a fresh scalp on my head, the stringy gray hair hanging down. A man’s bloody hat was crushed down on top of it, which the Indians found hilarious. We continued northwest, the grass tall with scattered thick motts of oak and the mesquites with their flickering leaves and the yuccas in bloom with their white flowers.

After a few hours the brave decided he didn’t want to soil his trophy any further and took it off my head, tying it to his belt and throwing the dead man’s hat into the bushes. The scalp and hat had been keeping the sun off and I asked for the hat back but we rode on. By then the other groups had rejoined us.

At the next change of horses, the Indians passed around some jerky they’d taken off the teamsters. My brother and I were offered a few bites. It was still hot but the Indians didn’t care about drinking water, and when one of them offered me tobacco I was so thirsty I couldn’t take it. My brother was not offered tobacco. He stood with his legs in a straddle and looked miserable.

When the sun finally went down my mouth was so dry I thought I would choke. I reminded myself to pick up a pebble to suck but then I was thinking about the spring near our house, of sitting and letting the water rush over as I looked out past the river. I began to feel better.

It was dark and at some point we stopped at a muddy hole and the horses were held back while the Indians tore up grass and piled it on the mud and took about two swallows each. My brother and I stuck our whole faces in and drank our fill. It tasted like frogs and smelled like animals had been wallowing but we didn’t care. After he’d swallowed enough my brother started to cry, and then the Indians were kicking him in the belly and giving him the knife at the throat. Wuyupa?nitu, quiet down. Nihpu?aitu, stop talking.

They were planning something. They changed their mounts but we were kept back with the horse herd.

“I think we’ve come a hundred miles. We must be right below the San Saba.”

“Do you think they’ll let me drink again?”

“Sure,” I said.

He put his face back in the muddy water. I tried again but now I couldn’t stand the smell. My brother drank and drank. It hurt even just to sit in the dirt now. I wondered how long it would take to heal; weeks maybe. We huddled together as best as possible. There was a bad odor and I realized my brother had shat himself.

“I can’t stop.”

“It’s all right.”

“There’s no point,” he said.

“All we have to do is keep going,” I told him. “It is not that much when you think about it.”

“And then what? What happens when we get where they’re taking us?”

I was quiet.

“I don’t want to find out,” he said.

“There was John Tanner,” I said, “Charles Johnston, you yourself have read those books.”

“I am not the type to live on bark and gooseberries.”

“You’ll be a legend,” I said. “I’ll visit you in Boston and tell your friend Emerson that you’re a real man and not just some cockchafing poet.”

He didn’t say anything.

“You could try a little harder,” I told him. “You’re risking our hair every time you piss them off.”

“I’m doing the best I can.”

“That is not true at all.”

“Well, I’m glad you know.”

He started to cry again. Then he was snoring. I was mad because he was just being lazy. We were not being fed any less, or driven any harder, than the Indians were driving themselves; we’d both had a lot more water than they had and who knew how long they’d been going like this? There was a logic but my brother couldn’t see it. If a man has done it, so can you: that is what our father used to tell us.

Then we were slapped awake. It was still dark and they tied us to the horses and there was a bright light in the distance that I knew was a burning homestead. I hadn’t thought there were whites this far out, but the land was rich and I could see why they had risked it. A few braves came up and I could tell they were pleased with the youngsters for getting us mounted.

In the darkness we saw another dozen or so horses driven into the remuda. There were two new captives; by their crying we knew they were women and by their language we knew they were German, or Dutch as we called them back then.

By sunrise we’d gone another fifty miles, changing horses twice. The Germans didn’t stop crying the entire night. When it was light enough we climbed a mesa, winding around the far side before coming up to watch our backtrail. The land had opened up; there were mesas, buttes, distant views.

The Germans were as naked as we were. One was seventeen or eighteen and the other a little older, and while they were both covered in blood and filth it was obvious they were at the peak of their female charms. The more I looked at them, the more I began to hate them and I hoped the Indians would degrade them some more and I would be able to watch.

My brother said, “I hate those Dutch women and I hope the Indians give them a good fucking.”

“Me too.”

“You seem to be holding up, though.”

“Because I don’t keep falling off my horse.” We had stopped twice that night so they could lash my brother on tighter.

“I’ve been trying to catch a hoof in the head, but I haven’t been so lucky.”

“I’m sure Momma would be happy to hear that.”

“You’ll make a good little Indian, Eli. I’m sorry I won’t be there to see it.”

I didn’t say anything.

“You know the reason I didn’t shoot is because I didn’t want them to hurt Mother or Lizzie.”

“You froze up.”

“They would have killed Mother anyway, that’s obvious, but they would have taken Lizzie with us. It was only because she’d been shot that…”

“Shut up,” I said.

“You didn’t have to see what they did to her.”

I was looking at him. He looked the same as always with his squinty eyes and thin lips but he seemed like someone I’d known a long time ago.

A little later he told me he was sorry.

The Indians passed around a few pieces of jerked meat from the teamsters. One of the Germans asked me where I thought we were going. I pretended not to understand her. She knew better than to talk to Martin.

THE NEXT DAY the views got longer. We were in a canyon ten miles wide, the walls going up a thousand feet above us, all red rock. There were cottonwoods and hackberries but not many other trees and we passed a magenta spear point in the sand, twin to the one I’d seen below our house. There were stone creatures in every rock and stream bank: a nautilus big as a wagon wheel, the horns and bones of animals larger than anything still alive on the earth.

Toshaway told me in Spanish that by fall the canyon would be full of buffalo. He was appreciating the scene. There were long tufts of black hair streaming from the cedar and mesquite; the buffalo had been using this place a long time.

The Indians showed no sign of tiring or of wanting a proper feed, but the pace had slowed. My mouth was watering; any number of fish could have been speared as we passed: the water was full of yellow cats, eels, buffalo fish, and gar. I lost count of the whitetail and antelope. A cinnamon grizzly, the largest I’d ever seen, was sunning himself on a ledge. Springs flowing down cliff faces, pools underneath.

That night we made our first real camp and I fell asleep in the rocks holding my brother. Someone put a buffalo robe over us and when I looked up, Toshaway was squatting next to me. His smell was becoming familiar. “Tomorrow we’ll make a fire,” he said.

The next morning we rode past sandstone mesas with figures scratched into the rock: shamans, men in combat, lances and shields and tipis.

“You know they’re going to separate us,” Martin said.

I looked at him.

“These guys are from two different bands.”

“How would you even know?” I said.

“The one who owns you is Kotsoteka,” he said. “The one who owns me is Yamparika.”

“The one who owns me is Toshaway.”

“That’s his name. He’s from the Kotsoteka band. The one who owns me is Urwat. They’ve been saying that Urwat has a long way to go, but the guy who owns you is not that far from home.”

“They don’t own us,” I said.

“You’re right. Why they might have that impression is completely beyond me.”

We continued to ride.

“What about the Penatekas?”

“The Penatekas are sick right now, or something else bad is happening to them. I can’t tell except that none of these are Penatekas.”

DESPITE TOSHAWAY’S PROMISE, we made another cold camp that night. In the morning we climbed out of the big canyon and onto the plains. There was no timber, no trail, no lines of brush to mark a stream, it was nothing but grass and sky and my stomach felt wobbly just looking at it. I knew where we were: the Llano Estacado. A blank space on the map.

After riding an hour nothing had changed and I was dizzy again. We might have gone ten inches or ten miles and by the end of the day I thought something had come loose in my head. My brother fell asleep and rolled all the way under his horse and the Indians stopped, beat him, and tied him back on.

We made camp at a stream cut so deep into the plain you could not see it until you were on top of it. It was our first fire and because there were no trees to reflect the light, it could not be seen from any distance. A pair of antelopes were thrown on, skin and all, and Toshaway brought us a pile of steaming half-cooked venison. My brother didn’t have the energy to eat. I chewed the meat into small pieces and fed it to him.

Then I climbed out of the streambed to have a look. The stars came down to the earth on all sides and the Comanches had pickets looking for other campfires. They ignored me. I went back to our pallet.

A catamount screamed at us for nearly an hour, and wolf calls were echoing from one side of the plain to the other. My brother began to cry out in his sleep; I started to shake him, then stopped. There wasn’t any dream he could be having that would be as bad as waking up.

THE NEXT MORNING they didn’t bother to tie us. There was nowhere to go.

My brother, despite having eaten real food and slept six hours, was not any better. Meanwhile the Indians were laughing and cutting capers, riding their horses backward or standing up, calling back and forth with jokes. I fell asleep and woke up in the grass. We stopped and I was tied on again, slapped a few times but not beaten. Toshaway came over and gave me a long drink of water, then chewed up some tobacco and rubbed the juice into my eyes. Still I spent the rest of the day not knowing if I was asleep or awake. I had the feeling that somewhere ahead of us was the edge of the earth and if we reached it we would never stop falling.

That afternoon a small herd of buffalo were spotted and run down and after a discussion my brother and I were taken off our horses and led to one of the calves. It was cut open and its innards pulled out. Toshaway cut into the stomach and offered me a handful of curdled milk but I did not want any part of it. Another Indian forced my brother’s head into the stomach but he shut his eyes and mouth. I was given the same treatment. I tried to swallow the milk but instead I aired my paunch.

This was done two or three times, with my brother not swallowing at all, me trying and throwing up, until the Indians gave up trying and scooped out all the curdled milk for themselves. When the stomach was empty the liver was cut out. My brother refused to touch it and I saw the way they looked at him so I forced myself to keep it down. The blood turned in my gizzard. I had always thought blood tasted like metal but that is only if you drink a small amount. What it actually tastes like is musk and salt. I reached for more liver and the Indians were happy to see it and I continued to eat until they slapped me away and ate the rest of the liver themselves, squeezing the gallbladder over it as a sauce.

When the organs were gone the calf was skinned out and a piece of meat held up to the sun in an offering and then the rest distributed to everyone, about five pounds apiece. The Indians finished their allotment within a few minutes and I was worried they would take mine so I ate quickly as well.

It was the first time I’d had a full belly in nearly a week and I felt tired and peaceful but my brother just sat there, sunburned and filthy and covered in his own vomit.

“You need to eat.”

He was smiling. “You know, I never thought a place like this could exist. I’ll bet our tracks will be gone with the first wind.”

“They’re going to kill you if you don’t eat.”

“They’re going to kill me anyway, Eli.”

“Eat,” I said. “Daddy ate raw meat all the time.”

“I’m quite aware that as a Ranger, Daddy did everything. But I am not him. Sorry,” he said. He touched my leg. “I started a new poem about Lizzie. Would you like to hear it?”

“All right.”

“ ‘Your virgin blood, spilled by savages, you are whole again in heaven.’ Which of course is shit. But it’s the best I can do under the circumstances.”

The Indians were looking at us. Toshaway brought another chunk of buffalo and indicated I ought to give it to my brother. My brother pushed it away.

“I was sure I would go to Harvard,” he said. “And then Rome. I have actually been there in my mind, you know, because when I read, I actually see things; I physically see them in front of me. Did you know that?” He seemed to cheer up. “Even these people can’t ruin this place for me.” He shook his head. “I’ve written about ten letters to Emerson but I haven’t sent them. I think he would take them seriously, though.”

Any letters he’d written had been burned in the fire but I didn’t mention this. I told him he needed to eat.

“They’re not going to turn me into some fucking filthy Indian, Eli. I’d rather be dead.”

I must have gotten a look because then he said, “It wasn’t your fault. I go back and forth between thinking we shouldn’t have been living out there in the first place, and then I think what else could a man like Daddy do? He had no choice, really. It was fate.”

“I’m going to make you a pile of food.”

He ignored me. He was staring at something on the ground and then he reached over and pulled up one of the blanketflowers — we were sitting in a big patch. He held it up for all the Indians to see.

“Note the Indian blanket,” he said, “or Indian sunburst.”

They ignored him.

He continued in a louder voice. “It is worth noting that small, stunted, or useless plants — such as Mexican plum, Mexican walnut, or Mexican apple — are named after the Mexicans, who will doubtless endure among us for centuries, while colorful or beautiful plants are often named after Indians, as they will soon be vanquished from the earth.” He looked around at them. “It’s a great compliment to your race. Though if your vanquishing had come a bit earlier, I wouldn’t have complained.”

No one was paying attention.

“It’s the fate of a man like myself to be misunderstood. That’s Goethe, in case you were wondering.”

Toshaway tried a few more times to give him meat, but my brother wouldn’t touch it. Within half an hour there was nothing left but bone and hide. The hides were rolled up and put on the back of someone’s horse and the Indians began to mount.

Then my brother was looking at someone behind me.

“Don’t try to help.”

Toshaway pinned me to the grass. He and another Indian sat on me and tied my wrists and ankles as quick as my father might have tied a calf. I was dragged a good distance. When I looked over, Martin hadn’t moved. He was sitting there taking things in; I could barely see his face above the flowers. Three Indians had mounted their horses, including Urwat, my brother’s owner. They were riding in circles around him, whooping and hollering. He stood and they slapped him with the flats of their lances, giving him an opening and encouraging him to run, but he stayed where he was, up to his knees in the red-and-yellow flowers, looking small against the sky behind him.

Finally Urwat got tired and, instead of using the flat of his lance, lowered the point and ran it through my brother’s back. My brother stayed on his feet. Toshaway and the other Indians were holding me. Urwat charged again and my brother was knocked down into the flowers.

Then Toshaway got my head down. I knew I ought to be getting up but Toshaway wouldn’t let me, I knew I should get up but I didn’t want to. That is fine, I thought, but now I’ll get up. I strained against Toshaway but he wouldn’t let go.

My brother was standing again. How many times he’d been knocked down and gotten back up I didn’t know. Urwat had discarded his lance and now rode toward him with his ax but my brother didn’t flinch and after he fell the last time the Indians rushed forward and made a circle.

Toshaway later explained that my brother, who had acted like such a coward the entire time, was obviously not a coward at all, but a ku?tseena, a coyote or trickster, a mystical creature who had been sent to test them. It was very bad medicine to kill him — the coyote was so important that Comanches were not allowed to even scratch one. My brother could not be scalped. Urwat was cursed.

There was a good deal of milling and confusion and three of the Indian kids held me while the adults talked. I was telling myself I would kill Urwat. I looked around for a friendly eye, but the German women wouldn’t look at me.

The shoulder bones of the dead buffalo were cut loose and several of the braves began to dig. When there was a passable grave my brother was wrapped in calico taken from the freight wagon and lowered into the hole. Urwat left his tomahawk, someone else gave a knife; there was buffalo meat left as well. There was discussion about killing a horse, but it was voted down.

Then we rode off. I watched the grave disappear from sight, as if the blanketflower had already grown over, as if the place would not stand for any record of human life, or death; it would continue as my brother had said it would, our tracks disappearing in the first wind.