Canyons (11 page)

It was easily the longest week in his life.

He worked hard with Stoney all week and called Homesley every night and when he learned nothing he ran, ran each night until he was tired and fell into bed and slept hammered into the pillow. There were no dreams.

“It takes some time to find all the stuff we asked for,” Homesley said the first time he called. “Be patient.”

It was easy to say, but very hard to do.

The skull was in his closet, in the box.

Waiting.

He couldn’t shake the feeling that it waited—sat in the box and waited for … for …

He didn’t know.

But the pressure was there, tremendous pressure, and just when it seemed he would explode Homesley called.

“It’s here.”

“I’ll be right over.”

“It’s nine o’clock in the evening and there are several boxes.…”

“I don’t care. I’ll tell Mom I’m staying over—if it’s all right, I mean.”

“Of course it is.” Homesley didn’t hesitate. “We’ll put you on the couch in the music room.”

Brennan cleared it with his mother and was gone out the door, almost before she nodded.

He tried not to run fast the three miles or so to Homesley’s—tried to set an easy pace. But he couldn’t hold it. His legs, his mind, the skull took over and soon he was running at a dead lope and when he arrived at Homesley’s he was sucking wind, his chest heaving.

“You must have run hard all the way,” Homesley said, watching him try to catch his breath. “Are you all right?”

Brennan nodded. “Where is the stuff from the archives?” he gasped.

“In the music room.”

There were seven boxes, each about a cubic foot in size.

Brennan picked up one of the boxes, put it down, picked up another. He didn’t know where to start. He picked up another one and tore the top open.

Inside were photocopies of papers. Hundreds of sheets laid sideways in manila folders.

He pushed back the corner of one folder.

“Eighteen eighty-one,” he said aloud. “He’s dated each one. The work—the work he’s done. It’s incredible.”

“Like I said.” Homesley sighed. “He’s a friend.”

“He must be a very
good
friend.”

“The best.”

“Vietnam?”

Homesley nodded silently. “Were you all friends that way?”

Another nod. “Those of us who made it.” He turned away and picked up another box. “He has them in order—see? There’s a number on the side of each box. Also, there’s a letter.”

He opened a manila envelope and read aloud. “The boxes are in order by date. They start in 1855 and end in 1895. Inside each box the papers are also by date. There are army reports and letters and newspaper clippings. He goes on about some private stuff here, then he says he isn’t sure what we want but he thinks there might be something for us in the box marked number three.”

Brennan picked up the number three box and sat on the couch, opened it.

“Eighteen sixty-four,” he read from the first folder.

He pulled out some papers that proved to be copies of old newspapers. Even as copies it was easy to tell that the original paper had been old. The newsprint was uneven and the headlines almost screamed.

“ ‘More raids by Apaches,’ ” Brennan read aloud.
“ ‘Livestock stolen, settlers frightened, army increases patrols.’ ”

“Got into their headlines, didn’t they?” Homesley said. “They didn’t need to write the story after that.”

Brennan read the story. It said that there had been several raids in the area south and west of El Paso. That “… great damage has been caused.” He finished the article. “It’s so weird to read this—it’s like it just happened. Yesterday or something.”

Homesley set the boxes on the coffee table in front of the couch. “It’s going to take days to go through all this—and we really don’t even know what we’re looking for, do we?”

Brennan shook his head. “Not really. But I’ll know when I find it—I think.”

He sat back on the couch with the box in his lap and started with the first folder. In moments he was lost in the papers.

He did not see Homesley leave, did not see Homesley come back with a plate of chocolate chip cookies and glass of milk, did not see Homesley put them on the table next to the boxes, did not see Homesley leave.

Brennan knew nothing but the papers, the papers and the world they showed.

Dust and heat. The newspapers spoke of patrols and raids and heat and dust. Long patrols the army made when the soldiers had to cut the veins on their horses and drink the blood; dust and sand so thick, they had to cover their mouths with bandannas just to breathe.

Brennan read the newspaper articles and stories first. They were all poorly written, redundant—they would often say the same thing several times.

“Twenty soldiers attacked a marauding band of Apaches in a running battle,” a story said. “No soldiers were injured though several Apaches were seen to have been hit.” And later in the same story: “A roaming patrol of twenty soldiers attacked a band of wild Apaches. After a brisk exchange of fire several Indians were hit though no soldiers received wounds.”

He put the article aside without looking up, without seeing the cookies or milk, took another story.

This one spoke of the ranchers who had to take their families into El Paso because they feared an Indian attack.

Ranchers, Brennan thought—how could they ranch? The area around El Paso was hot, dead desert; sand dunes and mesquite and a few coyotes. How many ranchers could there be?

Again, nobody was hurt.

There was much writing of fear:

Indian Fright!

Ranchers Flee!

Citizens Terrorized!

But when he got into the articles he found that while livestock had been driven off, there had been no injuries caused.

Or very rarely.

Some prospectors had been attacked at their mine and one had died of wounds received in the battle—while four Indians were killed in the same fight.

So violent, Brennan thought, leaning back. He saw the cookies and milk and took some. Everything was so violent—white, red, color didn’t seem to matter. Violence was the way of it—the engine that seemed to drive the West was violence.

All the articles were about Indian uprisings but on one copy, part of another article had been copied as well. It told of two soldiers who had hacked each other to death with
knives in a cantina in Juarez. The author didn’t seem shocked so much as amazed that they would kill each other at the same time.

Brennan finished the cookies and drank some milk.

Then he started to read again.

He read some of the articles in the box and opened the other boxes and scanned the articles in those as well.

But he could not forget the comment about box number three and how it might have something for him. They had told Homesley’s friend—he was named Ted Rainger—only that they desired information about the canyon area north of Fort Bliss and any actions that took place there between 1860 and 1890 or so.

The third box concerned El Paso and Fort Bliss and the canyons but it took some time to go through the other boxes to make sure.

He looked up one more time, saw that the wall clock said one in the morning, and knew he should try to sleep.

But he could not stop reading. He started into the general papers in the third box. They were mostly action reports with a fair number of letters.

The action reports were paperclipped to the order to which they applied.

“You will take your patrol to the vicinity of Hueco Flats where you will sweep north and south of the road from Carlsbad, engaging any hostiles encountered unless the enemy force is too large for engagement to be prudent. You will carry twenty rounds of ammunition per man and such rations
for man and horse as deemed suitable for an eight-day patrol. [Signed] Captain John Bemis.”

And clipped to the patrol order was the report of the patrol leader.

“We patrolled as per instructions the area of Hueco Flats with a fifteen-man unit all in standing good health, man and horses, and the patrol was without incident until noon of the fourth day when the patrol came under fire from small arms. No men were hit though one mount sustained a mortal wound. Fire was returned and a group of approximately twelve hostiles was seen to leave an arroyo a hundred yards distant and ride south at a good pace. No hits were registered and no pursuit was given. The rest of the patrol was without event, arriving back at Fort Bliss on 12 September 1864.”

Brennan put down the folder holding the orders and visualized what he had just read.

The words were so dry, concise, but they meant so much. Horses running, men shooting at other men—men trying to kill other men. A horse hit going down, everybody yelling, the Indians riding out of the arroyo and the soldiers firing at them.

What was that like? To aim at another person with a gun to try to kill him. How could that be?

He saw the clock again.

Two in the morning now. I have to work tomorrow, he thought—no, today. I have to work today with Stoney. I should lie down and sleep. Right now. I should lie back and sleep and rest, but he could not.

Instead his hands took another folder out of the box and he began to read. And then another, and another, and he read until it was past four, until his eyes burned and his brain was so full of words, of reports and more reports, that he fairly reeled with them, read until he was on the edge of something like sleep.…

And then he found it.

It started with a patrol order much like the others.

“You will patrol the area north of Fort Bliss along the line of bluffs leading to Alamogordo, over to the base of the Organ Mountains and back to the originating point. The purpose of said patrol to maintain the public order and engage hostiles if engagement seems prudent.”

Brennan’s mind perked. The “bluffs leading to Alamogordo” was the canyon area. This was the first patrol order in that area. But it was the after-action report that held him.

“Reporting on patrol 21 Oct. 1864. We worked due north of Fort Bliss without incident. On the second night, approximately thirty miles north of the originating point, our pickets reported hearing horses in the night but no contact was made with the suspected hostiles.

“We rode north two more days with no contact.
While making the sweep across to the Organ Mountains the patrol intersected a group of hostiles driving a herd of approximately 100 horses.

“Chase was given with the troop in skirmish formation. The main body of hostiles abandoned the horse herd and escaped in the direction of White Sands.

“Two hostiles bringing up the drag on the herd were seen to break away and ride toward the canyons in the line of bluffs to the east.

“Four troopers—O’Bannion, Rourke, Daneley, and Doolan—were dispatched and gave chase. One of the hostiles was killed in a running fight and the second was cornered in a canyon south of Dog Canyon. The troopers reported that after a brisk exchange of fire the second hostile was killed. Due to the remaining length of the patrol the bodies were not returned.”

“Chaaach!” Brennan’s breath exploded. He had been holding it without realizing it. A canyon south of Dog Canyon.

A coldness was in him now, a deep feeling of certainty. There was no real reason for it, for the sureness, but he was absolutely positive the skull belonged to the “hostile” the soldiers had chased into the canyon.

The
canyon.

He had run then, run from them up into the canyon. One boy, his age, his own age, one boy running and four men after him.

Names. He knew the names of the men. All Irish.
Probably big men, soldiers, blue uniforms, hot, stinking of sweat, chasing him, chasing me into the canyon up beneath the rock.…

He shook his head, rubbed his eyes. Not me,
him—
not me. The two kept mixing in his thinking. The soldiers chased him, not me. I am sitting here reading about it—not running into the canyon away from them, trying to hide.…

The clock again. Five-thirty now. There were no windows in the basement but outside the sun would be up. It was morning.

He took out another packet of papers from the same folder.