Come Sundown (17 page)

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Authors: Mike Blakely

BOOK: Come Sundown
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I
had decided to call her “Westerly.” It meant the same as West Wind, so it translated just as well from the Cheyenne Nomeme-ehne—Appears-with-the-West-Wind. Westerly. I liked the ring of it, and hoped she might also. So, the next morning, while going to catch a pony that had wandered a
short way away in his hobbles, I passed near the Cheyenne tipis and saw her carrying wood up from the timber along the Purgatory.
“Good morning, Westerly,” I said.
She stopped, and almost looked into my eyes. She answered in Spanish, saying, “That is not how I am called in English.”
“It means the same.”
She shifted the load of sticks and limbs in her arms. “How do you say it?”
“Westerly.”
She made a pretty little smirk with her mouth, and lifted her eyebrows. “I like it better,” she said, still refusing to speak to me in English. Then she went on her way with her heavy burden of fuel.
I caught my pony and spent the day riding wild horses that I was grooming for the saddle horse trade, knowing they might end up on some bloody battlefield under uniformed cavalry soldiers.
At dinner that day, Tom told me of his plans to lay out a large central plaza in Boggsville. The log cabins were temporary, he said, and he intended to build a new adobe home for his family, and a large adobe trading house, both of which would face the plaza. He wanted Boggsville on the map someday as a real community, with a market, a school, an inn, a cafe, and a church. He asked me to help him plot the plaza and survey the lots surrounding it.
I thought about it all afternoon while working with my horses. I calculated the angles at which the sun would cross the sky during various times of the year, so that the placement of the plaza might take full advantage of the sunshine during the winter and the shade trees during the summer. I decided that the town's eatery should situate on the southwest corner of the plaza so that the prevailing chinook winds would carry the inviting aroma of cooking food across the village square. The winds would also carry dust from the approaching wagon road and odors from the community refuse heap away from town if both were located south of the settlement. I envisioned rows of cottonwoods lining both sides of the road to town to greet the weary eyes of sojourners
with a cultivated suggestion of the island of civilization lying just ahead at Boggsville.
So that evening, while Tom was away checking on one of his sheep camps, I located the southwest corner of the proposed plaza, and began making the calculations necessary to plot the town square and all the lots around it. As I drove an iron stake pin into the ground as a corner marker, I sensed someone approaching behind me, and turned to find Westerly just a few steps away.
“I wish to ask you something,” she said in Spanish.
“Of course,” I replied.
“I want to know if you can teach me something.”
“What would you like to learn?” I rose and faced her, the lowering sun shining on her pretty face under the limbs of the big cottonwoods.
“I want to know how the shapes speak in silence.”
“What shapes?”
“The shapes on the paper.”
“You want to read?”
She nodded. “And write.”
“I will do my best to teach you.”
“When?”
“Tomorrow morning. We will start at dawn. There, on the porch of the Boggs house.”
She smiled as if she were embarrassed and excited all at once. I suppose she may have thought I'd refuse her. It had taken some courage to make the request.
“Thank you.” She turned away.
Before she could get too far away, I said, “Why do you want to learn to read?”
She stopped, and turned sideways to me, but did not face me. “It is good magic.”
“That is true. But why me?” I asked.
“The people who know you say you are clever. I can see for myself that you are kind and patient.”
“I will try not to disappoint you.”
She smiled again, and went away.
The full moon was approaching in two days, so sleep was out of the question, and all I could do all night was worry about
my newfound role as abecedarian. How was I going to teach this young Cheyenne woman to read and write? I realized to my own shame that I had never taught anyone much of anything, save the Indians I had learned to drink whiskey. I had met a lot of Indian women over the years, but none had moved my heart the way Westerly was beginning to do—not even Hidden Water, my former Comanche wife. If I should fail in teaching her to read, I would surely fail with her in every other way. Something in the core of my heart told me I had better take my role as her tutor seriously.
When we met in the morning, I gave Westerly a piece of paper upon which I had written the twenty-eight alphabetical characters used in the Spanish language. I had decided to teach her to read in Spanish, since English was fraught with so many illogical inconsistencies in spelling and phonetics. In Spanish, each character generally made one and only one sound, which greatly simplified the teacher's job. I wrote down only the lower-case characters. We would talk about capitals and other complications later.
Westerly looked at the letters for a while, then looked back up at me and shrugged in disappointment. “I do not hear them speak.”
“You will. Each of these shapes makes its own sound. Each one can only make one sound. To speak, two or three or more of the shapes must work together.”
She looked again, and cocked her head a little to one side. “I still do not hear.”
“The magic will come to you in time. First, you must learn the sound that each shape makes.”
“I do not understand how these shapes on the paper make sounds.”
“The shapes are called letters,” I explained. “It is easy to learn the sound that each letter makes.”
“How am I to learn, if I cannot hear them?”
I looked out toward the Purgatory, and saw the sky-colored plumage of a migrating mountain bluebird streak by. “That bird,” I said, pointing. “Do you know it?”
“Yes,” she replied, quickly catching sight of the bird as it
swooped up to a cottonwood limb. She seemed a little irritated that I was bird-watching instead of teaching her to read.
“Did you hear it make a sound?”
“No.”
“But you know the sound it makes.”
“Yes.”
“That is the way with the letters. Each makes a sound. When you see the letter, your heart will think of the sound it makes. The sounds of the letters, together in little groups, like flocks of different birds, make the words that we speak.”
“Different birds do not flock together.”
“Yes, all right, the letters are not
exactly
like birds. They will flock together in many different ways.”
“But I still do not know what sounds the letters make. I cannot hear them.”
“You will not hear them until someone shows you the magic. That is why I am here. With my own voice, I will teach you the sounds the letters make.”
She seemed very puzzled. “You make bird noises?”
I laughed. “No. The letters make different kinds of noises. Not exactly like bird sounds.”
Again, she looked at the letters on the paper. “There are so many.”
“Not at all. There are more different kinds of birds in the sky than there are letters on this page. You must know one hundred different birds, and the sounds they make. Yes? You will learn the sounds the letters make, for you are smart. When your eye sees the letter, it will tell your ear what sound the letter makes. Your heart may hear these sounds in silence, or it may tell your mouth to speak them.”
Now Westerly was getting impatient. She pointed to the first letter,
a.
“What sound does this one make?”
I made the sound of the Spanish letter
a.
She repeated it. She pointed to the letter
b.
I made its sound. We move on to
c.
We made our way through the entire alphabet during the next hour, repeating the sounds until I could point at each letter, and Westerly could make the sound it represented. She learned quickly and had no trouble memorizing.
“I do not think these letters make sounds at all,” she said finally. “You have tricked me. I am the one making the sounds.”
“It seems that way at first. But soon, the magic will come to you, if you continue to study and learn. In time, you will be able to open a book, and though your
eyes
see the letters making words, your
ears
will hear. Not so much the ears on the side of your head, but the ears in your heart.”
I saw a twinkle of intrigue in Westerly's eyes. “What is the next thing to learn?”
“I will show you how to put the letters together now to make a word.”
And thus my tutelage of Westerly began. I could only guess and hope where it might lead. With every word I taught her, I came a little closer to falling in love with her, though I tried to steel myself against the very real possibility that she wanted nothing more from me than reading and writing lessons. For a long time, it was difficult to tell. She was, after all, a Cheyenne woman, and women of that nation prided themselves on propriety and chastity. Flirtation was not regarded as a virtue among the Cheyenne. But eventually, I would discover a true friend, a passionate lover, and an intellectual confidante. For the first time in my life, I would begin to see myself growing old and gray with a woman I loved.
B
y June 1861, William Bent and I had made our plans to trade with the Comanches at the ruins of Fort Adobe. I was ready to go. Boggsville was a fine place, but it was named for Tom Boggs, not me. The Crossing on the Canadian was my home place, and it was calling to me, beckoning me even into the midst of the coming fray between the North and the South, between the Comanches and the Texans.
I would go first with a mule train of whiskey. After the drunken revelry, William would send the wagons laden with trade goods. I had requested that John Prowers drive the wagons.
William and everyone else certainly knew why. If John drove the wagons, he would bring his wife, Amache, who would surely bring along her sister, Westerly. Our frequent lessons had attracted much attention and caused some speculation. We no longer sat across from each other at the little table on the porch. We sat side by side.
“I know what kind of lessons you've a mind to teach her,” Tom Boggs said to me one day, a ribald grin on his face.
“It's all been very proper,” I insisted.
“Maybe so. But you ain't foolin' anybody.”
I had to put up with a lot of that sort of teasing. Only William kept quiet on the matter of my relationship with Westerly. Oddly quiet.
Anyway, Westerly was learning rapidly. She was spelling almost flawlessly, writing full sentences, and learning the usage of such things as upper-case letters, punctuation, and paragraphs. She had absorbed the nuances of sentence structure, conjugations, transitive and intransitive verbs, direct and indirect objects. Her Spanish vocabulary was flourishing. Her mind was like a whirlpool, and she devoured information, put it to instant use, and then immediately sought further knowledge. Her confidence in her own intelligence had soared. She arrived early for our lessons. I engaged in some self-flattery regarding my skills as an educator, but I knew in truth that my student was simply too percipient not to grasp anything explained to her in a rational, logical manner. Her acuity, in fact, constantly challenged my ability to teach at an ever higher plane and a rapidly accelerating pace.
Neither of us wanted the literacy lessons to end, so I had concocted a way to carry on my relationship with Westerly by including her in the trip to the Canadian. William had agreed, but I could tell something was bothering him about the entire situation. I sensed a buried undercurrent of disapproval when it came to my interest in Westerly.
 
 
KIT CARSON CAME to visit William's stockade before I left for the Canadian with my whiskey. I was delighted to see the old voyageur, as was everyone on the Purgatory. William and I,
and Tom Boggs, gathered with Kit under a brush arbor at William's stockade where we could sit at a table carried from William's house, and play Kit's favorite card game, seven-up, which was also called by the name “old sledge.”
Kit had aged noticeably since I last saw him. It seemed the miles and the years had finally begun to take their toll on his rawhide constitution. He carried himself stiffly, and I knew that the shoulder he had injured in that bad fall in the mountains the year before still galled him with pain. He was too tough to wince, but I could see his eyes flare with pain at times when he dealt the cards.
“You come lookin' for Utes, Kit?” William asked as we played cards. “I can tell you where all the bands are.”
“I'd be obliged,” Kit replied. “Got news for 'em. I ain't their agent no more. Bill Arny's taken over, and the agency has moved to Maxwell's Ranch to get away from the Taos lightnin' stills.”
William fanned his cards in front of his face. “Did you resign or did you smart off to your government boss and get fired?”
I, too, was curious to know why Kit had quit as agent. Probably to accept a commission in the army. But
which
army? His family ties were Southern, but his loyalties had remained with the Union since the Mexican War. He had ridden with Kearny and Frémont and many a lesser known officer.
“I got offered another government job. A tougher one, but one I thought needed doin'.” Kit threw a trump card to win a trick. “I'm raisin' a volunteer company.”
We sat in silence for a while, throwing cards for the next point, until William broke through the tension with characteristic candor. “Well, which side, damn it?”
Kit grinned at the intrigue he had generated with his arrival. “Y'all know I'm Southern by birth. My brothers have gone seccesh. My whole family, far as I know. Some of you boys may lean South yourself. Every man's got to make a choice, seems to me. I don't hold nobody's choice agin' 'em.” He dropped his last card faceup on the pile, a jack of clubs, the trump suit, winning the trick. “But I'm loyal to the Union. I've
been named lieutenant colonel of the First New Mexico Volunteer Infantry. Anybody wants to fight for the Union can ride south with me.”
“This is Colorado Territory now,” William said, quite curtly. He seemed irritated—either at the card game or at the news Kit had brought. “The Colorado volunteers are already forming up in Denver.”
“I've wandered a bit off my range as far as recruitin' goes,” Kit admitted. “But I'm honor bound to see that the Utes are taken care of as best I can. And I figured I'd come see my friends and tell 'em which way I aimed to lean.”
“I'm leanin' right down the middle,” Tom Boggs said. “Unless the Texans fight their way into Colorado. Then I guess I'll have to join up and fight for the Union.”
“I'm too old to muster,” said William, which was interesting because he was the same age as Kit and we all knew it. “But I'm sure worried about my boys in St. Louis. I hope they don't get hotheaded and join the Confederates.” He helped gather the cards and pushed them toward me, as it was my turn to deal. “You know I'm loyal to the Union, Kit. Me and Mr. Greenwood have already started figurin' on how to get horses from the Comanches to sell to the Union Cavalry.”
I took up the cards, cut them one-handed, and commenced some fancy shuffling tricks, drawing a suspicious glance from Tom Boggs, with whom I had never played cards. “How many frontier officers have gone South?” I asked in a quiet voice, only now feeling the onslaught of war creeping onto the plains.
Kit rubbed his left shoulder irritably as he watched me deal. “Everybody you might expect. Colonel Fauntleroy, General Twiggs. Colonel Albert Sidney Johnston left the Pacific and went to Texas. Alex Jackson resigned as secretary of state of New Mexico and went with Colonel Loring to Texas. Captain Crittenden left Fort Stanton. Major Sibley left his two companies at Fort Union and rode for Texas.”
“Sibley?” William asked. “The Walking Whiskey Keg? Did he take his tent with him?”
We all chuckled. Major Henry Hopkins Sibley, a renowned drunk, had invented a military tent that resembled a tipi, and
had convinced the U.S. Army to manufacture thousands of them. The irony now was that the Union would use Sibley's own tent against his Confederacy, for he hailed from Louisiana.
“Who does that leave that's loyal?” Tom asked.
Kit studied the six cards I had dealt him, and glanced at the trump card I turned up. “Me, Ceran, Captain Pfeiffer, Major Morrison, Colonel Sumner, and a few in California. And the old guard in New Mexico is loyal to the Union—the Vigils, Pinos, the Chaves boys, the Valdezes, the Chacons, the Bacas, the Archiletas—they've all volunteered for the First and been made captains and lieutenants.”
William shook his head and frowned. “What do you reckon will happen, Kit?”
“There are loyal spies in Texas. We're already hearing from them in coded letters. The best guess right now is that Sibley, or Johnston, or somebody who knows the lay of the land, will lead the Texas volunteers up to El Paso del Norte and march north to take New Mexico. If'n we don't whup 'em there, they'll march for the gold in Colorado. That's the best bet. They may even have their eyes on California.”
A sickly silence hung over the card table like the dried sage and brush from the arbor overhead. Through it all, we played our cards without commenting on them, each man knowing the rules of engagement well enough.
“Brother against brother, friend against friend,” William said. “I don't much care for the prospect of it at all.”
There was more silence as the cards turned, then Kit looked at me. “I'd heard that Kid Greenwood had come here to visit a spell. That's really what brung me here.”
I looked at Kit in astonishment, and felt the eyes of every man at the table on me. “Huh?” I said, in all my luminosity. “I mean,
sir
?”
“I'll need a courier and a scout. You and Tom were the two hardest riders in the West during the war with Mexico. Tom's got a family to look after now, but you're still bachin'.”
“But what about the Comanches? The horses? We've made our plans to trade.”
“Nobody can handle the Comanche trade but Mr. Greenwood,” William said, quite sternly. “I need him.”
“You've got time to make some big horse trades. I can get word to you through William. When I need you, I'll send for you.”
I threw in my last card and sat there, speechless.
“You don't have to answer right now,” Kit said. “Go see your Comanches. Do your job. Then come join me if your guts tell you to. Like I said, I don't hold any man's choice agin' him.” Kit turned his last card up on the table, again winning the trick, and this time securing enough points for the game. “Seven-up!” he sang, and leaned back in his chair to gloat over his victory. Colonel Carson knew how to play a winning hand.
 
 
LATER THAT EVENING, Kit and William came to my room in William's stockade. I had just finished a tutoring session with Westerly and I felt all aglow, for she had touched my wrist during our lesson. This was the first time we had actually touched. Kit and William, by contrast, wore rather droll expressions.
“Mr. Greenwood, I'll get to the point,” William said. “It's about that young squaw.”
“Westerly?”
“Yes.” He sat in the only chair in the tiny adobe room, and Kit leaned against the door frame, smoking his clay pipe. “It's your business, and none of mine, but I urge you to think things through. Kit agrees.”
“I had me an Arapaho wife once,” Kit said. “Name of Grass Singing. Pretty name, pretty gal. She gave me my daughter, Adalaide.”
“I know all that, Kit. What's it got to do with me?”
“Everybody knows you're sweet on that Cheyenne girl. But think about it, Mr. Greenwood. Think down the trail a piece.”
“William, you've had a Cheyenne wife as long as I've known you,” I said.
“That's how come me to butt my nose in your business. Once was the day when every white man out here had him a squaw wife. Now things have changed. I've got five half-breed
children who don't know if they're white or Indian, and don't fit in anywhere they go.”
“I'm just teaching her to read. We're making words and sentences, not half-breed babies.”
“Be honest with yourself, Mr. Greenwood. She's a fetching young gal, and you'd share a blanket with her tonight if you could.”
“William, with all due respect—”
Kit raised a hand as a peace offering. “Kid, you're a grown man, and you're gonna do what you want to do. Me and William just wanted you to know what you're up against. Poor Adalaide, back in St. Louis. When she was goin' to school, the other rotten little kids made sport of her terrible. It ain't easy for a half-breed child in the white man's world. And I'll tell you something else. Proper women in polite society will scorn a squaw wife, and her squaw man, too. It happened to me when I had me that Arapaho wife. I like to never lived it down. It embarrassed me fierce to admit to a real lady that I'd laid in a lodge with a squaw. I'm surprised sometimes that Josepha would have me at all, knowing I'd once been a squaw man, and her from a good family.”
“I don't have much to do with polite society,” I argued.
“You will,” William said. “It's comin' . In your lifetime, you'll see schools and churches on these plains. Your wilderness won't last forever.”
I sat in silence for a moment. Had I not respected William Bent and Kit Carson with every fiber of my heart and mind, I might have been angry. I knew they were only trying to spare me some pain they had themselves lived through. “I've had a Comanche wife before.”
“Didn't work out, did it?”
“No. But this is different. I don't know that I'll marry Westerly, or if she'd even have me, but if I do, I'll make sure it's right. I'll think through everything you've said. I'll give you my word on that. But I make my own way and make up my own mind. You gentlemen know that.”
William nodded. “I've said my piece. I won't bring it up again.”

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