Extract from "The Gunfighter"
I met Penny Bright in Socorro soon after Valdez escorted her up from old Mexico. I met her again in Tucson. She was a handsome long-legged young woman who smiled at me. It might have led to something if’n I’d had my father’s way with words. Then again maybe not,
Penny Bright – Socorro New Mexico
Time has a way of sneaking up on a man. You can ignore it all you want, but it’s always there ticking away like some damn fool clock you just know you can never rewind. What the future might hold I couldn’t say though I guess it would be of my own making. The boy shapes the man and the man shapes himself or leastways tries to do so. My early years had laid a weight on me and I was heading in the wrong direction. I’ve changed that now; leastways I like to think so. I’m a lonesome man by choice with an ache in my heart for the long trail and wide open spaces. I get to feeling trapped and restless if’n I stay overlong in one place. I’ve got to feel the wind in my face and the hot sun on my back, the smell of coffee coming to the boil and bacon frying in a pan over an open fire, the fresh morning still and quiet as a tomb. I like to sleep beneath the stars listening to my horse stamp and shuffle as I drift off. Guess you could say I chose the lonesome way of my life when I was young, and I can say I do not regret my choice. Some men are stayers, farmers, cattlemen and such and some are always wanting to ride over the hill. Mostly one does not understand the other, mostly stayers fear movers for the unknown quality they represent. And I, maybe more than most, know pretty much who and what I am, with a good idea of where I’m heading and what in my later years I will become; if I live that long and there’s no guarantee of that, there never is. Illness, a fall from a horse in some wild, empty place, pretty much anything can take a man down. But you don’t think about that, if you do you will never accomplish anything, never leave the place of your birth, never cross the oceans, or visit foreign lands with names that roll off your tongue, never ride the long trail or watch the sun setting over the desert. I think maybe I’d curl up and die if my freedom was taken away; I think maybe I would rather die fighting to maintain it. The illusion anyway even if the reality slips away now and then. I knew, as I rode away from the Staked Plains heading for New Mexico, that I would never meet Red Shirt again. Soon or late he was going to try and make it to the other side. He told me about the Smoking Mirror, why he did that, I can’t say, unless he just wanted someone to know outside The People. Someone to remember something of their history and their stories other than a red man and who better than the son of his friend who had come to live amongst The People for a while and learn something of the Nurmaná Road.
I’d thought after spending close on four years with the Llano Estacado Comanche when I returned the Colorado Gunfighter would be long forgotten, sort of dead and buried you might say. I was wrong, and don’t that beat all, because when you get right down to it I was little more than a hired gun whilst I worked for Edward Bourne, for all I thought I was working on the side of the law. You grow up quick in these parts is about all I can say or you mostly don’t live to grow up at all. I got lucky. I carried a silver armband and one day I rode away to find its owner. Still and all the stories were there when I returned to the white man’s world and I hadn’t planned for that, not one little bit, I can tell you.
Even so for all there was talk and stories going round about the Colorado Gunfighter, nobody fit my face to the man. I guess folks mostly wanted the romance of the stories but had no use for the man himself. Not that I cared you understand, but that’s about how it was. As the years rolled down there’d be times when I was sitting up at the bar in some dusty no-name town and I’d catch the drift of some cowboys talk as they dealt the cards. Yea, I would hear one say to another I’ve heard about Harpo Kane, they call him the Colorado Gunfighter, he’s a young man they say, twenty maybe twenty five years old or thereabouts. What, that old bounty hunter who rides a roan and owns the ugliest line back mule you ever did see. Yea, well, his name might be the same but that’s just one of them coincidences, I’ve been hearing about, that’s all it is because I can tell you his name might be the same but he sure as hell ain’t Harpo Kane the Gunfighter, you got to be blind if’n you can’t see that.
By and by the stories remained but folks mostly paid no attention to the bounty hunter who, by some strange coincidence, bore the same name. The bounty hunter was a quiet, sort of contained man, who went about his business with no fuss, tracking outlaws, murderers and thieves most everybody knew were wanted men in one state or another. He rode where he pleased, working out of Arizona, Nevada, sometimes Texas or New Mexico. Nobody ever rightly knew where he might show up and nobody knew a damn thing about the man. He does good work everybody knows that and he’s got a solid reputation for getting the job done. And that’s a wonder I can tell you, but fast with a gun, no siree he ain’t hardly that, though I can’t rightly say I ever seen him draw that old .44 he carries. He don’t say much, like he fights shy of folks, but when he does talk he comes across as a knowin’ polite sort of gent, one of them quiet types best left alone, there’s a kind of look in his eye if’n you know what I mean. I seen it a time or two when I bellied up to the bar and you just naturally want to give him room.
I met Penny Bright in Socorro soon after Valdez escorted her up from old Mexico. I met her again in Tucson. She was a handsome long-legged young woman who smiled at me. It might have led to something if’n I’d had my father’s way with words. Then again maybe not, I’m a lonesome man with a deep and abiding love for the trail and the burning hills. I chose my way a long time ago and I’m not willing to change, maybe one day but not any day soon. And if the need is on me there’s always a sporting lady willing to oblige for a few drinks and a dollar or two. Even so I couldn’t help but think on Penny Bright now and again when I was out on the trail some place watching purple shadows fall as the sun set over the desert in a flare of smoky red and gold. I’m a man who wants to love but can never let himself go inside. There’s something out there in the desert calling to me and I can’t say I can ever put it aside, or ignore the haunting sound of its voice in the wind. There’s something waiting for me someplace and maybe I’ll find it one day, maybe I’ll just keep on looking. Red Shirt said I was born to fulfil a purpose, he said, you haven’t come to it yet but one day it will find you. He said, one day you will face what white men call evil, he said maybe the way of your life is training you for the day when you face that great evil and only the way of your life will save you and rid the earth of what it does not want. Sometimes Red Shirt could wax mystical I think my father would say, and I can tell you I don’t have much understanding of such. That fire and brimstone preacher I listened to a time or two when I was young, I can’t say there was anything mystical about that, just hellfire and damnation waiting for all us sinners was about all that came across. He was feisty though and generally put on a good show, spittle flying every which way and such. So I thought about Penny Bright now and then and the way her young life was taken away and exchanged for another.
Ben Bright and his wife Angie, with the help of two good trail hands, played nursemaid to a small herd of cattle they put together up in Abilene. It was mostly breeding stock so they were not of a mind to push a hard, fast trail drive. By and by they reached the Purgatoire River country and settled in where there was water and feed in the meadows and valleys to graze the cattle whilst they cut timber for a house, barn and such like.
Right from the start Ben Bright and his hands never had no trouble with Indians. If’n winter was hard and game was scarce Ben Bright just naturally culled a few steers from his fast growing herd to see them through the lean months. He said I’ll not see your young ones go hungry; in return they left him and his people alone, and didn’t steal his cows just for the hell of it.
Penny Bright was sixteen years old when her familiar life crashed down in ruins. It should not have happened but it did, what Indians still lived in the Purgatoire River Country should have sent warning, they did not. And Ben Bright should not have gotten so careless, but he did; maybe a man would after more than sixteen years of never drawing a pistol ’ceptin’ to shoot rattlers and varmints and such. Maybe a man thinks when he has lived in peace for so long trouble will never find him, never mar the endless procession of his peaceful way of life, and that’s a mistake you only get to make once.
Trouble came thundering out of the hills in the shape and form of Blood Hand, a half breed Kiowa renegade from up around the Kansas Plain area. Talk was that he killed a family of settlers moving west, after which he and a few others like him lit out for Mexico, looting and killing as they went. He was called Blood Hand because he liked to slice his victims and smear his hands in their blood, pressing his palm to the victim’s body, leaving his Blood Hand print on their flesh as he watched them die. You can’t do much with a man like that except shoot him on sight and pray to god you kill him before he reaches you with his knife. Trouble was nobody could catch him, more likely nobody wanted to. Blood Hand was fearsome and about as mean as they come; damaged in the head maybe because I can tell you nobody in their right mind butchered people like hogs. I lived with the Comanche for a while, a proud nation of warriors who liked to fight and boast of their many enemies, but they faced their enemies in battle, they did not kill wantonly or for no reason other than a lust to kill. To the Comanche a mad dog like Blood Hand was beneath contempt. He looks like a man, they would say, he walks and talks like a man but he is not a man, he is not a human being, he is something else.
However that may be, Blood Hand wasn’t fool enough to go anywhere near the Comanche, they would kill him on sight.
The Purgatoire is lonesome, wide open country that backs up against hills and the towering peaks and deep, sweeping valleys and canyons of the Sangre de Cristo mountain range, wild, beautiful country that calls to your soul. Away from the hills and valleys and timbered ridgeline heading towards Kansas or Texas, the land reaches out towards forever, and Blood Hand and his band made good use of it, appearing suddenly out of nowhere attacking at dawn or dusk, leaving death and ruin and fire behind them.
Blood Hand attacked Ben Bright and his hands at sunup as they were saddling their mounts for the long days work ahead. Maybe Ben had grown careless over the years; maybe it all happened too fast for his mind, still foggy from sleep to take in. No one knows, no one ever will, but you can’t ever, not be on your guard in lonesome country, it goes with the territory, it always does and that’s the truth.
The renegades came out of the blinding morning sun, their mounts stretched out in a fast run. Ben Bright and his hands never stood a chance, shot down and killed even as they reached for their guns. Mercifully Angie Bright died in a flurry of shots when she came pounding out of the house with a shotgun in her hands. Young Penny Bright trailing her mother was unharmed, face ashen, grey, windy eyes staring in shocked horror at the carnage. Mind numb, she did not resist when the renegades threw her up on one of her father’s saddled mounts and led her away. Blood Hand intended to sell her to the Comancheros, but first he had to get there. Using trails only the Indian know, he followed where they led. And like a secret, Blood Hand and his band, dragging Penny Bright’s mount in their wake, slipped through the Sangre de Cristo hills and peaks and on through to New Mexico and the San Andreas mountain range. No one saw them, no one even guessed they were there as they followed the faint, ancient trails that led them clear through to Mexico. Swinging wide around the Fort Stockton area, the trail led them like ghosts on the wind up into the Mexican Sierra Madres where Blood Hand knew the Comancheros maintained a more or less permanent stronghold where female slaves were bought and sold along with guns and whisky and an assortment of supplies. The Comancheros were made up of renegade whites, half breeds and a mix of Spanish/Mexicans mostly wanted by the law for hanging crimes. The Mexican Federales did what they could but they were too few and the Comancheros too many; to go up into the mountains after them, would be as good a way as any to commit suicide. One day the Federales would be strong enough to take them but that day was a long way off, and until that day came the Comancheros effectively controlled an area greater than any one of those kingdoms in Europe my father used to tell me about. Even so the Comancheros were not fools, they wanted gold and silver in exchange for the goods they sold to outlaws, renegades and bandits and pretty much anyone running from the law with gold in their pockets. The Comancheros lived and operated outside the law, setting up shop in remote areas far from the haunts of men. They were mostly killers and thieves their own selves but they were not fools, they did not kill wantonly, it was bad for business and when word reached them, in what was then a temporary trading camp in the Magdalena country around the Sierra Madres, that Blood Hand and his band were heading their way, the word was the Comancheros were not pleased. They wanted gold and silver, what they didn’t want was a mad dog like Blood Hand roaming around killing their customers just for the hell of it. No sir, they did not want that, not one little bit.
The Comancheros’ camp was sited in a wide, shallow basin nestling in the Magdalena foothills. A well used trail led into the basin. Outside the basin, the foothills grudgingly gave way to the flat desert floor, heat baked in summer to a brittle granite like hardness that quickly turned to slushy mud beneath the winter rains. You could just about see to the horizon in every direction once you got away from the foothills proper. There wasn’t much to see other than smoky-blue heat haze once the sun came up. No one knows how he did it, but somehow Blood Hand made it to the Comancheros undetected. The Comancheros had been drinking bad whisky for most of the afternoon. It was getting on for dusk when Blood Hand arrived, and the Comancheros, about twenty in number were falling down drunk.
The half breed Kiowa sat his horse in silence as he surveyed the camp. Penny Bright sat her mount to the rear of his band. She knew what the Comancheros would do to her and when she was of no more interest to them, they would kill her. She was beyond fear; nine days with Blood Hand hardened her resolve to escape or die trying rather than meekly accept her fate. Oddly, neither Blood Hand nor any of his band had touched her; she was just a trade item to them, but one that needed to be traded intact to get the best price. Along the trail they watered and fed her like a prize horse. Fear remained but she shut it away someplace deep, the better to concentrate on how best she might escape. The band watched her like a hawk. At night there was always someone on guard to watch her, it seemed hopeless but she never gave up and when an opportunity finally presented itself, it did so unexpectedly and in the worst possible circumstance, surrounded as she was by the Comancheros who were both drunk and dangerous, but she took it anyway.
Blood Hand saw the hungry look in the eyes of the Comancheros when they noticed the tall, white girl and knew he had brought her to the right place. He was grinning as he slid off his mount. He was still grinning when about eight or so Comancheros grinned back at him as they drew their pistols and shot him and his band to doll rags. It was over in seconds, bullets smashed into Blood Hand lifting him up, hammering him down, sightless eyes turned up to the sky, as the swollen sun stared down like a smoky, lidless eye.
Eager hands reached up to drag Penny from her horse. As her feet hit the ground she feigned a stumble, crying out, her hand reaching down to clutch her ankle, the Comancheros, bunched to one side of her momentarily drew back, smiling now as they watched her, after all she wasn’t going anywhere and they had all the time in the world. Penny leaned over the body of Blood Hand, her back to the laughing Comancheros. She leaned over Blood Hand’s cooling corpse, her skirt hiding her quick, sudden movement as she grasped the butt of the fully loaded pistol stuck behind the half breed’s belt. Pulling it free she eased back the hammer and turned, firing all six shots into the bunched up group ogling her. It was point blank range, she couldn’t miss. Three Comancheros were hammered off their feet as bullets smashed into their chests, three others went down screaming. As the last shot echoed round the basin the bloody eye of the sun sank below the western rim. The surviving Comancheros stared in stunned amazement at the girl and continued to do so as she dropped the now empty pistol and fled like a startled deer into the swiftly gathering gloom, slipping over the basin’s rim like a slim, white ghost. She ripped her skirt off to free her legs of the cumbersome weight, because if there was one thing Penny Bright could do, it was run.
The leader of the Comancheros, Philippe Torres, a tall, whip-lean Mexican was only a little drunk. The night was closing in when the girl shot into his men and fled; he knew it would be useless to follow; besides he doubted there was one amongst them sober enough to sit a horse, let alone give chase. His voice rose above the babble of noise, ‘compadres,’ he shouted, ‘hombres listen to me, the little one has no where to go, she will run round and round in circles like a chicken with its head cut off. There is nowhere for her to hide. At first light we will find her and she will be grateful, yes; she will be hungry, yes;’ he shrugged, ‘sleep, save your pleasures for tomorrow,’ eyeing the three dead and groaning wounded lying on the ground, he hissed savagely, ‘we ride at dawn, she will pay,’ he growled, ‘she will pay dearly for the death of our compadres.’ His eyes glowed with an eerie light, slitting down to a grim, narrow look, the gaunt shadow of his face, skeletal, in the deepening gloom.
Philippe Torres was a lean wolf of a man; educated by Mission Fathers he nonetheless absorbed none of their compassion for his fellow man. Despising them for clement fools he walked away and took up the gun, preying on both the weak and the strong with all the consummate skill of a born hunter. By the time he was twenty he was leading his own band of Comancheros, and was just about as hard and rugged as they come. The girl was nothing, a plaything, no more than that. That she, the young white girl, had killed three of his men did not concern him, that she had injured his pride, well now, that was a different thing altogether. He would catch the Anglo and kill her, if he did not his reputation would suffer, it would tarnish and he would be diminished in the eyes of his men, and he could not allow that or the next thing you know some fast gun would challenge his leadership. The girl was as good as dead he thought dreamily as he wrapped his blankets around him, huddling close to the smouldering embers of the fire, the camp cook snoring like a hero nearby. At first light, he thought, at first light the little Anglo dies. He neither knew nor cared what his men might do when deprived of their pleasure. He was the fastest gun around, everybody knew that. They also knew he killed without remorse and that made him very dangerous indeed. A man like that, you can’t beat him, until he comes up against somebody better, someone who has never heard of Philippe Torres and couldn’t give a damn about his fearsome reputation. There is always someone, never doubt it; there is always someone, somewhere. Philippe Torres had been top dog for so long, maybe he forgot about that or maybe he believed in his own invincibility; but I can tell you this, when Philippe Torres and his men took in after Penny Bright, it was a mistake, fate you might say, stepped in. My father had little patience with what he called the idea of predestination and such like. He said if such were true then we were no more than puppets pulled every which way but loose in a never ending dance to someone else’s tune. I don’t think his pride could let him accept that. He said we make our own choices in life, for good or ill. He went on however to say somewhat reluctantly, that some choices appeared to be made for us. He called it a natural circumstance of life of which there were many that regretfully no one could explain or plan for. No, the idea of predestination never sat easy in him, it reduces us all to the status of slaves and we are more than that Harpo, much more than that. About all I can say is it seems to me now and again some folks are in the right place at the right time but they can never say with certainty how exactly they got there, only that they did through a series of unforseen circumstance. They just are and there’s no gain to be had wondering about it, such has happened to me a time or two and for all I never attach much importance to such, it happens I can tell you that. A stumble, when I’m a man who’s known to be sure on his feet, a bullet passing over my head that otherwise would have smashed through my heart. A different trail taken on a whim, only to find out later if’n I’d stuck to the original trail I would have ridden into an ambush. Reloading my old Colt .44 bullets whistling by and not a one finding its mark, whilst the shooter stands in plain sight before me, you don’t want to even think about the odds of surviving; any gambler worth his salt will tell you that. One time back on the farm, my father said when he was a young man he sailed aboard a merchant ship, a three masted schooner bound for the Spice Islands and the steamy land of Coromandel where, he said every mother’s son held implicit belief in what he called Karma. He said it amounted to the same thing as fate, predestination, call it what you like, he said when you get right down to it, it pretty much amounted to the same thing. Different words Harpo, that’s all they are, just different words used to describe much the same thing. When he spoke like that it added to the mystery surrounding his early years. About all I ever knew about him was from round about the time he met my mother Ava Marie Morales down in Old Mexico. You live out in the desert and the wild, empty lands long enough, and its for certain sooner or later you will encounter mysteries and secrets those city folk back east don’t even dream of, outside the pages of dime novels or those spooky stories that writer fella Edgar Allan Poe likes to write so damn much. Read one or two in some old newspapers, in a serial form like those stories that old English writer Charlie Dickens used to write afore they were collected together and put in books. Seen grown men fighting to get hold of a newspaper from England that contained the last piece of one of his serials, and that’s something you wouldn’t credit if’n you hadn’t seen it with your own eyes. So I guess that’s what burned my father up now and again, those odd circumstances of life he spoke about that you can never predict, like he felt it was a danger to him somehow. Maybe Red Shirt could explain it, I can say I surely cannot, and I’m not much interested in trying. What is, is, so Red Shirt says and that’s fine by me. I guess I’m the same but different since I left the Comanche, maybe a bit of the Nurmaná Way lodged inside me. Hard to say don’t you know. I’m not what you’d call a deep thinking man so I surely do not go looking. I guess I am what I am when you get right down to it, and I don’t mind that. In my own way I’m sort of comfortable with myself. Faults, hell yes I’ve got ‘em by the dozen but that don’t mean much to me. I’m lonesome by choice, lonesome by nature you might say, with a love for the soft rose of sunset out on the trail, the smoky smelting iron look of it calls to something inside me that I have no name for, and no interest in finding one. I’m lonesome by choice and that’s a damn sight different to being lonesome for someone, though I do say there’s many that don’t see it that way, but they are not me and I know what I am, leastways most of the time.
Sometimes folks try too hard to find what’s meaningful and they never come to know what its like to just be comfortable with who and what you are. If’n a body can do that, well, it seems to me that’s maybe what they try so hard to find anyway, it sounds crazy I know but maybe its just too damn plain and simple for such as they to understand. You can get so damn busy looking; you lose sight of life itself and the next thing you know you’re in your coffin wondering where your life went because you sure as hell don’t recall living one. Maybe that’s the Comanche in me, the Nurmaná Way, to know how to be comfortable with yourself, to listen to the messenger, the inner voice who mostly gets drowned out in a sea of noise, that on reflection doesn’t make all that much sense anyway. Simple is best, my father once said where spirit is concerned, complicate it too much and you drown the song the Maker sings that might be just for you. That’s what he said one time when I was young, I forgot it for a while, but I can say it’s in me now or something like it. The Red Sun, the song the Maker sings.
About the time Ben Bright took in to ranching up in the Purgatoire the nearest town was a three, maybe four day ride across country. He didn’t have any neighbours unless you count the Indians. Things didn’t change much for around ten years or so.
Penny Bright was seven years old when she discovered she liked to run. Her mother Angie thought such was unbecoming for a young girl, but as there were no other children for her to play with, she mostly just shrugged and let it be. By the time Penny Bright was fourteen years old she could run for hours at a steady, ground eating lope, her skirt hitched high or sometimes stuffed in the top of her bloomers. When she ran she wore lace up ankle high, flat heeled black boots, mostly she never wore anything else. What Indians commented on the spirit touched young girl, said she will never run like the wind, she is not fast, they said, but she can go all day like a strong pony. Growing up on a ranch was a hard life for a girl. She was expected to do her chores around the house and lend a hand out on the range when needed. Penny could shoot and reload a pistol whilst the chambers were still hot and smoking and she was a fair hand with a rifle. She could rope and brand a steer, catch and saddle a horse, fork hay and cut it too, stacking bales as neat as they come in the big hay barn out back of the ranch house. She was tough and resourceful and had a stubborn streak in her, just like her father, Angie would say with a fond smile. Ben Bright’s two hands Jake and Rowdy were the only males other than her father she had ever met. As was to be expected both Jake and Rowdy doted on young Penny Bright. Unmarried their own selves, they just naturally adopted the Bright family as their own. That’s about how it was in those days. You rode for the brand and the brand became your family in a land where single white women were mostly never seen. By the time she was sixteen Penny Bright was a slim, long-legged young woman with a mass of thick, curly, brown hair tumbling down to her shoulders and soul deep, windy-grey eyes. She wasn’t beautiful in the classical sense; you couldn’t say she was pretty or fragile like one of them china dolls. What she was was handsome with big, arresting eyes. She was striking you might say, with a nice smile and white, even teeth. She didn’t chew tobacco, for all she tried it once, she said it made her puke. Penny Bright had never known trouble or even felt threatened in the whole of her life. In Ben Bright’s eyes she could do no wrong and mostly her mother left her alone to do as she pleased, which was to run, most of the time. Jake and Rowdy would lay down their lives for her without even thinking about it. The Indians thought she was touched in the head and left her alone. Penny had never visited a town or seen more than five people together at any one time. Her mother taught her to read and write and her father taught her to tally cattle. When Blood Hand came screaming out of the sun, her safe, remote life came tumbling down. Shocked and mind numb the renegades led her away unprotesting. Somewhere along the trail, her every move watched like a hawk by savage, cruel eyed men, her senses returned and she knew with a sinking heart what lay in store for her. She determined to escape or die trying, knowing her fate amongst the Comancheros was quite literally too terrible to contemplate, a fate Blood Hand enjoyed taunting her with. As for escape or seeking some way to end her short life she could find none, there was always someone watching her even when she was allowed to squat in the bushes to relieve herself, she was never alone. Determined to escape or die trying, she never gave up, what stubbornness was inside her became more obdurate with each passing day. Penny Bright grew hard along that trail like forged iron. Penny Bright aged in her soul and never thought young again. She was a warrior that one, like some warrior Druidess of old, it was there inside her, needing but the terror of the preceding days to draw it forth like a tempered steel blade from the fire. Given the chance she would not even hesitate to kill in defence of her life; it was all she had left, her family and her home were gone, ashes on the wind she thought, ashes on the wind, blood in the air, my soul burns in this devil’s crucible of life. The lines echoed round and round inside her head, shivering the somnolent warrior, awakening the inner devouring eye, lines from a rambling verse written by the mad Spanish poet Paques, a book her mother gave to her. A strange book she read with distaste unable to comprehend its depth of meaning, until now.
Thwarted at every turn she determined to dash herself to the ground if need be and crush her skull. And then suddenly they were riding into the Comancheros’ camp. Guns bellowed and Blood Hand and his band fell. Her eyes lit on the pistol stuck in Blood Hand’s waistband. Seconds later her last shot rang out, and she was up and running, devoid of the constraint of her skirt, she leapt forward disappearing over the basin’s rim before a single Comanchero moved to stop her. The red ball of the sun slipped beneath the horizon. Darkness fell swiftly as she slipped like a white ghost down through the foothills and out onto the hard packed surface of the plain. The North Star glimmered low above the horizon. She fixed its position in her mind and resolutely surged forward, her long legs stretching out, eating distance with every stride. The run of Penny Bright is legendary now. Between the sunset of one day and the sunrise of another, sixteen year old Penny Bright covered twenty miles, but it wasn’t enough, it just plain wasn’t enough, but at least she ran in the right direction and maybe that was just plain luck or maybe it wasn’t because the end of Penny Bright’s legendary run was the start of something else, maybe it was just luck that she ran in the right direction and maybe it wasn’t, who knows, and if they do, who cares.
Penny Bright thought on more lines from Paques as she ran. ‘No broken song have I, to sing so sweetly, no midnight dreams come by to haunt me so completely, fading echo falling down the sky, my soul is weeping.’ His strange words somehow lent me strength; she was later heard to say. ‘In life I am weak, in death I am strong,’ wrote Paques.
Penny Bright ran with no thought of tomorrow in her head. If she could run the night down into dawn she could run until her heart burst, run until her feet no longer touched the earth, run until she reached forever or the world ceased to turn, run until she reached whatever came first. Penny Bright was sixteen years old and she was running for her life, to gain the greatest prize of all, life, a right to live. Unerringly she continued to run north. The plain stretched out before her like the flat blade of a knife. There was nowhere to hide, no rocks or trees offered concealment, not even a gully or a buffalo wallow, all she could do was run. Run until the cold desert air seared her throat, until she was panting, gagging for breath, her strength leaking away through muscles turned to lumps of quivering jelly beneath her flesh, run until sweat drenched her body, smoking away like vapour on the chill night air, her long hair hanging down her back sweat soaked grimy and lank. And when her body screamed in protest at its churning run toward death, she dug down deep and dredged the well of her soul, lengthening her stride, reaching out towards forever with the strange words of Paques the mad Spanish poet beating a drum roll way back and deep inside her head, the Comanche soul of him whispering, ‘run Penny Bright, run until the moon falls out of the sky, run Penny Bright, if you stop you will die, run Penny Bright run for your life.’
In the chilly, lonesome darkness Penny Bright ran through the night. Her parents lay stiff and cold, Rowdy and Jake were gone. No one searched for her, no one in all the world knew where she might be or that the devil’s brood had taken her. She was alone in her darkness and terror; alone without hope of light, without even a memory of a friend. She cursed the killers of her family, ‘may they rot in hell,’ she cursed the Comancheros who would kill her when they came, she cursed them all with chilling vehemency, ‘burn in hell,’ she whispered, ‘burn in hell until the end of days.’ Sobbing for breath, he eyes wet with tears, her smooth young face hardened as she grimly resolved to somehow survive the devil’s onslaught; to run through the night towards the light of dawn and live. She was sixteen years old, a Red Sun rising and like a stranger in a strange land she wondered where god might be. She fled through the starry night like the shade of Helen, like the white ghost of Troy pursued by Agamemnon the vengeful Greek king my father once told me about. As she ran, the moon rose out of the east, a haunted yellow moon; a round, fat summer moon that hung in the sky throwing down eerie tainted light thin as snow. Later as the moon rose high the pale yellow light melted into a stark, ashen glow. The pallid plain reached out before her in its breadth of space. The air was utterly still and as cold as the tomb. She ran with her lips slightly parted, sucking in air so cold it all but seared her throat. Somewhere far off coyotes howled and for all she was drenched in sweat she shivered at the mournful sound. Penny Bright ran clad in her upper bodice, long white bloomers and laced up ankle high black boots. As she ran she felt stretched inside, as though she was thinning out and leaking away through the pores of her flesh. She wished she had a gun or a knife, she wished she could kill herself and end the nightmare but knew she could not. Legs pumping, heart thudding rhythmically all she could do was run and run, maybe she could outdistance the Comancheros when they came, maybe she could find a place to hide, maybe with the coming of the sun she could learn to fly or go away deep inside. The stars burned cold and aloof, the thud of her booted feet resonating through her like a muted chant, and she ran and did not think of tomorrow. She did not think of life or death, she had never heard of the Red Sun, she just ran.
Between one moment and the next, night gave way to dawn. The sun rose swiftly, dramatically and in its blazing heat you might wonder if you had ever been cold at all. The plain broiled beneath its glare, the air taking on a hazy, smoky look. She was about done and she knew it. Glancing behind, her stomach crawled with fear as she observed the rapidly approaching dust cloud. The Comancheros had not waited for first light after all, saddling up in the light of the moon, too impatient and angry to wait for daylight, they all but pressured Philippe Torres to lead them out. Penny Bright’s trail wasn’t hard to locate, and once they had it, all they had to do was follow. Faces set in grim, hard lines the Comancheros settled in for a fast, punishing ride. As their mounts ate up the miles they began to wonder how it was possible for the young Anglo to travel so far. Her tracks were plain to see, she had no mount she was just running, only wild Indians could run like that, not a little Anglo girl. Philippe Torres was coldly furious, what should have been a quick, easy capture was turning into a long and thirsty ride. His head ached and throbbed. His men, sober now hung on the girl’s trail with cruel intent. If it ever got around that a young slip of a girl had made fools of them all, Philip Torres and his band would be finished, a laughing stock the length and breadth of Mexico and not a one of them could face that. Any thought of taking their pleasure when they caught her fled from their minds, to be replaced with a single desire to kill this foolish child who mocked and humiliated the most feared gang of Comancheros in Mexico. They would kill her on sight and be done with it. Not a one of them took note of where Penny Bright was heading.
Penny Bright never knew when she reached the lip of the plain, she simply topped a small rise that stretched to her right and left for miles, and stumbled down and on. Vision wavering, labouring for breath in the rising furnace heat, she took one last despairing look behind her as she topped the low ridge and ran on. She said later that she could not explain where she found the strength to continue, ‘I think those strange words written by mad Paques helped but I cannot say how or even why they should. I was running for my life,’ she said, ‘maybe that was incentive enough.’
As she left the hard, baked plain behind, she vaguely realised she was running across a more gentle plain of dry, close cropped prairie grass. She could see steers ahead, sudden hope flared within her bruised body like wild fire. The rolling thunder of running horses grew louder as she gamely ran on. Suddenly a horse and rider rode clear of the browsing cattle, he motioned her towards him. ‘Dear god’ she prayed ‘let him not be alone.’ Fourteen Comancheros armed to the teeth thundered down on her, one Vaquero could not stand alone against such numbers, we are both dead she thought hopelessly. She felt weak and giddy from exhaustion, her legs and arms leaden weights she could barely stir. The Vaquero took one look at the terrified girl and dismounted without a word, motioning her to climb in the saddle, helping even as he looked warily towards the fast approaching riders. ‘Comancheros,’ he spat in contempt, ‘vamoose Senorita,’ he shouted, slapping the rump of his mount, ‘he knows his way home, let him run.’
She held the reins tightly almost afraid to believe she had reached safety, but what of the man, the Mexican cowboy she thought. As the horse of Valdez carried her to safety she turned and looked back. The Mexican was a small slim man; he held a pistol in his hand and wore a holstered pistol on his right hip. She surmised correctly that he carried a spare in his saddlebag and had gotten it to hand even as he dismounted to help her. She looked on in dismay as the Comancheros bore down on the small man in a solid bunch. ‘What happened next,’ she said, ‘is forever etched in my mind.’
Valdez stood easy, his movements unhurried but sure. A wide dusty sombrero shaded his eyes from the sun’s blinding glare. He had two pistols six rounds in each. ‘Maybe it is enough,’ he mused, ‘maybe not.’ He waited until the charging Comancheros were well within range of his hand gun, and then he calmly raised his pistol and began to fire as though he was doing nothing more than indulging in a little target practice. He fired six times, rapidly; he couldn’t miss, bunched up as they were. As the last shot slammed through the air he dropped the pistol drew his belt gun and continued to fire into the now milling, confused mass of riders all but obscured in a great cloud of dust as their mounts balked and reared in the face of the Mexican’s continuous gunfire. Wild shots spattered around him. Cursing and shouting as they tried to control their plunging, rearing mounts. Boiling dust obscuring their view, the Comancheros could only guess where Valdez stood when they triggered their shots. Philippe Torres was already down and dying. As the hammer fell on his last cartridge, Valdez as cool as you please, ejected the spent cases and reloaded rapidly, his nimble fingers flying, finished, he calmly raised his gun and emptied six more rounds into the screaming, chaotic mass. Horses went down on their hindquarters as riders crashed into each other, cursing and shouting. Riderless mounts raced out of the boiling dust squealing their terror, and then it was over. Valdez had broken the Comancheros, reloading even as he watched the surviving Comancheros turn tail and flee back to the mountains.
Valdez killed nine men that day and he with nary a scratch on him. It was the day he became a legend, Valdez the Mexican pistolero, and like most legends he was destined to die young.
Crowley County Series, Novels 4-6
An uplifting series with romance, mystery and suspense.
Join the people of Crowleyville as they face the challenges of small town life while struggling to welcome an influx of newcomers.
Maria, raised in the Mafia and educated by the gangs of New York, is hunting the man who killed her Akalina, and she will kill anyone who gets in her way.
