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AMAZON
Digital Print Australia
Category:
Western
Publisher: Digital Print Australia
ISBN-10: 9780958521689
Type: Fiction
Pages: 308
Copyright: JUl, 2008
ISBN-13: 9780958521689
The Outlaw
The Boston writer B W Harding wrote lurid, over the top dime novels. His stories sold well and continued to do so for many years. He was no longer young when one day his publisher informed him, with regret, that the dime novel was dead and advised him to write about real flesh and blood heroes. BW agreed but he was perverse and decided to write about an outlaw whose exploits, according to various barroom tales up and down the country, were legendary.
But first he had to find him, to learn the truth behind allegations concerning stolen gold, murder and retribution and at the same time solve the mystery of why the last surviving descendants of a now vanished desert people revered him as a “Red Sun” — and how hard could it be to find one man — only BW had never travelled the western lands. He knew nothing of the desert, the outlaw trail or the Comanche.
The truth lurking behind the myth would change him. The outlaw’s story, when revealed, more compelling than fiction.
Excerpt
He sat in the cool shadows, an old man with a ruined face. His left eye, sunk deep in scar tissue sometimes gleamed with strange, pale-blue light. Scar tissue ridged his temple and forehead, clear to see through a thinning mop of white, shoulder length hair that carried no hint of its former gold. Sometimes when he rolled a smoke his hands trembled. Sometimes of an evening, watching the sun set and flame like glory in a painted sky he wondered why he was alive, knowing he should have died long ago in a forgotten corner of the desert. He wondered about that. He wondered about the chance and fancy of it all. A man falls off a horse and breaks his neck whilst another man falls of a horse damn near everyday and hardly earns himself a bruise for his trouble.
He never returned to Hidden Springs, he never tried to find it again. Vincenté said “it would do no good if you did, it moves,” he said.
The old man was pushing sixty five maybe seventy years or thereabouts. Sometimes he was none too sure himself and had gotten out of the habit of counting the years the day he rode away from Hidden Springs towards a moment in time that left three men down and dying in the dust and the heat, bathed in the lurid light of a scarlet and gold sunset, the roar and thunder of gunshots peeling away into an eerie silence, long shadows falling, his heart a windy hollow and in his hands, pain. He smiled at the recollection like a wolf in the deep and the dark, ‘do it again if’n there was need’ he said to himself, ‘and lose no sleep over it, damned if I would.’
The arched portico ran the length of the ranch house, wide and deep. He sat in its shadow facing towards the mouth of the valley. Lately, the hot summer sun set his broken face to throbbing and his head to pounding and he wondered why he bothered to live and breathe, and yet had every intention of doing so for a good few years to come. He looked what he was, a lean, tough old man who accommodated his pain and then pretty much ignored it.
He sat at a long table of rough hewn timber, coffee and fresh baked biscuits to hand along with a soft leather drawstring pouch of shredded tobacco leaf and a dozen or so loose, liquorice papers with a gummed edge, the kind that rolls a good smoke, strong and pungent as dust when the first rain falls after a long, hot dry. Life, he often thought, as he sat in the shade, doesn’t get much better than this. Somewhat solitary by nature with an enduring love of empty, wide open spaces beneath a vast blue sky he was content to be himself, content to be who and what he had turned out to be: Regret for what might have been, having long since burned away.
Beneath a curdled sky the land baked in tawny heat. Beyond the valley a range of low, humpbacked hills crouched beside a white dust trail. The gelding seemingly oblivious to the heat and the dust, high stepped along the trail with an eager look in its eye. BW had been fortunate in his purchase of the gelding, a strong, eager animal with a genuine love of the open trail in its heart. Not so the rider, hunched down on the rig’s unpadded bench seat. “By god,” he moaned, “I swear my spine’s damn near jounced to pieces.” He was however determined to find the Lost River Valley and his hoped for pot of gold. It has to be him, he hoped and prayed fervently with each and every passing mile, it has to be him by god or I’m done for. Swallowing nervously, eyes on the never ending trail ahead, he rode on. The gelding snorted, blowing air through its nostrils and stepped out with a will. BW shook his head in silent wonder as the rig picked up speed, thinking, there has to be something wrong with a horse this willing, it just ain’t natural by god, not in this heat, damned if it is.
Smoke-In-The-Hills spoke softly, his regard for One-Good-Eye apparent in his tone and manner, Vincenté, his blood father stood close by. Like his son, Vincenté was short and stocky, the hard muscle of powerful shoulders belied his years, for all his lank blue-black hair was shot through with streaks of grey and white. And like his sons there was something about Vincenté, something of the desert in his eyes, something latent and wild lurking beneath an otherwise mild and open manner. Vincenté was fluent in three languages and could read and write in two as could his sons and daughter, and there was that about him, that gave strangers reason to pause, to step around him you might say. And yet, if Vincenté had not found the Red Sun, as the Woman-Who-Sings-In-The-Summer-Valley advised, most likely he and his family would not have survived to continue the line of the ancestors who built a city of stone now lost beneath the sands.
The warrior blood of Vincenté was also noble blood. His line as old as anything is old or thought to be. As for where his people came from Vincenté did not say or otherwise care to reveal; ‘It is important to no one,’ he said, ‘nor do I think the Anglo scholars would believe my words, they have already made up their minds as to what is and what is not.’
“Well,” the old man drawled laconically in answer to Smoke-In-The-Hills’ report, “I guess when Harpo told his story, his version of it that is, it was just a matter of time before somebody got around to tracking me down. No matter,” he said soft voiced, “bound to happen sooner or later so I guess I’d best deal with it when he shows. A day, maybe two you say” adding pensively, “I think I’ve just about outlived any would be gun hand south of the border looking to make a reputation off my bones.” He glanced towards Vincenté, “and I’ve probably got you and your boys to thank for that, though I might say one or two came close back when we settled the valley, though I doubt they knew who I was, and that was their bad luck,” he said darkly. “As a matter of fact apart from the banditos up in the hills I doubt there is one honest to god gunfighter in the whole damn country.” He shook his head, “no place for such in these changing times. Man has a grievance he uses the law to settle it, which is as it should be, though it seems to me one or two of those fancy talking lawyers don’t care which side they are on so long as they get paid a nice fat fee,” adding, “me and Harpo, guess we both outlived our time.”
Smoke-In-The-Hills remained silent his face impassive. Vincenté coughed politely to gain the old man’s attention and said, “Perhaps it is a good thing compadre, the writer coming here.”
The old man turned toward him inquiringly, “oh yea,” he said softly, “and how do you work that out my friend.”
Vincenté shrugged, a hint of mirth in his eyes, “Are you not El Diablo,” he smiled, containing his mirth, “are you not the Jefe (chief) of the Indios Violento (wild Indians), a famous outlaw, a pistolero, does not your own story at least equal that of your friend Harpo Kane?” He left the sentence hanging and then said in a quiet voice devoid of mirth, “Long ago when I searched for the Red Sun you were someone else, who knows,” he shrugged, “maybe your story has more to offer than that of your compadre, maybe the old pistolero knows that, maybe that is why he spoke of you knowing one day a writer would seek you out, maybe it is his way of encouraging you to speak of a time already passing into legend. Your friend knew this I think, maybe that is why he told his story so those who come after will know how it was back then, maybe he wants you to do the same, knowing many in the security of their safe new world will not believe it anyway. Make a good story though,” Vincenté added with a smile, “for a dime novel writer.”
The old outlaw was tired, worn out and lean in the hollow of the Red Sun, its leaking rays sustained his ravaged body in a dream of Nurmaná that sometimes filled his soul with light in the deep and the dark of the soundless night. His name was different now, back then he was known as Johnny Sonora.
Harpo said he wanted to set the record straight when he related his story to the El Paso writer, maybe I should do the same he thought, set the record straight before I go, or some such thing, he grimaced.
The unscarred side of his face felt drawn and tight, the ruined side throbbed incessantly, full of achy heat and red hot splinters. For all his hands and head wounds had healed clean, they sometimes pained him plenty reminding him that there is always a price to pay for everything, including the continuance of ones life. He smiled inwardly at that, knowing he had a good many years left in him. How he knew, he simply could not say, and didn’t bother his head thinking too much about it other than to surmise it had something to do with the Red Sun. It was that kind of thing, about as personal as it gets, intuitive you might say. Something he picked up out in the desert around Hidden Springs, a spooky old place, where he was stretched about as thin as thin can be between life and death and somehow came to ‘knowing’ something of the Nurmaná Road from a strange looking Indian who never even bothered to mention his name or say much of anything at all for that matter. And yet he had somehow managed to convey the idea of Nurmaná, enough to lodge inside his head, but he never did figure out how he managed to do that. It was unanswerable, like a mystery you don’t want to solve because you just know you need the mystery more than the answer. The Red Sun is like that.
About then Vincenté and his band turned up and well, there you go, maybe Vincenté is right, maybe I should talk to the writer and set the record straight, for all Harpo tried to do it for me there’s a lot he didn’t know, nor any reason why he should, he did his best. If’n it hadn’t been for just one man there wouldn’t have been no bounty offered, dead or alive the man said, swore out a warrant too, said I was a cold blooded killer for all at the time most everyone knew it was a lie. He was a lawman and a crooked one at that. I was about the only one that knew Gun Hargate and his brothers were paying him off. He was afraid I would talk, though I can say I couldn’t have cared less. The warrant is still outstanding in Texas, a warrant that brands me a no good murderer, when the truth is I never shot a man who wasn’t facing me with a six gun in his hand.
As for the gunfighter book about Harpo, I read that and it seems to me the El Paso writer did a good job and wrote Harpo’s story pretty much as it was told to him. So maybe I will talk to that writer when he shows up, maybe.
To Smoke-In-The-Hills he said, “Be a good idea if’n you were to head on out, back down the trail and keep an eye on our friend in the rig and make sure none of that crowd up in the hills bothers him. They know better,” he added, “but they might just get a notion to try. A man alone and travelling in a rig at that might just be too much of a temptation for those boys if’n they get liquored up. Clear his trail,” he said, and like that fool of a cavalry man who disbelieved what a lone Comanche was capable of, teach them a lesson if they so much as try to harm our guest. Though I wouldn’t be surprised if the noise of that old cannon you say he’s carrying isn’t enough to give them boys pause. Those boys,” he said softly, “are not known for their courage when they come up against an armed man determined to make a stand.” Even so, “he added, “best to make sure, don’t you think.”
Smoke-In-The-Hills nodded and slipped away into the hot light. Vincenté watched him go, a lithe, self assured young man who uplifted his heart with his presence, thinking not for the first time that if he had failed to find the Red Sun not a one of them would be here in the valley. You make your own luck he thought, for all it comes and goes like the rascal, like an old worn out ghost in the desert waiting for you to pass by so it can hitch a ride and fill your head with its memories.
It had taken B W Harding more than two years to locate and finally meet the old outlaw and the first words the old man said sent a chill running up and down his spine.
“I could kill you right here and now,” the faded old man said conversationally, “and bury your body so deep it would take a thousand years or more just to find your bones. It’s a big, wide country,” he said, “and I expect those wild boys up in the hills would be held responsible anyway. You are in a wild land,” he said, “as wild as anything was wild back in my young years, what you would call the old west in your dime novels.”
BW stared at him glassily. The old man continued, “time doesn’t count for much out here. The sun comes up and the sun goes down and it don’t hardly rain much beyond a shower or two between one season and the next but I expect you know that, same as I expect your head is full of foolish notions concerning gunfighters and such. I expect you think the old west was full of righteous men, clean-cut outlaws and cowboys born to their manners; or maybe you don’t at that for I can’t say I have read your books, leastways none that I recollect.” The old outlaw offered a twisted travesty of a smile that just about chilled BW through to the bone and said, “Any outlaw on any day of the week was as likely to be shot on sight as he was to be hung from the gallows pole until he was dead. You had your prisons back east, out in the wild lands there were none. If you carried a weapon be it a gun or a knife or a damn big stick it was assumed by one and all that you were prepared to use it, else why would man or boy bother to carry a weapon at all, and you Mr B W Harding with that old cannon stuck in your waistband,” again that terrible smile flickered across his face, “I don’t know if I should kill you or talk to you and then let you go write your book,” his good eye twinkled. Deep in the shadows, Vincenté chuckled softly.
B W Harding sat in stunned silence; thinking, its hot enough to bake bread by god, and he was way out of his depth and he knew it. Sweat rolled down his cheeks, maybe Jules Verne could explain the hole in time he seemed to be stuck in, or H G Wells or Poe or Kipling or maybe it was the heat pressing in like a closed fist, knocking his wits out of his head filling the empty space with delusion because by god he had never seen anything like it outside the big top of a travelling show where, for a dime or maybe a quarter, you could look your fill at a dozen or more broken human beings reassembled by the devil himself by god. He pitied the poor creatures but that was as close as he ever came toward acknowledging they were human. And then suddenly, shockingly time clicked into place, his vision cleared, his thoughts shifted and moved at an orderly pace, his yammering heart missed a beat and then steadied, proceeding to thump away at a nicely rounded rhythmic pace.
It was hot but no more so than on any other day by god. He breathed in deeply, mopping his brow with a bright green bandana, he nodded towards his host and proceeded to assess him coolly in the portico’s shadow. Fully aware that at least one, probably two or more of the outlaws wild Indians hovered near, and as if he divined the very thoughts and momentary discomfort of the Boston writer, a ghost of a smile flickered across the broken face of the old outlaw.
His right eye, his one good eye shone like a bright blue star in heaven’s summer sky. His left eye, hooded in thick layering scar tissue lay back deep in its damaged socket, cold and pale as ice as if death astride its pale horse, lipless mouth shrieking had sucked out the colour. When death comes calling it will always take away something if it cannot take your life.
His head and facial wounds back then in that other life had almost killed him, he silently acknowledged to himself, and almost but not quite was a dark, dizzy chasm a thousand miles wide and a million deep; if’n it hadn’t been for that strange looking Indian, his thoughts skittered, best not to think about that, he told himself. Best to just let it go, along with every other bit and piece he had picked up along the Nurmaná Road and for which he knew there was no good answer, at least none that made much sense, he thought wryly, to the Red Sun maybe, to the Red Sun the ‘Rite of Condolence’ made sense, the ‘Rite of Regeneration’ made sense but the rays of the Red sun were fading, the rays were losing colour and thinning as the energies and the powers slowly but inevitably reabsorbed what was given on the Nurmaná Road but could only exist in this world for a brief swell of years until the years ebbed and the Red Sun returned whence it came, in ‘light it comes in light it goes’, nothing is forever, absolutely nothing at all, but damn it was all so real.
Vincenté said if no one writes down what he knows, the ‘Way’ of his ancestors, the ‘way’ of the Red Sun will die with him and like his people it will be forgotten, it will be as though my people never lived, never walked this earth and built in stone. That is why, he said, he was instructing Smoke-In-The-Hills. “Maybe he will write it down one day. I cannot,” he said, “though I do not know why,” he shrugged, “I cannot, it is not my task.”
Realising the old man’s threat to kill him and bury him deep was not actually going to happen by god, B W Harding began to slowly unwind. The long, dusty trail was behind him, for a few days at least, and the sudden, unexpected shock of the old man’s terrible scars was slowly draining away.
He began to think about his pot of gold, two years by god, he thought as he lit a thin Mexican cigar, inhaling deeply, savouring the bite of the strong tobacco at the back of his throat as he settled into his chair, glancing now and again at the Indian squatting on his heels in the shadow some few feet away from the table, face impassive, eyes seemingly staring into nothing. And if I were to make one false move he’d be on me like a damned hunting cat by god, I’d be dead before I even hit the floor. It was a sobering thought. But he was here to write a story and offered threat to no man. Still, he reasoned, best to be careful, best to go slow and easy by god. He thought the Indian looked like an Apache and a wild one at that and no one in their right mind wants trouble with an Apache; he had picked that up from barroom talk during his search for the old outlaw. ‘You don’t want to tangle with no Apache,’ he was told. ‘Given time an Apache warrior can run a horse down. Get a man like that on your trail and you might just want to shoot yourself if’n it looks certain he’s a goin’ to catch you.’ He wrote the snippet down along with all the other stories he had listened to from one end of Texas to the other. He thought he might compile all the bits and pieces into a book; one day!
For a while no one spoke. The day was slowly waning, the sting in the hot rays of the sun beginning to fade. Spears of red and gold and smoky orange slashed across the deepening sky. Somewhere a child’s voice called out, a woman answered with a laugh in her throat. Bee’s droned, the sound of horses hooves thudding in the nearby corral, the distant sound of bawling cattle drifting on the air. The pungent aroma of coffee simmering in the pot, the sound and smell of beef steak sizzling in a skillet, the underlying smell of hay and horse droppings adding to the moment as the ranch settled in toward the end of its day. BW was sure the old outlaw would talk, would give him what he wanted, what he had searched diligently to find, but he dare not rush it or as yet even begin to question the old man; best to go slow and easy, he thought, best not to blow it by god, not this close. He sniffed at the aroma of frying beef, his stomach rumbled. He smiled at that but no one took any notice. The Indian never stirred his complete and utter motionlessness somehow unnerving. The old man gazed off into the distance, the ruined side of his caved in face lost in the blue haze of a soft dusk, deepening the shadows for all the sun had not yet slipped below the horizon. A wandering breeze with sage on its breath crept in, adding to the savoury smell of frying beef, of chilli beans and tortillas. Damn, but he was hungry by god, but wise enough, now he had his wits about him, not to say so. If the old man did not invite him to stay for supper, well, that was that and two years of his life wasted; no, best not to rush it by god.
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