Blood and Gold

For a while no one spoke, my disagreement with Jen over the wounded Apache still frosting the air between us. Outside the rain continued to fall, hammering on the roof of the cabin, drops occasionally gusting through the broken windows. The wind was rising, whispering notions around the walls of the cabin, setting the lamp flame to dancing.

Jen finally turned from the stove, heaped platters in her hands, and laid them on the table with more of a thump than their weight merited. She returned with plates, silverware and chunks of cornbread, sniffed, then slammed each item on the table with not so much as a howdy-do.

Jacob gave his wife a long, warning glare, then turned to me and said: “Dig in, Mr. Hannah.”

“Call me Dusty,” I said without looking at him, all my attention riveted on the food.

Annoyed with me she might be, but Jen Lawson had set a handsome table.

One platter was piled high with fried antelope steaks, the other with boiled potatoes, and I helped myself liberally from both. Jen returned to the table and poured coffee for me and Jacob, then sat herself. Their daughter snuggled close beside Jen, who gave the child a small steak to chew on.

We ate hungrily, each pretending to be too busy with the food to notice the awkward silence stretching between us. But then I happened to turn my head to the left, my attention caught by a log crackling in the stove, and Jen exclaimed: “Why, Mr. Hannah, you’re wounded!”

Absently my fingers went to my head, where Lafe Wingo’s bullet had grazed me. I felt crusted blood, though the wound wasn’t near as tender as it had been even a few days before.

“It’s an old injury,” I said, trying to make light of it. “I stepped into a stray bullet back to the Gypsum Hills country.”

The woman’s face was full of concern. “After you eat, I’m going to clean that wound for you.” Her eyes softened as she touched the back of my hand. “You poor thing.”

Embarrassed, I gave all my attention to my plate and Jacob laughed. “Dusty, better let Jen do as she pleases. She’s forever nursing wounded critters back to health.”

The air had cleared between us and Jen watched me with growing concern until I’d eaten my fill, sighed and pushed away from the table.

“That was an elegant meal, ma’am,” I told her. “The first woman’s cooking I’ve tasted in many a month.”

Jen was looking at my wound intently, and to head her off, I dug into my shirt pocket, found my makings and asked: “May I beg your indulgence, ma’am?”

The woman nodded. “Please do. Jacob smokes a pipe and I’m well used to men and their need for tobacco.”

Jacob stepped to the wood mantel above the fireplace and returned with a charred, battered pipe, which he proceeded to light.

I’d hoped our smoking would forestall his wife’s attentions, but it was not to be. Jen left the table and came back with a pan of water and a cloth and began to bathe my wound.

Only now, as his wife fussed and fretted over me, did I mention to Jacob Lawson that I’d first taken Jen and him for Indians.

The big bearded man took that in stride. “Jen and me, our plan is to follow the way of the Indian and live as he does. That is why we dress as we do. Eventually, we hope to attract others to our valley who feel the same as we do.”

As Jen dabbed at my head, she said: “We wish to put away our guns and live as a community in perfect peace, love and harmony. When the Apaches came, Jacob tried to speak to them in friendship, but their only reply was a volley of gunfire that drove us into the cabin.”

“They nearly done for us,” Jacob said. “It was that close.”

I nodded. “When the Apaches are on the war trail, as a general rule they ain’t long on polite conversation.”

“But even this won’t deter us,” Jen said, dabbing at my head with something that stung. “Our vision is to see this valley populated by hundreds of kindred spirits who wish to live as nature intended, close to the earth in the way of the native Red Man.”

“It’s a good way, Jen,” I said, “but mighty hard. In the old days when an Indian ate, he filled his belly to bursting because he had no way of knowing when he’d eat again. In winter, when game and fuel were scarce, all the tribes suffered from hunger and cold. Even in good years a lot of them died, especially the old and the younkers like your little girl there.

“Now the buffalo are gone, things are even worse. To survive a bad winter, the Indian needs fat. The buffalo had plenty of fat, especially in his hump where he stored it, and in good years when the herds didn’t drift too far south, that rich hump meat was easy to come by. Now the Sioux and the Cheyenne and the others must depend on antelope and deer and rabbit, and there’s little fat on any of them. If they don’t get government beef, and many of the wilder ones don’t, they can fill their bellies with deer and jackrabbit in winter and still starve to death.”

I rolled another smoke, thumbed a match into flame and lit it. “Like I said, it’s a good way, but it’s not an easy way.”