Blood and Gold

After a while I stumbled to my feet, teeth bared, panting, looking down at the man I’d killed. I’d battled this warrior with fangs and claws and I had won, and by right of conquest his head and weapons were mine.

No longer completely sane, crazed by the sudden, shocking violence of the fight, I kneeled, grabbed a handful of the Apache’s long, greasy hair and scalped him.

Jumping to my feet again, I brandished the dripping scalp high, tilted back my head and let a savage Rebel yell tear from my throat. It was a barbaric, angry shriek, half wail, half scream, heard on hundreds of battlefields during the War Between the States. But the yell had much more ancient and darker roots, stretching back across the echoing centuries to the war cry of the wild, blue-stained Celtic sword warriors from whom my ancestors had sprung.

If there were Apaches around, I wanted them to know by that victorious scream that I’d killed one of them, that I’d torn out his throat with my teeth. I wanted them to suffer as I had suffered, wanted them to know fear as I’d known fear.

Finally, blood from the scalp running down my arm, I slowly returned to sanity.

Suddenly drained, I dropped the filthy scalp on the Apache’s back, picked up my rifle and staggered down the slope. At the creek I fell flat on the bank and splashed cold water onto my face and arms, washing away as much blood as I could.

Lila met me at the door of the cabin, awakened by my dreadful howling. She took one look at me and shrank back in horror, stiff with shock, her eyes wide and fearful, face as white as someone dead. I ignored the girl, brushed past her and collapsed onto a bunk.

Then merciful sleep took me and I knew no more.

I woke slowly to a gray dawn.

Shivering, I put on my hat and stepped to the stove. The fire had gone out during the night and I made it up again and soon had a small blaze going.

Lila and her pa were still asleep, so without disturbing them, I picked up the coffeepot and my rifle and stepped outside.

The rain had stopped but surly gray clouds hung low in the sky and the gullies and clefts of the surrounding hills were deep in shadow. The air smelled clean and fresh, like a woman’s newly washed hair, and a whispering wind teased the buffalo grass, the shy wildflowers nodding their approval.

I kneeled by the creek and began to fill the coffeepot, wary, my eyes searching the ridge. Nothing moved, but that in itself brought me little comfort. Apaches didn’t believe in making themselves obvious. There could be a dozen of them up there. Or none. Fickle fate was dealing the hand and I’d have to gamble that the Apaches had moved on and that the ridge and scattered rocks were as empty of life as they seemed.

Such thoughts do little to reassure a man, and after I filled the pot and rose to my feet I reckon I was a slump-shouldered study in uncertainty, feeling a lot older but not much wiser than my eighteen years.

The fight with the Apache had left me with a numb ache all over my body and my shoulder burned where his knife had grazed me. I remembered the fight like a man remembers a bad dream, hazy, terrifying and confused, without rhyme or reason.

I had scalped the warrior and held my bloody trophy aloft and like a madman I’d howled my triumph to the uncaring night.

That I recalled, but the why or wherefore of it escaped me. For a brief spell I’d been more animal than human, possessed by a blind, killing rage that had transformed me into something savage, something primitive and dangerous. I fervently wished that as long as I lived I’d never feel the like again.

All the soft thoughts, the lace-and-lavender thoughts I’d once had of pretty Sally Coleman were fast receding from me, being replaced by something darker, harder, more violent. As I stood there in the newborn morning, I felt my carefree youth slip-slide away, the sappy love songs I’d once sung forever stilled on my lips, circumstances thrusting a bleak maturity on me I’d never sought.

I glanced up at the lowering sky and saw only its uniform grayness, the clouds heavy with rain, without light.

Now I must get back to the cabin, yet there remained one last thing to do.

Quickly I walked to the wagon and searched under the tarp. Within moments I found what I was seeking, a half-full jug of whiskey and two more full ones.

One by one, a vague anger building in me, I smashed the jugs on the iron tire of a wagon wheel, smelling the sharp, smoky tang of the whiskey, and tossed away the broken shards.

Only then did I step into the cabin and put coffee on the stove to boil.

Ned Tryon was the first to wake.

The man rolled out of his bunk and fell on the floor, staying there for several minutes on his hands and knees, his head hanging between his arms. The thump woke Lila and she stirred, looking with shocked eyes at her pa. She made to rise, but I held up my hand, stopping her.

“Let him be,” I said.