By Curtis Craddock
A bitter wind knifed down from the mountains, running ahead of full winter like howl running ahead of a wolf pack. It carried flakes of snow in its teeth, growing thicker and heavier by the moment. Ame’ha’e expected at least a foot of snow before the dark of night overtook the dark of the storm, but the impending blizzard concerned her less than the taciturn, grizzled, scar-faced man riding beside her. His worn boots and ragged gray hat announced him as ex-cavalry officer... on the side that lost. His otherwise eclectic clothing had been gathered over a lifetime of wandering. He had been outlaw, lawman, gambler, trapper, bounty-hunter, miner, and, most recently, stagecoach driver. He called himself Hale, but Ame’ha’e usually called him Husband.
And never was there a better husband.
But yesterday, shortly after they had delivered a stage to the Little Thomson stop, she’d turned the horses over to the stable-hand when Hale had lurched up, not bothering to disguise his limp and said, “Send for a relief driver and settle our accounts. I have business in Mistwillow.”
“What business?” she asked, but he lurched away without answering, and her heart curled up in her chest as if to protect itself from a blow. It was never a good sign when Hale got single minded, or when he forgot to say ‘We’ instead of ‘I’. They were partners, after all, outsiders together for the last seven years, companions of many adventures that would have made her poor mother tear out her long gray hair. When Hale forgot Ame’ha’e was usually when he needed her most.
She’d rushed to collect what they were owed from the paymaster, and got back to the stable just in time to see him chamber a finger-length round in his rifle. The sight made her shudder with reflexive dread.
Hale always carried guns, of course, a pair of colts at his hips and a Winchester carbine in a saddle sleeve, though he rarely found more use for them than the threat their presence implied. Well had he taught her that a weapon is a tool for changing the other fella’s mind.
The rifle was different. It was made to his specifications by a cunning gunsmith they’d met while chasing a bounty in Vermont. She’d fired it once and nearly broke her shoulder. She’d once seen Hale kill a man from so far away that he looked like an ant. Of course she’d been grateful, as the man had been trying to stick a knife in her at the time, but it was still very disturbing to see his head explode in red mist before she heard the rifle bark.
Loading the rifle meant the worst kind of trouble, so she’d checked her pistols--his wedding gift to her--saddled her favorite paint, and followed him into the sunset.
After they’d left the stage line and made their way into the foothills, she asked, “Have you ever been to Mistwillow before?”
“Once,” he said in an accent that, like his gray coat, had started out new and flawless in Virginia then been torn, patched and stained west of the Mississippi.
“When?”
He stared straight ahead, his flinty eyes unblinking. “Before your time.”
“So, why are you coming back now?”
“I made a promise, Pretty Princess.”
She scowled; he only called her Pretty Princess when he was trying to make her mad at him, which he did to distract her mind from some deeper trouble. He’d get her lathered and she’d forget how lonely she was for her people, or how weary she was of white company. When he had her good and red-faced, he’d kiss her fiercely, and she’d try to resist the glitter in his eyes, but she’d always succumb to the heat of his loins and end up with her legs twined around him in the blankets, the grass, the occasional squeaky bed, and, on one memorable occasion, the roof of a mission church.
Yet such a moment clearly was not in the cards today, so who was he trying to distract? “And to whom did you make this promise, darlin’?” she asked in her best imitation of his drawl.
“George Stratton,” he growled.
Ame’ha’e’s eyes narrowed as she sifted her memory. “I’ve heard of him: the sheriff. What are you getting us into?”
“This has nothing to do with you.”
Ame’ha’e stiffened as if he’d slapped her. How could he think that? Their lives were braided together, woven over under and through. What affected one affected the other.
Alone in her hurt, Ame’ha’e did not speak to Hale for the rest of the day, and they spent that night in separate blankets despite the increasing chill.
By sunrise, Ame’ha’e had concluded that her husband never would have said such a thing to her. Therefore, the man who had spoken to her yesterday had not been her husband but a ghost, a bad spirit that had somehow got inside him, and it was up to her to drive it out. To chase the ghost away, however, she must first understand it, and she resolved herself to silence, but not, as yesterday, the timid stillness of the frightened doe, but instead the watchful quiet of the hunter.
The snow had started midmorning, just before the winding rutted road turned them into narrowing valley where abandoned placer mines lined an impatient stream. Broken sluices and water wheels and eroded, overgrown heaps of tailings spoke of the white man’s sickness. Why would anyone go to such enormous efforts to turn a harmless rock into something that, once they touched it, drove them completely mad?
Ame’ha’e watched Hale closely for anything that arrested his attention, but he seemed oblivious to the landscape. Indeed, his face grew ever more closed, until he looked as one who had spent an entire day walking straight into a stiff wind.
The snow intensified and began accumulating, muffling the world in a white blanket. The frontiers of vision shrank steadily, but the road remained obvious. They trudged on.
It shouldn’t be possible for a white man’s town to sneak up on you--they were generally loud and smelly--but Ame’ha’e blinked and there it was. Over the street arched a painted wooden sign, its vibrant colors dulled by the grayness of the storm. Hale had taught her to read and insisted she keep in practice, so she sounded out the words, “Mistwillow Est. 1866.” It was as if these so-called pioneers couldn’t believe in a place until they pounded wooden name posts into its heart. If we took all their signs away, where would they be?
Hale paused before the sign and frowned as if it was not what he was expecting. Ame’ha’e’s pulse quickened; the ghost within him was confused.
She asked, “Has so much changed in seven years?”
“Fifteen,” he corrected automatically.
Fifteen years ago Hale would have been...unimaginably young, a fresh faced youth without any of the scars that tallied his experiences. If she reckoned right, that would have been before the war, before the “Est.” on the Mistwillow sign...
“How could there be a sheriff before there was a town?”
For the first time since they’d left the stage-line, Hale’s steely gaze focused squarely on hers. “Can there be no justice without law? When God poured George Stratton’s mold, he mixed in rawhide, hot lead, and a tin star. He was a sheriff from the day his mother bore him, long before the law and opportunity pinned that badge to his chest.”
Ame’ha’e worked hard to keep her voice calm, to keep his attention focused and his mind occupied. She had to draw the ghost out. “It sounds like you respect this man.”
“I respect rattlesnakes, too, darlin’.”
“And yet you mean to kill him.” He had not said as much, but the rifle had no other purpose.
Hale’s lips and brow furrowed somewhere between a frown and a scowl; the man wrestling the ghost. His gaze wandered the town like a stray dog looking for scraps of memory. “The last time I was here, this was a peaceful valley with a clear stream and one log building: Jake Stratton’s trading post.
“Jake was George’s cousin on his father’s side, and they’d followed each other west from Kentucky, until Jake broke his leg and married himself a little girl from Charlestown whose family was on their way to Oregon. Her name was Petunia. Both events inspired Jake to settle down, and he built himself a trading post. Even back then, he had a mind to build the place up.” He paused take a long sweeping look at the town that sprawled before them like a drunkard sleeping off a jug of moonshine, proof of Jake’s ambition. “Big Chief Stratton.”
“Well, Jake called in his cousin George to help him run the place. George had no head for numbers or money, but he had a soft voice and an iron hand. He kept the peace between traders, trappers, emigrants and Indians.
“I was a regular at the trading post. I fancied myself a mighty trapper, though it was a wonder I didn’t starve for the beaver I caught--I had better luck with deer and elk; at least they’re good eatin’--but I was already the best shot in the territory, and I wasn’t afraid to say so. I could outshoot any challenger, cold sober or dead drunk, which I was more than half the time.”
Ame’ha’e’s eyebrows lifted, for though her husband had no aversion to liquor, never in her experience had he embarrassed himself with it.
“I had my fair share of run-ins with George. The miracle is, I never tried to shoot him, trigger happy as I was.”
Ame’ha’e’s eyebrows continued their climb. At this rate, she was going to need another thumbwidth of forehead. In her experience Hale never tried to shoot anyone. If he decided to shoot them, they were as good as shot.
“But you’re going to shoot him now. Why?”
“Because I gave him my curse.”
Dismay swelled in Ame’ha’e’s breast; a curse was very bad medicine. What had he been thinking?
Hale’s face closed again. His attention slipped from Ame’ha’e’s grasp, and the evil spirit he’d brought on himself dragged his mind back into the swamp of sickness. He nudged his horse in the ribs, and trotted under the town marker. Ame’ha’e pursed her lips and followed him up the main road between rows of clapboard buildings.
She loathed white towns with their reek, squalor and noise. She wasn’t sure if living stacked on top of each other made whites crazy or the other way around, but it wasn’t right. One ought to be able to hear the world breathing at night. Fortunately, the weather had driven most of the inhabitants inside. Only a few furtive figures scuttled from doorway to doorway, like rats.
She caught up to him, stirrup to stirrup. “What curse did you give George Stratton?” And didn’t you know you can’t give a curse without getting one back?
Hale chewed on his words for a moment, like grinding through old jerky. The ghost didn’t want to be dragged out in the open.
Finally he said, “Fifteen years ago, I woke up in the dark, soaking wet because George Stratton had dumped a bucket of water over my head. I was not amused. I said things then to George that I will not repeat in front of a lady, and I reached for my guns, fully intending to draw blood.
“It was at that precise moment I discovered two things. First, my guns were missing, and second, I was shackled to a tree. And there was George, not five feet away, squatting next to a little campfire, boiling a pot of coffee. He didn’t look at me, or say anything, just sat there waiting on the water and the steam while I cussed myself hoarse. I think he must have drunk half a pot before I finally sputtered out. Then he waited a little bit more, before he turned those blood-hound eyes of his to me and said, ‘Now that I have your un-dee-vided attention, let me tell you why you’re here.’”
Ame’ha’e pinched her lips shut, for she had helped her husband use exactly that same ploy on a drunken cattle rustler outside Dodge City.
“He said, ‘Boy, you’re in a heap of trouble; the Arapahoe found out about the yungun you shot.’
“Needless to say, I was confused. I had no idea what he was talking about, and I told him so, but he said, ‘You don’t say. Well, ain’t that funny. Y’see some paleface went and shot the big chief’s son, and that partner of yours, Mr. Kyle, who was much more cooperative than you are, by the by, mentioned your name in regards to that unfortunate event.’
“Of course I protested my innocence, loudly, and I didn’t believe for a minute that Justin Kyle would kill an Indian unprovoked, much less that he would implicate me in the proceeding. He was a gentleman, and he was my friend.”
The story hit Ame’ha’e’s mind like a brick. For seven turns of the seasons she’d held Hale as close as it was possible to hold such a man, and he’d never mentioned Justin Kyle. Of course he didn’t talk much about his life before the war--and having met his family in Virginia, she could understand why--but the man had been his friend, a word he did not use lightly.
Hale said, “George Stratton just sat there like a rock and listened to me, and when I was done, he tipped off his hat and scratched his balding head and said, ‘That’s just too bad, isn’t it? I mean, I’d ask Mr. Kyle if he’s sure he’d pointed up the right man, but he had himself places to go, lit off up into the mountains a little before sunset and took all his gear with him, most of yours, too, come to think of it. Meanwhile, here I am, stuck with a dead Injun and only one possible shooter.
“‘Now we do a lot of business with the Arapaho, and we don’t need any trouble with ‘em. There’s only a few of us after all, and a whole-lotta them. So, I’ll tell you what. I’ll leave you shackled to that tree, and when mornin’ comes around I’m gonna tell the Arapaho where you are, and since Mr. Kyle is your friend, and you’re willing to stand in for him, we’ll call it fair and square.’
“Needless to say, I did not agree with his notion of fair, but nothing I said could persuade him to change his mind. He finished his pot of coffee, bade me good night and then departed. He left me with nothing but my thoughts for company, and bitter thoughts they were. Had Justin shot an Indian? If so, why? And why blame me? Unfortunately, the only person who knew was miles up the mountain, gone from every sight but God’s.”
He paused for a moment, leaving Ame’ha’e tied up with his past self under that tree, until she said, “Then what happened?”
Hale snorted, “And that’s when the pretty girl arrived with the keys. It was Petunia. She told me she believed I was innocent. She told me she’d overheard Justin admitting that he killed the chief’s son. She begged me to flee.
“I will admit I thought about running away, but even if my sodden honor would have allowed it, the mouth of the valley was plugged by the Arapaho camp. Instead, I tracked Justin into the hills, all the while aware that someone else was following me. Indian trackers, I thought, come to extract their revenge.
“I found him in a little cut valley, with my mule and all my supplies, and every excuse in the world. He was happy to see me, and hadn’t I got the message he’d left me telling where he was going to be? That would have saved me a lot of trouble. No, he hadn’t murdered any Indian. Well, there was one brave but he’d attacked Justin first. No harm in one defending one’s self. No indeed.”
Hale shook his head like a horse trying to rid himself of a fly. “I knew he was lying, but I didn’t believe it, not until he showed me why he’d made his way all the way up to that little rock cleft where there were no beaver to trap and no game to hunt.” He pulled a pouch from under his coat and tossed it to her.
Frowning with concentration, she tugged it open and upended it into her cupped palm. Silver. A nugget as big as the first knuckle of her little finger.
“He got it from the dead Indian, who had found it in the first place. Justin got him drunk and made him tell just were it was that one could find sliver nuggets lying in a creak bed. Then Justin killed him.”
“So what did you do?” she asked, breathless.
“I told him I was going to turn him over to the Arapaho. He’d murdered a man and set me up for it, but I was willing to forgive him for it if he was willing to ‘fess up. That’s when he accused me of betraying him. He said I wanted the silver for myself. Then he drew on me. I don’t think he wanted to kill me. I think he was too scared to know what he wanted, that’s why he only hit me in the arm.” He tapped his left sleeve with his right hand.
“But you didn’t miss.”
“I don’t shoot to miss, but I wanted to. That’s why the bullet only grazed his heart. He didn’t die immediately. He just stared at me like he couldn’t believe what I’d done. Then he sat down on a rock and started crying. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, and he just kept repeating it. He died in my arms. And that’s about when George Stratton showed up with a posse of trappers and settlers and Indians, a very political mix, come to think about it.
“George got me to do his dirty work for him. If I killed Justin, he won. If Justin killed me, then he could point out to the Arapaho that Justin was the enemy of whites, too.”
“He is...shrewd.”
“And then he had the nerve to demand that I turn Kyle’s body over to the Arapaho, and I told him I’d be damned before I let some savage cut my friend to pieces. And that’s about when someone pistol-whipped me from behind.”
Ame’ha’e bristled at his admitted prejudice, but that was the ghost talking. It was Hale before the war, before he’d met her, saved her father’s life and won her love. He had changed.
“When I woke up, on a warm blanket this time, George was there. He called me a hero. He said I’d done the right thing, brought a killer to justice, maybe prevented a massacre. I told him where to put his pretty words. Then he gave me a letter from home. He’d said it had arrived the day after I chased Justin into the mountains, but I wonder how long he’d been holding onto it. It was a letter from my family, calling me home to the plantation.”
“And so you left.”
“Yes, but not before giving George Stratton my curse.”
And so Hale had bound himself up. Call it Southern pride or an evil spirit, it had ridden him for fifteen years, sleeping until something had woken it.
“But why come back now?”
Hale’s hand caressed the stock of his rifle. Ame’ha’e did not think he was conscious of the gesture. He said, “George had a stroke. I heard it from a post rider yesterday. He’s dying. This is my last chance to settle up.”
Horrible understanding thudded in Ame’ha’e’s chest like an old woman’s grinding stone, jamming against her ribs and grinding bone to meal. “You’re going to shoot a dying man on his death bed?”
“It makes sense. George would rather die quick and clean than drooling on himself.”
Ame’ha’e could almost see that...“But what about his family?”
Hale grimaced as if gut-punched. “They’ll understand.”
“No they won’t, and you know it. They’ll call you a criminal and a coward, and they’ll be right.”
Hale’s eyes flashed gunfire at night. His hand flew up, but did he not strike. He seemed surprised by his own temper.
She refused to flinch. Fight it, Husband.
“This is for honor,” he said, lowering his hand as if it was a foreign thing. “I don’t expect you to understand.”
“You think I don’t know honor? If you do this thing, I will ride back to my father’s camp, and you will never see me again, or do you think my word is worth less than yours?” Do not make me do this thing. If she went back to her father’s camp, it would only be in shame. She would not quite be thought of as a child, but certainly less than a woman.
Hale’s voice grew strained. “Dammit Ame’ha’e, I will be forsworn.”
It was all Ame’ha’e could do to keep the glint of victory from her eyes. He’d called her by name, a name the younger Hale would not have known. The door had opened, now all she had to do was expel the ghost. “No, you will not. Tell me what exactly did you swear?” Surely the words must be burned into his soul to have been so long a burden.
+++
The trading post, made of whole logs, was older and sturdier than the clap-board boom-town buildings around it. Ame’ha’e’s heartbeat quickened as she rode at Hale’s stirrup through the gate. She’d given Hale medicine to expel his ghost, but would it take?
Three days of snow and heavy traffic had turned the yard to soup, and their horses huffed with effort despite the slow pace. They ambled toward the house, where a crowd of townsfolk in their Sunday best mingled on the broad porch, talking in low voices. As they drew near, a stout, gray-haired matron in a somber dress and a black bonnet appeared at the railing. Her gaze passed over Ame’ha’e but arrested on Hale.
“Oh good lord,” she said. “Jessup Hale.”
“Petunia,” Hale said. “You’re looking well.”
“As well as can be expected under the circumstances,” she said. “You’ve...changed.”
“Grapeshot will do that to a man, as will marriage. Allow me to introduce my wife, Ame’ha’e.”
Ame’ha’e doffed her hat and plastered on a polite smile.
Petunia’s eyes grew round and she looked on Ame’ha’e with some wonder. “Well, I never... but never mind. Welcome, dear.”
Ame’ha’e did not trust herself to speak--why were white people always so astounded that Hale would marry her?--and so gave a polite nod.
“And how is Jake?” Hale asked Petunia.
“He’s fine, or will be anyway. Being mayor agrees with him, keeps him young. We thought you were gone for good.”
“I made a promise. I always keep my promises.”
She slowly shook her gray head, “Stubborn Southern pride. George did what he had to do, and you know it. If he hadn’t, none of us would be here today: you, me, this town.”
Which was, Ame’ha’e realized, yet another reason George had sent Hale away. If Hale had had his wits about him, he might have laid claim to the silver which could have throttled the town at its very first gasp.
“May I see him?” Hale asked. When Petunia pursed her lips, he added, “I shall make no mayhem.”
“And you always keep your word. Your singular virtue. Very well. Come in.”
They dismounted and made their way gently through the crowd into a spacious common room redolent with the smell of fresh bread and packed with people, most of whom were consoling a weeping old woman.
A tall, heavily built man in a black coat with a silver badge detached himself from the crowd.
“Hello, strangers,” the sheriff said, regarding them curiously through eyes stained red with grief.
Hale said, “Stranger, sheriff? I don’t think so. I’ve known you since you were about this tall.” He made a waist high gesture. “My name is Jessup Hale.”
The sheriff’s face went pale...paler. “Good lord.”
Hale presented Ame’ha’e and made her introduction again. “...and this is George Stratton Junior. Following in his father’s footsteps.”
George Junior quickly recovered his wits and his color. His eyes narrowed. “My father always said you’d come back, and when you did you would kill him, but you never came. I think, in the end, he was a little disappointed. He would rather have died of your bullet than a stroke.”
Hale spared Ame’ha’e an ironic glance. “I had a similar thought, but your mother would not have forgiven me. Where is he?”
“He is in Heaven with the Lord, but his body is about to be taken to the crypt.”
Hale nodded. “Can I see him?”
“Hmmm...the viewing is closed, but given your special relationship with my father, I’ll see what I can arrange.”
While the sheriff had a brief discussion with the undertaker, Ame’ha’e and Hale joined a group of mourners doing their best to console a straight-backed old woman. Hale offered his condolences and accepted her recognition in return. Then the undertaker graciously led them to the back porch where a wagon draped with black bunting awaited the body. The undertaker opened the casket and bowed himself out.
The man inside was merely dead to Ame’ha’e’s eyes, with the shrunken appearance all dead things get with nothing of life to fill them. His face was round like his son’s, though spotted with age. Hale stared down at the corpse as if trying to penetrate some elaborate disguise, his dark eyes glistering with old... what? Hate, respect, or regret? Some combination of the three?
As soon as the last onlooker departed, Hale reached for the corpse’s face. He pulled the dead-man’s lips back as far as the undertaker’s stitching would allow and jammed a bullet into his mouth between his teeth.
Then he smoothed the mouth shut again, straightened his spine, and said, “You always were a clever bastard. You tricked me into doing the right thing. You fooled me into realizing I’d been betrayed. You conned me into confronting Justin, and you made Justin realize that he’d done wrong and repent at the last. You made amends with the Arapaho. You kept the peace, and you kept me away for fifteen years so Jake could have his town free and clear. Well, my hat’s off to you George, but you can’t say I didn’t keep my oath. I made a solemn vow before God, whose name you knew I would never take in vain: I have seen your wife and children cry, and I made you eat a bullet.”
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