Paradise Sky

I was surprised Hubert had showed up, of course, but had suspected for a while that he and Ruggert and that big colored fellow I had seen was after me, but so much time had passed I thought they might have quit. Still, I figured they had come upon me by accident and might not even know they had found me. Maybe Ruggert and the colored man was lying dead and chopped up on the other side of the hill with a horse dick in their mouths. By the time it came to the Apache shoving one between your teeth, a stick of licorice, a cigar, or a horse dick was all pretty much the same to you.

I was trying to consider if it was possible for us to make a quick mount and ride off, but I concluded that would be a bad idea. It would put us in a busy way as they rushed down upon us, for surely they would. It seemed wiser to hold our ground, as we had trees for protection from the sun and we had plenty of water, something they might not have. The water might have led them to us in the first place.

It was then that Hubert reached up, partly pulled and partly spat that horse dick out of his mouth, and started moaning. He rolled off of what was propping him up, which turned out to be a hatchet, the blade of it stuck in his back. He went to crawling into some high grass and out of sight, but a couple of Apache came up on him then. They dragged him back and disappeared behind the grass, and we could hear screams.

It went on and on, and I began to feel sorry for Hubert. I tried to picture Pa burned up and lying next to the hog, but it wasn’t enough. It was just awful hearing him caterwauling.

Prickly Pear called out, “I can’t stand it no more. I’m go

“No, you’re not,” I said. “I’ll do it.”

“Why you?” said the Former House Nigger, bellying over close to me.

“Cause I’m in charge.”

“I’m going with you,” he said.

“Naw, you ain’t,” I said. “I get rubbed out, you’re the one next in charge. Lieutenant said so. You don’t want it to get down to Prickly Pear, do you?”

“Oh, hell, no,” the Former House Nigger said.

That crying out hadn’t ceased. It carried on and on. The sound of it was starting to make me sick to my stomach. It was like they was peeling his skin off an inch at a time, and for all I knew they was.

I turned to the Former House Nigger.

“When I get out there a ways, you and the others keep them busy as a hive of bees, but don’t send a blue-whistler up my ass. I’m going to see I can get to him, pull him out of there, or if I have to, finish him off.”

“Hell, we can’t even see them,” the Former House Nigger said.

“Then you got to shoot where you think they are, make them keep their heads down, or clip the top off one if it pokes up.”

I laid the Winchester on the ground next to my Spencer, deciding it was too burdensome to crawl about with. I had the two pistols from Mr. Loving, which I was highly familiar with, so I laid the service pistol on the ground with the rifles. Pulling my big knife, I put it between my teeth.

I waited a moment to listen and hope Hubert had quit crying out, but he hadn’t. He was still at it, louder than before. In that moment I couldn’t think of him as no one other than a poor man in a horrible situation.

I slithered alongside the creek as the men put up a line of fire, and then slipped into the creek bed. I was able to stoop and stay hid because the bank was high on the Apache side. I hunched down and ran along that way until I made it to where there was a wide swath of grass and the creek bank broke open in a sandy V. The wind was moving the grass. I stuck my face in it and parted it just enough for a line of sight, hoping I wouldn’t be seen and that the movement would be mistaken for the breeze at work.

There wasn’t anything to see but more grass. I bellied up in it like a snake and began to slide along, going quiet as the guest of honor at a funeral. Finally I come upon a drop-off, a gulley, actually, and by moving the grass slightly with my fingers, I could look down the length of it and see two Apache down there with the body of Hubert. He was good and dead, his throat slit, and them two Apache was trading out with the moans and cries and such, doing all they could not to laugh about it. The sneaky bastards; if that didn’t beat all. I was mighty impressed.

It was then one of them seen me.

They jumped up and come ru

I didn’t have no other course than to pull the knife from my teeth and jump down in that gulley with them. I didn’t want to shoot a pistol and make noise and bring the whole batch of them down on me. The one carrying the knife lunged at me with it, and though I was able to avoid his strike, his body hit me like a ca

The other was almost on me with that hatchet. I caught sight of him out of the corner of my eye as I struggled with the other, but that buck had made a mistake by raising his head above the gulley line. One of the troopers got off a shot that knocked his noggin apart. His hatchet went flying, and he went tumbling.

Now it was just me and the one with the knife. I was trying to cut him, and he was trying to cut me. We was using our free hands to hold each other’s knife hand at the wrist. I managed to squeeze his wrist enough he let go of his knife, but he jerked his hand loose and went for the gun in his sash, got it pulled, fired at me point-blank. I was moving, though, so the shot only singed my hair and made my ears ring like a church bell.

I got hold of his gun hand, partly covering the gun with my fingers, slipping one of them down on the hammer so he couldn’t pull the trigger. This didn’t work long. He yanked his hand free and stuck the gun in my face and squeezed the trigger again.

The pistol misfired. He was so startled by its failure he let go of my wrist with the knife in it, and that’s what cooked his goose. I stabbed him in the chest, kicked him off of me, leaped on top of him before he could shoot again, and went to stabbing wildly. Finally I put the edge of the knife to his throat and pulled it across. He gave me a look of disappointment, like maybe he’d just discovered I had my finger up his ass. He gurgled blood out of his mouth and nose, kicked once like he was stepping down on a bug, and went still.

Wasn’t nothing to be done for Hubert, so I put the knife away, pulled the Colt, and started crawling back to the creek the way I had come. The Apache saw me this time, as I had raised quite a ruckus in the gulley. Now I was making haste where before I had been trying to sneak. A bullet singed the butt of my trousers, but other than that I got back to the creek bed, and finally back to the soldiers, without any real wound.

When I was there, I said, “Who made that shot on the Apache?”

“That would be me,” said the Former House Nigger.

“Listen here,” I said. “I don’t want you calling yourself the Former House Nigger anymore. I don’t want no one calling you that no more. You’re a buffalo soldier, and a good one. I tell you another thing while I’m telling how the hoss ate the apple: ain’t none of us need to be called riding niggers, so we damn sure as hell don’t need to be calling one another that. I say we don’t. I won’t, and I’ll fight the man that can’t resist it. Rest of you men hear that?”

They all heard me well enough, including Bill, up the hill between them trees.

“You getting paid for that preaching, nigger?” said Prickly Pear, and everyone laughed.

“This here is Cullen,” I said. “He ain’t nothing but Cullen, or Private Cullen, or whatever his last name is. That’s what we call him. You hear that, Cullen? You’re a soldier, a top soldier, at that. You saved my life.”

“It was a good shot,” Cullen said, so only I could hear it.