Gabriel's Story (30 page)

More and more it seemed that creatures without language were speaking to him. For one full day a magpie stalked him. The black-and-white bird leapt from tree to tree, watching the boy with cagy sidelong glances, calling out in a sharp, rising call that sounded like a question. Another time he found himself dining with a family of skunks. The creatures plodded into camp like formally dressed dinner guests. They helped themselves to several slices of bacon, most of the lard, and a chunk of bread. Gabriel knew enough of these creatures to keep his distance. He thought a few well-placed rifle blasts might discourage them, but he had neither the heart for killing nor the desire to attract attention to himself. He spent the night watching the banquet from a nearby hollow.

And there were more frightening dialogues as well. Once the night was interrupted by eerie, tortured screams that seemed to echo across the mountains, gaining breadth and scale with each reverberation. The boy held the rifle tightly, staring into the dark. He could hear a beast moving through the trees, circling his camp in a close circuit that put terror into the horse. It seemed that the cries were those of a troubled soul, a creature part human, part animal, and part demon. He believed it was coming for him and he awaited it. But it never did come, just circled and cried, circled and cried.

The next morning Gabriel found a mountain lion's tracks less than fifty yards from where he'd slept. The cat had indeed paced round and round the camp. The large pawprints layered over each other. There were no claw marks, as the boy expected, just soft, padded orbs so numerous that he might have been surrounded by a pack of the cats. Gabriel knew that lions traveled alone. Hiram had told him that long ago. He didn't doubt the man for a moment, didn't question how he came to the knowledge, but still he saddled up with haste and rode the anxious horse into the dawn.

Mid-morning of his sixteenth day alone, Gabriel emerged from the treeline onto a long sloping scree. He gazed up at the pure skeleton of the earth, the ivory itself in naked and dizzying height. The granite peaks cut jagged lines against the sky. Enormous slabs of rock lay about the incline like the wreckage of demolished buildings. Brilliant white snowfields filled in the shaded northern slopes, and the sky loomed above it all, as infinite in ether as the mountains were in stone. Gabriel stood in awe for several minutes, then urged the mare forward.

That night he camped above the treeline, and it turned bitterly cold. A wind blew up from the valley and spread a dusting of ice crystals across his camp. He huddled beneath his blanket, shivering and fireless, wondering how long this could continue. Do these mountains end, or do they stairstep all the way to God's throne? That night he thought anything was possible, so near was he to the roof of the sky and so great was the friction of the clouds across the world's backbone.

Two days later, he saw a mining camp from a distance of perhaps five miles. He stopped in a windswept pass and looked down upon the wound. For some time he watched the activity of the antlike things that moved around the mouth of the mine. They seemed little more than curiosities to him, tiny creatures to be neither loved nor despised, just watched from a distance. Later, when he would try to describe his time in the mountains, the images would crowd in one on another, each clamoring for attention, each adding to the collage of memory that seemed thick enough to represent a complete lifetime of its own. If this were so, it was a life of earth and sky, rock and wind. It was spent in the company of mountain goats and bighorn sheep, picas and marmots and beavers. It was a life lived leanly, beneath pine trees and along riversides, growing thin in the saddle and yet stronger for it, a bone-deep strength that would never leave him. And it was a life that marked its maturity when he looked down upon that mine. From that day on, his journey changed. He'd crossed the Continental Divide without knowing it, and he'd begun the descent that would eventually lead him back onto the Great Plains, back into the world of men. He clucked to the dun and proceeded, looping off to the north and so avoiding the mine by a good few miles.

GABRIEL KEPT TO HIMSELF as he passed the settlements along the Arkansas River. He gave the homes a wide berth and spent the nights in secluded spots away from the homesteads. Those who did see him pass looked at him with a strange mixture of curiosity and respect. There was something old and trailworn about him, despite his young face. He was comfortable with his mount's movements beneath him, and it showed in the way he sat the horse. It seemed to a stranger's eyes that he was at ease with his place in the world. People's gazes noted the quality of the horse, the value of the saddle, and always the holstered rifle and the thirty-two he'd begun to wear on his hip. If they questioned a young black boy's right to these things, they did not do so within Gabriel's hearing.

When his supplies dwindled, Gabriel ventured into a town that sat cradled in a bend of the river. He could discern no name for the place, but it was easy enough to find the general store, as the building bore the traits of all such establishments. He bought a few supplies with the coin he'd earned in that long-ago time with Marshall: a small sack of potatoes, some more bacon and cornmeal and matches. He didn't see the need for a proper frying pan, but as the coin was worth more than the food, the boy also purchased a hat. It was neither newly made nor of a current style. It was of an older make, more like an old Mexican poblano. The shopkeeper kept it on display above the counter, and he happily traded it to the boy, although he still claimed he couldn't make change for the coin. A small crowd of scrawny youths gathered around and watched, as if this boy's shopping was the best amusement to be had that day. A few yards of calico balanced the sums, and Gabriel walked from the store with the fabric under his arm like a man shopping for his sweetheart. The boys walked out behind him, silently watched him mount the dun, and watched him ride away, the hush broken only by a mumbled phrase that Gabriel didn't catch.

He had his first and only real trouble that evening. He camped on the southern bank of the Arkansas, in a grove of low-slung trees. The evening had been alive with song: crickets in the tall grass nearby, swallows from somewhere along the far bank. He lay on his back with his head propped against the saddle, listening to the night music and recalling that Native Americans could communicate by birdcalls. As he drifted off to sleep, the avian music had so captured his mind that his dreams began as a string of melodies and only slowly took visible shape.

When he opened his eyes sometime later, the first thing he noticed was the absence of song. He listened to the silence and then realized why he'd woken. The dun snorted a protest and stamped its foot once more. Gabriel turned on his side and took in the moonlit scene in one glance. Three boys stood in a loose line along the riverbank. A fourth had ventured near enough to throw a hackamore over the horse.

He knew they had seen him move, but he didn't let that stop him. Before he'd fully thought out the action, Gabriel unholstered the thirty-two and trained it on the boy holding the hackamore. He didn't speak. He couldn't imagine the appropriate words. Neither could he imagine what would follow, what he would do with the gun if events didn't somehow turn the right way. But despite his inner hesitation, his arm held the pistol steadily, pointed dead on the other boy's chest. Time passed very slowly, but nobody moved.

The boy beside the horse eventually looked to the others for support. “His hand's shaking. Ain't it, y'all?” His voice quavered when he spoke, nearly cracking with each word, and Gabriel couldn't help noticing how childlike it sounded. His nose was a hooked bill outlined in gray. His eyes were tiny black specks beside it. The others kept their distance, and the boy eventually had to turn back to Gabriel. “You wouldn't kill a man for a horse, would ya?” He spoke with a clear intention of sounding calm and confident, but his voice betrayed him again.

Gabriel knew that his hand was not shaking, but he felt an almost irresistible urge to clasp his other hand over it. That hand even went so far as to rise from his side. He fought it back, redirected it to his chin, where it stroked the thin traces of hair like an intellectual giving the question a full breadth and depth of thought. It was a hard stance to hold, and Gabriel was aware that it verged on the ridiculous. He cocked the gun, a noise that was absurdly loud in the night. His hand still held his chin. But once the gun was cocked, feeling that he needed to do something more, he let his hand fall from his chin and float away from his side. It was a gesture without reason, stranger than the one that preceded it, but somehow it was just the thing to break the other boy's resolve.

The boy cleared his throat. “I wasn't . . . I mean, I ain't meant nothing . . . It was Whittle said we should do it.” He pointed a thin finger toward the others. “I never did . . .” The boy lost his flow of words, paused, then was struck dumb by the realization that he was holding the hackamore. He dropped the rope. All three of the others had been inching back throughout the conversation. One of them called to the boy with the horse, but still he didn't move.

Gabriel held his stance. His arm was just as steady as when he'd begun, his eyes just as attentively focused on the boy, but it still took all his effort just to state one word with authority.

“Go.”

That was all the boy needed. He whispered something under his breath and gestured to the others, who were already moving away before him. There was the motion of them dispersing in the moonlight, the sound of their feet thudding on the earth, an occasional twig breaking, and then they were gone into the night from which they'd come. Only when the distance between them was great enough did the boys find voice, naming Gabriel's race and threatening him with words that had escaped them only a moment before.

Gabriel saddled the horse by the same gray light and rode out twenty minutes later, aware that he had just avoided considerable danger, and even more aware that he'd just drawn a gun on another person for the first time.

WHEN HE ENTERED WESTERN KANSAS, Gabriel found a troubled land. The dry heat of summer had left the plains a tinderbox. Clouds gathered, thunder rumbled, and rain loomed imminent, but time and again the heavens withheld their moisture and threw down bolts of lightning instead. By the time of Gabriel's passage, in the second week of September, wide swaths of prairie lay charred and brittle.

He traveled for three days through such territory. The first day the turf crackled beneath him. Gabriel rode carefully, as if the horse's hooves were actually his own and he could feel the heat of the ground through them. On the second day, he often dismounted and touched the earth with his hand to test its warmth. In some places the fires were so recent that the heat of them still rippled the air. Eerie phantoms of smoke crept up from the ground and flew away before the wind. He saw more than one wheat field ruined, more than one home destroyed, and many white faces rendered far blacker than his by soot. The third day was one long and weary progress through a land of damned souls. The towns had swollen with people in search of aid or rest or friendship. The roads to and from them were strung their full length with a sad procession of the beleaguered. He watched one man hurl bits of wood and tools into the ravished hull of his home, fueling the fire within it. And he passed within fifty yards of a soot-covered family dressed in their Sunday best, standing with heads bowed before a miniature grave.

In some long-ago time, it seemed, Gabriel had called such curses on all who were fool enough to tempt the land. But now he rode back among them with mumbled prayers on his lips, both for those around him and for his own wayward soul. Despite their hardships, the people were still proud. Three times thirsty men refused his offer of water; once a mother turned her back on him as he nodded his condolences. He managed to make only one present. As he passed a young girl walking barefoot behind her mother, he sank low in the saddle and handed her the folded square of calico. He silenced the girl's thanks with a finger to his lips and rode on before his gift might be refused. Hiram used to say something about pride coming before a fall, but Gabriel hoped that no further fall need follow for these people.

THE SCOT WAS SURE THAT HE RECOGNIZED THE TRACKS of the
dun horse. He said as much to the Mexican, and they followed,
each with the hope that this trail would lead him to a final act of
vengeance. But with each passing day the Scot grew less sure. Yes,
it was the dun, but why did its rider choose such a circuitous
course? Why did he not cover his tracks, and why leave such clear
markers at his campsites? Why did he cross rivers so directly, never
using the opportunity for deception? It was a lone rider, yes, a certain horse, yes, but this was all they could be sure of. That, and
that the rider rode with an unrelenting pace that they gained on
only slowly.

They lost the trail many times as it changed terrain. Through
the scrubland it was easy enough, and in the mesa land of juniper
and pine they rode silently, sharing each other's company with the
trail clear before them. It wasn't until the mountains proper that
they felt the trail become truly difficult. They lost it on scree and
tallus slopes, found it in the slow progress of horse and man across
a glacier, then lost it again in an area of chaotic felsenmeers, a
jagged plain of jumbled rock thrust upward like geometric offspring growing from their mother rock. They continued to move
east, but spent a week with no clear sign to follow.

Camped one evening in the foothills of the Front range, the Scot
and the Mexican decided to descend onto the flatlands to resupply
themselves and determine their course, which way it would take
them, and if it would take them together. The Scot did not fancy
the notion of what the future held. He had grown close to this man
in their days together. He had talked to him the way men should,
but rarely do, talk to one another. They told the tales that were
their lives and so conveyed the meanings they had found or that
had escaped them, the fears they had conquered and those left
unvanquished. The Scot came to know what this man's family
had meant to him. He heard the father's words through the son's
mouth and learned of a mother's kindness, and he closed his eyes
at the thought of the dreams two girls had conjured for themselves
but could now never have.