Come Sundown Read online

  It was up to Sheffield to show his hand first. He turned over four aces. Only two of them had come from my deck. He had pulled the other two from someplace unknown to me. “Four angels,” he said, with more than a hint of arrogance in his voice. “A heavenly quartet. There’s the hand to beat, boys.”

  I folded my hand and frowned, feigning absolute failure. “I can’t do it.”

  Totally ignoring Blue Wiggins, Sheffield reached for the pile of winnings in the middle of the table.

  “Not much, hombre,” said Blue.

  Sheffield froze, his hands around the pot.

  Blue began showing his cards, one at a time, placing each on the table before him ceremoniously. First the two of diamonds, then the three, four, and five. Now he paused theatrically with the last card in his left hand. He raised it high over the table. I wondered what he was doing, until I saw his right hand moving toward his holstered Colt revolver. Sheffield’s attention was fixed on the last card, his hands still around the pot that he already considered his. Blue had learned a thing or two from me about misdirection. He was ready to drop that card and cock his hammer.

  The six of diamonds fell into place on that perfect fan of cards.

  Sheffield looked at it. An enlightened glint of anger flared in his eyes, and he looked at me, instead of Blue Wiggins. He knew now that we had done this together.

  “Like hell,” he growled. He bolted backward and reached for his pocket pistol, but Blue had his Colt cocked and pointed in an instant.

  I wheeled as I drew my revolver, jumping from my chair so quickly that I bumped the table and spilled my black coffee all over the cards. Behind me, I found the big bear of a bartender thumbing back the hammers of a double barrel he had produced from under the bar, and I let a bullet fly into the fancy mirror of the back bar behind him before he could get it aimed in my direction.

  The loud report of my Colt and the shattering of the glass hushed everything in the gambling parlor. The white smoke from my pistol mingled with the gray tobacco smoke. A movement from the center of the room caught my eye, and I saw old John Hatcher appear from nowhere as he walked to the bar and took the bartender’s shotgun away from him. I turned back to Luther Sheffield and saw him glaring at me. Blue’s gun was only inches from his head, and Blue looked like he meant business. Now, I, too, covered the gambler with my Colt.

  “The three of you,” Sheffield growled. “This is robbery.”

  “No, this is poker,” I said. “Blue won the pot. I suggest you allow him to collect.”

  “That hand is impossible.”

  “It’s no more impossible than your four aces.” I saw a hint of uncertainty in Sheffield’s glare, so I leaned closer to him, and spoke loud enough for only him to hear. “Would you like for me to tell everyone here where you’re getting those aces?”

  It was a bluff. I had no idea how that slick gambler was producing those heavenly cards. But I am such a marvelous liar that I convinced Sheffield right then and there that I was on to him. It took him a few seconds, but he began to choke down his pride and anger, and regain his composure. He would need to get out of this with some dignity if he intended to keep playing cards here in his own gambling parlor. And, most important, he knew that he would never get out of this town alive if I divulged his secret methods of cheating. He had beaten too many men in the room at cards.

  Slowly, Luther Sheffield’s hand moved away from the pocket that held the pistol. “Gentlemen,” he said, “forgive my haste. Those four aces must have charmed me right out of my senses. It’s obvious that Mr. Wiggins has won the hand. And you, Messieurs Greenwood and Hatcher, may certainly feel free to escort him from this parlor as he collects his winnings and leaves. This game is now closed.”

  The speech made an impression on me. I had introduced myself to the gambler, but not John Hatcher or Blue. He had obviously asked about us since the brawl the night before, and knew who we were. He was warning me to get myself and my friends out of town, for he knew who we were, and how to find us.

  Blue smiled as he returned his weapon to its holster. He took the coat from the back of his chair, spread it on the table and began heaping his winnings into it. He left fifty dollars in coin on the table. Having filled his coat, he gathered its edges and made it into a big sack which he lifted from the battlefield of his triumph.

  “You left some,” Sheffield remarked.

  “For your trouble,” Blue said. “And for the damages.”

  Sheffield tipped his hat with such poise that I had to admire him. It seemed he would survive this little setback to gamble again in Santa Fe. And he would win. And win. And keep winning until someone stuck a knife in him or shot him dead. At least, that’s what I thought at the time. In reality, I could never have predicted what the future held in store for Luther Sheffield and me. Our lives would become entangled in the most peculiar ways.

  Hatcher and I covered Blue’s exit from the so-called parlor, and we stepped out into the cold New Mexico night. I started for my room at La Fonda, but Hatcher caught me by the sleeve.

  “This way,” he said. “Blue already moved your things to another room. We figured that gambler might have had you followed last night.”

  “Good thinking,” I said.

  Blue shook his makeshift sack of coins to make them jingle. He chuckled as we strode down the street.

  “What are you gonna do with all that jack this time?” Hatcher said.

  “I’m of a mind to make a rancher of myself. Get me some land like Maxwell and Kit done.”

  “Maybe you ought to take that little gal Rosa with you,” Hatcher suggested. “Keep you company.”

  Blue shook his head. “No, John, she’ll never make a rancher.”

  “Now, how do you know that?”

  “She can’t keep her calves together.”

  I groaned and laughed all at the same time, and we plowed ahead through the crisp mountain night.

  Six

  Blue Wiggins and John Hatcher decided to take some of Blue’s recovered gambling money, buy a herd of sheep, and make another drive to California. The rest of the money they buried at the hiding place where I always stashed my whiskey outside of Santa Fe. There were no banks in New Mexico back then, and there must have been millions of dollars stashed and buried here and there all over the territory. Some of it lies buried still, I’m sure.

  “If we don’t make it back from California,” Blue said, “that gold is yours.”

  “I aim to come back,” John Hatcher stated, as if offended.

  They would spend the winter putting their herd together, and head west with the spring thaw. This, Blue hoped, would increase his holdings to the point that he could buy a sizable spread and start a cattle ranch. John Hatcher had already bought some land, but was hoping to add to his holdings. They left Santa Fe the next day, anxious to get about their venture.

  I stayed, for I had other obligations. I had given Burnt Belly my word that I would return in two moons with trade goods and whiskey. I had lost only a couple of days helping Blue outcheat the cheater Luther Sheffield, so I still had plenty of time to collect my goods and get on with my own enterprises.

  First, however, I had some letters of inquiry to write on behalf of Toribio Treviño, the Mexican boy I had ransomed from the Comanches. I began by writing the governor of Coahuila, since that was where Toribio had been captured, telling the governor the circumstances of Toribio’s ordeal, as near as I knew them. Then I wrote to the postal authorities near Monterrey, asking them to deliver copies of the letter I had written to the governor to anyone they knew by the name of Treviño. I provided as many copies of the letter to the governor as I could make in one day, spending hours in the room John Hatcher had rented.

  Finally, I ventured out to buy a meal. I remember paying for the meal, and leaving the cafe. There, my recollection ends. I woke up alone in a strange room—a small adobe room with no furniture, a washbasin on the floor. I was on a typical New Mexican mattress, covered with a worn Navaho
blanket. I had been apprehensive of something like this happening, for the new moon was upon me, and the new moon always draws me irretrievably into sleep like a whirlpool drowns a bug.

  This is my other curse. (The first being a genius.) I don’t sleep like a normal man. During the full moon, I don’t sleep at all for several days. During the quarter phases, I sleep a few hours every night, but I am tormented by nightmares and terrors that only insane men know. Then, as the new moon approaches, I am likely to fall asleep in the middle of the day. I may fall asleep walking, and continue walking, with my eyes open, yet asleep, for hours or miles. I may then wake up, exhausted instead of rested, and wonder where in the world I have wandered. The dogbane and moccasin flower Burnt Belly had taught me to use helped to make my sleep habits a little more normal, but sometimes I ran out, or got too busy to use them. And even when I used them as the old medicine man taught me, the power of the moon was still sometimes greater.

  Once, while camping alone out on the plains as the new moon approached, I killed a jackrabbit to eat, and proceeded to roast it on a stick I held in my hand over a buffalo-chip fire. While monotonously turning the spit over the flames, my world went black, as if someone had blown out the flame to my brain. I woke up almost frozen to death, covered with snow, still turning that stick in my hands, though the jackrabbit had burned to a char and the fire had gone out. I had just enough presence of mind to roll myself in a buffalo robe before I plunged back into lost sleep.

  So it was that I woke in Santa Fe in a strange room, thankful to be alive, but humiliated to have come to such a helpless state once again. When I wake from one of these sleeping binges, I can’t just bound out of bed. First, my eyes open, but the rest of my body remains immovable, as if in the grip of rigor mortis. So I blinked my eyes for a few minutes, then began to feel some movement in my face. I was just starting to lift my head, when I heard a door open. A sudden sound can serve to charge my limbs and body with energy when waking from such a slumber, and the opening door did just that. I shot upright on the mattress and found the lovely Rosa entering the room.

  “Gracias a Dios,” she said. “I thought you were going to die here.”

  “Where am I?”

  “In my room. Don’t worry. No one knows you are here.”

  I shook my head to clear my thoughts. “How long? How long have I been here?”

  “Almost two days. You just walked in here. Lucky for you I was alone. You said some things, but you didn’t make sense. You spoke Spanish, and English, and some other tongue I never heard at all.”

  “Two days?” I said. “What about … You know, what about your customers?”

  “You have cost me a lot of money, but what could I do? You wouldn’t wake up.”

  I sighed. It was embarrassing. “I’ll make it up to you. I have money.”

  “I do not take charity,” she said. “I always earn what I am paid.” The next thing I knew Rosa was crawling into her bed with me. It took some wrestling to get out of there with my virtue intact, but I considered myself a married man, and besides, I had many things to attend to after sleeping so long.

  So, as I collected my wits and my belongings, Rosa sat on the mattress and pouted. “Am I not good enough to share a bed with you?”

  “I’m married.”

  “Most of my customers are married.”

  “Well, I guess I’m different.”

  She sniffed. “You are different, you bet. You are the differ-entest son of a bitch I ever met.”

  I paid Rosa what I would pay an innkeeper for two nights’ lodging and got the hell out of there.

  AFTER POSTING MY letters and collecting my whiskey hidden in the ponderosa pines above the city, I got out of Santa Fe and rode north into a high-country blizzard. I stopped once between Santa Fe and Taos to build a big fire so that I could warm myself. There was little risk of my fire attracting hostile Indians or outlaws. Indians always had sense enough to hole up during bad weather, and most outlaws I ever knew were fair-weather criminals. So I used the fire to warm myself and dry my snow-dampened clothes as I ate the last of my pemmican. Then I pressed on through the dark toward Taos. I knew the trails well, having ridden them all as General Kearney’s top courier during the Mexican War.

  At dawn on the third day of travel, I came to a place called Martin’s Mill, owned by old Roy Martin. At his mill, Roy Martin spent most of his time making a corn liquor known as Taos Lightning. I bought six kegs of the stuff, packed it on my mules, and continued on toward William Bent’s trading post at the Big Timbers on the Arkansas River.

  It would have made sense to stay warm in Taos that night, but I rode into the mountains to spend a cold night in camp. Sometimes even a genius, by foolishness or design, must do that which makes no sense. I had once fallen in love with a Taos girl who ended up marrying somebody else. She had had no choice in the matter. Marriages were arranged among the old Mexican families in New Mexico, and men who interfered had been known to die of mysterious causes—like bullet wounds. Anyway, it was better for everyone if I stayed away from Taos. My broken heart had mended, and there was no sense in reopening the wound. I rode into the mountains.

  It was cold, but the sky was spectacular. I rolled myself in a buffalo robe and watched the constellations slowly migrate westward, only the fog of my own breath standing between me and the light of stars distant beyond the comprehension of even a genius. I managed to sleep a few hours.

  I rose before the first hint of dawn, and took to the trail by the time I had light enough to find my way. Major had to break through snow up to his chest crossing the divide, but he plowed on with never a touch from my spurs, blasting the air ahead of us with the warm vapor from his nostrils.

  Once we crossed the divide of the Sangre de Cristos, conditions improved on the east slope. The snow was not as deep, and the late morning sun beamed down at an angle that warmed my thighs through my leather chaps. I rode on downhill until dusk and camped on a southern slope where the snow had melted and the ground had dried. I had never traveled this particular way, but I knew exactly where I was, and I knew how to get where I was going. Another two days in the saddle would fetch William Bent’s new trading post.

  I made a small fire, Indian style, and roasted some elk meat Roy Martin had given me. I put the fire out once I had eaten, for I didn’t care to attract attention from roving hostiles, whether they be Indian, Mexican, or white. I entertained myself by practicing sleight-of-hand tricks in the dark until I got too cold. Then I rolled myself in my buffalo robe and recited Lord Tennyson until I fell asleep. I had some frightful nightmares, for I had run out of the dogbane Burnt Belly had traded to me. I was looking forward to getting back to the camps on the Canadian so I could replenish my supply.

  My paint horse, Major, and my two mules were tired when I crossed the Arkansas River, but they waded into the icy waters and swam the narrow channel easily. After building a fire to dry my clothes and warm my shivering bones, I rode past the remains of Bent’s Old Fort, and remembered the days I had spent there when the place had been a working trading post—the largest and grandest the West ever knew. It had stood as a great adobe castle on the plains for over fifteen years, a rendezvous for the most intrepid explorers and voyagers the frontier had ever produced, a battlement with walls so imposing that it had never been seriously threatened by any war party or army. William Bent, its builder and master, had blown it to bits to keep the government from condemning it, as he and I had destroyed Fort Adobe on the Canadian.

  Downstream I rode, looking for the first of the huge cottonwoods that gave name to the place called Big Timbers—for decades a landmark on the north bank of the Arkansas. I knew from talk handed down the trail that William was building a new stone trading post at this location. About an hour before dusk I began to ride among the old cottonwoods—huge, gnarled sentinels with bark like old scabs and limbs lying around them as if the monster trees had shaken them off—huge limbs that were themselves the size of respectable trees.
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  Though his head hung low in fatigue, Major quickened his trot, for he knew the ancient campground and rendezvous called Big Timbers meant rest, food, and warmth for him. Major and I had ridden and camped here in the past with Comanches and Cheyennes. The sun had just disappeared, pulling with it the last of the light from the sky, when I saw the dark outline of William’s new trading post. I actually heard the workers chipping stone and hammering timbers together before I saw the place. The placement of the fort was brilliant. Its back stood against a bluff, and it could be approached from only one direction, up the well-beaten trace I now rode, made wide to allow for the passage of William’s huge freight wagons that came from Kansas each summer.

  As I approached two large cottonwoods flanking the wagon trace, I saw two men in sombreros step into view from behind them. “Alto!” one ordered. Major tossed his head in the air when he saw them, for he was not yet too tired to alert me of danger.

  I reined him in, and raised a hand in a friendly manner.

  “Quién es?”

  “Me llamo Honoré Greenwood. Soy un compañero de Señor Bent.”

  “Greenwood,” one of the guards repeated. He turned to the other. “Está bien. Es el Comanchero.”

  I smiled. The guard knew who I was. “Comanchero” was a title in which I took much pride, for only few men could ride into Comancheria and ride back alive. Fewer still could turn a profit from such an enterprise. Most of them were Mexicans from the centuries-old Spanish outposts of Santa Fe, Taos, and Albuquerque. Among white men, Comancheros were few. William Bent. Uncle Dick Wootton. Ceran St. Vrain. John Fisher. Kit Carson. John Hatcher. And me, Honoré Greenwood.

  One of the guards whistled a message up to the trading post through his teeth, and they let me pass. Major and the two mules trudged on up the snow-mudded trace, the stone building ahead looming ever larger. It was not one-quarter the size of William’s old adobe palace, but it impressed me nonetheless—such an edifice this far beyond the frontier. The Mexican stonemasons and carpenters were finishing for the day, for their light had all but completely faded.