Angler In Darkness Read online

  It is dusk by the time they are at the edge of the cave. Grandfather carries a burning brand and the powerful iron headed thunderbird lance he cut from a lightning touched tree when he was a boy. The boy has a quiver of broken arrows dipped in oil and wrapped with dry grass, and his uncle’s bow. The empty pistol he has left by the fire.

  Grandfather holds his torch to the boy’s first arrow until it lights, and they go in.

  A few steps down into this cool stone pocket of the world they find Red Lance, the greatest tracker of the Blood Tribe. He lies on his belly, but his head has been twisted all they way around, and his throat is torn wide open as if by a bear. His rifle lies broken. Red Lance’s eyes stare at the boy, and a strange feeling comes over him, like entering a good friend’s lodge and finding it filled with spiders and old food left to rot. Grandfather touches his shoulder to keep him in the moment.

  Further in they hear a sickly coughing, and the boy finds his uncle sitting with his back against the cave wall, trembling with his elbows on his drawn up knees and his face in his hands.

  The boy goes to help him but stops when his uncle raises his head. Between his long black hair his eyes are owlish and shining, and his teeth are like a wolf’s.

  “What’s happening to me?” he murmurs, when Grandfather draws the boy back.

  “They have made you sick as them,” Grandfather answers, not unmoved, for this is his daughter’s husband’s brother and they have laughed and hunted together.

  The boy’s uncle shakes his head and lays back, bearing his breast.

  “Then kill me, while I’m still a person.”

  The boy draws the bow tight and looks down the length of the burning arrow at his uncle. He has never killed a man and this is his uncle, as much a father as he has had since his own died. Tears flow down his cheeks and he is ashamed to break his promise to himself. He is not a man after all.

  “Grandfather...” he begins.

  But something stirs above them.

  Telemachus clings to the rock ceiling of the cave among the sharp, hanging stones, like a spider with a big bowie knife in his teeth. His glass ball eyes glow in Grandfather’s torch light for a moment as he lets go and drops on them.

  The boy falls back and his Grandfather drops to his knee and plants the thunderbird lance like a lodge pole. Telemachus screams as its iron head pops through his back and tears through his coat, and Grandfather swings the lance and flings him at the wall like a dog from a spit. The greasy haired man crashes into the lap of the boy’s uncle, and the sick warrior’s strong arms encircle him in a bear hug.

  The boy rises and aims and lets go of his bow string, launching the fiery arrow into Telemachus’ chest. Without a thought he has killed his first man, where only a moment before he had thought he never could. The greasy haired man flops and screams and the fire travels quickly up his limbs as if he were made of straw, but the boy’s uncle does not let go even as it burns him too. As they burn together his uncle’s death song rises beautiful and resounding above the other’s animal shrieks.

  Grandfather pulls the boy up to stand beside him and his worn hand clamps on the back of his grandson’s neck. The boy feels by this that he has done well, and he disdains his own tears and brushes them aside. He vows never more to sully a brave warrior’s death with womanly crying.

  The tall, bald man called Maldonado steps out of the black at the back of the cave and shoots the boy in the shoulder with his pistol. The pain is like first pain, and the sound is like the curse of a giant in the cave. He falls to the ground.

  His Grandfather drops the torch and rushes in with the thunderbird lance, bleeding under his grey and white hair from Maldonado’s second shot, which skins his temple.

  Maldonado man slaps the lance aside and uses it to pull the old man towards his fangs. Grandfather goes into that embrace, but slyly brings with him his old flint knife, which he jabs under the bald man’s jaw, pinning his mouth shut.

  Tears of blood leak from Maldonado’s strange eyes and he shoves the barrel of his pistol into Grandfather’s belly and fires twice more, the flash like miniature lightning strikes in his gut that sets his deerskin shirt on fire.

  Grandfather wheezes and looks once over his shoulder at the boy before the tall man picks him up over his head and flings him to the ceiling, where a stalagmite pierces his body before he crashes down.

  The boy reaches out for the thunderbird lance, but the next moment Maldonado is leaning over him, blood pouring from under his chin, between his teeth, from his eyes; he exudes blood, and Grandfather’s black stone knife is in his fist.

  The boy twists and swipes at his belly with the thunderbird lance. Its head snaps off. Beneath the bald man’s long coat there is an iron shirt, old and tarnished and battered, but strong enough to still turn a lance.

  “Mal suerte,” says Maldonado, smiling.

  Then the boy’s father’s hatchet is free from his belt, and he parts the bald man’s neck from his shoulders with two swift chops. Maldonado’s head is still smiling as it rolls into the shadows of the cave and his body stands up and reels clumsily as if to go looking for it, then it stumbles and falls to its knees against the stone wall, hands scrabbling crazily as it sinks to the floor. His boots kick in the dirt like those of a dreaming dog, but the dream is a waking dream and it is death.

  The boy kicks the torch onto the body and watches it catch fire, then he goes to his Grandfather.

  “Take me outside,” the old man says. “I don’t wanna die beneath the earth. Let me feel the air.”

  The boy carries his Grandfather out into the blue darkness. Though he cannot feel his wounded arm, he will not drop the old man. Outside he sits down and holds him in his lap, listening to his ragged breath.

  “You’re a boy no longer. Your name is Killer Of The Dead.”

  The boy says nothing, but feels the warm blood pouring out onto his lap.

  For the third time he breaks a vow to himself.

  This story was inspired by real-life Texas Ranger Bigfoot Wallace, or rather his nickname, which brought the idea of Bigfoot Walsh full blown into my head. I’d like to revisit this character someday, I think.

  The German settlement of Fredricksburg (or Fritz Town as some old residents call it) really exists. Towns like Fredricksburg gave rise to a unique dialect akin to Spanglish known as Texas German, wherein English and German words are both liberally employed.

  The Germans of Fredricksburg established a peace treaty with the Penateka Comanche and the Easter Fires legend related in the story is still enacted as a sort of living history celebration to this day.

  Wilhelm Victor Keidel was from Hidelsheim, Germany, and became the first Chief Justice of Gillespie County. During the Civil War he willingly treated soldiers on both side of the conflict, regardless of their allegiance. He died of Typhus in 1870 and is buried in the Kott Family Cemetery in Gillespie County.

  Much of the Penatenka tribe was wiped out by a cholera epidemic in 1849, the band breaking up and joining larger clans. Carne Muerto, or Dead Meat, Santanna’s son, joined the Kwahadi Comanche, famous for producing Quanah Parker, and was an active raider and war chief into the 1860’s.

  There are a slew of interesting legends about Spirit Song/Enchanted Rock which can be visited and ascended to this day, only a few of which are mentioned here.

  Bigfoot Walsh

  It was a cool spring night when the Texas Rangers rode out of the dark into Fredricksburg.

  I remember because the people were out lighting the bonfires on the hilltops, and one of the Rangers, a dirty youth with rusty hair, asked me what they were for.

  “When we held a council with Chief Santanna last year,” I explained, “the Indians camped on the hills all around the town. The children were afraid, so their parents told them it was the Easter bunny boiling wildflowers to make the dyes for their basket eggs. This year the children expected it, so....”

  “It’s Easter?” the young Ranger asked in wonder.

  Hi
s captain rode up on a big American horse. He had grey salted hair and a lean face and legs, but his body was like an old washerwoman’s, with a baggy belly and thick hands. He wore a dark wide brimmed hat with a pheasant feather in the band, and what part of his skeleton was not weighed down by his bulky flesh sagged with revolvers. Beside him was another man, tall with a dark beard and checkered shirt, a flintlock rifle across his saddle.

  “This one speak English?” the captain asked.

  I said I did.

  “I hear tell there’s a Dutch doctor hereabouts. Name of Keidel.”

  “I am Wilhelm Keidel,” I said. “What are you men about, riding in so late?”

  “Captain Shockley,” said the captain. “We come across a ranch of Mormon brothers a couple miles southeast, along the Pedernales outside of Zodiac. The men and horses were cut to pieces. We figure Penateka Comanches done it.”

  “I doubt that. We’ve been at peace with the Penateka for over a year now,” I said.

  “I know all about your treaty. But I know Comanch too. They figure what you Germans paid ‘em off to keep your town safe don’t go for the rest of the white folks in these hills.”

  The bearded man snorted and spat his agreement.

  “What do you want, Captain?” I asked.

  “We’re checkin’ all the outlyin’ ranches and farms. Could be they’re on a murder raid. I figure anybody they come across’ll be in a bad way if they live.”

  “We’re in the middle of a cholera epidemic,” I said, “and I’m the only doctor for miles.”

  “You won’t be gone more’n a day or two.”

  “If it’s a fight you’re worried about,” said the bearded man, “there’ll be twelve armed Rangers between you and them savages.”

  “I’m not afraid,” I said. “I fought at Matamoro.”

  “On whose side?” the bearded man asked dryly.

  “That’s enough, Tackett,” said Captain Shockley. “Go see that the men don’t mingle. I don’t want any of them catchin’ anything.”

  Tackett nodded and rode off toward the rest of the company.

  “We’ve quarantined the sick in the church,” I said. “If you camp around the beer garden you should be fine.”

  “We’ll be pullin’ out early. Are you comin’ with or not?”

  I thought of the Ruizes then, Pedro and Mariela, Mexican potato farmers who lived a few miles west. I had just delivered their baby daughter a week ago. Also, I did not want these Rangers stirring up trouble with our red neighbors after we had worked so hard at negotiating a lasting peace. The cholera outbreak was a little less than an epidemic thanks to the efforts of myself and my two assistants anyway.

  “Alright,” I said.

  I left my assistants with instructions and at first light found the Rangers mounted and ready to go. I packed my sawed-off double barreled shotgun and the bag of shells, and put the bag in the pocket of my topcoat.

  We headed west, and Captain Shockley told me more about the Mormon cabin they’d found.

  “They smashed the door in. Broke the bar right in two. They mutilated the brothers, cut up their horses, butchered ‘em for the meat.” Shockley scratched his patchy chin. “Didn’t even take nothin.’”

  “Their rifles?” I asked.

  “Left ‘em behind.”

  “Would hostile Comanches leave perfectly good rifles behind?”

  Before Shockley could reply, the rusty haired private gave a yell and pointed to a cloud of smoke rising over the next hill.

  The Ruiz farm.

  But for the smoldering fire, the adobe and thatch cabin was much as Shockley had described the Mormons.’ It looked as if someone had kicked the place over.

  As we rode up to it, a monstrously tall figure in a long blue blanket coat and a crooked stovepipe hat emerged from the smoke billowing out of the ruptured structure.

  A dozen pistols and rifles trained on the stranger, and my own shotgun besides. Only Captain Shockley made no move.

  The stranger was possibly one of the ugliest individuals I’d ever seen. I had encountered many of the old trapper types in my travels, and in my service with the First Texas Rifles. As unacquainted as many of those men had been with the razor and soap, I had never encountered so prodigiously hairy and filthy looking a man as this. The whiskers on the sides of his face crept up nearly to his nose and halfway up his cheekbones. They were so abundant on the backs of his overlarge hands as to appear almost lustrous, dirty blonde in hue.

  I had seen a person with this rare condition before in a traveling Mexican circus in Austin, but combined with his immense size (he was perhaps over seven feet and could look Captain Shockley in the eye even seated as he was atop his horse) the overall effect was startling. The stranger looked like some sort of prehistoric throwback, more ape than man. The small, bright blue eyes that peered out of the face did so from the shadow of a thick, nearly simian suborbital ridge. The skin of his chin, which was clean shaven, was slightly mottled as if with some birthmark or disorder of the pigment.

  His patched blanket coat was hand-stitched with yellow thread, and he wore a coil of stiff rope over his shoulder. A brace of big horse pistols was belted around his waist, and he carried a stubby big bore rifle with a skeletal iron stock, the make of which I had never seen before. His shirt and trousers appeared to be homespun, and his feet were covered in great hairy hide boots, so near to the color of his body hair that he almost appeared to be barefoot.

  “Leather it, boys,” said Captain Shockley. “This man’s one of ours.’ ‘Lo, Bigfoot.”

  “Captain Shockley,” said the hairy stranger, in a voice surprisingly as articulate as it was deep.

  He smiled, showing big teeth like white marble tombstones, the canines slightly pronounced.

  Tackett rode up alongside his captain and ogled the new man openly.

  “Little bit out of your jurisdiction, ain’t you?” Shockley said. “Thought you were riding with Hays over in Bexar County.”

  “He gave me leave to go after this one. They attacked Waverly’s stage stop, killed Ben Waverly.”

  “Take anything?”

  “Just the Santee woman he kept around to sweep up.”

  “They killed a couple Mormons out by Zodiac,” said Captain Shockley. “We figure it was Comanches.”

  “I don’t think so,” said Bigfoot. “No arrows anywhere about the place.”

  “Any bodies?” said Tackett.

  “One. A man. Burned up in the fire.”

  I said a quiet prayer for Pedro.

  “Pedro Ruiz. He had a wife and a baby daughter,” I said.

  “No sign of ‘em,” said Bigfoot.

  “They got a long hard ride to Old Mexico with captives,” said Shockley.

  “They’re not headed to Old Mexico,” said Bigfoot.

  “Where else they gonna sell ‘em?” Tackett said.

  “I don’t believe they intend to sell ‘em.”

  “What then?”

  “Come over here and lemme show you something.”

  In a while the large man had led us behind the cabin, and there we found a dead horse, the meat ripped from its rump, most of the guts scooped out, and the tongue pulled out of its head, which had been wrenched completely around on its strong neck.

  “What do you make of that?” Bigfoot asked.

  “They butchered the Mormon horse too,” said Shockley, sliding off his mount. He got down slowly on one knee and squinted at the carcass.

  “And the stage stop team. Well, not so much butchered as ripped apart,” said Bigfoot.

  “Comanches have been known to eat horses,” Tackett said.

  “Yeah but they’ll use a knife,” said Shockley, “not twist their damn heads around. These look like the meat’s been pulled off the bones. What do you say, Doc?”

  I examined the horses. They were in wretched condition. The remaining ligaments hanging from the bones did indeed look torn. But who had the strength to pull muscle from bone?

 
“There are marks of teeth on the bones,” I said, “and the intestines have been gnawed. But why would Indians eat the horses? Why not take food from the cabin?”

  “Did they?” Shockley asked Bigfoot.

  “It’s all in there. Preserves, salt pork, bacon, all burnin’ in the pantry,” said Bigfoot. “I don’t think the fire was on purpose either. Looks like a coal oil lamp got smashed next to the cradle, spilled up the wall. I think the father knocked it over in the fight.”

  “How ‘bout guns?” Shockley asked.

  “I found a squirrel rifle laying,” said Bigfoot.

  “They left the rifles at the Mormon place too,” Shockley mused.

  “Well if we ain’t talkin’ about Comanches, what are we talkin’ about?” Tackett asked.

  Bigfoot rubbed his discolored chin, then looked away and shrugged.

  “I ain’t sayin’ yet.”

  “You ain’t sayin yet,” Tackett repeated mockingly.

  “OK so they got two women and a baby now,” said Shockley. “How about sign?”

  “Still no horse tracks,” said the company tracker, a half-Lipan in a fringed buckskin coat called Dano.

  “There’s got to be something.”

  Bigfoot looked reluctant, but he nodded and led us over to a patch of ground on the northeast side of the cabin.

  Down in a mud near the iron pump there was a single smeared bare footprint, as of a man, but ridiculously exaggerated, in a halo of coarse long hairs. One of the Rangers got down and laid his hand in the heel. You could’ve fit two more in there.

  “I’God!” he exclaimed. “That’s a big Indian.”

  “It’s smudged,” said Tackett. “Just looks stretched ‘cause he slipped in the mud, runnin’ off.”

  “Nah, look at them toes,” said another. “That’s a solid imprint.”

  “Comanches don’t go barefoot either,” Shockley said.

  “Nope, and their feet don’t hardly touch the ground,” Bigfoot said. “Comanch without a horse is like a bird without wings.”

  “OK, so they ain’t Comanch,” Shockley agreed. “We can catch ‘em anyway, if they’re on foot. Bigfoot, can you follow ‘em?” Shockley said.