The Ballad of Black Hawk and Billy the Kid, Page 4

  But beyond the stories, you hear things and see things you cannot explain. You wake in the morning to find odd tracks around your camp left by a beast you cannot identify, or you discover a horse or a steer is missing, but with no track marks on the ground. Sometimes you see things in the air, birds that are bigger than any flying creature should be. There are lakes you avoid because something hungry lives in its depths, caves you don’t want to camp in because local legend tells that they’re inhabited by red-haired giants. And often, far too often, at night, you’ll hear shouts, snarls and roars from animals you cannot identify and do not want to meet. This is a vast country. Huge swaths of the land are blank and uncharted. Who knows what mysteries and terrors it holds? Why, didn’t I set out on this journey because of a map etched onto a sheet of silver?

  “You’re taking it well,” he said eventually. “You didn’t pull away, or reach for your gun. Does that mean you believe me?”

  “Let’s say I’m prepared to listen,” I said carefully. “So the hook-handed man sent you here to find me?”

  “He sent me here to make you an offer.”

  “To make me immortal?”

  “No, Marethyu does not do that. But he will direct you to a creature who can grant you immortality. A long time ago, I did some work for a creature worshipped by the Aztec. Quetzalcoatl. He gifted me with life eternal. If you survive the next few days, I might introduce you to him. I think you would loathe one another on sight.”

  “Why didn’t Marethyu come himself?”

  I saw Black Hawk’s hand move in the night, briefly blanking out the stars. “This is not the only world. There are many others that border this one. Shadowrealms. They are all inhabited, and I believe he moves from realm to realm fighting for humanity, keeping them safe from an ancient evil. He works through agents.”

  “And you are one of these agents?”

  “I am. And you could be one also.”

  An agent of Death. I rather liked the sound of that. “So you’re not the only one?”

  “I’ve encountered others through the years. Some are aligned with Marethyu, but others act against him. They have allied themselves with darker forces who are controlled by an immortal English doctor. If you are very lucky, you will never meet him. I know there is a woman on the East Coast who is supposed to be three hundred years old, and in Europe I’ve heard there are some who have lived for many hundreds of years.”

  “I think I would like to be immortal,” I said.

  “There is a cost to immortality, Billy.” A note of incredible sadness touched Black Hawk’s voice. “You remain unaged while the world changes around you, and the people you know—family, friends—wither, age, and die. Is that a price you are prepared to pay?”

  “I don’t have anyone,” I said, surprised by the wash of emotion that rolled over me, the abrupt realization that I really had no one in my life. “My mother, father, and stepfather are dead, and I haven’t seen my brother, Joseph, in a long time.”

  “No sweetheart?” Black Hawk asked.

  I shook my head. “There was a girl, Paulita Maxwell. I liked her well enough, and I think she liked me. But she came from money, and her family did not approve. I suppose we could have run away together, but a life on the road is hard and she’d grown up used to the finer things in life.”

  “And friends?”

  “I don’t have friends. There’s a rotating list of petty criminals, horse thieves and robbers who move in and out of my gang. Though, to be honest, it’s not really a gang.”

  “Then maybe you’re just the person Marethyu is looking for.”

  “I’m guessing I’ve got to do something to earn this immortality.”

  “It is true that you earn eternal life by proving yourself worthy. But this mission has nothing to do with becoming immortal. This is something deeply personal to me. Something I have tried—and failed—at for the past ninety years. I believe Marethyu thinks you may able to help.” He could not quite keep the disbelief out of his voice.

  “And has this Marethyu ever been wrong?”

  “Often.”

  “And if he is wrong about me.”

  “Then you will probably be dead by the end of the week.”

  “So, what were you trying to do?”

  “I am hunting a Wendigo.” He said it and left a pause, almost as if he expected me to know what a wee-jee-joh was.

  “I have no idea who that is,” I told him.

  “Wendigo. And it’s a what, not a who. Sometimes called a Windigo or a Windago.”

  “You can tell me as many versions of its name as you like, but I still have no idea who or what it is. Doesn’t matter, though. If it sets me on the road toward becoming immortal, you can count me in.”

  “If you survive,” Black Hawk reminded me.

  “So, what’s a Wendigo?”

  “It’s a fifteen-foot-tall skeletal monster with the head and horns of a stag and a taste for human flesh.” I saw his teeth flash in a smile. “Are you still in?”

  I swallowed hard, but curiosity had always been my failing. I’d never seen a Wendigo before. I figured, how bad could it be? “I’m in.”

  7

  Billy: Black Hawk and I rode side by side down the dusty trail, while the dawn brightened the sky behind us.

  “Ninety years ago,” he told me, “a tribe of Wendigo rampaged across Canada and North America, killing and eating everyone in the path.

  I felt my breakfast—coffee and fry bread—churn in my stomach. “Now, when you say eat…”

  “The Wendigo are cannibals,” Black Hawk explained.” The eat one another and they’ll take animal flesh, but they really prefer humans.”

  “What sort of beast are they: some type of bear or wolverine?”

  “Not bears, wolves, wolverines or elk. They are a combination of human and beast and the worst of both. My people believed that a Wendigo is created when a human commits that most awful of sins and eats human flesh.”

  I shuddered. Cannibalism: it is the ultimate taboo. Everyone has heard the stories of miners stuck underground, or travelers trapped by weather, or sailors lost at sea, who had no alternative but to eat one of their companions to survive.

  “So did they gradually turn into flesh-eating monsters, or did it happen overnight? Do they turn into a monster with every full moon, like a loup-garou, a werewolf? I got friendly with some of the Navajo who were held in the army camp in Fort Sumner, and they told me stories about something called a skinwalker. Is it like that?”

  Black Hawk’s spine stiffened. He leaned over the saddle and spat into the dirt. I’ve seen old Italian and Spanish women do the same; it’s a superstition to do with driving away bad luck. “Never use that word again in my presence. Even saying the name is enough to bring us to their attention. The…the name you just used is given to witches trained in a lore going back generations. They are not always evil—some are healers and seers—but, their dark arts change them. Nonetheless, they are still human. The Wendigo are not. I do not believe they are corrupted humans; I think they are something older, darker, a leftover from another age of man, from the Time Before Time.”

  The road opened up in front of us, revealing a vast and glorious panorama. We were on a trail north and west of Albuquerque. As far as the eye could see the landscape ahead was flat, with just the blue smudge of mountains in the distance. The cloudless sky directly overhead was still purple with night, speckled with stars, but when I glanced over my shoulder, I could see the dusty pink dawn racing toward us.

  Black Hawk: Very poetic. You’re talking about pink skies while I’m telling you about cannibal Wendigo.

  Billy: “So these Wendigo attacked your tribe?” I asked.

  “I think what happened was that the native Canadian tribes banded together and hunted the
Wendigo almost to extinction. The few who survived headed south. The monsters are always ravenously hungry and have to feed to survive. They rampaged through the native tribes around the Great Lakes, killing and eating everyone in their path.”

  I heard the catch in his voice and guessed these Wendigo had struck close to home.

  “Entire settlements were wiped out.”

  Even though I knew it had happened a long time ago, the pain in his voice was still raw. “And you weren’t there when it happened,” I guessed.

  “I was in New York City listening to George Washington give his State of the Union address in Federal Hall.”

  “You saw Washington!” I was impressed.

  Black Hawk stared into the distance. “It was clear that the world was changing. I wanted to be there to see history being made.”

  A sudden thought struck me. “What would have happened if you’d been at home with your tribe?”

  “Dead and eaten, probably.”

  “So I’m guessing Marethyu suggested you go to New York. Did he pluck one of those destiny threads you talked about?”

  “You know, you’re not as dumb as you look.”

  “Thanks. I think,” I said. “I’ve always found it’s better to be underestimated.”

  “By the time I got back to my tribe, it was all over,” Black Hawk said. “Maybe a third were dead or missing.”

  At that, Black Hawk raised his head and looked into the lightening skies, but I knew he wasn’t seeing the dawn. We rode in silence for a while, and when he finally spoke again, he sounded tired and lost. “I’ve lived long enough to witness some terrible things, Billy. I was there when Prophetstown burned, I was on that hillside four years ago when Custer fell at the Battle of Greasy Grass. I walked the Civil War battlefields of Gettysburg, Antietam, Shiloh, and Fredericksburg, and I witnessed firsthand the forced march on the Trail of Tears.”

  I hadn’t heard of half the things he named, but I knew enough to keep my mouth shut. I don’t think he even realized that he had tears on his cheeks.

  “I am old, Billy, older than most of the people on this planet. I have forgotten more than I remember. And that is a good thing, because I do not think any human could bear the weight of so much loss and suffering. All the years of the Native American wars have blended into one monumental and fruitless struggle. The Civil War horrors have rolled together in my mind into a single enormous battlefield. I don’t remember every one of the five thousand miles of the Trail of Tears, though I will always remember individual faces. But here is what I can never forget, no matter how hard I try: the aftermath of the Wendigo attack on my camp.”

  There was a long silence, broken only by the horses’ hooves plodding on the hard earth. Eventually, Black Hawk took a deep, shuddering breath. “I will not tell you what I saw there that day,” he said, glancing sidelong at me. “All I will say is that it was gruesome, and the sights, the sounds, and the smells have never left me. I doubt they ever will. The following morning, I packed my weapons and some clothes and set off after the Wendigo. I have been hunting them ever since. There were twelve when I started; now, almost a hundred years later, one remains.”

  “One Wendigo. One’s not so bad. You’ve killed eleven by yourself. Now you have me to help. We can do it,” I said with a confidence born out of absolute ignorance.

  “The eleven I killed over the years were the weakest, the slowest, damaged by disease, and their bodies were falling apart. If the Wendigo do not eat regularly, their flesh rots and their bones begin to protrude through their skin.”

  “That’s disgusting.”

  “So the one who remains is the oldest, the most powerful. It has lived for centuries, and is cunning and dangerous beyond belief.”

  “And, I’m guessing, hard to kill?” I asked.

  “Almost impossible. I have been chasing this last surviving monster for nearly thirty years.”

  “And let’s say—and this is just a wild thought—let’s say we attack this monster but don’t kill it. What happens then?”

  “It will eat us. And it will take its time doing it,” he said. “You’ll be alive for most of it.”

  “You really didn’t need to tell me that part,” I said.

  8

  Billy: We rode deep into Native American land, heading for the Valley of the Gods. We kept an easy pace, not pushing the horses hard. Black Hawk took the lead and rode a little ahead and to my left, finding us a path through the scrub. I hung back, constantly checking the landscape on either side, turning in the saddle to watch behind. There were Apache and Ute to the north, Navajo directly ahead, and Zuni to the south of us. I knew they were watching us, and even though the ground was flat and featureless, I had no doubt they’d be right on top of us before we knew it.

  Black Hawk: You might not know it; I would have.

  Billy: At night we slept in shifts. Or rather, I slept; I’m not sure I ever saw Black Hawk sleep. Some nights were loud with critters, and while you’d think they might keep you from sleep, it’s a pleasant, restful sound. It’s the quiet nights, when even the air itself is still, that you have to be careful of. On those nights, neither of us slept. I often wonder if something was out there in the night, watching us.

  Black Hawk: There was. Apache braves creeping in close, maybe hoping to snatch one of the horses, or trying to work out why a Native American and a white man were traveling so amicably together. Billy, I’m not sure how much recording time is left on this device. Let’s get to the Wendigo part.

  Billy: Maybe ten days later, we caught up with the Wendigo.

  We were settling down for the night, in a natural hollow in the almost completely flat landscape. I’d just started a fire and put water on to boil. Dinner would be beans and biscuits. Again. Finished off with Arbuckles’ coffee. Again.

  Black Hawk squatted with his back to me, watching the landscape, looking for grasses that didn’t move in time with the wind, or a bush that remained still when it should have been moving. His skills, honed by over a century, enabled him to read signs and tracks as easily as others read a newspaper. “I’m thinking,” he said quietly, pitching his voice low so that it wouldn’t carry on the wind, “that maybe the Wendigo is heading toward the Huerfano Mesa.” His arm rose and he pointed straight ahead, where a smudge of white was barely visible against the gathering night.

  “Never heard of it,” I said.

  “It is one of the four sacred mountains of the Navajo people. They believe it is the home of Áłtsé Hastiin and Áłtsé Asdzą́ą́, the First Man and the First Woman.”

  “Why do you think this creature would head to such a sacred place?”

  “Who knows how monsters think? But do not make the mistake of assuming that it is a dumb beast. It is intelligent and has lived long enough to have seen the world change and change again. The same intelligence keeps it away from the major cities.”

  “Surely it should be drawn to heavily populated cities and towns? Lots of easy pickings,” I said. “We’re low on coffee,” I added, “and we have maybe two days of beans left.”

  “We’ll make do,” he said. “What happens when a bear, a wolf, or a mountain lion starts hunting too close to civilization?” he asked.

  “It is hunted to destruction.”

  “If a Wendigo started killing and feasting in a town—no matter how small—how long do you think it would be before heavily armed hunting parties were formed or the army was called in?”

  “Good point.” I nodded. I’d seen it happen.

  Black Hawk pointed into the distance. “But if the Wendigo keeps its killing to the Native American lands, do you think the army will come out to protect us? Do you thinking anyone will even notice if a few natives go missing? Will anyone care?”

  “You’re right. The Wendigo could hunt out here for years, maybe dec
ades…”

  “Unless it’s stopped…,” Black Hawk finished.

  The wind changed, blowing out of the north and west, carrying with it the promise of rain…and something else. Something foul and rotting.

  I quickly rose to my feet and looked to Black Hawk. His eyes were closed, nostrils flaring as he homed in on the scent. I tried to mimic him, closing my eyes and breathing deeply, but the appalling scent overwhelmed me and I spun away, gagging.

  “Something’s dead out there.” I gasped.

  “That is the scent of the Wendigo,” Black Hawk whispered. “It sweats when it hunts. It is rotting from the inside out, and its sweat reeks of decay.” He spun away and kicked dust over my fire, extinguishing it. Then he grabbed his rifle and vaulted onto the back of his horse. “It’s hunting now. And it’s close.” Digging his heels into the side of the horse, he galloped away at full speed.

  I spun around in a complete circle, not entirely sure what to do. My horse and the pack mule looked at me, nostrils flaring, eyes wide with fright, obviously smelling the stench in the air. I tossed my saddle onto the back of my horse and cinched it quickly—Black Hawk hadn’t even bothered to saddle his mount. For a moment, I thought about freeing the pack mule, but I left it staked to the ground, alongside our supplies. If we didn’t return, someone was sure to come across it.

  Sitting tall in the saddle, I looked out across the darkening landscape, searching for Black Hawk. Suddenly, in the distance, directly ahead and to my right, there was a flash of light, followed an instant later by the crack of a shot. Chambering a round into my Winchester, I set off in that direction, pushing my horse as hard as I could, hoping she was not going to step into a hole and toss me to the ground, hoping I was not going to be set upon by an Native American war party, hoping I was not going to arrive too late.

  9

  Billy: Although the landscape looked flat, it undulated like the slow waves on the ocean. As I crested a low rise, I spotted a glow in the distance: campfires.