Wolves Howling in the Night
A Story of Ayatas FireWind
First published inLawless Lands: Tales from the Weird Frontier, an anthology from Falstaff Books (2017). Time: 1879.
Ayatas touched his horse’s flank with a heel and guided him closer to the mount ridden by Etsi, his Everhart woman. They had been on the trail for days in the summer heat, with limited water, only enough for them and their mounts to drink sparingly. They had run out of even that twelve miles on the south side of Eagle Tail Mount and Dry Wash, which lived up to its name. The summer sun had baked the land dry. If they did not reach the town of Agua Caliente by nightfall, their plight would become desperate, yet Etsi still laughed, saying she smelled ripe, her scent as strong on the air as his own.
The town they hoped to reach had abundant water, enough to have a bakery, saloons, a laundry, a livery, a feed-and-seed shop, a half-dozen seamstresses, a school run by a woman from back east, and two dry-goods stores. The newsletter they had read when they shared a campfire with a wagon train said that an inn was being built in Agua Caliente, “with a bathhouse,” as Etsi kept reminding him, a bathhouse with hot water that rose from the ground, from hot springs. Etsi would get a hot tub-bath with soap, as her own people, theyunega, the white men, bathed.
He would wash out back with the other people of color—the Mexicans, Africans, and Indians—though Ayatas might prefer to bathe in the Gila River, near the town, ifIndianmeant Apache or Pah-Ute. TheTsalagiand Western tribes did not make peace together, and fighting would anger Etsi. His red-headed woman’s temper was hot like fire, and his heart had ached the few times she had turned her anger toward him.
Tonight, Etsi would sleep in a real bed, and Ayatas would bed downwith the horses or out in the night, under the stars, knowing that if she called him with her magic, he would hear the sound of her summons on the wind.
Beneath him, the horse stepped higher and his head came up, moving better than the tired beast had all day. “I smell smoke,” Ayatas said. “And water.”
“Hallelujah and praise the Lord,” Etsi said, her voice hoarse. She tied the small pouch ofdalonige’iinto her skirt to hide it. White men traded for gold, gave news for gold, stole land for gold, killed for gold. She was wise to keep it out of sight.
—
Together, as the sun slid into the scarlet west, they studied the town from a small rise. Agua Caliente was mostly low adobe houses and buildings, a few stone-built ones, and some dried-brick buildings, all flat-roofed and mud colored. Wood smoke billowed in low waves down the main street, curling and mixing with the dust clouds. Horses and mules, saddled or loaded with packs, stood, tied to hitching posts here and there. A scrawny, short-legged dog trotted down the street, her teats dragging on the dirt. A wagon rolled out of town. A Mexican woman with a white head scarf and dark skirts carried a heavy bundle into an alley and disappeared. The sound of a piano plinking and men singing echoed down the street.
They let the horses have their heads, and the tired animals moved down toward the town. The noise got louder. Dogs barked. Chickens ran across the main road and under a bakery. There was much shouting from laborers, still working in the town, using the last light in the cool of evening. He spotted stonemasons, bricklayers, adobe plasterers, and tile layers constructing the inn that would make the town great and bring in more white people. And drive out more tribal people and people of color. The walls were rising, arches appearing where windows and doors would go. Heavy beams were in place to hold the roof. The wind spun and changed direction, bringing the smell of the town to them.
The horses found a spill of water and a clay-lined pool outside the bathhouse. The puddle stank of soap, white men, and sulfur, but the mounts drank with desperation. “Son of a witch on a switch,” Etsi muttered. “I forgot how noisy and stinky towns are.” The stench of outhouses,saloons, fires burning, and food cooking was overpowering after so long in the wild.
“White men always stink,” he said, keeping his own thirst at bay until he could get Etsi and the horses to safety.
“Yes. Well. Don’t forget,” Etsi said, her tone telling him more than she realized, speaking of pain and long-held anger. “It’s only a game we play to keep you safe.”
Ayatas grunted. The game claimed that he was her servant instead of her man. That he worked for gold instead of searching for his dreams. But Ayatas would pretend many things to keep Etsi, which meant My Love in the tongue of The People, safe. His red-haired woman, who had gone by many names as they traveled, was possessed of a fiery nature, changeable as the wind, and was constantly searching out danger. She had been born Salandre Everhart, but when she ran away with him, she had changed her name toIgohidv Adonvdo, or Forever Heart, inTsalagi. Now, after many years of travel and adventures, his fire woman used a different name in each town, but she was always and forever his Everhart woman, and Etsi.
He pulled the horses away before they could take in enough to grow sick and jumped back into the sheepskin saddle. The mounts knew they would be fed now and trotted on into the town and up to the sheriff’s office. The man with the badge waited, his guns in clear view, an old hunting rifle in his arms, and a six-gun at his hip. They reined in the mounts in front of the man, and Etsi slid from the saddle to the ground. She groaned with pain on landing in the dusty street, knees stiff from all day in the heat, on horseback. Ayatas landed behind her, silent.
“Good evening, Sheriff,” she said, approaching him and smoothing her skirts. His Everhart woman did not offer her hand, but the sheriff looked pointedly at her left hand and the thin gold band that could be seen beneath her dirty gloves. “I’m Mrs. Everhart, reporter for theArizona Daily Star, out of Tucson.”
“A woman reporter?” The sheriff spat, the stink of tobacco strong on the air. He transferred his sharp gaze to Ayatas. “Women can’t work for newspapers. That your young buck? He don’t look like Apache or Ute.”
“He is Cherokee, from back east,” Etsi said with asperity, “and he’s my guide. And women most certainly can be reporters. Watch your tongue, young man. You may be sheriff, but you are not above manners.”
Etsi was no longer a girl, but a woman now, sharp-tongued and stern, and she knew how to stop men from showing disrespect. They had been together since 1860, and she had grown more fiery with each passing year.
The sheriff laughed, the sound like sand scouring rock in a low wind, and when he spoke, it was with a tone of insult and amusement. “Manners. Yes, ma’am. I’ll mind my manners.” Before Etsi could respond he added, “You looking to take the baths and find a bed, Old Missus Smith can help you. Your guide’ll have to sleep in the stables with the other animals or outside the city. We don’t risk our scalps letting Injuns stay inside after sundown.”
“You have nothing to fear from my guide, Sheriff.”
“I ain’t a-feared a’ no redskin.”
“Hmmm.” Her tone suggested that he lied. The sheriff’s eyes narrowed. Etsi continued, “I’m sure he’d rather be as far from the white man as he can get. If you’ll direct me to the boardinghouse and the baths and point my guide to the livery?”
The man with the tin star on his chest gave directions. Etsi turned to Ayatas and gave him six small coins, saying things she did not need to say, to appease the sheriff and to fulfill their roles. “Aya, take the horses to the livery and purchase their care. See if they will also feed you and let you sleep there. If not, go to the back door of the bakery and buy some dinner, and then bed down outside the gates.”
Ayatas took the coins and nodded. “Yes, ma’am. Thank you, ma’am.” Gathering the reins, he led the mounts down the street, following the scent of manure and hay more than the lawman’s directions. With his predator’s senses, he could feel several pairs of eyes on him as he walked, so he kept his shoulders slumped and his head down as befit the station of servant instead of the warrior and skinwalker he was, a beaten man instead of a man of much power and magic. It galled him. But the white-man world was not kind to people of color.
He had spent much of his youth in the Blue Holly clan house, under the thumb of hisuni lisi, grandmother of many children, in the Indian Land of the Western Cherokee. He had hated being with the women in the summer or winter houses, but with no father, and with the obstinacy of his grandmother, he had no one to take him in among the older men. Until hisuni lisitaught him to shift into an animal when he was fifteenand he had learned to dance. Then he had many offers to join the hunters and many offers of marriage from the women, but he had refused them all. He had changed his name toAyatas Nvgitsvle, or FireWind, for the raging fires he saw in his dreams.
“Pride,”uni lisihad said. “Foolish and stubborn pride.”
“Dreams,” he had responded. “Dreams of fire and wind and magic,” such as his people had long ago lost to the white man. He had left the Indian Land.
