At the livery, the white man and his two half-white sons sold him two stalls and enough feed for three days. They helped him to brush down the mounts, check their feet, and untangle their wind-tossed manes. One of the boys was good with animals, discovering a swollen place on the cannon bone of Etsi’s mount. The older man applied an herbal liniment and wrapped the limb. Ayatas gave the boy great praise. White men needed praise to feel worthy.Tsalagiwarriors needed no such words to know their worth.
The man and his sons gave him permission to sleep in the hayloft, sold him a meal of dried meat and cold beans, and sent Ayatas to the back of the bathhouse, as he had suspected. His bath consisted of a bucket of water he poured over himself, a sliver of soap in hand. It cost a penny, but the water was clean and pure and still hot from the springs.
As he dried off, Ayatas heard two white men talking within the men’s private room of the bathhouse. They talked about a bird that was to be sold. He thought nothing of it, except that the dove would be in need of cleansing, which he thought was strange. Etsi would likely understand and would explain it all to him, and perhaps in the telling, she would find a good story to write for the newspapers back east, for his Etsi was a newspaper reporter as she had claimed.
Smelling much better, dressed in his clean canvas pants, wool socks, and a cotton shirt, Ayatas bedded down in the small loft. Tonight he slept on layered sleep rolls and blankets and his serape, atop fresh hay. His pillow was his scarf, his gun and skinwalker necklace by his hand.
He slept well until about three a.m., when a noise woke him, the squeal and creak of a buckboard with a wheel that rubbed, needing a wheelwright. Above the rubbing he heard a woman’s muffled sobs. The sound of a ringing slap. The woman fell silent.
Ayatas rose and secured his clothing, hiding his weapons, tying his moccasins. He crept down from the loft to the stall where his own mount slept, standing, head low, at the window that looked out onto the street. A wagon rolled by, a white man driving, two white men, a Mexican, and a Black man in the bed. A woman was propped on a feed sack, her hands tied, her mouth tied with a gag. In the bright light of the moon, he could see that she had been beaten. Some of her clothing had been torn away.
Abuse of women was a foreign thing among theTsalagi. Had a man tried that onuni lisiorelisi, his mother, the women would have removed the parts that made him a man and put him to work in the fields. But Ayatas knew that white men were often cruel to women.
The buckboard rolled on, and Ayatas thought on what he should do. His Everhart woman would have intervened, even at the risk to her own life, believing that her magic could protect her from anything. It was hard to keep her safe from her own actions, but he could not keep this from her even to keep her safe.
Ayatas secured his long hair, rolled out the window, and landed silently on the dirt. Keeping to the shadows, he followed the buckboard to the biggest saloon. Etsi had taught him to read and write, and the sign over the door readpeacock saloon. The wordsfaroanddancehallwere beneath it. Faro was a card game. Dancehall meant that women danced with men and then pleasured them for money, though the women seldom got to keep much of their earnings. It was a hard life, and the women died young and sickly. And... the women were called soiled doves.
Ayatas recalled the conversation between the men in the bathhouse, the words about a bird that was to be sold and the dove that would be in need of cleansing. Were these men selling the woman to the saloon owner? Slavery was now illegal, but women were often kept as sex slaves, and the law did nothing to stop it. Ayatas remembered the sheriff and his insulting tone to Etsi.
The buckboard stopped in the street. Ayatas climbed the rickety stairs of a building nearby and crawled across the flat roof to the next building, and then to the Peacock. He heard the sound of coins clinking. Gold made a dull sound, silver clinking sharply. The woman was crying behind her gag, making a single sound over and over. He thought it might be “No, no, no...”
He spotted an open shutter on the back wall of the saloon and dropped from the roof to the ground. There was no glass here to bar the way or to stop a breeze from cooling. Ayatas raced to the window and vaulted inside, landing on the dusty wood floor in the dark. Silent. The smell of alcohol assaulted his nostrils, a sneeze threatened, but he forced the urge away, staying crouched, allowing his eyes to adjust. Gray shapes resolved out of the dark—large whiskey and beer barrels, a side of smoked hog hanging from a hook overhead, bags of flour and cornmeal. He was in a storage room. Still stealthy, he moved through the room and out the door to find himself behind the bar in the saloon’s main room, the barkeep asleep on a blanket on the floor, snoring.
Ayatas crawled to the opening and studied the main room of the saloon, which was lit with two lamps, one on either side. A piano was on one wall. Rough-hewn round tables made from broken wagon wheels with boards atop them were everywhere. Stools and a few chairs were scattered. A small stage took up the space beneath the stairs to the upper floor. On it stood a man, part Mexican, wearing a fancy suit and two guns on his hips. There was an air of ownership about him, the saloon owner, surely. He watched as the two white men carried the bound woman up the stairs. She was kicking, fighting, screaming behind the gag. Ayatas could not help her. He remained in place, watching, learning the room the woman was placed in—room seven at the hall’s end. The white men carried her in and shut the door. The sound of blows and muffled crying followed.
The other men were each poured a shot of whiskey by the saloon owner, who said, “Turner, you sure—”
“I’m sure.” Turner was slim with a curling blond mustache and blond hair slicked back. His clothing was expensive, his boots shiny. He pulled two cigars, offering one to the saloon owner, and snipped off the ends with a small silver clipper. The two men lit their cigars from a taper placed in the flame of the nearest lamp.
“If you want her back,” the saloon owner said, “I’ll make sure she comes away a more contrite and pliable female. The women sold through this house are valued up north and eager to pleasure a man.”
Turner said, “I’ve had enough of her sass. And her money’s mine now, so I don’t need her. According to the sheriff, law’s on my side.”
Turner was the man who had held the buckboard reins. Ayatas studiedhim the way he studied prey when he was a jaguar. Turner had delicate hands, uncalloused with rounded nails. He was dressed in city clothing, the kind Ayatas had seen in San Francisco, worn by the wealthy. This man had taken his wife’s property, her gold, and had sold her into abuse.
The saloon owner was part Mexican, a handsome man with a pockmarked face. He had grown wealthy on the labor of women slaves. Ayatas had heard the words himself. He would tell his Everhart woman. They would decide what to do.
Ayatas stayed for an hour, listening to the men talk. Long enough to learn the name of the stolen ranch. Carleton’s Buckeye Springs Ranch. When the men left, Ayatas tried to get into room seven, but the door was locked and he did not have a key. So he disappeared into the shadows, following the buckboard to the ranch. It was only three miles away, a short run.
—
Dawn came quickly, and Ayatas had already checked the horses when the liveryman and his sons arrived. The sore place on the leg of Etsi’s mount was better, the heat pulled out by the liniment. The horses’ piss smelled healthy, and their eyes were bright despite the days with low water rations. The liveryman began shoveling out the stalls, giving the horses hay, feed, and fresh water. Knowing that the mounts were cared for, Ayatas wrapped his scarf around his waist to help hide the weapon he wore strapped to his leg and went in search of the inn. His Everhart woman was still asleep, so he left word with the small Mexican child who came to the door, and sought out the bakery. He approached the back door and knocked.
A large woman came to the door and looked him over, head to foot. Her skin was white; her lips were full and fleshy. She smelled of wood smoke, sweat, and sourdough, and she mopped her face with an apron she pulled up. It was already warm in the desert air, and the heat in the room where she toiled was stifling from the wood-burning stove and oven. She dropped the apron and heaved a breath. “Not Apache. Not Ute. What are you?”
“I am a man.”
The white woman blew out a breath. “A traveling storyteller, full of comedy. What tribe, injun?”
“TsalagiorChelokay. Cherokee as you might say the tribal name.”
“Long as you ain’t Apache, I don’t care who you are. Apache killed my father when we first came out west.” She waited, as if to give him time to think and speak. Ayatas shrugged with his shoulders as the whites did. White men had claimed and invaded lands that belonged to others. The people who lived there had fought back. People on both sides died. The white man was winning that war. There was nothing else to say, and the white woman would not understand his reasoning. Those who grieved seldom did.
“You want food?” she asked gruffly. “I got fresh loaves coming out of the oven shortly. Fifty cents for a fresh wheat loaf. Yesterday’s bread is half that, and I got one left. Dime for a square of cornmeal.” She held out her fingers in a square to show him the size. “I can toast the bread, and I got eggs I can skillet-cook, mix ’em up with yesterday’s beans, five cents for three.”
“Your prices are low.”
“I charge three times that for the ranch hands.” She pulled off her kerchief and finger-combed her hair. It was gray and wet with sweat. She leaned against the jamb of the door, resting. “Ranch hands pay more for my cooking. People like you eat cheap.”
