Read Online Far Bright Star by Robert Olmstead - Free Book Online
Authors: Robert Olmstead
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release and stretched and pawed in the dirt. He kneeled down and touched the horse’s shoulder. It was fine and flat and in the Rattler’s eye he could see it knew his touch. This horse’s bones, tendons, blood, muscles, and nervous substance had given him all it had that day and now it lay in the dry crackling dust in blue flame ready to stop bullets for him.
He opened his tobacco pouch and took a mouthful. His life seemed strange and silent and deathlike to him. He experienced a certain looseness in mind and thought. His earliest memories were of riding in the saddle in front of his mother. His grandfather had fought in old Mexico with Thomas Jackson and so too his father and now it would kill him and these men with him and this fine horse that lay at his feet.
He thought, It will require courage to die, and launched a brown smear of tobacco juice into the sand in response to his own thinking.
After the storm came a deep suspended silence and the dust it raised softened the horizon.
The day’s protracted light was diminishing. The east wall painted red and gold and the west wall deepened in shadow. Present time was fading. Soon it would be dark and darkness would favor them. This day’s distance did not amount to much in actual miles, but they’d been turned so many times he’d lost track of their immediate location. He wondered if there was a possible conclusion without consequence, a conclusion without truth or meaning. He didn’t try to answer his wondering questions.
The weaving channels of dust blew away, the light wavered and behind it, somewhere, the orient sun was a ball of fire burning out the western sky and in the distance before him there were riders and they were coming out of that slant sunlight.
10
H E TOOK THEM to be a stray band of Villistas, soldaderas, broken and maimed Dorados, the shock cavalry who charged willingly and with such elan at the battles of Celaya and Agua Prieta and were mowed down by the Maxims and thrown onto the barbed-wire entanglements where they experienced slow and potting deaths.
Of the men and women, the women were always the hardest of the band. They knew what the men knew but they also knew what the men would never know. They knew hard work and hunger, but they also knew childbirth and they knew the death of those children. They knew rape and the death of their men. They knew hatred and no one returns hate like a woman.
They were armed with a variety of Winchester and Remington carbines and rifles and some carried Mausers and all manner of bladed weapons: knives, swords, and machetes. If indeed they were Dorados, they would attack. They always attacked.
Napoleon was kneeled and readied, awaiting the furious onslaught. But then he stood and faced his men. He stood straight as a ramrod, the stock of the Springfield tucked to his right side and the weight of it riding in the crook of his arm. The new men had not had the occasion to see him in battle and they were braced by what they saw.
“Gentlemen,” he said, turning to face them. “We have discovered the enemy,” and at this they laughed.
He wasn’t scared. It wasn’t that he was brave or smart or stupid; it was just it wasn’t worth a damn to be scared. Being scared killed you again and again before you died from what finally killed you. At least that’s what the poets and the old heads had to say on the subject. He lifted the field glasses. He recognized one of the men as the horse trader who was speaking to his brother that morning.
“What is your thinking?” Stableforth called out.
“I think pr’aps it could be time for us to die.” At this they laughed again.
“Right now?” Stableforth asked.
“Pretty near,” he said. Having been outwitted and out-flanked he understood how consequential his mistakes.
“Can we not do anything about it?”
“It’s too late.”
“Why?”
“It just is. If they pass against us, we lose,” and this time, if they thought him funny, they did not
He opened his tobacco pouch and took a mouthful. His life seemed strange and silent and deathlike to him. He experienced a certain looseness in mind and thought. His earliest memories were of riding in the saddle in front of his mother. His grandfather had fought in old Mexico with Thomas Jackson and so too his father and now it would kill him and these men with him and this fine horse that lay at his feet.
He thought, It will require courage to die, and launched a brown smear of tobacco juice into the sand in response to his own thinking.
After the storm came a deep suspended silence and the dust it raised softened the horizon.
The day’s protracted light was diminishing. The east wall painted red and gold and the west wall deepened in shadow. Present time was fading. Soon it would be dark and darkness would favor them. This day’s distance did not amount to much in actual miles, but they’d been turned so many times he’d lost track of their immediate location. He wondered if there was a possible conclusion without consequence, a conclusion without truth or meaning. He didn’t try to answer his wondering questions.
The weaving channels of dust blew away, the light wavered and behind it, somewhere, the orient sun was a ball of fire burning out the western sky and in the distance before him there were riders and they were coming out of that slant sunlight.
10
H E TOOK THEM to be a stray band of Villistas, soldaderas, broken and maimed Dorados, the shock cavalry who charged willingly and with such elan at the battles of Celaya and Agua Prieta and were mowed down by the Maxims and thrown onto the barbed-wire entanglements where they experienced slow and potting deaths.
Of the men and women, the women were always the hardest of the band. They knew what the men knew but they also knew what the men would never know. They knew hard work and hunger, but they also knew childbirth and they knew the death of those children. They knew rape and the death of their men. They knew hatred and no one returns hate like a woman.
They were armed with a variety of Winchester and Remington carbines and rifles and some carried Mausers and all manner of bladed weapons: knives, swords, and machetes. If indeed they were Dorados, they would attack. They always attacked.
Napoleon was kneeled and readied, awaiting the furious onslaught. But then he stood and faced his men. He stood straight as a ramrod, the stock of the Springfield tucked to his right side and the weight of it riding in the crook of his arm. The new men had not had the occasion to see him in battle and they were braced by what they saw.
“Gentlemen,” he said, turning to face them. “We have discovered the enemy,” and at this they laughed.
He wasn’t scared. It wasn’t that he was brave or smart or stupid; it was just it wasn’t worth a damn to be scared. Being scared killed you again and again before you died from what finally killed you. At least that’s what the poets and the old heads had to say on the subject. He lifted the field glasses. He recognized one of the men as the horse trader who was speaking to his brother that morning.
“What is your thinking?” Stableforth called out.
“I think pr’aps it could be time for us to die.” At this they laughed again.
“Right now?” Stableforth asked.
“Pretty near,” he said. Having been outwitted and out-flanked he understood how consequential his mistakes.
“Can we not do anything about it?”
“It’s too late.”
“Why?”
“It just is. If they pass against us, we lose,” and this time, if they thought him funny, they did not
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