1
The morning was cool and fresh after a recent rain, but most of the clouds had moved away to the northeast. As I drove west, vibrant, black-stemmed green brush and clumps of yellow grass stood out against the red dirt. Here and there, narrow red Indian Paintbrush trumpets hung off thin green stems. The smells of creosote and wet earth filtered into the pickup through the vents.
The road, one of those usually grey-asphalt little country roads that form a spiderweb all over the rural United States, was marked on the map as a two-lane. But it was all chest and no shoulders, no wider than a lane and a half, black and shiny from the rain.
Like most of the roads on or near the reservations, it was also pitted here and there with bone-jarring, tire-shredding, wheel-denting potholes. I took my time, skirting the edge of the potholes I couldn’t avoid. And eventually I spotted the old guy’s house.
The yard had no fence and was covered with tired, mostly flattened Bermuda grass, glittering with moisture. A gnarled, ancient elm tree grew in the left part of the yard, its early morning shadow stretching away to the west, pointing into a fallow field. Some bright yellow remnants of last season’s wheat harvest were interspersed among the thriving weeds.
I slowed the pickup.
The house beyond the yard was old, one story, and almost square with a double-hung window on either side of the front door. The blinds were pulled on both windows. The walls of the house were covered with off-white asphalt tiles under a green asphalt shingle roof. The “porch,” actually jut a square concrete stoop with a gabled roof over it, was centered under the front door above three shallow steps. The concrete was wet despite the roof.
I parked the pickup with the passenger side door alongside the elm tree, got out and walked past the front of the truck. The engine was ticking as it cooled. Across the yard, I stepped up onto the low porch, opened the screen door, and rapped a few times with the back of my hand.
A voice raspy with age came from behind the house. “Ho! Around back. Dell? You’re early.”
I stepped down off the right side of the porch. “Yeah.”
As I walked past the back corner of the house, the old man was some forty feet away and moving toward his back door. He was carrying a shallow, empty, stainless steel bowl in his left hand, and he looked like anybody’s grandfather: old, a little bent, and a little too thick. He stopped and looked at me.
He was dressed in scuffed brown roper boots with a little mud at the edges, jeans, a brown natural leather belt, and a plain white western shirt. The shirt had yokes in front of the shoulders. The bottom of each yoke formed a pocket. Faux-pearl snaps ran down the front of his shirt, and two more anchored the pocket flaps.
His western straw hat had a thin black hat band and a rancher crown. He’d pulled the brim about halfway down his wide forehead. Beneath the brim, his silver-grey hair was pulled straight back. The hair and the light-yellow straw were a striking contrast against the weathered, dark-brown skin of his heavily lined face.
Around twenty feet behind him in a chicken-wire enclosure, maybe a dozen frenzied chickens were all over the place, squawking and flashing their wings at each other and scratching and pecking at the mud. In the far corner of the pen, a red-headed rooster seemed to lounge as if considering his next conquest.
A barn loomed in the distance to the left beyond the chicken pen.
But no corral. I had hoped for a rough-hewn, split-rail corral.
I had read that in situations like this, back in the old days the Comanche made good use of split-rail corrals to drive out new settlers and deter others from moving into northern Texas and southern Oklahoma. That would’ve been perfect for this man. A former chief, he had disgraced himself in the eyes of his tribe.
2
If the Comanche had been here and if there had been a corral, they would have slashed Mr. Olathe’s Achilles’ tendons so he could neither run in his cowardice nor fight them.
Then they would have hurled insults at him and spat on him as they dragged him to the corral. They would have hooked his elbows over the top rail and tied his wrists together with a strip of wet rawhide stretched across his chest. It would tighten as it dried.
They would have torn his shirt off, then ripped open his abdomen and hooked his entrails with a branch. They would have dragged out the entrails as a treat for the coyotes and the big cats and the wild hogs. And they would have sliced away his eyelids so he would have to watch the animals dine.
Some of the younger members of the war party might have practiced on him with their bows and arrows. Or they might have ventured closer before the beasts came, ceremoniously counted coup on the bound man, and then practiced carving bright red designs in his brown skin just to make him scream. They might have even carved out some of his rich fat to clean and oil their knives.
But finally, because he was not merely a settler but a chief who had betrayed his people, after a time, the leader of the party would have gouged out his eyes.
Hence line five of the message.
The failed Chief Redhawk would be allowed no sight in the afterlife.
He would be allowed no visions.
3
As Edmund Redhawk Olathe met my steady gaze, the smile he’d put on to greet ‘Dell’ faded.
He raised his wrinkled right hand and pointed vaguely in my direction with a gnarled index finger. He grunted, “Hey, you ain’t Dell,” then turned his head. With his chin, he gestured past his left shoulder. The motion revealed a thick, tight, silver ponytail hooking down from beneath the back of his hat. “Jus’ feedin’ the girls.”
When he looked at me again, still pointing and his hand wavering only slightly, he said, “But you’re Native, ain’t you?”
His eyes were clouded with cataracts.
He smiled thinly. “Come to see the old chief? Ask for counsel? Pay your respects?”
He probably thought I was Native because of my presence in his yard. Well, and my black hair, my skin tone, and my high cheekbones. And my mousey moustache. I had a beard for awhile too. I kept the moustache, but I’d shaved the beard off a month or so ago.
The withered finger wavered a little more. “I think you ain’t Seminole though.” He put his palm to his chest and raised his chin slightly. “I’m Seminole.”
I stopped maybe ten feet away, and he frowned slightly. “Shoshone? Paiute?” He paused. “I don’t think you’re Cherokee.” Then his smile returned. He pointed harder with that finger and smiled again. “Sioux. You’re Sioux? Down from the north country? Oglala?"
I smiled as I reached behind my back and lifted my jean jacket with my right thumb. “No.”
As he lowered his hand, he frowned. “What then?”
“I’m death.” I pulled the little sound-suppressed .22 caliber Beretta from the waistband of my jeans and brought it around. I pointed it at him, and I cocked it.
His eyes went round. His eyebrows arched so quickly and so high that his hat tipped up slightly on his forehead. “What did you say?” His shoulders twitched and he dropped the bowl and his hands came up. “No! No!”
With three twitches of my finger, three 40-grain bullets tore through his shirt at the middle of his abdomen.
Where the Comanche would have opened him.
4
He huffed, looked down, and slapped both hands one over the other, covering the wounds. A thin trickle of blood seeped across the knuckle of one finger and dripped to the ground between his boots. He looked up, gaping. He frowned. “Y-you killed me!”
I stuck the Beretta behind the waistband of my jeans and started toward him. “Not yet.”
He looked down again and shifted his fingers a little, maybe in an attempt to stem the leak.
As I stepped past him, I grabbed his ponytail with my left hand, jerked, and kept walking, dragging him.
He stumbled backward and fell. His hat rolled off to one side. Only my grip on his ponytail kept him off the ground. As I dragged him, quietly, he said, “My people? The tribe?”
I didn’t slow down or look back. “Yeah.”
“But you are not Seminole?”
“No. I’m a professional. The people hired me.”
“But why?”
“What you did.” I hesitated. “Especially the girls. You should be very glad you don’t have a split-rail corral.”
“What?”
I dragged him to the chicken enclosure. As I pulled open the gate, chickens flapped and clucked and scattered in every direction. I dragged him through the gate and dropped him. “I’m not Native. If I were, I would be Comanche.”
He looked up at me, his hands still clasped to his abdomen. “But as you can see, I’m too old for girls.”
“The prostitution ring.”
He closed his eyes, opened them, and said, “Oh.” He squinted, and his fists clenched on his abdomen. The pain was starting to get to him. He coughed and a trickle of blood slipped from the corner of his mouth and down over his cheek. Through gritted teeth, he said, “Yes, that. But I resigned.”
I pulled the Beretta again. “The drugs were a bad thing. You know that. But the prostitution ring was too much. The prostitution ring is why.”
He breathed, settled his gaze on me, and nodded. In the slow speech of a regretful old man, he said, “I was their chief. I betrayed those girls.”
5
I pointed the Beretta at his left eye. “Yes. So you die with no sight.”
“It is right.”
I fired.
He jerked, convulsed.
I said, “So you can not seek visions.” I fired into the other eye.
He didn’t move.
But I don’t trust anyone who would pimp out young girls. Christ, even I was revulsed by that. He did not deserve the release of death, but those were my orders.
To be sure, I wedged the toe of my right boot beneath his left shoulder, then flipped him onto his face.
The ponytail obliged me by flopping off the left side of his head.
I fired three more bullets into his medulla oblongata, and the slide of the Beretta locked back.
One in the chamber, seven in the magazine. Perfect.
But Dell.
I dropped the empty magazine into my palm, pulled a full one from my hip pocket, and seated that one in the magazine well. I released the slide and lowered the hammer, then returned the pistol to the waistband of my jeans at the small of my back.
I stepped out of the pen, closed the gate, and started toward the corner of the house.
Hold off, Dell. You don’t want to arrive while I’m here.
*******
Author Note
“But There’s No Corral ” is derived from the novel Blackwell Ops 40: John Staple.
About the Author
Harvey Stanbrough was born in New Mexico, seasoned in Texas and baked in Arizona. For a time, he wrote under five personas and several pseudonyms, but he takes a pill for that now and writes only under his own name. Mostly.
Harvey has written and published over 110 novels, 10 novellas, and over 290 short stories. He has also written 19 nonfiction books on writing, 9 of which are free to other writers. And he’s compiled and published 5 omnibus novel collections, 29 collections of short fiction, and 5 critically acclaimed poetry collections.
These days, the vendors through which Harvey licenses his works do not allow URLs in the back matter. To see his other works, please key “StoneThread Publishing” or “Harvey Stanbrough” into your favorite search engine.
Finally, for his best advice on writing, look for “The New Daily Journal | Harvey Stanbrough | Sub
Good story. Chief got lucky for sure.