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.Hot off the trail Chapter two, Blood Canyon The horses are nervous, I've got a creepy feel'n and I don't like any of this a bit. Stuck in this canyon with Roy lying there helpless and as for how it looks, hopeless as well. When night falls in a high desert canyon the sky appears to be pulling itself away from the world. The clouds are high, thin and run out of here like white smoke drawn away in a passing wind. The shadows begin moving around like mysterious dancers passing from one side of the stage to the other and though they seem not to have any substance they have a living form. As the darkness increases the shadows fade into the shear walls of the canyon but you somehow know that although now hidden, they are still there lurking throughout the night. Soon your vision fails and everything looks the same, black! Just when you think the night has settled and all is calm, the keeper of the canyon begins her nightly work. You can hear her coming from a distance from the direction of the canyon's mouth. She swoops through the canyon sweeping her magical swirling broom from side to side. Rustling everything in her path and whisking away with any and everything not attached. When she reaches the canyon's end she slithers up and over the wall carrying off all of the days debris. With the canyon swept clean the air becomes cold, crisp and clear letting the midnight blue heavens show through with all of its sparkling pulchritude. Now is when your bones start to chill and your thoughts can begin to wonder. Sounds that would never penetrate the commotions of the day stand out bold and piercing to the ear and are confusing to the mind, as they seem to have no known origin. This is the setting from which myths are born. Suddenly out of no where like Lazurus coming forth from the grave Roy sat up and looked straight at me, eye to eye with a look on his face that would scare the devil himself. He spoke to me as though he was not a bit surprised that I was there. He said, there here! Who I questioned? Yahi he answered. I thought back for a second for my reply, Yahi, they ain't none of them left except that squaw back in town. I talked to one named Ishi yesterday. Needless to say I breathed a sigh of relief, as I knew without doubt Roy did not talk to anyone yesterday. I couldn't help but to laugh a little as I explained to him that he must have been dreaming cause I was sitt'n right here nurse maid'n him all day while he was sick with fever and I told him that I reckoned that the fever must have been what caused him to wonder into this box canyon. Roy explained that he was not sick nor was he lost. He said that it was a dream that he had before he left that brought him out here. He said that he was having a vision when I got there. He started to explain the vision to me. He started off telling me about how there were stories of Indians that could turn into animals which I have heard something of before. Roy went on to explain how the squaw at General Shore's house was this Ishi fellas's sister. So I had to wonder and ask, what does any of this got to do with us? Roy replied, Ishi has the missing girl and he wants to make a trade. A trade I questioned, the two girls aren't even connected, the white girl's family can't decide for the General's family and the General's family can't decide for the white girls family. Roy explained the fact that Indian people don't look so much to the individual when it comes to things like moral issues or something that will affect the community as a whole. They believe that each is an individual with a special part that helps make the whole. In this case the whole consist of Ishi, his sister and their mother and father. You see, we did not just kill that tribe this time, we finished off an entire race of human beings. Ishi, his sister and their mother and father are the last of the Yahi Indians forever. Just one hundred years ago there were roughly 25,000 of them and those were the survivors from a terrible disease, which we brought, which killed many thousands of them. So tell me Roy, just what is it that that you and I are supposed to do about all that mess? I mean do think that anyone in town is gonna buy all that crap? Hell, I been sitt'n right here the whole dog garn time Roy and I didn't see or hear none of it. I laid out my reasoning for leave'n it be. First off, California has a bounty on the head of every free Indian and it ain't no dead or alive bounty neither. In fact a scalp is all that's required to collect. If we were found to part of helping an Indian we'd be killed fer it. There was no talking Roy out of it and he said he had some kind 'a medicine that would make everything turn out all right. Roy for some reason believed that this time there was things involved more powerful than guns and know'n how to use-em. |
Hot off the trail part two; "Blood Canyon!" |
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