“Didn’t expect to bump into you,” Sonora said somewhat matter-of-factly.
“Oh, don’t mention it. You’re welcome. Nice to see you again, too,” I said, gasping for breath. He just nodded back at me. “Care for some o’ this tarantula juice?” I asked. My head hurt like hell.
“Don’t mind if I do,” he replied.
I poured him a long one, and then took a swig from the bottle. The effect of the alcohol on my split lip sent sparks flying through my body and right down to my boots.
“Best be gettin’ outta here afore they wake up,” he suggested.
I wasn’t about to disagree.
We decided to make a quick exit after first grabbing some supplies from the station’s storeroom. Mason caught me tossing some money on one of the shelves and laughed at me.
“Momma brought her boy up real proper, I see.”
“Hey, get off my back, would ya. I got enough people after me as is without getting the stage line detectives involved.”
“You being chased? That’s a new one.”
“Long story, I’ll tell you about it later.”
As we were leaving the station, Buffalo Vest groaned and started to sit up. Mason simply kicked him in the face as he stepped over him. The last thing I remember as we walked out the door was the sound of his head hitting the floor with a loud thud.
That night we camped about twenty miles west. The cut on Sonora’s shoulder looked pretty bad so I offered to fix it.
“Got anything to work with?” I asked.
“Check my mochila, back of the saddle. Should be a sewing kit in there.” I looked in his saddlebag and found some old buttons and a couple of needles, but no thread.
“Looks like I’m going to have to improvise a might,” I said, walking back to his horse. I began pulling tail hair. Then I poured a little of the whiskey into a cup, dropping in both the needle and horse hair. I tossed Sonora the bottle. “Here, wash that wound with this.”
He looked at me apprehensively while removing his shirt. “You sure you know how to do this?” He grimaced as the alcohol ran over the cut on his shoulder.
“Don’t worry, I learned how from my uncle Zeke. He’s a leathersmith back home, and, judging from the look of this hide of yours, it shouldn’t be much different from the leather we worked on.” I removed the needle and hair from the whiskey cup.
“Just you remember this hide is my skin. It ain’t no saddle, you know.”
“ ’Course not,” I replied, threading the needle. “A good saddle’s worth a whole lot more.”
“Very funny.” He flinched as I began to sew, but I had to hand it to him again. It took a long time to get that wound stitched up, and it had to hurt, but he didn’t complain once; he just sat there and took it in stride.
When I finished, I poured some more whiskey over the wound and bandaged it with an extra shirt I’d found in his mochila.
“You know, I’m getting a little tired of nursemaiding injured renegades all the time,” I joked.
“Didn’t nobody ask you to jump in,” he replied.
“That all the thanks I get for saving your sorry ass?”
“Hell, there was only eight of them. Could’ve handled things myself.”
“Well, I’ll remember that the next time around.”
“Hombre, I don’t know about you, but I hope there won’t be a next time.” He started laughing, and I joined in.
“Shoulder or no shoulder, you get to cook dinner tonight,” I said, throwing more wood on the fire. “What’s in those cans, anyway?”
Mason eyed the supplies carefully. “You’re in luck. We have a wide selection. Canned tomatoes and beans or canned beans and tomatoes.”
“I’ll have the beans and tomatoes,” I sighed.
“Good choice. As it turns out, they’re my specialty.”
“Didn’t expect to find you in these parts. Last I heard you were down around Zacatecas,” I said.
“My friends were for a while, but I had some personal business to attend to at the fort.”
“Anything to do with those drovers?” I asked.
“Nope. They was just a few mule heads that didn’t want to drink while there was a gentleman of color in the establishment.”
“Some folks are just downright impolite,” I replied.
“Truth is, I’m visiting a friend of mine, a sergeant with the Tenth Cavalry.”
“The buffalo soldiers? I didn’t think they were posted at Yuma.”
“They’re not,” he replied. “But my friend is with a special troop on detached duty.”
“Must be quite a friend for you to come this far out of your way just to say hello.”
“He is. His name’s Freeman, Nathaniel Freeman. After Pa escaped from the plantation he was slavin’ on, Nate helped him make his way into Mexico where he finally met my mama. Nate was real kind to me after they both died.”
“Sounds like a good man. So how come you didn’t end up joining the Army like him?” I asked.
Sonora ladled a thick mess of overcooked beans into my tin. As they dripped down onto the plate, he looked up at me and smiled.
“Hombre, no way! Not for me. Have you ever tasted how bad that Army cookin’ is?”
I looked down at the glob on my plate, and then back up at him. “Of course,” I replied. “I understand…completely.”
Chapter Sixteen
During the ride to the fort the next day Sonora got to philosophizing on one of his favorite subjects, namely those who wanted to make him conform to their way of doing things.
“Ever notice how some folks are always tryin’ to tell you how to act?” he asked.
“Sure, there’s always someone like that around, so?”
“Well, it just seems to me that we was a country supposed to be formed by runaway folk, like them pilgrims. They just wanted to be left alone, ya know. Nowadays it seems like we got more political parties and do-gooder temperance groups telling us what to do, than we got people actually doin’ it. Hell, I even heard there’s some place in Kansas what won’t let you carry a gun in town. You hear about that?” he asked.
“Yeah, I did. They call it a deadline. Anyone passing over it has to check his guns with the sheriff or he gets arrested.”
“So what you think about that,” he asked.
“Well, I’ll tell you. My uncle Zeke used to be in the military for a while and studied a little law. According to him, we all got individual rights, you know, ones no one can take away. My uncle said that somewhere in the Constitution, or the Bill of Rights, or something, it says we all got a right to keep and bear arms.”
“Right, but what about those badges what try to take them away?”
“Uncle Zeke said there’s a part in there to protect us against a corrupt government. Funny thing, but he says the Constitution don’t actually grant rights…we already have them…it just spells them out clearly. Seems when the Constitution was written and they got to talkin’ about folks protectin’ themselves, they used a very specific word…infringement.”
“ ’Fringement? What’s that?”
“Zeke says it means the government can’t mess with your right to carry. ‘The right to bear arms shall not be infringed,’” I quoted.
“Well, some folk say that you can keep your gun, but just can’t wear it. Says it’s better for the town,” he pointed out.
“I once asked my uncle a similar question. He says the founding fathers didn’t set things up so our rights could be tromped on in the name of a supposed greater good for the majority. See if it’s an individual right, like the right to free speech or to protect your family or home, it’s still a right, regardless what the local star says. Funny thing, I hear the bank in that town you mentioned has already been robbed four times, and the sheriff never caught any of the robbers.”