Constellations of Bone

Chapter One, Constellations of Bone ©

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Chased and Chaser: March, 1910

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The heat would come up behind him, following the sun. Within the hour, cold sunlight would stretch across the deep, still congress of shadows now chilling the jagged, rock-strewn arroyos like a tyrant’s smile. Heat would follow.

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Dan Hitchins clasped the collar of his worn and dusty sheepskin jacket tightly around his neck in a fist. He felt the stubble on his chin with his knuckles. He tugged on the rope in his other hand and, making an inward sucking sound through his teeth, encouraged the burro to keep pace. Hitchins and the burro stumbled on, exhausted, having traveled through the night without stopping. The temperature had continued to drop as each dark hour passed and now, just before daybreak, it was at its coldest, close to freezing.

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Cold and tired, Hitchins pushed forward into the brittle desert air at a regular, slow pace, stumbling over loose rocks. His cheeks and nose and hands burned from the cold. The burro was reluctant to move. Few thoughts cluttered Hitchins’ perception of his arid surroundings and a steady flow of visual sensations arose to fill his eyes and mind. The moon was near-full and illuminated the landscape of shadows with crisp, blue-green moonlight.

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When a thought did come to the surface of Hitchins’ mind, erupting through his calm sensations, he quickened his pace, looking over his shoulder at the eastern horizon, and felt a troubled pounding in his chest. Few thoughts came to his mind. Those that did brought on the same uneasy emotional response.

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Fear.

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Daybreak came quietly slinking over the ridge, early sunbeams like the fingers of a blind man, and color rushed back into the scenery.

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Hitchins was thirsty. Drawing his goat-bladder bota bag to his chapped lips, he washed the sour dryness out of his mouth before swallowing. The burro nibbled at a mesquite bush that was coming to life with sunrise color. Morning had not yet dispelled the chill in the air though moonlight had already drained away into the sandy earth before the onrush of daylight.

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Hitchins forced his weary eyes to travel the horizon from end to end, a precaution that had in the last three years become habit with him. His eyes moved slowly, looking for details of motion, a metallic reflection, anything out of the ordinary. The sun had not lifted itself to the edge of the ridge, but an overspill of light preceded it.

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The burro settled down for a rest and Hitchins, fatigued, stood, hanging on his skeleton like old clothing on a scarecrow. He sat heavily on a large rock and, fumbling through his inner pockets with numb fingers for a tobacco pouch and rolling papers, started to make plans for the next few days while his squinted eyes moved across the ridge horizon.

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If he could get to San Bernardino and a Mormon family he knew there, Hitchins thought, he would be able to hide out, regain his strength, then move on to San Pedro. From there it would be a cinch with the help of Wobbly friends to move in any direction he wanted without being followed.

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The first draw of the cigarette was tart, dry, and aromatic. Hitchins forgot everything in his head and let the warmth and taste of the coarse southwestern tobacco circulate in his lungs before he exhaled. Still exhausted, he felt less tense, more relaxed. The burro lifted her head and searched the air for the odor. Catching it, the burro’s head slowly returned to the ground, eyes closed, rewarded. A few strands of tobacco came out on Hitchins’ lips and he chewed them with his front teeth, savoring their raw flavor. Opening his mouth, he drew the smoke from the thin, rolled cigarette through his nose. He watched shadows disappear on the high desert and let himself fall into light, anxious sleep.

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Hitchins was aroused from slumber by a faint sound in the distance. Small and distinct, like the sound of a stalk of celery being snapped in half. He forced weighted eyelids to open and gazed at the ridge, turning his head rapidly from one end to the other. The sun was edging over the horizon and Hitchins shaded his eyes against its demanding brilliance.

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The sun’s warmth hit him directly in the face. He had no time to enjoy it. He concentrated on every boulder and mesquite along the lip of the ridge. Slowly, he eased himself down and around behind the rock he had been sitting on. The burro, roused from her own slumber, perhaps by a sound or smell, perhaps by the tenseness Hitchins was generating, seemed puzzled and concerned.

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“Sleep, girl. Sleep,” Hitchins whispered reassuringly, reaching over and scratching the animal’s forehead. “Everything’s fine, real fine. Go to sleep now, girl,” he said, distracted, his attention fixed on the ridge.

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He felt for the bulky Schofield revolver he had taken off a soldier in Goldfield, Nevada a few years earlier when President Roosevelt sent three companies of infantry to break the strike that Hitchins helped organize for the Western Federation of Miners and the IWW. The Industrial Workers of the World was Hitchins’ family, his wife, his religion. In an unlit alley, where the trooper was frisking an IWW comrade, Hitchins sucker punched him from behind with a blackjack made of a hand-size stone in an old wool sock. Too hard. The trooper died of brain concussion. Hitchins took the young man’s revolver before the trooper died and fled with his buddy. Probably just a kid from Indiana, Hitchins thought in passing.

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Hitchins muttered an obscenity when a reflected glint on the ridge caught his eyes. The reflection repeated itself, coming from behind some low desert brush. He gauged the distance between that point and his own location to be less than 100 yards, a short distance made long by the depth of the ravine that separated the two points. About a forty-five-minute hike, he figured as he took in the difficulties that separated him from the reflection.

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While Hitchins measured time and distance, a small, gray puff issued from the glint behind the brush and some sand kicked up about ten feet to his right. The burro was on her feet, moving nervously in place. The sound of the rifle shot echoed and sank in the ravine.

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“Sonuvabitch, he’s right there,” Hitchins cursed as he drew his revolver. “He’s got a goddam bead on me,” he said to no one, frightened at the awareness. He put his fist to his mouth and bit the flesh. “Sonuvabitch.”

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An angry and terrified expression crossed Hitchins’ face as he gazed intently across the ravine, for the moment unable to move. He wanted to cry. There were no tears.

 

“Dear Jesus,” he whimpered under his breath, “why can’t I lose the bastard?”

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The next shot, its sound swallowed by the gapping ravine, dropped the burro to its knees and Hitchins heard the shocked, harsh whine of disbelief gurgle from her throat as he watched her roll to her side, dead. Blood spurting from just below the animal’s ear put Hitchins in a panic and, disregarding his pack, he ran, revolver in hand, away from the rifleman across the ravine.

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By mid-morning, Hitchins was unable to continue. Weariness overcame fear and a prolonged exhaustion of body overwhelmed his mind. He curled up in a partially-shaded spot under a creosote bush beside a cluster of boulders and fell into dreamless sleep, the bulky Schofield still in hand.

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The sun moved overhead and those few animals that had scavenged in the morning disappeared into the cooler floor of the high desert. Cotton-tailed rabbits, white-tailed antelope squirrels, and Mojave green rattlesnakes sought and found shade in rocky crevices, under straggly sagebrush, and in deep burrows. The sky was cloudless, endless, and pale blue. Red-tailed hawks and turkey vultures flew in large and lazy circular argument with each other. Heat waves rose in curls from the earth and distorted the atmosphere, otherwise clear and distinct. The air did not move except for these rising heat waves. There was no breeze.

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The sun slowly reached around and over the protective creosote bush that was overhanging and shading Hitchins. Inch by fraction of inch, the sun moved around the creosote and reached out for Hitchins, first grasping his feet, then gradually up his legs, penetrating and drying, heating, burning. He was unconscious of the heat. Days of difficult and troubled travel, together with increasing preoccupation and fear, had reduced him to the point where his only understanding was one he stumbled on in disturbed dreams.

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When the sun reached Hitchins’ exposed hands and pulled relentlessly at the moisture in them, he did not awake. Beneath his jacket, a liquid perspiration soaked his clothing and, unnoticed, worked to create, first, a fever in the sleeping man and, then, a delirium that would greet the man when he awoke.

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The sun eventually covered Hitchins’ face and settled there, direct and uninterrupted, until late afternoon, when Hart opened his eyes and turned his head abruptly away from the slanting light.

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He was unable to separate the objects of his dreams and the things around him when he awoke and he could not shake a sense of reality into his head or vision. He was uncertain if he were awake or asleep. His neck ached and the soreness that affected his bones was profound and abiding. The muscles that ran down his neck into his shoulders throbbed and the fever in his head seemed to produce a dozen simultaneous headaches in his eyes, his forehead, behind his ears, deep in his cranium. Soreness, pain, delirium. Standing, Hitchins’ vision was unclear and he could not focus his attention. Within him a persistent fear urged him to immediate action, but he was unable to translate this into a single motion, a single step, and he stood next to the creosote bush, swaying, feeling each complaining part of his body, anxious and fearful, and finally fell to the ground, pitying and weeping for himself.

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The sun descended and the desert was filled with a lonely beauty as it withdrew. After minutes of despair, Hitchins managed to drink from his bota and rub his face vigorously with water. It did not enable him to focus clearly, but it did revive him from some of the dreams and delusions that clouded his dire reality. He began to walk, weaving, in a direction that would, he believed, lead him to his Mormon friend in San Bernardino. A weak determination, one barely able to outweigh his mental and physical sickness, kept him moving. He felt the aim of a rifle pinpointed on the nape of his neck and the spot burned with attention.

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He moved, waiting to die.

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He dragged his feet through the sand; the sun passed below the western horizon. He was unconscious of the obvious trail he left.

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Hitchins’ one thought was of Hiram Sharp, an old Mormon friend in San Bernardino. Hiram would help him.

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Hitchins was helpless alone. He had always been helpless alone. His achievements in life came from working with others, a man in the crowd among the multitude. He had accomplished nothing by himself and he knew it.

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Hiram would forgive and comfort him.

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Hitchins followed the point on the horizon where the sun had succumbed to night.

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San Bernardino was directly to the west. All he needed to do was keep moving. If he could keep moving, he would be at Hiram’s ranch sometime in a day or two. Or three.

His judgment of place and hour was scrambled by lack of focus. Hiram’s ranch is to the west. He remembered that much as he walked and the memory kept him walking through heat and desperation.

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The rocky hills of the high desert gradually gave way to lower altitudes and leveled into a sandy plain with sparse creosote bushes, mesquite trees, and tumbleweed. With imperceptible, decimal precision, afternoon had descended into evening and evening into night, but Hitchins was unaware of day and night. He could not judge how far or long he had traveled. His feet were weights to be lifted for each step and he passed from semi-alert and painful awareness to drowsy unconsciousness, though his legs continued to carry him forward. He left a trail behind in the sand, one of dragging feet and pieces of clothing, a trail that could not be missed.

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The trail Hitchins left was of no importance to him. Fear of his pursuer had been replaced by fear for survival. It seemed in his trance of muscle and agony that it was more likely that he would die of his own weak efforts than an assassin’s bullet. The bullet, he thought, would be faster and easier.

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The afternoon sun had blistered his exposed face before it ran its course. The outer skin of his nose was swollen. Swollen cheeks forced him to squint through slat eyes. He fell frequently. Each time he rose, it was harder to struggle to his feet and regain momentum. Night sweat beaded and rolled from his forehead and neck and internal chills and contradiction shocked his frame and upended his dreams.

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When morning came, Hitchins was moving unconsciously, aimlessly.

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He knew he was dying.

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He sat on the barren earth and thought of rolling a cigarette. He could not find his rolling papers, but his hand pulled a small, crumpled card from an inside pocket. Hitchins' eyes were too sick and pained to be able to read the small print on the back of the card. On the front of the card, three large letters found their way through his clouded vision: IWW. Beneath these letters, above his signature, was a circle containing an arm holding a hammer.

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Hitchins fell over and began an intimate discussion with death.