White Sands

By Philip Corbett

February, 1896. A prominent attorney and his eight-year-old son disappear near the White Sands of New Mexico, presumed murdered.

Seven years later, during a traditional rite of passage, a young Native American experiences visions that unlock the staggering truth about his heritage. These revelations catapult him, and his family, into the corrupt world of the ‘bilagaana’ white man. As the young man faces up to the shocking reality of his past, he hurtles towards the most daunting decision of his life - justice, or cold-blooded vengeance?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Philip Corbett
• Release date: May 19, 2011
• ISBN: 9781458111920

Philip Corbett

Philip Corbett is somewhere between 35 - 45 years old. He looks mildly concerned most of the time. Originally from Scotland, he now lives near Market Harborough in the heart of England.

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White Sands

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The Henry Jennings Fountain Story

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Part One

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by

Philip Corbett

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White Sands

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© Copyright 2011 Philip Corbett

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Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Dedicated to Oma

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FOREWORD

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The following is true.

On February 1st, 1896, prominent attorney and Civil War veteran Colonel Albert Jennings Fountain and his eight-year-old son, Henry, disappeared near the White Sands area of New Mexico.

Suspicion immediately fell on a brutal cartel of ranchers under investigation by Fountain at the time. Despite overwhelming evidence, the courts acquitted landowner Oliver Lee, and ranchers Jim Gililland and William McNew.

The bodies of Albert and Henry Jennings Fountain have never been discovered.

PROLOGUE

I think my name is Henry Jennings Fountain.

No one has ever told me this. It is more than a suspicion, but not quite a memory, an awareness that fleets to mind and then retreats before I can grasp it fully. It is one of several such thoughts, borne out of an earlier life that is not discussed. I suspect those around me know, but still, it is not discussed.

Nor is my first father. My memory of him is more enduring, a solid cord tied at the other end to a life that seemed to never exist. But occasionally I can grasp this and pull it towards me, to see what was denied me, and when I see, I cherish the thought of my first father, my white father, my real father.

He is a rough charcoal sketch on old paper, very slightly animated, just enough to convince me he was once real. Outlined in broad strokes, there is no detail at first, just hard, dark edges where the charcoal crunches into the paper, around his eyes and the firm line of his jaw and where his collar turns taut against the winter wind. Soft, lighter strokes where there is movement and detail – the brim of his hat flicking, the fine wisps of moustache against his cheeks, the turn of his mouth. He is looking ahead but talking to me, laughter glinting from the corner of his eye, his face silhouetted against the bleak winter sun over the white sands beyond.

But I sense he will never be more than this, never more than a memory.

My new father is not a memory. If the memory of my first father is a sketch, my new father is a painting, a large slab of heavy colour, rich in tone and human depth. I can reach out and touch my new father; I can hear him, speak with him. He is very real indeed, a canvas hung on the wall of my life, and his eyes follow me everywhere. And my new father knows. He knows of my past. Every morning, he looks at me with a fresh sadness, a sadness that he cannot bring himself to share.

My third father, I have never seen. He is a presence. He is the whispering tree in the forest, the fleeting shadow at the edge of your vision, the reflection in the river that you can never fully identify. He is the feeling you are being followed.

Which, indeed, I am. He has walked with me always. At first, from a distance, and then, in my eighth year, he moved close and I felt his touch upon me for the first time. That was many years ago. Now, every day, he is watching and waiting. He is never far. I wish him no ill, yet I do not long to greet him. I simply accept him, and that he will walk with me throughout my life.

I think my name is Henry Jennings Fountain.

My people call me Hok'ee.

And Death walks with me.

CHAPTER ONE

We had hunted together since childhood, since I first came to their family, eight years earlier, and they had taught me well.

We hunted with bows and knives. Stay light, stay nimble, stay silent, our Navajo father Niyol would say. When I hunted alone, I would cheat and take the rifle from the cabin of our white friend, Clay Wilberforce, but I would face a lecture from Niyol for using the weapon in preference to my bow. But today, we hunted with bows and knives.

Stay light, stay nimble, and stay silent. This also meant very little clothing - breeches, a vest top, and soft hunting boots which, for February, in the Gila Mountains, New Mexico, was far less than the minimum for comfort, but we endured.

Our reward would be fresh meat for supper. Deer, if we hunted well. If we hunted poorly, it would be hare.

The mule deer we were now stalking had a coat as grey as a winter river that glistened in the broken sunshine as he stopped to graze. His donkey-like ears twitched as he nibbled the grass. He was large for a mule deer, would probably stand shoulder to shoulder against me, but despite his height and bulk, if he ran we had no hope of matching him for speed.

My brothers and I picked our way carefully over the soft mat of pine needles. With the wave of a finger, Arrow indicated he was looping around to the right, and Rabbit made the same gesture, disappearing to the left. The trees ahead thinned slightly, a clearing with just enough cover for us, but not enough for the deer. It was a perfect kill spot. If we could circle the buck in this area and one of us got a clear shot, we had every chance.

My brothers were out of sight. I counted silently to the cadence of my own breathing. I knew they would be in position when I finished counting down, we had hunted this way for years, and like me, they would have an arrow nocked against the bowstring, ready to be drawn. I counted down against my own heartbeat as it thudded noisily inside my chest.

A soft breeze lifted the leaves and tilted the grass. It was barely noticeable but I froze. I was upwind of the deer.

The buck snapped his head up from the grass, his nose twitching and eyes manic on the sides of his head. After a brief moment of indecision, he was off, swallowed by the pines.

I cursed and took off after him, crashing through the undergrowth.

Rabbit came after the buck from the left. Arrow was gone, hunting his own way. If the deer headed deeper into the forest, we would lose him quickly in the greenery, but he bolted in the other direction, out of the forest, where the trees were sparser, we just needed to keep him in sight...

Downhill, our momentum carried us quicker than our legs could and we leapt and ducked and skirted all the obstacles of the forest, tree stumps, branches, dead logs, ditches, the slope grasping at our balance all the way.

The buck was moving quickly now, quicker than us, towards the edge of the forest, but once on the open hillside, if we could get a shot off, we still had a good chance.

I needed to slow, to bring my heart rate right down, or I would be heaving for air while trying to shoot my bow. I could not stop dead, gravity was against me. All I could do to slow down was shorten my stride, legs still pumping down the slope but I began to slow, and I re-nocked the arrow as I pulled up. There was sunlight above as the canopy thinned, and the trees visibly fell away. Finally I was slowing down. With twenty strides to go to the tree-line I could see the buck was in the clear. Within ten strides, I had slowed to a walk, breathing deeply, and Rabbit appeared to my left, loading his own bow. Arrow appeared to my right, and we were all at the forest edge. Clear blue skies. I felt hard rock beneath our feet. We stopped in a line.

The buck was already thirty yards clear of the tree line, scampering down the dusty slope. I placed three fingers around the string. The deer was now forty yards clear. Our bow arms came up as one. Fifty yards. Our string arms drew back together in a fluid motion, bodies perfect tee shapes. Sixty yards. Right hand, just by the corner of the mouth. Anchor point. Seventy yards clear, breathe. Eighty yards, aim. Ninety yards, exhale. One hundred yards clear, release.

~

Clay laughed as he wiped gravy from his chin with his sleeve. I don't care who made the kill, best damn meal I had in months.

I tell you, it was me! Rabbit protested. They may have slowed it down with their bows, but it was my blade that finished him off. Arrow rolled his eyes at me and grinned.

Anyway, I had him clear in my sights before Hok'ee farted.

Before I could object, Rabbit had his open palm held to my face.

Don't try and deny it, brother, how else could it have smelt you coming? There was no wind, apart from your breakfast escaping. When will you ever learn, bilagaana? He used the old Navajo word for white man whenever he mocked my hunting. Bilagaana can't hunt, only with guns, and lots of them.

I'll go up against you any day, brother, your bow and your non-stop tongue, and me with one of Clay's rifles, I said. Clay nodded his approval.

Now that's a challenge, Rabbit, Clay agreed. There's nobody in the whole of New Mexico I'd wager to beat your brother with a sniper rifle. Best student I ever had, he grinned.

You have been living with us since I was a baby, Clay, and you never let me use one of your rifles. You know your problem, Clay? You're turning into one of them Indian-haters. You just don't like Navajo, taunted Rabbit.

Clay almost choked on his food. Hah! First, I don't live with you! Your village is half a mile that way, he jerked his thumb over his shoulder to the base of the mountain, and, secondly, I've shown you how to reload the Whitworth! In fact, you're quite good at it.

Oh, that's a real accolade, Clay, thanks. Rabbit the Re-loader, maybe they will call me that one day. Why have you never taught us how to use it?

Your father would hang me if I taught you how to use a rifle, you know that. He only permits Hok'ee to use it because he is bilagaana. Besides, if I'm that bad a neighbour, I teach you to use that rifle, what's to stop you turning and using it on me?

Don't you trust me, Clay? Rabbit drifted into a long objection. His Navajo name was Ata'halne - He Who Interrupts. It was very apt, and it wasn't uncommon for me and Arrow to take him hunting just to force him to silence. Even that didn't always work, many deer has escaped us due to the overactive tongue of our little brother.

A single haunch of the day's kill roasted over the glowing pit, slivers and shards of fat fuelled flame striking high into the dusk. It was between afternoon and evening, although dark enough already that the fire cast the only light, but there was still warmth in the air itself.

I looked at Clay's worn face. He must have seen sixty, maybe sixty-five winters, but the flames cast harsh shadows that could add a dozen more to that number. I knew his appearance was worsened by his visit to Las Cruces the previous day, as many hours in the saddle took their toll on him now. Despite his years and his obvious fatigue, his bright eyes laughed louder than his mouth as Rabbit continued his ranting, and finally Clay stood, exasperated.

Enough, Rabbit, wait there. Let's see if we can shut you up. He sauntered off into the gloom of his cabin and returned with two long, slender rifles under his arm. Clay handled the weapons as a mother of six would handle her seventh baby, with ease and confidence but with tender care, all in equal measure.

He passed one to Rabbit, and the other to Arrow, and they admired the weapons at arm’s length. I knew both of these rifles. I knew their characteristics. I knew which had the most recoil. I knew the subtle difference in their sighting mechanisms. I knew the different sounds they made when fired.

Clay had used both rifles in the Civil War, when he served as a sniper in the Confederate Army. Whitworth rifles. British made, point four-five-one calibre. They were effective up to one thousand yards, and deadly up to eight hundred yards, in the right hands.

But they had just passed from the right hands to the wrong hands. Both my brothers were looking down the sights into the fire. Rabbit jerked his head at me. Is this the one?

I shook my head. No, it was neither of these. Clay looked at me quizzically. General Lytle. He rolled his eyes.

How many times, he groaned.

Is this the rifle you used? Is it, Clay? Tell us about it again!

Rabbit, you have heard this half a dozen times, I groaned.

That's as may be, but it's just the best fire side tale, Hok'ee. I couldn’t argue with him. It was true. Clay, don't pull that face - you love to tell us about your Civil War days.

But it's 1903! The battle was forty years ago! he protested modestly, but his eyes burned even brighter as we settled like little boys, captivated by his retelling of the Battle of Chickamauga in 1863, forty years earlier, the height of the Civil War. Clay had taken the life of Union General William Lytle as he led a charge against the Confederate lines, and turned the direction of the battle. The single shot, which was now legendary throughout the South, had never been accredited to Clay.

By the time Clay finished the tale, Rabbit was a rattlesnake coiled with a thousand questions, waiting to strike, and Arrow and I sighed with relief as our father arrived.

Ya'ateeh! Niyol greeted us, strolling from the trees into the dome of firelight.

Ya'ateeh, we all replied warmly.

Good kill! Father nodded at the haunch of venison roasting over the pit. He looked disapprovingly at the guns, sniffed, and went to examine the rest of the deer, hanging from the canopy of Clay's cabin. Finding the two arrow wounds in the back and shoulders of the carcass, his expression changed to one of hearty approval.

Very good kill, he said, his eyes twinkling at Arrow and me. Noticing Rabbit's hopeful gaze, Niyol continued to inspect the corpse. And here, he fingered the throat wound which had finally killed the deer, an expert final cut. Well done. Rabbit beamed.

Niyol's face straightened as he came to stand between us. Ata'halne! Motega! he used Arrow's Navajo name - New Arrow. Your mother and sisters hunger. Please, take your floppy eared friend home and help your mother prepare him. Niyol was oddly serious and distracted this evening. Rabbit would normally groan and complain, but sensing father's mood, he obeyed without his usual objections. They passed the rifles back to Clay. Arrow hoisted the deer easily across his vast shoulders, and they began the short walk back to the village.

I would talk with Clay and Hok'ee a while, Niyol called after them as they wandered off into the darkness.

Niyol motioned for me to sit by the fire, and then followed the old man into the cabin. Clay slid the rifles back into the hessian bags and I heard the familiar rasping as he slid them across the rough-hewn floor to their place under his bed.

I tried very hard not to eavesdrop on the murmured conversation, but poking the fire with a stick offered little distraction. The conversation grew intense and their voices rose, with Clay finally shouting, Then why seek my opinion at all? The cabin door flew open and both Niyol and Clay were staring me down as they approached.

I hate this! Clay continued. Why do you Navajo have to interfere with everything? Why can't you leave well alone?

Because all is not well, Clay Wilberforce. We have spoken about this. We assume it is well, but all our men go to the mountain at this age. Yes, he is bilagaana, but he is also Navajo, and he has more reason to go to the mountain than most.

He has never asked!

By not asking, his curiosity burns only brighter. He has a right to know.

My heart picked up speed. I had been waiting for this moment for years. I had never asked, knowing this day would come, but now, I asked. I spoke in Navajo. It seemed appropriate.

My curiosity, when it burns, burns hot and bright, but most days it is doused in the contentment of my Navajo life, my Navajo family. Clay, I looked him straight in the eye, you are a match to the kindling of my questions. You are bilagaana. You bring more questions to my mind than you bring answers. I ask you nothing about my life, yet I think you know much. Clay struggled to hide his discomfort. You chose to turn your back on the way of the white man. You chose the Indian life. That decision was denied me, it was not mine to make, but I would know my past. I would have my memory set free.

No good can come of this, Clay stressed as he shook his head. His eyes pleaded with mine. What could he know of my past?

I turned to my father.

I am ready.

That night, I went to the mountain.

CHAPTER TWO

I was spent. The peyote had scoured my insides, cleared me out, but the thick black liquid still clung to every tooth and hung from every fold of my tongue, nothing was moving the bitter black tar that the elders had given me to drink, and every dry swallow was a bitter mouthful of nettle. I was on my knees, then on all