was crusted with drying blood. Scalps lay strewn in his wake. He did not keep trophies.
When a doctor told Eddy he would soon be enjoying the company of his friends, he broke out with much energy and said the best thing a friend could do would be to blow out his brains with a pistol. Raving for a full day or more, he exhausted himself and, quietly moving his head as he said 'Lord help my poor soul', expired. Baltimore newspapers reported that the poet's death was caused by 'congestion of the brain' or 'cerebral inflammation'.
With Brother Carey, Hendrik hunted down Gentile families. He razored off a mother's eyelids and forced her to watch as Carey eased his jackknife into her sons' throats. Her anguish was an offering. Gathering the woman's hair in his fist, he slid his blade around her skull, feeling the razor-edge scrape bone. He scalped her alive then stove in her brains with his boot-heel.
He yelled to the skies, to his dead brother, to goat-horned Jesus. Blood flowed into the American earth around his boots. He waded through the rivers of his sacrifices. Fresh water from the prized well of New Canaan would run pink for years.
His war cry choked and he had to catch his breath. Three Paiute braves stood a little way off, watching the Josephites make sacrifice of the Gentiles. The Indians seemed appalled. The practice of scalping had been introduced to the Americas by the French, Hendrik knew. Savagery came from men's hearts, not their skins.
'From this day,' said Crow Who Mourns, the Paiute chief, indicating Hendrik, 'you are Bonnet of Death, killer of women and children …'
There was no condemnation, exactly, in the Paiute's naming. Bui there was a recognition that Hendrik Shatner was not of the red man.
'This is a new land,' he shouted, a hank of long, bloody hair in his fist, 'and we are the new people!'
The Gentiles had been taken by surprise. The men, having invested so many hours of agony in their crops, tried first to save the fields, leaving their families for the knives and guns of the Josephites. They had quickly seen their mistake. There were bloody black hats in the dust and Indians had fallen too.
But Hendrik was invincible. He might have taken another ball in his leg, but he could feel nothing.
Bonnet of Death, killer of women and children, abandoned his bowie in the chest of an old man and continued to make sacrifice with his razor. The blade was thick and slippery with blood but its edge was not dulled.
Animals, freed from pens, ran loose. Josephites put bullets into goats and horses, though the Paiute let the animals pass. Crow Who Mourns had made treaty with the Josephites because a hard winter had carried off too many of the animals of the tribe, and he needed to replenish livestock through raiding. Unheeding pain, Brother Clegg charged at houses, tearing with his hands, scattering stone, uprooting timbers, felling roofs.
In flashes, Hendrik saw the white plain extending around the burning blotch of New Canaan. The plain could absorb any amount of blood and flame.
The Ute strode through it all, approving the sacrifices, silently killing where he could. Eddy Poe had been one more sacrifice, important enough for the Ute to take a personal interest. Hendrik understood that the poet had been some crazed kind of three-fifths genius. The greater the potential that was lost, the greater the offering. He wondered if men or women of genius had died this morning in New Canaan. Was there a child among the dead who would have been a painter, a discoverer, a singer?
In the centre of the nascent town was a half-built church, a raised wooden floor and the skeleton of a tower. A bell, laboriously conveyed through the desert, stood ready to be hauled up. At intervals, Josephites would fire shots at the bell, producing an unresonant dinging.
Brother Carey found a preacher, stripped of his collar but still wearing his black shirt, and pinned him down on the churchless floor, piercing his hands and feet with knife-thrusts. The Josephite had emptied his gun minutes ago. The preacher opened his mouth – to pray? to curse? – and Carey jammed a stone into it. Brother Carey fell upon the Gentile and stabbed him again and again in the belly, ripping free the ropes of his innards, strewing them across the boards.
Hendrik walked towards Brother Carey and the preacher. As he stepped, he froze. Carey was distracted by some sound and looked away. Hendrik saw the perfect circle of his black hat for an instant before its centre became a red splash. Carey fell dead on his still-living sacrifice, his face shot away. At that moment, timbers burned through and the church tower collapsed like a straw house.
Hendrik went to a crouch, alert, taking cover behind the bell. Someone with a rifle had intervened. He remembered the horseman of the dawn and, with a dizzying certainty, knew the stranger was Brother Carey's murderer.
He looked to the fields. They had burned down to stubble. Thinning smoke poured into the air, a veil over the landscape. Through the gauzy wisps, Hendrik saw the horse and the rider. They advanced deliberately through the burned fields. Hendrik lost himself in the shimmer, a great tiredness falling upon him.
The horseman could not possibly reload his rifle in the saddle. Hendrik stood up, ready to chance a bullet, and stepped away from the bell. The boards under his boots were slippery. He was shivering again, shocked awake. The cries of the dead pressed in on him. Again, he had made sacrifice and not been freed. The white pain still waited. He cast his razor away.
No Gentile stood. Josephites had fallen too, and Indians. Animals and men kicked their last, leaking life into the soil, seeding the dirt. Maybe these sacrifices would be the foundation of Joseph's shining city.
The horseman advanced, empty rifle held easily. Hendrik saw a battered face under a battered hat. A long duster lifted in the breeze around his flanks.
To Hendrik, the saddle tramp looked like an executioner from God. He strode past Carey and his kill, stepping off the floor that would never be covered by a church. After a dozen strides, he was walking on the crunchy black stubble of the field. His bootsoles wanned in the thick ash. A ripe, cooked-corn smell hung in the air.
Hendrik thought he must have sacrificed ten or twenty Gentiles He was Bonnet of Death. He stopped shaking. The stench of blood was as strong as the smell of the corn. All his offerings had been rejected. Despite it all, he was not free.
Somewhere, a goat-horned Jesus was laughing, and in his laughter was Eddy's
The horseman dismounted and slipped his rifle into a long holster by his saddle. A pistol hung on his hip.
Hendrik unholstered his Colt. It had been forgotten until now; neglected in favour of more personal killing irons. The gun was heavy in his hand. With his thumb, he eased back the firing hammer.
The horseman had also drawn his pistol. A curtain of smoke and low flame hung between them. The heat haze played tricks, making the horseman waver like a reflection in disturbed water.
Hendrik was aware of another in the field. The Ute, a long rifle raised as he paced steadily. Around his knees the flames still burned, but the sham Indian ignored any pain he felt. He waded through fire towards the stranger.
The horseman whirled around slowly, bringing up his pistol. He sighted on the Ute as the Ute sighted on him. The stranger presented his side to Hendrik.
At the edges of the smoking field, the survivors of the war party stood, silent like a congregation. Even the sorely wounded had hauled themselves to a position where they could watch. Crow Who Mourns held up his hand, keeping everyone else out of the drama. This was between the three of them.
The horseman and the Ute were fixed on each other, like a hawk and a snake. Their guns held steady. Hendrik brought up his Colt and sighted on the horseman. The stranger had a thick moustache and a crinkle of lines around his ice-blue eyes. A straggle of white-blond hair escaped from under his hat.
The three men stood, fingers tight on triggers. The moment extended. Hendrik realised his own hand was shaking. He saw the stranger in his line of fire but he also saw the whole scene from above. A triangle of men in a black-burned scar on an infinite plain of white. The black patch seemed smaller, the white sands a continent.
He blinked and focused on his gunsight. Beyond was the red-painted face of the Ute, mirror glasses flashing sunlight.
He glanced away at the horseman, who stood like a statue, and back at the Ute.
In the mirror-glasses, Hendrik saw tiny reflections. His own image was held in one lens, the horseman's in the other.
'Thou must make sacrifice, Hendrik,' the Ute said.
Hendrik had been made to kill women and children. He had been made to do worse things than that.
The horseman did not avert his eyes from the Ute. The smoke was almost cleared now.
