With Blood in Their Eyes

Chapter Three: 1918

Chapter Three 1918 They were losing light when Tom made his way through the bosque to where they had camped. Sisson was sitting under one tree, John’s body was on its side under another. Sisson had a rifle aimed at Tom, then turned it away. “You all right?” Tom asked. Sisson nodded. “How about him?” “He’s had a rough go of it. Fell asleep awhile ago. Ain’t stirred since. I got the splinter out.” “That ought to have been fun for the both of you.” Sisson nodded to where John still lay, unstirring. “You want me to take a look at yours?” Tom looked back over to John. “Nah. I think I’ll take my chances. You take the eye out?” Sisson shook his head. “Just the splinter.” “I’ll still take my chances.” He walked over to where John slept. The sleep of the dead. He couldn’t help but think that. The sleep of the dead. He knelt down and shook John’s shoulder. Sisson would remember the gesture as one of love and gentleness and that it hadn’t surprised him. For all their bickering, for Tom’s acid tongue, they were brothers and loved each other as brothers. Therewastheolderbrother,Charlie,whohadtakenoffjustaftertheyarrived in the Galiuros. He had taken up cowboying in New Mexico rather than staying with the family. And the family had a deep and seething resentment of that. A note had come nearly a year ago that Charlie had lost a hand, and probably his ability to make a living, in a mining accident in New Mexico. Tom had read the note aloud to both the Old Man and John. At the end of the reading, they had looked at each other, confirming that none of them was much interested in what had happened to Charlie. They went back to work. “Come on, John. We got fresh horses, we got dark, and we got to ride. Now.” John came slowly back to consciousness and nodded as though he had been asleep only seconds, just nodded off. He rose, dusted off his pants, took a quick 25 Thomas Cobb swipe at the line of scab and gore from his eye, recoiled, and went off to get his saddle and gear. When the fight was over and the outcome was clear, Tom and John had dragged their father from the front of the cabin to the entrance to the mine. The mine was his dream, the cabin only a place to sleep. While the brothers tended to their father, Sisson had gone looking for the horses that had been spooked just before the fighting started. Failing to find them, he took the two horses and mule that the lawmen had tied up just over the ridge from the cabin. He had packed their camp supplies and got them ready for the ride. Tom Sisson was like much that surrounded the Power family—pretty well broken down. He had done time in the Arizona State Penitentiary at Florence for horse theft. He denied the charge that he was a horse thief for the rest of his life, but so did the Old Man, Jeff Power, who had a knack for acquiring horses. Sisson had been released from the army in 1892 at Fort Grant, Arizona, some twenty miles from the Galiuros. The Apache Wars were over. Geronimo had surrendered to General Nelson A. Miles in 1886, and though there was an occasional skirmish later, the battle for Apachería had ended, and so had the career of Thomas Sisson, aged twenty-three. He worked odd jobs around the Sulphur Springs Valley in south-central Arizona, cowboying when he could, laboring when that was what was available. He was illiterate and unable to sign his own name. He had learned both blacksmithing and wheelwrighting in the army, and he could often find work doing those jobs on a ranch or in a livery. He was a good farrier, but he lacked the initiative to do it on his own. He did not like being in the position of having to makedecisions.Decisionstormentedhim.Howsomeonecouldmakeadecision, not already knowing the outcome but somehow projecting out into the future, baffled Sisson. When he made a decision, it was usually wrong, so he tried his best not to make one. What he liked was being told what to do. In 1915 he was working in Aravaipa Canyon, finishing up some chores for a rancher there, when he ran into Jeff Power...