Gabriel's Story by David Anthony Durham Read Free Book Online Page A

corner of the book and took a quick glance at it.
    â€œIt do too.” Ben made a point of pulling the book away and reading it at an awkward angle, away from James.
“ ‘Richardson
held the two remaining
banditos
at bay with his pistol cocked and
steady, still smoking from the damage it had already wreaked upon
the fiends. With his other hand, he cut the ropes from Miss Day’s
heaving bosom—’ ”
    â€œIt don’t say that!” James again grabbed for the book.
    Ben stretched his arms away. “It do too, you idjit. If you could read, you’d . . .” He tried to start reading again but gave up the effort and fell into a wrestling match with the other boy.
    Raleigh watched them with vague and mistrusting eyes, with the air of one who had seen such behavior before and was certain it led to no good. He snorted his judgment on the two. But then something caught his attention. He raised his head and scented the air and looked off to the north.
    Gabriel followed the horse’s gaze and at first saw nothing but flat prairie. He soon picked out a rider heading toward them at a steady canter. Gabriel watched him for a while in silence. As the man came closer, the boy recognized his clothes, his demeanor on the horse, his firm, forward-facing posture, and his dark face. He knew him not as an individual but as a member of a certain race, a people named in error.
    â€œThere’s an Indian.” He spoke in a voice barely audible, and the boys tussled on. “Ben, I said, there’s an Indian. Stop acting the fool and look.”
    This time the two boys did just that. At first neither was sure why or at what they were supposed to look. They gazed off in different directions, until Ben sighted the rider and let out a low whistle. James squinted and studied the horizon long and hard before he made the rider out. “You say he’s an Injun?”
    â€œIf I ever saw one,” Gabriel said.
    â€œWhat should we do?” Ben asked, grabbing for Raleigh’s hackamore. The action disturbed the horse. He snorted and stepped back, pulling the rope tight in the boy’s hand.
    â€œShhh,” Gabriel said, although nobody was making any noise to speak of. “Stop acting the fool. Just wait. He’s seen us sure as shit, so let’s just wait.”
    The native rider sat his horse bareback, with only a blanket between himself and the pinto’s mottled body. They moved like a single being, united in flesh. They trundled along with a rocking, relaxed motion, the hair of both horse and man flapping up and down with their strides. The man held something in his lap, but other than that, he was unencumbered and traveled light.
    Only as the Indian passed alongside them, about fifty yards away, did Gabriel realize that it was a rifle he held cradled across his thighs. It seemed a strangely fixed object, as if it were attached to the man’s lap as securely as he to the horse. The man neither slowed nor acknowledged the boys in passing. His eyes were set below a heavy brow. They fixed straight forward on a far distant object, as if his sight could reach beyond the horizon and was little troubled by the curvature of the earth. He moved on in a silence that seemed ghostly. Gabriel entertained the thought that he was witnessing not a man of flesh and blood but an ethereal rider passed from the netherworld into this one on a mission of vengeance for his vanishing people. Before long, the rider had grown small on the horizon and was lost to sight, and all was as before.
    The boys stood without speaking for a long while. Eventually Ben asked if all the Indians hadn’t been whipped and reserved. James said that most had been, in these parts at least, and he couldn’t make no sense of this whatsoever, him riding like he’s out for blood and all. Gabriel didn’t comment. He swept up their lunch spread and crammed it into the sack Hiram had rigged to the saddle. He