Beyond the Horizon by Ryan Ireland Page A

know of prayer, but this wish that he be killed quickly came as close to prayer as he had ever been. It quieted his mind.
    He had not been asleep long when he stirred from slumber, feeling another’s eyes upon him. He started awake and squinted against the flames of the still raging fire. A tall figure stood opposite the fire looking at the man. He was familiar. Haze from sleep still clouded the man’s vision. The figure moved and picked something off the floor. The man hunched forward and suddenly recognized the figure to be the stranger he had entrusted his wife to.
    â€˜You,’ he said aloud. His voice resonated in the stone cavern of the kiva.
    The stranger stepped forward, holding whatever it was between his fingers like an alm offered up to some deity. His boot came down on the log, sending embers flurrying up into the air. He looked up over the head of the man. The man looked to the same spot.
    The Indian chief stood there. The white horse stood by his side. The man jumped up and treaded backward. He looked for the stranger. The stranger was gone—no more than part of a dream. Frantically he searched his pockets. He pulled out the shiv and shook it in front of him.
    â€˜Come down here ya nigger and I’ll run this through yer eye.’
    The Indian chief appeared slightly bemused by the man. He watched as the man pantomimed stabbing him through the eye. As the man danced around the fire pit, the logs collapsed into coals and a few licks of flames now and again.
    â€˜Send yer other nigger with the hat down then,’ the man said. The resolve had left his voice and when he issued the challenge it was tinged with resignation. He stopped moving around the pit. A dull clank cried out in the night when he dropped the shiv. Then he sat on his haunches. Though his words were no more than murmurs, than sobs, the acoustics made his ramblings audible to the chief.
    â€˜Just go on an kill me if thats what you aim to do,’ he said. ‘Do it quick if you can. Wont be the worse that ever been done to me.’ He cried for a while, head down and eyes scrunched shut, anticipating a blow to the back of the head at any moment. When he opened his eyes and looked back up, the chief still watched.
    â€˜I’s just trying to get to Fort James,’ he said.
    The chief’s eyes went alight.
    â€˜You know it,’ the man said. ‘You know Fort James?’
    The chief raised his index finger, the hand of bone flexing with his own, fleshed hand, pointing seemingly at the stars. The man began to stand up, but a hand on his shoulder spun him around. He came face to face with the painted Apache. The Indian raised a hatchet into the air and brought the blunt butt side down on the man’s eye. Blackness engulfed him.
    The boy and his father were released from the cellar immediately. Though a dulled cloudy grey, the light outside caused in both of them a temporary blindness. They were afforded a room at the inn down by the docks and given clothes. The innkeeper did not look the father in the eye when he said the room was already paid for. Whatever fortunes had been bestowed on them, their benefactor remained unknown.
    The boy had his suspicions though. It was when they were telling the witch doctor about the Sargasso. The boy had been struggling to find a proper lie when his father interrupted.
    â€˜It was the Sargasso,’ he said.
    â€˜Yes, the Sargasso,’ the doctor said. ‘Heard of it. Doldrumed place.’
    â€˜Aye.’
    The boy decided he needed to say the rest. ‘Men there acted like animals.’
    â€˜Your men? Your shipmates?’
    The boy nodded. ‘Did things like eat each other, stick their pricks in each other—’ The father coughed abruptly. ‘The Portuguese ate a candle.’
    The doctor’s eyes went alight. ‘A candle, as in a taper?’
    â€˜Yes,’ the boy nodded eagerly.
    The doctor shifted his weight on the stool,