The Son by Philipp Meyer

couldn’t see it. If a man has done it, so can you: that is what our father used to tell us.
    Then we were slapped awake. It was still dark and they tied us to the horses and there was a bright light in the distance that I knew was a burning homestead. I hadn’t thought there were whites this far out, but the land was rich and I could see why they had risked it. A few braves came up and I could tell they were pleased with the youngsters for getting us mounted.
    In the darkness we saw another dozen or so horses driven into the remuda. There were two new captives; by their crying we knew they were women and by their language we knew they were German, or Dutch as we called them back then.
    By sunrise we’d gone another fifty miles, changing horses twice. The Germans didn’t stop crying the entire night. When it was light enough we climbed a mesa, winding around the far side before coming up to watch our backtrail. The land had opened up; there were mesas, buttes, distant views.
    The Germans were as naked as we were. One was seventeen or eighteen and the other a little older, and while they were both covered in blood and filth it was obvious they were at the peak of their female charms. The more I looked at them, the more I began to hate them and I hoped the Indians would degrade them some more and I would be able to watch.
    My brother said, “I hate those Dutch women and I hope the Indians give them a good fucking.”
    “Me too.”
    “You seem to be holding up, though.”
    “Because I don’t keep falling off my horse.” We had stopped twice that night so they could lash my brother on tighter.
    “I’ve been trying to catch a hoof in the head, but I haven’t been so lucky.”
    “I’m sure Momma would be happy to hear that.”
    “You’ll make a good little Indian, Eli. I’m sorry I won’t be there to see it.”
    I didn’t say anything.
    “You know the reason I didn’t shoot is because I didn’t want them to hurt Mother or Lizzie.”
    “You froze up.”
    “They would have killed Mother anyway, that’s obvious, but they would have taken Lizzie with us. It was only because she’d been shot that . . .”
    “Shut up,” I said.
    “You didn’t have to see what they did to her.”
    I was looking at him. He looked the same as always with his squinty eyes and thin lips but he seemed like someone I’d known a long time ago.
    A little later he told me he was sorry.
    The Indians passed around a few pieces of jerked meat from the teamsters. One of the Germans asked me where I thought we were going. I pretended not to understand her. She knew better than to talk to Martin.
     
    T HE NEXT DAY the views got longer. We were in a canyon ten miles wide, the walls going up a thousand feet above us, all red rock. There were cottonwoods and hackberries but not many other trees and we passed a magenta spear point in the sand, twin to the one I’d seen below our house. There were stone creatures in every rock and stream bank: a nautilus big as a wagon wheel, the horns and bones of animals larger than anything still alive on the earth.
    Toshaway told me in Spanish that by fall the canyon would be full of buffalo. He was appreciating the scene. There were long tufts of black hair streaming from the cedar and mesquite; the buffalo had been using this place a long time.
    The Indians showed no sign of tiring or of wanting a proper feed, but the pace had slowed. My mouth was watering; any number of fish could have been speared as we passed: the water was full of yellow cats, eels, buffalo fish, and gar. I lost count of the whitetail and antelope. A cinnamon grizzly, the largest I’d ever seen, was sunning himself on a ledge. Springs flowing down cliff faces, pools underneath.
    That night we made our first real camp and I fell asleep in the rocks holding my brother. Someone put a buffalo robe over us and when I looked up, Toshaway was squatting next to me. His smell was becoming familiar. “Tomorrow we’ll make a fire,” he