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: Chapter One
The warm desert sand felt good under Mouse's bare feet as he walked in the early morning. The fine grit rubbed between his broad toes, spilling over his toenails and the tops of his feet. Dust rose with each step in small cloudy puffs that clung to Mouse's dark skin giving him grayish socks beneath his brown trousers. His steps made regular, faint scrunching sounds in the sand and lizards and small mammals froze, waiting until he passed. Grains of the fine sand occasionally stuck between Mouse's toes, but each step pushed it out. Mouse had a pair of white man's shoes slung over one shoulder, the tied laces served as a built-in handle, but it was better in the early summer morning to walk in the warm sand with no shoes, even if it did stick between his toes. The shoes might be needed later, however, so he kept them. They had been given to him by the Mormons in St. Thomas, Nevada. The Mormons gave Mouse the shoes; the long sleeved, collarless shirt he wore buttoned all the way to the top, and also the brown trousers which covered his legs. He believed the Mormons gave him these things because they wanted him to come to church with them and become a Mormon. In 1896, the Mormons were always trying to get the Southern Paiutes to join their church. Mouse would take everything they wanted to give, but he would never become a Mormon. He stopped and squinted into the sun over his back-trail. The lines crinkling out from the corners of black eyes deepened as he surveyed the ground. His steps had left hollows in the sand and he could see his track weaving through the pale, pungent sagebrush on the gradual slope behind him. The Mojave Desert air was clear and sharp. Not a cloud showed in the deep blue sky. Mouse knew there would be no wind today to blow dust and cover the regular depressions left by his feet. Even a white man sheriff should be able to follow that track, Mouse thought. He turned and continued northwest up the slope toward the jagged red peaks in the distance; his steps scrunch, scrunching in a steady cadence. In four hours the fiery summer sun would turn the sand scalding hot and even his heavily calloused feet would feel the heat. Already, larger desert dwellers like the coyote and kit fox had taken shelter. Blistering July days were for resting and sleeping while the cool nights were for hunting and traveling. Mouse knew this, but he also knew the white man sheriff, John Currie, would be after him this day. Three nights ago he had broken a small window in Bunker's General Store in St. Thomas in order to take a broad-bladed hunting knife and sheath from a front display. It was not the first time he had taken things from the small general store, but it was the first time he had broken a window, and it was the first time someone had seen him. Mouse saw the woman who witnessed him breaking the window. He knew she raced home and told her husband, who told someone else, who told someone else, until by noon the next day, everyone was aware of the incident. By the following day, Mouse knew the Mormons in the town had gotten word to Sheriff John Currie who spent most of his time in other parts of Southern Nevada. The Mormons had left Mouse alone, knowing that the sheriff would come to St. Thomas this day, and he would take care of the Southern Paiute. Sheriff John Currie would come from wherever he had been and he would arrest Mouse for stealing the knife; arrest him and lock him in jail. Mouse knew this and it was not good. He had been in jail before and he didn't like it. St. Thomas, where the Muddy and Virgin rivers met before trickling some twenty miles south to add their meager splashes to the Colorado River, had a tiny jail made from quarried stones. There were two windowless cells in the jail and a wooden door that stayed closed until the prisoners were fed twice a day; morning and night. The door had a tiny window with thick iron bars that let in air and enough light during the day so a man could pass the time counting the rocks mortised together in his stone home. |
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