Free Come Sundown by Mike Blakely

Mexico night. I started for my room at La Fonda, but Hatcher caught me by the sleeve.
    â€œThis way,” he said. “Blue already moved your things to another room. We figured that gambler might have had you followed last night.”
    â€œGood thinking,” I said.
    Blue shook his makeshift sack of coins to make them jingle. He chuckled as we strode down the street.
    â€œWhat are you gonna do with all that jack this time?” Hatcher said.
    â€œI’m of a mind to make a rancher of myself. Get me some land like Maxwell and Kit done.”
    â€œMaybe you ought to take that little gal Rosa with you,” Hatcher suggested. “Keep you company.”
    Blue shook his head. “No, John, she’ll never make a rancher.”
    â€œNow, how do you know that?”
    â€œShe can’t keep her calves together.”
    I groaned and laughed all at the same time, and we plowed ahead through the crisp mountain night.

Six
    B lue Wiggins and John Hatcher decided to take some of Blue’s recovered gambling money, buy a herd of sheep, and make another drive to California. The rest of the money they buried at the hiding place where I always stashed my whiskey outside of Santa Fe. There were no banks in New Mexico back then, and there must have been millions of dollars stashed and buried here and there all over the territory. Some of it lies buried still, I’m sure.
    â€œIf we don’t make it back from California,” Blue said, “that gold is yours.”
    â€œI aim to come back,” John Hatcher stated, as if offended.
    They would spend the winter putting their herd together, and head west with the spring thaw. This, Blue hoped, would increase his holdings to the point that he could buy a sizable spread and start a cattle ranch. John Hatcher had already bought some land, but was hoping to add to his holdings. They left Santa Fe the next day, anxious to get about their venture.
    I stayed, for I had other obligations. I had given Burnt Belly my word that I would return in two moons with trade goods and whiskey. I had lost only a couple of days helping Blue outcheat the cheater Luther Sheffield, so I still had plenty of time to collect my goods and get on with my own enterprises.
    First, however, I had some letters of inquiry to write on behalf of Toribio Treviño, the Mexican boy I had ransomed from the Comanches. I began by writing the governor of Coahuila, since that was where Toribio had been captured, telling the governor the circumstances of Toribio’s ordeal, as near as I knew them. Then I wrote to the postal authorities near Monterrey, asking them to deliver copies of the letter I had written to the governor to anyone they knew by the name of Treviño. I provided as many copies of the letter to the governor as I could make in one day, spending hours in the room John Hatcher had rented.

    Finally, I ventured out to buy a meal. I remember paying for the meal, and leaving the cafe. There, my recollection ends. I woke up alone in a strange room—a small adobe room with no furniture, a washbasin on the floor. I was on a typical New Mexican mattress, covered with a worn Navaho blanket. I had been apprehensive of something like this happening, for the new moon was upon me, and the new moon always draws me irretrievably into sleep like a whirlpool drowns a bug.
    This is my other curse. (The first being a genius.) I don’t sleep like a normal man. During the full moon, I don’t sleep at all for several days. During the quarter phases, I sleep a few hours every night, but I am tormented by nightmares and terrors that only insane men know. Then, as the new moon approaches, I am likely to fall asleep in the middle of the day. I may fall asleep walking, and continue walking, with my eyes open, yet asleep, for hours or miles. I may then wake up, exhausted instead of rested, and wonder where in the world I have wandered. The dogbane and moccasin flower Burnt Belly had taught