Free Come Sundown by Mike Blakely Page A

me to use helped to make my sleep habits a little more normal, but sometimes I ran out, or got too busy to use them. And even when I used them as the old medicine man taught me, the power of the moon was still sometimes greater.
    Once, while camping alone out on the plains as the new moon approached, I killed a jackrabbit to eat, and proceeded to roast it on a stick I held in my hand over a buffalo-chip fire. While monotonously turning the spit over the flames, my world went black, as if someone had blown out the flame to my brain. I woke up almost frozen to death, covered with snow, still turning that stick in my hands, though the jackrabbit had burned to a char and the fire had gone out. I had just enough presence of mind to roll myself in a buffalo robe before I plunged back into lost sleep.
    So it was that I woke in Santa Fe in a strange room, thankful to be alive, but humiliated to have come to such a helpless state once again. When I wake from one of these sleeping binges, I can’t just bound out of bed. First, my eyes open, but the rest of my body remains immovable, as if in the grip of rigor mortis. So I blinked my eyes for a few minutes, then began
to feel some movement in my face. I was just starting to lift my head, when I heard a door open. A sudden sound can serve to charge my limbs and body with energy when waking from such a slumber, and the opening door did just that. I shot upright on the mattress and found the lovely Rosa entering the room.
    â€œGracias a Dios,” she said. “I thought you were going to die here.”
    â€œWhere am I?”
    â€œIn my room. Don’t worry. No one knows you are here.”
    I shook my head to clear my thoughts. “How long? How long have I been here?”
    â€œAlmost two days. You just walked in here. Lucky for you I was alone. You said some things, but you didn’t make sense. You spoke Spanish, and English, and some other tongue I never heard at all.”
    â€œTwo days?” I said. “What about … You know, what about your customers?”
    â€œYou have cost me a lot of money, but what could I do? You wouldn’t wake up.”
    I sighed. It was embarrassing. “I’ll make it up to you. I have money.”
    â€œI do not take charity,” she said. “I always earn what I am paid.” The next thing I knew Rosa was crawling into her bed with me. It took some wrestling to get out of there with my virtue intact, but I considered myself a married man, and besides, I had many things to attend to after sleeping so long.
    So, as I collected my wits and my belongings, Rosa sat on the mattress and pouted. “Am I not good enough to share a bed with you?”
    â€œI’m married.”
    â€œMost of my customers are married.”
    â€œWell, I guess I’m different.”
    She sniffed. “You are different, you bet. You are the differ-entest son of a bitch I ever met.”
    I paid Rosa what I would pay an innkeeper for two nights’ lodging and got the hell out of there.
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    AFTER POSTING MY letters and collecting my whiskey hidden in the ponderosa pines above the city, I got out of Santa Fe and rode north into a high-country blizzard. I stopped once between Santa Fe and Taos to build a big fire so that I could warm myself. There was little risk of my fire attracting hostile Indians or outlaws. Indians always had sense enough to hole up during bad weather, and most outlaws I ever knew were fair-weather criminals. So I used the fire to warm myself and dry my snow-dampened clothes as I ate the last of my pemmican. Then I pressed on through the dark toward Taos. I knew the trails well, having ridden them all as General Kearney’s top courier during the Mexican War.
    At dawn on the third day of travel, I came to a place called Martin’s Mill, owned by old Roy Martin. At his mill, Roy Martin spent most of his time making a corn liquor known as Taos Lightning. I bought six kegs of the stuff,