Free Beyond the Horizon by Ryan Ireland Page A

unnatural.’
    â€˜You said that was the way desperate men act.’
    Again, his father shook his head. ‘No men act that way. People dont eat—they dont stick their pricks—’ It was the only time the boy saw his father cry. ‘If we make it back to a place with laws and proper folks I’ll show you how a man acts.’
    It was night in the cliff dwelling. The stranger looked up from the bottom of the ceremonial pit, the kiva used only by the men of the Anasazi male order. First he noticed the sky, stars sprawled out. Closer to him, close enough for the heat to warm his skin, was a fire. The fire had been built in the hole in the center of the kiva; the same hole where ritual fires were set ablaze a thousand years ago. The man sat hunched by the wall, half in a stupor of sleep. The stranger stood on the other side of the flames. Yes, this was where he desired to be, to walk in step with the man. But this was too soon. The man seemed to stir from his slumber and his eyes fluttered into wakefulness.
    â€˜You,’ he said. He hunched over and squinted past the light of the fire into the shadows on the other side of the pit.
    The stranger stayed quiet, knowing he appeared to the man as little more than a shadowed vision. A scarab scuttled by on the stone floor. How insignificant most of the life in this universe is. And how unwitting this insect is. Years from now philosophers would attribute the origins of the universe to a complex system of events and would credit the flap of a butterfly’s wing as the catalyst for such things.
    He stooped and plucked the bug from the ground.
    When he looked at the man again, the Indian chief—clad in his bone armor—stood at the edge of the pit looking down on the unwitting subject.
    â€˜You,’ the man called again. He passed from cobwebs of dreams into full reality. The stranger crushed the bug between his thumb and forefinger as he stepped into the fire pit.
iii
    The man took to traveling at night again, this time by foot. Since his encounter with the Apache, an uneasiness settled over his every move. He felt watched, the most intimate moments of his life interrupted by others’ voyeurism. He gauged the stars circulating above, noted a streak of white that blipped in and out of existence. The course he took kept him in a low and vulnerable spot. He looked to the rock ledges on either side of him, the pine trees nothing but wire silhouettes in the moonlight.
    Once the sun crested over the ridged peaks of the mountains, the man gave his surroundings a quick survey, then darted off the trail and into the groves of pines. He crouched by the trunk of a tree and listened. In his hand he gripped the shiv. He held his breath. Somewhere farther off—down on the trail, maybe from the yonder ledge—there was a noise. The sun kept rising, cutting through the gauzy haze of early morning. He listened for another noise but fell into sleep instead.
    He woke again when the cool damp of night stirred him from his dreams. Upon realizing he was awake, he held his breath and listened again. If there was a noise, he did not hear it. Still, he imagined the eyes of the skeleton man on the horse fixated on him from one of the ledges, his gaze able to pierce through the night. The Indians, he thought, trolled the trail behind him, picking up artifacts from his travels and destroying the prints he left in the soil. He couldnt go back onto the trail; it was too open, too visible. He resolved to keep to the forests.
    Shiv in hand, he meandered through the trees and thought little as to how the stars above him aligned with his predestined path. He came to a clearing and had the sudden urge to urinate. He put his back to a tree and placed the shiv on the toe of his boot so he could easily find it in the dark. As the urine pittered on the pine-needled ground he thought he heard something a second time. His stream weakened and he glanced around the forest. Again