Black Sun Rising / La Corazonada Read online

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  BLACK SUN RISING

  BARRY GIFFORD

  Seven Stories Press

  New York • Oakland • Liverpool

  Copyright © 2020 by Barry Gifford

  Title page image: Frederic Sackrider Remington, Pool Desert, 1907.

  Drawing of John July by Barry Gifford

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  SEVEN STORIES PRESS

  140 Watts Street

  New York, NY 10013

  www.sevenstories.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Gifford, Barry, 1946- author.

  Title: Black sun rising, or, La corazonada / Barry Gifford.

  Other titles: La Corazonada

  Description: New York, NY : Seven Stories Press, [2020]

  Identifiers: LCCN 2020022697 (print) | LCCN 2020022698 (ebook) | ISBN

  9781609809980 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9781609809997 (ebook)

  Subjects: LCSH: Kickapoo Indians--Fiction. | Mexican-American Border

  Region--Fiction. | GSAFD: Western stories.

  Classification: LCC PS3557.I283 B47 2020 (print) | LCC PS3557.I283

  (ebook) | DDC 813/.54--dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020022697

  LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020022698

  College professors and high school and middle school teachers may order free examination copies of Seven Stories Press titles. To order, visit www.sevenstories.com or send a fax on school letterhead to 212-226-1411.

  BLACK SUN RISING takes place on the Mexico-Texas border in 1851. Historical fiction written in a style that could be described as western noir, it is a recounting of the Seminole Indian migration from Florida to Oklahoma and Texas to Nacimiento in the Mexican state of Coahuila, and also the story of the fugitive slaves from the American South who came to be known as Black Seminoles, or Mascogos. Together with the Seminoles and a handful of sympathetic whites, they comprised the first integrated tribe to establish themselves on the North American continent. At the heart of the novel is the romance between Sonny Osceola, a son of the great Seminole chief Osceola, who was assassinated by U.S. soldiers, and Teresa Dupuy, a wild and rebellious daughter of the rancher Cass Dupuy, a former Texas Ranger and slavehunter, who is violently opposed to their union. Populated by such colorful characters as the Seminole and Mascogo leaders Captain Coyote and John July, Insurrectionists from the secessionist state of Coahuila, the German warlord Colonel Emilio Langberg, and raiding border bands of Comanches and Apaches, Black Sun Rising is a terse but poetic tale set in a too little-known time and place in American and Mexican history, one deserving of being remembered.

  To the memory of Jim Hamilton

  “Living is a very dangerous business.”

  —João Guimarães Rosa,

  The Devil to Pay in the Backlands

  “He understood that one destiny is no better than another, but that every man should revere the destiny he bears within him . . . He understood his intimate destiny, that of wolf and not of gregarious dog.”

  —Jorge Luis Borges,

  Biography of Tadeo Isidoro Cruz (1829-1874)

  Preface to Black Sun Rising,

  or La Corazonada

  I BECAME interested in the history and plight of the Seminole Indian tribe when I was a boy. My mother and I would often stop at reptile farms in Florida on drives between our residences there and in Chicago during the 1950s. We came to know several of the caretakers and employees of these reptile farms well enough that we were regularly allowed entry very early in the mornings, hours before the farms opened to the public. I got to know a few of the Seminole boys who worked or had worked as alligator wrestlers, some of whom had lost parts of or entire fingers having failed to get their hands out of the way of gators’ jaws before they snapped shut. These boys continued working at the farms watering bird cages, cleaning snake enclosures and feeding the large reptiles, tossing hunks of meat at them with pitchforks.

  As I got older, I read all I could about the Seminoles and how they combined with fugitive slaves, intermarrying with them, resulting in an integrated tribe known as Mascogos, or Black Seminoles, who, in the mid-nineteenth century, established a settlement in the state of Coahuila in northern Mexico. I wrote a story about this little-known coalescence with the idea that it could have been made into a film by one of the greatest directors of westerns, such as Raoul Walsh, John Ford, Howard Hawks or Sam Peckinpah. Unfortunately, by the time I finished writing it, most of these directors had retired or died, and the movie studios had virtually ceased producing westerns altogether. Black Sun Rising, or La Corazonada, as I titled the story, is meant to be read with this in mind. It is published here in its entirety for the first time.

  —B.G.

  AFTER THE forced evacuation of the Tribes from Florida, when he was imprisoned at the relocation camp in Oklahoma, Captain Coyote had a vision that he and the Seminole nation would one day find a new homeland in another country. Once they had found it in Nacimiento, a Mexican granjero told him this presentiment had been una corazonada, a premonition from the heart.

  

  Coahuila, Mexico, 1851. Near the Texas border.

  A black woman and her two children, a boy, ten, and a girl, seven, were bathing in a shallow stream near a stand of cottonwood trees on a hot, dusty afternoon. The children laughed and splashed in the water as their mother watched. The three of them were naked.

  Suddenly, there came the sound of horses galloping, gathering like thunder. From out of the trees two white men on horseback exploded into view. They bore down on the woman and her children. One of the riders swooped up the boy onto his saddle, the other did the same with the girl. Together the horsemen dashed across the stream. The children’s mother threw herself in the path of the horse bearing her daughter and was knocked down. The kidnappers disappeared over the rim of the arroyo and were gone.

  The woman stood again and looked briefly in the direction the horses had vanished, then picked up her burlap shift and pulled it over her head. She began running in the opposite direction.

  

  A MAKESHIFT tribe of Seminole Indians, originally mostly Southern Creeks from Georgia and Florida, and fugitive slaves, known as Mascogos, collectively numbering about four-hundred, had established a camp at the mouth of a rugged, mesquite-filled canyon called El Moral. These were remnants of the people who had survived the long Seminole Wars and relocation from Florida to Oklahoma, and runaways from the Confederate states. The groups had banded together in Mexico in an attempt to live as free men and women.

  The tribe had two leaders: John July, a tall, imposing, middle-aged man of striking dignity who was one-quarter Creek and three-quarters black; the other, Captain Coyote, a full-blooded Seminole warrior, a moody, unpredictable man slightly older than John, mischievous and playful one moment, somber and deadly the next. Together they shared responsibility for the welfare of their combined people.

  The woman who had been bathing her children came racing into the encampment, staggering from exhaustion. Members of the tribe immediately rushed to her side. Directed by John and Coyote, a rescue party comprised of three Indians and three Mascogos leapt on their horses and rode off in search of the children.

  

  THE RESCUE party, making use of their excellent tracking skills, headed toward the border. One of them pointed tow
ard the side of the arroyo, made another sign and the party split in half.

  The two white slavers loped their horses easily toward the Rio Grande, each holding a child. When three of the Seminoles appeared at a gallop, headed straight at them, the slavers spurred their horses into the river and started across the shallow water toward Texas. The other three Seminoles approached from a different angle, having circled around to take the men by surprise. The slavers halted their horses abruptly and in a moment realized that they were at a disadvantage. Simultaneously they dropped the children into the river and spurred their mounts for the bank on the Texas side. The Seminoles fired their rifles at the slavers but did not hit them, then gathered up the children and headed back toward their encampment. Across the river the two slavers sat their horses and watched the Seminoles disappear. After a few moments, the white men turned and headed north.

  

  WHITE-PICKET FENCES, outbuildings, and a manicured lawn and garden surrounded an immaculate ranch-house in Brackettville, Texas. Everything about this spread suggested a neatness and cleanliness to an almost severe degree. Even the cattle grazing nearby looked like they were part of a well-ordered world.

  Inside the stables, Sonny Osceola was grooming a horse. He was in his mid-twenties, a Seminole Indian of mixed white and Creek blood, and an exile from both worlds. He was a cool looking customer, wary, alert, with a certain regal air.

  Teresa Dupuy rode in and halted her horse. She shaded her eyes from the sun and looked toward the barn, then at the house as if she were being watched.

  “Sonny! Sonny, where in blazes are you?”

  Teresa dismounted and tied her horse up. She looked toward the stables and a slow grin broke across her face. Teresa was twenty-five, blonde, beautiful and bold. She was hatless and tossed back her long unruly hair and headed for the stables. It was her walk that defined her character in many ways: the long, easy strides of a physical, sexually precocious young woman, confident and headstrong.

  Sonny stood just inside the entrance, secretly watching Teresa’s approach. He grinned, turned away and resumed grooming the horse. He heard Teresa’s boots crunching on the ground, getting closer and closer; Sonny pretended he didn’t know she was coming. Suddenly Teresa slipped under the horse’s neck and kissed Sonny full on the mouth, hard, open-mouthed, and possessive.

  “You saw me, didn’t you? Why didn’t you answer?”

  She nuzzled him, bit his ear, and pressed closer.

  “I got better things to do than watch you.”

  “Liar!”

  They kissed hotly, then Sonny broke away.

  “Hey, your old man’s about due.”

  Teresa pulled Sonny into a tack room cluttered with horse paraphernalia and the reek of old leather, clutching and kissing him. They tore at each other’s clothes with erotic abandon, struggling to get their boots off. This was where Sonny lived as a hired hand. They started on a cot but ended up writhing around on the floor, Teresa on top one moment, Sonny the next. There was an urgency to their love-making, a desperation, a wild tenderness.

  Later, as Sonny and Teresa lay in each other’s arms, a shadow darkened on Sonny’s face. Teresa did not see this change but she felt it and she stiffened, without even looking at him.

  “Where’d you go?” Teresa said.

  “Huh?”

  “You were just here and then you weren’t. What’s wrong?”

  “Nothin’s wrong.”

  “Sonny . . .”

  “We can’t keep doing this. I’ll end up with a load of buckshot in my ass. Or worse.”

  “You’re lying. You’re not afraid of him.”

  He studied her for a moment; she was right—he wasn’t afraid of her father, but Teresa was another matter.

  “Come on, you don’t have to hold back with me. You know that.”

  “The Tribes are in Mexico, not far from the border,” said Sonny.

  “Are you sure?”

  He nodded.

  “I ran into two Seminoles the other day in Eagle Pass. More’n three-hundred of ’em are down there now. They refused to stay on the reservation in Oklahoma.”

  Teresa got up and started dressing quickly.

  “Come on,” she said, “let’s go talk by the creek.”

  Sonny and Teresa saddled up their horses and rode out just as her father, Cass Dupuy, and his close friend, Royce Box, came loping in on their horses. Dupuy motioned for Sonny and Teresa to stop. He was just on the north side of fifty, a hard-looking man as befit a captain in the Texas Rangers. Royce Box, his sidekick and head wrangler, was fifteen years younger, also a former Ranger, a very physical, quiet man with a hooded, reined-in look. Taken together, these two men had many times struck fear into the hearts of the wayward and the lawless.

  “What’s this?” said Dupuy.

  “Just moseyin’ out for a little ride,” said Teresa.

  Dupuy crossed one leg over his saddle, took out his snuff box and started packing his lower gum, all the while eyeing both of them, back and forth. That bulging lower lip gave his countenance a peculiar menace.

  “Ain’t you got chores?” Dupuy asked Sonny.

  “Just shoed this little mare. Thought I’d loosen her up.”

  Throughout this tense exchange Royce Box stared at Teresa in a certain proprietary way that even he was not aware of. What did catch Royce’s attention was Teresa’s disheveled state and also a loose piece of straw clinging to her hair, evidence of her recent carnal interlude. He shot an apprehensive glance at Dupuy to see if he noticed but Dupuy was busy eyeballing Sonny. Royce shifted his attention to Sonny as well, open hostility in his eyes.

  “See you’re back quick.”

  Dupuy leaned out over his saddle and spit a gob of snuff juice, as Sonny and Teresa passed.

  

  SONNY TOSSED pebbles into a secluded creek near a few cottonwood trees where he and Teresa’s horses were tethered in the shade. Teresa sat down on the grassy bank and stared at the gently flowing stream.

  “So that’s why Daddy and Royce and them been crossin’ the border at night.”

  “They’re slave-hunters.”

  “Well, never mind. My father is a different piece of business. What I’m asking you is, would you trust the Mexican government? They got a revolution every other day down there. How can they keep promises? Besides which, they won’t give your people land out of the goodness of their hearts.”

  “True,” Sonny said.

  “How long have they been in Mexico?”

  “I don’t know. Not long. They left Florida damn near two years ago. Many died on the trail from starvation, fighting other tribes, sickness. There’s a mess of Mascogos travellin’ with ’em, too.”

  “Mascogos?” Teresa asked.

  “They’re black slaves who’ve run away from plantations in Georgia and Alabama, then crossed into Florida when the Spanish owned it and lived among the Seminoles, who were mostly breakaway Creeks. Some even intermarried. They fought the government right alongside the Seminoles. A lot of ’em spoke good English and knew how to read between the lines of a treaty. Seminole means to break off, to secede.”

  “I never heard of slaves and Indians livin’ together before.”

  “Some whites, too. My grandfather, William Powell, was a white trader.”“These two men you saw, did you tell them who you are?”

  Sonny sat down next to her.

  “Naw. They just figured I was some border breed.”

  Teresa moved as close to him as she could get, and ran her hand lightly through his hair.

  “But you’re the son of Osceola, a Seminole chief.”

  “They wouldn’t have believed me.”

  “Leader of an undefeated people,” Teresa continued. “But you weren’t one of them, one of the undefeated. That’s what’s been eating away at you all these years,
hasn’t it?”

  Sonny shrugged. She put her head in the crook of his shoulder.

  “You should be proud. I wish I had Indian blood in me.”

  “I like your blood just fine.”

  “Instead of what I got,” Teresa said, almost under her breath.

  “Teresa, you have to stop talkin’ that way. You got your mother’s blood in you, too, don’t forget.”

  Teresa felt a mood shift coming on, and looked away.

  “You never did tell me how she died.”

  “Her heart froze over. Listen, Sonny, would you mind riding on back to the ranch without me? I need to be alone for a while.”

  

  TERESA RODE her horse slowly along the grassy edge of a small lake on the ranch. The horse was limping noticeably so she dismounted and checked the horse’s ailing hoof. She saw that he had thrown a shoe. She looked off at a tiny knoll of dry land in the middle of the lake, with a willow tree growing out of it. Teresa was enchanted by the solitude of the setting. She started walking her horse toward home, her head down, absorbed by her thoughts.

  Royce Box happened to be riding past the same lake, but did not see Teresa. He glanced sharply at the ground near the grassy bank and saw some tracks, which he followed until he spotted her. He rode up alongside. She looked up at him and smiled.

  “He throw you?”

  “Naw, just a worn-out shoe. Put a little split in it.”

  Royce motioned with one hand to his saddle.

  “Want to climb on? I’ll see you home.”

  “I’d just as soon walk, thank you.”

  Royce shook his head.

  “I never was much for walkin’. Got on a horse before I could.”

  “It’s when I do my best thinking,” said Teresa.