Home    Hardluck Thoughts    Guest Editor    Submissions    Archives

The Conversion of Carne Muerto

James Reasoner

This happened in the early days of what came to be known as the Old Company, that band of intrepid Texas Rangers led by Captain John S. “Rip” Ford. I was the company surgeon in those days, less than a decade after Texas had ceased to be an independent republic and joined the Union. Those were still wild, dangerous times, especially in the brush country along the Rio Grande, the border between Texas and Mexico. In that time and place, a man could die quickly, at any time, with little or no warning. Bandits from below the border raided into Texas on a regular basis, and bands of fierce Comanche warriors terrorized settlers on both sides of the river. The fiercest of the war chiefs was little more than a boy, but he was feared from the mouth of the Rio Grande to the Big Bend. His name was Carne Muerto – Spanish for “dead meat”.

But I seem to be getting ahead of myself. The first time I saw Carne Muerto, he was not yet a war chief. Instead, he was a wounded, frightened lad .

***

The running fight had lasted most of the morning. Our scout and tracker, Roque Maugricio, had located the Comanches who had raided and burned a rancho north of Laredo. We hit them at dawn, killing two of the Indians and putting the others to rout. I felt a moment of pity when I saw the bullet-riddled bodies sprawled on the ground – I was a healer, after all – but then I remembered what the Comanches had done to the rancher and his wife and their two little girls, and the feeling passed.

The rest of the war party fled toward the border with the Rangers in pursuit. As the Comanches scattered, so too did the Rangers, breaking up into smaller groups to continue the chase. I found myself riding with Roque and Doc Sullivan, the company’s jokester but also a crack shot and one of the bravest men I ever knew. Why Doc had acquired that nickname when I was the company surgeon, I never knew, but it seemed to fit him.

We saw one of the fugitives racing his pony toward a clump of mesquite trees. Doc drew a bead with his rifle and brought down the pony with a single shot. The rider sailed through the air when his mount collapsed underneath him. He scrambled up and ran on into the trees, but I could tell from the way he moved that he was hurt. We closed in rapidly.

A pistol cracked from the cover of the trees, making Doc yelp as the bullet passed close by his head. Roque said, “Keep him busy”, and peeled away from us, veering off so that he could circle around and come at the trees from a different direction. Doc banged away with his Colt’s revolver, not caring whether or not he hit anything as long as he kept the fugitive ducking for cover. After a few minutes, Roque called, “Hold your fire! I’ve got him!”

Doc and I hurried into the trees to find Roque standing over a young Comanche, about eighteen years of age, who had been shot through the upper right arm. He lay on the ground at the foot of a tree, glaring up at Roque, who kept a pistol trained on him.

I could tell that the wound in the youngster’s arm was several hours old and knew that he had suffered it during the initial encounter earlier that morning. To ride for hours at a furious gallop while in what must have been great pain speaks volumes about the strength and determination of these people. I have long regretted that fate cast us as enemies, as there was much to admire about the Comanches. Other than their habit of inflicting the most unspeakable tortures on innocent people, of course.

But to get back to the subject at hand . . . Roque spoke quickly to the boy in his native tongue. Roque was half-Comanche himself, though he had turned his back on that part of his heritage and was now a valued citizen of Texas and member of the Rangers. The lad made no reply at first, but after more prodding by Roque, he finally spoke in a sullen tone.

“He says his name’s Carne Muerto,” Roque told Doc and me. “Claims to be the son of a chief. If it’s true, we’ve caught ourselves a pretty good prisoner, boys.”

“Can I take a look at that wound?” I asked.

“Give Doc your gun first. Don’t want him grabbin’ it.”

I handed my revolver to Doc and knelt beside the Comanche youth. Roque had already disarmed him, so I was in no real danger, but despite that I felt a tiny shiver go through me as I saw the look of hatred in Carne Muerto’s eyes. If he had not been so weak from loss of blood, I think he would have attacked me with his bare hands.

The wound in his arm had bled quite a bit, but I could tell that he was in little real danger from it. The bullet had gone straight through the fleshy part of his arm and missed the bone. I fetched my bag from my horse and cleaned and bound up the wound. Barring corruption, I thought the injury would heal cleanly.

Then, since Carne Muerto’s pony was dead, we put him on my horse and I rode double with him as we headed back to rendezvous with Captain Ford and the rest of the company.

By the middle of the day the Rangers had regrouped and were on our way to our temporary headquarters, an abandoned rancho near Laredo. Though several more Comanches had been killed during the skirmishes that morning, the young man taken by Roque Maugricio, Doc Sullivan, and myself was the only prisoner. Captain Ford, a tall, lean man with a close-cropped white beard and piercing eyes, was pleased when he discovered the identity of Carne Muerto.

“If he’s really a chief’s son, we might be able to trade him for some white captives,” the captain suggested. There was a fairly steady traffic in such exchanges in those days. “We’ll take him to Fort McIntosh.”

After a brief stop at the rancho, we rode on to the fort at Laredo. The adobe buildings of Fort McIntosh, arrayed around a central parade ground, were on the very banks of the river itself. The American flag flapped lazily in the hot breeze as the Rangers rode in.

As we dismounted in front of the post’s headquarters building, I saw a man and a woman standing in the shade on the porch. While there were women in that part of the country, they were rare enough so that any female drew attention, especially one as attractive as this lady. Her hair, which was pulled back into a severe bun, was the color of burnished copper. Her complexion was very fair, the sort that burns easily in the sun of the border country. She was about twenty-five years old, I judged, a mature woman who still retained a bit of her youth.

The man who stood with her was an army officer, a lieutenant about the same age, with a dark mustache that curled up on the ends. I didn’t know him and thought that he must be newly arrived at the fort. As I watched, he slipped an arm around the woman’s waist in a possessive gesture. She was his wife, I told myself. Officers were usually allowed to bring their families with them wherever they were posted, even to frontier forts such as this one, but I wasn’t sure it was always a good idea.

The prisoner drew a great deal of interest and not a few rude comments. One burly sergeant wanted to know why we hadn’t just shot the young heathen instead of taking him alive. The woman on the porch heard that and seemed disturbed by it. She spoke to her husband, who shook his head as he replied quietly to whatever she had asked.

Captain Ford, Roque, and myself took Carne Muerto inside, and we were shown immediately into the office of the colonel who commanded the post. The man grinned and said, “What’s that you’ve got there, Rip, a mountain lion cub?”

“Says his name is Carne Muerto and claims he’s the son of old Gato.” The captain had questioned the prisoner at length, with Roque translating, but he hadn’t gotten much more out of Carne Muerto than we had discovered originally.

“Dead Meat, eh?” the colonel said. “Fitting name for one of those savages.”

“I thought we might get word to Gato and see if he’d be interested in working a trade. I don’t know if he’s got any white captives right now, but those bands of Comanch’ nearly always do.”

The commanding officer nodded in agreement with Ford’s suggestion. “Want me to have him locked up in the guardhouse until we decide what to do with him?”

“I thought that might be best – ” Captain Ford began, but he stopped as someone came into the office behind us.

“Colonel, you can’t lock that prisoner up,” a woman’s voice said. “It would be inhumane. Why, he’s nothing but a boy, and he’s hurt!”

I looked around and saw the young woman with copper-colored hair, followed closely by the lieutenant, who looked worried and upset. He said quickly, “Begging the colonel’s pardon, we don’t mean to intrude – ”

“Then don’t, Lieutenant Patrick,” the colonel said, not bothering to conceal his irritation at this interruption.

Still trying to fix things, the lieutenant said, “It’s just that Julia is new to the frontier and doesn’t understand – ”

“I understand perfectly well, Bartholomew,” she said. “I understand that this poor young man needs help, and it’s my Christian duty to give it to him.”

Captain Ford said, “Ma’am, I believe in the Lord, too, but I’m not sure He’d want you getting mixed up in this.”

Julia Patrick turned on him. “Are you in charge of those so-called Rangers?”

“Yes, ma’am. Captain John S. Ford, at your service.”

“Did you shoot this young man?”

“Well, I don’t rightly know if it was my bullet put that hole in his arm or not,” Ford said. “There was quite a bit of lead flying around at the time.”

“Has he been tortured?”

Captain Ford frowned. “No, ma’am, not by us. Fact of the matter is, it was our company surgeon here who patched him up and kept him from bleeding to death.”

That didn’t do much to mollify Mrs. Patrick. She sniffed and said, “After it was you and your men who brutally wounded him.”

“Lieutenant . . .” the colonel said in a warning tone.

“Yes, sir.” Lieutenant Patrick gripped his wife’s arm. “Come along, dear – ”

She pulled away from him. “Colonel, I demand that this prisoner be turned over to me for safekeeping until arrangements can be made to return him to his people.”

That took us all by surprise. I’m afraid we stared at her. The colonel finally said, “That’s impossible. He has to be locked up.”

“You didn’t hear what the men outside said, Colonel,” she argued. “They hate the Indians, and I’m afraid that if this young man is put in the guardhouse, something terrible will happen to him.”

That was possible, I supposed. The soldiers who had fought the Comanches before had good reason to hate them, and if some fatal “accident”, shall we say, were to befall Carne Muerto I knew the Army would not investigate too vigorously.

Captain Ford rubbed at his bearded jaw in thought and said after a moment, “The lady may have a point there. We don’t want anything bad happening to the boy until we find out whether or not we can make use of him.”

That brought another sniff of disapproval from Julia Patrick, but she didn’t say anything else.

“But he’s a savage!” the colonel said, as if that should have been blindingly obvious to everyone. “We can’t turn him over to a . . . a woman!”

An idea occurred to me. “What if he was guarded at all times?” I said.

“I can’t spare any men for that!”

It seemed to me that if the colonel could spare men to stand watch over the guardhouse, he could have assigned a trooper to keep an eye on Carne Muerto. But rather than make that argument, I said, “I can stay and watch him.”

Captain Ford frowned. “I don’t want to lose my company surgeon.”

“Yes, but we’re not going out on patrol again immediately,” I pointed out. “I assume you’re going to send Roque to see if a trade can be made . . .”

The captain nodded. “That was my plan.”

“So the company may not be leaving the rancho until he gets back. And if I may remind you, Captain, while I’m a doctor, I am also a Texas Ranger.”

Ford chuckled. “True enough, old friend.” He looked at the post commander. “What do you think, Colonel?”

“Well, I don’t like it very much, to be honest . . . but what do you say, Lieutenant Patrick? You’re the one who’d have two guests in your house.”

The lieutenant looked at the colonel, at the three of us Rangers, and at the prisoner. But in the end he looked at his wife, and that meant the decision was a foregone conclusion.

“I suppose it would be all right,” he said.

That was how Carne Muerto came to stay with the lieutenant and his lady . . . and how the course of more than one life was set.

***

“Don’t trust the son of a bitch for a second,” Roque told me before he rode out to seek Gato, Carne Muerto’s father. “He don’t want you to know it, but he speaks a little English and Spanish. He knows what’s going on. And if he gets a chance, he’ll cut your throat.”

“You’re not telling me anything I don’t already know, amigo,” I assured Roque.

I have to admit, however, that I was surprised by what happened over the next few days. The colonel insisted that Carne Muerto be handcuffed, and not even Julia Patrick could argue him out of that. But other than that precaution, and the fact that I was always with him, the Comanche youth stayed in the small house where Lieutenant and Mrs. Patrick lived much as any guest might stay there. Mrs. Patrick insisted that he wear white man’s clothes and take his meals at the table with us, and although he was sullen at first, within a couple of days Carne Muerto seemed at ease in his new surroundings. I tended to his arm, which was healing nicely just as I expected, and Mrs. Patrick tended to what she saw as his spiritual needs.

She began reading the Bible to him the first day he was there.

Although as a physician I am a man of science, I find no great conflict between scientific tenets and the Word of God. Still, I saw little point in trying to impart the Lord’s teachings to a heathen. Carne Muerto, though, seemed interested. He lost his sullen attitude and no longer bothered to conceal the fact that he understood and could speak a little English. I sat on the porch of the lieutenant’s cabin with them for long hours, smoking my pipe as Mrs. Patrick read from the Scriptures and talked to Carne Muerto about his immortal soul.

By the time a week had passed without Roque having returned from his scouting mission, Carne Muerto was asking Mrs. Patrick what he would have to do in order to be saved from the fires of Hell.

“Simply accept the Lord as your savior, my young friend,” she said to him as a beatific smile shone on her face. She refused to call him by his name, feeling that it was too savage.

Carne Muerto tapped his chest with a fist. “God here,” he said. “Jesus here.”

“Praise the Lord!” Mrs. Patrick said. She reached over and hugged him – something which I’m vaguely embarrassed to admit bothered me. “You’ve accepted Christ into your heart. Do you know what this means?”

He shook his head.

“It means that all your sins are forgiven and that when you die, you will ascend to glory, to be with Our Heavenly Father and all the hosts of angels. And you will live forever.”

Carne Muerto smiled. I had to admit that the expression made him look younger and not nearly as savage and frightening as he had that first day we brought him to the fort. I asked myself if I truly believed that he had converted to Christianity. While I was skeptical by nature, I had to admit that I had no real reason to doubt him. After all, missionaries had been coming to Texas and converting the heathens for a couple of hundred years. In fact, some of the first white men to explore this rugged land had been Spanish priests.

And wasn’t it often said that the Lord works in mysterious ways?

***

Now, you may ask where Lieutenant Patrick was during all this, and how he felt about his wife ministering to the young captive. For the first four or five days of Carne Muerto’s sojourn with the couple, the lieutenant was there, and he wasn’t too happy about the way things were going. Although I certainly wasn’t trying to eavesdrop, several times I heard him engaging his wife in quiet but heartfelt arguments about the subject of how much time she was spending with Carne Muerto. Needless to say, the lieutenant did not emerge victorious from any of these arguments.

Following that, he was sent out on a routine patrol with a troop of cavalry, so he wasn’t at the fort when Carne Muerto’s conversion took place.

That evening I checked the dressing on the boy’s wounded arm. The holes left by the bullet had closed up nicely and were almost healed. I’m sure the muscles of his arm were still stiff and sore, but I saw no need to replace the bandage. “You’ll be all right now,” I told him.

He nodded. “Carne Muerto all right. Carne Muerto saved. Good as white man.”

Mrs. Patrick heard what he said and beamed approvingly. “Of course you’re as good as any white man,” she told him. “God doesn’t care about the color of your skin.”

I truly believe that she was right about that. Of course, she was wrong about many other things.

At night Carne Muerto slept on a pallet on the floor. Before he lay down I always moved one of the handcuffs to a leg of the wood-burning stove, which was too heavy for one man to budge, so that he couldn’t get away. I slept on a divan across the room, out of his reach.

I take all the blame for what happened next. At first I had been extremely cautious with the lad, but as the days passed and he became cooperative and almost friendly, I fear I relaxed my vigilance slightly. So it took me by surprise when I unlocked the cuff of Carne Muerto’s right wrist and he hit me with it, striking with his left arm so that the loose cuff slashed across my face with stunning viciousness.

I was knocked to my knees by the blow. Carne Muerto kicked me in the chest, driving me backward onto the floor. Like a wild animal he pounced upon me. His hands went to my neck and closed about it. The fingers dug cruelly into my flesh. I couldn’t breathe, and I feared he was going to crush my throat. I fumbled for the holstered revolver on my hip.

Before I could draw the weapon, Julia Patrick stepped into the room. She had been to the privy out back before retiring for the evening and was already in her nightdress and robe. When she saw Carne Muerto kneeling on top of me, trying to strangle me, she cried out, but her hands were over her mouth and muffled the sound.

“No!” she said as she hurried forward. “My friend, please, I beg you! Stop what you’re doing!”

He took one hand away from my throat, but only to ball it into a fist and smash it into my face, stunning me even more. I lay there half-conscious as he sprang up and turned toward Mrs. Patrick.

“Carne Muerto saved!” he said. “Sins all forgiven!”

“Yes, yes, but . . . you can’t just kill that poor man.” She caught hold of his arms and leaned close to him, speaking urgently. “You have to repent of your sins. That means you have to turn away from them and sin no more – ”

If I had been able to draw my gun at that moment, I would have seen to it that Carne Muerto sinned no more. But I was still too stunned, my muscles unable or unwilling to do my bidding. All I could do was watch as Carne Muerto grabbed Julia Patrick, jerked her against him, and kissed her with the lustful intensity of a full-grown man. As she struggled, he dug a hand in her hair and tore loose the pins that held it in a bun. The coppery masses tumbled down as he forced her to the divan.

I rolled onto my side and tried to get up, but then consciousness slipped away from me. I slumped to the floor and passed out.

***

When I regained came back to my senses, the first thing I heard was muffled sobbing. I pushed myself onto my hands and knees and crawled across the room to the divan, where Mrs. Patrick lay with her nightclothes in tatters. One didn’t have to be trained as a physician to see that she had been assaulted in a most savage and brutal manner. But she was alive and so was I, and in all honesty both of those things surprised me. I would have expected Carne Muerto to slit our throats before he escaped.

He was gone, of course. He had slipped off the post entirely, it was soon discovered.

But before I raised the alarm, I did my best to ascertain if Mrs. Patrick was seriously injured. Her eyes were wide and staring. I said, “Mrs. Patrick! Can you hear me? Mrs. Patrick!”

She began to mumble something. I had to lean close to her to make out the words. “Forgiven,” she said. “Forgiven . . . he said all his sins were forgiven . . .”

She had no injuries other than bruises and scrapes. At least that was the case as far as physical injuries were concerned. The look in her eyes told me that the wounds to her spirit and her mind went much deeper.

I left her lying there on the divan, staggered onto the front porch of the little cabin, drew my pistol at last, and fired three shots in the air. That drew plenty of attention.

The colonel immediately sent a rider to the rancho where the Rangers were gathered. Since I had determined that Mrs. Patrick was not in need of medical attention, she was turned over to the care of the colonel’s lady and the other officers’ wives on the post. I waited in the colonel’s office, miserable, until Rip Ford strode in.

“I’m sorry, Captain – ” I began as I started to my feet.

Ford waved me back into the chair. “It’s not your fault, old friend. I should have left Doc or one of the other men here with you. I’ve never doubted your courage, but you’re maybe a mite too trusting.”

“Never again,” I said with a bitter taste in my mouth. “I’ll never trust anyone again.”

The captain had no patience for self-recrimination, so he ignored me and turned to the commander. “We’ll get on the trail right away, of course. Might still be able to catch him. Maugricio’s not back yet, but several other men in the company are good trackers.”

This time I came to my feet. “I’m going with you.”

Captain Ford glanced at me and said, “You’re hurt.”

I raised a hand to the bloody gash left on my forehead by the blow from the handcuff. “I don’t care. This is nothing.”

“Suit yourself.” Ford turned back to the colonel. “What about Lieutenant Patrick?”

“His patrol is due back in tomorrow morning. I’m sure he’ll want to come after you.”

“More than likely. Don’t let him.”

The colonel frowned. “I can order him to stay put, but I may have to put him in the guardhouse to keep him from deserting.”

“Then do it,” Ford said. “I don’t need a man crazy with anger getting in the way out there.”

The colonel shrugged and nodded. “All right. You’re riding out tonight?”

“The sooner the better,” Captain Ford said.

***

We didn’t catch Carne Muerto – not that night. And not on any of the other occasions we did battle with his war parties over the next few years as his reputation grew. Not until some time later were we able to put an end at last to his depredations.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Patrick seemed to recover from her ordeal, but three months after the incident, her husband came home to find that she had hanged herself from a beam in their home. Her Bible was open on the table beside her, but the window was open and a border breeze was riffling the thin paper of the pages, so if she had meant for her final message to be a Bible verse, there was no way of knowing which one it was.

Lieutenant Patrick remained in the army but requested a transfer to another post, a request which was, of course, granted. He was killed three years later, leading a charge against the Apaches in Arizona Territory . . . a charge that some said was foolhardy, even suicidal.

As for myself, I went on to have many adventures with Captain Ford and the Old Company, but after that I never carried a gun again and took no part in the battles that the company fought. My contribution was limited to patching up their wounds when the shooting stopped.

The captain and I never talked much about what had happened. I viewed the incident as a fundamental failure on my part. But once as we rode across a lonely stretch of border country, Ford said to me, “You know, I honestly think that no two people ever see the world just alike. They may think they do, but they don’t. Take Carne Muerto. I reckon he took what that poor woman told him to mean that if he became a Christian, he could do whatever he wanted to, no matter how bad, and the Lord would still forgive him for it. He took it as permission to sin, rather than a prohibition against it.”

 “You might be right, Captain. When he was talking to Mrs. Patrick, he seemed sincere enough.”

Ford nodded. “When you get right down to it, that’s why none of this can end well, old friend.” He waved a hand to indicate our surroundings, but I knew he meant something larger than that. He was talking about the whole clash between our culture and that of Carne Muerto. “We look at the same things, but what we see is different. Worlds apart, amigo. Worlds apart.”

I knew he spoke the truth, but at the same time this was one of the few occasions in his life when Rip Ford, truly a far-seeing man, was too short-sighted. Yes, there were vast differences between our people and those who opposed us, but in the end that gulf would be bridged as it always is.

For in the end, no matter who we are or where we come from or what our beliefs, we wind up the same . . . carne muerto.

Copyright(c) 2006 by James Reasoner

Home    Hardluck Thoughts    Guest Editor    Submissions    Archives