I overlooked a fire crackling and a sheriff chewing on a buffalo leg like a savage. “Well, you really fit in with these folks, don’t you?” I said.

  With food in his mouth, he insisted, “Have a seat, Doc.”

  When we were at eye level, a firelight cast betwixt, he said, “So, you want to know my relationship with Big Owl and Ahote? Their relationship with each other? Listen up.”

  January and June 1850. Ten Years Prior.

  In a dimly lit room, twenty-year-old Chip and his stepfather stood next to one another in matching long coats and bowties, separated by a wooden table which contained two glasses of whiskey.

  The father, gray headed and tall and slender, held a textbook in his arm and astonishment on his face. The walls creaked, while Chip anticipated the usual shouting and overreacting.

  “I have no words. You’re going to go all over the country with a clown show? You may as well take the last name of your real outlaw parents. Call yourself Blaze, because you can never be a Chambers.”

  “Listen, the drinking loosens your lips; it's best you stop now.”

  Shouting over Chip, he said, “God bless the Pinkerton who shot your sorry, bank robbing biological mom down.”

  Young Chip had as much a temper as his stepfather. If ears could emit smoke, his of done it.

  The stepfather mocked him. “What’s the matter? Need I remind you that you have no way of affording a living, except out of my purse. You’re a circus clown, bottom feeding—’

  Chip snatched his own father by the collar. After drinking glasses clanked, liquid spilled, and table legs shook, Mr. Chambers lay on his back, choked by his own tie and Chip had walked out his Virginia home of rearing for the last time.

  ***

  By the summer, Hugh Biggs’ circus show was in Texas with an act called, Grappler. They set up right on the outskirts of the dangerous Grand Jose-El Paso Road. Behind a buffalo heard passing, the Nagawitchi nomads had made camp in a grassy wide-open area and were standing in anticipation for “the grappler” to come out the red circus tent.

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  Inside, the mustached, spandex wearing strong man, Hugh Biggs folded his arms and admonished with a deep voice. “You have to beat all of them. That’s the only way the goneys going to believe.”

  When Chip stepped out on the plains and challenged any and every tribesman, Chief Big Owl laughed from the oak tree he leaned against. He’d been training “the grappler” to wrestle for a month and expected his powerful, young protégé to hold his own.

  Next to the giant, a ten-year-old boy, who could pass as fifteen, looked on.

  Chip wore red spandex and squatted in a wrasslin pose, gesturing for any and every competitor. And who do you know stepped up? Nagawitchi men painted, longhaired, some with mohawks. None lasted more than a few minutes. He submitted them all the same way— squeezing their bodies in his massive arms then slamming them down.

  From the oak tree, Big Owl hoisted up a golden bird and set it free and flapping. Underneath its dwindling feathers, the ten-year-old boy ran away from Big Owl and toward Chip. The child looked up, locks hiding his entire face. “When I grow up, I want to be mighty like you.”

  Chip threw his hands up. “But Ahote, why not be like your humongous father?”

  “All he wants is peace. I want to claim this land for the Comanche, make our Nagawitchi band the most feared of all, then squeeze the life out of every last Apache.”

  Chip brushed the top of young Ahote’s head and chuckled.

  ***

  After Chip finished recounting, I stayed quiet.

  Chip leaned in, looked me dead in the eyes, and said, “When we confronted the witch in the alley, I heard her call their Ana chief by the name Ahote. He was taller than the others, and I knew it had to be Big Owl’s son.”.

  “Now, how do you suppose a regular Nagawitchi boy transformed into some mutant?” I said.

  He shrugged. “Only Big Owl can say.”

  When our conversation came to pause, I gazed at the twinkling stars some millions of lightyears away, feeling a burden for the future, for its survival. I must remedy this so-called curse that was altering our world, but the truth was I had no way of being successful. Nor did Chip.

  Sheriff spoke up, beholding the same stars. “I suppose Ahote couldn’t accomplish what he did without becoming a beast.”

  “Are you defending him? He’s a savage. That’s all there is to it.”

  “Are any of us really that ideal?” Chip replied.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Look at our own United States. All I’m saying is, we still have slavery; we’ve taken land that belonged to these tribes. We’re far from perfect.”

  “A Mormon once told me, ‘As long as we aspire to be better, there’s hope.’” Right when I finished, infernos ascended from the mountaintop.

  Chip hopped up. “Big Owl went that direction. Come-on, we have to follow. That’s the only way we’ll know what the hell is going on.”

  After I hesitated, he beseeched again. “I know him. If he was going to kill us, he’d have done it already.”

  I dusted off and said, “I reckon there’s no better option...”