Spoils of War

Copyright © 2009 Ernest Bloom.

Several tall baskets were arrayed along the inside of the low mud wall that encircled the town. It was very hot when we rode in, and we were anxious to find water for the horses and ourselves and to continue on as soon as possible, but the baskets caught our attention. They were fashioned crudely from rather wide swatches of yellow straw or heavy flattened cornhusk or cattail, or probably some kind of cactus fiber, and they had shiny green ribbons woven in long diagonals, the same kind used for Christmas presents. The fighting was over now, and the town was very quiet. We had missed the fiesta from the previous night. Black marks from firecrackers still marked the hard-packed road. Some of the baskets had lids fashioned of the same material, but they bulged thickly with their contents, and several of the lids were tucked in between baskets or else had fallen off, or been blown away by random gusts of the scorching breezes so common to these parts. You knew from the smell what they contained before your eyes picked out the details in the dark shadows from the wall. They were curved and dirty things, brown and black. They must only be storing them here for a few days, I thought, before distributing them to the rest of the villages, these baskets overloaded with hands and feet taken in battle from the enemies of the tribe.

We found a trough and let the horses drink deeply. There was a slow-moving stream nearby where we filled our skins, not saying anything to each other. There was nothing to say. A few of the dark-eyed children were there, staring at us silently from behind the great cottonwoods. We were there less than ten minutes, and then we were gone again, riding back into the trackless desert.