Who Was That Masked Man?
A short story by John Picard.
This story is an accompaniment to the article “Scenes From The Literary Blacklist” by Elizabeth Kaye Cook and Melanie Jennings published on September 13, 2024.
“Me not happy.”
We were sitting by the campfire after a long day of putting the Clayton brothers in the local lockup when Tonto came out with this startling statement.
“Since when?” I said.
“Long time.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
“Saying now.”
“Is this about the Claytons?” Tonto had tracked the brothers to Eagle’s Bluff. Presuming on a long-standing division of labor, I was the one who opened fire.
“Me see first.”
“I know, but you’re the tracker, I’m the marksman.”
“Tonto marksman too.”
“You’re a fine marksman. Is that what this is about? You’re wanting in on more of the action?”
“Not mind more action, less chores.”
“More action. I’ll work on that. And tell you what, I’ll help with gathering the firewood from now on. I can even do some of the cooking if you can stand more of my fatback and beans? Anything else bothering you?”
“Me miss home.”
Tonto and I had been together since he saved my life ten years ago and we embarked on a crusade to bring law and order to the West. We had never been apart in all that time, not even for a day.
“What do you mean by home?” I asked. I knew, of course. It had been awhile, but this wasn’t the first time he’d expressed the desire to take a break from life on the trail—and my talking him out of it, frankly.
“My tribe my home, Kemosabe. All Indians have tribe.”
“I know that. I know you have a tribe. Comanche. Do you mean like a vacation? Are we talking weeks or months here?”
“Not sure.”
“Well, let’s not rush into anything, okay? Let’s think about it. All right?”
Tonto grunted.
“I’ll take that as a ‘yes’.”
This upsetting conversation led to a restless night. A decade is not long enough to erase some memories. I would have died with the rest of my posse in the ambush at Bryant’s Gap if Tonto hadn’t found me with a bullet in my chest and nursed me back to health.
“I am the lone ranger,” I said to Tonto after he buried all five of my fellow Texas Rangers, one of them my brother. I asked Tonto to make a mask out of my brother’s vest, a mask I have worn ever since, to honor my brother’s memory. Tonto dug a sixth grave with my name on the marker to deceive the murderers about my true fate in order to bring them to justice that much faster.
Then, near the end of my healing, I shared with Tonto what I can only describe as a vision, a vision of going beyond merely avenging my comrades’s deaths. I’d always been an idler. The silver mine I inherited made it so that I didn’t have to work. I’d only joined the Rangers to be with my brother. I’d never seriously considered law enforcement as a career. But this was different. This was a mission, a calling. I would be The Lone Ranger, a lone crusader pursuing evil doers wherever he finds them. But I wasn’t someone who liked being alone; I hated it. Along with my parents, brother and four sisters, I grew up with a couple of grandparents and a slew of nieces and nephews. I was rarely alone in our big, bustling household. Since leaving home I’d done everything I could to avoid being by myself; so I strongly urged Tonto, my new friend and rescuer, to join me on my quest.
“How long you need me?” He explained he was only in that part of the country because he was visiting a relative who belonged to a northern branch of the Comanche nation.
“As long as you’re willing.”
“One moon. Two moons most.”
“Two months. I’ll take that.” I suspected even then I could get many more than two months out of him. He gave the impression of being unsettled, adrift. I asked, “Do you know how to cook, by the way?”
“Good cook, Kemosabe.”
“Kemo…?”
“Kemosabe. It mean Faithful Friend.”
“Faithful Friend. I like that. I like that a lot.”
Two months stretched into six months, a year, two years, and so on, Tonto seeming to find it harder as time passed to leave a way of life he’d chanced upon in his youth, which worked for me. At what point does your friend become your brother, your companion, your family? I couldn’t say when exactly but the bond between Tonto and me became permanent in my mind, a bond that could only be broken by death.
One thing I quickly learned about evil-doing: if you go looking for it, you find it. Tonto and I seldom went more than a week without coming upon a situation that needed our unique brand of help. A few days after I vowed to let Tonto in on more of the action we rode into Laramie where the sheriff had just been murdered. The town—its citizens paralyzed by fear—had been taken over by Eli Drake and his band of desperadoes. The sheriff’s widow—speaking for the terrified townsfolk—didn’t have to ask twice for our assistance.
Tonto tracked Drake and his men to their hideout on Baker’s Ridge. Tonto suggested employing one of his craftiest Indian tricks, one we hadn’t used in awhile because it could be overdone, but I decided to risk it, especially if it gave Tonto a greater sense of participation. Tonto’s running from place to place hollering the Comanche war cry soon convinced Drake’s gang that they were surrounded. They filed out of the cabin with their hands up, except for Drake who ran for his horse and rode off. I jumped on Silver and gave chase. Drawing beside him, I wrestled him off his horse and onto the ground where we duked it out until I got the better of him.
By the campfire that night I expected that Tonto’s somber mood of recent days would have lifted. But he remained long-faced, sitting cross-legged in his buckskins and moving his food around on his plate.
“Sorry about the beans,” I said. “Kind of bland.”
He made no reply.
“The widow couldn’t thank me enough for saving the town,” I said.
Tonto raised his head. “Why she not thank me?”
“Well…she probably didn’t think you spoke English. She meant both of us, of course.”
Tonto grunted.
“I would have let you fight Drake. It’s just that Silver is faster than Scout.”
“Scout plenty fast.”
“He is. Very fast. My point is, if you’d gotten to Drake before I did he would have been all yours.”
He grunted again.
“Did you hear what that old fellow said as we were riding away? The one I gave the silver bullet to?”
“Me hear,” Tonto said, wearily.
“‘Who was that Masked Man?’ Then his buddy said, ‘Why, that was The—”
“—Lone Ranger,” Tonto brusquely interrupted. “People ask, What Lone Ranger really like? What he look like under mask? Never questions for Tonto.”
“I’m sorry, but there are a lot more Indians around than there are masked men. So is that your problem? Lack of recognition?”
There was a pause. The fire was dying. Darkness was coming on.
“Not just that, Kemosabe.”
“What then?”
He didn’t speak for a moment, then, “Me miss life with own people. Not getting younger. Not too late to take a wife, start family. Me want to speak own language. Tired of sounding like two-year-old.”
“So we’re talking about more than a vacation here.”
“Yes, Kemosabe.”
There arose a frightening specter. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”
“Yes, Kemosabe. Should have done long ago.”
“What about the people who still need our help, the people whose lives still need saving? What about them?”
“People have Lone Ranger. Tonto must put self first for change.”
“Faithful Friend,” I said. “Isn’t that what Kemosabe means? I thought that went both ways.”
“Not work this time,” Tonto said.
At dawn I walked with him to the horses. I’d barely slept and only managed to calm myself with the thought that once Tonto experienced the tedium and boredom of domestic life he would gladly return to the excitement and adventure of the trail.
Tonto mounted Scout.
I handed him a silver bullet. “A keepsake,” I said.
Tonto started to say something but I cut him off.
“You know how I hate goodbyes.”
Tonto, my friend, my brother, rode away, headed for the New Mexico Territory.
“I’ll be in the Phoenix area for the next few weeks,” I shouted after him.
Tonto turned in his saddle and waved.
“After that, Tucson,” I said, “then Galveston, then Amarillo,” but I wasn’t sure he heard me.
Tonto had a limited vocabulary and struggled to fashion complex sentences, but he was an excellent listener. Whenever I confided in him I felt heard. I couldn’t claim that about my own brother, who’d only wanted to talk about horses and women. Not that Tonto and I did all that much talking. That was the beauty of it. We always seemed to know what the other was thinking. We could go hours, even days, without speaking and not feel the slightest awkwardness. In addition to his personal qualities, Tonto was a resourceful cook and an efficient manager of a campsite, among other practical virtues.
While waiting for Tonto to come around, I decided to take on a temporary sidekick. I went quickly through a Huron, an Illinois, two Cherokee, a Kickapoo and, for sentimental reasons, a Comanche. Some found the work too perilous and quit after their initial brush with danger. Most just lacked the requisite zeal, the necessary dedication. They, too, had better things to do.
Finally, another Cherokee seemed to be working out. Kanuna was a good shot, possessed adequate tracking skills and, though an indifferent cook, prepared something edible for every meal. Like anyone his age, only seventeen, he was something of a know-it-all. He spoke no English and refused to learn any. But how many Indians would give up the security of the tribe for the high-risk rough-and-tumble of the trail—with a masked white man, no less?
We’d been together for a month when we found ourselves pinned down in the Pecos Hills, shooting it out with The Crawley Gang. I motioned for Kanuna to cover me so I could sneak around and surprise them from behind, jumping down from a high rock.
Kanuna shook his head, letting me know that such a maneuver would be cowardly. He wanted to charge the Crawleys on horseback like a real warrior. With emphatic hand gestures, I tried to reason him out of this foolish notion. He screamed back at me in Cherokee. The argument got so heated Kanuna forgot himself and stood up. Immediately, a bullet pierced his brain. It was the kind of thing Tonto would have never allowed to happen.
A few weeks later, nursing a hangover (whiskey took some of the edge off the loneliness), I spotted a driverless stagecoach rattling pellmell across the prairie. I jumped on Silver and rode hard to catch up to the team of runaways. I leapt onto the lead horse and, yanking on the reins, halted the stagecoach less than a hundred feet from Devil’s Gorge. The sole passenger lay unconscious on the stagecoach floor. I gathered Monique LaFleur—for that was her name—into my arms and headed for the nearest shade tree. I placed on the ground the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen: raven hair, alabaster skin, dewy lips, slim ankles.
Upon regaining consciousness, she explained that the stagecoach had been attacked by robbers on the way to Dodge City, where she was to start her new life in America as a school teacher. Offering to take her the rest of the way into town, I laced my fingers together to make a stirrup and lifted her onto Silver.
“Thank you for saving my life, monsieur. I owe you—comment vous dites?—a debt of gratitude.” Her arms were wrapped around my waist, her breath on my neck, her perfume in my nostrils.
“Not at all, madame. It’s what I do.”
“Mademoiselle.”
“Sorry?”
“Mademoiselle. I am not married, monsieur.”
Normally I would have dropped her off and left town with a hearty “Hi-Yo, Silver,” but I hadn’t spoken to another soul in days and I was starved for company. I booked a room at a boarding house, paying a week in advance, unable to remember the last time I’d slept with a roof over me.
On our third day together Monique packed a picnic lunch and we rode out to Smith Lake.
“I don’t even know your name,” she said, removing my hat and stroking my hair. “I can’t keep calling you Lone Ranger, can I?”
It showed how quickly matters had progressed that I revealed to her my real name.
“Quel dommage, John. What a pity such a handsome face is covered.”
“Only part of it.”
“Do you ever take it off, your little mask?” she asked, feeding me a piece of apple.
“Never. Well, when I bathe, of course.”
“Did you take it off for your Indian friend?”
“Yes,” I admitted.
“But not for me? Not for your Monique?”
“I’m sorry. I’m just not ready.”
If I removed the mask one thing was bound to lead quickly to another. What Monique didn’t know was that my silver mine would have allowed us to live in perfect ease and comfort. We could have bought a hundred acres of farmland and built a house with five bedrooms. But that would have meant giving up my reason for being. Also, the mine more or less ran itself. What would I do all day? I had grown accustomed to an active, thrill-packed life.
The next day a possible solution occurred to me.
“How do you feel about traveling?” I asked Monique.
“I traveled all the way from France.”
“How would you like to ride with me?”
“Ride with you? On your horse?”
“You’d have your own horse. Your own gun, too. If you don’t know how to shoot I can always teach you.”
“Shoot?”
“If you’d rather not handle a firearm, you can just take care of the campsite? That way I wouldn’t have to worry about you being injured or killed.”
“Injured or killed?”
I failed to convince her. The next morning, while Monique was still sleeping, I saddled up and rode quietly out of Dodge, wondering how long it would be before she awoke and found on the pillow next to hers a silver bullet.
I met Cootie Wilson at a saloon in Austin. He was aptly named. He was just that, an old coot: sixty if he was a day, with a whiskery face, a squint in his eye, a chaw of tobacco in his cheek. His clothes were ill-fitting. He wore his battered old hat with the brim bent back in front. A former soldier in the Mexican-American War, he was a crack shot with his Winchester; also as good a cook as Tonto and his near-equal at tracking. And I could listen to Cootie talk all night when he started in with one of his tall tales while we passed a bottle back and forth. Trouble was, we were off the trail more than we were on it. Where Tonto and I seldom went more than five or six days without encountering some wrong that needed righting, Cootie and I might go two or three weeks. We were sleeping in, dilly-dallying after mealtimes, taking extended target practice. When I pointed out to him how much more we could be doing, especially compared to my time with Tonto, Cootie took offense.
“You and that Injun a yours,” he said, spitting out a stream of tobacco. “I’m tired a hearin’ about him.”
“Indian. They don’t like to be called Injuns.”
“It’s Tonto this and Tonto that.”
“We rode together for ten years.”
“I wouldn’t ride with no savage for ten minutes.”
“He was not a savage. Not every Indian is a savage.”
“Most are. They can’t help theirselves. It’s their nature.”
“I think we should drop the subject,” I said.
Cootie spit out more tobacco. “Fine by me.”
Early one morning we spotted clouds of smoke on the horizon.
“Someone needs us,” I said to Cootie, spurred Silver and off we went.
We came to an Apache village half-burned to the ground. I learned from the chief that white settlers had set fire to their teepees and kidnapped the chief’s daughter-in-law. The settlers refused to return her until the Indians ceded to them the Apache’s rich bottomland.
“We’ll find her,” I told the chief. “Rest assured.”
“I ain’t riskin’ my life for no squaw,” Cootie informed me.
“Then I’ll do it myself.”
“You heard what the chief said. They’s five of them. They’s one a you.”
“That’s why I could use your help.”
“I don’t stick my neck out for no Injun.”
“I asked you not to use that word.”
“What’s wrong with it?”
“It’s dismissive of an entire race of people. It implies they’re incapable of decency and fellow-feeling. It suggests they’re not fully human.”
“Injun! Injun! Injun!”
It was all I could do not to strike him.
I got the job done that day but without Cootie, whom I never saw again. I considered retirement—removing the mask, hanging up my firearms, settling down to a more conventional life. Was I sacrificing too much? Was I missing out on life’s more conventional rewards: wife, children, home? I didn’t think so. How often as I was about to ride off after rescuing some damsel or saving some homestead did I see on the faces of family men the hankering for a life absent all responsibility save keeping a lookout for the next big adventure?
“Who was that masked man?”
I was hale and hearty at thirty-eight. I had many more years as The Lone Ranger ahead of me. But the problem remained.
Riding south to the New Mexico Territory, I stopped in Silver City—cheek by jowl with Comanche country. While refreshing myself at the local saloon, I learned that the notorious Grogan Gang had shot up the town earlier that day, enraged that one of their own had been jailed by Silver City’s tough new sheriff. Besides destroying public property, the gang had killed the sheriff’s deputy before fleeing to the Pinos Altos Mountains. I immediately volunteered my services. I had just left the saloon when I saw an Indian emerge from the seed store carrying a large bag, the very man I’d hoped to run into.
“Tonto!”
“Kemosabe!”
He approached, smiling broadly. His features were the same, but his overall appearance was greatly altered. He was bare chested—no more buckskin. He had let his hair grow long in the way of Comanche men. He had an earring made of shell and a tattoo on his right cheek.
“How have you been, Tonto?”
“Me not Tonto anymore. Me Puhihwikwasu’u.”
“Puhih…So how are you? Keeping busy?”
“Plenty busy, Kemosabe. Me father now. Four little ones to feed.”
“My, you have been busy.”
“What about Lone Ranger?”
I told him about the job I’d just taken on.
“Grogan Gang. Very bad men.”
“I’ve been told their hideout is in the Pinos Altos Mountains.”
“Pinos Altos. Plenty rugged.” Tonto sniffed. “Me smell firewater.”
I put my hand to my mouth.
“Lone Ranger drink now?”
“On occasion.”
“That not like you.”
“I’m thinking of cutting back.”
Tonto grunted. “Must meet family.”
His children’s ages ranged from two to eight years. Tonto’s eldest son, who’d recently completed his first buffalo hunt, performed a series of horse tricks for our entertainment before we sat down to lunch. His little girl held her deerskin doll close to her chest and gazed shyly at the masked stranger. Kumaquai, Tonto’s wife, eyed me warily throughout a delicious meal of corn cakes and buffalo strips.
Afterwards, taking Tonto aside, I said, “You have a beautiful family, Pruh…Pruh…”
“‘Tonto’ fine.”
“Thank you.”
“Me very proud.”
“You should be.” There was a silence, then I said, “Got a proposition for you. I understand you’re a husband and a father. I respect that. But you’re also a man of action. You need to be that man sometimes or deny a vital part of yourself. I know Indians tend to have large, extended families. While you’re riding the trail with me for, say, six months of the year—okay, four months; make it three—while you’re riding the trail you could always have your relatives look in on your wife and children.“
“Kumaquai not like.”
“You told her about us, huh? About me?”
“Yes, Kemosabe.”
That explained the gimlet-eyed stare I was getting all through lunch. She was afraid I was going to steal her husband away.
“Too dangerous,” Tonto said. “Family need father.”
“Suppose you just did the tracking. You’d be out of harm’s way. I’d make sure of it. You’d be in no danger whatsoever at any time.”
He glanced in the direction of his teepee. “Me can’t do.”
“All right. How about this, then? I could use some help with the Grogan Gang. You said yourself the Pinos Altos were rugged terrain. You’d only be gone, oh, three days at the most. We’d set up a campsite. I’ll do the cooking. It would be a one-time thing. For old time’s sake.”
Tonto shook his head.
“What’s a few days? Don’t you miss the trail, Tonto?”
“Sometime.”
“Well? I’ll talk to Kumaqaui myself if you think it would do any—”
“Kemosabe!”
“What?” I said, startled by Tonto’s vehemence.
“You Lone Ranger,” he said.
“Okay.”
“Lone Ranger?”
“What about it?”
“Be Lone Ranger.”
“I’ve tried. I really have.“
“Try harder.”
“Maybe I should follow your example—get married, have kids.”
“That not you.”
“I’m no good at being alone.”
“We all alone, Kemosabe. Must learn.”
“How?”
“Only one way,” he said and, shifting his gaze, looked out over the vast and lonesome prairie that stretched to the blue horizon.
I saw that he was right. I’d put it off for too many years, I’d run from my destiny, from myself, long enough.
There wasn’t much else to say. I asked Tonto to tell his family goodbye and climbed up on Silver. We were seeing each other for the last time, committed to our very different lives.
“Me pity Grogan Gang,” Tonto said with a smile.
“Thanks for that,” I said, reaching down to shake his hand. “Thanks for everything, Faithful Friend.”
Once Tonto and I helped a Mescalero chief break his peyote habit. The poor man suffered horribly, writhing on the ground as he struggled to free himself from the powerful substance. On my own at last—no Tonto, no whiskey either—that was how it was for me. It didn’t take a mere forty-eight hours either, as it had for the chief. It took years, two or three, before I could get through a day without yearning for companionship, for a shared life. I shed more than a few manly tears. But over time, I minded my aloneness less and valued my own company more. Eventually, I preferred it. I still met people wherever I went, people desperate for the kind of help only I could provide. These intense, if brief, encounters satisfied my need for human interaction.
And I was never truly alone, of course. A man on the trail is never alone. I had the wide open spaces, the birds of the air, the beasts of the field. I had the moon and the stars. I had all of that, plus the best friend a man like me could ask for—a fiery horse with the speed of light.
“Hi-Yo, Silver, away!”
John Picard is a native of Washington D.C. currently living in Greensboro, North Carolina. He has published fiction and nonfiction in New England Review, Narrative Magazine, Iowa Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and elsewhere.
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What a wonderful story. In addition, it prosecutes and proves the case against cancel culture in one short, perfect work of art.