“Or bones and entrails,” Herrera replied. “They have always been hunters, you know, when they are not at war.” A minute went by. “Your buffalo killers destroy their livelihood.”
“Sometimes I think you like them,” Tarrant murmured.
“I have dealt with them since I was Pedro’s age, as did my fathers before me,” Herrera said. “One comes to a little understanding, whether one will or no.”
Tarrant nodded. Comancheros had been trading out of Santa Fe for a century, since de Anza fought the tribes to a standstill and made a peace that endured because he had gained then’ respect. It was a peace with the New Mexicans alone. Spaniards elsewhere, any other Europeans, the Mexicans who ruled later, the Americans—Texan, Confederate, Yankee—who despoiled the Mexicans, those remained fair game; and indeed by now there had been such bloodshed and cruelty on both sides that truce between Comanches and Texans was no more thinkable than it was between Comanches and Apaches.
Tarrant forced his mind back to his horse. He and Rufus had gotten fairly good at riding range style; but damn it, what they really were was seamen. Why couldn’t their search have led them into the South Pacific, or along the shores of Asia, or anywhere but this unbounded emptiness?
Well, the search might be near an end. No matter how often he had thought it before, that coursed through his blood and shivered up his spine. O Hiram, Psammetk, Pytheas, Althea, A t hen ais-Aliyat, Armand Cardinal Richelieu, Benjamin Franklin, how far has the River borne me from you! And all the lesser ones, beyond counting, down in dust, wholly forgotten save for whatever might glimmer in him, a comrade of decades or a drinking companion in a tavern, a wife and the children she bore him or a woman chance-met for a single night—
Herrera’s shout slammed him back into the day: “/Alto!” and a rush of alien gutturals. Rufus dropped left hand to pistol. Tarrant gestured him from it. The boys brought the pack animals to a stop. Their eyes darted around, they were new to this and nervous. Despite his earlier times between jaws ready to snap shut, Tarrant’s flesh prickled.
Two men had come around a brush-grown hillock where they must have been on watch. Their scurry-looking mustangs closed the distance in a few pulsebeats. They checked the gallop with invisible touch of knees and twitch of hackamore; seated merely on blankets, they seemed parts of the beasts, centaurs. Their own frames were stocky, bandylegged, swarthy, clad in breechclouts, leggings, and moccasins. Midnight hair hung in twin braids past broad faces painted in the red and black of death. Leather sunshades had been left behind and the war bonnet of the northern plains was unknown here. One man had stuck a few feathers into a headband. The other bore a great shaggy cap or helmet from which sprang buffalo horns. He carried a Henry repeating rifle. A bandolier of cartridges crossed his chest. His companion nocked an arrow to a short bow. Archers were rare of late, or so Tarrant had heard. Maybe this warrior was poor, maybe he preferred the ancestral weapon. No matter.-That barbed iron head could punch through ribs to the heart, and more shafts waited in their quiver.
Herrera talked on. Buffalo Horns grunted. The bowman slacked his string. Herrera turned in the saddle to regard his employers. “The fight is not ended,” he told them, “but the Kwerhar-rehnuh will receive us. Chief Quanah himself is here.” Moisture glistened on his face. He had gone a bit pale around the nostrils. In English he added, for many Co-manches knew some Spanish: “Be ver-ree careful. Sey ‘ave much anger. Sey can easy kill a w’ite man.”
3
The ranch buildings had already been visible. As he drew closer, they seemed to Tarrant, if anything, more small and lonesome in the middle of immensity. He recognized what must be the owners’ home, a bunkhouse, and three lesser outbuildings. Sod, they were little damaged. A barn was smoldering ashes and charred fragments; the family had doubtless spent a lot of money and hope on getting the lumber hauled to them. A couple of wagons had been pushed into the flames. A chicken coop had been emptied and smashed. Hoofs had trampled saplings that were to have grown into shelter against sun and wind.
The Indians were camped where a windmill stood skeletal by the cattle trough for which it pumped water. That put them out of rifleshot from the house and, probably, sight through loopholes. About thirty tipis lifted their gaudily decorated buffalo hide cones across what had been a pasture. At a fire near the middle women in buckskin gowns prepared captured, butchered steers for eating. They were rather few. The braves numbered maybe a hundred. They loafed about, napped, shot dice, cleaned firearms or whetted knives. Some sat grim in front of lodgings from within which sounded keening; they mourned kinsmen slain. A few, mounted, kept an eye on the many horses that grazed in the distance. They were as tough as their masters, those mustangs that could keep going on winter’s grass.
When the newcomers caught the notice of the camp, excitement kindled. Most people ran to crowd around and jabber. The stoic reserve of Indians was a myth, unless they were in pain or dying. Then a warrior’s pride was that not the most prolonged and agonizing torture his captors or their women could think of would make him cry aloud. It was an ill thing to fall into such hands.
Buffalo Horns shouted and pushed his pony through the ruck. Herrera called greetings to men he knew. The smiles and waves that he got in return made Tarrant feel easier. If they took due care, bis party ought to outlive this day. After at!, to these folk hospitality was sacred.
Close by the windmill was a dpi whereon were painted signs that Herrera whispered were powerful. A man too dignified to leave it for curiosity’s sake stood outside, arms folded. The travelers drew rein. Tarrant realized that he looked on Quanah, half-white war chief of the Kwerhar-rehnuh. The name of that band meant “Antelopes”—an American misnomer for the pronghorn, like “buffalo” for bison or “corn” for maize; and curious it seemed for the lords of the Staked Plains, the fiercest of all those Co-manches whom the United States had yet to conquer.
Save for lightning-like bands of yellow and ocher, he wore simply loincloth and moccasins, with a Bowie knife sheathed on a belt, xet there could be no mistaking him. From his mother’s race he took straight nose and a height that towered, thickly muscled, over his followers. However, he was even darker than most of them. His regard of the strangers was lion-calm.
Herrera greeted him deferentially in the tongue of the Nermerauh, the People. Quanah nodded. “Bienvenidos,” he rumbled forth, and continued in accented but fluent Spanish. “Dismount and come in.”
Tarrant felt relieved. In Santa Fe he had learned some of the Plains Indian sign language, but used it haltingly; and Herrera had told him that few Comanches were adept in it anyway. The trader had said Quanah might or might not condescend to speak Spanish with Americans. He had a certain grasp of English too, though he would scarcely handicap himself with it when he didn’t have to. “Muchas gracias, senor,” Tarrant said, to establish that he was the head of this band. He wondered whether he should have used the honorific “Don Quanah.”
Herrera left the remuda in charge of bis sons and accompanied Tarrant and Rufus into the tipi behind the chief. Its outfit was sparse, little more than bedrolls; this was a war band. The light within fell gentle after the glare outside, the air smelled of leather and smoke. The men settled cross-legged in a circle. Two wives left, posting themselves at the entrance in case of a task for them.
Quanah was not about to smoke any peace pipe, but Herrera had said it would be okay to offer cigarettes. Tarrant did while introducing himself and his friend. Deftly left-handed, Rufus took a matchbox from his pocket, extracted and struck a stick, lighted the tobacco. To have such a formidable-seeming man serve them honored both the principals.
“We have come a weary way in the wish of finding you,” Tarrant added. “We thought the Antelopes would be on their home grounds, but you had already left, so we must ask anyone we met, and the earth itself, where you were gone.”
“Then you are not here to trade,” said Quanah in Her-rera’s direction.
“Sr. Tarrant engaged me in Santa Fe
to bring him to you, when he had learned I would be able to,” the trader answered. “I did pack along some rifles and ammunition. One will be a gift to you. As for the rest, well, surely you have taken many cattle.”
Rufus sucked in a sharp breath. It was notorious that New Mexican ranchers wanted stock and would buy without questions. Comancheros got small detachments of Indians to drive herds they had lifted out of Texas to that market, in exchange for arms. Tarrant laid a hand on the redhead’s knee and muttered in Latin, against the outrage he saw, “Stay quiet. You knew this.”
“Make your camp with us,” Quanah invited. “I expect we will be here until tomorrow morning.”
Hope quivered in Rufus’ tone: “Uh, you will spare them in yonder house?”
Quanah scowled. “No. They have cost us comrades. The enemy shall never boast that any defied us and lived.” He shrugged. “Besides, we have need of a short rest, as hard as we have fared—the better to fight the soldiers afterward.”
Yes, Tarrant understood, this was not really a plundering expedition, it was a campaign in a war. His inquiries had informed him of a Kiowa medicine man, Owl Prophet, who called for a great united thrust that would forever drive the white man from the plains; and last year such horror erupted that Washington’s attempts at peace came to an end. In fall Ranald Mackenzie took the black troopers of his Fourth Cavalry into these parts, against the Antelopes. Quanah led a retreat that was a running, fight, brilliantly waged—Mackenzie himself received an arrow wound—high up onto the Llano Estacado until whiter forced the Americans to withdraw. Now he was returning.
The stern gaze shifted to Tarrant. “What do you want with us?”
“I too bear gifts, senor.” Clothing, blankets, jewelry, liquor. Despite his remoteness from this conflict, Tarrant could not bring himself to convey weapons; nor would Rufus have stood for it. “My friend and I are from a distant land—California, by the western waters, which I’m sure you have heard of.” In haste, because that territory belonged to the foe: “We have no quarrel with anyone here. The races are not foredoomed to blood feud.” A risk that he deemed he should take: “Your mother was of our people. Before setting forth, I learned what I could about her. If you have any questions, I will try to answer them.”
Stillness fell. The hubbub outside seemed faint, distant. Herrera looked uneasy. Quanah sat expressionless, smoking. Time passed before the chief said, heavily: “The Te-janos stole her and my small sister from us. My father, Peta Nawkonee the war chief, mourned for her until at last he took a wound hi battle that got inflamed and killed him. I have heard that she and the girl are dead.”
“Your sister died eight years ago,” Tarrant replied low. “Your mother soon followed her. She too was sick with grief ‘and longing. Now they rest at peace, Quanah.”
The tale had been easy enough to obtain, a sensation remembered to this day. In 1836 an Indian band attacked Parker’s Fort, a settlement in the Brazos valley. They slew five men and mutilated them as was Indian wont, preferably before death. They gang-raped Granny Parker after a lance pinned her to the ground. Two of the several other women they violated were left with injuries almost as bad. Two more women they carried away, together with three children. Among these was nine-year-old Cynthia Anne Parker.
The women and boys were eventually ransomed back. Though this was by no means the first time the Comanches took females for slaves, the tale of just what those two suffered came to stand for hundreds; and the Texas Rangers rode with vengeance in their hearts.
Cynthia Anne fared better. Capriciously adopted, raised as a girl of the Nennernuh, she forgot English, forgot wellnigh everything of her early childhood, became an Antelope and presently a mother. By all accounts, hers was a happy marriage; Peta Nawkonee loved his wife and wanted no woman after he lost her. That was in 1860, when Sul Ross led a Ranger expedition in retaliation for a raid and fell . upon the Comanche camp. Its men were off hunting. The Texans shot what women and children fled too slowly, and a Mexican slave whom Ross believed to be the chief himself. Barely in time, a man saw, through dirt and dung-grease, that the hair of one squaw was golden.
The Parker clan and the state of Texas did everything they could for her. It was no use. She was Naduah, who only yearned back to the prairie and the People. Repeated _ attempts to escape finally forced her kinfolk to keep a guard on her. When disease robbed her of her daughter, she howled, tore and slashed her own flesh, sank into silence and starved herself to death.
Out on the plains, her younger son perished as wretchedly. Sickness dwelt always among the Indians, tuberculosis, arthritis, worms, ophthalmia, the smallpox that Europeans brought, a litany of ills without end. But her older son flourished, gathered a war band, became headman of the Antelopes. He refused to sign the Medicine Lodge treaty that would put the tribeson a reservation. Instead, he carried terror along the frontier. He was Quanah.
“Have you seen their graves?” he asked levelly.
“I have not,” Tarrant said, “but if you wish, I can visit and tell them of your love.”
Quanah smoked for a while longer. At least he didn’t outright call the white man a liar. Finally: “Why have you sought me?”
Tarrant’s pulse quickened. “It is not you, chief, great though your fame be. Word has come to me of somebody in your following. If I have heard aright, he hails from the north and has traveled widely and long. Yes, very long, longer than anybody knows, though he never seems to grow old. His must be a strange power. On your home grounds, uh, Nermernuh who stayed behind told us that he came along on this faring. My desire is to speak with him.”
“Why?” demanded Quanah. The bluntness, unlike an Indian, betokened tension below the iron surface.
“I believe he will be glad to talk with me.”
Rufus puffed hard on his cigarette. Laid across his lap, the hook trembled.
Quanah raised his voice to the squaws. One of them left. Quanah returned his look to Tarrant. “I have sent for Dertsahnawyeh. Peregrine.” —the Spanish for the Co-manche name: Wanderer.
“Do you hope he will teach you his medicine?” he went on.
“I have come to find out what it is.”
“I do not think he could tell you, if he were willing, which I do not think he would be.”
Herrera peered at Tarrant. “You only told me you wanted to find out what might lie behind those rumors,” the trader said. “It is dangerous to meddle in warriors’ affairs.”
“Yes, I call myself a scientist,” Tarrant snapped. To Quanah: “That is a man who seeks for whatever truth lies hidden behind things. How do the sun and the stars shine? How did the earth and life come to be? What really happened in the past?”
“I know,” replied the chief. “Thus you whites have found ways to do and make many terrible things, and the railroad runs where the buffalo grazed.” Pause. “Well, I suppose Dertsahnawyeh can take care of himself.” Starkly: “As for me, I must think how to capture yonder house.”
There was nothing more to say.
The tipi entrance darkened. A man trod in. While clad like the rest, he bore no war paint. Nor was he a native of these lands, but tali, slender, lighter-hued. When he saw who sat with Quanah he spoke gently in English. “What do you want of me?”
4
They walked over the prairie, Tarrant, Peregrino, Rufus trailing a step or two behind. Light spilled out of vastness, a measure of warmth lifted from soil. Dry grass rattled. Camp and buildings soon vanished among the tall tawny stalks. Smokes continued in sight, rising straight and slow toward the vultures.
Revelation was strangely subdued. Or perhaps it wasn’t strange. They had waited so long. Tarrant and Rufus had felt hope grow into near certainty while they quested. Peregrino had nurtured an inner peace to which any surprise was like a passing breath of air. Thus he endured his loneliness, until he outlived it.
“I was born almost three thousand years ago,” Tarrant said. “My friend is about half as old.”
“I never counted tim
e until lately,” said Peregrino. They might as well use that name, out of the many he had had. “Then I guessed five or six hundred years.”
“Before Columbus— What changes you’ve seen!”
Peregrino smiled as a man might at a graveside. “You more. Have you come on any like us, besides Mr. Bullen?”
“Not quite. A woman once, but she disappeared. We’ve no idea whether she’s still alive. Otherwise, you’re my first since him. Did you ever?”
“No. I tried but gave up. For all I knew, I was solo. How did you get on my trail?”
“That’s kind of a story.”
“We got plenty time.”
“Well—“ Tarrant drew a tobacco pouch from his pants and, from his shirt, the briar pipe it would have been unwise to smoke before Quanah. “I’ll start with Rufus and me arriving in California in ‘49. You’ve heard about the Gold Rush? We got rich off it. Not as miners, as merchants.”
“You did, Hanno,” said the Van at his heel. “I tagged along.”
“And damn useful you’ve been, hi more tight spots than I can list,” Tarrant declared. “Eventually I dropped from sight for a few years, then showed up in San Francisco under my present alias and bought a ship. I’ve always favored the sea. By now I own several; the firm’s done right well.”
Having loaded his pipe, he laid fire to it. “Whenever I could afford to, I’ve hired men to look for signs of immortals,” he proceeded. “Naturally, I don’t teS them that’s what they’re after. By and large, those of our kind who survive must do it by staying obscure. These days I’m an eccentric millionaire interested in lineages. My agents figure me for an ex-Mormon. They’re supposed to locate—oh, individuals who seem much tike others that dropped from sight earlier, and are apt to appear carrying a pretty fair grubstake—that sort of thing. What with railroads and steamships, I can at last spread my net across the world. Of course, it’s not that big yet, and the mesh is awfully coarse, which may be why it’s caught nothing except a few that turned out false.”
The Boat of a Million Years Page 28
