Comanche Raid (A Cheyenne Western--Book Six)

by Judd Cole

  “No, shaman,” Black Elk said, his tone ominously low with rage, “but it does permit a war leader to take his wife’s braid. This is the second time you have pulled your knife and spoken the he-bear talk to me. I trained you, buck!”

  “And I learned my lessons. Remember this when you lift your hand to strike Honey Eater.”

  “I will remember it now, squaw stealer, and gut you like a rabbit!”

  Black Elk unsheathed his knife again, his eyes dark and dangerous. His war face was made even more hideous by the dead, leathery flap where part of an ear had been severed by a Bluecoat saber, then later sewn back on with buckskin thread. Again Black Elk thought of the time he had caught Honey Eater kneeling before Touch the Sky s empty tipi, crying in fear for his safety aboard the white men’s keelboat.

  Touch the Sky made no move to leap down the bank, though his weapon was still in his hand. Black Elk was halfway up the bank when a shout from camp made both braves look that way.

  Touch the Sky’s drawn knife had earned the attention of a vigilant Bowstring named Tangle Hair. With the hunt preparations underway, they were patrolling the camp.

  Tangle Hair raced over on his jet-black mustang.

  “Black Elk! Touch the Sky! Would you sully the Arrows even as your tribe prepares for the hunt?”

  Despite their anger, Tangle Hairs words shamed both warriors. According to the Cheyenne Way, the four sacred Medicine Arrows, always protected by Arrow Keeper, must be kept forever sweet and clean. The bloodshed of any Cheyenne stained the Arrows, and thus the entire tribe. When violent emotions were brewing, the thought of the Arrows prevented many fights. It would be an especially serious wrong to the tribe to sully them as a hunt was beginning, thus creating bad medicine to scare off the herds.

  Tangle Hair nodded toward Touch the Sky. “I am not surprised to see this one brandishing his knife as the hunt begins. He was raised among hair faces and it is said he does not truly respect the red man’s ways. But you, Black Elk! You are my war leader! For this very reason, you should be the last to risk bloodshed now!”

  His words flew straight-arrow. Even the proud Black Elk, who brooked censure from few men, nodded to admit their truth. Still, his anger at Touch the Sky’s interference was great.

  “This spy for the long knives has been working his trade again,” the war chief said, “only now he spies on me as I discipline my squaw.”

  “I was not spying,” Touch the Sky said hotly. “I saw this brave warrior beating a defenseless woman, and I interfered as any warrior is required to do. The Cheyenne Way does not permit the beating of our women.”

  By now several more Bowstring soldiers had ridden over to see what was wrong. They conferred among themselves for some time in low voices. This was an awkward matter. The tall youth was right. Yet few Cheyenne braves did not occasionally beat their women. It was a private matter. Still, all could see that Black Elk had cut off Honey Eater’s beautiful hair. This was a severe punishment for a girl well liked by everyone in the tribe, the daughter of the great Chief Yellow Bear.

  The Bowstrings now demonstrated their tact once again. Clearly, Black Elk’s pride had been offended, his manhood challenged publicly by Touch the Sky’s interference. Yet they grudgingly agreed among themselves that the youth had been right to do so.

  “Black Elk,” said Tangle Hair. “Help us have a good hunt! It has been decided that you should ride over with us now to our troop’s pony herd. Select two of our finest ponies and add them to your string. A warrior with so many feathers in his bonnet should have the pick of the best.”

  The last thing Black Elk needed was more ponies. But Tangle Hair’s gesture allowed him to save face without risking the severe stigma of murder. Black Elk nodded. Then he fixed his stone-eyed stare on Touch the Sky and said, “I have no desire to sully the Arrows. But Bowstrings, during this hunt watch this white man’s dog close and keep him far from me, or I swear his gut will string my next bow!”

  Chapter Two

  The Kiowa leader named Hairy Wolf halted his band at the rim of Blanco Canyon.

  All around the warrior as far as his eyes could see stretched the vast Llano Estacado, the Staked Plain—a land of endless, barren desert plains divided by sterile mountains and bone-dry arroyos. This remote wilderness, covering much of the Texas Panhandle and eastern New Mexico Territory, was an unsettled, almost treeless wasteland seldom visited by the hair-face whites. It was inhabited by buffalo, antelope, wolves, coyotes, jackrabbits, prairie dogs, rattlesnakes—and the Kiowas’ closest allies, the Comanches.

  The Llano’s searing sunshine and chalky alkali dust made their enemies reluctant to go in pursuit of them—thus it had become the Comanches’ favorite haunt. Blanco Canyon, the largest single break dividing the Staked Plain, was now home to Iron Eyes and his Quohada, or Antelope Eater, band of Comanche. Hairy Wolf had led his Kiowa warriors from Medicine Lodge Creek in Oklahoma for this important council.

  Longtime friends, hunting partners, and battle allies, the Kiowas and Comanches were even closer than the Cheyennes and their Lakota Sioux cousins. Many found this close alliance odd, since the towering, broad-shouldered Kiowa warriors were considered a strikingly handsome tribe; the Comanches, in contrast, were small and bandy-legged and considered homely. Yet in fierce temper and love of battle the two tribes were twins. Both tribes were fluent in Kiowa, Comanche, and Spanish, and used all three languages interchangeably, especially to fool their enemies.

  “Painted Lips,” Hairy Wolf called to a nearby warrior, “bring me the war pipe.”

  Painted Lips owned a fine hand-tooled saddle captured during a raid on Mexican soldiers in the Superstition Mountains. He reached into a saddlebag and removed a long clay pipe painted in bright crimson and black. He nudged his pony closer and handed it to his war chief.

  Hairy Wolf undid the thongs of a rawhide pouch. He removed a generous pinch of rich white man’s tobacco. He stuffed it into the pipe, ready to present to his friend Iron Eyes. It was the custom to always arrive with a pipe filled when recruiting braves for a raid.

  “Look!” Painted Lips pointed below into the canyon.

  Hairy Wolf watched a magnificent herd of ponies suddenly round a sandstone shoulder. The Comanches, like the Kiowas, were rich in horses—indeed, much of their constant fighting with other tribes was to protect, or get back, their herds.

  Below, a Comanche herd guard had spotted the Kiowas. He raised his skull-cracker—the stone war club so deadly in the hands of a mounted Comanche—in greeting.

  Hairy Wolf lifted his streamered lance high overhead to return the greeting. The Kiowa leader wore captured Bluecoat trousers and boots. He was bare from the waist up except for a bone breastplate. He was huge—well over six feet— and thickly muscled, with an aquiline nose and long, flowing black hair that fell well below his waist. Now it was matted from exposure to pale alkali dust.

  Hairy Wolf led his band down the narrow and rock-strewn trail that descended into the canyon. As they drew closer to the bottom, the well-disguised camp began to emerge from its natural camouflage. Unlike the tipis preferred by the northern Plains tribes, Iron Eyes’ Comanches lived in one-room, mesquite-branch huts called jacals and in even cruder wickiups—curved-brush shelters which withstood the strong wind and dust storms of the Llano better than tipis.

  Iron Eyes had already stepped out of his lodge to meet his Kiowa brothers. Hairy Wolf dismounted and greeted him with a strong bear hug, lifting the smaller Comanche clear off the ground.

  Then, still without speaking a word, he solemnly offered Iron Eyes the filled pipe.

  The Quohada leader stared at the pipe with the deep-brown eyes characteristic of his people. He had a sun-darkened, oval face. His hair was shorter than Hairy Wolf’s, parted exactly in the center and just long enough to brush behind his ears.

  “So,” Iron Eyes said at last, speaking in the Kiowa tongue, “you are riding into battle. Hair faces?”

  Hairy Wolf shook his head as the rest of his w
arriors dismounted and greeted old friends with their hearty bear hugs.

  “Cheyennes,” he said.

  A look of satisfaction settled on Iron Eyes’ weather-seamed but still-youthful face. The Cheyenne tribe had long been bitterly hated by the Kiowas and Comanches. More than twenty winters earlier, the Cheyennes had met their southern enemies in a major battle at Wolf Creek. The Cheyennes had not only possessed muskets and outnumbered their opponents, but had stunned them with their reckless bravery. On that fateful day scores of good Kiowa and Comanche warriors had been sent to the Land Beyond the Sun forever. Even today the words “Remember Wolf Creek!” were a Kiowa-Comanche battle cry that inspired heroism.

  Iron Eyes reached out and accepted the pipe. “It was the Cheyenne who sent out the first warrior,” he said. “We only sent out the second. Since Wolf Creek, they have constantly stolen our ponies, and for camp fires they have burned our lodges. I hate them almost as much as I hate the hair-mouthed Texans who are stealing our best lands. Come inside and let us smoke this good tobacco while you speak more on this thing.”

  The inside of the jacal was more spacious than the other lodges. The mesquite-branch walls were chinked with red clay. The skin of a roadrunner, the good luck charm of the Comanches, hung from the ceiling. Dangling all around it were enemy scalps. These had been cured and painted bright colors, the hair dyed in bright greens and yellows.

  Iron Eyes waited respectfully until Hairy Wolf had seated himself first on a stack of coyote furs. After all, the Kiowa was a member of his tribe’s most elite warrior society, the Kaitsenko—the ten bravest warriors of the Kiowa Nation.

  They smoked, filling the jacal with the rich smell of the tobacco. Then Hairy Wolf laid the pipe down between them.

  “You know,” he said, “that the Northern Cheyenne have chosen a brave named Gray Thunder as their new chief?”

  Iron Eyes nodded. “He is a good warrior, not so old as their former chief, Yellow Bear.”

  “He is leading his tribe on the spring hunt. We know this thing because buffalo scouts from his tribe have followed the herds south, close to our ranges. This can only mean they are leaving soon for the annual hunt.”

  Again Iron Eyes nodded, waiting for more. Outside the hut, a pistol shot, followed by a woman’s scream, suddenly rose above the hubbub of voices. Both leaders calmly ignored it. The scream was followed by a loud chorus of laughter.

  “You know,” Hairy Wolf said, “that Cheyenne Hunt Law requires them to hunt the buffalo as an entire tribe?”

  Iron Eyes began to see which direction his friend was grazing. His thin lips eased into a smile. “Of course. They are a people ruled by many strict and foolish laws.”

  “Yes—and a people whose beautiful women and children command a good price in Santa Fe.”

  Iron Eyes liked the sound of this. His tribe, like Hairy Wolf’s, needed whiskey and new rifles. Both tribes were active in the Comanchero trade conducted with New Mexicans and Mexicans, supplying Indian captives as slaves in exchange for firearms and alcohol. It was illegal, as was slavery itself in both Mexico and the New Mexico Territory. But a constant market for cheap labor and prostitutes made it very profitable—much more so than selling hides or even fine horses. Hides and horses required much time and work, and besides, who wanted to part with a good pony once it was broken right?

  “They are too strong in their camp,” Hairy Wolf said. “But the tribe will be vulnerable on the move. Especially in a region less familiar to them.”

  “How far south must they come?”

  “Well below the Smoky Hill River. That is the soonest they could catch the herds. We would not have far to ride.”

  “We can attack,” Iron Eyes said, “while the braves are engaged in the hunt. The women and children will be alone at the hunt camp behind the herds.”

  Again outside there were more sharp cracks from a pistol, and again a woman’s scream was followed by a loud ripple of laughter. Again the two war leaders ignored it.

  “Brother,” Iron Eyes added, “you saw me smoke your pipe. My lips touched it. You are a member of the Kaitsenko, honored by my tribe fully as much as yours. And we Comanche, are we not called the Red Raiders of the Plains? Again our two tribes will ride to battle as one, and the Cheyenne will pay dearly for their victory dance after Wolf Creek.”

  Hairy Wolf nodded. “We can expect a bloody fight if we do not strike quickly. Their war chief is a young buck named Black Elk, whose coup feathers trail to the ground. He is no warrior to take lightly.”

  “There is another,” Iron Eyes said. “He is even younger. A tall one whom the Pawnee speak of with fear in their voices. They say his medicine is strong, his war lance unerring. They say he can summon insane white men from the forests, conjure up the angry silvertip bear to save himself.”

  “The Pawnee!” Hairy Wolf said scornfully. “They are fierce warriors, true. But brother, their superstition knows no bounds. Let him summon a crazy white—Hairy Wolf will scalp a soft-brain as quickly as any other hair face!”

  “Well said, Kaitsenko! Then we ride north! Human flesh is not only valuable—it need not be broken like horses.”

  From outside, more pistols shots, more screams.

  This time Iron Eyes smiled as he caught his companion s eye. “The ones we plan to sell need not be broken,” he corrected himself.

  ~*~

  Outside the jacal, while the two leaders planned their strike against Gray Thunders Cheyennes, the braves from both tribes had gathered for the usual festivities when meeting after a long separation.

  Whiskey was in short supply. But the Comanches had learned how to make corn beer from the Navajos to the west. There had been the usual competition in riding skills, won, as always, by the Comanches. A brave named Big Tree won shouts of approval from both tribes when he shot twenty arrows and rode three hundred yards in the time it took a Kiowa to reload and fire a carbine twice.

  But the real entertainment was provided by an Apache squaw the Comanches had captured during a raid into Sonora.

  The Comanches prided themselves on having killed more white settlers than any other tribe. Like the Pawnee, they were fond of attacking at night. They excelled at stealth, and were fonder than most tribes of taking captives. And like their battle brothers, the Kiowa, they enjoyed torture— especially of women.

  Two Comanche braves named Dog Fat and Standing Feather were in charge of the entertainment. This Apache squaw was too old to fetch much at the auction block and too ugly for the braves to bother rutting on. She was good only for fun.

  They had tied a plaited thong around her arms and drawn her hands behind her. They had tied them so tight they turned purple. Then they had tied another thong around her ankles and drawn her feet and hands together. They then had flipped her on her face so she was unable to move, and begun beating on her head with their bows.

  Her screams were piteous. To add to the torment, they laid their pistols right up against her skull and fired them. The caps and powder flew into her face and hair, producing bruises and powder burns until she was sorely disfigured.

  This went on for hours, well into the evening. Now and then someone would throw a rock at her, cracking a rib or fracturing a facial bone. Finally, they grew tired of their sport and wandered off to eat, then sleep.

  But the old squaw was still conscious, still begging them to kill her and end the pain. It was Dog Fat who returned, holding a lethally honed bone-handle knife. Casually, he wrenched the Apache’s mouth open and reached far into her throat, slicing her tongue out at the very root. He left it lying in the dirt in front of her so she could see it.

  She could no longer scream—she was too busy gagging in her body’s reflexive effort not to drown in her own blood. This went on for nearly an hour longer before she finally lost the struggle and died.

  Chapter Three

  “Brother,” Little Horse said, “I have heard a thing.”

  Touch the Sky looked up from the elk skin moccasins he was stitching
with a bone awl and sinew thread. He sat beside the cooking tripod outside his tipi. Lost deep in thoughts about the upcoming hunt, he had not heard his friend approaching. All around the two braves, young boys fashioned travois out of limbs and vines, anticipating huge loads of fresh buffalo meat and hides.

  “Sit and speak this thing,” Touch the Sky told his friend.

  Little Horse still moved a bit stiffly as a result of a leg injury inflicted when he was a prisoner aboard the white men’s keelboat. He sat beside his friend.

  “You know that Wolf Who Hunts Smiling wishes to be initiated as a Bull Whip?”

  Touch the Sky nodded. His mouth was a grim, determined slit. That was one of the things he had been thinking about when Little Horse walked up. “I know that he has taken the gift of arrows to their leader, Lone Bear.”

  “He has,” Little Horse said. “But do you also know that Black Elk is changing over to the Bull Whips?”

  “But he is a Bowstring!”

  “Lately he has told certain braves that he is not happy with Spotted Tail and his Bowstring troop. He claims that the Bowstrings settle things too much like women, that they are afraid to punish those who violate the Cheyenne Way. Also, Spotted Tail preaches cooperation with the palefaces who can be trusted. Lone Bear is for the warpath against all of them. Black Elk has ears for such talk.”

  “Yes,” Touch the Sky said, “like his cousin, Wolf Who Hunts Smiling.”

  Touch the Sky said nothing about the incident earlier when Black Elk had cut off Honey Eater s braid. But Black Elk had accepted the Bowstrings’ ponies, and now he had openly turned his back on them! Touch the Sky knew full well the reason behind Black Elk’s hardening of heart. It was the fact that Honey Eater loved him, a Cheyenne who had been raised by whites, instead of Black Elk.

  “Hearing this hurt my ears,” Little Horse said. “The Bull Whips have many enemies among the tribe, those who believe in ways besides harsh punishment to settle disputes. Black Elk is a respected warrior, chosen battle chief over many older braves. By joining Lone Bears troop, he lends the strength of his many coups to the name and beliefs of the Bull Whips.”