by Mike Blakely
“There’s one more use for that bell,” William said. “We haven’t had to use it yet, but you ought to know. The guards are trained to ring hell out of that bell in case we’re ever attacked. So if you ever hear three bells, you know somebody friendly’s a-comin’. You hear five, you know the stable hands are feedin’. But if you hear more than that, grab your guns, Mr. Greenwood, and take your place on the wall.”
One night I decided to sleep under the stars inside the protective walls of the stockade. I preferred this to sleeping inside as long as the weather was neither too wet nor too cold. I found a place where the stockade wall blocked the cold north wind, and rolled myself into a buffalo robe. I kept a pistol under my rolled jacket, which I used for a pillow, and I placed a rifle at my feet. This way, whether I had time to roll to my feet or not, I would have a weapon at my disposal.
I spent most of the night reciting poems to myself, and thinking about the problems of the plains and the rest of the world. Finally, toward dawn, I fell asleep and began to dream of Mescalero Apaches crawling over the stockade walls to kill me, accompanied by ogres and carnivorous creatures of the most terrifying ilk. I remained thus tormented by the machinations of my own twisted mind until the bell began to ring. The first few tones frightened away my nightmarish attackers just before they scalped me alive.
Then my eyes opened, and I saw the pewter cast of a not-quite-dawn hanging heavy in the sky. The bell had rung four times. Now five … A pause. Then it rang again. And again! I reached under my coat and took my pistol in hand, glancing both ways along the pointed tops of the stockade timbers. I saw no attackers coming over the wall just yet. My mind was still trying to sort nightmares from reality.
The bell rang on, so I fought the buffalo robe until I kicked it aside, letting the cold air hit my body. I rolled to my feet, and thought about picking up my rifle. Instead, I decided to jump up on a large oaken barrel so I could look over the stockade walls. I had slept in my clothes and boots, so I sprang immediately onto the cask, put there for that purpose, and risked a peek over the wall. In the dim light, I could see no attackers, but that bell was still clanging away—and in a most irregular cadence, as if the guard ringing the bell was quite agitated—or even wounded.
I jumped down from the keg and scooped up my rifle as I sprinted around stacks of wood, around a smokehouse, and past a hand-dug well. I darted among other outbuildings as I ran toward William’s cabin at the center of the stockade. No shots yet fired, I thought. But over the sounds of my own footsteps and my own heavy breathing, I heard hoofbeats, voices shouting, and doors flying open as men woke and came alive to answer the call of the bell.
The attack was coming from the east, I surmised. From the timber along the river. But who? Pawnees? Apaches? Blackfeet? Outlaws? Texas warmongers? As I came around a dormant freight wagon, a horse lunged at me, shoving me down behind a wagon wheel, and scaring the liver out of me. I looked for a rider, but there was none. Were the attackers inside the walls already? Stealing horses? How had this mount escaped the corrals? Rolling out from under the wagon, I regained my feet and finally sprinted around the toolshed—the last obstacle between me and the bell.
I found a dozen men standing around with guns in their hands, shaking their heads as horses milled everywhere in confusion. And at the bell? Major. My horse. He held the rope to the bell between his teeth, and he was pulling down with his powerful neck, swinging the bell so hard that it almost flipped over in its cradle every time he yanked the rope. The relieved men began to chuckle, and they all looked at me as I slid to a stop upon the field of battle, for they all knew I owned that horse. Major saw me, too, and he finally turned the rope loose and looked at me as if to say, “Where the hell have you been?”
William was standing at his open cabin door, his shotgun in one hand. He scowled at me, though I could tell he was holding back a grin. “Mr. Greenwood!” he shouted. “Your goddamn horse is hungry!”
The men burst into laughter at my expense. As they jeered me, I saw Major’s lips groping comically again for the knot at the end of the rope. He managed to get in two more rings before I got to him, took the rope away from him, and pushed him toward the corrals. “Come on, Major,” I groaned, heading for the feed troughs. I knew I would have to pour some grain to get the horses all back into the corrals. Major followed, truly believing he had just ordered up his own breakfast. Now I saw where Major Pain-in-the-Ass had used his teeth to slide the poles aside at the corral openings, dropping one end of each pole so he and the other horses could step out of the corral enclosure. All this in order to get at that confounded bell.
As I trudged toward the corn crib, Major shoving me between the shoulder blades from behind, I heard William shout, “Who’s trainin’ who?”
The laughter roared. It got worse. Within minutes, a relief party from Boggsville had arrived, for the bell could be heard even that far away. So I had to hear it from Tom Boggs and his men, as well. William put me to work gathering eggs and firewood for his wife, Yellow Woman, so she could cook a hearty breakfast for everyone who had responded to Major’s false alarm. I didn’t hear the end of it for years.
WINTER CAME TO William’s stockade, and with the frost and snow came my plans to ride back into Comancheria to begin the winter trading. Kills Something, Loud Shouter, and Fears-the-Ground were eager to go home. They would be returning to their camps and families with much to show. On their fleet Comanche ponies, they had won many a horse race against the Cheyennes and had gifts of deerskin and metal to show for it. The Cheyenne women produced some of the finest quill work and bead work on the plains, and the Comanche women coveted their wares. Also, I had paid my Comanche friends well with gunpowder, lead, bullet molds, hoop iron for making arrowheads, and fancy silver conchos pounded from Mexican coins. These they wore in their hair, around their necks, and upon their deerskin shirts as we rode away from Boggsville and Bent’s Stockade.
“Get us some horses,” William had told me. “More than usual.”
The reason went unspoken, for it was unspeakable. War devoured horseflesh as surely as human flesh. By this order, I knew William believed that war would begin soon. And so I rode again as a pawn on mankind’s chessboard, a mere cog in the great machine of humanity. I flatter myself to think that had I lived an honest life I might have used my God-given gifts of intelligence to deter wars, rather than feed them with the meat and bones of horses. But, alas, a fugitive lives a wasted life.
Twelve
No one covers ground a-horseback like a Comanche. We covered more than forty miles a day on our return to the Crossing on the Canadian River. Our ponies, lightly encumbered with pad saddles and war bridles, carried us on all day at a long trot or a slow canter. Kills Something was the largest man among us, and he could not have weighed over 155 pounds. The spare horses carried the pack saddles loaded with things like blankets, metal pots, and gunpowder, but we had enough spare mounts to distribute the weight among three pack saddles. The Comanches, incidentally, were the only Plains Indians I ever saw to adapt the white man’s way of using pack animals. Other tribes used only the travois. Anyway, we got back to the site of old Fort Adobe in a mere five days. Had we not been encumbered by the pack animals, we could have made the trip in three and a half days.
Our return caused much celebration. Little Bluff’s band of Kiowas were in camp with old Shaved Head’s Comanches, and the Kiowas had attacked a wagon train on the Santa Fe Trail and had killed and scalped a white man, and had gotten away with five mules and two horses, with only one Kiowa warrior slightly wounded by a bullet through the flesh of his arm. This warrior’s arm was swollen to the size of a cantaloupe, but he danced the scalp dance that night with the rest of the men and women, circling the scalp on the pole.
“Does that wound hurt?” I asked him.
“The bone is not broken,” he replied.
I found the Kiowa chief, Little Bluff, and he greeted me like a brother, for I had not seen him in over a year.
; “Why did your hunting party attack the white men’s wagons?” I asked the Kiowa leader.
“They behave like fools in our country.”
“What do you mean?”
“They were killing buffalo and only taking the tongues and the humps, leaving the rest to rot. I tried to make talk with them, to tell them we would hunt and trade meat to them. I rode toward them alone, with a white flag, but they shot at me. I heard the bullet cut the grass just in front of my pony. They were foolish. They did not keep guards around their camp. They were easy to attack in the morning while they were hitching the animals to the wagons. We could have killed more of them, but it was only a warning.”
“The soldiers may come to punish your people if you continue to attack the wagons,” I said.
Little Bluff laughed. “Who will lead them here? You? No one else knows the way.”
“I will never lead your enemies to you. But there are others who know the way.”
“Who?”
“Some of the Apaches and Pueblos are serving as scouts to the army.”
Little Bluff tossed the idea aside with a wave of his hand. “If the bluecoats come in numbers too great to fight, we will move south into the country where only Kiowas and Comanches know how to find water. The soldiers will be easy to kill when their ponies die of thirst.”
My talk was meant to warn Little Bluff away from attacking too many wagons on the trail, but he seemed to have a logical answer to all of my arguments. After all, this was his country by birth, blood, and sacrifice. The United States may have included this wild region on its paper maps, but the hooves of Kiowa and Comanche ponies on this soil meant more than all the treaties in government archives and all the deeds in all the courthouses of the so-called civilized world. Just as the Kiowas and Comanches had invaded this country to take it from the Apaches and Tonkawas, so were the Americans and Texans now invading it to take it from the Kiowas and Comanches. It was the old story of human arrogance, one nation against another, one civilization crushing the last, in turn to be crushed by the next. There was little I could do about it other than watch.
We stayed in camp at the Crossing for several days, resting and feasting on venison, black bear, and antelope. Yet the buffalo were nowhere to be seen here this year, and the people began to feel anxious about starving through the winter if we could not kill some buffalo and dry some meat.
Then came word from the south. Peta Nocona’s band of Comanches had made a sweeping raid on the Texas settlements and had come away with many horses and several scalps. Then, retreating into Comancheria, the raiding party had found large herds of buffalo. Now a camp had been established on the Pease River, where women and Mexican slaves pounded and dried meat that would last through the winter.
When this news came, the elders called for a council in the lodge of Chief Shaved Head. Any council caused excitement among the people of a camp, and this one was no different. It began with a gathering outside of Shaved Head’s lodge. His lodge was made of seventeen buffalo hides—the largest I ever saw. Old Shaved Head entered the lodge first, followed by my friend Kills Something, for Kills Something had risen to a rank almost equal to that of Shaved Head.
After Shaved Head and Kills Something entered the lodge, other elders filed into the tipi, including the mystic, Burnt Belly. They circled around the inside of the walls until they came to the entry, then they continued to circle in ever smaller rings, making room for another row of warriors against the tipi walls as they continued to spiral inward. In this way the lodge gradually began to fill with warriors in descending authority. The warriors knew where they stood in rank to one another, so the highest-ranking men entered first, and when the lodge got full, the youngest warriors just had to listen from outside. I knew my place, as well. I was not Comanche by blood, but I had taken Apache scalps and defended Comanche camps, so I stepped in line behind the warriors who had earned more coups and war honors than I had.
My battle honors put me about halfway between the fire in the center of the lodge, and the portal through which we all had entered. Once inside, we all sat down and waited as Shaved Head lit his pipe. He drew some smoke from the pipe, and when he exhaled the smoke he patted it on his chest as he chanted a prayer to the spirits. The smoke would carry what he felt in his heart up through the vent hole at the peak of the tipi, and into the Shadow Land where the spirits dwelt. He then passed the pipe to Kills Something, who did the same, passing the pipe among the inner circle of elders so that all the wisest men of the band might let their hearts be known to the spirits.
When the elders had smoked, Shaved Head began to speak. He was old, but his voice was strong and certain.
“The Great Circle goes around and around, like the ring of warriors who have entered this council lodge. It goes around and the True Humans go with it, for this is the way of the Great Creator and the spirits who guide us. The Circle comes now to the Beaver Moon. Winter comes soon after. It is time to hunt buffalo so our women can make meat to feed our children.
“Now, the spirits do not send the herds to this camp. The Great Mystery always tries the skill of the True Humans, and we must always use the wisdom of our hearts to survive because the spirits like to see us struggle, and that is good, because it makes us strong. We must find meat. My heart tells me we must leave this camp to find it.
“You have heard the criers in the village. Chief Peta Nocona of the Nokonis has found large herds of buffalo to the south. Even now his women and his slaves butcher the carcasses and make meat. The ravens gather over their camp. Peta Nocona has sent riders to tell us this. The riders say that his hunters have been wise and careful. They have hunted the small herds among the hills and have used the power of the wind so that the big herds have not been frightened away. Peta Nocona’s riders invite our hunters to go south and hunt the buffalo in their country, and have a feast, and let our young warriors find brides among his people. His warriors have taken scalps from tejanos and they wish to hold a great scalp dance.
“The spirits tell my heart that this is good. This camp is old. The grass is gone. The wood is gone. The deer and antelope and bear have fed us, but we must have buffalo meat for the winter. To the south we will find great herds. I have seen this in visions. We will find timber and honey, and tall grass for our ponies. We will find women for our young men, and nuts from the pecan trees to make pemmican. It is time to move our village. I have spoken.”
The men in the lodge remained quiet while Kills Something prepared to speak, for it was his place to talk next. He waited for some time, then looked at old Burnt Belly and said, “Grandfather, do you have something to tell the council?”
“Tsuh,” said the old man. From his cross-legged sitting position he suddenly rose to his feet as if lifted by strong arms from above—a strange thing to witness from a man apparently so old and feeble. This seemingly effortless ascension startled everyone who saw it and charged the air in the lodge with mystical anticipation.
“For three moons now I have seen visions,” Burnt Belly began. “Listen, my brothers, these are powerful things. When the spirits give the True Humans great power, it shines and dazzles us, and makes us smile, and gives us courage. But we must remember that the great shining visions of power come fastened to dark dangers, as night fastens itself to day. The darkness holds power equal to the brightness. The brightness leads us to glory, the darkness to destruction. I will tell you of my visions now, but you must remember that we ride forever in twilight, and if we lose our direction, we will turn into the darkness rather than the light.
“In my visions, I have seen a good time that begins with a great hunt. We will have much meat and we will dance with brothers of other bands of the True Humans. This time of feasting and celebration gives us power from the Shadow Land, strength for our bodies and our horses, and courage to protect our country.
“Then, the vision changes …” When he said this, Burnt Belly spread his arms and tilted his face upward and threw his voice so that the words se
emed to come down from the smoke hole instead of up from his mouth. The men in the lodge shifted nervously when this happened, for ventriloquism and prestidigitation always shook the Comanche mind.
“The spirits have shown me a great war—white man against white man. The soldiers will go away to fight other white soldiers. The tejanos will go away to war. No palefaces will remain on our borders but women and children. In my visions, I have seen our warriors raiding the places where the white men have built their square lodges of trees that once held turkeys and black bear. We will take back the camps that the white men have spoiled along the streams. The water will run clear again, and the grass will grow tall where the iron tools have torn up the earth. We will capture the white children left behind to teach them the Good Way, and make the white women good with the seed of our bravest warriors, and take scalps from any white people who try to keep our country from us longer!
“This I have seen in visions of bright splendor, sent to me by the spirits. But beware, my brothers. Remember the darkness. You must pray and seek wisdom before you act upon my visions. You must hold council and search the hearts of your elders. Greed for land and white women and battle honors will destroy the bravest warrior. You must remember the whole good of the True Humans in everything you do in this time—this coming time of victory upon victory, this good time of dancing and feasting, this gift of many seasons. I have spoken.”
