“I do,” said Britt. “I will translate as we go on.”
“Very well,” said the major. “But please first indicate that we, ah, come in peace. We are only interested in the captives and nothing else.”
It was too soon to start mentioning the captives. Britt had come to understand they should finish the food first, but after a pause he relayed this in Spanish to Tissoyo.
Eaten Alive refused to speak Spanish but turned instead to Tissoyo and spoke in Comanche.
Tissoyo pushed a wedge of bannock into his mouth and swallowed, and then straightened his back to a perfect horizontal and became erect and dignified.
“He says, you, the underwater man, you went to the Kiowa and you paid very well for your wife and your girl child.” He made the sign for Kiowa, a cupping gesture at the right side of the head where they cut their hair short. “You did not pay for the boy. Later the boy ran away and joined you. He says this was a trick and it was not a good one. He said you had it planned out that way so you did not have to pay for the boy.”
Britt said, “My son is very brave and clever. He came on his own. He is very strong. He crossed the country between the Cimarron and the Canadian by himself in three days.”
Toshana said, He took Aperian Crow’s best horse. The black one. It was a warhorse.
Britt said, “Too bad for Aperian Crow.”
Toshana snorted in a short, surprised laugh. He turned the carved pipe over in his hand and knocked the dottle from it on a smooth stone. Then he spoke again.
Tissoyo listened and then said in Spanish, “He says there are captives here with us Comanche, it’s true. The soldiers know there are captives here.” He signed as he spoke in Spanish. It was a habit of many translators. It was a way of gesturing and also so that everyone would know what he was saying. He made the sign for Comanche, a wavering snakelike motion for the Snake River far away in Idaho where the Comanche had come from in centuries past and still retained that territorial name.
Britt turned to the major and told him what had been said so far. The major nodded in an agreeable way.
Britt said, “Where is the two-year-old girl that the Kiowa took? Her name is Millie. Do you have her?”
Eaten Alive shook his head. She is dead. The Kiowa told us she got sick and died.
“Where did she die?”
Up near the Cimarron. By Black Mesa.
Britt kept his eyes on Eaten Alive for several blank and dubious seconds. Then with a small movement of his hand he said, “Now, a grown taibo woman and a taibo girl about three or four years old. Are they here?”
Eaten Alive nodded. Before he could speak a small boy ran up and fell to his knees in the dirt beside him and whispered anxiously in Comanche. The headman nodded. He waved his hand at the boy to send him away. The boy retreated behind Eaten Alive’s back where he could not be seen and stood listening. Eaten Alive then turned his attention back to Britt and the soldiers.
They are here. The woman is mine, she is a slave. I want a rifle and ammunition and three horses, two packages apiece of coffee and sugar. He indicated the size of the packages; to Britt it looked like about twenty pounds each. And a hundred dollars.
Tissoyo bent over and spoke to Britt rapidly in Spanish, so quick that Eaten Alive could not keep up. “The little boy has come from Eaten Alive’s wife with a message. She says sell the taibo woman for anything at all, just sell her.” Then to cover his words Tissoyo opened and shut both hands twice, indicating twenty. “That many in pounds.” He turned innocently to Eaten Alive. “Is that right?”
“Hm.” Eaten Alive fixed Tissoyo with a stare for a moment and then over his shoulder he handed the carved pipe to a thin adolescent boy to clean and put back in its case. The young man flushed with pride and carried it carefully away between his two hands as if it were explosive.
Tissoyo said, “He wants to know if you will give this for the big loud woman.”
“No,” said Britt. “I will give twenty-five dollars in silver money for her.”
That’s not enough.
“Then keep her.”
The boy behind Eaten Alive listened and then turned quietly and walked back toward the village and after a few moments began to run and disappeared among the tipis.
I will think about that, said Eaten Alive. And now the girl. My wife loves the little girl very much.
To give himself time to think, Britt turned to the major and told him what had been said so far. The major nodded. He shifted on the ground. His hip joints were hurting from sitting cross-legged.
Major Semple said, “Britt, you have a future in the army.”
“Maybe so.” Then Britt said to Eaten Alive, “For the little girl, I have some jewelry for your wife and two mirrors and a serape and a horse. To make Eaten Alive’s wife feel better about giving up the girl, I will add the coffee and sugar and fifty dollars. This is to wipe away her tears.”
Britt turned and made a motion to one of the soldiers to bring the trade pack and open it. All of them sat and watched as two soldiers opened the pack and spread out the ornate jewelry, the two framed mirrors, the serape, and the coffee and sugar. The serape was of that design called jorongo, a brilliant series of red and white stripes in varying widths overwoven with black diamonds. This was to wipe away Pakumah’s tears and in truth Pakumah sat in the farthest tipi stroking Siikadeah’s hair and weeping as if she would never stop. She wiped her face on her shoulder and then sent the boy out again with another message.
“Don’t open the money,” said Britt.
Eaten Alive rested his hands on his kneecaps and bent forward over the jewelry and serapes. Then he heard behind him the footsteps of the small boy. The boy again dropped to his knees behind the war leader and Britt heard the rapid whispering. Eaten Alive made a waving motion of his hand and the boy rose and stood off a few paces.
Britt could tell that Tissoyo was longing to tell him what the message was but he was waiting for Eaten Alive to answer.
“He says to give him two serapes instead of one, and the other things and the horse and the fifty dollars in silver and then that would be all right as payment for the little girl.” Then Tissoyo spoke to Britt in rapid, slangy Spanish. “The wife sent a message to pay the underwater man to take her away, if he has to.” Tissoyo shook down his bracelets again. They had crept up his arm as he translated because he made sign to accompany his words but in an amazing display of double-speak he had signed one thing and said another. Eaten Alive watched the signing and so did not pay any attention to the quick Spanish. Tissoyo had signed His wife is sad to hear her husband will sell the little girl, and so you must add another serape, even as he told Britt in Spanish that the wife was willing to pay him to take Elizabeth away.
Britt held one wrist in the other hand and rested his forearm on his thigh. He leaned on the forearm and stretched his back muscles. His admiration for Tissoyo’s ability to deal in intrigue had increased greatly in the last fifteen minutes.
“As you say, I will give an extra serape for the little girl and the other things and fifty dollars in silver Spanish milled dollars,” he said. He turned to the soldier standing behind him. “Open the other pack and get out the black and yellow jorongo.”
Good.
Eaten Alive and Wolf Escaping and the other men nodded. The soldier brought out the black and yellow jorongo; it was newly made and the fine wool shone. And so that, at least, was settled.
“And so we are agreed? I will take the little girl, and you will keep the woman.” Britt reached to his belt to unbuckle the spurs.
“Wait.” Tissoyo lifted a hand. “He wants you to wait a moment.”
“What’s going on?” said the major.
Britt said, “I closed the deal on Lottie Durgan and we are talking about her grandmother, Elizabeth Fitzgerald. I can get her cheap.”
“Jesus,” said the major. Here was a black man bargaining for the price of a white woman. The world had turned upside down. He shifted his eyes sideways to the pi
le of goods being laid on the serape, the bags of coffee and the sugar, the ornate mirrors. Britt was still holding back the money.
Britt turned to Tissoyo. “Tell him I know the woman. She works hard, she is strong. I know he will be glad to keep her.”
Tissoyo translated and then listened to what Eaten Alive had to say to this. He said to Britt, “He says that the little girl was the one they loved the most. The woman they don’t care all that much about. They already stole all her cattle and horses so they got all the good out of her.”
Britt thought about this for a long moment. He had been watching Tissoyo to see if he would pull that trick again, of signing one thing and saying another. It was admirable, amazing. But Tissoyo translated straightforwardly and in a modest manner.
Britt was not sure of how much advantage he had. They could always kill Elizabeth. They did not need to sell her to get rid of her. “Twenty-five dollars.”
Then Tissoyo said in that quick, slurred Spanish, “They think she is a witch, she frightens them.” And at the same time he signed Eaten Alive will think about the twenty-five dollars.
“Damn,” said Britt.
“What?” said the major. His hip joints felt like they were on fire.
“Later,” said Britt to the major, in English, and then turned to Tissoyo and said in slow, measured Spanish, “Tell him that I will pay twenty-five dollars but I also want the big bay horses, the ones that sweat in leopard spots. The ones you took from her ranch.” Britt saw subtle changes in Eaten Alive’s face. They knew his thoughts. They knew he was thinking about when they had killed his son and raped his wife. Thoughts have power. They can drift through the air unhindered. Ill will and hatred, the lust for revenge, can detach itself from the person who generates these thoughts if that person has a certain power from some being. Even after the person is dead.
Eaten Alive lifted both palms to the air and said something in an exasperated voice.
Tissoyo took on a light and somewhat haughty expression. “He says, soon you will ask him to pay you, to take her away.”
“Tell him I was thinking about it.”
Tissoyo did not laugh, with some difficulty. “He says you can have her, and the horses, for twenty-five dollars, but then you have to give him a four-point Hudson’s Bay blanket.”
Britt turned to the soldiers. “Give them the red blanket and seventy-five dollars in silver. Do it nicely.” The sergeant glanced at the major, and the major gave a brief nod. The sergeant brought out the four-point Hudson’s Bay blanket and laid it out on the ground, bright red with its four wide stripes. Then he sat on his boot heels and counted out seventy-five dollars in silver Spanish milled dollars, stacked in three piles.
To Major Britt said, “We’re done. Let’s go.”
“Did you get both of them?”
“Yes. And he gave me two draft horses into the bargain.”
ELIZABETH DID NOT believe she was free and safe even when she and Lottie were seated in the wagon with soldiers riding on either side of them. She would never feel safe again. The major glanced down at her; a raped woman, a captive redeemed. Lottie sat silent and staring. What was happening to her now? There was no telling. The four-year-old watched the soldiers in a state of fear with her thin hands clutched in the remains of Elizabeth’s skirt. Two soldiers led the big bay horses, now much reduced in weight. The draft horses turned constantly and called back to the herd of Comanche horses.
Elizabeth said, “What did you have to pay for me?”
Britt rode alongside.
“Twenty-five dollars and that red four-point blanket.”
“What?” Elizabeth shouted and Lottie closed her eyes. “Only twenty-five dollars?”
“That’s it,” said Britt.
“Goddamnit, I’m worth more than that!” Elizabeth glared at the major.
“I got you cheap, Mrs. Fitzgerald,” said Britt. “But remember the horses.”
“You can have them,” said Elizabeth. “Take both of them. They’re yours.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” said Britt. “Much appreciated.”
“Twenty-five dollars,” Elizabeth said. “If they paid me by the hour for all the skinning I did there wouldn’t be enough money in the goddamn federal mint to get me back.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I’ve paid more than that for a boar pig.”
Britt kept his eyes steadily on Cajun’s mane. Finally he said, “Actually, it was twenty-six.”
“That don’t make me feel a bit better, Britt Johnson.” Elizabeth wiped her hands on her dress. “So just shut up.”
Chapter 22
THE CAPTIVE GIRL was about fourteen. Maybe older. She spoke no English and sat in the office of Samuel Hammond, in the agency house, stiff as a pasteboard figure on the edge of a wooden chair. She was packaged in a corset and long stockings and a dress with a tight waist over the corset and her thin neck thrust up out of the collar of the dress with its tiny lace band edging. She had that wide fixed look in her eyes that Samuel had come to see in the Indian people themselves when they thought they were in danger. When they were disturbed and angry and frightened. The Mexican-Comanche housekeeper sat beside her but it did not comfort her. The woman had come from Fort Sill to help, and there was no way to help her.
A band of Kiowa had come in for rations. They were hungry and thin. They had been in some kind of a conflict out on the plains. Samuel told them through Onofrio that there would be no more rations nor beef nor issue of any kind until they brought in whatever captives they had. He heard himself withholding supplies from those in need. His own voice refusing food to starving people.
Then they had brought her in, with her hair loose and muddy, barefoot. They said the girl had come from somewhere far south in Texas where there was timbered country when she was very young, very young, but her adoptive parents had died in the battle with the Utes, which was just last month out on the plains. Then they had come through a great burned area and could not find buffalo and they came out of it black to the knees and starving. Now there was no one to take care of the girl and so they handed her over for two horses and several brass kettles and a supply of flour and lard and several beef cows that they killed on the spot and ate.
The girl walked behind Samuel with a stony expression and tears running down her face. The laundresses at the fort had bathed her and dressed her. For the second time she had been torn from a culture and a language she knew, from people she loved. Once by violence, once from the bitter necessities of hunger.
Samuel had a list in front of him of all the captives’ names that he was able to garner. The black child named Jube, Britt Johnson’s only surviving son, sat on a chair beside him, a thin cap of tight black hair on his head and his booted feet placed precisely together.
“Tell her we only want to help her,” said Samuel. “We will help her go back to her own home, her own parents.”
Jube translated this and listened to the reply and said, “She says her parents, the Utes killed them a month ago.”
“No, I mean her real mother and father.”
But they died.
“All right.” Samuel paused and then smiled. “What is your name?” Samuel listened as the young black boy spoke in the tonal language of Kiowa, with several explosive consonants, clicking glottal stops, rising and falling tones.
“She says her name is Good Medicine. They say in Kiowa the name of a plant, Good Medicine.”
“Her English name, Jube.”
“She doesn’t know.”
Samuel smiled again. “I will read these names and see if she recalls one.” Jube nodded and spoke to the girl. Samuel pronounced each name several times, slowly and carefully. “Alice Todd.” A blank stare. “Mahala Fussell.” Nothing. “Susan Murdoch.” The girl’s eyes shifted to Jube and then back in a wide, dry stare at the Indian agent. “Susan Forster. Mary Ann Findlay. Charlotte Sanger. Frances Lee. Vera Mae Grandin.”
“Ah,” said the girl. She turned her eyes to Jube and
spoke quickly in the musical notes of Kiowa, those strange lifts and the explosive unvoiced th!, the descending tones.
Tell him that was my name. Vela Mae Glandin, Vela Mae Glandin, yes.
“Where did she come from?”
I remember a very tall bluff of stone down south in Texas. We lived on a river. Sabinal, Sabinal. That was the name of the river. It was clear water. Up above our house there was a very tall cliff.
“Do you remember what happened when they took you captive?”
The horses came running in, they were frightened. They came running toward the house. Then the Koiguh came in the house and shot my father and mother. They took me and my little brother and my aunt. My little brother would not stop crying and so they killed him. They did things to my aunt and then they killed her.
The girl’s face was impassive as she said this. Jube flushed a little at his cheekbones as he hesitated a moment and then finished her last sentence.
“What were your parents’ names?”
Mama and Papa.
“Oh. Yes. Well, what was your aunt’s name?”
The girl frowned slightly and stared at the floral carpet. Aun-tie Flo.
Samuel watched the girl for signs that she was tiring, or too frightened to reply coherently. That he should stop the questioning. The girl’s hair trembled in raw, newly washed locks around her neck.
“You said your last name was Grandin. Or Glandin.”
“They can’t say ‘r,’” said Jube.
“All right. Your last name was Grandin, and what was your aunt’s last name?”
I don’t know. Aun-tie Flo.
Samuel lowered his head for a moment, resting it on his hand. He said a small, brief prayer for help. How to do the right thing. The girl lifted her hand to Jube and went on speaking.
Jube said, “She wants to know if she can go back to the Kiowa. And if not, can she go and live with the Comanche.”
Samuel stared at the boy for a moment. “They killed her little brother and her mother and father, and then mistreated her aunt and killed her too. Why does she want to go back?”
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