Bonds, Parris Afton
Page 8
If only something would happen! Anything!
Anne cursed her words when something did happen. It was totally unexpected coming so soon, not two weeks after Colin's departure. The attack happened just before dusk, as Anne prepared to go to the reception being held at the Vereins-Kirche in honor of the fiftieth wedding anniversary of Professor and Lina Bern. Everyone else was already there, but Anne had told Otto to go on ahead. She and Delila were busy trying to get Elise ready for her first grown-up party.
The child twisted this way and that, trying to see all sides of the lavender-pink organza dress of Anne's that Delila had remade for the girl. "There now," Anne said, tying the pink ribbons about the child's two braids. "You're as beautiful as a fairy princess."
"But fairy princesses are not real, Tante. I vant to be as beautiful as you are one day."
Anne smiled wistfully. "You will be―but even more so, pet. Now let's hurry, or Mr. Maren will never forgive us for missing his congratulatory speech he prepared for the Berns."
Elise made a face, but with Auguste tucked under her arm, hurried to follow a grumbling Delila outside. "Mmmm, Lordy me," the black woman muttered just loud enough for Anne to hear. "That man wouldn't be happy if the Good Lord Jesus Himself was a'sitt'n on the front pew."
Anne opened her mouth to protest Delila's disloyalty, but her words were drowned out by the blood-curdling yells that sliced through the early evening tranquility. From the concealment of the distant river's embankment suddenly poured vermilion-painted fiends.
"Run!" Anne screamed.
The Vereins-Kirche―a fortress in itself. There stood safety. The great wooden door still stood open against the day's heat, and the congregation's loud singing mocked her. The settlers could not hear the screams of attack. Anne hoisted her skirts above her ankles with one hand and dragged Elise by the arm with the other. But Delila's heavy bulk could not keep up with the younger woman. "Delila," Anne panted, "hurry!"
The large woman stopped, planting her feet firmly. "It ain't gonna do no good, baby. Ah just slows you down. Go on with you. Now!"
Anne halted and tugged violently on the woman's arm. "I can't leave you!" she cried. Past Delila's shoulder she could see the Indians had already reached the fringes of the town square.
"I said git!" Delila pronounced in the same unyielding tone she had used when she had been really angry at one of Anne's childhood pranks.
Tears sprang to Anne's eyes. "No! You're coming with us!"
The black woman's big hand lashed out, and Anne's head jerked to the side with the impact. "You heard me, Miz Anne!" Delila shoved the young woman and the child forward just as the lead Indian fell upon her, tomahawk upraised. A big swipe of her hand sent him sprawling. "Teach you trash some manners," she said, as Anne began to run, pulling Elise along behind her.
Once Anne looked over her shoulder, and the old woman was fighting off three of the savages. But crimson already streaked the glistening black skin. And other Indians sprinted past her toward Anne and Elise.
Tears spilled over Anne's cheeks as she pushed herself faster, stumbling when Elise stumbled. Only a few more yards now. Perspiration dotted her upper lip. Her breath came in aching gasps. Blood pounded in her ears.
"Jesus, Lord take me!" Anne heard Delila's scream, but did not turn to look this time. She could not―or she would be unable to go on.
Stabs of pain cramped Anne's leg muscles. But safety was just a few more feet away. Protection. Oh, dear God, no! Johanna―she was pulling the door closed!
Then Elise broke free from Anne. "Auguste! I dropped her!" The child was running back to where the corncob doll lay, its dress a ghastly yellow against the green grass. And advancing on the child was one of the Indians. The copper ring in his nose gleamed ominously in the sun's dying blood-red rays.
"No!" Anne shrieked. "No!" She ran back toward Elise.
The child stooped, scooped up the doll, rose. Then the sharp-bladed weapon came burrowing down through the small skull. Anne watched in petrified horror as gray matter flecked with scarlet spilled out on the pink dress.
Then the flat of a tomahawks mashing against the side of Anne's head came only seconds before her hysterical brain would have itself willed her unconscious.
The Indian with the ring through his nostrils shoved Anne before him, and she stumbled. "Ma-bequo-si-tu-ma," he grunted, then grinned.
Anne scrambled to her feet. Her mind was numb. She could think no farther than keeping out of the savage's reach. She was grudgingly grateful that he wore no scalps at his belt. It seemed that she―and the nine Indians she counted, some of whom did carry scalps―had been trotting for miles, ever since. She regained consciousness to find herself thrown over the back of her captor. But it could have been only for a few minutes, maybe a quarter of an hour, for the sky was still a mauve gray and the moon had not yet risen above the eastern horizon.
Then Anne saw where they were headed. Near a grove of sycamores were hobbled a dozen or more Indian ponies. And two guards, tall, dark Indians painted with war markings like the others, squatted, waiting.
"A he!" her captor shouted as they joined the guards and pointed toward Anne. "Ma-be-quo-si-tuma," he repeated, grabbing her hair that hung now in rat tails.
Inwardly Anne flinched, but she refused to let the savages see her fear, and glared at the man who held her hair. Was that what they had in mind―to scalp her? Why had they not done it back at Adelsolms? Or did they plan on a slow torture―to enjoy her suffering the better?
There was further exchange of what seemed like different levels of grunts to Anne before her wrists were bound and she was thrown on her stomach across the back of a mustang. The pounding of her heart slowed. At least death was not imminent. There might still be a chance for escape―though in her heart she knew that there was nearly no hope of escape. Too often she had heard the grizzly results when captives attempted to flee their red tormentors.
They traveled throughout the evening and into the night. The darkness washed away vision so that at times Anne could not see her hand before her, yet the Indians moved unerringly forward. Always traveling westward. Her ribs were bruised, and it hurt to draw a breath. Her throat ached. Her stomach growled with hunger. And her clothes were still damp from the soaking she had received when they had forded the Colorado River an hour before.
At last, when orange-streaked with pinktinged the sky in the east, the band of Indians halted before a slow-moving creek bordered on both sides by rapierstraight cedar elms and hickorys. The Indian with the ring in his nose, Pa-ha-yu-quosh Anne learned he was called, grabbed her by her thighs and yanked her from the horse. Legs numb, she sank to the ground. Pa-ha-yu-quosh laughed, a guttural laugh, but his obsidian eyes watched her closely.
With gestures he indicated she was to drink from the creek, and Anne needed no second urging. Half crawling down the grassy incline, she lowered her head to the water and began to drink as noisily as the others. The water was brackish. But that did not matter. She continued to drink even after the Indians had stopped until Pa-ha-yu-quosh jerked at her hair, motioning for her to rise. The Indians began to destroy all signs of the halt there at the creek bed, and she realized with amazement that they planned to continue without resting.
Brassy daylight reclaimed the sky, and the lowland prairies yielded to gently rolling hills. This time the traveling was easier for Anne, for Pa-ha-yuquosh allowed her to ride astride her pony, tieing her wrists with leather thongs for security. Anne had never ridden bareback before, and it was all she could do to stay on by clinging to the mare's matted mane. However, it was not long before her thighs and buttocks ached.
She was miserable but clung tenaciously to the knowledge that Colin would find a way to save her. Sometimes the Indians were known to capture whites and sell them at the trading posts on the Red River in far north Texas. As soon as word reached him of her capture, she knew he would see to it that every town and village was alerted. Had not he told her his word carried weight in the Tex
as Republic, that some way, somehow, he would find a way to bring the two of them together? All she had to do was keep the image of his face fixed firmly in her mind―and find a way to stay alive―until he came for her.
The group diminished by five that afternoon―those five, Anne learned, riding backwards as scouts, to see if the band was being followed. The grass was not as high now, a fine curly mesquite grass.
They were crossing the LlanoEstacado, the Staked Plains, which were dotted with huge buffalo wallows and Indian war trails that stretched as far south as Chihuahua, Mexico. It was a place the white man dared not travel.
The band stopped only once that day, near noon, at an old pond. The waterhole was muddy, full of flies and bugs. Pa-ha-yu-quosh leaped from his mount and helped Anne down this time rather than yanking at her as before. Perhaps, she thought, he sensed the little strength left in her. She looked up into the flat face with the wide, quivering nostrils, but it was expressionless.
Listlessly she watched as he and the others pulled up clumps of clean grass, spreading the blades over the water. With admiration she realized the grass acted as a strainer. Moving off a little way from the others, Anne threw herself on the ground and began to suck up the muddy water through the grass. She was delighting in the cool, refreshing taste when Pa-ha-yu-quosh came up behind her and, with a moccasined foot, pushed her head into the mud.
She came up sputtering. "Damn your ugly eyes! You―you ..."
She was certain he would kill her then. But a slow grin spread over the copperface. Instead he grabbed at her tied wrists and pulled her back toward the horses. And began the repetition of another day―without food or rest―and another night.
Toward dawn of the next morning Anne grew feverish from the water she had drunk the day before. However, she was sure if she once swooned from the horse, the Indians would kill her where she lay. With a determination born of stark fear she managed to remain upright, her precarious swaying like the rolling of the ship that had brought her to the desolate frontier.
The days passed, blending into one another, so that she was no longer certain how long ago she had been captured. At some point seven more Indians with fresh scalps at their belts joined the band, but otherwise, as the grassy plains gave way to a barren landscape, there were only chaparral thickets and mesquite scrubs with an occasional prickly pear to mark the passing days. However, Anne's captors at least allowed her the luxury of rest during the hottest part of the day when it was impossible to travel across the sun-bleached desert that reminded Anne of a giant sandbox.
At first she had disdained eating the smoked prairie dog and rattlesnake Pa-ha-yu-quosh offered her, but driven by hunger she at last ate the unconventional meats with almost as much relish as did her captors. Only one food had she been unable to eat, vomiting at the first loathsome bite. The others had laughed tauntingly at her inability to eat the roasted tarantula when she had crawled away to the nearly dry creek bed where her stomach knotted in dry heaves.
Even Anne's own parents would not have recognized their haggard daughter. The scorching sun had blistered her face, swelling the lids of her eyes and cracking her once beautiful lips so that they oozed with infection. And her glorious red-gold hair was now matted with all sorts of filth and looked almost as dark as the brown-black braids of her captors. Her body was marred with bruises where she had been kicked when she did not move quickly enough to suit the others. And on the tender skin of her neck was a festering sore administered with a burning stick from the campfire by one of the Indians when she overslept. Her skirt and blouse hung in tattered rags. She felt near to death, yet her stubborn Scot's blood would not let her give up.
Anne was finally rewarded, the afternoon of the tenth day out, when the band topped a little knoll to make camp. Usually at this time, one of the Indians, whom she had named One Ear for the scarred area of sunken flesh where his left ear should have been, would withdraw a mirror made of a bright piece of steel and use it to throw the reflection of the sun in a certain way. These signs were passed from one scout to another farther down the line, and an answering reflected flash would come back. But this particular afternoon Anne sensed something was different, for One Ear raised instead a red blanket and waved it in a half circle, returning it the same way. This process was repeated several times, followed by several keen yelps escaping from her captors' lips.
That evening the Indians even seemed in a better mood, leaving her alone as they talked and joked among themselves. They feasted on an antelope Pa-ha-yu-quosh had killed with his bow and arrow of orangewood, a superior weapon to the lances and bows and arrows made of bone and cane. Anne devoured her portion, pulling the hair from the cooked flesh and picking the bones clean.
However, instead of resting as they had been, they resumed their journey immediately. Daylight of the next morning found them on a rocky bluff overlooking a narrow valley dotted with several small ponds. After the stark white barrenness of the desert, the greenness of the juniper and cedar trees and the crystal blue of the ponds were so brilliant Anne's eyes hurt. Only after she blinked did she realize she was looking at the first Indian village she had ever seen. Perhaps three hundred tepees laced the valley.
Signals were flashed below, and Anne's captors goaded their ponies into a sweeping gallop, riding down steep, almost perpendicular paths that made Anne close her eyes in fear. As they rode into the village, yells, whoops, and other horrible sounds greeted her ears. The camp must have contained well over a thousand Indians―all of them, it seemed to Anne, turning out to stare at the spectacle of the white captive.
When they reached the inner circle of tepees, Pa-ha-yu-quosh jumped off his horse and led Anne's pony toward one of the tepees. All about her the braves and their squaws were yelling, hooting, and making so much noise that she thought the very earth must shake. One fat squaw pinched her, grabbed at her hair, tugged, then spit on her―greatly to the amusement of the others. At last the tiresome old woman let Anne alone, and Pa-ha-yu-quosh motioned for her to dismount and follow him inside the tepee.
At first it was so dark Anne could not see. There was a guttural exchange between Pa-ha-yu-quosh and a woman before he pushed aside the entrance's flap and left. Bewildered, Anne stood erect, stiff as a deer frozen by a strange scent.
"Sit, Ma-be-quo-si-tu-ma."
There, that name again. The woman addressed her by that name.
"You listen. I will talk,"
Anne sank to her knees on the earthen floor, grateful for the rest-grateful for the sound of English, however labored it was. "I am Louise Moonflower, Pa-ha-yu-quosh's uncle."
For the first time in a long while Anne smiled. "Aunt," she was tempted to correct the woman, but the words, like her smile, faded on her lips as her vision now focused in the darkness and she saw the old woman's face before her.
Her nose had actually been burnt off to the bone―all of the fleshy end gone. Both nostrils were wide open and denuded of flesh. "I live with white faces at Bernard Trading Post," the grossly fat woman continued. "Much time ago. When I was run off―when I came back to my people―" Louise Moonflower's hand went to her face. "This is done. No man wants me for wife. Now lonely hard life. But not for you, Ma-be-quo-si-tu-ma. Pa-ha-yu-quosh wants you for his second wife."
Anne sat stunned. Then, "But why me? There are others―"
"You are blessed by the god of the sun, Ma-be-quosi-tu-ma, Woman of the Burning Hair of the Head."
Anne's hand flew to her tangled hair. Its bright copper color―so that was what saved her from the same fate as Delila and Elise .It was the first time she had allowed thought of the two people she loved to enter her mind―and she cut off the thought just as quickly, before it had a chance to tear at her heart.
"But I can't be Pa-ha-yu-quosh's second wife," Anne said with a bravery she did not feel. "I am already married."
"Maybe husband dead. Warriors bring back many scalps. No matter. Pa-ha-yu-quosh is son of Chief Iron Eyes―he will make you good husband."
The flap fell back. A tall form darkened the tepee. Anne whirled to face Pa-ha-yu-quosh. The ring in his nostril gleamed in the darkness like the cycloptic eye of some mythical beast.
XII
Anne watched the fly buzz through the hot, motionless air and light on her sun-browned hand without really seeing the insect. She saw instead her broken, jagged nails with the dirt encrusted beneath. She felt the sweat that beaded on her temples, that stained the underarms of her deerskin tunic, that rolled down the inside of her thighs; and she smelled the muskiness that clung to her unwashed body.
To go without bathing for long periods of time―that had been the most difficult adjustment of all to make in her new life with the Kwahadi Comanches, for they never bathed except on special religious days. The other aspects of life among the Comanches had been somewhat easier to endure. As a squaw―and a slave―it was her duty to pound the corn, skin the game, drag away the dung from the tepee, dress wounds, and carry water.
Only the making of the fire had been truly difficult for her to learn, requiring much patience. And Pa-ha-yu-quosh's first wife, Morning Sky, was quick to beat Anne if she did not succeed immediately. "It is done this way, stupid one," the pock-marked wife would tell her, rubbing the soto sticks together rapidly.
At first Anne had been clumsy with the small sticks that were notched and coated with sand. But eventually she became proficient enough even to distinguish the kind and amount of wood used, for the wrong type of kindling, or too much, could cause the smoke to ascend in too great a cloud and alert an enemy.
Sitting back from her kneeling position on the flat, projecting rock, Anne squatted like the other women along the bank who scrubbed their animal hides beneath the boiling sun. Her hand crept to the small of her back, massaging the ache there. Only a little while longer, she thought. When the last of the hair was scraped from the soaking deer hide―and the women finished with their hides―then she could at last bathe in privacy.