She found patient little Tabukina Naki, Rabbit Ears, Takes Down’s pony. Rabbit Ears was shy too, and seemed to know she was knobby and ugly. She took the thistle delicately in her mouth, her lips rolled back, and pulled the spiny stem in with her discolored teeth. She swallowed it with a blissful expression.
Cynthia gathered up Sunrise’s mule, three pack ponies, one riding horse, and Rabbit Ears, holding all of their lines loosely in her right hand. The mule led better if she was casual about it, as though he were just politely accompanying her. Sunrise’s buffalo pony was already in the village, tethered near his lodge as usual. One of her jobs was to gather armfuls of grass each day for him, but this was the first time Sunrise had asked her to bring in the rest of his small herd. Star Name’s brother, Upstream, always brought them in with his own mother’s animals.
Her foster father had asked Cynthia casually, after Lance had ridden through with his message about moving the camp. But she knew it was a test. There was nothing to stop her from getting on one of the horses and riding off into the rising sun to find her family. Nothing except the fact that she wasn’t much of a rider, nor did she have any provisions. She could handle the docile pack animals or Takes Down’s favorite mare, but a horse fast enough to get away would be too much for her. And Spaniard could track her down in no time.
Besides, what would she find if she escaped? Even if she managed to find her way home? She had a horror of riding into Fort Houston or Parker’s Fort and having everyone stare at her as though she were a ghost come back to haunt them. To accuse them silently of abandoning her. Maybe they had forgotten her. Or maybe her whole family was dead and she would be an orphan. At least here she had people who cared about her.
Worse yet, she might be put into the charge of her Uncle Daniel. And she couldn’t remember ever, in her nine years, having seen him smile. He must have sometime. But she couldn’t remember it. She knew what his idea of proper conduct for young ladies was. She would be confined to the cabin and yard, unless accompanied. She would never be allowed to ride or explore miles of wild countryside. The thought of it was like a pillow over her face, smothering her.
Anyway, she would be a freak to them, a wild Indian. As she led the six animals down the path that zigzagged across the face of the bluff she felt her braids, still greased from the night before when Takes Down had fixed them for the dance. Would the children back home taunt her and throw stones at her the way they did at Puss Weber’s mulatto offspring? She tried to remember her mother’s face, and her brother’s and sister’s, but they kept fading out of focus.
A strong, familiar smell and a patch of feathery, gray-green bushes caught her eye. They waved flat clusters of tiny pink flowers at her, bouncing and beckoning in the breeze. Milfoil. Yarrow. What was it doing here? It grew by the acre back in Illinois. Her mother and grandmother had brought it with them to east Texas so they would have it when they needed it. They planted it and gathered it carefully, but it spread like gossip around the fort, its roots creeping everywhere and sending up new plants.
The flowers’ spicy fragrance reminded her of the bundles of it hanging from the fireplace to dry, and filling the small cabin with the aroma. Achillea Millefolium, named in honor of Achilles, who used it in the Trojan War. Or so her grandmother always said. Granny Parker claimed it would cure anything, influenza, gout, liver and kidney ailments, wounds.
Thoughts of home were forgotten. Here was something she could give Medicine Woman. She had never seen her use it. Perhaps the plant was rare here. She could show her how to steep it in boiling water and treat wounds with it. She was so excited that she wanted to gather it right then, but she had her hands full with five ponies and a stubborn mule. And besides, she had no bits of food to put in the hole as an offering as Medicine Woman had taught her to do.
She noted the location of the yarrow so she could find it again as soon as she delivered the ponies. She would come back alone for it because she wanted it to be her secret, her gift. She did a little jig step as she imagined the smile on Medicine Woman’s face. She skipped as she hurried the animals along, splashing through the shallows of the river and heading for camp. As she walked along she rehearsed the speech she would make to Medicine Woman, rummaging through her store of Comanche words for the ones that would express what she wanted to say.
Eagle and Wanderer were a few miles from camp, scouting for second-growth saplings to make arrow shafts, when they heard the rumble. It sounded like distant thunder in a cloudless sky, but they knew better. Without a word they kicked their ponies into a headlong gallop, the lash of their quirts counterpoint to the drumming of their heels against their horses’ sides. Mile after mile the ground whipped by under them, long after a grain-fed horse would have collapsed.
When they hit the outskirts of camp they hardly slowed down.. Wanderer went one way and Eagle another, both shouting as they rode. They tore among the lodges, scattering kettles, drying racks, dogs, and children. As though they had kicked an ants’ nest, the village exploded into action, a chaos that spread outward from the riders. Women screamed for their children, dogs barked, ponies whinnied and plunged at their tethers.
Cynthia was threading her way through the maze of lodges, her precious yarrow plants clutched in her hands. Each time the camp was moved it was set up in a slightly different pattern. Pahayuca’s lodges were always at the center, and Sunrise’s were nearby, but the neighbors usually shifted, and the lodges still looked alike to her. She was following the route she had carefully memorized, and as the hysteria engulfed her she started running toward home. A wrong turn brought her up short. She fled down another alley between tents and knew she was lost. In panic she began running aimlessly.
“Takes Down The Lodge. Star Name. Ha-itska ein, where are you?” All around her people worked quickly and grimly, dismantling the lodges and packing them away. With the precision of years of practice, the camp fell apart. Tents collapsed around her. The coverings weighed 125 pounds each and took two or more women to fold. The towering skeletons of the lodges toppled slowly after the hide slid off them. Cynthia dodged the heavy poles as they swayed and fell. She leaped aside to avoid being trampled by a herd of wild-eyed ponies driven in from the outskirts of camp by a dozen yelling boys. Others thundered by on all sides of her.
Sobbing, she ran on, knowing that something terrible had happened. Maybe it was an attack. Maybe her family had come after her. If so she had to find them. To tell them not to kill Takes Down or Sunrise or Star Name or Medicine Woman or even bratty Upstream. Or Owl or Name Giver. And Pahayuca had been kind to her, and Something Good. She had to save them.
She veered instinctively when she heard more hooves pounding behind her. A pair of strong hands gripped her under the arms and swung her onto the back of the coal-black pony. Wanderer held her in front of him as he galloped through the village. The lodge with the bright yellow sun on it was gone. In its place were the four main poles with the beds and possessions still lying about, strangely naked and exposed. Wanderer leaped down before Night had stopped and ran to help Black Bird and Star Name pull down their lodge.
Night was heaving and retching, his eyes rolling and his legs trembling with fatigue when Cynthia climbed down from his back. She threw her arms around his wet neck and hugged him before running to help Takes Down. Without thinking, she began folding the heavy hides from the beds, bouncing up and down on them to crease them. Sunrise was already loading everything onto the packhorses and mule that Cynthia had brought in earlier. Caught up in their frenzy, she forgot about the soldiers and being rescued. She had moved with Takes Down and Sunrise five times, but this time was different. There was no order of packing. She just picked up armloads of things and stuffed them into whichever saddle bag or pouch had room.
The People had already begun to pack when Eagle and Wanderer arrived. And they could dismantle a village of a thousand souls in less than fifteen minutes. It wasn’t fast enough. Over the shouts and banging of the poles and gear, Cynthia heard a d
ull rumbling. It grew, ugly and ominous. The pace increased as people began driving their ponies full speed toward the low bluff. A long, creamy wave, beaten to a foam and a mixture of almost equal parts sand and water, crept along the wide bottomlands to the canyon walls on either side. It hissed like a million snakes as it slithered along.
Already it was lapping at the heels of the laggards in the western edge of camp. About sixty feet behind it came a mass of water four feet high. Heavy rains in the uplands far to the west had sent it coursing through the narrow channels and gorges of the high plains. It spewed into the broader river bottoms downstream with the pressure of a colossal fire hose. More and more horses and mules labored up the slope toward the safety of higher ground. Poorly tied loads fell, scattering household gear with a clatter on the rocks. The lodge poles, tied into travois behind the horses, bounced crazily along. Tiny, wide-eyed children clung to the edges to keep from falling off.
Leaving what hadn’t been packed yet, the People raced across the bottomlands. Cynthia rode double, bouncing in front of Takes Down on Rabbit Ears. She could see the load slipping on the mule in front of them, but there was nothing she could do about it. The hastily tied lines were loosening, and the pile of her family’s robes was falling off to one side. She knew now the effort that went into making them, and she watched them fall with despair. A corner of the hide Cynthia had labored over dragged in the thick wet sand that flowed under them like thin cornmeal mush. She clenched her fists, willing the lines to hold until they reached safety.
Sunrise galloped ahead of them, herding the other packhorses. Suddenly he swooped down, sliding off his pony until he held on only by one foot hooked over the horse’s backbone. He grabbed at something under a scrub oak bush and came up with a wailing child, a baby who must have fallen off one of the travois in the confusion.
All around them the villagers fled through the trees and up the slope, floundering as the sand crumbled under them and slid down the side of the bluff in sheets. Kettles and pots, racks of meat, toy bows and arrows, dresses and robes lay strewn about. Eagle was helping Something Good calm a mule that had panicked and bucked everything off, sending it flying through the air. As Cynthia and Takes Down passed, Cynthia saw a doll floating almost under Rabbit Ears’ hoofs.
“Stop, Pia.” Rabbit Ears braked and Cynthia jumped off. She grabbed the doll and Takes Down pulled her back up. It was Something Good’s doll. She held it to her chest as they raced up the sandy bluff, the pony pawing desperately for footholds.
As they reached the top of the bluff, Takes Down turned the horse around to look back. The four-foot wall of water rose gradually to the rear until it was fifteen feet high and studded with logs and debris, entire trees rolling and plunging like twigs in the flood. The noise was deafening, like being under the biggest waterfall Cynthia could imagine. At the top of the crest the body of a mule whirled slowly, his four legs sticking out of the foam. A few lodges were still erect where their owners had abandoned them. One stood alone, like a lighthouse in a stormy sea. The hide covering was still in place, and it seemed deserted.
Cynthia watched Wanderer head for it with the water swirling around Night’s hocks. As he slid down and disappeared inside, Night gave a shrill cry that rose over the oncoming wave. He poked his head through the door, as though urging his friend to hurry. Wanderer ran out with a few bags and looped them over his saddle horn. Then he ducked back in and came out with a large bundle of robes and blankets in his arms. He balanced it in front of the saddle and leaped on from the rear. Holding it with one hand, he headed Night toward the bluff.
The water was belly high now and the huge wave loomed over the campsite. The exhausted horse struggled desperately with his double load, and the scene seemed almost frozen, acted out in slow motion. Night lost his footing and was swept thirty feet before he regained it. He surged a few feet closer to higher ground, then began swimming, his eyes bulging with the strain while the wave hung poised over them.
“Come on. Night.” Cynthia’s hands were clenched, her knuckles white. Tears were rolling unheeded down her cheeks and everything was blurry. “You can do it. Night. Swim. Please swim.”
The wall of water hit and washed over them. They came to the surface and whirled downstream, dwindling until finally lost among the debris. A pecan tree glided sedately after them, its tangled roots jutting up like an enormous, tattered sail.
“He’s not so bad, you know.” John had meant Eagle when he said that, but Cynthia thought of Wanderer’s handsome, mocking face. He hadn’t fooled her with his charming ways. She’d been right about him all along. He was a thief. Their hero had turned back to do the unthinkable, to steal from one of the People. All of them in danger of their lives, and he was looting. He deserved to die. She was glad. But did he have to take Night with him?
The pony had been her only friend and solace on the nightmare journey from the fort. She remembered his velvety muzzle tickling her palm as he ate the sweet grass she held out to him. He would lower his head so she could scratch his ears, and he flicked them when she whispered to him, as though answering her. If she stopped scratching before he was ready, he would butt her between the shoulder blades as she walked away.
They both felt guilty about it. Cynthia was afraid Wanderer would be enraged if he caught her making friends with his horse. He was so possessive of Night. And Night seemed to feel he was betraying a trust. When they were together he always looked around him with something akin to furtiveness in his soft brown eyes. Now he was gone because of Wanderer’s greed. Cynthia lowered her face onto the pony’s neck and cried into the coarse hair. Vengeance was hers, and its taste was bitter.
Takes Down patted her shoulder to comfort her. She flicked the single rein looped around her pony’s underlip and kicked her lumpy sides to catch up with the others. The band fanned out across the hills, following Pahayuca and mountainous Hahki, Blocks The Sun, his number-one wife. Cynthia leaned back, sinking into her foster mother’s warm, plump body. She felt the short arms curl protectively around her as Takes Down guided Rabbit Ears into the dust of the fleeing villagers.
By the time they found another campsite, it was too dark to set up the lodges. It didn’t take much time, normally, to erect the tent and have a paunch of buffalo stew boiling. But now everything was thrown into the packs in a jumble or scattered over miles of wild country. And many people didn’t even have what they needed to put up their lodges. There would be a great deal of swapping and loaning and sharing and helping until everything was replaced.
The land had leveled out and bristled with agave, prickly pear and an occasional mesquite. Against the horizon, their tops sheared off, a ring of bluffs encircled them. They hulked there, brooding and black against the graying sky. At first glance it looked like a grim, inhospitable place, but at the edge of their camp was a ravine. It was choked with wild grape and plum bushes, and a cold stream ran through it. There was buffalo sign all around, and some of the men were getting ready to start a hunt in the morning. Pahayuca always said that with so much territory to choose from they’d be fools to camp in any but the best places. Staying along the flooded river was out of the question. The water was too foul and muddy to drink, and it rampaged between its new banks like a wild animal rattling the sides of its cage.
Fires flickered against the black sky as each family gathered for a quick meal of whatever they could find in the jumble of their possessions. Cynthia shivered in the night breeze as she sorted through the saddle bags, searching for her rabbit fur robe. She looked over at Upstream, his face outlined by the fire. He usually buzzed around like a cicada on a string, but now he sat with his lower lip pushed out and his eyes bunched. A few tears made furrows in the dirt on his face. Sunrise simply stared into the flames while Takes Down and Black Bird talked quietly together. They would be talking about Wanderer’s death, and she didn’t want to hear it. To hear them mourn Wanderer as though he were special. Pieces of the day whirled in her head, a kaleidoscope with Wanderer�
��s elegant, arrogant face at the center. Was he going to haunt her because she had wished him dead?
Star Name caused a ripple in the gloom as she appeared silently from the dark and sat down. She had been touring the bedraggled camp, checking up on her many friends, and two were missing.
“Ha-itska Nocona, where is Wanderer?” she asked.
“Medicine Woman was sick. He was trying to save her. We do not know if they are alive or not.” Takes Down lowered her head and studied the fire, tears streaming down her cheeks. Cynthia froze, her hand in the saddle bag. She had understood most of what Takes Down said.
“Was Medicine Woman in her lodge when Wanderer went in?”
“Yes.” Takes Down could hardly talk and her soft voice quavered. “She had the shaking sickness. Wanderer told Pahayuca he would get her. Now they’re both gone.”
A sudden chill shook Cynthia, and it was more than the night air. Wanderer and Medicine Woman were both dead. And he wasn’t a thief. “No,” she whispered in English. “I’m sorry, Wanderer. I didn’t know.” Remorse made the tears sting even more. She remembered the shy smile he had given her when he handed her the string figure. He’s not so bad, you know. And she remembered Medicine Woman the afternoon she had gone gathering herbs with her. They had wandered the hills and ravines around camp, lost in their quest. Medicine Woman seemed oblivious to time. It stopped around her. The world narrowed to just the two of them, and finding herbs was the only important thing in it.
Robson, Lucia St. Clair Page 13
