Robson, Lucia St. Clair

by Ride the Wind

  “How do you know which plants to use, Grandmother?”

  “Other people told me, just as I’m telling you. And I used to watch what the animals ate, especially the bears. Bears know medicine. Why do you think they call this bear root?” She held up the gnarled root she was holding.

  “I suppose because bears eat it.”

  “Yes. They eat it in the wintertime and it keeps them healthy. Sometimes, if a plant is new to me, I try it on myself. Some of them are very strong. I’ve made myself sick from time to time, but it’s worth it. Don’t you do it, though, until you’re much older. Are the willow trees nearby?”

  “Yes. We’re coming to them.”

  Medicine Woman would dry the willow bark and pound it fine. “Mix it with water then,” she’d told Naduah. “It’ll start things moving in the most stubborn set of bowels. Be careful not to give too much, though. Pahayuca once broke up a war council after I’d given him some. Buffalo Piss said it sounded like a tribe of mad Cheyenne trapped inside my brother’s gut. And when the explosion came…” Medicine Woman laughed. “Pahahyuca’s a big man, and he hadn’t relieved himself in a long time. They’re still laughing at him about it. He’ll burst before he’ll take any more dried willow bark.”

  “Naduah. Naaa-duah.” Star Name came pounding over the low bluff bordering the river bottomlands and slid her pony down the slope in a shower of pebbles. She pulled up out of breath, Paint in a lather and steaming in the cold air.

  “Takes Down said I’d find you here. Spirit Talker’s band finally arrived. They’re camping way down the river, at the end of the line.”

  “So what?”

  “There’s a white man with them.”

  “Did you see him?”

  “No. But I heard he has red hair all over him, like a bear. Even on his chest and back. He’s been with Spirit Talker’s band for three moons.”

  “Is he a captive?” Naduah knew that was unlikely. White men were almost always killed. Slowly.

  “No. He’s a messenger from the Texans. They want to have honey talk and give everyone presents. Maybe I’ll get a new mirror to replace the one I broke. Let’s go see him.”

  “Granddaughter, it would be better if you didn’t see the white man.”

  “It’s all right, Kaku,” broke in Star Name. “Cub saw him already. He counted coup on him and got away without the white man even recognizing that he was white.”

  “Don’t worry. Grandmother. I won’t let him steal me. I’ll pull my robe over my hair and stay far away.” Naduah reached out and held her grandmother’s fragile wrist briefly as they rode knee to knee.

  “Just be careful, little one. Those eyes of yours flash like the white patch on your doe’s rump. Your antelope was a nuisance, but I miss her.”

  “So do I, Kaku. Maybe I’ll find another one someday.”

  The three of them headed toward the Wasps’ campsite. As usual, Pahayuca had deliberately arrived early and picked the best place. On the other side of the river a waterfall slithered down the dark gray cliff face and splintered on the boulders in its path. It sent a fine spray into the creek that cascaded to the river. In summer it was a cool green glade. In winter it was a lacy sculpture of ice patterns. Naduah could see the sun glinting on it from her lodge door.

  When they left Medicine Woman, the two girls rode slowly toward the place where Spirit Talker’s people had set up their lodges.

  “There’s something else I wanted to tell you when we were alone.”

  “What?”

  “There are two captive white girls with Spirit Talker’s band. I wondered if you would want to talk to them.” Star Name looked over at her sister and friend, and there was worry in her eyes.

  “I don’t know. I’ll think about it while we ride.”

  “They haven’t been adopted, those two girls. I don’t know why. The older one is too old, but the young one isn’t.” Naduah knew that if she had been two or three years older she probably wouldn’t have been adopted either. The People would have considered it too late to train her properly. The thought frightened her.

  “Have you seen them, Star Name?”

  “No. They just arrived. This is only what I heard. Naduah, they’re slaves, those girls. They’re not of the People like you are.”

  “What are you trying to tell me, Star Name? Does that mean they have to work harder?”

  “It means they might not have been treated well. I wanted to warn you before you see them or talk to them. In case you decide to talk to them.”

  “I don’t know if I can remember my old tongue. It’s been so long.”

  “They speak our language. They’ve been with the band a year and a half. Some white men attacked Spirit Talker’s camp last winter, like they did Old Owl’s. The girls’ owner hid them and threatened to kill them if they cried out. I hear that their father was with the white soldiers, and they had to lie silent. He walked through the gunfire and arrows and flames, just calling them. It must have been terrible for them. It must be sad to be a slave.”

  “Why are they treated so badly?”

  “They’re slaves, Naduah. Do white people have slaves?”

  “Yes.”

  “And how are they treated?”

  “It depends on their owners. Sometimes badly. Sometimes well. Sometimes they pay men just to whip them and make them work.”

  “It’s the same with us. Not everyone is like Takes Down and Sunrise.”

  As they rode into the outskirts of Spirit Talker’s camp, Naduah noticed slight differences from Pahayuca’s or Old Owl’s. When they had all camped together two winters ago she had been too new to notice, but now she did. It was hard to say why she felt a little out of place there. True, more of the women chose to raise the hides they were tanning on frames rather than stake them on the ground. And there seemed to be more shouting and less laughter than she was used to. But outwardly the camp seemed very much like her own.

  She sniffed, tasting the air with her nose. What was it? Bread! Wheat-flour bread. And more coffee than she ever smelled in her own camp, although there was usually some brewing somewhere. Where did they get the flour? The white man must have brought it. For some reason she felt uneasy. This looked like a village of the People, but with differences so subtle they only teased her senses. Once she’d recognized the smell of baking bread, she noticed more women in cloth blouses, and more ribbons.

  “Pull it up farther. Shade your face more.” Star Name reached out and adjusted Naduah’s buffalo robe, forming a deep hood around her face and head. They left their ponies tied to a tree and walked through the bustle.

  “Where are the white girls?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You seem to know everything else about them, Star Name.”

  “Deer.”

  “Oh.” Takes Down’s friend. Deer, would sometimes know a piece of gossip before it happened. And she often embroidered it with designs of her own.

  Then the girls saw her. She was carrying water from the river. Even in the winter’s cold she had no robe to throw over her shoulders. Her wrists, where they stuck out from the tattered sleeves, looked like sticks. Her face and head, arms and legs were covered with bruises and raw, running sores. Her hair had been burned from her head in patches. Her nose was charred to the bone, and there was no flesh left on the insides of her nostrils. Her face was puffy and purple with welts.

  She limped and staggered under the weight of the heavy paunch. Then she turned her head and looked their way. At fourteen, Matilda Lockhart was an old woman, a walking nightmare. Naduah whirled, her stomach churning, and ran. She ran all the way to where Wind was tied, and her hands trembled as she fumbled with the knot. She galloped back to her own camp, crying the whole time. She never tried to see the white girls again. Nor would she go near Spirit Talker’s camp.

  Spirit Talker’s council lodge was crowded. The leading civil and war chiefs from all six bands camped together were there. In the center, opposite the door, in the warm place
of honor, sat Noah Smithwick. Noah had been in Texas a long time. Ten years before he had made his living as a blacksmith in Stephen Austin’s original colony.

  This gathering of Indians in the council lodge reminded him of the stag parties he and his friends used to hold in Austin. They called them “love feasts,” and demanded that everyone perform. Three-Legged Willie would give minstrel shows, patting juba with his wooden peg and playing the banjo. Noah accompanied him on fiddle. On second thought, mused Noah, maybe the scene is more like the ongoing monte game run by old Vincente Padilla. In any case, Noah felt at home.

  Noah’s huge, bushy red beard flowed down his shirt front like a napkin, and he used it as such while he ate the greasy stewed meat. There was plenty of food. A regular fireman’s line of women paraded back and forth to the lodge, bringing more steaming kettles of stew. Noah belched loudly, feeling a little queasy from too much meat and too much tobacco smoke and too many unwashed bodies in too close a space. He was used to all those smells, but not so closely packed together. He felt like he could slice the air with his knife, spear it, and eat it. He turned to the solemn Delaware who sat next to him.

  “Jim, tell Spirit Talker that this is very good stew. Ask him if there’s anything in it besides buffalo meat.”

  Jim Shaw was elegant. He was the only Indian Smithwick had ever seen whose leggings looked like they’d been tailored in London. He spoke English and Spanish and six Indian languages, and he trailed like a wolf. Made mean biscuits too, when pressed. He would never lack work on the frontier. He knew what Noah was getting at.

  “It’s okay. Comanche don’t eat dog.”

  Santa Ana reached a beefy hand across Shaw and stroked Smithwick’s beard, talking all the while. There was a roar of laughter.

  “What did he say?”

  “He says white eyes has very fine beard. Wishes he had a beard like that.”

  “Tell him thank you.”

  “Are you sure you want me to? He wishes he had a beard like that to hang on his shield. Wants to know if you have hair all over your body. Make a very powerful scalp. They like to take it all off in one piece. I saw one once like that. Ears and all.”

  “Don’t tell him thank you. What’s he saying now?” Noah had done most of the talking in Spanish in his three months with Spirit Talker. He had only sent for Jim Shaw to help him with the delicate maneuvering necessary for this council. For three months he had been in the Comanche camp alone, as Spirit Talker’s guest. And he had enjoyed it. But now he found himself depending on Shaw’s knowledge of Comanche and handtalk.

  “Santa Ana wants to know if your women like your beard in bed. Does it tickle them?” Noah thought about how long it had been since he’d had a white woman. Whoever had nicknamed the Penateka tenyuwit, Hospitable Ones, had known what he was talking about. Comanche were a lot more thoughtful and generous in some ways than Christian folk.

  The women came slithering under his lodge wall late at night, no mean feat for a couple of them. Those prairie belles must have outweighed him by fifty pounds, and he was a big man. They left before light and he never knew who they were. But Spirit Talker always grinned broadly in the morning when he asked how Noah had slept. The toothless, bawdy old goat. If he hadn’t sent them, he damned well knew they were there. Noah wondered what stories about him were circulating through camp. Well, at least women were safer subjects than beards as ornamental items.

  He had learned that Comanche didn’t consider brevity the soul of wit, and he launched into a lengthy listing of all the fine qualities of their women. He ended with the conclusion that they only had one fault. They giggled so much about his beard it was hard to make love to them. The hide walls almost shook with laughter as he told one story after another on himself.

  Noah was at home with storytelling, and he’d refined his technique after watching the Comanche. When it came to storytelling they could hold their own with any barb-tailed Texas yarn-spinners. And the Texans were no slouches either. When a situation got so bad there was nothing left to do, they made jokes about it. They were a lot alike, the Texans and the Comanche. Tough, mean, stubborn, and always ready to laugh at themselves.

  “Boys,” he said, finishing his last anecdote, “I even tried tying my beard up, you know, the way you tie your ponies’ tails before you fight. The little lady laughed so hard that my sturdy pine tree here,” he waved grandly at his lap, “wilted like a dry daisy on a hot day.” He held up his hand and forearm, then circled the hand and dropped it limply, palm up, onto his thigh. The hand rose slightly, quivered once, and fell back like a dead animal. His audience whistled and applauded, shouted and stamped their feet on the hard dirt floor. The wizened old buzzard next to Santa Ana laughed so hard he began to choke. Santa Ana pounded Old Owl on the back, almost knocking him over.

  “Why don’t you cut your beard off?” Santa Ana asked the question while he pounded on Old Owl.

  “Cut my beard off!” Noah covered his beard with both hands, his eyes saucer-wide in horror. “Cut my beard off! Why, boys, you might as well ask me to cut off something almost as near and dear to me.” Again he gestured toward his groin, framed by his crossed legs. “My beard is my strength and my medicine.” Everyone grunted. They could understand that.

  “Let me tell you a story about a great warrior who lived a long time ago. So long ago Spirit Talker wasn’t even born yet. He wasn’t even a glint in his father’s eye, as we say in Texas. This warrior’s name was Samson, and he had the most magnificent mane you ever saw.” Noah had gotten warmed up now and had almost forgotten why he was there. Everyone else seemed to have forgotten too, as they listened raptly. And the night wore on.

  When Noah finished his tale of Samson and Delilah, Spirit Talker reached for his ornate medicine pipe. A hush fell over the lodge. The friendly, frolicking hounds turned into hungry wolves. The orange flames flickered on their solemn, chiseled faces, carving their stern lines even deeper.

  Noah looked around at them in the silence of the pipe-lighting ceremony. He thought of the hours he had spent with the men of Spirit Talker’s band, and the times he had stood by their campfires and fiddled for them with three or four of their dogs asleep around his feet. The women and children and the men too had laughed and clapped and stamped and danced their own version of “Haste to the Wedding.”

  The real business was about to begin, and Noah had a moment’s pause. He was alone here, at the mercy of men with whom he was at war. Never mind that Spirit Talker had told him the custom. That anyone who asked for hospitality from the People, even if that person was an enemy, was received as well as a friend or loved one. Spirit Talker had told him that when treaty talk was going on, both sides were guaranteed safety and good treatment. Noah knew that he had almost undoubtedly charged into the sleeping camp of some of these men and had tried to kill their people. He was little comforted by the fact that these men had also raided his own folks and done worse than kill them. Oh, Lord. I hope we white eyes all look alike to them.

  Spirit Talker was the one who had proposed this council and had introduced the white envoy, so he gave the first speech. He drew deeply on the pipe before talking. His hair was graying, and he was the first balding Comanche Noah had ever seen. He looked like a chicken that had been halfheartedly plucked. His spare body was covered in leggings and high moccasins, with a breechclout so long it almost grazed the floor when he stood. His chest was hidden by a breastplate of bone cylinders laced to form a bib. It was so heavy it seemed to be pulling him forward by its weight. His voice was high and quavery. He talked for a long time, while Shaw murmured the translation. Finally he came to the point, his voice rising to a crescendo.

  “We have set our lodges in these groves and swung our children from these boughs since time immemorial. When the game beats away from us we pull down our lodges and move away, leaving no trace to frighten it. And in a little while it comes back. But the white man comes and cuts down the trees, building houses and fences, and the buffalo get frightened. They
leave and never come back, and the Indians are left to starve. Or if we follow the game, we trespass on the hunting grounds of the other tribes and war comes.

  “The Indians were not made to work. If they build houses and try to live like white men, they will all die. If the white men would draw a line defining their claims and keep to their side of it, the red man would not molest them.”

  There it was. The crux of the matter. Summed up beautifully by an ignorant savage. Ignorant, hell. They wanted their land and the freedom to hunt on it without interference. A reasonable request. But it could never be. Lamar wouldn’t agree to any kind of boundary barring Texans from taking as much land as they wanted. He planned to spread Texas all the way to the Pacific Ocean, and to hell with anyone who got in his way. Even if he did agree to a boundary, it would be worthless. Sam Houston had summed it up: “If you built a wall a thousand miles long and a hundred feet high between the Texans and the Indians, the Texans would find a way to get over it.”

  This treaty would be like all the rest. The Indians gave and the white men took. If he were a Comanche he doubted that he would even discuss the demands, much less give them the solemn and dignified consideration these men were giving them. One of the other chiefs rose to give a lengthy oration on the love the Comanche felt for the Texans, and, “By the way,” he asked, “did the messenger bring more presents?”

  The worst part of all this had been living in the village with Matilda Lockhart and her six-year-old sister. He had seen Matilda’s eyes pleading with him to help her and knew the agony her family was suffering for them. He had tried to ransom her, but their owner wouldn’t part with them. Noah dared not push too hard and ruin the chance of keeping Spirit Talker’s cooperation. It was more important to bring all the leaders to the talks, and win the release of every captive, than to jeopardize the treaty over these two. But the picture of them gave him the determination to stand and repeat the Texans’ demands one more time.

  “The Texans want peace with their red brothers.” Well, that much was certainly true. “It grieves them that there must be killing and bloodshed. They are sad when their children are taken from them and must live far from their families. It is impossible for them to feel love in their hearts for their brothers, the People, when their children are kept from them. Father Lamar asks that you meet with his war leader in San Antonio and that you bring all the white captives with you to return to those who gave birth to them and love them.”