Buffalo Piss and his men had come to the Staked Plains. He spoke to the leaders gathered in Iron Shirt’s council lodge.
“The white men are everywhere. They swarm like buffalo gnats. And the old Penateka leaders, Pahayuca and Old Owl, Santa Ana and Sanaco, they meet with them and agree to their demands. The young men’s bravery is eaten away by the whiskey that the white traders bring with them.
“Last fall, right after Wanderer left, three Texans came to meet with us. They invited the leaders of the Penateka to make honey talk with more of the treacherous cowards. They wanted us to walk into their town and be slaughtered again like helpless deer.” Buffalo Piss was almost chewing on the pipe stem in his rage.
“Arrow Point and I wanted to kill them then and there. Or tie them in the center of the village for the women to torture. They have no honor, these Texans. They lured us to treaty talks and turned on us. And then they expected us to come meekly again.
“All afternoon we discussed it. Not whether or not to go to the treaty talks, but whether or not to kill the envoys. We were there all afternoon. And Pahayuca kept silent. Finally he spoke. He was the last to do so.
” ‘These men’s honor and the honor of the Texans does not concern me,’ he said. ‘My honor and the honor of the Wasps does. The Texans are not the People. They do not understand our ways or our honor. I will not be disgraced by the blood of men who have come to me under a flag of truce. Their blood is not worth it. The blood of all Texans is not worth it. For after they are dead, I will still have to live with myself, and with my shame. They will not be harmed while they are here under my protection. Any man who wishes to harm them must fight me. Suvate, that is all.’
“What could we say? After Pahayuca and Old Owl agreed to meet with them, we let them go. The leaders made honey talk with Sam Hyu-stahn a month ago. They agreed to allow trading posts. They agreed to stop raiding. To stop raiding! Why didn’t the Texans ask us to stop breathing? A man who doesn’t raid is not a man. And as usual, the Texans refused to set boundaries on themselves. They won’t guarantee us our land, or promise to punish those who wrong us.
“So we came here, those of us who can no longer live under the conditions in the south. The Quohadi will never surrender. They will never allow the white men to set up trading posts and destroy their young men with stupid water. And they will never stop raiding.”
The pipe passed to Wanderer, and he thought as he drew a deep breath on it. Then he stood and adjusted his robe, to signal that he would speak next. He wrapped it around his chest and draped it over his left arm, leaving his shoulders uncovered. Solemnly he recounted the war records of Pahayuca and Santa Ana, Old Owl and Sanaco. He told of their coups and their bravery, their wisdom and loyalty. He told the history of the Penateka, their courage as warriors. Then he talked of the white men.
“The Penateka have always lived in the lands the whites want, the easy lands where there is much timber and game and water. A hundred years ago the Spanish tried to take their lands, and the Penateka fought them and won. Their warriors rode fearlessly through the Spanish towns in daylight and took whatever they wanted. But the Texans are different. They spawn like rabbits, like fish in the streams, like mosquitoes in the swamps. Their lodges are crowded with children. And still more come from the east. They bring sickness with them, and death, and the stupid water.
“And they bring guns. If we’re going to drive them out, we have to have guns like theirs. And powder and ammunition. I will lead a party south to steal more of them. We will raid until every man of the Quohadi has a gun. We will raid until the white men are beaten and leave our lands forever.”
Iron Shirt spoke next.
“My son speaks wisely when he says we must continue raiding. But I do not agree that guns are the answer. Our arrows are better than the white man’s guns. They fire more quickly, and they do not require powder and bullets. If a bow breaks, we can make another one. If a gun breaks, it is useless to us. Bows do not misfire, or explode or hang fire or rust or jam. They do not wound or deafen the man firing them. While the white men stop to reload, we can shower them with arrows.
“We should steal the white man’s weapons whenever we can. It’s better for us to have them than him. But we must not depend on them to defend ourselves. We must not depend on weapons that come from a source outside ourselves. When we do that, we will be as foolish as those who depend on the white man’s wih-skee for their courage.”
For the rest of the afternoon the men discussed the raid that Wanderer proposed. Wanderer’s face was expressionless throughout it. If he was angry with his father for contradicting him, he never showed it. The council lodge was not a place of anger. Anger was undignified, and maintaining the dignity of the council was much more important than personal slights and offenses.
When he returned to his lodge that night, however, Naduah could tell he was raging inside. She served the stew silently, waiting for him to speak. Finally he did, in a low, calm, dangerous voice.
“There will be a raid. I will lead a party, but there will probably be more than one group going. Buffalo Piss is going to Sun Name’s band to recruit more men. Everyone is restless after a quiet winter. Many will want to go, to teach the Texans a lesson.”
“May I go with you?”
“No, golden one. We will be raiding far south, deep into the timber country where the Penateka used to hunt. There are many white men there now, and they will try to take you. I do not want to risk losing you.”
“I could darken my hair, dress as a man.”
He stared at her in his intense way, tenderness showing through the rage.
“No, my love. Darken your hair, dress as a man. You’re still too much of a woman to hide it. And your blue eyes shine like signal shields on a high hill in the bright sun.”
Naduah sighed. She knew why Sunrise had insisted that she learn to shoot and track and hunt. There were many weeks, months, sometimes years, when the men were gone on raids. And the women were left to fend for themselves and their families.
They moved inside, and he began checking his war gear. While he cleaned his carbine and rolled fresh sinew bowstrings, she took out the envelope-shaped rawhide wardrobe case. She untied the flap and pulled out his war shirt, leggings, moccasins, blanket, braid wrappers, and bear claw necklace. She shook the clothes and inspected them for wear or stains. Then she hung them over the pole rack to let the wrinkles fall out. Next she took his eagle feathers from the stiff tubular case that kept them from becoming torn or broken. She retied one of them onto its bone holder, and polished the silver disks.
Then she began an inventory of all the items he would need as he traveled: carrying cases, extra moccasins, his medicine bag, fire-making equipment, jerky, his pipe bag with its tamper and tobacco, a buffalo robe, his quirt, powder horn, lead balls, his knife, club, sinew, and awl in their tiny cylindrical case, spare leather for patching, his whetstone and its case, his war-paint bag and seashells for mixing the powders. She added a bag of puoip root from her supply of medicines and a bag of skunk musk to blot out any scent trails that the Texans’ hounds might follow. Wanderer took out a lead ingot and his bullet mold. He built up the fire until it was hot enough to melt the lead. While he worked, he talked.
“None of them understands. None of them. Iron Shirt lives in the past. ‘Arrows are better than guns,’ he says. Never do they ask where the guns come from. Where do the Texans get them? We have raided all over the country, and rarely do we find a place where the guns are made. Who makes them? Who improves them?
“I remember the first gun I ever saw, an old smoothbore, muzzle-loading musket that took forever to load. Each year the guns get better. For how long will our arrows be more efficient? What will the next improvement be?” He shook the carbine in the air to emphasize his point. And he looked at Naduah strangely, as though she had changed while he talked.
“Do you know where the guns come from, golden one?”
“No, I don’t.” And she busie
d herself with her work. She told him the truth. She didn’t know. When she was a child guns had always been in her family’s houses, but she never asked where they came from. They were always just there. She had lived in isolation on the frontier since before she was old enough to remember anything. She could no more imagine an armory than Wanderer could. She could barely remember her family’s last cabin.
“Pahayuca and Old Owl are treating with the whites now.”
“Yes, I heard that,” she said.
“You and Cub are gone. They no longer have a reason not to.”
“Surely that has nothing to do with it. The Penateka have been hounded by soldiers and Rangers until there’s nothing else for them to do.”
“There’s always something else for them to do. They can do what the People have always done. Fight.” In spite of his anger, Wanderer sounded sad. “No. Like my father, they’re getting old. They’ve won their coups, made their reputations. They have no more need for the war trail. And they’re denying the young men the opportunity to become leaders. They’ve been seduced by the trinkets that the white men bring. Because you can be sure that the Great Texas Father, Sam Hyu-stahn, isn’t going to allow his traders to sell us guns or horses. Nothing we can really use.
“They’ll bring us trinkets, things we’ve always gotten along without. Ribbons and flour and coffee. They’ll be coffee chiefs— Pahayuca and Old Owl and Santa Ana. Coffee chiefs!” He spat the words out as though they were bitter in his mouth.
“Wanderer, stop!” Naduah sat in misery in the middle of the pile of soft furry sleeping robes. Her knees were drawn up and her face was buried in her arms. He sat next to her and put an arm around her shoulders. With his other hand he pulled back the thick, flaxen hair to see her face.
“I love Old Owl and Pahayuca too. I respect their courage and their wisdom. I haven’t forgotten their records as warriors. But the future is no longer theirs. They have nothing piled on the sidelines to bet on it. Their fighting days are almost over. We are the ones who will pay for what they are doing. We and our children.”
“I’ll fight with you, Wanderer. I want to go on this raid.”
“Not this time.” Outside, from different parts of the village, the sound of drums intensified, like a pulse beating faster with the excitement of war. Men were seeking medicine to protect them as they fought.
Wanderer rose to go and Naduah didn’t try to stop him. She knew he would probably be away all night. He would find a spot with spirits inhabiting it, and smoke and pray to enlist their aid. There were many places like that in Palo Duro canyon, places where the rocks had been twisted by time and kneaded by the elements into mystical shapes. Places where the wind whistled and moaned eerily out of dark side canyons, and shadows seemed to writhe in the full moon’s light.
“Yee, yee, yee!” Naduah screamed and leaped with the other women, waving her arms in time to the scores of drums. In the center of the cleared space the men of the raiding party had been dancing for hours. Silhouetted against the roaring bonfire, they leaped and stamped. Individuals stopped to tell of their bravery and to beg the others to shoot them if they faltered in the battles to come. They staged mock skirmishes, firing their rifles in the air. Outside the dance area, Wanderer sat watching on Night. When his men gave a screech that resonated against Naduah’s eardrums and left her head ringing, Wanderer rode forward at a gallop. He ignored the bullets they shot over his head, and stopped at the center of the circle.
There was a sudden silence, broken only by the snapping of logs on the fire, the occasional jingle of bells, or the dry crackle of a pebble-filled gourd rattle. Wanderer’s face was painted black, as were the faces of his men. In one hand he held his carbine over his head, and in the other his bow and quiver. Night, as though he knew the effect required, turned slowly so all could see his rider clearly.
“Men and women of the Quohadi,” Wanderer’s powerful voice rang in the stillness. “We are going on the raid trail. We will win horses and scalps, guns and captives and slaves to make us even stronger. We will take what we want, and we will leave our enemies crying in the ruins of their lodges. We are strong. We are fearless. We are invincible.” He gave the People’s unearthly, yodeling war whoop and his men joined him. The drums took up the war chant, and the dance began again.
As it went on, into the early hours of the morning, the people of Iron Shirt’s band worked themselves into a frenzy. Naduah was swept along by it, drunk with fatigue and excitement, delirious with the drumming and the swaying. She had lost her sense of self and become a part of something bigger and grander and more exciting. The rhythmic pounding seemed to radiate out from the marrow of her bones, vibrating every cell in her body. The flames of the huge fire leaped and danced too, as though nature were joining in the effort. The fire hypnotized her as it would a moth.
It was almost dawn when she staggered to her lodge, fell onto her bed, and pulled the warm robe over her. As she drifted off to sleep her arms and legs felt light and alien, as though they belonged to someone else, and her head was whirling. She never knew when Wanderer joined her an hour later. He had only a few hours to sleep before it all started over again.
Once more he got up, dressed in his war clothes, and led the parade of his men through the village. He carried his banner of red flannel streamers on a pole tipped with the eagle feathers of his coups. The older men lined the procession’s path, cheering them on and urging the women to sleep with the warriors. The women and children followed behind, dressed in their best clothes and chanting war songs. When the second night’s celebration was over. Wanderer hurried to catch Naduah as she walked toward home, her legs feeling light and wobbly from dancing.
She laughed when he picked her up in his powerful arms and swung her around. He swept into the lodge with her and threw her gently onto the tumbled robes. He fell lightly on top of her. Neither of them said a word. As she had felt her mind and will blending with his during the dance, so now did her body seem to become one with him. The touch of him was intoxicating. He was slick and satiny with sweat and the beaver oil that made him impervious to bullets.
She wrapped her arms and her long legs around him to pull him as close as possible. She wanted to meld their flesh together, to feel him push deep inside her. engorging her and making her complete. The lodge seemed to whirl slowly with her and Wanderer entwined at its very center, at the center of the universe.
They coupled almost violently, silently except for her low moans. They were totally absorbed in the feel of each other’s flesh and skin and muscle and bone. They were driven by the unspoken knowledge that he would leave in a few hours, and that she might never see him alive again.
CHAPTER 39
Sam Walker groped around him, feeling among the sticks and pebbles and spiny tufts of brown grass. He was searching for the, tiny screw that held his new Colt Paterson together. His fingers bumped into a tubby little barrel cactus.
“Dammitall, Jack.” He shook his hand. “If we had a fire I could at least see what I was doing with this infernal machine.”
“Sam, you know why we don’t make fires after dark.” Jack Hays’ voice was low and pleasant.
“Hell, Jack, there aren’t any Indians within a hundred miles of here,” said John Ford.
“Not after yesterday. They must be at least a hundred miles away and still running,” added Noah Smithwick.
“That bunch is gone, but there may be others. We follow the usual procedure. Eat before sunset, then ride a couple more hours and camp.”
“Camp! I don’t call this camping,” grumbled Rufus Perry. “No fire. No grub, ‘ceptin’ old jerky that tastes like someone’s been wearing it on their feet for a month. No smokes, no laughing. Can’t even have Noah fiddle for us.”
“Thank you for that!” put in Ford. Rufe didn’t usually mind Hays’ rules, but after routing the huge Comanche war party the day before he felt they should celebrate a little.
“Well, it isn’t the lack of light that’s a pr
oblem anyway,” mumbled Sam. “It’s this damned gun. You lose this little screw here, the one that connects the standing breech with the lock frame, and the infernal thing falls apart.” He finally found the screw and held it up, as though the others could see it in the pale starlight. The fourteen men of Hays’ Ranger patrol still sat in a circle around an imaginary campfire. They were vaguely silhouetted against the lighter sky. Far off an owl hooted and cicadas made the night air vibrate with sound.
“You can’t reload it while you’re bouncing around on a running horse,” Sam went on. “And it’s too light to club anyone. Poorly balanced.” He hefted it in his hand. “Man that made this obviously never hunted Comanches.” The pistol’s three pieces lay on his rumpled, grimy red bandana spread on the rough ground. Squinting and working mostly by feel, he began putting it back together.
“You ain’t tellin’ us anything we don’t know, Sam,” said Perry. “But hell, who’d’ve thought we’d be close enough to Comanches to club them? We hardly even get a chance to see them.”
“Whooee.” Ford let his breath out in a rush. “Didn’t they run though!”
“I don’t care what you say, Sam. I’d like to find the man that made these pistols and kiss the hem of his robe. He’s a savior. That’s what he is.” Noah kissed his pistol instead and cradled it to his chest. “How many Indians do you suppose there were? I didn’t take time to count.”
“There were seventy,” said John Ford.
“How do you know, John?” asked Walker.
“I did what Bill Wallace taught me to do,” said Ford. “I counted their horses’ legs and divided by four.” Smithwick dove into him, a solid shadow in the dark, and they tusseled on the ground like children.
Robson, Lucia St. Clair Page 47
