He was restless while he waited for his great aunt, Old Owl’s wife, Prairie Dog, to make him a pair of leggings, a breechclout and moccasins. There were none in the village big enough to fit him. And he couldn’t go to meet his spirits wearing white men’s clothing.
Cub lay awake one night, almost a week after he had backed Sanaco’s horse into his grandfather’s smoking lodge. On the other side of the tent Old Owl’s snores had reached their maximum volume. But they weren’t keeping Cub awake. His own thoughts were. He had to make his vision quest, and then count coup. To prove himself in battle. Until then his acceptance in the band was tenuous.
There was a slight movement outside the lodge, and the hem of the wall was lifted. Cub felt for the large knife he always kept at the side of the bed. Someone the size of a large boy rolled under the edge. With one smooth motion she slid under the covers, leaving the robe she was wearing outside them.
“Manita, Small Hand!” Cub was astonished. She had been staring at him for days, but he assumed she was laughing at him. He couldn’t believe any woman would be interested in him with his ugly, hairy chest, his short, tousled blond hair, and the freckles spattered across his nose and cheeks. The girl laid her slender fingers against his mouth, silencing him. He put his lips to her ear.
“It’s all right,” he whispered. “I could fire off a gun in here and Old Owl wouldn’t hear it.” He nibbled at her lobe, while he was in the neighborhood. Then, without thinking, he ran his tongue around the inside of her ear. She giggled, stifling the sound against his chest, sending chills through his body. He ran his hand hesitantly over her round, firm buttocks and up her soft, naked body, feeling the goose bumps his tongue had raised.
Cub had never lain with a woman. His heart was pounding and when his tongue touched the roof of his mouth it was like licking a hot rock. He was grateful for the need to be quiet. He didn’t trust himself to speak. He was more afraid of this small, pliant Mexican captive than the warriors he had faced down silently when he came here. He was used to fighting, ready for it and good at it. But this was different. Very different. He had missed more than target practice while he lived with the whites.
Small Hand rolled on top of him and pressed sensuously against him, rotating her hips slightly, but urgently. She rubbed her cheek into the mat of hair on his chest, and he ran his hands all over her, stroking every slope and valley of her lithe young body. He felt his cock stir and swell, throbbing with pent-up pleasure against her hip. What would Uncle James and Elder Daniel say? He thought it with malicious glee before he lost himself completely in her.
She turned onto her back and guided him, stroking his balls with her fingers and firmly taking his cock, erect and hard now, in her hand. She spread her slender legs and pressed the head of it to her, easing it into the tight, slippery, wet hole. He whimpered as he felt her close snugly around him, felt the intense heat of her penetrate him, spreading through his groin. He was frustrated when he hit against a taut shield inside. He propped himself on his elbows to keep from smothering her with his weight. He looked down at her small, round face, and stroked her thick, wavy black hair.
“Is this your first time, Small Hand?” he murmured.
“Yes. The women told me it would hurt. I’m ready for it.”
“How old are you?”
“I’m not sure. I was very young when I was captured. A baby. I’ve been with the People almost thirteen years. I’m old enough to bear children, though.”
“You’re very beautiful”
“So are you. Bear Cub. I heard you’d be leaving soon on your vision quest. I wanted to come to you before you left. Several of the young women teased about doing this themselves. They have never seen a man like you. You fascinate them. But I told them I’d cut off their noses if they even looked at you.” She smiled wickedly up at him, and he lowered his face to kiss her gently on the lips. Her mouth was full and soft and for a second, yielding. Then she returned the kiss fiercely. They made love the rest of the night, to the serenade of Old Owl’s snores. When Cub finally fell asleep, exhausted and happy, just before dawn, Small Hand slipped out and was gone.
Cub awoke early that morning to a hand rocking his shoulder. His grandfather sat crosslegged next to him, shaking him. He held a neatly folded pair of leggings, a painted breechclout, and a pair of beaded moccasins in his lap.
“Are you going to sleep all day?”
Cub threw back the covers, and Old Owl wrinkled his mountainous nose.
“Whew. What were you doing here last night?”
Cub started to explain that it wasn’t his fault, that he had been taken advantage of, but his grandfather held up a hand, palm outward and waved it from side to side. The stop signal in sign talk.
“Never mind. I can tell. We’ll have to burn sage in here before I can let anyone in. The smell of love is on everything. Somebody will think I’ve been entertaining women here. Santa Ana will never stop teasing me about it.” Old Owl left the clothes for his grandson and bustled around. He piled green sage boughs on the fire and prepared meat for breakfast while the crackling fireworks from the green branches died down. As he scolded he kept his back turned so Cub wouldn’t see him smiling.
“You’re about to start on your vision quest, the most important event in your life, and you’re wasting your time with women.”
“The vision quest may be the most important event in my life, Grandfather, but now I know which event is the most fun.” Cub yawned mightily and staggered to the fire. His legs felt a little wobbly. He sat with a thud, scratching his chest and looking very self-satisfied.
“Smug pup. Foolishness! After we eat you can take a nap. Then we’ll talk about your journey.”
Cub sat straighter, alert suddenly.
“I’m not tired. I want to talk about it now, and start as soon as possible.”
“All right. Tell me what you’re to do, my son.”
“I take only a few things with me—a buffalo robe, a pipe…”
“I have a pipe for you.”
“Tobacco and a fire horn. I wear only a breechclout and moccasins. I stop four times on the journey to smoke and pray. I will stay on the south slope of Medicine Mounds so I can see the sun rise and set. I will eat nothing until I’ve had my vision.”
Old Owl gave Cub a small leather bag.
“This is powdered willow bark. It’s a very powerful purgative. It will clean you out and make you ready for your vision. And you’ll ride Eagle Feather.”
“Eagle Feather’s your favorite pony.”
“Take him. And take this too.” The old man searched through the piles and bundles heaped around the side of the lodge. It was a lifetime’s accumulation of things. He pulled out a battered rawhide tube and opened it reverently. The tube was more scarred than Cub remembered and it seemed smaller, but he recognized it instantly.
“No, Grandfather. I can’t take your sacred wolf skin.”
“It’s time for you to have it. I promised it to you a long time ago. I don’t need it anymore. And I’ll give you one of my songs too. Listen carefully.” Old Owl composed himself in front of the fire, facing east. He began to chant his favorite medicine song in a high, quavery, pinched voice. Cub listened intently, the wolf robe spread across his lap. He could almost feel the power seeping from it and into his legs. The hypnotic repetition of the song’s words intensified the feeling. It was his grandfather’s holiest chant.
That afternoon, when Cub had hung the few things he was taking with him onto the surcingle, Old Owl embraced him. Cub was always surprised at how much power was contained in his grandfather’s lean, bent frame. There were tears in Old Owl’s eyes, and he wiped them on one corner of his filthy white vest, worn thread-thin now, and colorless with age. The white hairs on his head shone silvery in the bright sunlight. He looked old and fragile as Cub turned to wave his rifle at him in salute. He was taking the gun for food and for protection on the journey. It would be a longer trip than usual. Not everyone traveled all the way
to Medicine Mounds to seek their vision.
He had left the village and was on the trail to the river when a figure stepped from the bushes.
“Bear Cub.” Small Hand said it in a low voice. “I wanted to give you something to take with you.” She held up a buffalo robe, straining under its weight. It was a large robe, five feet by seven feet. It was made of two separate pieces sewn down the center. A narrow line of red paint hid the stitching. It had a seal-brown coat of thick wool mixed with hair almost two feet long. It was warmer than four blankets.
“May this keep you warm until you come back to me and I can do it instead.”
Cub rolled the robe into a tight cylinder and strapped it across his pony’s back.
“My heart is glad. Small Hand. When I lie under it at night, I’ll think of your warmth. But my heart is gladdest for the gift you gave me last night.” He leaned down from his pony to kiss her lightly on the mouth. Then he righted himself and rode off at a trot.
In March of the next year, 1849, an army expedition left Torrey’s trading post at the site of an old Waco village. The expedition’s orders were to map a route for the emmigrants headed for the California gold fields. Its commander, Indian Agent Robert Neighbors, enlisted the aid of the Penateka to guide them. It was a peaceful expedition, and it was unmolested because of Neighbors’ influence among the Comanche.
In April the party bivouacked near one of the cold springs that gushed from a gravel bed to form a clear pool before joining a stream nearby. The high, rolling prairie along the Canadian was spectacular at any time of the year, but it was at its best in the springtime. A tall gallery of hardwoods towered over the camp. The air was crisp. Each star in the soaring sky looked as though it had been polished and set in place on black velvet.
The horses and mules grazed on the thick, sweet rye. They had each cropped a neat circle, its radius the thirty feet of the tether line allowed them. If “Major” Neighbors was in charge of the party, Captain Randolph Marcy of the United States Army saw to its marching order and bivouack routine. He left nothing to chance. Each animal was double hobbled as well as picketed. Sidelines fastened their hind and fore feet on the same side. As added protection, the small A-shaped tents were set up neatly around the exposed side of the pasture. The pasture itself was in the wide curve left by the stream’s meanderings. Attack from the water side was unlikely.
Once Marcy had checked the mounted guards for the herd and the lookouts posted on the crest of a hill over camp, he was ready to relax. He unfolded his long camp chair with a clatter. It was an ingenious device of oak and canvas. He sank into it with a sigh, and rolled a cigarette.
“That contraption looks like it’s alive and about to swallow you, Randolph,” said Neighbors.
“Not at all. It’s very comfortable. And after all, if you can’t be comfortable on these little jaunts, what’s the use of coming?”
“Seems to me if God had intended man to use a folding chair like that in the middle of the howling wilderness, he wouldn’t have provided all these fine, soft rocks for us to sit on.”
“This is the life, isn’t it, Major?” And Marcy blew a smoke ring. On the other side of the fire, John Ford was having a harder time relaxing.
“How can a man concentrate with all that caterwauling going on?” He slammed the Bible closed so hard it blew out the candle by which he had been reading. Old Owl had been chanting his medicine songs for hours. Lying flat on his back, he sang to the huge, star-strewn sky. It was getting on Ford’s nerves.
“Don’t get testy. Rip,” said Marcy.
“Actually, Rip, I prefer Old Owl’s singing to your temperance lectures,” added Neighbors.
“Trouble with you is you don’t drink enough,” put in Marcy.
“I don’t drink at all, and you know it. Drink is the devil’s crowbar, prying us off the straight and narrow.” John Ford had recently joined the Temperance movement. It was one more thing to goad him about.
“Now you’ve done it, Marcy. Don’t get him started.”
“How’d you get your nickname, Rip?” Marcy changed the subject.
“In Mexico, during the war. Just a year ago, actually. I was adjutant. It was my dolorous duty to write the families of the men killed in action. Of course, I ended each letter with R.I.P., Reseat In Pacem. Hence the name.”
“It’s a good ‘un.” Neighbors twisted his bushy muttonchop whiskers around his fingers.
Ford looked out into the darkness of the warm April night, toward the source of the chanting.
“He stirs up recollections of boyhood, the chief does,” Ford said. “The calling of hogs, the plaintive notes of a solitary bull frog, the bellowing of a small bull.”
“Hark,” Neighbors joined in, cupping his hand to his ear as though to hear better. “The awful melody of a sonorous gong. The mournful howl of a hungry wolf, fading into the gobble of a lovesick turkey.”
“Hard to believe that dried-up old man is a ferocious, brutal Comanche chief,” said Marcy.
“They’re surprising people, the Comanches,” said Neighbors. “I met with Old Owl and Santa Ana and Pahayuca. Even that scalawag Buffalo Hump was there, a couple of months ago.”
Ford smiled to himself, thinking of Buffalo Hump’s real name and of how he and Wallace and Ben McCulloch had rechristened him almost ten years before. Neighbors went on with his story.
“That’s when I got them to agree to help us scout the trail and to leave the wagon trains alone. They were a very jovial set. We spent the evening eating and smoking and talking about war and horses and women. I found myself, in the end, upon a good understanding with them.”
“Are you on a good enough understanding with Old Owl to ask him to shut up before I pin his ears to the wagon bed and force-feed him his own vocal cords?”
“Ford, since you’ve gotten religion you’ve lost your sense of humor,” said Marcy mildly.
“It’s teetotalling that has him out of sorts,” said Neighbors. “Rip’s always had religion. You obviously never heard his famous Sunday School lesson about the prophet Jeremiah.”
Marcy shook his head in a cloud of cigarette smoke, and the Major continued.
“According to Ford, here, the man’s name was just plain Jerry. Then one day his stubborn old mule bucked him off into the slimy black mud of a swamp. Well, he came a-staggering back into town all covered with black goo. And the folks dubbed him Jerry-mire. Called him that ever after.”
“That’s not true.” Marcy laughed so hard he choked on his cigarette smoke. “Ford, you didn’t teach that in Sunday school!”
John Ford looked solemn and placed his hand on his tattered bible. His pale blue eyes, high forehead, and arched Roman nose gave him a patrician look.
“Yes, I did.”
Marcy laughed, and then turned when he felt a warm weight on his shoulder. Reflexively, Ford’s hand went to his waist where his pistols were stuck into the waist of his pantaloons. Behind Marcy stood a hulking Comanche with a good-natured grin on his affable face.
“It’s all right, Rip,” muttered Neighbors. “It’s just Sanaco.”
The Comanche held his broad palm up in the sign of peace, and Marcy stood to face him. Sanaco executed a rather snappy salute, which Marcy returned, as much from reflex as anything else.
“Sanaco,” the man said pointing to his broad chest and tapping his grimy fingernail on the crescent-shaped, silver gorget that dangled there.
“Marcy,” answered the Colonel, clicking his brass coat button. Suddenly the Comanche lunged forward and enveloped him in a smelly hug, almost smothering him with the odor of bear grease and sweat and the dung he had rubbed in his hair for this special occasion. Sanaco had seen Marcy holding sway in his camp chair and had assumed he was a plenipotentary of some sort.
“Amigo,” he said, pointing first to himself and then to Marcy. “Nermenuh, amigos, tabbay-boh, soldiers. The People are friends of the white soldiers.”
“And we are friends of the People.”
Sanaco beckoned to Marcy to step closer to the light. He tugged his arm gently with one hand, and with the other pulled a filthy, tattered piece of paper from somewhere within the fringes and folds of his hunting shirt. Ford was nervous, and by now his hand was resting firmly on his pistol. He had spent too many years tracking Comanche to trust them. Marcy squinted at the faded, smudged writing on the paper, being careful to keep out of line of Ford’s fire, should it come.
“Major, would you bring me a light?”
Neighbors brought a burning branch from the fire and held it so Marcy could read. Sanaco peered over his shoulder, a worried expression on his face.
“Is it a testimonial?” asked Neighbors. “Many of the Penatekas carry them to gain safe passage through the territory.”
“Looks like it.” Marcy chuckled softly. Sanaco’s worried expression deepened.
“Him no good?”
“Not as good as it could be, chief. Listen.” He read aloud to his two friends. “The bearer of this says he is a Comanche chief named Sanaco; that he is the biggest Indian and the best friend the whites ever had, in fact, that he is a first-rate fellow; but I believe he is a damned rascal, so look out for him.”
Marcy folded the paper and handed it back to Sanaco, who looked crestfallen. He crumpled the paper, then threw it into the fife. He turned to Marcy, and slowly and somberly he shook hands three times. Then, gazing at him with a steady, sincere expression, he locked right elbows with him and pressed both their arms to his side. He did the same with his left arm, repeating, “Bueno, mucho bueno,” the whole time. He melted back into the night, leaving the three men laughing and shaking their heads.
Pahayuca was the last of the Penateka leaders to arrive. When he did they all were ready to meet with Marcy and Neighbors to discuss details. They would talk about the possible routes, the meals and the presents they would receive in payment for their services as guides. The Delaware scout Jim Shaw was there to translate.
Robson, Lucia St. Clair Page 54
