Robson, Lucia St. Clair

by Ride the Wind

  Gathered Up rode by. Leaning down, he picked up Star Name and laid her across Naduah’s coyote dun. Quail supported the body in front of her as she rode the dun. Then Gathered Up grabbed the rifle. He held it up in a salute to Naduah.

  “You are a warrior now,” he shouted. “Wanderer sent me to help you escape.” Naduah lowered herself onto the woven slats and tumbled robes of the travois. She tucked the bow and quiver under one of the straps that bound it together. Gathered Up began lashing the ponies viciously with his quirt.

  They galloped through camp, the travois bouncing crazily on the stones and scattered equipment. Thorny mesquite whipped her face and arms, embroidering long red welts on her skin. As the poles bucked and swayed, she gripped them with white knuckles scraped and bloodied by the bushes. The fingers of her left hand were bruised where they had been smashed against a tree trunk in passing.

  Dizziness, nausea, and pain swept over her, but she fought to stay conscious. If she blacked out she would fall from the travois and be trampled. The camp was a chaos of stampeding ponies and running people. Mules kicked and brayed, sending their half-tied loads flying.

  The pony swerved to avoid a small child standing bewildered in its path, and Naduah tensed to keep from rolling off. The sky was a lead-gray color now. Forms of soldiers could be seen ghosting through the clumps of bushes in the camp. Their silhouettes, broken up by the branches and leaves, looked fragmented, like the camouflage patterns on moths’ wings. As Quail and Gathered Up and Naduah plunged into a steep ravine outside the village, the sounds of firing faded. They were replaced by the roll of thunder.

  An hour later, it began to rain as they reached the ford of the river. The water was running fast and deep, and a hundred refugees gathered at the shallow place to cross. They splashed helter-skelter into the river. Dogs barked as they were washed downstream by the current. Small children clung to their travois, choking and shaking their heads when the spray reached them. On one travois each of the three children held on tightly with one hand and clutched a tiny, whimpering puppy with the other arm.

  Women held up their husbands’ lances if they had them. They used them as signs around which their scattered families could gather. Naduah searched for Pecan and Wanderer and Quanah, gritting her teeth against the pains which were coming close together by then.

  “Quail,” she called.

  “Yes, Mother.”

  “Star Name?”

  “She’s dead.” Quail sobbed, her head bowed. Her tears mixed with the rain falling on Star Name’s limp body as it lay across the pony’s withers. Naduah was too distraught for the news to register deeply. She would grieve later.

  “Gathered Up,” she said, “tie my sister’s body onto the other pack pony. Quail, look for Wears Out Moccasins. My time is near.”

  When Gathered Up finished transferring the corpse, he rode ahead of them, clearing a path in the crush of people and animals at the water’s edge.

  Wanderer. Where are you, Wanderer? Naduah gasped as the icy water hit her. It was even colder than the rain that was coming down in large drops. Thunder crashed in reverberating explosions that seemed to rip the sky open. Once on the other bank, the three of them stopped to look for Wears Out Moccasins and the rest of Naduah’s family.

  Refugees crowded past them, jostling each other as they hurried up the crumbling embankment. Someone picked up a child who had fallen from a travois and been unwittingly left. Mothers zigzagged in and out among the ponies, searching for lost little ones. People retied loads and redistributed weight on their horses, trying to save them from exhaustion. Sometimes three or four children rode on one horse. They sat in a row, each with arms tightly wound around the waist of the one in front. Their faces seemed to be all eyes.

  On the far side of the river, the fleetest of those on foot were beginning to arrive along with the riders. Wanderer rode among them.

  “Naduah!” The cry was wrung from somewhere deep inside him as he drove Raven into the water at a gallop. It wasn’t until he was by her side that she began to cry, great gulping sobs. He shook her gently.

  “It’s all right. I’m here.”

  “Please don’t leave.” She clung to his arm. She felt so helpless and bloated. Unable to move or run or defend herself.

  “I’ll stay with you.”

  She began to calm.

  “I’m sorry, Wanderer. I was afraid.”

  “I was afraid too, golden one. I was terrified I would find you hurt.” He saw the pain cross her face. “Is the baby coming?”

  “Yes.”

  “Quail, find Wears Out Moccasins. She crossed near me.” He brushed wet hair from Naduah’s face, leaning over to shield her from the rain. She had never seen anything as beautiful as his big dark eyes. “Wears Out Moccasins wouldn’t leave the village until she had counted coup on a tabay-boh soldier.” He smiled, and it seemed to warm her in the cold rain.

  “Wanderer,” said Gathered Up. “Quanah is coming. And Pecan has just arrived on the other side. He has Night with him.”

  Wanderer mounted and paced along the riverbank, waiting for his sons.

  “He’s going too far downstream,” he muttered to Gathered

  Up. “Pecan!” Wanderer shouted and waved, but thunder canceled his voice. The child’s pony waded into the water, with Night following behind.

  “Quicksand?” asked Gathered Up.

  “Yes.” Wanderer galloped back toward his youngest son. Pecan crossed safely, but Night slipped on a shifting ridge of sand and floundered. As the lead line came up taut, Pecan turned around and saw what had happened. He began tugging at the rope in panic, trying vainly to pull Night out. But as the pony struggled, he sank deeper. His eyes bulged as he strained to free his feet. He neighed when he saw Wanderer coming, testing the bottom with the butt of his lance. Wanderer took the line from Pecan.

  “I’m sorry, Father.” The child was sobbing. Wanderer ignored him, staring only at his beloved pony. It was a bad stretch of quicksand. The worst kind. Wanderer knew that the harder Night fought, the deeper he would sink. And Night was fighting hard.

  There was a stir among the crowd waiting to ford. Someone had brought word that the soldiers were coming. People rushed to cross, pushing and shoving. Wanderer looked from Night to the travois where Naduah lay wrapped in robes. Wears Out Moccasins had found her and was signaling for him to hurry. He drew his revolver from its oiled leather case. Naduah saw him point it at Night’s head. She closed her eyes, and flinched when the gun went off.

  Then they were moving again, and Wanderer, Gathered Up, Quanah, and Pecan galloped to catch them. The rain became a torrent, blown like sheets of needles by the wind.

  “We have to get her to cover. The baby is moving down. Its head will be out soon.” Wears Out Moccasins had to shout to be heard over the thunder, the wind, and the rain.

  “There is no shelter.” Wanderer led them into a ravine where the wind was blocked. He and Quanah and Gathered Up held hides over Naduah while Quail and Wears Out Moccasins helped the baby into the world. No one had to tell Wanderer that his third child was a girl. Wears Out Moccasins wiped the tiny body off as best she could and wrapped the baby up and buried her among Naduah’s robes. She and Quail hastily lashed a domed framework of thin cottonwood poles over the travois and tied a covering of hides over it. They would protect the mother and child a little from the rain.

  Rain continued all day and all night. The next morning dawned and was hardly noticed. The sky was still dark with clouds and the rain was still falling. They traveled another day in it. That night it slowed, but no one dismounted to sleep. The water had flushed tarantulas from their holes. The ground seemed alive and shifting with them. Everyone slept that night on their ponies, or not at all.

  After burying Star Name, they spent a week hiding in caves or sleeping out in the open, gradually collecting the scattered people of the Noconi band. Then they returned to their village to salvage what they could. The rain that had plagued them in their flight h
ad also saved most of their lodges. They had been too wet to burn when the soldiers returned from chasing the survivors. If the cavalry had been Texans and not United States troops, they would have wrecked everything they couldn’t burn. For the cavalry, hunting Indians was a job. For the Texans it was a vendetta. The cavalry had yet to learn that to destroy the People they would have to destroy their entire way of life.

  Even so, the rain had flowed in streams through the lodges and soaked many things. Scavengers had eaten most of the food supply. The drying racks were fallen and empty. The horse herds were scattered. And the soldiers had ransacked the tents in their search for weapons and souvenirs.

  There was a cold wind blowing as the People rode into the deserted village at twilight. A flock of crows seemed to be caught in the tangled web of tree limbs, black against the gray-white sky. They cawed hollowly at the intrusion. While the men and boys went to find lost ponies, the women picked through the sodden piles of their possessions.

  Naduah was glad when they had all packed what they could save and left, the next morning. The place made her uneasy, as though it was inhabited by ghosts. Which it was. There had been bodies lying where they had fallen or been dragged by wolves. Naduah couldn’t look at Star Name’s lodge without crying.

  As the long column of Noconi moved out, Wears Out Moccasins rode beside Naduah.

  “You found the cradle board. Daughter.”

  “Yes. It was still in the lodge, and unharmed.”

  “Seeing your daughter hanging in her cradle board from your saddle is like salve on a sore wound, or a fire on a cold day. She looks so peaceful asleep. So new and full of promise for the future. Looking at her, I can believe everything will be all right. Have you named her yet?”

  “No. Quanah calls her Grub because she wiggles so. But she has no real name.”

  “I have a name for her.”

  “We would be honored to have you name her.”

  “She should be called Toh-tsana Kohno, Hangs In Her Cradle.”

  “Toh-tsana Kohno will be her name. But I’ll probably call her Topsana, my beautiful little Flower.”

  As they rode, Naduah wondered what the future would be like for her daughter. It had always been uncertain. Winter was coming and there was a shortage of meat. They would have to hunt long and hard to make up for what they had lost. They had lost their food supplies before. And they had survived. They always survived. Naduah nursed the thought like a tiny ember in a bleak world.

  It had been a long time since she had had the dream where time stopped. The nightmare in which everyone stood motionless with their heads turned toward an opening in a wall made of logs. Something horrible, ominous, was out there. There was a jingle of metal, and the scene exploded. Naduah was running, falling, screaming, struggling futilely in huge hands that gripped her. Then she was awake. Fear gagged her, and the drumming of her heart echoed in her head.

  She lay, afraid to move, listening to the silence. She heard the gentle breathing of her children and Quail. Outside, a light wind jingled the metal cones on the shield cover by the door. Stars glittered in the patch of icy sky seen through the smoke hole. She looked up, dizzy from fear and the exhaustion of another long march and hunger. The lodge tilted and whirled around her. She seemed to be hovering like a hawk and looking down at the stars, as though into a deep pool. The stars seemed to glint at the bottom of it like shiny pebbles.

  Wanderer stirred beside her. And the feel of him righted the world. She measured his smooth, taut body with her own, stretching to touch as much of him as possible. She smelled the smokiness of his skin as she pulled the warm, soft robe closer around them. Wanderer’s hand moved lightly up her stomach and ribs. It stopped, cupped around the breast over her heart. He felt her heart pounding like that of a small, captured animal.

  “It is winter,” he whispered against her neck. “They will not come. We are safe.” His strong, graceful fingers moved back down her body. His thick black hair trailed across her shoulders as he moved over her.

  WINTER

  “We took away their country, their means of support, broke up their mode of living, their habits of life, introduced disease and decay among them; and it was for this and against this they made war. Could anyone expect less?”

  General Philip Sheridan

  “The only good Indians I ever saw were dead.”

  General Philip Sheridan

  CHAPTER 53

  Over a year had passed since the attack on Naduah’s village. It had been a hard year. The Noconi moved constantly, avoiding the cavalry patrols that roamed the southern part of their range. The hunt that fall had not been good. The buffalo were elusive. Even though it was mid December, Wanderer and his sons and the men of the band were away hunting for them. As usual, the women and children and old people were fending for themselves.

  The band was camped along a creek, a tributary of the Prairie Dog Town River. The red cliffs broke the wind some. The prairie dogs in their vast village among the sandhills beyond the bluffs usually barked a warning if anyone approached. But they had withdrawn into their holes and closed the openings with weeds and earth. It was their signal that a storm was imminent.

  “Mother, there’s a dust storm coming,” said Quail.

  “I know.” Naduah panted as she ran. “Head him off.” The armadillo she was chasing swerved, trying desperately to elude her. His gray plating rippled as he scuttled along, dodging under mesquite bushes and through cactus clumps.

  The sky was dark gray. The clouds hung low overhead like the undersides of granite boulders. Already Naduah could feel tiny shards of sand stinging her face and arms. Her short hair blew in tangles around her head. She was dirty from falling as she ran after the animal.

  Finally she was close enough to grab his tail. She lifted his hind feet, careful to leave his forefeet touching the earth. He scrabbled in the rocky soil, digging furiously with his powerful claws. He scattered gravel and a pile of desiccated pellets of rabbit dung. If she had hoisted him completely off the ground he would have twisted back toward her hand and wrenched tree of her grasp. And too exhausted to chase him farther, she would have lost him. I’m old, she thought. I don’t have the stamina I once did. Quail took the armadillo from her.

  “Hold him tightly,” Naduah said. “Or he’ll wriggle free.”

  “I know.” The girl held his sides and carried him toward the lodge. He struggled in, his legs swimming futilely in the air, his. head snapping from side to side. Naduah followed, her body bent, her head bowed, squinting to block the sand blowing on the cold December wind.

  She could feel her heart pounding in her chest, and she put a hand over it, as though to calm it. She was dizzy and panting, and her lungs burned from breathing the icy air. For a moment she felt as bleak as the landscape around her. The sand hills were covered with brittle, rusty-looking brush, and the ragged buttes looked like stained, broken teeth to the north. The river and the creek were covered with a thin film of ice.

  Naduah knew she couldn’t have chased the armadillo any farther. No longer could she run for miles. There had been a time when she felt she could run forever. She remembered the exhilaration of races with Wanderer. Her long legs had rolled easily in their joints then. And she could pace him as he loped along, loose-hipped and graceful as a pronghorn. No, she wasn’t the lithe young woman she had been.

  It was a relief to enter the lodge and escape the shoving wind. Quail had already broken the armadillo’s shell and was separating out the meat. Armadillo meat was delicious. And even if it hadn’t been, they would have eaten it anyway. Naduah was hoarding their supply of pemmican. They would need it for the time when winter was in earnest, in the Month The Babies Cry For Food.

  Right now winter was only playing with them, like a cat that catches a mouse and lets it go so she can catch it again. First it would be cold, and then there would be a few days of warmth. But the Indian summer didn’t fool Naduah. She knew exactly how much food her family needed to live comfortably
through the winter. And they had too little this year.

  Sand gusted and blew against the lodge with a dry, scratching sound, like tiny persistent claws. It was not a good time to break camp and move. But some of the villagers were leaving. They were following Wears Out Moccasins in search of the men. Naduah could hear the clatter and shouts of people packing and moving into line. The dogs were barking, eager to be traveling, and chasing small game with the boys.

  Let them go, Naduah thought. Tomorrow is soon enough to pack. She tossed the armadillo meat into the kettle along with the last of the horse Gathered Up had slaughtered. She wrinkled her nose at the odor that floated up from the pot. Naduah didn’t like horse flesh. Mule tasted better, more like beef. Horse meat was stringy. It smelled bad and had a peculiar, slightly sweet flavor.

  As much as she missed Wanderer and the two boys, she was grateful she didn’t have to feed more than three people with what was in the pot. At least Quail never complained. And Gathered Up didn’t care what he ate. His only preference was that there be plenty. He was like a ravenous dog that gulped down choice bits of steak and camp offal with the same relish. But when there wasn’t much to eat, Gathered Up quietly gave part of his portion to the younger children.

  Hangs In Her Cradle was fifteen months old now. Her mother called her Flower, or sometimes Grub, as the mood struck her. The child was banging Naduah’s big, curved horn cooking ladle against an iron skillet. It took both her hands to swing the ladle, but she did it with great enthusiasm. That was the way she did everything.

  “Quail,” called Naduah. “Feed Flower.”

  Quail coaxed the child onto her lap. She scooped cold corn mush onto her fingers and fed it to her. Then she chewed some pemmican and gave that to her.

  “Where’s Gathered Up?” she asked.

  “He’s riding to the head of the valley with Wears Out Moccasins. He’ll be back soon.”

  Gathered Up was a rare one. He accepted his status as part-time warrior and part-time servant with grace and dignity. He stayed home more often since the cavalry attack. He knew Wanderer had to leave his family to lead hunts and raids, so he remained to protect Naduah and Quail and little Flower.