The woman got down on her knees to take the onslaught, and Cynthia Ann hurled herself into her grandmother’s arms, followed almost immediately by little John.
“What are you children doing out here?” she scolded. “You know you shouldn’t be out of the gate like this.”
Benjamin smiled. He was holding a musket, and brandished it with a certain pride. “My turn to watch the gate, Mother,” he said. “I told them they could come out to see you.”
“We’d better get to work,” Hiram said. “The sooner we get finished, the sooner we can get inside and out of this infernal sun.”
Granny straightened up, then took the children by the hand, and started back toward the house. “You come on with me, now. You can keep me company on the porch. I’ve got peas to shell. If you’re good, you can help. You’ll see your Uncle Ben later on.”
“I can’t shell peas,” young John said. “I don’t know how to shell peas.”
“Sure you can, Johnny,” Granny said. “You just watch me, and you’ll catch on in no time. You’re already five years old. ‘Bout time you started earning your keep.”
She was teasing, but the boy looked uncertain. Turning to Cynthia Ann, she asked, “What do you think, Cynthia? Shall we teach your brother how to shell peas?”
Cynthia Ann, at nine, was rather self-assured. “I already know, even if he doesn’t,” she said. “I can do it better than anybody.”
Elder John followed in their wake, nodding to Peter Wilhelm and David Jason, two more of the members of their small community. “Going to be hot out there. You boys ought to bring some extra water along today,” he said.
“I’ll just run down and drink me some of that river water, if I get thirsty,” Wilhelm said.
“I been here eighteen months, Peter, and I ain’t seen you run for nothing yet, except maybe for dinner, that is,” Jason joked.
“You may have seen me hungry, but you never seen me thirsty, David.”
Ben Parker watched the men drift on out to the fields, until they were little more than blurs under the early morning glare. He liked gate duty, because it gave him a chance to be alone with his thoughts. He admired his father, but there was something a little too stiff and unyielding in the older man, especially when it came to matters of religion.
Ben was a believer, Elder John had made sure of that, but it was not an unquestioning belief, nowhere near as certain as his father’s. He leaned against the wall, the musket near at hand, and tilted his hat forward to protect his eyes a little without interfering with his ability to scan the surrounding land for Indians.
There hadn’t been any trouble in the eighteen months they’d been in the Navasota River valley, but Ben knew that vigilance was most necessary when it seemed least important. Bands of Kiowa and Comanche, usually small hunting parties, had visited the fort and Elder John had tried to make them understand the purpose of the fort. In every case, though, the Indians moved on, and as far as anyone in the fort knew, none had ever come a second time.
There hadn’t been any hostility, but the skepticism of the Indians had been apparent. And the Comanche, especially, had a fearsome reputation for bloodthirsty cruelty, although it was by reputation only that any of the Fort Parker inhabitants knew them at all.
Two more of the men moved on out to the fields, waving to Benjamin as they left the safety of the palisade and trudging across the baked ground and through the tall, sun-brittled grass. Ben watched clouds of insects mushroom with every step, and for a while he could hear the whisper of the dry grass against the rough cloth of the men’s pants.
Soon, they joined the others, and were reduced to shadows bent over hoes, scratching at the ground. Even at that distance, he thought he could hear the sound of the metal blades on the hard ground, but knew it was just his imagination. It was backbreaking work, he thought, but not as hard as trying to change a heathen’s mind about God. And Benjamin smiled ruefully at the thought, knowing that of the two dozen souls at Fort Parker, only his father had a faith unwavering enough to believe that they would triumph. It might take a while, Elder John argued, but the Indians would come around. It was, after all, the Lord’s will.
Under the scalding sun, though, Benjamin was inclined to doubt it. He knew that agriculture was not in the least appealing to people who made their living off the land as they found it, instead of trying to transform it through sweat and determination. And he couldn’t blame the Indians, because there had been precious little reward for eighteen months of backbreaking labor.
Chapter 7
BENJAMIN LOOKED BACK through the gate and watched his niece playing in the shade of the front porch. He could just make out the bulky figure of Granny, an apron spread wide on her lap, her hands busy in the capacious hollow between her knees. And for a moment he envied the children. They didn’t miss Illinois so much because they had never had time to get attached to it. And it seemed to make little difference where you played with a doll or a toy soldier. Texas was the same as Illinois.
But, soon enough, that would all change. When Cynthia Ann was old enough to work, her childhood would vanish in a twinkling, and the choices available to her here were few and unattractive. He thought about school and wondered how his brother Silas would ever be able to send John to college. He talked about it all the time, as if it were just as easy as snapping his fingers. As it was, what little schooling the children were getting had to be crammed into those few precious moments when neither work nor prayer had prior claim on the adults. Free time was nonexistent.
And there would be no money. They would have their hands full scratching enough to eat from the ground. The river bottom was fertile enough, and there was plenty of water and, God knew, more than enough sun. But there was no market, no place to sell what little excess they would be able to raise, and without money, college for John would be nothing more than a dream tucked away in the back of his father’s skull. They were growing food for themselves, and at least they wouldn’t starve, but beyond the next day of stultifying field work, and the one after that, there wasn’t a lot to look forward to.
He turned back to the fields, glancing involuntarily at the sun until his eyes watered and he was forced to turn away, rubbing at the brimming sockets with his knuckles. Shaking his head, he wondered how the men could endure their work. It was one thing to believe, like Elder John Parker, or to be the son of such a man and willing to endure out of a sense of filial obligation, and quite another to dig down inside yourself and find enough faith of your own to pack up everything you had and follow a man already full of fire and brimstone to the very doorway of hell itself.
But that’s exactly what Hiram Hardee and Peter Wilhelm and David Jason had done. And they had dragged their families along in the bargain, imposing on them, at one remove, the same sense of duty that John Parker had imposed on him. But, willing or not, they were here, and they would all have to make the best of it.
Benjamin was feeling restless, and turned his eyes to the distant edge of the pine forest that ran along the river bottom, spearing dark green tongues toward the sun and shimmering in the glare like green flames. It looked cool, even pleasant, but he knew the same oppressive heat that choked him there against the wall would clamp him in its viselike jaws under the trees. The tang of the pine needles would make it more pleasant, perhaps, but not much.
He looked at his musket and started to reach for it for some reason, then changed his mind and allowed himself to slide down along the rough bark of the palisade wall. The ground was dusty, in some places the dirt so fine it felt like talcum powder under his fingertips. It was smooth and almost slippery. He hefted a palm-ful, then tossed it into the air and clapped his hands together to rid them of the residue.
The first hint of movement near the edge of the trees almost slipped past him unobserved, but for some reason he could not quite put his finger on, he glanced up. At first, he saw nothing out of the ordinary, but squinted away the bright sun and finally spotted what had drawn his eye. A fi
gure on horseback, then another moved away from the dark mass of pines. As he got to his feet, he spotted a third, moving quickly out of the trees and closing on the first two.
He could tell at once that they were not white. Grabbing the musket, he turned to yell back into the fort. Granny heard him and came running. The Indians were holding a makeshift flag of some sort, gray or beige as near as he could tell through the glare, and waved it once or twice, then stopped their ponies as if to wait for him to come meet them in the middle of the open field.
Granny reached the gate, with Elder Parker right behind her.
“What is it, Ben?” John asked.
Benjamin edged back toward the open gate. “Indians, three of ‘em. Over there,” he said, jabbing a finger in their direction.
Parker looked for a moment. “Why, them Indians has got a white flag! See there?”
Instinctively, Benjamin glanced toward the fields where the others were working. It was a long run, and he didn’t want to call attention to them if he could avoid it. Some of them had guns, but there wasn’t a soul at Fort Parker who was much of a marksman. If there were trouble, he thought, they might be unnoticed as long as no one directed attention their way. They’d be safer than trying to shoot it out.
“What do you figure they want, Pop?” Benjamin asked.
Elder Parker shook his head. “Can’t be sure, son. I suppose they want a little food or something, like the others. I wish I knew enough of their lingo to talk to them. I can’t even tell what kind they are.”
“They’re Indians,” Granny snapped. “That’s all you need to know. Come inside and close the gate, Benjamin.”
“They’re why we come here,” Elder John corrected her. “How can we bring them the Lord, if we turn them away when they come calling?”
“I think maybe it would be best if we went inside and closed the gate,” Granny suggested again. “They can receive the Lord another day.”
“That would be unfriendly,” Elder John said. “Not to mention shirking our responsibility.”
“I’m not feeling any too friendly,” Granny said. “And I don’t much know what our responsibility to heathens is.”
“Maybe if I go on out there, I can find out what they want,” Benjamin said. “They’re carryin’ a white flag, so they must have had some contact with white men before. They must know what it means.”
“Knowing what it means and doing what it says are two different things, Benjamin,” Granny said. “Don’t you go out there.”
“The boy’s right, Granny,” Elder John argued. “You go on ahead, Ben, but be careful. The first sign of trouble, you scoot on back here.”
“You’d best take your gun, Ben,” Granny added.
“No, that’ll just give them the wrong idea.”
“You go ahead and take your gun. Most likely they have their own weapons. I’d feel better.”
Reluctantly, Ben snatched at the musket and started slowly away from the fort. As he approached the Indians, they seemed to be whispering among themselves, the ponies shifting nervously beneath them. Ben could hear the snuffle of the ponies, and the swish of their tails as he closed the gap. He was conscious of the rustle of tall grass against his clothes and tried to ignore it as he listened intently.
The Indians started forward then, and he realized that something was amiss. It didn’t dawn on him right away. But when all three of the warriors were arrayed in a row twenty yards away, it struck him—despite the white flag, they were wearing war paint, red and yellow bands that arced across their cheeks and bridged the broad, flat noses, and gave them a malevolent appearance, despite the fact that they were grinning at him.
“Howdy,” Ben said, not expecting an answer. He shifted the musket nervously from hand to hand, then curled his finger through the trigger guard. He thought about cocking the hammer, but decided it might be too provocative a move.
The warriors moved into a circle around him then. Suddenly, the white flag fell to the dirt and the warriors started prodding him with their lances, counting coup, which Ben knew was one method of attaining honor among their people. The jabs of the lances got more forceful, and Ben adjusted his grip on the musket. He wanted to say something to them, distract them from the game, if it was a game, but the language barrier was unbridgeable.
Unconsciously, he moved his thumb to the hammer and started to cock it. Abruptly, one of the lances was raised high overhead and stabbed down in a vicious arc before he could do anything to protect himself. He lost his grip on the musket, and realized that his forearm had been cut by the sharp point of the lance.
He turned and tried to break out of the circle, looking back at the fort and its open gate that now seemed so far away. More prods with the lances, sharper and harder, and he fell to his knees. Something struck him in the shoulder and he felt the sharp thrust of the lance as it pierced his chest and struck bone. He was driven over backward. He saw the gates starting to close, his mother standing there with her hands to her mouth, and heard a yip. The thunder of hooves erupted then, and what seemed to him like a hundred ponies dashed out of the pines and rumbled past him on the way to the fort.
Once more, he saw a lance high overhead, its blade glittering in the sunlight, then saw it plummet toward him. He heard the sound of the lance hitting home, felt the pain as a warrior leaned his weight into the thrust, then saw the jumble of pony legs as the other warriors leaned over to stab at him with their own lances.
At the gate, Elder Parker struggled to get it closed, but the first warriors reached it and shoved it aside, knocking him to the ground before he was able to move the heavy log into place.
The warriors were shrieking now, racing their horses around the inside of the small palisade. Elder John got to his feet and grabbed at a warrior as he rumbled past, dragging him from his mount. Furious, he leaped on the Indian, but felt something slash at him from behind and turned to see that another warrior had dismounted and come to the aid of his unhorsed comrade.
He saw Granny running toward the house, calling to the children. He never even felt the slice of the blade as it slit his throat. Granny, too, was knocked to the ground. Scrambling on all fours, she saw the Indians leaping from their horses and swarming around the houses. Already, smoke was beginning to spew out of the buildings as Comanche rousted the inhabitants. A few gunshots rang out, but the muskets were too difficult to load for close fighting, and soon the defenders were reduced to using the heavy guns as clubs, wielding them by the barrels and lashing out with the heavy wooden stocks.
Granny felt something strike her in the back, and she collapsed on the ground. A moment later, she heard the rasp as the lance was pushed all the way through her shoulder and driven into the dirt beneath her. Desperately, she clawed at it, but her strength was ebbing quickly. She saw Sarah Hardee running from her log house, several Comanche in pursuit. The children were running aimlessly, crying and trying to hide.
Once more, Granny tried to get up, but she was too weak, and lay there pinned like a butterfly on velvet as the chaos she feared, and that her husband had refused to acknowledge, swirled around her. The houses were all in flames now, and the Indians seemed to be tiring of their sport.
Several sprang back onto their mounts and raced out of the fort, nearly trampling her as they thundered past. The air was filled with a thick pall of smoke. She heard shouts in English, and the report of a musket, as the men from the fields raced, too late, to defend their homes and families.
She kept looking around, trying to see through the smoke. Weakly, she cried out for Cynthia Ann and John, but no one answered her feeble cries. A moment later, she saw an Indian racing toward one corner of her house. Flames were already licking up the front wall, and smoke billowed out of the broken window. The door had been shattered and dangled from a single hinge. Tongues of flame lapped at it through the opening, and she saw Cynthia Ann then, darting from the house and rushing toward the stable. But a Comanche saw her, too, and raced toward her, leaning far over the
side of his pony. The warrior snaked an arm around the girl’s waist and hauled her up into his lap.
Wheeling the pony, the warrior dashed past, and Granny reached out a hand toward Cynthia Ann’s flailing arms, but a moment later pony, warrior, and grandchild all were gone. A few seconds later, John was captured. He was crying for his mother as his captor dangled him by his arms trying to get him draped over the pony’s neck. As soon as he felt his captive secure, the burly warrior dug his heels in and the pony broke into a gallop for the open gate.
Granny lay there, her hands curled into fists full of dust until the clouds of pain drifted over her. Soon, she was conscious only of the horrible pain in her shoulder. Then that, too, mercifully faded.
Chapter 8
CYNTHIA ANN CLOSED HER EYES hard, until she thought the pressure would squeeze them so tightly she would never be able to open them again. She felt the hands on her back, the rough hair of the horse under her. All around her, she could smell the tang of pine needles. She could tell by the sound of the pony’s hooves that it was in the pine forest near the fort. And under the smell of the pine, she smelled sweat, both of the pony and of the wild man who held her.
She kept seeing things in her mind’s eye, things she didn’t want to see, things that terrified her and made her scream, and only when she realized that did she understand why her throat was so raw. She could see Granny, the lance stabbed through her shoulder, pinned to the ground the way Elder John had once pinned a kingsnake. Only the kingsnake had wiggled and curled itself into a ball, then straightened out as it tried to squirm away. But Granny just lay still. There was blood on Granny’s dress and her hair was a mess, the pins undone, the long strands of gray spread out around her like a string mop.
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