Slowly but surely, the Comanche retreated under the unrelenting pressure. Soon their backs were against their lodges. The retreat of the women and children was paramount, and the Comanche fought valiantly, trying to hold the better-armed attackers and sending runners to nearby camps for reinforcements.
One of the runners reached Peta Nocona’s camp, four miles away, with the news that the Texans had come, and that Iron Jacket had been killed. Nocona was now the principal chief of the Noconi band, and he started rallying his warriors. Quanah, not quite thirteen years old, was one of the first on his pony, and in a matter of minutes, nearly five hundred warriors had assembled and followed Nocona out of the village, leaving just a small detachment behind for defense.
Ford, sensing that he had the upper hand, pressed his advantage, driving the Comanche back through their camp and beginning to lay waste to the lodges. Some of his men split off and began to torch the tipis while the balance continued pursuit, as women and children, unable to get to the horses, most of which had been driven off by the Tonkawa, fled on foot, leaving everything behind.
Bodies lay everywhere, almost all of them Comanche, and more than a few of them women and children. In the hail of arrows, the Rangers were not particular about their targets. If something moved, it drew a bullet.
Smoke started to fill the valley as the lodges and supplies burned, settling just above the ridge line in a dark gray pall.
Resistance had all but vanished a little after noon, and Ford, reluctant to push too far from his camp, called his men back. The Tonkawa were less willing than the Rangers to respond to the order to stand down, but exhaustion made them tractable enough that Placido and Ross were able to get them in line.
Taking a breath, Ford looked over the campsite and gave orders for the few Texas wounded to be tended to. A small unit went through the village, picking its way among the burning lodges and scattered belongings, for a body count. Nearly seventy Comanche lay dead, while Ford had lost only two killed and a handful of wounded. The firepower he had at his command, coupled with the suddenness of the attack, had done its work.
But as he surveyed the ruins, a sergeant noticed something on a far ridge, and raced back to Ford. Taking field glasses, Ford looked in the direction the sergeant was pointing and saw more than five hundred Comanche massing for a counterattack.
Men and horses were exhausted, and Ford was unwilling to risk losing the advantage he had gained, but the Tonkawa were rowdy, and a few of them charged out to meet the newly arrived Comanche horde.
Nocona, seeing that there was little he could do to punish the heavily armed Rangers, was reluctant to engage. But he couldn’t turn his back and ride away, either. He led a charge downhill, and the Tonkawa turned tail, running under the umbrella of the Ranger rifles, then turning to taunt the Comanche with displays of bravado and shouted insults.
Ford, realizing that his men were perilously close to collapse after seven hours of incessant combat, decided to fall back and regroup. The men needed rest and food, and their ammunition was nearly exhausted.
Riding behind his father, Quanah watched as the Texans pulled out. He felt confused, knowing that Iron Jacket had fallen because he was a Comanche, that his father was now chief of all the Noconi Comanche, and that, like the men who had killed Iron Jacket, his mother was white. He felt as if a giant fist were squeezing him, trying to crush the breath from his lungs. He wanted to run and hide, or to charge blindly downhill into the muzzles of the Ranger rifles. But Nocona, sensing his son’s confusion, ordered him to stay by his side.
For his part, Nocona felt his heart sink as he watched the burning lodges. This was what he had always feared. Not just a raid—a war, a war the way the white man made war. It had come for certain, just as he had always known it would, and there was no turning back.
Chapter 17
Autumn 1860
PETA NOCONA HELD UP HIS HAND, and Quanah reined in beside him. Gesturing toward some cottonwoods, Nocona nudged his horse into a walk, and Quanah fell in behind him. The sun was high overhead, but it was late in the year, and the shadows long and pale.
Nocona slid from his pony, grabbed the bridle and tugged it into the shade, tethering it to some brush. He watched Quanah dismount, told his son to tether his own mount, then walked through the brush to sit beside the small creek bordered by lush grass. Quanah followed him through the brush and when he reached the grassy bank, Nocona was already sitting down. He patted the ground beside him.
“Sit,” he said. He looked up at his older son, realizing almost with shock how tall he had become. And so soon.
Quanah was baffled, but did as his father told him. He leaned toward the ground, felt it with one hand, then turned and looked at the sky for a second, almost as if he expected to find in the sky some explanation of his father’s strange behavior.
“Is something wrong?” he asked, as he folded his long legs beneath him and lowered himself to the ground.
Nocona shrugged. “Everything is wrong,” he said. He cleared his throat the way he always did before he spoke around the council fire, and Quanah knew something very serious was about to be discussed.
“I don’t understand.”
“It has not been easy for you, growing up not sure whether you were Comanche or Anglo.”
“I haven’t minded. You have been good to me. So has my mother. I don’t think I would change anything, even if I could.”
“That’s easy to say now, but someday, not too far away, everything will be different. You know how the whites feel about the Comanche.”
“But as long as we are free, what difference does it make what the white man thinks?”
“We might not always be free. Every year, there are more and more Texans. Up north, the whites are increasing like grasshoppers in summer, more and more and more … Soon, it will be the same way here.”
“The whites don’t want the Llano Estacado. There is nothing there for them. Life is hard for them where there is no water. They are not hunters like we are. They like to put down roots in one place, like a tree, and hang on even when the wind is strong. The Comanche knows when it is time to bend, to move, but the whites don’t know. They are different.”
“But every year, there are more of them. They want our land, and they will do anything to have it. That is why they are always putting their papers under the nose of some Indian, telling him to make his mark. They tell him the paper means one thing and then, after the Indian makes his mark, they tell him it means something else. It happened to the Keechi and to the Kickapoo. It happened to the Osage and the Tonkawa. It happened to the Peneteka Comanche, too. One day it will happen to us all. Because one day the choice will be to make a mark on the paper or die, and no man wants to die.”
“No man wants to give away his land, either, Father. You taught me that if you taught me nothing else. I will never make a mark on the white man’s paper. And neither will you. So what difference does it make how many papers he brings, or how many times he sticks the pen in an Indian’s hand?”
“It is different now. When we fought against the Mexicans, they always ran. They ran from the Apache and the Comanche, because they were afraid. We fought them bravely and they went away. But these Anglos are different. You see how it is. They make their soldier forts, and their army comes. Once that happens, they don’t go away.”
“But … “
“Let me say what I want to say, Quanah. Still, you haven’t learned the value of patience. You are like all the other young hotheads, sometimes.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I am getting old. The buffalo are getting scarce, and for every buffalo that goes away, three white men come in its place. Soon, there will be more white men than buffalo, and one day there will be more white men than all the buffalo that ever were.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“It is so. When the Texans attacked the Penetka last summer, I understood that they would not rest until all the Comanche were dead or on a re
servation. But you see what it is like on the reservation. You have seen how the agents lie and cheat and steal from the Indians. You have seen how the Cherokee and the Choctaw live, wearing white man clothes and living in white man houses. That is what it will be like for all of us one day. But I don’t think I will live long enough to see it. At least I hope not.”
“I won’t either.”
“I think you will. I think the time is not that far away. And I think you ought to give some thought to what it will be like when that day comes. You are young yet, and these are hard things to think about and to understand, but you have to start, because one day you will be a chief, and these questions will need your answers. I want you to think about these things and we will talk. And I want you to explain to Pecos, too, because when you are a chief, you will have to lean on him the way an old man leans on a stick. He will help you the way you will soon help me.”
Quanah shook his head. “I understand,” he said. “I will do anything you ask of me. You know that. I will even learn patience.”
“Good. Now we should return to the village, because tomorrow we will be leaving on a hunt. We have to spend much more time looking for the buffalo now that the white man has started to kill them for their skins. But we will talk more while we are away. I don’t like to talk about such things when your mother can hear. It upsets her.”
Nocona got to his feet heavily, heaved a sigh, and stretched his arms, then bent at the waist to relieve the stiffness that increasingly plagued him. He looked at the creek for a long moment, bent to pick up a small twig lying in the grass and tossed it into the water. The impact made a splash, sending a sheet of translucent gold and ruby fanning out from the point of impact for a brief moment. When it was gone, the twig spun once on the current then started to move.
“You see that?” Nocona asked. “You see how that stick moves?”
Quanah nodded.
“The stick does not decide where it wants to go. The water decides and the stick goes because it has no choice. The water is like the white man flooding into our land, and we are like that stick.”
“I don’t believe that,” Quanah argued.
“Neither does the stick,” Nocona said, with a sad smile. “But it is so.”
The next morning they left early, taking most of the warriors from the small camp. The main village was two hundred miles away, and the small hunting camp was little more than a way station, fewer than fifty lodges. Pecos was along on his first buffalo hunt, and Quanah was given the assignment of keeping a close eye on him, charged especially with making sure that the younger boy’s youthful enthusiasm, sometimes a virtue and sometimes a danger, didn’t lead him into peril.
As they headed out, fifty miles to the south, other men were heading north. Sul Ross, given his instructions by no less a figure than Sam Houston himself, had been charged with smoking out the scattered hornets’ nests of Comanche. To help, Houston had gotten a unit of the 2nd Cavalry assigned to Ross, under the command of Capt. N.G. Evans. The idea was to make a strong showing and convince the Comanche by a show of force that Texas was serious about putting an end to depredations, using force if persuasion proved inadequate.
They traveled for two days, heading toward the Pease River, the bane of southern cattlemen. Its alkaline waters were almost useless, and the treacherous quicksands which migrated across its bottom seemed to swallow almost as many cattle as the northern appetite for beef.
The Ranger unit and cavalry had traveled up the Brazos, and picked up nearly seventy angry cattlemen as volunteers. Ross, concerned that the irregulars would be undisciplined, had tried to keep them on a tight leash, but they were spoiling for a fight, and the Ranger captain knew he would have his hands full once the expedition struck Comanche sign. He was hopeful that they could accomplish their purpose without a battle, but he had been on the frontier too long to think it likely.
On the first morning of their second week out, they entered the southern end of a long valley and were halfway up when they heard the thunder of buffalo hooves, hundreds of them, stampeding their way. Ross knew the most likely explanation for the terrified flight of the huge animals was a hunting party, as like as not Comanche, somewhere behind them, and he sent scouts out to find the trail.
The captain himself headed for a nearby ridge, where he found marks in the dust. Dismounting, he examined them closely, another ranger kneeling across from him. “One pony, unshod,” Ross said.
“Indian for sure,” the ranger agreed. “Just one pony, near as I can tell.”
“Not too long ago, either. Maybe an hour, hour and a half at the most.” The center of the scuff marks was still damp with morning dew, despite the sun. Looking down into the next valley, he scanned the floor for sign of the solitary warrior, but he was nowhere in evidence.
“Probably not too far away,” Ross said. “Buffalo don’t run that far when they get spooked. They usually play out in an hour or so.”
“Could be a small hunting party on their tail,” the ranger suggested. “They’d run longer, then.”
“Yeah, they would. Guess we’ll have to wait until the scouts get back.”
“Captain,” the ranger asked, getting to his feet and brushing off his knees, “suppose it’s a big village. I don’t know if we ought to take ‘em on with them goddamned cowhands along. They’ll shoot us as like as not, once things start to heat up.”
Ross shook his head. “Sometimes folks get in their own damn way, but there’s nothing you can do to stop it. All you can hope for is that they keep their heads on straight, and that it’s over quick. With any luck, we can parley with the head man and just send them packin’ and nobody has to get shot.”
“If they’re Comanche, and I’d bet my Sunday hat they are, there won’t be no parley. We’ll have to shoot some sense into ‘em.”
Ross nodded. “You’re probably right, Roy. But that’s why the good Lord invented prayin’. We do it right, maybe he’ll listen.”
Roy laughed. “Captain, I ain’t been a Ranger that long, but I don’t recall nothing at all about prayer being part of the arsenal.”
Ross grinned. “What the governor don’t know won’t hurt him, will it, Roy?”
He sprang back into the saddle and moved on back to the main force. Harley Beauchamp, the nominal leader of the cowboy volunteers, was sitting his horse alongside Captain Evans. He was chewing tobacco, and an unsightly trickle of amber juice leaked from the corner of his mouth. He spat a stream into the dust, then wiped his jaw with one sleeve. “Find anything, Cap’n?”
“One set of pony tracks is all. Most likely a scout.”
“They’ll know we’re here then,” he said.
“Maybe not.”
“We’d best push on, anyhow,” Beauchamp urged. “Just in case … “
“We will, Mister Beauchamp, we will,” Ross assured him.
But it was two days before they found the camp, nestled in a shallow bend of the Pease. Surveying the camp through glasses, Ross concluded that it would be lightly defended. Handing the glasses to Captain Evans, he said, “You ever fought Comanche, Captain?”
Evans shook his head. “No, sir, I haven’t, but I’m looking forward to it.”
“You won’t say that again tomorrow, Captain, I assure you. Fact is, you better hope and pray you live to look back on it.”
“Doesn’t look like we can expect much opposition.”
“All the better.” As he was taking the glasses back, Ross heard a shout somewhere to the left, and glanced up in time to see a solitary Comanche dashing for the small village. One of the cowboys was drawing a bead, and before Ross could stop him, the man fired.
The shot fell way short, the ball making a small geyser in the water barely fifty yards short of its target. But the damage was done. There was no chance of having a peaceful talk, not after the unprovoked gunshot.
“Damn it to hell,” Ross barked. “I ought to skin your ugly ass for that.”
“We come here to kill redskins,
Cap’n. I don’t know about you, but I ain’t about to try and scare ‘em to death,” the cowboy snapped.
Ross nudged his horse closer, then reached out and grabbed the man by the shirtfront, half lifting him from the saddle. “Listen to me, mister! You so much as breathe from now on without my permission, and as God is my witness, I will put a bullet through that thick skull of yours. This ain’t no picnic, and I got two hundred men to worry about. One less will be just fine with me.”
Chapter 18
WITH THE POSSIBILITY OF SURPRISE gone, Ross ordered a charge. The Rangers and the cowboy volunteers swept up through the valley and over the ridge. Already, the Comanche had started to scatter. The few warriors on hand had mounted their ponies and charged out of the village, desperately hoping to delay the assault long enough for the women and children to get away.
As at Antelope Hills, the Comanche were armed only with bows and arrows, lances, and war clubs. Ross and his men had rifles and revolvers, and there was little the warriors could do to repel the attack. There was no help within a short ride as there had been two years before. A small hunting camp, it was a hundred miles from the nearest village. The Comanche could not use overwhelming numbers to offset the superior firepower of the Texas raiders. Their only chance was to slow them down long enough to let their families escape.
A handful of warriors moved in a wide arc, as if trying to slip around the left flank and get in behind the Rangers. Captain Ross sent a small detachment to cut off the flankers and drive them back. He slowed his assault long enough to make certain he wasn’t encircled. Clouds of arrows were arcing high in the air, as the Comanche fired as fast as they could notch and draw.
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