by Judith Pella
“’Cause you woulda been scalped and murdered before you even opened your mouth! That’s the difference between the Comanche and Cheyenne.”
“I don’t believe that. The Comanche were allies of the Cheyenne by a treaty that has lasted more than a quarter of a century. I know the Comanche are a lot more brutal in their ways, and I don’t condone their barbarous acts. Even the most primitive peoples must have an innate sense of right and wrong. Yet, I believe much of their behavior is retaliatory; and if they are treated with respect, that is what they will give in return.”
“Now don’t go and tell me you plan to go prancing up to their hideout in the panhandle and make a private treaty with ’em.”
“I realize it is too late for such gestures. I do value my scalp, whatever you and the U.S. Army may think.”
“So, what are you planning to do?” asked Griff suspiciously. “You ain’t going to sell out, are you?”
“That thought has crossed my mind.” At Griff’s gaping stare, she hastened to add, “But I believe what you said before is right, Griff. There is room for everyone; we just have to learn how to live together.”
“Now, you’re talking sense. And I’ll tell you, Deborah, if you leave here, another white is just going to move in who ain’t going to give a hoot about respecting Indians. So, in the long run, the Comanche are better off with you here.”
“I just have to convince them of that,” Deborah said with a determined glint in her blue eyes.
“Yeah …” A wary wrinkle etched Griff’s brow.
“Griff, I suppose the wagon was in the barn.” When Griff nodded with a perplexed scowl, Deborah continued. “The soldiers’ horses will have to do. Come on, Griff. We have a lot of work to do, and as it is, we’ll be working after dark.”
****
The moon had risen full in the sky and lent an appropriate, dolorous light to the conclusion of Deborah’s labors. With the help of Griff and three of the soldiers, she had loaded the bodies of the fallen Comanche on the army horses—given none too cheerfully by the soldiers whose own comrade lay in a freshly dug grave—and carried the dead Indians to a remote pasture some three miles from the house. There, the soldiers, at her instruction, laid all thirteen bodies on the ground in a careful row.
The soldiers then watched with mixed awe and disgust as Deborah proceeded to prepare each body for a proper Indian burial. The scarcity of wood allowed no scaffolds to be built, so the ground had to serve as a bed, but she had brought along all the Comanche weapons left behind at the battle site. These she distributed among the bodies which she had carefully groomed and painted for war. She knew only the Cheyenne rituals, but she hoped there were enough similarities so that this would suffice. She hoped, if nothing else, that when, and if, the Comanche returned to retrieve the bodies of their brothers, they would see and apprehend the meaning of Deborah’s gesture of respect.
When the bodies were all arranged in the most suitable and honorable repose, she stood back and sang a Cheyenne burial song. Then she murmured the traditional words that still made her heart ache:
“Nothing lives long, only the earth and the mountains.”
And, because she had no hides, she covered the bodies with prairie grass.
A few hours ago she had been fighting these men; her own bullets might well have killed some of them. Yet they were not her enemies. An innate respect for human life, nurtured in her by Broken Wing and brought to its fullness through her relationship with Christ, could not be so easily crushed even by fear for her loved ones. Perhaps she was caught in a confusing dichotomy, but the love that God had placed in her heart was constant. It would in the end conquer the hatred and misunderstanding of others. Last fall when she left Fort Dodge, Lt. Godfrey had given her the bow because she had come away from Washita with nothing. Now she realized she had, by the grace of God, carried away all the best things in her heart.
Before Deborah lifted her head, she was prompted to offer a Christian prayer, not so much for the dead, who were beyond her prayers, but for those who remained and for whom there was still hope.
“Dear God, these fallen warriors are your creation; they belong to you and their fate is in your merciful hands, as is that of Private Haley who fell so heroically in our defense. Give us the strength to love our enemies, to avoid falling victim to the hatred and distrust that so abounds in this world. Somehow, dear God, make this ranch a haven for your peace and love in a complicated and confusing world.”
As Deborah lifted her head she noted that all the men standing beside her, even Griff, had bowed their heads and removed their hats for her prayer. Maybe there was hope after all. The small party of mourners then mounted their horses and rode in a solemn silence back to the ranch house.
No one saw the lone mounted figure in the distance silently observing the proceedings. The Comanche warrior had, indeed, returned to discover the fate of his fallen comrades, one of whom was his younger brother. He had been shocked at what he saw—a white woman laying out the bodies of the dead warriors as if she were their grieving sister. It had so stunned his senses that he completely forgot about the rifle gripped in his hand ready for use.
68
In the next two months, unhampered by further Indian raids, Deborah worked tirelessly to make her ranch productive. While Griff and a much-recovered Slim labored at rebuilding the destroyed barn and portions of the house, she and Longjim, whose mount had survived the fire, concentrated on replenishing the most grievous loss of the horses, for without them they could round up no cattle.
In this part of Texas, herds of mustangs still roamed freely in large numbers. Deborah quickly envisioned a profitable business in breaking these fine, wild animals and selling them. First, however, they had to be captured. It took two days of hard work to bring in a small herd of eight, but she and the men had been choosy, since these would be for their own use. Deborah spent the better part of one morning coaxing in a particularly grand filly with a dun-colored coat and black mane and tail.
She and Longjim drove the herd triumphantly into the yard and were greeted with whoops and cheers from the others. Carolyn ran right toward the herd and was saved from being trampled only by Slim’s quick intervention.
Too young to realize the danger she had been in, she continued to struggle in an attempt to escape from Slim’s confining arms.
“Horses!” she cried with glee. “Mama, I want a horse!”
Deborah was torn between scolding her errant daughter and laughing with pleasure at their shared love of horses. She dismounted and went to her daughter.
“Carolyn, you may choose one of these for your own, but first Griff and Slim get to have their pick.” She turned to her friends, “Go ahead, take your pick.”
Slim chose a roan and white pinto that looked almost identical to the one he had lost in the fire. Griff went right for the dun filly. Deborah smiled at his choice, for she had thought of him when she was toiling to bring the animal in.
But the minute he flung his rope around the filly’s neck, Carolyn began to shout, “That’s the one I wanted! It’s mine!”
“Carolyn!” Deborah scolded. “You are being rude and selfish. That will be enough!”
Griff only laughed. “The girl knows good horseflesh just like her mother!” He led the filly to where Carolyn still sat perched in Slim’s arms and handed her the rope. “Here you go, sweetie—a present from your Uncle Griff. Only thing is, you gotta break her yourself.”
“Griff, she’s only four years old,” protested Deborah.
“Well, maybe I’ll help a mite,” added Griff. “That a deal, Lynnie?”
Carolyn nodded vigorously. She already knew how to ride and felt completely confident in her ability to tame the mustang. When she and Griff shook hands, her tiny, delicate hand nearly buried in his big rough paw, a bond of friendship was formed between the two that would survive many years.
True to his word, Griff helped Carolyn—or Lynnie, as he was fond of calling her—with the filly
, which she christened “Bunny” because she had once seen a rabbit on the prairie with similar coloring. Deborah had to admit that Griff was good with this strong-willed child who seemed to think she already knew all there was to know about breaking a horse. Griff did what many parents would not have had the patience or nerve to do—he let her do it her way. After only ten minutes of this, Carolyn was contritely calling to him for help, and she listened to Griff as she never would to her own mother.
In a way, Deborah was glad her daughter had someone she could admire and go to for help, which she came to do with Griff in other matters besides horse-breaking. Yet it grieved her because that someone wasn’t Deborah herself. She had noticed for some time that Carolyn had begun to draw away from her mother. It was subtle at first, like when she declared she was too big to sit in her mother’s lap, then turned around and sought out Yolanda’s lap. Or, when Deborah was showing her daughter how to make a rein out of a length of rope and Carolyn would glance at Griff or one of the other men to verify the accuracy of the teaching.
Deborah had no idea that this gradual pulling away had been greatly intensified as a result of an incident following the Comanche raid. That evening after supper the family, including Griff, Slim, Longjim, and Yolanda, were unwinding with the five soldiers. They were all engaged in an innocent conversation, and one of the soldiers had inquired about Deborah’s time with the Cheyenne and complimented her on what a fine lad Sky was.
This was too much for Carolyn, who had no reticence around her elders, and she piped up petulantly, “I am Cheyenne, too, you know!”
They laughed at this. “Why, there ain’t a drop of Injun blood in you, child, and that’s obvious,” said a soldier.
“My brother is Cheyenne; I am Cheyenne!”
“It don’t work that way, missy, when you got a different pa.”
“That’s not true! Tell him, Mama.”
Deborah hesitated. She had hoped to have had more time before having to confront this dilemma, yet she should have known that with a child like Carolyn she had only been fooling herself. They had talked in deliberately vague terms about the physical differences between Carolyn and Sky, but there had never been cause to go beyond this. And, Deborah was not anxious to do so.
Sensing the immediate tension, the soldier added quickly, “I ain’t spoke out of turn, have I, ma’am?”
“No,” said Deborah. “Not at all.” She skirted away from the subject by offering more pie to her guests.
Later, when they were alone, Carolyn brought the subject up again. “Wasn’t my papa Cheyenne, Mama?”
“No, dear, you had a different pa than Sky. He was white.”
“Tell me about him like you tell about Sky’s nehuo.”
“There’s really not much to tell, Carolyn.”
“Was he a warrior like Sky’s pa?”
Spoken so simply, yet fraught with such youthful yearning, the question made Deborah wince. And at this moment Deborah did what she was sure to regret in later years; she began to perpetuate the great lie about Carolyn’s dead father. She did so with the noblest of motives, believing that even God would forgive her for trying to give her child some positive memories to cling to. How could she tell her innocent child that her own father was a mean-spirited, abusive animal, who had succumbed to foul play, and that Carolyn’s own mother stood convicted of the man’s murder?
But she kept her explanation simple and vague for, even then, she did not wish to become caught in a tangled web of deceit.
“Your father was a rancher. I did not know him well and he died … suddenly. He was a … good man, Carolyn, but there isn’t really much to tell about him.”
Since this was the first she had ever heard about her dead father, it seemed to satisfy Carolyn. Yet, she was puzzled at the chilly tone in her mother’s voice as she spoke of the man; it was so different from when she spoke of Sky’s father. Perhaps for this reason alone she did not ask about him again for a long time. She was a little afraid of what else her mother might say. Yet it began to undermine her security in her little family. She was too young to know that something was wrong, but even a four-year-old can sense such things.
****
With horses to make them mobile, Wind Rider Ranch could move forward and flourish. Once the mustangs were saddle broken, all four adults—except Yolanda, whose job it was to keep a vigilant eye on the children and the house—began to round up cattle. Like the mustangs, the famous Texas longhorns roamed the prairie freely, and many an industrious cattleman would make a fortune off this free gift of the plains.
By August, Deborah had rounded up some five hundred head. Griff calculated that they would bring an easy twenty thousand dollars at the railhead in Abilene. The only problem was getting them there.
Because the Comanche were still raiding the frontier settlements, and with no guarantees that the Wind Rider Ranch would remain unmolested, Deborah did not feel she could spare her men from the defense of the ranch. Yet if they didn’t soon sell some cattle and bring in money, the ranch might cease to exist, anyway. Deborah and the men had many discussions over this dilemma.
Griff went to Jacksboro, a town about a hundred miles east of the ranch, to see about hiring a trail crew. There he met a colorful fellow named Reverend George Webb Slaughter, a circuit rider and rancher from the Fort Worth area, who was well known for preaching his fiery sermons while packing a six-shooter as protection against Indians. Griff was leery about getting mixed up with another preacher, but Slaughter’s expertise with cattle and his upright business dealings received such abundant praise from all that Griff could hardly ignore the man. Moreover, Slaughter was willing to take another herd on consignment.
“I got four hundred head already tagged onto my bunch from a rancher south of here named Stoner,” said Slaughter.
Griff immediately perked up at this. “Stoner, you say?”
“Yeah, you know the old buzzard?”
“Caleb Stoner?” When Slaughter nodded, Griff said casually, almost disinterestedly, “Naw, just heard of him.”
The conversation quickly drifted to the cost of Slaughter’s services, and Stoner was forgotten for the time being.
Slaughter loaned Griff three of his cowboys to take back to the ranch to help drive Deborah’s herd to Jacksboro, as long as she was willing to use the preacher. She was more than agreeable to do business with Slaughter, especially after Griff’s assurances of Slaughter’s skill and integrity.
Griff said nothing about Stoner, deeming that such news might only cause Deborah undue distress. Stoner was a world away—well, at least several hundred miles away. It seemed highly improbable that he could ever give them any trouble. But it was kind of ironic that their cattle would be mingling nose to nose for a couple of months on the trail. According to Slaughter—a fact that slipped out in a later coversation—the Stoner outfit was so big that Stoner never personally accompanied his cows north, and his son only did so occasionally. This present four hundred head were just a drop in the bucket for them, and they were only sending them north because in a few months they’d be too old and rangy to bring a good price.
Griff drove the cattle to Jacksboro, and the drive north began by the first of September. Deborah would not hear from Reverend Slaughter again until well into December.
In the meantime, Deborah concentrated her efforts on reinforcing her mustang herd. The commanders of Fort Belknap, Fort Richardson, and Fort Griffin assured her the army would purchase practically anything she brought to them. Thus she rounded up a hundred head and spent the fall breaking the horses. By spring, they ought to fetch a good price from the army.
69
Word of Deborah’s quality mustang business spread quickly over that part of Texas. True to their word, the army purchased a substantial number and impressed cavalry troopers passed the news of the fine mounts along to their civilian associations. It was very good for business. Perhaps a bit too good.
A satisfied customer rode down to Austin, and when m
en commented on his fine mount he told them about the lady rancher on the frontier in northwest Texas.
Laban Stoner was in the market for horses and he questioned the cowboy closer.
“You say the army deals with her?” he asked.
“Oh, yeah. Fact is, I found out about her through a trooper. Them army boys live and die by their horses, so if they are pleased, you gotta know there must be something to it.”
“Where exactly is she?”
“Don’t know exactly. I bought my horse from a fella in Jacksboro. But from what I hear she lives way out on the frontier west of Jacksboro.”
Laban ruminated on this during his ride back to the ranch. The man who had been providing them with horses for years was becoming less reliable, and the quality of his stock was diminishing. Laban had been looking for sources by which he could infuse their present stock with new blood. If this female rancher in west Texas was as good as the drifter in Austin claimed, Laban saw no reason not to give her a try. Even the distance would not be a problem if the stock was good. He had always been partial to mustangs—that wild and free breed that roamed the plains with a tenacity that even captivity did not entirely dull. Of course, Laban’s father sought the stylish breeds with fancy names and European bloodlines. He cared nothing for freedom.
The reminder of his father made Laban grimace. It brought to mind the dismaying fact that no matter what Laban wished for their ranch—and he used the word their in its most general term—everything had to pass the scrutiny of the patron before being acted upon. No decisions at the Stoner Ranch, except for those of the most minor nature, were reached without the approval of Caleb Stoner. And Laban felt certain that his own decisions received the most intense examination. Laban knew horses better than any man on the ranch—in fact, many neighbors often came to him for advice—but Caleb always managed to treat his half-breed Mexican son like a novice.
“Someday …” Laban murmured, but he did not complete the thought, for thinking of a future without Caleb seemed futile. The old tyrant would outlive them all; he was too mean-spirited to die. And Laban hated to admit it, but he himself was too spineless to do anything to help nature along … not that he had not thought of it. But there were practical considerations, the main one being that Laban had never been able to ascertain if he was included in Caleb’s will. It would never do to kill the old coot and then find himself disinherited, anyway. He might not be as lucky as that snip of a Virginia girl in escaping the gallows.
