Love's Serenade

by Madeline Baker

  The only social event she enjoyed was the dancing. Sitting on the sidelines, she loved to watch the dancers. Men and women alike moved with a natural grace, a freedom of movement that was beautiful to see. There was something mesmerizing about sitting in the darkness, watching the flames cast flickering shadows on the yellow lodge skins as she listened to the singing and the rhythmic beating of the drum.

  She had been to several dances the night Esatai took her by the hand and led her into the dance circle. Sarah tried to pull away, but he refused to let her go, insisting that she dance with him.

  She felt the heat climb in her cheeks as she endeavored to follow the steps, but her pregnancy made her feel clumsy and she felt as if everyone was staring at her, laughing at her.

  Fighting tears, she ran out of the circle and into the darkness beyond the campfire.

  She ran until she was out of breath and then she sank down on the damp grass and let the tears flow. She wanted to go home. She wanted to see Danny. She needed to see Devlin, to feel his arms around her. Soon, their child would be born. The thought of having a baby here, among enemy people, filled her with soul-wrenching fear. She wanted Devlin to be there when the baby came. She wanted a doctor, a soft bed, clean sheets.

  She let out a startled cry as she felt a hand on her shoulder. Glancing up, she saw Esatai standing behind her, his face unreadable in the darkness.

  Wordlessly, he put his hands around her waist and lifted her to her feet. Wordlessly, he drew her into his arms and held her close, one hand awkwardly stroking her hair.

  “Why do you cry?” he asked.

  “I want to go home. Please, Esatai, take me home.”

  “No.” Sadly, he shook his head. In the few short weeks that she had been in his lodge, he had come to love her as he had loved his first wife. He didn’t care that the other warriors ridiculed him for taking a white woman into his lodge. He didn’t care that the child she carried belonged to another man. She was his woman now and he would not her go.

  Discouraged and homesick, Sarah rested her head on his shoulder. She wanted to hate him. She could have hated him if he’d been cruel, but he treated her with infinite kindness. She knew the other warriors mocked him because he gathered the wood and the water for their lodge. He ate whatever she cooked, no matter how it turned out, and thanked her for it afterward. He tanned a hide so that she could make herself a warm dress for the coming winter. He had made her a pair of fur-lined moccasins, had traded his rifle so that she might have a warm robe.

  How could she hate him?

  He held her while she cried, held her until her tears were gone and her heart was cold and empty.

  And then he kissed her, once, gently.

  “I…be good…hus-band,” he promised. And taking her by the hand, he led her back to his lodge.

  That night, very softly and gently, he caressed her face, his touch gentle as he traced the curve of her cheek, her lips, the line of her jaw. Desire blazed in his eyes, his breathing grew shallow.

  “Nananisuyake,” he murmured hoarsely. “Pretty.”

  Sarah blushed in spite of herself, her whole body tense as she waited for him to attack her, to take forcefully what she could never give. But he only smiled at her, his dark eyes asking her not to be afraid, to trust him. And then, giving her shoulder a gentle squeeze, he left the tipi.

  Later, lying beside him in the dark, Sarah listened to the sound of the rain against the lodge skins, the soft patter of the raindrops echoing the silent tears in her heart.

  Chapter Seven

  Soaked to the skin and bone weary, Toklanni reined the gray to a halt. Earlier that morning, he had entered the Llano and now he sat there, wondering which way to go.

  It had never been safe to be in Comanche country, but it was even worse now. The Indians were on a rampage, riding with a vengeance against the whites, who were slaughtering the buffalo at an alarming rate. Hides were selling for almost four dollars each.

  Back in the autumn of ‘73, several hunting outfits operating out of Dodge City had crossed into the northern Panhandle in violation of the Medicine Lodge Treaty of ‘67. When the buffalo hunters established a trading post at Adobe Walls, the Comanche had taken to the warpath. Now, almost two years later, the destruction of the herds had escalated.

  There were some who lamented the decimation of the great herds. Opponents decried the waste of so much meat and argued that continued hunting only served to keep the Indians stirred up and on the warpath, but the buffalo hunters insisted they were rendering a great service in annihilating the animals because everyone knew the Indians depended on the buffalo for survival.

  Phil Sheridan agreed, declaring that the buffalo hunters had done more to destroy the Indians in the last two years than the entire Army had done in the last thirty. Sheridan had gone on to say the legislature should give each hunter a bronze medal with a dead buffalo depicted on one side and a discouraged Indian on the other.

  But Toklanni’s concern wasn’t for the buffalo, or white hunters, or the Army. His only thought now was to find Sarah and take her home.

  He swore softly as a dozen or so riders came into view. Dismounting, he led the stallion behind a clump of sagebrush. He tapped the gray behind its right foreleg and the stallion immediately laid down. Drawing his rifle, Toklanni squatted behind the horse, hardly daring to breathe as the Indians rode by.

  Like the Apache, the Comanche went to war not only for plunder, vengeance and glory, but for the sheer love of fighting. Success in battle brought admiration and respect. The highest honor a warrior could achieve was to count coup on living enemy because it required more bravery to touch one’s enemy with a spear or a coup stick than to kill him from a distance. The taking of a scalp was a matter of small consequence. Anyone, even a woman, could scalp a dead man. Stealing tethered horses from within a hostile camp was also considered a high honor. The Comanches allowed two coups to be counted on a fallen enemy. The Cheyenne counted coup on an enemy three times, the Arapaho four times.

  Toklanni stayed where he was for several minutes after the war party passed by, offering a silent prayer of thanks to Usen for the rain that had washed out his tracks.

  Urging the gray to its feet, he swung into the saddle and reined the horse south, toward Palo Duro Canyon.

  * * * * *

  The next two days passed slowly. He slept little and only in snatches. Several times, he saw small groups of warriors, mostly hunting parties. Once, he came upon a village. He watched it for several hours, but there was no sign of a white woman and he rode on, riding deeper and deeper in Comancheria.

  The weather grew severe, making travel almost impossible. He was wet all the time, his nerves were raw, every muscle tense.

  He reached Palo Duro Canyon late one rainy afternoon. Taking cover on a ridge behind a pile of rocks, he counted thirty lodges where there had once been hundreds, but most of the Comanches were on the reservation now. Only last year, General McKenzie had launched an attack on the Comanche in Palo Duro Canyon. After the battle, McKenzie had captured and destroyed over a thousand Indian ponies. With their supplies and mounts seriously depleted and winter coming on, the bands had straggled into the reservation one by one, until only a few renegade bands remained in the Llano.

  With darkness coming on, Toklanni huddled into his blankets, his rifle resting on his knees. There would be no sleep for him this night, he thought ruefully. No sleep, no fire, no hot coffee to turn away the cold. Nothing to sustain him but the hope that he would find Sarah here, alive and well.

  * * * * *

  Morning dawned clear and cold. Rising to his feet, Toklanni blew on his hands to warm them. After checking on his horse, he squatted on the ridge, absently chewing on a hunk of beef jerky as he scanned the camp.

  The women were up now, moving to the stream for water, gathering wood for their cook fires.

  Toklanni leaned forward, the cold and his hunger forgotten as he watched one of the women walking toward the stream. She wore a
buckskin dress. A heavy robe was draped around her shoulders, her head was covered by a colorful Mexican shawl. But there was something about the way she moved…

  She turned for a moment and he saw that she was pregnant. ��Sarah.” Her name slipped past his lips.

  Almost as if she had heard him, she turned to stare up at the ridge, her gaze searching the rocks and trees. She turned away when a young man came up behind her and took her by the arm, leading her into a tipi located near the center of the village.

  Toklanni watched the camp the rest of the morning, but Sarah didn’t leave the tipi again.

  He spent the morning considering and rejecting a half-dozen ways to rescue her, but, in the end, there were really only two choices.

  He could try to sneak into the camp at night and spirit her away, though he knew that would be next to impossible. Like most Indian villages, the Comanche camp was overrun with dogs, most of them half-wild, making it virtually impossible for anyone to enter undetected.

  His second option was to ride in and boldly demand her return.

  In the end, he decided on the second plan.

  With the matter decided, he removed his weapons, then swung onto the gray’s back and rode down the ridge, hoping he wasn’t making the biggest mistake of his life. His appearance roused the whole camp. Women grabbed their children and scurried for the shelter of their lodges. Dogs barked. Old women hurled insults at him; old men shook their fists in his direction.

  But it was the young men who gathered around him, dragging him from the back of his horse. He was the enemy. He staggered under the blows that rained down upon him. One man darted into his path, striking him across the chest with his coup stick. Another came up behind him and struck him across the back of the neck with a war club.

  Grunting with pain, Toklanni dropped to his knees. He stayed there for a moment, feeling the blood trickle down his neck, knowing that if he stayed down, they would kill him.

  With an effort, he gained his feet and continued forward. He saw Sarah emerge from one of the lodges, saw her eyes widen and her face grow pale as she recognized him.

  The young men continued to torment him, slapping him with their open palms, pummeling him with their fists, hitting him across the back and shoulders with clubs.

  Ignoring the pain, he walked steadily onward, his gaze focused on Sarah. Gradually, the warriors backed off. Risking a glance to the side, he saw the confusion on their faces, the grudging respect in their eyes.

  He came to a halt when he reached Sarah’s lodge. There were tears in her eyes now and when she would have touched him, he shook his head imperceptibly, warning her off.

  For a moment, he let his gaze move over her, making sure she was unhurt, and then he focused all his attention on the warrior at her side.

  “I am Toklanni of the Mescalero Apache,” he said, speaking loudly so all could hear. “I have come to get my woman.”

  The warrior drew himself up to his full height. “I am Esatai of the Tekapwai Comanche. You not find woman in our lodges. Only death.”

  “I have found her,” Toklanni said. He nodded at Sarah. “This is my woman. She carries my child.”

  “No. Woman is mine. Child is mine.”

  Slowly, deliberately, Toklanni shook his head. “She is my woman. Ask her.”

  Esatai lifted his chin defiantly. “If I say she is my woman, she is my woman.” A faint smile curved his lips. “Dead man has no need of woman.”

  Toklanni kept his face impassive, knowing that any sign of weakness now would be fatal.

  “I have crossed the Llano,” he said, keeping his voice even. “I have come in peace to claim what is rightfully mine. It has long been known that the Comanche are a brave and fearsome people. Have they now become a people without honor, to rob a man of his wife and child?”

  Esatai’s eyes narrowed ominously as his hand curled around the hilt of the knife on his belt.

  “You can kill me,” Toklanni said, “but you cannot kill the truth.”

  A low murmuring rose from the men and women that surrounded them. Toklanni kept his gaze on Esatai, but he could feel Sarah watching him, feel her heart reaching out to him.

  Esatai looked at the crowd that had gathered around. The Apache had done a brave thing, riding boldly into their camp, alone and unarmed. He could not kill the man outright. To do so would be cowardly and the Comanche scorned cowardice above all else.

  Esatai glanced at the white woman. She belonged to the Apache. It was there in her eyes for all to see and he knew he would have to give her up. But first he would see just how deeply the Apache warrior’s courage ran.

  “The gauntlet,” Esatai decided. “If you survive the gauntlet, the woman is yours.”

  A sudden chill snaked its way down Toklanni’s spine, but he kept his emotions carefully masked, refusing to let Esatai see his trepidation.

  There was a sudden burst of excited conversation from the crowd as they began to speculate on the Apache’s chances of survival.

  Esatai held up a hand for silence. “What say you, Apache? Will you run for your woman? Or leave as you came?”

  For the first time, Toklanni let himself look at Sarah, his smile assuring her that everything would be all right. “I will do as you say.”

  Sarah looked at Devlin. He and Esatai had been conversing in a mixture of Comanche, Apache and sign language, leaving her totally in the dark.

  As quickly as possible, he explained what Esatai’s terms were.

  “No!” She shook her head, appalled at what he was about to do. “No, Devlin. Don’t. Please don’t.”

  “I’ll be all right.”

  It didn’t take long for the Comanches to get ready. The warriors hurried to their lodges, choosing their favorite weapons, then quickly formed two long parallel lines.

  Esatai took Sarah by the arm and led her to the far end of the gauntlet.

  “Here. Stay,” he said, then took his place to her left, at the end of the line.

  After stripping down to his clout and moccasins, Toklanni took his place at the head of the gauntlet, his hands clenched into fists. Closing his eyes, he took several deep, calming breaths.

  Usen, fill my heart with courage. Bless me with the strength of my brother, the horse, with the speed of an arrow in flight, with the surefootedness of a wild mountain goat. Above all, bless my woman with a strong, healthy child…

  He opened his eyes when he felt a hand on his shoulder. An old Comanche woman stood at his side. She looked at him for a moment, her sunken black eyes brazenly assessing him.

  “Miaru!” she said, giving him a shove. “Go!”

  Toklanni stared at Sarah for a long moment and then, taking a deep breath, he ran for his life.

  Hoots and war cries rose on the wind as the Comanche warriors struck out at him, striking him across the back and shoulders with war clubs, jabbing at his arms and legs with lances, while young boys stabbed him with sharp sticks.

  Toklanni hunched over, shielding his head with his arms as he sprinted between the howling warriors. His whole body throbbed with pain by the time he reached the halfway point. He risked a quick glance toward the end of the line where Sarah waited for him, her clasped hands pressed against her chest, her lips moving silently, urging him on.

  And beside her stood Esatai, a look of eager anticipation on his face as he raised a war club decorated with scalps.

  Toklanni ran forward, dodging left and right in an effort to avoid the blows that pelted him like rain, steadily, mercilessly.

  He was near the end of the line when a barrel-chested warrior struck him across the side of the neck with a club. With a grunt, Toklanni dropped to his hands and knees. He heard Sarah’s warning scream, heard an exultant cry as Esatai darted forward. Summoning the last of his waning energy, Toklanni rolled to the side so that Esatai’s club, aimed for his head, caught him on the shoulder instead.

  He felt his skin split from the force of the blow, felt a sudden rush of warmth as blood trickled dow
n his arm. Some deep-seated instinct prompted him to roll back the other way and as he did so, he felt a rush of air past his head as Esatai swung his war club a second time.

  A war cry rose on Toklanni’s lips as he scrambled to his feet and sprinted the short distance to the end of the line.

  He stood there, glaring defiantly at the Comanche warriors, his breath coming in harsh labored breaths, his whole body throbbing with pain.

  Esatai scowled at him, the hatred radiating from him like heat shimmer on the desert.

  With an effort, Toklanni squared his shoulders and then, in a gesture that was clearly intended to show possession, he draped his arm around Sarah’s shoulders and drew her up against him.

  “My woman,” he said, his breath hissing between clenched teeth.

  Esatai’s hand closed around the knife sheathed on his belt. The urge to draw that knife, to drive it into the Apache’s heart, was strong within him, but such an act would forever shame him in the eyes of his people.

  Toklanni saw the threat in the warrior’s eyes. “My woman,” he repeated. “Do you deny it?”

  Slowly, Esatai shook his head. “Take woman and go.”

  Toklanni nodded, his movements heavy and sluggish as the adrenalin that had been keeping him on his feet drained away, leaving him weak and weary.

  One of the warriors brought the gray forward. A faint smile curved the Comanche’s lips as he handed the reins to Toklanni. “Hoartch,” he said, a look of admiration in his eyes. “Friend.”

  Toklanni nodded as he took the reins. “Hoartch.”

  He lifted Sarah into the saddle and then, gritting his teeth against the pain, he swung up behind her, his back straight, his face impassive, as they rode out of the village.

  “Devlin, are you all right?”

  Sarah’s voice, low and filled with concern, wrapped around him. “Yeah.”

  Sarah glanced over her shoulder, her gaze sweeping over him. He looked awful. His face was swollen, caked with sweat and dirt. His right shoulder was bleeding, his chest was a mass of bruises.