Walking Wolf (2 page)

I learned to ride as soon as I could walk. The Comanche didn't cut you any slack in that area. If you weren't handy with a horse, then what good were you? Every Comanche child, boy and girl alike, was expected to know how to handle a full-grown horse all on their own by the age of five. When I was three years old, Eight Clouds lashed me to one of his ponies with a rawhide lariat while he held the pony by a tether, and he circled that pony around and around until I literally
became
a part of that animal.

As a child, I had plenty of friends. It didn't make a difference to them that I was White—even less that I was marked as Medicine Dog's understudy as the tribe's shaman. Kids is kids. Like I said, I had plenty of playmates, but my favorites were Small Bear, Flood Moon, Lean Fox and Quanah, who would later become better known in the world outside the
Comancheria
as Quanah Parker. Quanah and I also had something in common, since I was an adopted White and he was the son of a captive White woman and the great war chief, Peta Nocona.

Many a summer day was spent running around the plains, naked as jaybirds, whooping it up in grand old style, playing games like “Grizzly Bear” and hunting hummingbirds and bull-bats with our toy bows and arrows. Sometimes we'd play “camp,” and each of the boys would team up with a girl, so they could pretend to be man and wife. The girls would set up windbreaks on the banks of a stream, while us “men” would go out and hunt squirrels, so they could have something to cook for us when we came back to camp. I always made it a point to snag Flood Moon as my “wife” every time.

Sometimes we'd get into mischief—like the time Quanah, Small Bear and I got one of Eight Clouds' ponies and backed into the tipi where the elders of the tribe who were too old to wage war spent their time, smoking the pipe and chewing the fat about the good old days. Lord, did that thing buck! The old men came pouring out of the smoke lodge like angry bees, shouting and carrying on. Quanah got away, but the old men latched onto me and Small Bear and started making noises about punishing us for our lack of respect. Just then, Medicine Dog came up and motioned for the elders to be quiet.

“Now, you old fellows, you were once boys like Little Wolf and Small Bear! Don't you remember what devils you were? Forgive them their actions—for will boys not be boys?”

The elders looked at one another, laughed and let the matter drop. After all, they were old men—peaceable after all the years spent on the warpath, not young warriors jealous of their dignity. All in all, they were fine old gents.

Every year, near winter, the various bands of Comanche would gather together. It was a time when news was swapped, friends and family saw one another, marriages and liaisons between different bands became formalized, and the braves took a breather from the hunting and raiding that filled the rest of their year.

There were several different branches of Comanche back then, some of which were more powerful than others. Like I said earlier, I was a member of the Penateka, or the Wasp Band. Others included the Yamparika (the Yap-Eaters), the Kweharena (the Antelope People), the Kutsuaka (the Buffalo-Eaters), the Pahuraix (the Water Horses), and the Wa'ai (the Wormy Penis—don't ask), to name just a few. But even collected together in all their glory, there couldn't have been more than ten thousand Comanche. So you can imagine the damage that was done when smallpox broke out during the gathering in 1850. I couldn't have been more than six or seven at the time, but I remember it being worse than any nightmare I'd ever had—or ever will again. It was then that my adopted mother, Thunder Buffalo Woman, died. It broke poor Eight Clouds's heart, and he was never quite the same after that, even though he ended up taking her younger sister, Little Dove, to wife a year or two later.

I was twelve years old by the time I finally got to go on my first real buffalo hunt. I was riding with Eight Clouds and several other braves from our band, including one who went by the name Grass Rope. Grass Rope's specialty was lying low in the weeds and sneaking up on the buffalo while they were grazing. He wore a coyote skin draped over his shoulders to mask his scent. Since coyotes were always haunting the fringes of the herds, looking to scavenge afterbirth during the calving season, the buffalo didn't pay much mind, since they were too small to bring down even the youngest calf.

When we spied the herd, Grass Rope got off his pony and motioned for me to follow him. Holding his bow at the ready, he got down on his hands and knees and started creeping through the prairie grass in the direction of the buffalo. I followed him, doing my best to keep upwind. I was very proud that a skilled stalker such as Grass Rope had chosen me to accompany him, and I was determined to cover myself with glory the best I could. But as we crept closer and closer to the herd, something strange began to happen.

My sense of smell had always been acute, but for some reason it was incredibly keen that day. I could smell the grass as the sun dried the dew from its stems, the pungent odor of buffalo wool, the reek of their flops—but, more importantly, I could smell the coyote pelt Grass Rope was wearing. I caught its scent, and for the briefest moment I knew everything there was to know about the beast it had once belonged to: its sex, age, health and social standing in its pack. The surge of recognition was so powerful, I had to lower my head and whine.

Grass Rope gave me a hard look. Hunting was serious business, and it was no time for foolish pranks. “Be quiet, Little Wolf!” he whispered.

I tried to keep silent, but I was suddenly gripped by a strange fire that burned deep inside me like a banked coal. I bit my tongue to keep from crying out, causing blood to flow. The fire in my belly was growing, and my skin felt as if it were covered with biting ants. My bones seemed to be inflating inside my flesh, and for a fleeting second I was afraid I'd been bitten by a rattlesnake without realizing it.

Grass Rope grew very angry with my whimpering and twitching. He turned to give me the sharp side of his tongue, but what he saw made him forget about scolding me. Even though I was in great pain, I knew something must be very wrong, because his face suddenly went pale under his paint. Next thing I know, the buffalo start to bellow and stampede, running away from us.

Without thinking, I leapt to my feet and started chasing after the fleeing herd, running like a band of Apache was at my heels. I vaguely remember seeing some of the other braves from the hunting party sitting astride their ponies, pointing in my direction, their lances and arrows forgotten. I spotted a young calf that had lost its mother on the fringes of the herd. I closed the distance between us, separating it from its fellows, snapping at its trembling flanks. The frightened youngster bellowed for its mama, but it was too late. She was already miles away, trapped within the nucleus of the herd, helpless to defend her errant child.

Without fully realizing what I was doing, I leapt onto the calf's wooly back, sinking my claws and teeth into its neck. The calf shrieked and, overbalanced, fell on top of me. And you better believe that seventy-plus pounds of buffalo calf is
nothing
to sneeze at. Although I had the wind knocked out of me, I refused to let go. The dying calf jerked and kicked, but to no avail. I tore out its throat with my bare teeth.

I stared down as the calf bled its life onto the prairie grass. I threw back my head and howled in triumph. And it was only then, as I licked the fresh gore off my snout, that I realized I was covered in fur and that my hands boasted cruel, curved talons in place of fingernails.

Eight Clouds rode up, reining his pony at a safe distance. His mount rolled its eyes and stamped the ground nervously, uncertain whether to stay or flee. Eight Clouds looked the same way.

“My son—are you still inside?”

“Yes, Father. I am still here.” My voice was strangely distorted and gravelly, like an animal given the power of human speech.

Eight Clouds nodded, relieved. “You have hunted well. You bring honor to our lodge.”

Grass Rope rode up, looking positively thunderstruck. “What manner of thing is this?” he demanded, pointing at me.

Eight Clouds smiled, proud enough to bust. “It is not a thing. It is my son.”

Grass Rope shook his head in amazement. “He is a walking wolf! Never have I seen such a thing!”

And that's how I shapeshifted for the first time in my life—and got my adult name in the bargain.

I didn't realize it then, but my boyhood days were gone forever.

Chapter Two

After my first shapeshifting, my life amongst the tribe became very different. The first, and most radical, change came with my apprenticeship to Medicine Dog. The old shaman had always taken a grandfatherly interest in me, but now I was expected to move my meager belongings from my father's tipi into his.

Medicine Dog was a wise man, full of knowledge acquired during a long and eventful life. I remember I once asked him if he hated the Apache for blinding him in the right eye, and he laughed.

“My life was good in the old days. But it was the life of a fool. I was a mighty warrior back then. I was very proud. Too proud. My vanity made me weak. When the Apache took away my eye, I may have lost the ability to see things in this world, but I gained the ability to see into the Spirit World. Should I hate the Apache for giving me such a wonderful gift, Walking Wolf?”

As I said, Medicine Dog was a wise man, but I was young and still aching to prove myself as a brave, so I tended to ignore a lot of what he told me. I genuinely liked the old fellow, but it chafed me that I had to tend his fire and fetch his water, just like a woman, while my old playmates Quanah and Small Bear were off hunting buffalo or out on pony raids.

It pains me to look back and realize just how big a fool I was. But Medicine Dog didn't seem to mind it—I guess he expected a certain amount of thick-headedness on my part. Still, I did learn things, in spite of myself. Medicine Dog schooled me as to the prayers necessary to ensure successful raids and hunts, the prayers that correctly guide the dead to the Spirit World, and the prayers that confuse evil spirits so they can't tell which tipi is the one they're looking for at night. He also taught me breathing and meditation exercises that helped me control my shapeshifting, so I could summon what he called my “true” skin at will and with minimum discomfort. He also warned me to never tell a White that I was a skinwalker.

“Whites are jealous of things they don't understand, and of things they cannot have. That is why the human beings—we who lived on this land before they came—have had so much trouble with them. If you tell a White that you have more than one skin, they will try and take it away from you. Just like they did your natural father. Be very careful who you show your true skin to, Walking Wolf, if you want to keep it on your bones.”

Medicine Dog also told me stories of Coyote, the trickster god from whom all skinwalkers are descended. I reckon it was on account of their most popular folk hero having the head of a coyote that the Plains Indians I knew back then rarely got upset by me sprouting hair, claws and fangs. When they looked at me, instead of seeing a monster, they saw a god. After all, according to their folklore, Coyote was responsible, in part, for human beings coming into existence in the first place. He also gave them fire and corn and the buffalo to make their life on earth easier. While their acceptance of my condition was indeed broadminded, it did nothing to prepare me for what I would run up against later in life, although I did get a taste of rejection early on.

I've already mentioned Flood Moon. As I said earlier, I'd known her all my life. She was a pretty thing by Comanche standards, with long, straight black hair woven into two thick braids. She had this shy way of smiling that was enough to melt my heart every time she looked at me.

I'd known from the time I was seven years old that Flood Moon was going to be mine, and once, when we were still very young, I even got her to promise to be my wife when we grew up. But that was back when I was Little Wolf. Things became very different once I became Walking Wolf and, like the young fool I was, I refused to admit it.

As I said, most of the Comanche took my being not-exactly-human as a matter of course. Occasionally I'd get asked by an exasperated older sister to threaten to eat a misbehaving youngster, but that was quite rare, and the children usually knew better. Flood Moon, however, was one of the few who had genuine trouble with my condition.

Before I'd learned how to shift, she'd been all smiles and flirts, but when we rode back from the hunt that day—me still wearing my true skin—she grew ashen-faced and hurried into her family's tipi and wouldn't come out.

Despite Flood Moon's sudden coolness towards me, I was still sweet on her. Whenever I could manage it, I would sneak away from Medicine Dog's tipi and loiter near the creek, waiting for her to pass by on her way to gather firewood or water.

One thing you've got to understand about the Comanche way of courting is that it was all very proper. Boys and girls, after a certain age, weren't allowed to be in one another's company unchaperoned. And there's nothing more bashful than a love-struck brave. So young lovers had to sneak what time they could together during daylight.

I spent agonizing hours waiting for just a glimpse of Flood Moon. And when I finally did get a few minutes alone with her, I was so tongue-tied I never could say much. She would tolerate my presence well enough if I was wearing my human skin, but if I was wearing my true skin she'd be as nervous as a pony staked out to trap a mountain cat, hurrying through her chores as fast as she could, often slopping half the water she'd drawn from the creek on her way back to camp.

Although I was nowhere near as bold as some of my friends, who would lie outside their chosen one's tipi at night and whisper promises of love and marriage through the seams in the tent-skins, I was determined to make Flood Moon mine and set about saving up ponies to give her family as marriage tribute. But first I had to make sure her father and brothers would not turn down my offer.