Bill Dugan_War Chiefs 04 (8 page)

Q
UANAH SPENT THE FIRST SIX MONTHS
of his life in a cradle board most of his waking hours. Wherever Naudah went, Quanah went with her. When she bent over the skins, he was propped up nearby. When she went to the river to swim or bathe, he dangled from a nearby tree. When she went for a walk, he was strapped to her back. And all the while she talked to him, telling him everything she was doing, not knowing whether he understood her or not, but talking all the same, thinking that everything she told him would one day sink in, and shape his life, perhaps even save it.

When he was not away on a raid against the Texans, who were getting more and more aggressive, Peta Nocona spent time with his son. They would play on the buffalo robes on the floor of the lodge. Still given to solitary walks, Nocona often brought the boy with him, hoisting him high into the air and dropping him onto his shoulders as if they were a saddle, holding the
tiny feet in his hands as he climbed a hill or ducked under a tree limb in the thick forest of the Cross-Timbers, the tongue of pine forest that licked at the center of Texas, south and east of the Llano Estacado.

Increasingly, the Comanche were pressured by western expansion, and spent less and less time away from the Llano, where they were safe and where their superior horsemanship, endurance, and knowledge of the forbidding terrain gave them the kind of security they could have nowhere else.

The boy looked like a Comanche, his skin copper, his hair black. Only the blue-gray eyes revealed his mixed heritage. But it was in biology only. Naudah was thoroughly a Comanche now, hating the Texans with all the fervor of the other Comanche women. She understood their ways as if she had been born to them, riding as well as any of the squaws. She knew as much about the buffalo as anyone, and knew as well how to prepare the meat for drying, how to pound and soften it, then add ground nuts and berries, pounding them in with stone to make pemmican. She knew what roots were edible, which ones helped to heal wounds, which ones could be stored for long periods of time and which had to be eaten immediately. She knew where the best berries grew and how to mix buffalo marrow and mesquite to make a pleasing dessert.

She was Comanche through and through now,
her language, her Anglo past no more than misty shadows. And Quanah, as the son of a chief, was destined to be more Comanche still.

By the time he was able to sit up by himself, Naudah took him on her horse, sitting him on its neck as she rode. Like most of the Comanche women, she had learned early how to ride, partly out of a spirit of adventure and mostly as a skill to master because one day it might mean the difference between life and death.

Because Nocona was often away from the village, sometimes for weeks, even months at a time, much of Quanah’s education fell to the old men of the camp. They were repositories of tribal history, and their tales held the boys spellbound. Almost every night, summer and winter, a few of the old men would gather in a lodge, surrounded by the young boys, who were so quiet one wondered whether they were even breathing as they hung on every word. Only when a story was done did they explode into a storm of questions, begging for another story or an amplification of the one they’d just heard. Quanah seemed even more eager than most of the others.

They seemed to like best stories about the ancient days, when the Comanche lived in the plains of the north, where there were high mountains. They were not Comanche then, but Shoshone, and they hunted buffalo on the grass-rich plains where the weather was not so hot and there was cool water everywhere. But those days
were long gone, and not even the grandfathers of the old ones had been alive when the Comanche lived there.

All that was left was the language. Even now, the boys were told, the Shoshone and the Comanche spoke the same language, no matter where they might meet one another. But now the Comanche lived where the earth was thirsty all the time, where the sun came too close and stayed too long, making even the strongest Comanche sometimes walk with his tongue like a strip of buffalo hide in his parched mouth, and his body shriveling in the heat like an old berry forgotten in a parfleche.

And after every such story, it was always Quanah who wanted to know why the Comanche no longer lived where the Shoshone lived, or why they didn’t go back where the air was cool and the grass long and thick. But that was something not even the wisest of the old ones knew, and Quanah was left to wonder until the next time.

Sometimes, during the long summer days, he would seek out one of the old men and beg for a story just for him, and the old man, Blue Cloud, who was the best storyteller and Quanah’s favorite, would oblige him, sometimes sitting right there in the open lodge, sometimes taking the boy by the hand and walking down to the river, where they could sit under a cottonwood out of the scalding sun. Then, slowly, choosing his words carefully, Blue Cloud would weave
another fabulous web, a gnarled spider spinning words to catch the imagination.

Quanah would lie on his back, his eyes fixed on the leaves overhead or a far-off hawk drifting silently on the wind so high it was little more than a black speck against the summer glare.

Blue Cloud was careful, because he knew that Quanah would one day become a leader of the people, and it was important that a leader not have his head full of nonsense. History was a precious thing, the only way one could learn to avoid the mistakes of the past. And, as both the Great Spirit and Blue Cloud knew, there were enough pitfalls and blind alleys to trick the wisest of men. It would never do to have Quanah’s head stuffed full of milkweed and dead leaves.

But the best times were those with Peta Nocona. When he was home, the chief would take his son on long walks, pointing out the track of a deer, the small prints of a single rabbit in the dirt, the trace of a rattlesnake as it slithered across a patch of dust. There was so much to learn, Nocona doubted he would ever have the time to teach it all. When he thought back over his own life, how everything he learned seemed to spawn a dozen questions, and each answer a dozen more, he despaired of teaching it all to Quanah.

But the boy was a quick study, and the questions he asked showed that not only did he understand what he had already been told, he
was thinking about the next step and the one after that. He seemed able to connect things together, following the logic of a situation the way many full-grown men were unable to do. It made Nocona proud, and more than a little frightened. The boy seemed to understand things far beyond his years.

But he pushed on, spending as much spare time as he could squeeze out of the clutter of his daily life to be with the boy and, after a couple of years, with Pecos, Quanah’s younger brother.

One morning in late summer, when Quanah was six years old, Peta Nocona woke him early. Pressing a finger to his lips, he shushed for the boy to be quiet, then waved toward the entrance of the lodge. The fire was almost out, and there was a morning chill in the air that made Quanah reluctant to leave the warmth of his sleeping robes. But when his father called, he knew better than to drag his feet.

Once he was certain Quanah was awake, Nocona slipped outside, where he waited patiently for his son. When the boy appeared, still rubbing sleep from his eyes with his knuckles, his face was full of questions, but he said not a word, watching Nocona to see what would happen next.

Nocona walked away from the lodge, waving again for Quanah to follow him. The boy hurried to catch up, not sure where he was going but starting to get excited. This had never happened before, and he knew it had to be something
special.

Beyond the edge of the village, Quanah saw Nocona’s horse, hobbled and ready. Beside it, a second one, smaller, also hobbled, and fitted with a small saddle pad and a third. Running to catch up to Nocona, Quanah grabbed onto his father’s hand.

“Where are we going, Father?”

“You’ll see.”

“Does Mother know?”

Nocona nodded. “She knows.”

“Will we be gone long?”

Nocona shook his head. “Not long, I hope.”

“Where, then?”

Hoisting the boy up onto the small horse, he bent to unhobble it, then did the same to the other two horses. He climbed onto his mount before answering. Taking the tether rope of the third horse in his hand, he eased in alongside Quanah. “I thought it was time you learned to hunt.”

“But I don’t have a bow.”

“There is much to learn about hunting before you ever get to notch an arrow. You will have a bow in good time. Now, you are old enough to learn the other things, the important things that every good hunter has to learn if he is going to find the game to shoot with his bow. That’s what we will do today.”

“Why so early?”

“The deer don’t move around much under the hot sun. They make their appearance either
early, while it is still cool, or toward sundown, after the worst of the day’s heat has passed.”

“Is that what we’ll be hunting? Deer?”

Nocona nodded, then broke into a broad grin. “That’s right.”

“Why didn’t Mother come, too?”

“She has her own work. Hunting is something men do. They provide food for the village, and others prepare it. It is a way of making sure that no one has more to do than he can do.”

They moved away from the village in the predawn gray. The last few stars were all but invisible, and the air smelled damp. The grass showered small drops of dew as the hooves of the three horses moved through it.

“Where do we look for the deer, Father?”

“They will be coming for water, soon. We will find a creek where they like to drink, and we will wait for them. The best way to hunt a deer is to get where he’s going before he does. Let him come to you. If you are very still, and make no noise, he will come close and you can get an arrow into him before he knows you are there. But if he is already at the creek, then he will hear you coming, unless you creep up on him from a long way off. That takes time, and it means you have to be too far from your horse. No Comanche wants to be far from his war pony. Even here.”

They rode for more than an hour, Quanah plying his father with a thousand questions, his quick mind skittering from fact to fact like a
surefooted frog hopping on lily pads.

Nocona reined in as the sun started to come up. It was just a mound of brilliant red on the horizon. In the valley below him, a creek meandered through a stand of cottonwoods and willows. The leaves of the trees were stained a bright ruby color by the first rays of the sun. Here and there through the trees, the sluggish creek was dyed red, the color winking like fireflies as the soft breeze stirred the tree limbs.

Nocona had hunted in the valley many times, and he knew it was a favorite watering hole for deer. Nudging his horse with his knees, he urged the boy to follow him over the hilltop and down toward the creek. Keeping a wary eye peeled for an early deer, he led the way to the water, urged the horse into the creek and out on the far side, then followed the tree line, just skirting the thick brush under the cottonwoods.

He seemed to be looking for something in particular and Quanah noticed.

“What are you looking for?” he asked.

“A good place to leave the horses. We will have to dismount so that we can get close enough. The horses will frighten the deer if we bring them with us.”

“But you said a Comanche never leaves his horse.”

“I said a Comanche never gets too far from his horse. But if we want to have venison, we will have to hunt the deer on foot.”

When he found the spot he was looking for, he swung down lightly, his feet hitting the tall grass without a sound. Quanah slid from his pony, making a small thump that brought Nocona’s disapproving gaze to rest on him for a moment. “Sorry,” the boy said.

“It’s a good thing you are not fat like Black Snake’s son, or the deer would hear you in the next valley.” But he laughed, and ran a hand through Quanah’s hair. “It’s all right. Just try to be more quiet, son.”

They hobbled the horses again, then Nocona took a bow and a buckskin quiver full of new arrows from his horse and moved down to the water’s edge. Quanah followed him, reaching up to take the quiver from Nocona’s hand. “I want to help,” he said. “If I can’t use the bow, at least I can carry the arrows.”

Nocona smiled. “You are always thinking, aren’t you?” he said.

Quanah nodded eagerly. “Always.”

“Good. Our people will need someone who is always thinking to lead them.”

“You are always thinking.”

“But one day I won’t be here. And you will have to take my place.”

The boy didn’t want to hear such things spoken of, and changed the subject. “Will there be many deer?”

“Probably. But we only want one. Two, if we are lucky. We don’t need more than that.”

“But there are many people in the village.”

“There are many warriors to hunt, too.”

“But some people cannot hunt for themselves.

Someone has to hunt for them. Grandmother Walks on Wind does not hunt.”

Nocona held a finger to his lips. “I’ll explain that some other time. Right now, we have to be quiet and start looking for the deer.”

T
HEY WERE QUIET
for a long time. Quanah was starting to get restless, and each time he would start to move, Nocona would tap him on the shoulder and put a finger to his lips. Leaning over after the fifth or sixth time, he pressed his lips close to Quanah’s ear. “You have to be still,” he said. “Or the deer won’t come.”

Mimicking his father’s gesture, Quanah whispered, “The deer aren’t going to come anyway. They will never come. And even if they do, they take too long.”

Nocona laughed in spite of himself. He knew just how hard won was the patience necessary to stay and wait for the skittish animals. And he knew, too, that unless Quanah learned it, everything else he learned would be as good as worthless. Patience is the simplest of things, he thought, but the hardest to understand.

But Quanah tried hard to be still. And soon he
sensed Nocona growing tense. He wanted to ask what was happening, but knew it was a bad time to ask anything, so he craned his head trying to see through the brush across to the other side of the creek. He strained his ears, but all he could hear was the hiss of the breeze in the cotton-wood leaves and the burble of the water where it flowed over some stones.

But Nocona maintained his vigilance, and Quanah struggled with his own impatience. Soon, Nocona reached for his bow, took an arrow from the quiver and notched it, then took a second arrow and clamped it in his teeth, where he could get at it in a hurry. Turning to Quanah, he made the sign for deer, and for five. Quanah wanted to shout, but bit his tongue.

Soon, he heard the dull thud of hooves on the grass across the creek, then the rattle of brush as something pushed through the undergrowth. Twisting sideways, he could see upstream for nearly twenty yards, but there was still no sign of the animals.

Nocona shifted his position now, getting comfortable on one knee. A sharp crack echoed among the trees, and a deer stepped through the brush and stopped, its head cocked. Quanah held his breath and Nocona leaned forward drawing the bow at the same time. Waiting for the deer to expose itself fully, he held the bow at half draw.

The deer looked around, its ears twitching, took a tentative step forward, and a second
appeared behind it. The lead animal was a good-sized buck, its antlers sporting eight points. Its eyes were like wet pebbles in the shadows, catching a glint of early sunlight as it swiveled its head, then it stepped all the way into the clear.

The second animal, following its lead, moved into the open, and suddenly two more broke through, a young buck and another doe. Quanah kept looking from Nocona to the deer and back, waiting for his father to shoot, wondering why he didn’t.

Finally, as if in response to some inaudible cue, all four were lined up at the water’s edge, their heads bowed. Quanah heard the tongues lapping the cool water and suddenly Nocona drew the bow all the way, loosed an arrow and whipped the one from his teeth and notched it in a single fluid motion.

The first arrow struck home, catching the big buck below the left shoulder and burying itself all the way to the fletching. The buck fell as if it had been pole-axed and the second arrow was on its way, the bowstring singing in the shadows. The second target, the larger of the two does, was hit in the chest as she turned. The buck went to its knees with a curious noise that sounded like a cough, its head bobbing as it tried to figure out what had happened to it.

The brush exploded as the remaining deer bolted across the creek, their hooves splashing in the water, and in a flash they were gone.

But Nocona had aimed well. His two targets lay on the creek bank, the buck already dead, the doe struggling to get to her feet. The chief snatched a third arrow from his quiver, nearly tugging it from Quanah’s hands, notched it, and let it fly. Again the bowstring hummed, and this time Quanah heard the thud of the arrow as it drove deeply into the doe. She made a strange cry, took a step and then collapsed into the water.

Nocona grunted with satisfaction, then stepped out from his cover, Quanah right behind him. Wading in the creek, the older man walked to the nearer of his two kills. The buck was staring vacantly, its head stretched out on the grass, its hindquarters still quivering. Turning to his son, Nocona said, “Run and get the horses.”

He watched as Quanah slipped through the underbrush and disappeared, then turned to the business of butchering. Drawing his knife, he knelt on the sandy bank and started the grisly work.

By the time Quanah returned, the horses tethered together and following in his wake, the water was red with blood. The buck had already been gutted, and Nocona was working on the doe. Quanah turned away, but couldn’t help peeking over his shoulder to watch Nocona eviscerate the doe. Normally, he would have brought the entire carcass home, but he didn’t want to overburden the pack horse. The liver was a delicacy,
and he would pack it separately, using a parfleche he’d brought for the purpose.

“We’ll have plenty of meat,” he said, grunting as he bent over the limp form of the doe.

He wiped his knife on the grass, then dipped it into the current and swished it clean before drying it on the grass and tucking it back into its sheath.

The carcasses were heavy, but Nocona handled them easily, his broad back and shoulders taking the heavy load easily as he hoisted the buck onto the pack horse. He lashed it in place with buckskin thongs, then did the same with the doe. Together, the two deer made for a heavy load, but he had chosen the pack horse carefully, and didn’t want to ride double. If they ran into trouble, it would be better if he and Quanah had separate mounts. He could always hunt another deer, and cutting the pack horse loose would be a small price to pay for survival.

When the deer had been securely lashed, he turned to his son, who kept looking at the deer, then at his father, then at the swirls of blood still curling away from the clotted mound of viscera murkily visible under the surface of the creek.

Nocona patted him on the head. “Patience,” he said. “That’s the secret.”

“Will we go home now?” Quanah asked.

Nocona nodded. “We don’t want the meat to spoil, do we?”

“But the other deer got away.”

“We don’t need them. A good hunter always leaves some game for the next hunt.”

“When we hunt the buffalo, we kill a lot more. Why not the deer?”

“We hunt the buffalo to feed ourselves all winter. Besides, there are many more buffalo than deer. You know that very well. You have seen the herds of buffalo, haven’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Have you ever seen that many deer at one time?”

The boy shook his head.

“There you are, then. Let’s go.”

Nocona hoisted the boy onto his horse, climbed onto his own mount, and nudged it through the brush and out into the broad, green valley. As they started up the gentle slope toward home, they were forced to move slowly, the pack horse laboring under its heavy load. Nocona was watchful. An enemy would see how slowly they were moving, and would know they were vulnerable to attack. Surprise would give the enemy a distinct advantage, and the worst he would have to show for his effort would be a pair of freshly killed deer and a good horse, reason enough to take on a solitary warrior and a small boy.

The sun was well on its way toward the meridian now, and the late morning was hot. The meadow was full of flowers, and there seemed to be a dozen bees for every bloom. The
whole valley throbbed with the collective humming of a million tiny wings.

When they reached the ridge, Nocona stopped to scan the floor of the next valley. Like the one behind, it was full of bluebonnets, but there was no creek and no cotton-wood stand. That meant there was little cover, small enough problem if they hadn’t been hampered by their catch. Satisfied the valley was deserted, Nocona started down, turning to wave for Quanah to follow him, when he spotted something moving among the trees near the creek.

At first, he thought it might have been more deer, coming late, waiting until the interlopers had left. But he wasn’t sure, and he couldn’t afford not to be. Tilting his head toward the valley ahead, he said, “You go on.” Handing the lead rope of the pack horse to Quanah, he realized the boy wouldn’t be able to hold it if the pack horse bolted, and fashioned a quick loop in the long lead and draped it over the neck of Quanah’s pony.

“What’s the matter, Father?”

Before Quanah could answer, a sharp crack shattered the stillness. A moment later, three horses burst through the underbrush along the creek, and Nocona yanked on the pack horse’s lead, swung it free of Quanah’s pony, and slapped its rump with the free end. To Quanah, he shouted, “Ride. Ride home. I’ll follow you as soon as I can.”

“But what …?”

Taking the bow from his shoulder and jerking an arrow from his quiver, he snapped, “Do it!”

As soon as he was sure Quanah had obeyed, Nocona turned his horse and notched the arrow. The three horsemen were charging uphill straight toward him. They were Anglos, probably Texans, and he saw immediately that all three were armed with rifles. The one who had fired the shot was trying to reload on horseback, not the easiest thing to do, and he was lagging a bit behind. The other two men were waving their rifles and shouting.

He wondered how long they had been watching him, then, knowing it didn’t matter, he drew the bow. The first arrow sailed long, and he quickly notched a second at the same time he kicked his pony and started downhill toward the attackers.

A second rifle shot cracked the silence, and Nocona heard the whistle of the bullet as it sailed past his head, high and to the left. More used to firing from horseback, the chief had a slight advantage. He could also fire several arrows for every bullet from the clumsy muzzle loaders, but there were three of them, and the men probably had pistols, as well.

His next arrow struck the lead horse dead center in the chest, and the horse broke stride, stumbled and fell, spilling its rider over its mane. The man shouted something, rolled over several times and scrambled to his feet as his companion fired.

Once more the bullet sang nearby, and the unhorsed rider tugged at his waistband. Nocona drew the bow once more, this time holding for a split second to be sure of his aim. He heard the moist whack of the arrow as it struck the white man in the ribs. He was using hunting arrows, rather than war arrows, and the placement of the arrowhead made it harder to find a gap in the ribs, but this one managed. The man fell backward, his hand clutching at the arrow half buried in his left side.

The man in the rear had reloaded now, and Nocona watched the bobbing muzzle of the long gun as the attacker tried to hold his aim. The other horseman was still charging ahead, and Nocona jerked the bridle of his mount and dashed downhill at an angle, causing the charging men to turn and disrupting their aim … but not his own.

Launching a fourth arrow, he saw it narrowly miss the nearer of the two horsemen, who ducked sidewise as it flew past close enough to scrape his shoulder with its feathered fletching. Another arrow and another, neither finding a mark, and another gunshot.

Nocona was downhill now, circling around behind. The two survivors were trying to wheel their mounts, but the big American horses were less maneuverable. The slope didn’t help matters, and Nocona was now on their tails, urging the pony back uphill, an arrow drawn all the way to the head. He let it go and saw it strike one
of the men in the biceps and pin the arm to his body as it pierced the fleshy part of the arm and burrowed on into the right side of his chest.

Instinctively, the man jerked his arm and yelped in pain as the arrow came free, tearing a hunk of flesh loose with its barbs. It flapped now as the man waved his wounded arm, snapped the arrow off with a shriek of rage, then jerked it free, sending the blood-smeared shaft in a tumbling arc as he tossed it away.

Nocona already had another arrow nocked, drew and fired in one fluid movement as his pony narrowed the gap. Preoccupied with his wound, the man looked surprised when the second arrow hit him, this time dead on, just below the collarbone on the left side. He fell backward off his horse, his lips pursed as if to shape a question. But he said nothing as he fell, then let out a whoosh of air as he landed flat on his back, just in time to receive a third arrow as Nocona galloped past. This one pinned him to the earth.

The third man had already turned tail, but Nocona thundered after him, drawing his bow once more. He held the arrow at full draw until fifty yards became forty, then thirty. Only when he had closed to within twenty yards did he snap the string.

The arrow struck bone with an audible crack as it shattered a shoulder blade and knocked the last of the three attackers from his horse. Nocona closed hard, leaping from his horse and drawing his knife while in the air. The man lay on his
stomach and was crawling through the grass, one hand curled around the arrow shaft, his legs and remaining arm clawing, making him look like a crippled insect.

Nocona landed on the man’s back with his knees, snapping the arrow as he grabbed the man by a fistful of greasy hair and hauled the head back far enough to jerk the knife once across the exposed throat. The taut tendons parted with dull snaps and a horrible gurgle gushed in a spume of bloody froth from the severed windpipe. Slicing once more, Nocona lifted the scalp, jumped to his feet and held the bloody flap of skin and hair high overhead as he shrieked in triumph.

Moving quickly, he raced on foot to another of the attackers, took a second scalp, then darted toward the third body. He had the hair in his hand and the knife poised when something caught his eye on the ridge. He looked up then, frozen, to see Quanah watching. He looked down at his victim, hesitated a moment longer, then took the scalp.

This time, though, there was no shriek of triumph. Only a grunt of grim satisfaction.