Comanche Dawn (22 page)

His father's next arrow flew truer, but found the shield of a Northern Raider, instead of vitals. He took the next moment to remove the war bridle from his dying stallion, for his son was coming fast.

An arrow thumped the carcass of the stallion, and others passed Shaggy Hump like bees. He turned away from the attack to watch his son ride to his rescue. He had seen the boys practice pulling one another onto their horses, and knew how it was done, though he had not tried it himself.

Horseback reached for his father and ignored the arrows that brushed by him. He clasped his fist tight above his father's elbow and used his weight to pull Shaggy Hump on behind him. Having sprung at the right moment, Shaggy Hump landed astride the rump of the horse, quickly scooting up behind his son. He cawed like a crow and smiled over his shoulder at his enemies, though their arrows seemed to swarm. Beyond them, he could see the white man preparing the Fire Stick for more magic.

Soon they were beyond arrow shot, riding toward the horses, which had bunched ever closer for protection, too curious to run from the two strange riders. Horseback rode directly into this herd, and leapt upon the sandy colored mare that dragged the rope. Quickly, he grabbed the rope around her neck and slid off. Standing on the ground, he let the mare pull against the rope as he motioned to his father for the war bridle.

Shaggy Hump tossed the bridle he had taken from his dead stallion, and slid up behind the withers of the pony, taking the reins Horseback had dropped. As his son charmed the horse at the end of the rope, Shaggy Hump rode around the captured herd to keep them from scattering. The Northern Raiders were coming swiftly on foot, picking up their arrows as they ran.

Grunting at the captured mare to calm her, Horseback worked his way up the rope until he could touch her head. He stroked her a few times, gently, though she tried to pull away. He said, “
Noomah. Noo-oo-oo-mah-ah
…” He used a firm and steady hand, and the mare ceased to fight. Quickly, he hitched the horsehide bridle around the lower jaw of the captured mare and mounted. She was a beautiful animal the color of fine river sand, with a dark stripe down her back and another across her shoulders. Her ears stood straight, like two young pines reaching for the same sun, and her eyes were large and round and black.

Coiling the rope to keep her from stepping on it as they made their escape, Horseback heard a strange voice shouting from the enemy village. Glancing, he saw the hairy-faced white man waving his arms at the Northern Raiders, warning them aside, for the enemy warriors had moved in between the horse takers and the Fire Stick.

“Ride low, my son!” Shaggy Hump said, starting the stolen herd toward their own camp of cut lodge poles. “Keep our enemies between us and the white man!”

Horseback tied the coiled rope into the sandy mare's mane and swatted her rump with his bow to make her run. Looking over his shoulder, he tried to keep the enemy warriors between himself and the Fire Stick, yet he had to weave to herd the horses. He saw his father lying along the neck of the horse he rode, and thought this was a good idea, making a smaller target of himself for the Fire Stick, which he knew would soon lick with its evil tongue of black smoke.

Falling against the neck of the sandy mare, Horseback found the coil of rope he had tied into the mane pressing against his bow arm. The lower curve of the coil was just right for his elbow to settle into, so he let this coil of rope bear his weight, and found he could use the neck of the horse as his shield by resting his elbow in this circle of rope.

All the wild sounds of this ride suddenly died away, and Horseback could feel the spirits talking in his head, though he could not quite understand their words. They were trying to tell him something, give him something, make him wiser. His thoughts came like water from a mountain cascade.

The growl of the Fire Stick came, and one of the horses in the herd fell with a shattered leg. The spirit voices faded in Horseback's head. Now that the Fire Stick had missed him and his father, he knew he was going to escape with stolen horses, and stolen lodge poles, and much glory.

Shaggy Hump moved in front of the herd and made the six surviving horses stop at the edge of the trees. He began filling the air with laughter and cries of victory. The Northern Raiders had ceased in their pursuit, for they were tired of running and knew they could not catch horsemen.

“Where is the magic black paint for your feet,” Shaggy Hump said, “so that you may catch me with the speed of an elk?”

“Father,” said Horseback, “they do not understand the tongue of the True Humans.”

“They hear the laughter in my voice, and it speaks more than all the words of all the nations.” He shouted again at the enemy warriors: “I leave you with much horse meat to feed your white man while I take the live horses to ride in my own country!”

“We must go,” Horseback replied, “before the hairy-faced man fills the Fire Stick with more medicine.”

Shaggy Hump gestured his approval, but before he could start the horses, a shrill voice spoke from the line of Raiders who had stopped in the middle of the park. One of the women had caught up to the warriors and was cajoling the horse takers in their own language.

“Your Snake People will curse your name, horse taker! All the warriors of my great nation will hunt you down, and burn the lodges of your village, and scalp your sons, and rape your wives and daughters! You are the most evil of enemies of my people, for you killed my husband's brother seven winters ago, and left your arrow in the ground to boast of it. Now you leave your arrow again in the shield of my husband. You leave your tracks upon the soil of our country, and our warriors will follow them forever, and you will know peace never again.”

Horseback looked at his father, and saw the surprise on Shaggy Hump's face.

Shaggy Hump shouted: “You speak the tongue of the True Humans, ugly woman. Who are you?”

“I was born a child of the
Noomah,
but my people captured me and brought me to this better life, and this finer country. Now I hate you and your ways. I hate your language, and speak it only to torture you with knowledge of your own days to come. You will die a most painful death, horse taker, and your soul will live in an agony of pain forever!”

Horseback was watching the white man, far away at the edge of the village. He had seen enough of Fire Sticks to know when the killing spell was almost finished. Now the ugly hairy-faced man was pulling the medicine stick from the mouth of the evil weapon. “My father, she makes us stay too long. The Fire Stick!”

“My name is Shaggy Hump, woman. Tell your warriors to come die in my country! As for you, I will not speak of you to the
Noomah,
for you have ceased to exist. You are nothing!”

They moved their stolen herd into the timber and drove the animals toward the lodge poles they had cut, two ridges distant. The horses would be tired when they arrived and would stand while the horse takers burdened them with many lodge poles. Then they would drive the new horses mercilessly back into the country of the True Humans before the Northern Raiders could get more mounts and follow.

The killing power of the Fire Stick rattled through the limbs behind them, followed by the growl of the Fire Stick itself, muffled by distance. But they were safe inside the protection of the forest.

“Father, what did she mean?”

Shaggy Hump's face turned to look at him, drawn with more worry than Horseback had ever seen before in his eyes. “You remember the story I have told of how I avenged my brother. I rode into the country of the Northern Raiders, killed one of their warriors, and left my arrow between two others that the spirits would not let me kill. The one I killed and scalped must have been the brother of a great warrior, for they remember the markings of my arrow, and now they have found me again.”

“Is this not why we mark our arrows, Father? So our enemies will know us?”

“The markings bring medicine from our guardian spirits. If our enemies know us by the markings, it is as the spirits wish.”

“Then you are great in the eyes of our enemy.”

“Yes, my son. I am great, for they have chosen me.”

“What does it mean to be chosen?”

“I am more than a man to them now. More than a warrior. To take my scalp would mean great medicine for one of their warriors. The things that woman said to me are true. They will destroy my family and my whole village to avenge the warrior I killed.”

Horseback weaved among the trees on the sandy mare, keeping the stolen horses herded together and moving in the right direction. When he came close enough to his father again, he said, “You could have killed all three of their warriors. Why do they hate you so much for letting two of them live?”

“They do not hate me. They fear me. I stood over them like a shadow, like a breath of wind that never touches the ground, like a spirit-warrior. I pushed my arrow into the ground while they slept like helpless babies in cradle boards. Now they dream of me when they sleep and wake up covered with sweat, even on the coldest of nights. Do you hate the great humpbacked bear, my son?”

“No.”

“Is it not a great thing to battle and kill the humpbacked bear and win glory?”

“It is a great thing, Father.”

“So it is. I am chosen. We must move away from this country of Northern Raiders. I am not afraid to die, but I do not wish our enemies to rub out our whole band of Burnt Meat People. We must move to the south.”

“Yes,” Horseback said. “Far to the south.”

23

As his seventeenth winter
came near, he began to have powerful dreams. It started during the Moon of Falling Leaves, when the groves of aspens on the faraway mountains turned the color of tanagers; when the sacred deer battled one another with their antlers; when the cranes and the geese and the ducks made noisy lines in the sky; when the antelope danced before the early blasts of cold air and were good to touch as they lay dead on the ground, for they wore much fat under their hides.

It was in this good part of the circle of time, before the harsh days of winter, in the country of the True Humans, that Horseback began to see visions in his dreams.

In one of the first dreams, he was attacking a war party of Northern Raiders who had come to rub out the Burnt Meat People. Riding with the speed of a falcon, he made a sacred ring around his enemies. All the while, the Northern Raiders shot arrows at him. The arrows flew around him in such numbers that he ducked his head behind the neck of his horse, using the horse as his shield. He leaned so far that he began to fall, and he feared he would land on the ground and be killed by his enemies. Then the dream made a horsehair rope appear, looping under the neck of his mount. As he fell, Horseback slipped his arm into this loop almost up to the elbow, and found he could ride at full speed hanging on the side of his warhorse.

When he woke after having this dream, Horseback began making a rope of corded rawhide made from the hide of a dead pony. He started with two strips of hide, each as thin as a quill shaft. He would twist one strip away from himself with his fingers, then turn it toward himself with his wrist. Holding it there, he would then twist and turn the second strip, adding new strips of rawhide all the while, making a cord of the two twisted strips. When this cord was long enough, he doubled it, again twisting and turning, making the cord twice as thick, with four bundles now making up the cord. Doubling the cord again, he finally finished a rope of eight strands, as long as he was tall.

Horseback looped this rope under the neck of the sandy-colored mare he had captured, weaving each end of the rope into the mane of the mare. The Burnt Meat People watched as he rode around the camp, hanging from the side of his horse, his forearm resting in the loop he had made. Only one leg slung over the back of the mare remained exposed to his imaginary enemies.

Spirit Talker, the old
puhakut,
told the other young warriors that they should fashion like slings under the necks of their warhorses. “Horseback's medicine grows strong,” he said. “Watch him well.”

When Looks Away saw what Horseback had done, she went to River Woman and said, “Do you see what your son has made, my sister?”

“I saw it in the dream,” River Woman replied.

“What dream, my sister?”

“The dream my son had.”

River Woman spoke strangely like this all the time now. It was said that she never came all the way home after battling the demons in her trance-world. This sometimes happened to warriors who had seen much battle, as it had happened to River Woman.

The next dream vision Horseback had was very strange. He spoke of it to Spirit Talker:

“I rode over much land, Grandfather, and my horse had much speed and could leap over great canyons and rivers. I saw many strange lands. In one place, the land was so flat that it looked like the surface of a lake with no shores. It was covered with nothing but grass that rippled like water. While I rode over this land, I came to a place where buffalo were coming up from the ground, like water from a spring.”

Spirit Talker threw a pinch of sacred powder into the fire.

“What does it mean to have a vision like this?”

“I do not know. Maybe it means you are hungry.” This was all Spirit Talker had to say about the dream.

Then, Horseback saw another vision in his dreams and came to Spirit Talker to tell him about it:

“I came out of a cloud over some mountains with lodge poles and much timber. Across the mountains I saw people living in lodges made of dirt. I went into one of the dirt lodges, and it was very dark. While I was in the lodge, I heard horses running outside. I heard so many horses that it took them all day to run by the lodge.”

“Did you see the horses?”

“I only heard them, Grandfather.”

“Then it could have been just a few horses running by many times.” Spirit Talker would say nothing more about this vision.