Comanche Dawn (23 page)

Horseback continued to dream and came to Spirit Talker to tell him of yet another vision:

“Grandfather, I was in a strange place. I was looking into a pool of clear water. There were leaves of some strange tree floating on the top of the water. I saw many deer tracks at the edge of the pool. The water was so clear that I could see fish swimming in it. It was so still that I could see the sky, and limbs of a strange tree reflected in the surface, but when I bent over the water to get a drink, I could not see my own image.”

Spirit Talker seemed thoughtful for some time. “I once had a dream that I was walking along and looked down to notice that I cast no shadow.”

Horseback straightened, hopefully. “What did that mean, Grandfather?”

“The sun was behind a cloud.”

Spirit Talker would offer no further interpretations of Horseback's many visions. Finally Horseback dreamed of white men with hairy faces, iron shirts, and Fire Sticks. They tended many beautiful horses. There were only a few white men, and many horses. In this dream, night came, and the moon rose full. Horseback found himself running with the horses, as if he were one of them. The sun rose on his right and set on his left many times before he came to his own country and found the village of the Corn People, and gave the many horses to Teal's father.

He did not ask Spirit Talker to interpret this dream. He knew he was to search out the source of horses to the south. He told his father that he was going to raise a party to travel into the distant country of the Sacred South.

“I will follow you, my son,” Shaggy Hump said.

When Spirit Talker heard, he came to Horseback and said, “Now you have found the meaning of your own visions, young Horseback. I do not understand why you have been called to travel so many sleeps from your own country, for your spirit power is more than I can understand.” Then he came very close to Horseback and spoke in a low voice, saying, “Always remember, if the visions grow too powerful, if the magic makes too much danger, you may give it back to the spirits, and no one will speak out against you. Do not let your gift destroy you, young Horseback.”

Others heard about Horseback's search, but few trusted his visions enough to ride with him on the trail south. Most of the men with wives and children said they must stay with their families through the winter. One young married man named Bear Heart, who had elder brothers to take care of his wife, said he would go south with Horseback, for he wanted many horses. Echo-of-the-Wolf and Whip also agreed to follow Horseback.

They prayed the whole night before they left, except for Whip, who still had not received a vision and did not believe in praying. The women prepared a small lodge for the searchers, packing it on a pony drag. Before dawn Shaggy Hump went to Looks Away's lodge, and Bear Heart went with his wife into his lodge. But when the dark robe of night began to roll away from the east, all of Horseback's followers were ready to ride.

They took very little pemmican, for they expected to move onto better hunting grounds, and wanted the people in the camp to have the pemmican for the winter. They left their barbed war points at home; carrying only hunting points in their quivers, hoping to avoid battle with the many strange nations to the south. When they left, the whole band of the Burnt Meat People came out to sing prayers to them as they turned south, except for River Woman, who was chanting strangely in the lodge she shared with no one. Then, when the riders were almost too far away to hear, she came running out of her lodge, shouting, “My son! My son!”

Horseback held his party of searchers back long enough for his mother to catch up to him. “Mother, why do you keep us from leaving? Father Sun looks upon us.”

“My son,” she replied, placing one hand on his leg and one hand on the mare he rode. “It is well that you let Bad Camper go free. I know he is the brother of my sister. You have done well, my son.” She turned and walked back toward the lodges.

Shaggy Hump smiled, for he found a certain charm to River Woman's crazy talk, though others accused her of sorcery. The other searchers looked southward, wanting to ride. Only Horseback made sense of what his mother had said, and he took it as a powerful sign. A good sign. Horseback loved his mother very much.

24

Sound-the-Sun-Makes blessed and protected
Horseback's party of searchers many sleeps to the south. They traveled far each day, stopping to rest and let their horses graze only as Father Sun began his return to earth in his great leap across the sky. For the first few nights they made no fires, eating only the dried meat and pemmican they had brought with them. The night sky stayed full of stars, so the searchers left the hides for their small lodge folded and lashed to the pole-drag, choosing to sleep under the open sky, trusting their medicine to keep the giant cannibal owl from plucking them from their robes.

The Thunderbird flew over on the fourth day, making the riders wet and cold. But the rain softened the ground, which made traveling easier on the feet of the horses. On the evening after the rainstorm had passed, Horseback began unpacking the lodge at that night's camp.

“We will not need the lodge, my son,” Shaggy Hump said.

“The Thunderbird may return,” Horseback replied. “His cloud hangs over us still.”

“Spider tells me no rain will fall this night.”

“Does my father know the talk of spiders?”

Shaggy Hump took Horseback to a place along the bank of the nearby stream where a spider was building a new web between two bushes. “When the web is thicker than a hair from the tail of a horse, rain will come soon. If the web is thinner than the hair, the Thunderbird will fly over another country.”

“My father knows much that I do not,” Horseback said. He left the lodge skins packed on the pole-drag and slept dry under the cloudy sky, rolled in his buffalo robe.

As they rode southward on their search, Horseback drank in the sights of this new land. The sage had given way to grass as he left the country of the
Noomah,
and the grass had grown thicker and taller with every day he led his party south. Small herds of buffalo had become common, and antelope were more numerous than he had ever imagined. Large bands of elk congregated in the valleys of streams. Through stands of timber, lesser bears ambled, ranging in color from that of the night sky to that of sand along a cutbank.

The searchers kept the mountains in sight to the west, the vast plains under them rolling away to the east, carved by creeks and rivers. The mountains were their landmarks, but the mountains also harbored the
Yutas.
These plains were often used as hunting grounds by the
Yutas
and by other fierce peoples, such as the Wolf People, who lived far to the east, but sometimes wandered all the way to the great mountains to hunt and wage war and take captives. Horseback's father was his guide on this part of the journey, for Shaggy Hump had made this long dangerous trip once before, to trade with the Raccoon-Eyed People far out on the plains.

On the fifth day, Echo rode up one of the streams they crossed and killed a fine young elk cow. That night, they made a small fire and cooked some of the meat. The searchers were eating plenty, and good grass was keeping the horses strong.

Through seven suns they encountered no people. Shaggy Hump knew how to avoid the likely campsites of his enemies. Horseback listened to the advice of his father on these matters and hoped the tracks of his party's little pole-drag would not arouse suspicion. The True Humans had no allies, and so they had to travel cautiously and make ready to run or fight.

On the eighth day, they awoke to find the Great Mountains dusted with the first snow of the coming winter. Traveling under the rising sun, they soon came to a streambed that held water in pools where their horses could drink.

“My son,” Shaggy Hump said, letting his pony drink next to Horseback's, “when we leave this place, I will ride behind you. The land to the south of this stream is as mysterious to me as the Shadow Land. Now there is nothing to guide us but your vision, and the power of your medicine, for no True Human has ever searched this far south. In the old times, before First Horse came and circled your birth lodge, our people could not think of traveling this far. Your children will know a way much different from the way my grandfathers knew.”

“The way will be better,” Horseback replied. “This is why I have had my vision.”

They had drifted far from the mountains, so Horseback decided to ride up the stream of pools, as it would lead them to the south and west, closer to their landmarks. The shadows of their horses were beginning to fall behind them when Echo noticed a smudge of smoke in the sky not far ahead. Riding carefully on, they peered over the scrubby willows at each bend in the stream until they located a large camp of hunters at a place where water trickled from pool to pool in the sandy bed of the stream.

The searchers looked upon the strangers' camp for a good while. The camp was larger than that of any band of True Humans Horseback had ever seen—even larger than the village of the Corn People and the Burnt Meat People during the great camp-together. He counted forty-two lodges in view, with others yet unseen around the bend in the valley of the stream. The lodges were small, made of buffalo hides draped over four poles, the hides dyed red and white. Only a few horses stood near camp, and they looked poor.

Horseback noticed several fresh buffalo hides spread on the ground, their fleshy sides still pinkish with blood. Butchered meat stood in piles on one hide, ready to pack onto several nearby pole-drags that were small enough for dogs to pull. Near the edge of the camp, five of the hunters were using pointed sticks as skewers to hold meat over a small fire. They laughed much as they roasted their kill.

“My father,” Horseback said, “what kind of people are they?”

“I do not know, but I see that they possess things that I saw in the villages of the Raccoon-Eyed People the time I went there to trade. See the blue blanket the nearest one wears across his shoulders? They use many-colored blankets the way we use our hides and buffalo robes. They make the blankets from the wool of sheep and from the hair of the cotton plant. That is what I have been told. They say the blankets are warm and the wool ones will turn water away. I do not know why they like it more than a good deerskin or buffalo robe.”

“The color of the blanket is good,” Horseback replied. “Like the sky. But I have seen blankets that our warriors have captured from enemies. They come apart in little pieces.”

“
Hah.
Now, see the woman cooking at her fire beside the fourth lodge? She uses a bowl made of iron. The iron bowl carries the magic of heat from the fire, so she does not have to drop hot stones into her stew.”

Horseback looked over the camp for some time as the strange people moved about. The five hunters began to eat the meat they had roasted. “We could easily take the horses of these hunters,” he said in a whisper, “but the horses are poor and would only slow us down.”

“They number greater than our small party,” Shaggy Hump said. “To fight so many for such poor horses would be foolish.”

Horseback glanced at Echo, who was scowling at the strange camp through green willow leaves. “Yet, if we sneak away, they will find our tracks where we have looked upon them, and they will think us cowards. We must show ourselves and make talk with them. If they try to take our horses from us, we must fight until we have all escaped or died.”

“This is a good place to die,” Echo said, “and a good time. The sun is shining and the air is like the wind from the wings of a great eagle. I hope they will try to take my horse.”

Mounting their ponies, the searchers rode onto the brink of the stream bank, into view of the strange hunters. Several of the hunters ran out of the camp on foot to challenge Horseback and his riders, but since the searchers wore no paint and left their bows unstrung in their quivers, they were invited into the camp with gestures.

The strangers gave Horseback's riders some buffalo meat, and Horseback gifted them, in turn, with the hide of the elk Echo had killed a few days before. This pleased the strange hunters very much, and they began trying to make talk with the mounted searchers. There was a short talk among the hunters, and one of them ran away to the main part of the village, for what reason the searchers did not know.

Horseback touched the blue blanket one man wore as he tried to make sense of the many signs these strangers made with their hands. He had heard of this hand talk, but had seen little of it. He knew how to make very few of the signs, yet he found them easy to understand when the strangers repeated them slowly. He felt he should learn more of this talk, as he had heard that many nations of the plains used it.

Soon, Horseback and Shaggy Hump had learned that the strange hunters came from a nation of people called
Tiwa.
They knew much about the hairy-faced white men, whom they called Metal Men. These
Tiwa
hunters lived in a village just one sleep south, called Tachichichi.

The visitors roasted and ate meat as the sign talk went haltingly along. Finally, the runner who had left for the main part of the village returned with another warrior, a young man who urged the
Noomah
searchers to speak, so that he might hear their language.

“I am Horseback. I come in peace with my friends. We are searching.”

The young
Tiwa
warrior frowned, for he did not understand.

Then Horseback repeated the same words in the
Yuta
tongue he had learned from Looks Away.

Now the
Tiwa
smiled and answered in the language of the
Yutas:
“I am Speaks Twice. You are welcome in my camp.” As he spoke, he made corresponding signs in the hand talk.

“Why do you know the
Yuta
tongue?” Horseback asked, fearing that he may have stumbled into a camp of
Yuta
allies, and as such, enemies to himself and his searchers.