Comanche Dawn (36 page)

At a place where the trail widened and curved sharply to the south, Bad Camper reined his mount aside to an overlook that afforded a splendid view of the valley to the west. Speaks Twice followed, signaling behind in the hand talk he had been teaching to Horseback: “Come see.”

Horseback rode the yellow stud in between Bad Camper and Speaks Twice, watching the east floor of the valley move into view as he approached the rocky precipice. Stopping near the rim of the overlook, a neck ahead of the other two riders, he leaned slightly to one side to see around the stud's head.

The sight astounded him. Far below stood a village larger than any he had ever beheld—a city. It was made of the kind of lodges he had seen at Tachichichi, but covered twenty times as much ground.

“What is that place?” he asked.

“The city of the Metal Men,” Speaks Twice said. “They call it Santa Fe.”

Horseback could see that the Metal Men believed in the power of lines over circles. Their lodges were straight, the paths between them straight and long and very wide. Beyond the city were more lines and other strange things upon the land. There were patches where the sage was gone and the earth was broken up, and the sun shone on water that webbed these places. The water was coming from little brooks that were straight like the paths of the Metal Men between their lodges.

On other patches of land, Horseback saw strange animals: little pale ones that resembled maggots from this distant overlook; larger black ones that looked like unhealthy buffalos. Then he saw a small herd of horses standing in a trap made of lodge poles stacked upon each other. “Where are all the horses?” he asked. “I see only one small herd.”

Bad Camper chuckled, as if to ridicule the searcher's ignorance. “The Metal Men keep them well guarded in special places. They build lodges for the best horses and keep them inside.”

“Inside? What do they eat?”

“Snake People.” Bad Camper burst into laughter.

Horseback frowned and looked toward Speaks Twice.

“The Metal Men feed them dried grass that they cut and stack up in the horse lodges. Also grain from a plant they grow called oats.”

As the rest of the
Yuta
riders and the loose horses filed down the trail, Horseback's searchers reined aside to the overlook. They peered with silent wonder out over Santa Fe.

“When will we see Metal Men?” Horseback asked.

Bad Camper pointed. “We will raise our lodges on the stream above Santa Fe. The water is foul below, for the Metal Men have filthy ways. When our camp is made and our horses under guard, I will take you to meet the Metal Men.”

“Why must we leave the horses guarded at our camp?” Horseback asked. He was not aware that they had ridden into enemy country.

“The Metal Men may try to steal them,” Bad Camper said.

“They steal horses?” Shaggy Hump asked.

Speaks Twice answered: “Horses, land, women, children. They steal everything. Their god tells them to do this.”

“We come here only as seekers, under a sacred truce,” Horseback said.

Bad Camper grunted his amusement. “No truce is sacred to the Metal Men. In their city, they hold one thing sacred: metal that is shiny, heavy, and cold. Sometimes yellow, sometimes white. They believe it has the power of gods to make things happen. They form it into circles and use it to trade.” He reined his mount back onto the trail, as if he had grown ill from looking too long at Santa Fe.

The old trail led the travelers to a meadow flanking the mountain stream that supplied Santa Fe. Here, the warriors began raising lodges, and Horseback prepared to ride to Santa Fe. He caught his least-favorite mount to ride, an old white mare. Should the Metal Men indeed succeed in stealing his pony as he entered the city, he did not intend for them to have his best one. As he threw the bearskin pad on the mare and wound the horsehide coils around it, Bad Camper approached.

“Listen, Snake warrior, and I will teach you a word in the language of Metal Men. It means a camp-together for the purpose of trading.”

“They say that much with one word?”

“It is the way with their language. They have many words that they use seldom. They believe this great number of words gives them wisdom.”

“Wisdom comes from the heart, not from the tongue,” Horseback said.

Bad Camper nodded. “Now, listen. It is said in this way:
rescate.
”

Horseback raised his head, like a pony who had heard something new and strange. “Say it again. Slowly.”

“Res-CA-te.”

Horseback let the sound of the strange word echo in his ears, then he spoke it:
“Rescate.”

“You speak it well,” Bad Camper said, sounding a bit surprised. “The Metal Men will ask you why you have come to their city. When they do, speak the word, and they will know you have come to trade.”

Horseback turned back to the saddle, repeating the word:
“Rescate … rescate … rescate.”

He mounted the old white mare and rode around the camp. His eyes searched the ground habitually for deer tracks, for he was ever mindful of honoring his guardian spirit and wished to avoid defiling the trails of the sacred deer. Though he found no deer tracks, he did see the sign of a single horse—hoofprints and dung. Hanging from the side of his mount, he reached down and scooped up a handful of dung, finding it warm to the touch. He was going to need much
puha
to ride into this city of strangers, for the Metal Men had placed a scout here, and they would be ready.

A few of the
Yuta
warriors stayed behind to guard the horses, as the rest of the party rode toward the city. As they traveled on the trail beside the river, Horseback noticed that the water became calm. He expected to find a beaver dam ahead, making the water still. Instead, he found a great mass of rocks and earth blocking the river, forcing the water to flow south of the riverbed into a brook that ran as straight as an arrow. He stopped to puzzle over the sight.

“The Metal Men make dams, like beavers,” Bad Camper said.

Horseback had often seen women scratching little ditches around lodges to channel rain water away, but he could not imagine digging a ditch as deep and long and straight as the one that took water from this stream. “Why do they bleed this river?” he asked. “Her waters flow away like life from a wound that doesn't heal.”

“They make the water flow over the ground where they grow plants to eat,” Bad Camper explained. “They call this the
acequia madre.
It means the mother ditch.”

“They force the water to go where it doesn't want to go,” Horseback said, “Do they know nothing about the spirits in the water? This will make the spirits angry, and a flood will come.”

“There have been floods before,” Bad Camper said. “They do not learn.”

“The Black Robes don't believe in water spirits,” Speaks Twice added. “They are afraid to talk about any spirits or gods, except for their one Great Spirit.”

“Their Great Spirit must be a very jealous god,” Horseback said.

“The Black Robes say their god is the same as the Great Creator to whom we pray. If it is true, the Great Creator does not speak the same way to the Metal Men as to us.”

“The Metal Men do not
hear
the same way,” Bad Camper said.

The party rode on along the north bank of the river until the trail widened and veered toward Santa Fe. As they came to the edge of the city, Horseback saw a sight that startled him. Two sickly looking buffalo, of the kind he had seen from the overlook, were pulling a thing like no pole-drag ever strapped to a pony. It seemed to ride on two sacred circles, like the hoop targets the
Noomah
bowmen rolled along the ground and shot at for practice. It made very little dust rise from the wide trail, for it rolled, unlike the butt ends of a pole-drag, which scraped the ground. This rolling buffalo-drag was heaped with dried grass. It made a horrible moaning sound as it moved down the wide path that led to the city. A man walking beside the buffalo goaded them with a stick. As the party rode past the buffalo-drag, Horseback's pony shied away from the sound, and the hairy-faced Metal Man, in turn, drew away from the travelers, not having seen them until they passed.

“What is that noise?” Horseback asked.

“It is made by the wooden circles rubbing on the thick wooden pole around which they turn,” Bad Camper explained.

“What have they done to those buffalo?”

“Those are cattle.” Bad Camper glanced at Horseback's face. “You have much to learn.”

Horseback was looking back at the hairy-faced man. The strange man wore cotton clothes. His ugly moccasins were just plain leather, devoid of any dye or colorful quill work. He wore a strange headdress with a sun shade attached to it, making a circle all around his head. He did not look the least bit fierce, and in fact seemed afraid of the travelers.

As they rode deeper into the city, Horseback sensed people scurrying from lodge to lodge ahead of him, as if the arrival of the travelers caused great excitement. At last they came to a square in the middle of the city where no lodges had been raised making Horseback think the square must be sacred.

Six light-skinned, hairy-faced men came out of a lodge on the north side of the square. Horseback knew they were warriors by the weapons they held—lances and guns. One wore the weapon called a
sword
—the first Horseback had seen—and appeared to be a greater warrior than the others.

Then one of the Black Robes he had heard about came out of the lodge—a large man with huge shoulders and eyes that seemed to hold great powers. The Black Robe grew no hair from his face, and the hair on his head grew in a sacred ring, the top of his head being bald. The Black Robe was followed by a hairy-face whose clothes were finer than those of other Metal Men he had seen, making Horseback think he must be a chief. This chief's moccasins were shiny black, his leggings green as pine needles, with rows of shiny metal circles down the outside of each leg. He wore a brilliant red belt tied around his waist, and a shirt as white as a mountain goat. A strange little Metal Man walked behind the chief, acting like a slave. The slave carried a feather and some kind of square thing that unfolded in his hand. Soon, Horseback realized that the feather was magic, for when the chief spoke, the slave touched the tip of the feather on the surface of the square thing he held on his arm, and the tip of the magic feather made a mark like a trail of dark blood.

All around him, Horseback felt the dirt lodges tower, and he wondered if he could escape should the Metal Men attack. He thought of his guardian spirit, Sound-the-Sun-Makes. Had he ridden his pony upon the trail of a deer in the mountains? He looked at his father, and found Shaggy Hump's face tense. His guides, however—Bad Camper and Speaks Twice—seemed at ease, so Horseback attempted to behave as they did.

Just when Bad Camper raised his hand in a sign of greeting, another man stepped from the shadows of the large square lodge. Horseback knew who he was immediately. The man's hairless face wore the tattoos of the Raccoon-Eyed People, yet his skin was light and his clothes like those of the Metal Men. This was the Raccoon-Eyed Flower Man Horseback had heard about in Tachichichi, the great trader who possessed both wisdom and power. Horseback could not say why, but the presence of this man gave him a feeling of peace in the middle of this dreamlike world of strangers and strange ways. Immediately he could tell that Raccoon-Eyes knew what was good and powerful, for he was looking first at the ponies.

33

Jean had remained in
the shadows of the
Casas Reales
to form his initial impression of the Horse People. Captain Lujan had simply walked out into the street with his soldiers, followed by Fray Ugarte and Governor Del Bosque. Del Bosque had summoned a scribe to accompany him with a tablet and quill pen to record any intelligence gleaned from the
Norteños.
These Spaniards were inordinate recorders, yet all of them thought this just another visit by
Yutas,
and didn't yet realize that a new people had appeared.

Jean was the only white man who understood what was going on, a distinction that carried with it an ominous responsibility. He had spoken much with Coyote Man about the new nation coming down from the north, yet many mysteries still swirled in his head. Why were the Horse People now riding with
Yutas
when they were said to have no allies among the nations? How many of these Horse People lived to the far north? How many warriors could they mount? Most important, what power, what magic, what medicine did they possess?

It was said that the Horse People had broken away from a nation known as
Shoshoni,
or Snake People, yet it was not clear to Jean whether the Horse People had indeed broken away from the Snake People, or were simply destined to do so, according to the visions of the
Tiwa
elders.

No one knew much about these Snake People. They kept to themselves, completely surrounded by enemies, forced onto bad hunting grounds, bereft of allies, distrustful of all other nations. What would happen, Jean wondered, if such a people came into possession of a new tool and suddenly saw a chance to break free from a life of retreat and poverty. What if the tool were also a weapon, and the weapon, wealth?

The riders had pulled up in the street and made a line, all the horses standing abreast. A silence had ensued, and the people of these diverse nations—strangers brought together by forces none could fully comprehend—all simply stared at one another. The silence seemed to last a long time, and even the horses stood with their heads high and their ears forward.

Then Jean stepped out of the shadows, studying the horses first, then the weapons and the men. The ponies were small and rather poor, the weapons primitive—bows, knives, lances, war clubs. Most of the riders were
Yuta,
their dress and equipage familiar to him. He recognized two individuals: Bad Camper, of the
Yuta
nation, and Speaks Twice, the
Tiwa
translator from Tachichichi. He identified only four warriors whose dress he had never seen, and knew these four had to be the Horse People. In their eyes he saw the look of the lost. They were far from home.