The Color of Lightning (41 page)

“I don’t have any answers,” said Samuel. He sat quietly in the ruin of his own personal philosophies as if they were smoking tim- bers in a heap and felt as if he had just murdered someone, or per- haps abandoned someone in a burning building.

Simonton looked at Deaver and then back to Samuel. “So you’re the Indian agent,” he said. “Honored.”

“I am that,” said Samuel. “A Quaker.”

“Yes.”

“Well, well.” Simonton nodded. “You came here to bring peace and brotherly love, and you are going to preside over their destruc- tion. My my.”

“I have merely arrested four men who have admitted to mur- der and kidnapping.” Samuel sat with both hands loose in his lap. “There was nothing else I could do.”

“Why should they be charged with murder? This is a war. They are at war with the Texas settlers, and now you are handing them over to Texas juries. Have you heard the news from Washington?”

“Tell me, then.”

“The Peace Policy might be rescinded.” Simonton searched in his pockets and found half a cigar. He lit it. “You must regret that. Or maybe not.”

“Why do you want to talk to me?” said Samuel. “I must thank James for introducing us, but I don’t keep much of a social life and I find matters are pressing.”

“Wait, wait,” said Simonton. He put out a hand. “Jim is an old friend. He makes interesting acquaintances. His sketches are renowned. I depend on him for the interesting acquaintances he makes.”

“You owe me,” said Deaver. He had poured himself a shot of gin and sipped at it and with the other hand sifted through a loose-leaf pile of ink drawings. “I am looking at the mementos of a destroyed people, here.”

“And you are the Friend in authority,” said Simonton. “The other Quakers of the Indian Committee are far away. You can do as you like.”

“That’s quite untrue,” said Samuel. He tried to think of some- thing to calm himself, to reply politely. He was the Indian agent and

could not indulge in personal hostilities. He was a representative of the federal government and also of the Society of Friends.

“But the Quakers and the red men are alike, in some way.”

“I used to think that,” said Samuel. “But experience has taught me otherwise.”

“But think. The young Comanche men go alone to the moun- tains or some deserted place and fast and cry for a spirit to guide them. Do you not seek the Inner Light?” Simonton leaned forward in the chair. He was interested.

Samuel glanced up at Simonton from beneath his eyebrows. “You know very well we do.”

“So do the horse Indians. Now, consider. Both Quakers and Comanche stand alone before the Divine Presence and seek to be taken, or moved, by the spirit.”

Samuel threaded his fingers together and regarded his shoes. “Mr. Simonton, this is the sort of conversation Harvard divinity stu- dents have with each other when drinking brandy in their rooms.”

“But the question must be considered, were you to dispute theol- ogy with a Comanche medicine man, or a Kiowa priest of the Sun Dance.”

“I have no intention of disputing my beliefs with anyone.”

“Ah, you will miss one of the great pleasures of life. As well as London Royal Gin.”

“I will concede that.”

“The free life on the plains. No other people like them any- where,” said Deaver. He turned to Samuel, and Samuel saw that his eyes were glistening. “You will send the army after them. You know they kill the women and children. You know about Sand Creek and the battle on the Washita. Will you preside at the hangings?”

“What hangings?” Samuel stood up and reached for his old brown wide-brimmed hat. “Are you quite sober, James?”

“No, I am not,” said Deaver. Simonton silently poured out an- other measure of gin for the illustrator. “I am merely here to see them tried and then strangled on a rope. A carnival of crime on both

sides. Which side are you on?” Deaver wiped at his face and took up his glass. “You are going to force them to live within the reserva- tion,” said Deaver. “I find this melancholy. It will kill them.”

“It can’t be helped,” said Samuel. “You spoke once of tragedy. That Americans were uncomfortable with tragedy. And here it is. We are regarding it. Like an audience.”

He walked outside into the cold. The cavalrymen were forming in ranks, and their guidons stood out stiff in the wind and all their brasses glittered even though the sun was dim under a screen of high, thin clouds. The black Ninth Cavalry were serious and reserved and conscious of their recent honor. The horses moved against their bits and their tails blew between their legs and Samuel watched as a kind of great ordering took place, as if the union of men and horses made them more than themselves, something they were meant to be from the moment they were born. Their bugles a hazy harsh gold and their carbines sheathed at their left stirrups and the flag boots creaking on their slings and so they stood silently in the beauty of their weapons.

sa mue l d r ov e th e
mile and a half to the agency, watch- ing the winking of the horses’ shoes as they trotted on. He set the brake block as they started down the rocky slope to the valley of Cache Creek. The horses minced their way down, and the fixed wheels spewed dust. The agency appeared in the crawling weaves of ground-blow, the sandy wind poured through the white picket fence and around the warehouse and corrals. The place was empty and lifeless, devoid of red men or white men either one. Here and there a bit of ribbon and a rawhide box where things had been dropped as the Kiowa and Comanche women were taken captive. A sense of something about to happen. The stubborn brush unmoved by the wind. The wind’s scouring howl as it poured across Oklahoma.

Samuel did not know what to do with the scalps. They lay in loose sheaves of hair on his flowered carpet. Finally he buried them like kitchen trash in the manure pile behind the wagon shed.

He paced the agency house from one end to another. He felt he was turning into someone else. Or perhaps someone he had al- ways been. He was hardening like pottery fired in a kiln. Hard an- gry words in his head carrying an abrasive silt. He did not like the sounds of the words in his own head. Outside he saw two Caddo boys digging the scalps out of the manure pile and turning them over in their hands. They threw them at each other and then one of them put the brown scalp on his own head and pranced in a circle. Samuel sat down in front of his coal stove. He did not like the chemical smell of it but wood was scarce. He was within seconds of going outside and taking the boy by the back of his jacket and beat- ing him with the buggy whip.

He got up and walked through the door and slammed it be- hind him and went to stand in front of the new water mill, arising stone by stone, the masons snapping their chalked strings along the courses of sandstone. Others were constructing the dam. Shouts and songs. Mexicans and soldiers working side by side.

He stopped to watch two stonemasons with a scorpion. One shot down his hand with a knife and cut off its poisonous tail. It began to run in confused circles. The men squatted down to watch it and laughed.

He went back into the agency house and washed his face and hands and sat down in front of a plate of hominy grits and prairie chicken. He could not eat.

He sat at his desk and flipped through Isaiah as if through a law dictionary, searching out the right words, the right terms.

I have trodden the winepress alone, and from the peoples no one was with Me. For I have trodden them in My anger, and trampled them in My fury; their blood is sprinkled upon My garments and I have stained all My robes. For the day of vengeance is in My heart, and the year of My redeemed has come. I have trodden down the peoples in My anger, made them drunk in My fury, and brought down their strength to the earth.

W

ja me s d e av er t o o k
a bath in a horse trough after the horses had been led to water in the late, cold evening. He had sent his clothes to the post laundresses. He had the impression of himself and all the horse Indians of the plains shut up in a frame and drift- ing away in thin colors on scattered sheets of paper. It was because of the gin that sat in its glass in the dirt beside the water trough. He got out and dried himself and did not feel the cold. He finished the gin and put on his shirt and then went to the barracks carrying his pants. He clodded across the parade ground with bare legs and wet shoes.

He sat at the table beside the fire and composed a long telegram to Dr. Reed of the Friends’ Indian Committee in Philadelphia. In it he stated that Samuel Hammond had abandoned all precepts of his Quaker upbringing. Imprisoned several Indian men in the guard- house in Fort Sill to be sent to Texas justice. Indian women and children held in horse corral. Refused rations to the families that had come in who were destitute and starving. Imprisoned young boys in the schoolhouse whose only crime was that they had been captives and were not yet capable of accustoming themselves to the ways of white people. Discouraging thing that men could so change and alter. Red men wanted only a life of freedom on the plains and to hunt the bison there as God meant them to else why did he place them there. Agent Hammond ignoring all precepts of Peace Policy. Still time to stop conflict. Soldiers preparing to campaign. Your obedient sv’t, James Nathan Deaver.

i t wa s a
week later, the first week of January of the New Year, that the letter came from Dr. Reed. Samuel sat close to the window to read it as the light faded from a world that was glistening with windblown dust.

Our dear Samuel Friend in Christ;

We have with dismay read a report to this Committee that thou hast imprisoned five men of the Kiowa and Comanche tribes inclusive

of their women and small children despite our professed desire to treat the Red Man as our brother and as a being deeply wronged over the centuries that we have inhabited this continent. Whatever the desperate measures taken by these people remember that they have been cheated and dispossessed of those things most dear to them. Is it not to be expected that the Kiowa and Comanche and others under thy charge are reduced to such measures?

If thou has stood resolutely by our agreement in that the Texans and others who have incrementally stolen the lands of these people be prevented from mistreating them then those for whom thou art

responsible should have understood our feelings of love, of admiration, of brotherly regard and come to settle themselves on the vast reservation that has been set aside for them.

If thou hadst been attentive to thy duties then the saving truths of the Scripture would have been communicated to them. If the Red Men have not seen the advantages of peace then thou hast somehow been amiss, Samuel. Unless our reliance is on that which comes from above, we shall fail.

Samuel put the letter down. It was clear he would have to resign. He would be glad to go. He did not know how to use authority, he was not good at it. Let someone else come and take on this terrible task. He had only a few things left to do. War with the Coman- che and Kiowa was coming as sure as the sun rose in the east. As the sparks fly upward. It would take his letter of resignation several weeks to reach Dr. Reed in Philadelphia, and in the meantime he must complete every task he could.

And after that he would take the overland route for San Fran- cisco, where at some time the
Monongahela
would come in and he would board his own ship as supercargo and go with her round the Horn. How could he have known this was something he had always wanted to do? A private and obscure longing to be on the surface of the great oceans suddenly appeared as a complete and accomplished thought. He had been obligated to a life of service from his earliest upbringing and he had done his best. Now he

wanted to take ship around Cape Horn and serve no earthly power whatever.

th e b o ys ’ r e l ativ es
had at last been found, and until they came to claim them the boys lived like shadows in their army tent. Sometimes the soldiers came to teach them how to gamble with dice, and they liked that. They were in an empty space between their Comanche names and the names Clinton Smith and Adolph Korn and Temple Field and Valentine Maxey. It made them feel as if they were made of some other substance than flesh and blood. They often sat and gazed at the Speckled Blue-Faced Mountains behind the agency and the fort. Yes people were good to them. No they had not learned their alphabet. Yes they would try.

Samuel sent for a photographer to take their portraits. The boys watched with rigid and fixed expressions when the man set up the scaffolding and then placed the camera and the dark cloth over his head. When he turned the brass lens tube toward them like the bar- rel of some weapon, they shouted aloud and fled. All that remained on the glass plates were blurred streaks like smoke, or the impres- sion of fugitive spirits caught in the flash powder.

Samuel sat and thought of how to reach them. How to describe anew their lives to them before they were taken, how to help them know who they were. He had the feeling that they might never again know who they were. That their identity might be held as some dis- tant, lucid secret in the heart of God until the day they died.

Like his own. Like his own.

Beyond the windows the blue loom of the Wichita Mountains, a sanctuary of iron and granite and clean water. Temple Field regarded them from his half-closed eyes. No one knew what he thought. The other boy captives spoke to him but he refused to answer. Samuel handed him over to his grandfather, shook the old man’s hand, and handed him a handkerchief to soak up his tears.

Two years after Temple Field was returned to his family near De Soto, Kansas, he died of self-starvation, in complete silence.

Chapter 34
‌

W

I

n l ate d e c e m b e r
of 1870 Britt rode in front of a herd of horses at a slow trot to bring them in to Fort Belknap. The

army had bought them from a rancher named George Daley who lived in a large log house that was constructed like a fort out beyond the Old Stone Ranch House. In return for bringing them in, he was to have four of the best of them. Paint and Dennis were moving northeast from Elm Creek toward Jacksboro with a load of hay and butter in small kegs and salted beef. They would meet back in Fort Belknap and begin to break in the four horses to harness. Britt trot- ted Cajun at a slow and steady pace in the front, and as long as he kept this up, they would follow him.