The Texans (16 page)

Little Bull looked to the boy sheepishly. “Well, I'd say that went well.”

“Father, when I'm a man I think I will have only one wife,” Pony Heart said seriously.

Little Bull tried to keep a straight face and clapped the boy on the back. “You are wise beyond your years. Let's leave the women to their warpath and see if we can fix Badger's hoof.”

Pony Heart held Badger's rope while his father picked up the lame foot. The boy hoped that some day he would have a buffalo runner as good as the gray. Once Little Bull had been offered fifty horses for Badger, but refused. Like the ill-tempered, masked burrower of the plains that was his namesake, Badger was gritty and tough. While there were swifter runners, Badger never seemed to tire or want to quit, and he had never fallen, even at a dead run over the roughest ground. Once brought alongside a running buffalo he would guide himself in for a close thrust from his rider's lance or a shot from his bow. He would pin his little ears back and willingly rub shoulder to shoulder with a half-ton animal that could gore him to death with one swipe of his curved black horns.

“Come see.” Little Bull held the horse's hoof between his knees and waited for the boy to walk around for a better view.

“What's the matter with his hoof?”

“See the little spot where the sole is soft and wet?”

“Yes.”

“He has bruised it on a rock or something, and it's rotting from the inside. We need to cut a hole to let the poison drain out.”

“Will he heal?” Pony Heart was genuinely troubled by the thought that Badger might be forever crippled. He had always envisioned his first hunt on the back of the gray.

Little Bull took his knife's point and carefully drilled into the sole of the hoof. He only had to dig a little ways before serum and stinking pus ran from the hole. The abscess was deep, and he widened the drain before setting the foot down.

“I think he'll be fine before long. We'll pack the sole of his hoof with your mother's good poultice for the next few days,” Little Bull said.

Buffalo Butt had already gotten over her mad enough to bring them a moist pack of clay and various herbs known only to her, and they tied it in place with a soft strip of deer hide. Little Bull led the horse to a picket rope near the tepee and staked him out where he could graze but still be close to hand.

“I think he is walking better already,” Pony Heart said.

“Yes, I believe you're right. He'll be ready to run buffalo again before too long.”

Pony Heart looked at his father adoringly. “When will I know all the things you know?”

Little Bull laughed and jumped on his black warhorse, then swung his son up behind him. “You will be a man soon, but ride with me today just as my son.”

Pony Heart had been riding his own horse since he was three, and he knew his friends would tease him when they saw him riding double behind his father. He started to ask to retrieve his own horse but thought better of it. He hugged close and smiled around his father's broad back as they passed through the camp. His friends could think what they wanted. None of them had a father like Little Bull.

They wove through the cluster of tepees scattered along the shallow river until they reached the far edge of camp. Two elderly squaws were beating a young white woman with switches and shouting at her. The slave had dropped the water buckets she had been carrying and was cowered on the ground with her knees drawn up and her arms protecting her head. Bloody welts already crisscrossed her back and legs, and she whimpered pitifully.

Little Bull didn't stop, but Pony Heart studied the filthy, half-naked white girl in passing. “Why must they beat her so? Can't they see she won't get up?”

Little Bull cast a bland glance back behind him at the captive girl lying in the trail while they splashed across the river. “Have no pity for the Tejano slave. She is less than nothing.”

“But you told me there is no pride in killing a weak enemy.”

Little Bull pulled up his horse halfway up the side of the mountain where he had sat earlier that morning. He sighed and reminded himself to be patient with his son. “Yes, but I did not say there was no pleasure in it. Revenge is big medicine, and it is good for our people to see our enemies captive and crying out in pain like babies. A people who hate strongly will fight strongly. It has always been our way.”

Pony Heart wrinkled his brow. “What if the warrior who captured her takes her as his wife?”

“Some captive wives become Comanche, others just bear children until they can be ransomed. You already know these things and are talking yourself in circles.”

“But even if she becomes Comanche, her white body will still be the same.”

“But her heart will not be. At least for now, that one is still a slave and her masters can do what they will with her. She will be beaten until she sees that we are superior to all men. If she is strong, maybe she will live to raise more Comanche; if she is weak, she will die.”

He swept his hand before him, tracing the arc of the horizon around them. “All that you see is ours. None of our enemies have yet stood long before us. The corn growers cower in their villages because we let them so that we will have trade for our horses. The Lipan and the Tonkawa have fled east before our fury, and the Mexicans are weak and only know how to die.”

“I understand these things you say, but why do you hate the Tejanos so much? All of the Kotsoteka speak of your hatred and how you will ride far to raid them even when other enemies are closer.” The boy hoped his face looked as fierce as his father's.

Little Bull swung his left leg over his horse's neck and dropped to the ground. He took hold of Pony Heart's leg with one hand and looked up into his eyes with an anger simmering there that scared the boy. “You remember this always. The Tejanos are different. They are still learning this land, but most of them fight and die well. And they have one thing that can't be tolerated or forgiven. To do so will be the end of us.”

His father's grip was digging painfully into his leg and Pony Boy bit his lip and tried to think. “What thing is that?”

“Pride.”

“Pride?”

“Our pride is our strength. As long as we are fearless we are proud, and as long as we are proud we will be fearless and hold these plains forever. But the Tejanos have a strange pride too, and there is no room for two such people.” Little Bull softened his grip, embarrassed that he was so caught up in the passion of the truth that he hadn't noticed he was hurting the boy.

“The Lipans and the Tonkawas have made peace with the Tejanos.” Pony Heart's voice was a whisper, and he felt that perhaps he had caused his father's anger.

“Without fighting there is no life for us, no warriors, no Kotsoteka, no Comanche. We would grow weak and die. We would become like the Tonkawas and the Apaches who the Tejanos have conquered with this word ‘peace.' What is peace? I say there can be no such thing between true enemies.”

“My enemies.” Pony Heart's little chin lifted defiantly.

“They are the worst of our enemies. In your time you shall see the truth of this. There is no room here for both, and one of us must die,” Little Bull said. “We are the People and the pale-faced Tejano thinks he is the people. That is his pride too. He cries that the Comanche break their word when the old chiefs bluster of peace, but the Tejano breaks his word too when it suits him. My father, your grandfather, went to one such gathering at the old Mexican village on the River of the Bells, and the Tejanos tried to take him prisoner after promising peace.”

“He shouldn't have trusted the Tejanos.” Pony Heart felt his own anger rising up in him.

“You are right to never trust them, no more than they should trust us. They claimed your grandfather had agreed to bring in all the Tejano women and children held captive by the Comanche. He tried to tell them that he had brought in all that he had, and that he had no control over the other bands. They claimed he was holding prisoners back to bargain for more of their goods later, and they killed him.”

“They killed him?”

“They were going to make him their captive, and that is death enough for a Comanche warrior. He fought them with his knife until they shot him many times with their guns.”

“I will fight the Tejanos.”

“I know you will. You have the heart to be a great warrior and killer of our enemies. So, feel no mercy for that pale girl being beaten with switches, or for the scalps you see hanging in our lodge. Slay the Tejanos where you can find them until there are no more of them left to die. Steal their horses and their women and children until you are rich and well satisfied.”

“I promise, Father, I will.”

Little Bull jumped up behind Pony Heart this time and started them down off the mountain. He hugged the boy tight to his chest and told him of all the Comanches who had died at the Tejanos' hands, of the sicknesses the white men brought, and the treachery of their lies and promises. He told the boy of mighty Comanche warriors of old and of their great deeds in battle against all comers, and how the people had ridden from the north long before to conquer many tribes and come to rule over Comancheria. He recited the names of their enemies by rote and then Pony Heart repeated them to himself silently.

“Remember that the bull of the herd always has the most to lose and has to fight to keep what is his. We are the bull and our enemies are many. The Tejanos killed my family until there was once only me. Now I have a strong son and I will fight them for you as long as I can, but one day it will be your glory.”

“Will it take so long?”

Little Bull scanned the horizon to the east. “I don't know their numbers or the land where they come from. The Comanche have killed many Tejanos, but there are always more. My heart tells me there will still be plenty for you to kill when you come of age.”

“One day I will ride with you against the Tejanos,” Pony Heart said.

“You will, but that is for another day. For now, let's ride down and see how badly Speckled Tail is beaten.” Little Bull ruffled the boy's hair and grinned.

When they crossed the river the white captive girl was still lying there, but the old women had finally walked off and left her. Pony Heart looked down at her angrily and spat on her bloodied back as they passed. “Enemy.”

“Never forget that, and who you are. Without enemies there can be no Comanche,” Little Bull said.

“I promise I will never forget.” Pony Heart hugged his father's forearm to him and began again to say the list of his enemies over and over to himself.

Chapter 18

T
he moon was so bright and low in the sky that it almost felt as if Odell could ride his horse right up and touch it. It was as if it was no moon at all, but rather something unreal hovering in the dark night. He had slipped away from his second camp with the Prussian's war party to ride out upon the expanse—looking for something and finding another thing altogether. He sat Crow in silence and felt small upon the face of the earth. The white light lay gently on the land and the silhouettes of brush, cacti, grass, and the dry waste of the plain were lit in soft, glowing black—all somehow made alien and magical under the illumination of the strange moon. He had only intended to be alone with his thoughts and not to ride into a different world.

Trouble rode Odell's soul with sharp spurs, and the nights could be especially bad. Often, when sleep wouldn't come and doubts and frustrations crept in on him, he went out alone to do nothing more than sit his horse in the dark. The quiet and the emptiness surrounding him calmed him like a lullaby, and his thoughts came clearer.

The wind had lost the day's heat, and it touched his face like a cool kiss. Crow was still beneath him and the weight of his rifle lay heavy across his thighs. The months on the trail had left him wild and unkempt, and hard living and loss had left his heart equally ragged. He removed his broad hat and bowed his head and ran a hand up his forehead and back through the tangled mop of his hair. He did so more out of weariness than anything else, but anyone watching would have thought him some pagan bowing before the white orb of the heavens. But truly, there was something in the wide land of his wanderings that spoke to him.

Red Wing was somewhere out there, and his eyes inadvertently made a search of the distances for the glow of a fire, as he did almost every night, but there was nothing to make him feel any closer to her. He wondered if she too saw the big moon, and he swore for the thousandth time he wouldn't quit. He had lost everything dear to him but her, and no matter how long and how far he had to ride, he was going to find her.

He was lost in his thoughts and the buffalo came very near to him on the upwind side before he even knew they were there. It wasn't a large herd, just stragglers from the massive yearly migration north. They passed before him single-file like phantoms. Their humped shadows, bovine grunts, and the brush of their hooves in the grass were all that connected them to the earth. Although the herd was just an old bull and a half dozen cows and calves, he swore that he could feel the heat off of them and smell the musky earth matted into their wooly heads.

The wind must have shifted or they finally noticed him for what he was, for the ghosts lifted their tails and stampeded straight into the moon. Their dust floated up in the moonlight like a thin black veil on the backlit skyline, and he waited to breathe until the dull throb of hooves was gone to his ears and vibrated no more in his heart. Somewhere in the way off, coyotes yipped and yapped until a lone wolf answered them with a long, low wail. And then there was silence once again except for the occasional creak of his saddle when Crow shifted beneath him.

He sat long before the moon until the bawdy laughter of the Texans and the raspy voice of Son Ballard lifted from the camp. Sound carried well in the night, but Odell only half paid attention to the goings-on at the campfire far behind him. He didn't have to catch every word to know what kind of stories Son and the other men were telling. It would be tales of brave men come to hard ends and violent deaths, of bitter fights with Indians and weather, of bad horses too wild to tame, and of abandoned homesteads and starved-out pilgrims too soft for Texas. Like all good frontier sorts, the Prussian's party scoffed at destiny and consequences and the fickle twists of fate that could take your life just as quickly as it brought you fortune. Laughing at what could kill you didn't make you stronger, but it passed the time and made such men bolder by the telling.

Odell was in no mood for storytelling. Somewhere out in the black, Red Wing was waiting. He turned Crow around and started at a slow walk back to camp. Just beyond the edge of the firelight he spied the shadow of a man afoot.

“You should be careful about wandering so far from camp in Indian country, Herr Odell. I would've thought you'd learned that by now,” the Prussian said. “You know that is a Comanche moon.”

“I didn't see any Indians about.” Odell stopped Crow beside the Prussian's shoulder.

“What did you see?”

Odell waited long to answer. “I don't know just what I saw. I don't think I've the words for it.”

The Prussian dragged hard on his pipe until the red glow of it faded and died. “Just the same, a man could get himself killed wandering around in the dark.”

Odell waited again to answer. He could just make out the Prussian banging his pipe against his palm and dumping his tobacco ashes out.

“You should be careful yourself, Karl. A man can start a fire if he isn't careful.” Odell rode on into camp and didn't hear the Prussian's answer, if there was one. He went to sleep on the ground with Crow's hackamore rope in his hand and the black horse standing over him like a sentinel.