“Why would I want to?he’s a goddamn stinking Indian,” Sam said.
Kicking Wolf at once wanted the Negro boy. When the boy was brought out of the wagon, naked, and saw Buffalo Hump, he was so frightened that he tried to run away, speeding on his little legs toward the ridge the sand spumed over. The Comanche braves followed, curious; Kicking Wolf and the others had seen few blacks. They thought the boy might be some kind of small black animal?perhaps he could be trained to gather firewood, or just be kept as a pet, like a bear cub. Just as the little black boy was about to get to the ridge, Kicking Wolf picked him up, screaming, and brought him back to the wagons.
“That’s my brat, give him back,” Joe Nibbs said. Kicking Wolf, too, was a man to be wary of?everyone on the plains knew what a good thief he was. Joe and Sam had two extra donkeys with them, besides the horses that pulled the wagons. He meant to see that the donkeys were close hobbled that night, else Kicking Wolf would come back and take them.
Kicking Wolf motioned toward two of the captives, indicating that he would trade them for the black boy. Before Joe Nibbs could even walk over and inspect the children, to be sure that they were healthy, Buffalo Hump lowered his lance and put it in front of the children. Kicking Wolf had not set foot in Mexico. Who was he to be offering the captives in trade? While they had been raiding he had lingered near the Pecos, torturing one scalp hunter to death. Of course, Kicking Wolf had made many raids and taken many children?he would have to be allowed some booty. But he could not simply trade away children that were not his. Fast Boy had taken the two children in question?if anyone had the right to dispose of them, it should be he.
Kicking Wolf was very annoyed by Buffalo Hump’s intervention. He himself, not Buffalo Hump, was the great child thief. He had taken more than fifty children from their homes, and brought them north. It was because of his skill as a child thief that the tribe had had plenty of knives the last few winters. Who was Buffalo Hump to deny him two children, when all he wanted in exchange was the small black animal?
“Even swap?even swap,” Joe Nibbs said, pointing at a Mexican boy who was about the same size as the little Negro. He didn’t like trading blacks, not on the plains. He had only given a packet of needles and a small blanket for the black boy. In the south it was profitable to trade little blacks, but not on the plains, and even less so west of the Carlsbad Mountains. The Apaches had superstitions about blacks?they usually killed them.
Buffalo Hump allowed the trade?one Mexican child for the black cub Kicking Wolf held. He had merely lowered his lance to remind Kicking Wolf that he was not the war chief. Of course,Kicking Wolf was an unusually good raider; the need to torture Kirker had distracted him; but his pride had to be considered. He could have the black cub.
Joe Nibbs produced tobacco, and the trading went quickly. Buffalo Hump kept four captives, including the girl, Rosa. The other three were Mexican boys old enough to be useful slaves. The others he traded for three boxes of knives, many needles, some mirrors, a box of fishhooks, and four rifles. Several of his younger braves considered themselves to be great marksmen. It was well enough to take a few guns for them to break.
“He don’t like guns much,” Sam said, to Joe. “He only took four. How are we going to get this girl if he won’t take guns?”
Rosa, still tied, sat by a little bush near Buffalo Hump’s horse. She had seen the two traders looking at her?she felt no hope. Either the white men or the Comanches would use her and kill her. She watched the sand spuming over the ridge as the wind gusted. She wished she could simply lie down and be covered with sand; be dead; be at peace. She watched the sand come, and tried not to think.
Joe Nibbs was wondering the same thing as Sam?what could he offer Buffalo Hump that might make him part with the girl?
“I’ve got that old Gypsy glass,” he said. Some months before he had found a wagon and a dead man, an old Gypsy, on the Kansas plain near Fort Lawrence. Probably the old man had been killed by Pawnees, who had ripped up his body and his wagons, taken his whiskey, and left. Joe had happened to notice something shining through a crack in the wagon bed, and had discovered a ball of glass, or crystal, hidden so well that the Pawnees had not noticed it.
“He might want that glass,” he said, going to his wagon and taking the glass from a blanket he had wrapped it in. It was the size of a small melon. When you looked into it, it made your face elongated.
“It’s Gypsy glass?take it to your medicine man, he can use it for prophesying,” Joe said, offering the ball of glass to Buffalo Hump.
All the warriors crowded around, exclaiming at the way the glass made their faces long. Buffalo Hump thought the glass a very odd thing?he turned it over and over, and let his young braves handle it. It was clearly a thing of power, but he was not convinced that it could be used for prophesying.
“Yes, it’s a prophecy glass, that’s what it is,” Joe insisted. “Take it to your medicine man. It’ll tell him where the buffalo are, and when’s the best time to hunt. It’ll tell you when to go to war, and when to stay home.”
Buffalo Hump was not convinced, but as the afternoon waned, he began to want the glass. He wanted to take it home to his main camp and study it. Perhaps he would come to understand its power. His mother was old, and knew much. Perhaps she would understand why the glass made faces long.
He decided, though, to kill the traders, the old one and the young one, too. He meant to take all the knives; there were several more boxes in the wagons. With so many knives they would not need the traders for several winters; he did not want Joe Nibbs coming into his country with such a thing as the glass. If it was a prophecy glass, then it could do much evil. Some of his people grew sick and died, just from meeting with the whites. With such a glass the old trader might cause many deaths. The glass might be a trick, to spread death among the Comanches, to get their robes and their horses and their hunting lands. The whites were always coming, up the rivers and creeks, always north and west, toward the Comancheria. Buffalo Hump thought the glass was a bad sign. He would take it to the main camp and let the old ones see it?perhaps one of them would know what to do.
Buffalo Hump left them the Mexican girl and took his braves over the ridge, where the sand spumed. Then he told his braves that he had decided to kill the traders, take back the captives, and get all the knives. Kicking Wolf wanted to go back with him and catch the white men and torture them, but Buffalo Hump wouldn’t let him. Instead, he gave him the glass that might be evil, and rode back alone. When he crossed the ridge of blowing sand, the old white man had already tied the girl to a wagon wheel and was abusing her. The young white man sat on the tailgate of the wagon and waited his turn. Buffalo Hump walked quietly, over the soft sand. He had his lance, and a knife.
Sam Douglas sat on the wagon, trying to decide whether to take one of the nine-year-old Mexican girls, or wait for night, when old Joe would be sleeping. Then he could do what he pleased with Rosa. He had meant to leave the nine-year-olds alone, but after all, why should he? They were slaves. They were there. Old Joe was tiresome, when he had a new slave to abuse. He might keep Rosa tied to the wagon wheel for hours.
Then, before he knew it, Sam Douglas found himself doing the one thing he had vowed not to do: he looked straight into Buffalo Hump’s eyes.
It was a mistake: he knew it. He had thought the big Indian was gone. But there he was: the animal, the panther, the bear.
The next second, Buffalo Hump drove his knife straight down through Sam Douglas’s skull. One of the Mexican captives screamed. The old trader, Joe Nibbs, had his hammer in his hand. When he turned, Buffalo Hump threw the lance?the distance was short. Half the lance came out the other side of Joe Nibbs’s body and stuck in the ground, so that his torso was tilted slightly back. He was still alive; he dropped his hammer. Buffalo Hump picked it up and hit him at the base of the neck. Joe Nibbs’s head flopped back, like a chicken’s.
Then the warriors came back; they took the captives, the knives, the donkeys. They decided to burn the wagons and camp for the night; they could eat all the white men’s food.
Buffalo Hump could not get his knife out of Sam Douglas’s skull. It was stuck so deep that not even his strength was enough to pull it out. The braves laughed. Their own war chief had stuck a perfectly good knife into a white man’s skull so deeply that he could not get it out. Finally, Buffalo Hump smashed the skull with the old slaver’s hammer and freed his knife.
Rosa, the young captive, could not stop weeping. She hurt from what the man with the hammer had done to her. She wanted to be with her mother, her brother, and little sisters; but she knew she could not go home. She had been with the Comanche; the people of her village would consider her disgraced, if she went home. She wept, and listened to the sand; she wished that she could sleep beneath the sand, breathe it into her, and die. But she could not; she could only weep, and be cold, and wait for the big Comanche who sat nearby, holding the rawhide string that bound her wrists.
