At such times unexpected things could happen. Below them the cliff was pocked with caves. Buffalo Hump wondered if the jaguar lived in one of them. It soon became clear that no people were in the old camp. Three jackrabbits were nibbling at the bushes near the edge of the clearing, a thing that would not happen if the people were still nearby.
As he stood on the cliff looking down, Kicking Wolf suddenly had a memory of his friend Three Birds--a memory so strong that he began to tremble.
'What's wrong--why are you shaking like that?' Buffalo Hump asked.
'I was thinking of Three Birds,' Kicking Wolf said.
Although Buffalo Hump waited, Kicking Wolf did not say more, but he continued to tremble for some time.
Though Buffalo Hump hid himself well near the edge of the cliff, he soon realized that the eagles were not going to come anywhere near him, certainly not close enough that he could kill one with an arrow. One eagle did dip close enough to tempt him, but it was merely a trick on the eagle's part. He tilted and let the arrow pass under his wing --x fell all the way to the bottom of the cliff, so far that Buffalo Hump lost sight of it.
'Let's go down,' he said to Kicking Wolf.
'I want to find my arrow.' Once they rode into the camp at the base of the Yellow Cliffso they saw that no people had been there for some time.
'The jaguar was here,' Buffalo Hump said.
'The Apache who spoke with Slow Tree did not lie.' Near one of the little caves they found some scat, and, everywhere, there were tracks. But the scat was old and none of the tracks were fresh. The jaguar had slept in a little cave near where the people had been.
He had left some of his hairs on the rock.
Carefully the two men collected as many hairs as they could--the hair of a jaguar would be very useful to Worm or the other medicine men.
While Buffalo Hump finished collecting the hairs, and some of the scat to be used in medicine, Kicking Wolf walked a good distance along the base of the cliff, looking for any trace of his friend. They had looked in the smelly pit and determined that the hastily buried bodies in it were Mexican. There was nothing of Three Birds in the pit, and it was not he rotting from the post in the center of what had been the camp. Yet Kicking Wolf felt that Three Birds would not have come to him so powerfully in memory if his remains, or at least some part of them, were not near the cliff somewhere.
'Be careful,' Buffalo Hump told him.
'The jaguar might be clever. He might be hiding.' Kicking Wolf did not answer. He wanted to be away from Buffalo Hump for a while.
Buffalo Hump was so strong in himself that when you were with him it was hard to think about other people, even such an old friend as Three Birds.
Kicking Wolf thought that if he just got away from Buffalo Hump for a while he might receive another strong memory and be able to locate some trace of his friend; his thinking was correct. Near the base of the cliff, below where the cages hung, Kicking Wolf found the bones of the Comanche Three Birds. The bones were scattered and most of them broken, with only a little skin clinging to them here and there, but when Kicking Wolf found the skull he knew that he had located his friend. Three Birds had a knot, a little ridge of bone, located just below his left temple. As a boy he had been hit in the head with a war club while playing at war with the other boys: the blow left the little ridge or knot of bone behind his temple.
Kicking Wolf looked up at the cliff, so high that it was hard to see the top--there two eagles were soaring. He wondered if Ahumado had had Three Birds thrown from the cliff, or if he had fallen out of one of the cages. It might be that he had jumped, in hopes of becoming a bird as he was falling to his death.
Kicking Wolf knew that he would never know the answer to that question, but at least he had found what he had journeyed to Mexico to find.
He went back to his horse and got a deerskin he had brought just for that purpose; then he wrapped the bones of Three Birds carefully in the deerskin and tied them securely with a rawhide thong. Buffalo Hump came to him as he was working. When Kicking Wolf showed him the skull and the hand he merely said, 'Ho!' and helped Kicking Wolf search the site so they would not miss any bones. It was Buffalo Hump who found one of Three Birds' feet.
The next day the two of them left the canyon of the Yellow Cliffs. Kicking Wolf carried the bones of Three Birds tied safely in the deerskin. He meant to take them to Three Birds' brother.
'We must come back soon and catch those wild horses,' he said to Buffalo Hump, as they were crossing the river, back into Texas.
'I have never known a man who wanted horses so much,' Buffalo Hump said. Book III
Augustus McCrae was sitting at the bedside of his second wife, Nellie, when Woodrow Call tapped lightly on the door.
Bright sunlight poured through the window, but, to Gus's eye, the sunlight only pointed up the shabbiness of the two poor rooms where Nellie was having to die. There was no carpet on the floor, and the curtains were dusty; the windows faced on Austin's busiest street--horses and wagons were always throwing up dust.
'Come in,' Augustus said. Call opened the door and stepped inside. The sick woman was pale as a bedsheet, as she had been for several weeks. He thought it could not be long before Nellie McCrae breathed her last.
Augustus, weary and confused, held one of the dying woman's hands.
'Well, what's the news, Woodrow?' he asked.
'War--civil war,' Call said. 'War between the North and the South. The Governor just found out.' Augustus didn't answer. Nellie was in a war, too, at the moment, and was losing it. Thought of a larger war, one that could split the nation, seemed remote when set beside Nellie's ragged breathing.
'The Governor would like to see us, when you can spare a moment,' Call said.
