horseflesh himself. What he knew was that Kicking Wolf was tricky and that he ought to be wary of the horses that Kicking Wolf praised the most.
It amused him to think that this boy, this half-white war chief, Quanah, might know the same thing: that Kicking Wolf was sly, too sly to be easily trusted when it came to horses.
Naduah was nursing the child when the other women began to scream. She had been dreaming while the little girl nursed, dreaming of the warm lodge they could build if Peta was successful in the hunt and brought some good skins for her to clean and tan. The men had left early, to hunt--only an hour before, Peta had been there.
There were a few slaves in the camp, young Kickapoos who had been caught only a week before. The white men charging at them on the horses were shooting the young slaves, thinking they were warriors. Before Naduah could run, the Texans were all around her. Her little girl, Flower, was a speedy child; she was almost two years old and could run as fast as any of the little children in the camp.
Before Naduah could flee, Flower dropped the breast and ran, crazed with fear of the Texans.
She almost ran under one of the charging horses, but the rider pulled up just in time. The wind was up--dust swirled through the camp. In the confusion, with the dust blinding them, the Texans were shooting at anyone who ran, whether woman or slave. Naduah only wanted to catch her child before one of the horses injured her. Her hope was that Peta and the other hunters would hear the shooting and come back to attack the Texans.
Just as Naduah caught up with her little girl she turned and saw two men aiming rifles at her. They were going to shoot her down. The wind blew her clothes away from her legs. She held tightly to Flower, regretting that there was no time to hide her. If she could just hide the child well, then even if she herself were killed the men would return and find her. Flower would live.
Naduah thought death was coming, but the first man suddenly lifted his rifle and put out his hand to keep the other Texan from shooting. The first rider jumped off his horse and grabbed Naduah, to pull her aside so that none of the Texans would ride her down or shoot her. Some of the other women had been killed, and others were fleeing with their children. Naduah tried to pull free and run, but the man who held her was strong; though she fought and scratched she could not break free.
When the shooting stopped several of the Texans gathered around her--theirthe smell was terrible. They peered into her eyes and rubbed her skin. One even lifted her garments to stare at her legs. Naduah thought rape was coming, the rape that many women experienced when a camp was invaded. The Texans kept rubbing her skin, arguing with one another. Naduah thought they were only arguing about who would rape her first, but the men didn't rape her. Instead, they began to make plans to take her with them--when Naduah saw what they were about she began to scream and try to free herself. She could not stand the touch of a Texan: their breath smelled like the breath of animals and their eyes were cruel.
Naduah screamed and fought; when she got a hand free she began to rake at herself, clawing at her breast to make herself bloody and ugly, so the Texans would leave her to run away with the other women. She knew Peta would come back, if she could only find a hiding place where she could wait for him.
The Texans would not free her, though. They tied her hands and put her on a horse, but Naduah immediately rolled off and ran a few steps before the Texans caught her again. This time, when they put her on the horse, they tied her feet under the horse's belly, so she could not get free. Some of the men rode off rapidly toward the west, in the direction Peta had gone with the other hunters. Naduah hoped that Peta was too far away for the Texans to catch. There were too many Texans for Peta and the few hunters to fight.
Other warriors had already taken the stolen horses north--it was mainly the horses that the Texans wanted.
Soon the riders came back and the Texans began to ride south. Naduah screamed and struggled with her bonds. She wanted the Texans to leave her. Two women lay dead at the edge of the camp, shot by the Texans in the first charge.
But Naduah was tied to the horse and could not escape. She wished she could be dead, like the women whose bodies she had seen. She thought it would be better to be dead than to be taken by the Texans, men whose breath smelled like the breath of beasts.
'She might be the Parker girl,' Goodnight said, as they rode away from the Comanche camp. The blue-eyed woman tied to the horse behind them screamed as if her life were ending. Call had his doubts about taking the woman back; even Goodnight, who led the horse she was on, seemed to have his doubts. All of them had seen what happened when captive white women were returned to white society. Grief was what happened, and the longer the captivity the less likely it was that the women could accept what they would have to face, or be accepted even by the families who had wanted them back. Most of the returned captives soon died.
'The Parker girl was taken twenty-five years ago,' Call reminded Goodnight.
'Comanche women themselves mostly don't live that long. I doubt any white woman could survive it.' 'I know I couldn't survive twenty-five years in one of their camps,' Augustus said.
'If I couldn't get to a saloon now and then I'd pine away.' He said it in jest, hoping to lighten the general mood, but the jest failed. The mood was grim and stayed grim. They had killed six Comanche women as they charged into the camp; they had also killed three Kickapoo captives who were only boys. It was not their practice to kill women or the young, but the men were frightened, the dust was bad, and they knew there was a band of Comanche hunters in camp or not far away. At such times fear and blood lust easily combined--it was impossible to control nervous, frightened men in such a situation; men, in particular, who had good reason to hate all Comanches. Except for the new soldiers there was scarcely a man in the troop who had not lost loved ones in the Comanche raids.
Killing women left a bad taste in the mouth.
But the deed was done: they had killed six. The women were dead. There was nothing to do but go home.
They were all troubled by the woman's screaming, and by the way she ripped at her breast when she saw that they meant to take her. Despite her blue eyes and white skin, the poor woman thought she was Comanche; she wanted to stay with the people she felt and believed to be her own. Taking captive women back was not a duty any of the men could be sure of or be easy with. Of course, leaving a white woman with the Comanches would have been just as hard and left them just as uneasy.
'She doesn't know English,' Goodnight said. 'She's been with them so long she's forgot it.' 'In that case it would be a mercy to shoot her,' Call said. 'She'll never be right in the head.' 'I don't know why you think she's the Parker girl, Charlie,' Augustus said. 'That girl was taken before I was even a ranger, and I can't even remember what I was before I started being a ranger.' 'You were a loafer,' Call said, though he agreed with Gus's point. Sometimes Goodnight's opinions irritated him. The poor woman could be anybody, yet Goodnight had convinced
