took everyone by surprise, even Worm, who knew what Buffalo Hump felt about the proper modes of warfare.
'Those of you who have guns, throw them down,' Buffalo Hump said. 'Put them here in a pile, in front of me.' More than two hundred warriors had firearms of some sort--old pistols or muskets, in most cases, but, in some instances, good, well-functioning repeating rifles. They prized their firearms and were reluctant to give them up.
There were a few moments of silence and hesitation, but Buffalo Hump had planted himself before them and he did not look to be in a mood to compromise.
Even Blue Duck, who far preferred the rifle to the bow, did not say anything. He did not want to risk being chastised by his father in front of so many warriors.
Buffalo Hump had not expected all the warriors to be happy with his order. He was prepared to have it challenged. Many of the warriors were from bands who scarcely knew him, over whom he held no authority--except the authority of his presence. But he had thought much about the great raid they had embarked on. He knew it might be his last chance to beat back the white man, to cleanse the land of them and make it possible for the Comanche people to live as they had always lived, masters of the llano and all the prairies where they had always hunted. He wanted the warriors who rode with him to fight as Comanches had always fought, with the bow and the lance--and there were reasons for his decision other than his devotion to the old weapons.
After he had faced the warriors for a time, Buffalo Hump explained himself.
'We do not need these guns,' he said. 'They make too much noise. They scare away game that we might need to eat. Their sound carries so far the bluecoat soldiers might hear it. There are bluecoat soldiers in all the forts but we do not want to fight them yet. We will spread out soon. We will slip between the forts and kill the settlers before the soldiers know we are there. We must slip down on the settlers and go among them as quietly as the fog. We want to kill them before they can run and get the bluecoats. Kill them with your arrows. Kill them with your lances and your knives. Kill them quietly and we can ride on south and kill many more. We will go all the way to the Great Water, killing Texans.' He stopped, so the warriors could think over what he had said. He had spoken slowly, trying to bring all his power into the ^ws. His fear was that some of the young warriors would defy him and split off.
They might make their own raid, shouting and raping, in the way of young warriors. But if such a thing occurred there could be no great raid into the large towns of the whites. There were many forts now, all along the Brazos and the Trinity. Unless they could get below the forts, into the country where white settlers were thick as sage, the soldiers would pour out of the forts and come after them. Then the Comanches would have to defend themselves, rather than bringing war to the settlements. It was not what he wanted, not what he had prayed for.
The half-moon was still visible in the morning sky. Buffalo Hump pointed to it.
'Tomorrow we will break into small parties,' he said. 'We will fan out, as far as the headwaters of the Brazos. Go quietly between the forts and kill all the settlers you find. When the moon is full we will come back through the hills to the Colorado and strike Austin, and then San Antonio. When we have killed as many Texans as we can, we will go on to the Great Water. If the bluecoats come after us we can go into Mexico.' The warriors listened silently. There was no sound in the camp except the stamping and snorting of horses. No one, though, had stepped forward to lay down his gun. Buffalo Hump feared, for a moment, that he was not going to be obeyed. The warriors were too greedy and too lazy to surrender a gun, even a poor gun. With guns they didn't have to hunt so hard and carefully. Too many of them had ceased to depend on their bows, or to practice with them. He decided he had better keep speaking to them.
'Now is the time to fight as the old ones fought,' he said. 'The old ones had no trouble killing Texans with our own weapons. It was only when we first tried to use guns that we lost battles to the Texans. The old ones believed in the power of their weapons. They fought so hard that they made the Texans run back down the rivers. We took their women and made their children captives. The Mexicans feared us worse than they feared their own deaths. Leave your guns here and let us make war like the old ones made it.' At that point old Yellow Foot pushed through the crowd and put his musket on the ground. The musket looked even older than Yellow Foot, one of the oldest warriors to come on the raid. He had wrapped buffalo sinew around the gun so that the barrel would not jump off the stock when he shot at something. It was such a bad gun that no one wanted to stand near Yellow Foot when he shot it, for fear that it might do more damage to them than to whatever Yellow Foot was shooting at.
Nevertheless, Yellow Foot was very proud of his gun and wasted many bullets shooting at game that was too far away to hit. Twice he had killed young horses because his vision was poor and he mistook them for deer. Buffalo Hump was pleased when he saw the old warrior come forward.
Though a little crazy, Yellow Foot was much respected in the tribe because he had had over a dozen wives in his life and was known to be an expert on how to give women such extreme pleasure that they would remain jolly for weeks and not complain as other women did.
'I am leaving my gun,' Yellow Foot said. 'I don't want to smell all that gun grease anymore.' All the older warriors soon followed Yellow Foot's example and put their guns in a pile. Buffalo Hump said no more, but he did not move or look away, either. He looked from warrior to warrior, making them face and accept his command or else reject it in front of everybody. In the end only one warrior, a small, irritable man named Red Cat, refused to put his weapon on what had become a great pile. Though Blue Duck was almost the last man to lay his gun on the pile, he did finally put it there. Red Cat, who was indifferent to what any chief thought, kept his rifle.
Buffalo Hump did not want to make too big an issue of one gun.
'If you are going to keep that smelly gun, then raid far to the west, where the Brazos starts,' he asked. 'If there are any Texans out that way, you can shoot them. I don't think there are any bluecoats out there to hear you.' Red Cat made no answer, but he thought it was stupid of old Buffalo Hump to leave behind so many guns. He meant, when he had time, to slip back to where the guns were and pick out a new rifle for himself.
When Famous Shoes saw that the tracks of the Buffalo Horse were going straight into the Sierra Perdida, he sat down on a rock to think about it. Scull was studying a small cactus, for reasons Famous Shoes could not fathom. Very often Scull would notice a plant he was not familiar withand would stop and study it for many minutes, sometimes even sketching it in a small notebook he carried. Sometimes he would ask Famous Shoes about the plant, but often it would be a plant Famous Shoes had no use forand knew little about. Some plants were useful and many were very useful, yielding up medicines or food or, as in the case of some cactus buds, yielding up important visions. But, as with people, some plants were completely useless. When Scull stopped for a long stretch to examine some fossil in the rocks or some useless plant, Famous Shoes grew impatient.
Now he was very impatient. The little cactus Scull was studying was of no interest at all--all anyone needed to know about it was that its thorns were painful if they stuck you. Now the situation they faced was apt to be far more painful than the thorns of any cactus. They were near the country of Ahumado, the Black Vaquero, a man who had wounded Scull once and who would do worse than wound him if he took him prisoner. Scull needed to recognize that their situation was perilous. Under such circumstances, studying a cactus was not the proper behaviour for a captain.
