Winter Rain

clothing. Rather than dressing the child in a small chemise and skirt, smaller copies of adult clothing, the woman had instead draped her daughter in what appeared to be a boy’s shirt, long enough to reach the crude, wet moccasins the child wore. It was plainly a pullover, three-button style, the sort to be found among most households on the southern plains, the sort offered for sale in any sutler’s or mercantile.

Yet this was not a white settlement, his thoughts boiled as he studied the child again.

“Step over here,” he told the woman gruffly, with roughness taking her elbow in his hand.

“Senor?”

“Come over here to the light,” he said, his voice low. “I don’t mean to frighten you.”

Her eyes pleaded with him. “My child, Senor.”

“Yes, I know,” he replied, trying to smile at the young girl. “Just … just bring her into the light.”

That look of fear still captured on her face, the whore did as Hook demanded, reluctantly bringing her young daughter closer to the light.

When he reached out to touch the long hem of the shirt, the child shrieked and the woman pulled back. “No. Just tell her not to be afraid. I won’t hurt her. Only want to look at this shirt”

“She grows so fast, Senor,” the woman began to explain, apologetically. “I can’t keep her in nice things—a child that plays in the streets when my mother watches her. I go to work and my mother watches—”

“All right,” he interrupted the whore, having inspected the dingy, faded hem of the shirt. “Turn her around. I want to see in the back of the dress, Senorita. Please, turn your daughter around so that I can look.”

In curiosity the woman turned her daughter’s back toward Hook. He gently pushed aside the child’s long hair and twisted open the back of the collar.

“Over here—to the light more.”

She cooperated by leaning the child more into the candlelight on the narrow table where Two Sleep sat watching the whole process with curious eyes of his own.

Jonah felt it rush over him as he let go the collar of the shirt. He touched it with his fingertips, running his hand down the full length of the child’s back until his hand rested on the woman’s bare forearm.

“What do you want for the dress?”

Her eyes narrowed. “Senor?”

“How much will you take for the child’s dress?”

“I do not understand—”

He turned abruptly and dragged up his outer coat, stuffing his hand into a small inside pocket. Pulling out a small skin pouch, Jonah brought forth a single eagle into the candlelight. She gasped slightly at the sight of the gold piece, her eyes grown even bigger while the frightened child buried her face in the crook of her mother’s shoulder.

“I’ll pay for the dress.”

“Senor, I do not know what to say—”

“Say yes,” he interrupted, his mind scratching for more of the Spanish words to express it. All of it was coming so hard—staring at that scrap of shirting hung over the small child like a simple sack dress: … how dingy, dirty, sun faded, and stained. Across all these years.

Then he thought to remind her, “You won’t earn this kind of money in a week. In a month. Will you?”

Reluctantly, the whore shook her head, clutching her daughter ever tighter. “I … I am not sure I should —”

Dragging out another single eagle, Jonah told her with a low, even voice, “All right, I’ll give you the two of them. For that dress your daughter wears. With this you can buy her, and yourself, many dresses now.”

She swallowed, as if something dry and unforgiving were lodged in her throat, then reached out for the two shiny coins.

Jonah pulled them back, just out of reach—tantalizing. “But first, you tell me if there are any comancheros in this village.”

Her brow knitted in concern. “Si.” She nodded. “There are a few. Why do you —”

“Good.” He glanced at Two Sleep, seeing the interest there lighting the Shoshone’s face. “Now we are making ground. I think you got this dress from one of the comancheros, yes?”

She nodded again. “Yes.”

“Take it off your daughter and give it to me.”

“I have … don’t have nothing else to put her in. Not another dress.”

“Put her coat on her now and give me the dress … that shirt.”

As her eyes fell away, the woman sought to apologize. “Yes, Senor—it is a shirt. The only thing I could afford when the comancheros bring clothing to sell.”

As she set the girl on the hearth beside the fire and took up the threadbare coat, preparing to pull the thin, faded garment from the child’s skinny frame, the woman gazed up at Hook, her eyes pleading. “You are really … really going to give us those coins?”

“Yes,” he answered, holding them out to her. “I am an honest man. I will never steal from a mother. Never would I steal from a child.”

As she pulled the garment over her daughter’s head and quickly put the thin coat on the child, Jonah felt Two Sleep step up beside him in the firelight. Hook asked the woman, “How do the comancheros have clothing to sell?”

Her eyes went to the floor again as she rose and handed him the limp, much-washed shirting. “It was so dirty when I bought it. But I knew it was big enough, it would fit her for some time to come.”

He pressed the two coins into her hand. “How did the comancheros have this?”

With abject apology in her eyes, the woman looked up from the coins in her palm and replied, “They take the clothing from the American children they buy from the Comancherias.”

His mouth went dry, his tongue almost pasty, slow and clumsy to move of a sudden. “Where did the comancheros go with the child who wore this?” He held its faded shadows out before him, as if beckoning for her to answer.

Instead, she shook her head, her lips trembling. “Please, Senor. Take that and go. Give me your money, or no. But just go.”

Jonah took a step closer to her, towering over the small woman now. “I will go, but only when I have your answer. Where did the comancheros take the child who wore this shirt?”

Again she shook her head, gazing up at his face, her eyes swimming with tears, imploring him, her words coming hard. “There was no … no child. Only this.” She touched the garment, then knotted her hands in the front of her chemise, beginning to sob. “I think I know now why you came here. To our village.”

He was slow putting it into order in his mind. “You are telling me you don’t know of the child the comancheros took this from? The child who wore this shirt?”

“All I know,” she answered, dragging a hand beneath her nose, “I heard them tell a story that they had bought that with some other clothes from a band of Comancheria.” She pointed. “To the north in the forbidden land where the comancheros go to trade with the Indians.”

“Wait,” he said angrily, confused. “You are telling me there was no child sold to the comancheros? Only the shirt?”

She nodded, her eyes fluttering to the old Indian before she answered. “That is right. The story the Comancheria told the traders was that their warriors had killed another band of bad comancheros—distrusted ones—then the Indians took the white children from the traders they killed. When the children outgrew the clothing, the Comancheria decided to trade it to other comancheros, as they did with other things the traders wanted.”

“Did the traders say … did anyone say anything about the children? How old they were? Boys?”

She wagged her head in resignation. “Nothing like that, Senor.”

“All right,” Jonah finally said, his tone softened now. Looking quickly at Two Sleep, he said in English, “We got a fresh trail to follow now, my friend.”

When the Shoshone had nodded, Hook turned back to the woman. He reached for her hand and laid another gleaming coin in the charcoal-stained palm. Then spoke in Spanish, “I have been waiting a long time to give this