unsteady love. Would those hands now be gnarled and deformed as he had seen the hands of the old warriors become? Or would they still be strong and sure, unshaken as he took the reins of a team and moved them toward the field in need of planting?
Hands that would remain forever young with the elixir of a young boy’s dream.
Try as he might, even staring down at this wavering reflection in the cold stream, Tall One could not make himself believe this was a true picture of his father. The man would surely be much, much older now. After all, Tall One was himself.
Suddenly a cautious part of him reminded Tall One that it likely did not matter. Something mocked him— saying the man who had been his first father no longer existed. He had not come home from that war he marched off to fight, leaving his family behind. And even if in the realm of slim possibilities that man did survive the war… in the end his first father had simply ceased to exist.
No more did that life on that farm mean anything to him. It was something too remote, too foreign, too long ago to matter anymore. And those dimly focused people from his memories, the people who had shared his long- ago days and nights, the fights and the loving, the laughter and the tears—they too had simply ceased to exist in this new world of the Antelope People. That is, every one of those memory people except his brother, Antelope.
Antelope had always been, and always would be, Tall One’s brother.
It was that single handhold gripping something lasting and eternal that allowed Tall One to feel secure.
Over the seasons of wandering from camp to camp, from stream to stream, hunting and raiding, sleeping and eating in an endless cycle of nomadic wanderings, the boy had eventually grown accustomed to this life of change. Still, coming to accept it was nowhere like feeling secure. The way he had sensed a rock-steady security of day after day, season after season on that farm his family carved out of a valley so far, far away now. Secure in knowing what was expected of him by those he loved. Secure in knowing what to expect out of the turning of the seasons shared with those who loved him.
As much as the boy in him had reveled in the life of these nomads, the young man in him came to yearn every bit as much for something solid and lasting. To count on the rains of spring and the sun in summer, the chill of autumn’s harvest and the season of rest given a farmer come winter’s short days. If only …
It could not be! His life had changed irrevocably. The silly chores of a white man scratching at the earth no longer made any real sense to him. He was a warrior now—
Angrily Tall One plunged his hand into the cold stream; all the way to the muddy bottom he stirred savagely, his fury bringing the once-placid surface to a froth. Doing so, he churned the reflection as quickly as he dispatched all those memories recalled over all those seasons.
He would not allow himself to miss the life he had lived back then. For he never would live it again—
Turning at the distant sound, Tall One felt the sense of being out of place. If not he, then some thing.
A sound sullying the stillness of this morning. Low, rumbling, rolling downstream between the high canyon walls. Perhaps a warrior’s gun. Hunting—
The next crack in the pristine morning raised the hair on his neck. Another gunshot. And a third.
Then as Tall One rose on the muddy bank of the stream, there came a flurry of gunfire from upstream where the Kiowa and Cheyenne had camped. The medicine of those old Kiowa shamans had guaranteed this would be a sanctuary for them all—safe from attack by the pony soldiers.
Behind him the Kwahadi camp came to life. Men sprang from their lodges, pulling on clothing. Women began to drag sleepy children from the lodges, everyone clutching something important beneath an arm as they scurried downstream like a covey of frightened quail, away from the shooting. Into the noise and confusion Tall One raced, dodging little ones and old ones with big, frightened eyes, hurling himself around lodges and favored war ponies. Bridge stood outside the lodge, buckling on a belt shiny with cartridges.
“Your weapons—inside!”
Tall One plunged past him, finding the interior in disarray. He was alone. The rest of the family already gone in those first moments of gunfire up-canyon. From the dewcloth liner the young man tore free his medicine bag, which he draped over his left shoulder, then pulled down the wolf-skin quiver that rattled, heavy with arrows, and his short cherry wood bow. He dived through the doorway as Bridge turned to him.
“Take this, Tall One!” he ordered, shoving an old pistol into the young warrior’s hand.
“It is loaded?”
“Yes,” the old warrior said.
“I … I never shot this before—”
“It does not matter. You will learn how to shoot it well before the sun rises to midsky,” he replied sternly, his eyes narrowing on the youth. “Fight well this day, Tall One. And remember: you are Kwahadi!”
Bridge whirled, setting off.
Tall One called out. “Four Spirits Woman? She and the children?”
Bridge turned, his face grim in determination. “I have sent them on downstream with the others. Into the rocks to hide.”
In the distance rose the brass-throated eruption of a soldier bugle echoing off the blood-red walls of this canyon.
Bridge stared for a moment as the sound echoed from the canyon walls. “They will be safe, Tall One. Be strong this day—we Kwahadi must not fall!”
He watched his second father wheel and disappear, melding into the confusion as people and ponies swept past him.
“Bridge, let me fight beside you!” he shouted. But it was too late. Already the man was gone too far, and the noise too great for Bridge to hear him.
The Comanche village was cleaving itself asunder: women and children, along with the old ones, all headed downstream while the warriors rushed upstream toward the sound of the gunfire becoming more general now. As the women wailed and keened their mourning and death songs, men raised their voices in anger, rage, fury—in the terrible mocking of death.
Where was Antelope?
He feared fighting alone, perhaps even dying alone. Not having his brother by his side when they finally clashed with the soldiers. Grudgingly he admitted that his brother might be more Comanche than he was. Might be more Kwahadi than Tall One ever would be.
It had always helped to have Antelope beside him as they rode with the others, caught up in the swirl of things before he had time to think, to feel, to fear. To doubt.
He dared not allow himself any doubt—
Crying out with his own war cry, Tall One dived into the rush and blur with the others as they hurried, most on foot, some on horseback, to the sound of the fight upstream. Sharp cracks of the Indian weapons punctuated the low booming of the soldier rifles in a two-note symphony reverberating down the twisting path of the Prairie Dog Town Fork. The simple act of crying out, letting his lungs roar against what residue of fear he might still hide in his heart, helped Tall One once more shed the last paralyzing hold that fear itself had on him. It had always been easier to hurl himself in with the others, let them sweep him along, let them do the leading so that he did not have to think. Only follow.
As he joined them, Tall One was struck with a singular thought: that none of the men, young warriors or old, had painted themselves or taken any time to put on their hair ornaments. He fretted, creating an ever-tightening knot in his belly that this absence of ritual, this forfeiture of the tribe’s spiritual power, would spell disaster for them this day. Yet he calmed himself, reminded that all they had to do was what they had done so many, many times before: just cover the retreat of their families with their own lives until it came time they too could escape downstream.
Just cover the retreat with their own lives.
“Tall One!”
Far ahead one of them stood against the rest, waving Tall One on as the others rushed by him. The warrior’s face flushed with excitement. Eyes lit with the flame of passion.
“Antelope!”
“Come, brother—we have
