River country. Slowly he moved back and forth across the site with Two Sleep, absorbing every ring and pit, every gnawed bone and scrap of hide or discarded moccasin.
He had to admire them—no matter they were savages. If this was truly the bunch caught in the Palo Duro by Mackenzie’s Fourth Cavalry more than four months back, then Quanah Parker’s Kwahadi were something, all right. Starting the winter with next to nothing, for them to come out this well the following spring. How he prayed the boys were alive. Prayed they were with Parker’s fierce and hearty holdouts.
Eventually he walked back to the old pony the village had abandoned there when it had put to the trail once more. The animal suffered what looked to be a festering bullet wound low in the neck. The way the pus and blood had clotted and oozed around the bullet hole told the story.
“This bunch been fighting its way north, Cap’n,” Jonah explained. “Likely this pony got hit on a raid and stayed strong enough to carry its warrior back to the village. But the Comanche plainly saw what you and me can see: this critter’s dying.”
As Hook inched over to the pony, it vainly tried to move away, although it had strength to do little more than stay on its four wobbly legs. Carefully, moving slowly, Jonah inched up to stroke one of the forelegs before picking it up to inspect the hoof. He set it back down, patting the animal’s neck with one hand as he brought his pistol out.
That country proved flat enough that it swallowed his gunshot in the time it took the pony to fall without a struggle.
“What did the hoof tell you, Hook?”
He gazed up at Lockhart. “This bunch has been running. That hoof was sore and bleeding. Near worn out. Some of their stock didn’t fare the winter so well. And still, this bunch is fighting on.”
“Kwahadi, Mr. Hook,” Lockhart said respectfully.
“Yes, Cap’n. I’ve come to know just what you mean.”
“How long since they broke camp?”
He returned to the pony, rubbing his hand along the inside of the rear flanks, under the neck. The dampness of the hide and the heat of the animal gave him something to make his best guess.
“We’re behind ’em less’n two days now.”
Two Sleep came up. “Two days,” he agreed.
“They find out we’re back here, they’ll bolt,” Lockhart said to no one in particular.
Jonah shook his head. “I don’t expect this bunch will get worried all that much about our outfit.”
“You don’t think they’ll make a run for it—try to outdistance us?”
“No. From what all I’ve been learning about Comanche—I figure soon enough they just might turn around and wait for us to come right to ’em.”
41
TALL ONE’S EIGHTEENTH summer was not that far away. Already Antelope was eager for his sixteenth spring. Together they had fought and killed Mexicans, Lipan, and Tonkawa. Black scalp locks hung from their war shirts, from their clubs and at the end of their bows. And both had struggled against the yellow-leg soldiers at the bottom of the red canyon. Still, their belts held no white man’s scalp from that battle.
It would be only a matter of time now.
That small party of white men dogging their trail had the Kwahadi making no preparations for war. When the time came to turn about and strike, it would be nothing more than a brief inconvenience, a momentary interruption in their march north. To think that three-times-ten would have the gall to throw themselves against four times their number. It was nothing short of utter foolishness: these white men wanting to die so badly that they hurled themselves into sheer suicide.
On its way north one of the warrior societies had bumped into a roving soldier patrol. Antelope’s hunting party had been of equal strength, so they had charged into the yellow-legs and made a fight of it. Two of the soldiers had been wounded, maybe bad enough to die. And one of Antelope’s young friends had been knocked from his pony.
Antelope had joined another rider rushing in to pick the young warrior from the prairie and sling him to the back of his wounded pony. They turned about and headed across the rolling plain, in the direction they hoped to find the migrating village. By the time the warriors returned, the pony was clearly dying, its rider faring little better. The village war chief said they would have to abandon the animal. All the while the shamans continued to shake their gut rattles and beat on their hand drums—praying that the bullets left inside Antelope’s friend would disappear and he would come back from the near-dead.
Antelope had grieved like never before when his friend failed to return to the land of the living. His spirit went on to cross the great Sky Road. That was the closest the lightning bolt of death had ever struck near Antelope. Like a passing spring thunderstorm, the death of his best friend heated the air and charged the ground where young Antelope stood, frightened him into greater resolve against the white man.
“What about our mother?” Tall One asked one morning.
“Big Mule’s wife? What of her?”
“No. I am not talking about the mother who adopted you. I am talking about the woman who gave us birth.”
Antelope stared at the ground, squeezing his eyes as if something must surely come of kneading his memory so hard. “I cannot remember her. There are no pictures anymore.”
“Our sister?”
The young brother eventually shook his head. “No. Do you remember them?”
“Some things. If I try—I can remember.”
“Pictures only?” Antelope asked, a little suspicion in his voice. “Or do you remember … words?”
Tall One could not lie to his brother. Keeping silent about it was like being turned wrong side out, just like a snake shedding its skin, from the inside out. “The more I try, looking at things, thinking on it hard—I remember some of the words. I remember other things too.”
Antelope’s eyes had darted back and forth like night birds, looking for anyone who might overhear. “Tell me.”
“The touch of our mother’s hand.” He watched Antelope stare into the distance. Out there might prove to be his memories of her, of the life they once had. “Brother, can you remember how good it felt when she held us against her, rocked us to sleep?”
With a wag of his head he answered, “No. I can only remember Rain Woman and how she cradled me when I grew frightened.”
“We were frightened a lot those first days, Antelope. Rain Woman was a good mother to you.”
“She is the only mother I remember. And Big Mule is the only father I know.”
He bit his lip a moment, then grew determined to say it. “You were too young, perhaps. But we both had the same father long, long ago. A tall, thin man with a long face.”
“Like many of the
“Yes. I remember how loud his voice would get when I did something wrong. And I’ve been remembering how safe and secure I felt sitting in his lap when the sun had gone down at the end of a day, when he moved back and forth in a chair that rocked.”
“I cannot remember such a thing. I know I have seen a chair—but not one that moves back and forth.”
Tall One squatted slightly, then swayed forward and back in pantomime. Then he stood again and sighed. “A few days ago I remembered how it felt to lay my ear against Mother’s breast and hear her heart beating as she ran her fingers over my cheek. It was hard, and it took some time, but I remembered too the smell of our father—that fragrance of tobacco smoke from his pipe, and the rich smell of moist black earth that clung to him always.”
“He was an earth-scratcher?”
“Yes. Like these settlers who are moving into our buffalo ground,” he answered. “And just this morning before the camp awoke, I lay in my blanket thinking on those memories. Trying for more. And I did have a new one come to me: remembering the feel of his strong hands wrapped around mine as he taught me to shoot his
