At first, as they rose onto the plains and the weather grew sharp, clothes were the first worry. Their farm was in the south; the three of them were lightly clad. All that remained of the cotton dress she had been wearing was a few scraps tied around her loins. When the cold deepened, the Indians let her cover the children with a bit of old blanket at night. She herself had nothing. She had not yet recovered from the birth of little Sal, a fact lost on her captors. She awoke in the morning from her few minutes of restless sleep with blood frozen on her legs. She feared, for a time, that she might bleed to death, but she didn’t, though at times she was so weak that her vision swam.
Fortunately an older man, whose name was Quick Antelope, was not so cruel as Tana. He joined in her torment, but without enthusiasm, and was kindly toward the children. When she could not interest them in taking food, Quick Antelope made a soup which tempted them. Once when Tana began to beat her with a heavy stick, murder in his eyes, Quick Antelope took the stick from him and made him calm down.
It was not until later that she learned the older warrior’s name. At first the only name she knew was Tana, the young man with the deep burn of hatred in his eyes, the man who beat her hardest and devised the most intricate torments for her. It was Tana who hit her with hot sticks from the fire, who outraged her longest, and spat on her if she tried to resist.
The night after they left Eddie, Maudy began to sob and could not stop. She thought of her boy, lying in the thin grass with his broken head, dying alone, and the wall around her feelings broke. She began to sob so loudly that all the warriors grew angry. Bessie and Dan were fearful; they tried to shush her, but Maudy could not be shushed. Eddie was dead, little Sal was dead; tears flooded out and she could not stop them, even though Tana dragged her through the fire by one ankle and hit her so hard he knocked out one of her front teeth. But, in her bereavement, Maudy scarcely felt the beating or the burns. She cried until she had no strength left to cry. The Comanches, disgusted and fearful, finally left her alone. Snow began to fall, drifting out of the cold sky onto the dark plains.
Finally Maudy got up and pulled the scrap of blanket over Bessie and Dan; they watched the big snowflakes flutter into the campfire, causing it to make a spitting sound. Across the campfire Tana was still looking at her, but Maudy sat close to her children and avoided his eyes.
23.
TANA WANTED QUICK ANTELOPE, Satay, and Big Neck to go on to the main camp with the captive white children and the fourteen horses they had stolen. The horses were not the skinny horses Kicking Wolf was always stealing from the poor farmers along the Brazos. These horses were used to eating good grass. They were strong fat horses, of the sort Buffalo Hump liked. Tana thought Buffalo Hump would be impressed with the horses—he wanted the other warriors to hurry and take the horses and the two children to Buffalo Hump’s camp. The two children were sturdy; they had borne the trip well and could be traded, or else put to work in the camp.
What Tana wanted was to stay behind with the white woman and torture her to death, as vengeance against the whites who had killed his father. Long before, when Tana had been younger than the captive children, his father, Black Hand, had gone with many other chiefs to a big parley with the whites in a place of council. The whites had promised the chiefs safe passage—when they went into the tent to parley, the white chief had asked all the Comanche and Kiowa leaders to leave their weapons outside. Many of the chiefs, including Black Hand, had been reluctant to do this, but the whites made them strong promises and some chiefs agreed, though they were wary. They had no reason to trust the whites, and they didn’t trust them. Some of the chiefs concealed at least a knife, when they went into the tent.
They were right to be wary, for the whites immediately tried to place all the chiefs under arrest, claiming that the chiefs had not returned all the white captives they were supposed to return. Tana’s father, Black Hand, protested that he had never agreed to return any captives, but the whites were arrogant and told the chiefs they would all be put in chains. The chiefs with knives immediately drew them and stabbed a few of the whites. Then they cut their way out of the tent, but the tent had been surrounded by riflemen and all but four of the chiefs were immediately cut down, or captured. Black Hand was shot in the hip and taken prisoner. That night the white soldiers tormented him with hot bayonets and in the morning they hung him, not with a rope but with a fine chain, so that he was a long time dying. Then, because Black Hand had been the most important chief to attend the parley, the whites cut off his head and kept it in a sack. They said they would return the head only when all the remaining white captives had been returned to Austin.
But it was too late to return any captives. The four chiefs who escaped told all the tribes about the dishonesty and treachery of the whites. The few captives held by the tribes at that time were immediately tortured to death.
Tana’s own mother went to Austin to beg for the head of her husband. She wanted to put it with his body, so his spirit would be at rest. But the whites merely laughed at her and chased her out of town. One white man cut her legs with a whip—cut them so deeply that she still bore the scars.
Tana was young, but he had waited all his life to capture a white person, someone he could torture to avenge his father, whose head the whites had never returned. They had even lost the sack it was kept in; no one knew where the head of Black Hand was.
Though he had abused and beaten the white woman, what he had done was nothing compared to what he intended to do, once Quick Antelope and the others took the horses and left. Because of the whites and their treachery he had had no father to instruct him as he was growing up. He had yearned bitterly for his father; the torture of the skinny white woman would not make up for his loss, but it would help.
Quick Antelope, though, would not agree to go.
“We have to take all the captives to Buffalo Hump,” he insisted. “Then if he says you can have the woman, you can have her. The women will help you with what you want to do.”
“I do not need any women to help me,” Tana said. “I want to do it here and I want to do it now. Take the horses and go.”
Big Neck, though he had known Black Hand and understood the reasons why Tana wanted to torture the woman himself, agreed with Quick Antelope. Tana was only one raider, and a young one. The woman did not belong to him alone.
Satay did not take part in the argument with Tana. He made it his business to see that the stolen horses did not stray. Satay thought the white woman would die anyway, soon. Her breasts were swollen with the milk she had been feeding the infant they killed. Her breasts dripped milk all day and her legs were bloody. She had made a big fuss in the night, crying for dead children, who could not come back. Though Quick Antelope and Big Neck were right to point out to Tana that the woman did not belong to him alone, Satay would have let him have her. She would only last a few hours at most. Even if she did survive until they reached the big camp, the women would make short work of her. They made short work of white women stronger than this one.
Satay thought it was foolish to argue so much about one woman. The sun had been up for some time. They needed to be on the move. But Tana was a stubborn young warrior; he would not stop arguing. Quick Antelope and Big Neck were firm with him, though. He could prance up and down and make threats, but they were not going to let him have the woman.
Tana was very angry at the two men who opposed him. He felt like fighting them both. Quick Antelope had never been much of a fighter, but Big Neck was different. Though he looked old he moved quickly and was almost as strong as Buffalo Hump. The only way to beat him would be to kill him with an arrow, or shoot him, and Tana, though very angry, knew he would not be welcomed in the tribe if he killed Big Neck over a white woman.
“Put her on the horse,” Quick Antelope said. “You can beat her some more tonight.”
But Tana’s rage was too great. He would not do as he was told. If he could not be left to torture the woman, at least he could kill her. It wa
s what his father would want. He watched her, as she cowered under the little blanket with her children—he wanted her death and he wanted her to know it was coming.
“You can put the children on the horse,” he told Big Neck. “I am going to kill the woman.”
Tana took out his knife and began to sing a death cry. He looked at the woman and waved the knife at her. He wanted her to know he would step across the fire soon, and cut her throat.
Satay began to feel uneasy, and it was not because Tana was so determined to kill the woman. He looked around. Big Neck and Quick Antelope felt the uneasiness too. They picked up their weapons and looked around. Though no one could see any danger, they all felt that something was not right—all except Tana, who was advancing on the terrified white woman, waving his knife and singing a loud death cry.
Tana jumped across the campfire and grabbed the white woman by her long hair. He pulled her up, away from her children, so she would know a lot of fear before he put the knife to her throat. He dragged her though the fire again and lifted her up so that he could cut her throat, but Quick Antelope suddenly ran past him, bumping him a little.
The bullet hit Tana and knocked him clear of the woman before he saw the horsemen, racing toward them. He rolled over and saw that Quick Antelope had fallen too. Several horsemen were coming and coming fast. Big Neck was among the horses. Tana wanted to reach his gun, but his gun was several yards away. The horsemen were racing down a little slope toward the camp. Tana saw Big Neck leap on a horse and turn to flee, but before he was even out of camp a bullet knocked him off his horse. Tana was almost to his gun when another bullet hit him. It caused him to roll over. The ground where he fell was sandy—he wanted to reach for his gun, but he could not see. It was as if the sand was pouring over his eyelids, so heavy that he could not open his eyes. He heard the horsemen, racing closer, but the sand was so heavy on his eyes that he let it bury him—he had ceased to worry about the horsemen, he only wanted to sleep.
24.
THE PLAN, hastily established, was for eight rangers to charge the four Comanche braves, mainly to distract them. Deets was to watch the spare horses. Call and Augustus dismounted and crawled to within one hundred yards of the camp while the Comanches argued about the woman. When the young brave raised his knife to the woman, Augustus shot him; when the boy got up, he shot him a second time. Call shot the two braves standing by the weapons; one he had to shoot three times. By this time the racing rangers were almost in the camp, led by Teddy Beatty. Several of them shot at the large warrior who mounted and was about to escape, but it was a snap shot from Gus McCrae that killed him.
Call hurried down into the camp and made sure that all four Comanches were dead. Most of the men, Augustus included, were stunned to find that the battle was over so quickly.
“They’re dead, Woodrow—they’re dead,” Augustus assured him.
All of them were surprised that the victory had been so easy.
“I guess we’ll be promoted when we get home,” Gus said, reloading his rifle.
“There ain’t nothing to promote us to, we’re already captains,” Call reminded him. “If that ain’t high enough for you, then I guess you’ll just have to run for governor.”
“He’d never get elected, he’s done too much whoring,” Long Bill said.
Gus knelt by the young Indian boy, to see where he had hit him. Deets came up, leading the extra horses, and went to help the two children. Call pulled a slicker off his saddle and gave it to the woman, who was almost naked. She took the slicker but didn’t say thank you and didn’t look at them. She was staring away.
Of course, he realized, she had been only a moment from death—perhaps she couldn’t yet comprehend that she was saved. Perhaps in her blind stare she still saw the knife poised above her.
“You’re saved, ma’am—we got here just in time,” Call said, before backing away. He didn’t think it wise to say more, or to try and rush the woman back from the place she had gone in her mind. It was a place she had had to go to survive, as much as she had survived, he felt sure. If she was let alone she might come back, although he realized there was a chance she wouldn’t come back. What was sure was that the men who would have killed her were dead.
“You made a fine shot to keep that young one from killing her—he was ready,” Call said to Gus. “They’re all four dead and we got the woman and the children back, and some horses besides. We’ve been fair captains, so far.”
Augustus was thinking how quick it had been—a few seconds of action and four men dead. Deets was talking to the two children, while the other rangers milled. Neely Dickens was becoming more and more exhilarated by the knowledge that he was alive. Long Bill busied himself counting the horses they had recovered, fourteen in all.
“I guess we won’t starve now, boys, even if we get plumb lost,” he said. “We got horsemeat now—horsemeat on the hoof.”
Pea Eye had charged down on the Indians with the rest of the men, but had not fired his gun—he thought he would be unlikely to hit anybody, while running at such a speed. Pea Eye had heard so many tales about how devilishly accurate Indians were with tomahawks and clubs that he had kept as low on his horse’s neck as possible, as he raced, hoping to avoid the tomahawks and maybe the arrows too. But then it turned out they were charging only four men, all of whom were dead by the time he reached the camp. Only one of the men had a tomahawk, and the rifles they were equipped with looked older and less reliable even than his own. Pea Eye went over to hold the horses, while Deets tended to the frightened children. He felt weak, so weak that he thought he might have to sit down. Even so he did better than Neely Dickens, who passed through his phase of exhilaration, grew weak suddenly, and fainted. Neely flopped down as if dead, but, since none of the Comanches had so much as fired a gun, no one supposed Neely to be dead. Teddy Beatty fanned him with a hat a few times and then paid him no more attention.
“He ain’t hurt, the little rascal,” Teddy said. “Let him nap, I say.”
Call noticed that the woman had a lot of blood on her legs—the traveling must have been rough.
“We need to go,” he said to Augustus. “These four are dead, but there could be forty more not far away.”
“Or four hundred more—how would that be?” Augustus said. The fight had left him feeling a little distanced from himself; all the men seemed to feel that way, even Call. But it wasn’t a condition they could afford to indulge, not with Buffalo Hump’s camp just to the north.
“Do we bury them, Woodrow?” he asked, nodding toward the dead warriors.
It was a question Call had not had to consider before. There were four dead Comanches. Did they bury them, or leave them as they had fallen?
“I’m told the Comanches bury their own,” he said, uncertain as to what was right in a such a case.
“I expect they would if they were here,” Gus said. “But these men are dead—they can’t bury themselves, and I expect they’ll be bad torn up by the time a Comanche finds them.”
“I’m worried about that woman,” Call said. “I think she’s about lost her mind.”
Deets boiled a little coffee over the Comanche campfire and fed the children a little bacon; the woman would take none. The men dug a grave and put the four dead warriors in it. While they were filling it in the woman began to shriek.
“He won’t want me! I can’t go home!” she shrieked. Then she ran away, out onto the prairie, shrieking as she ran.
“I was afraid of this,” Call said. The children were crying, though Deets tried to shush them. The men all stood, numb and confused, listening to the woman scream. Augustus mounted his horse.
“I’ll get her,” he said. He touched his horse with the spur and went loping after the woman.
“I was afraid of this,” Call said again, looking at the stunned men.
25.
MAUDY CLARK ran away several times a day, every day, of the two weeks it took the rangers to reach Austin. Another sleet storm delayed t
hem, and then heavy rains, which made the rivers high and treacherous. Three horses bogged in the swollen Red River and drowned.
Still, whatever the weather, Maudy Clark ran away. Once caught, she was docile—she seemed to mind Deets less than the other men, so Deets was assigned the task of seeing that she didn’t escape or hurt herself. It was Deets, too, who cared for her children; she seemed not to recognize them as her children now.
“Something’s broke in her, Woodrow,” Gus said. “She won’t even help her own young ’uns, anymore.”
All the men were careful not to let Mrs. Clark snatch a knife or a gun; Call instructed them to be especially watchful. He did not want the woman to grab a weapon and kill herself.
“Bodies can heal—I expect minds can too,” he said.
At night they had taken to tying Maudy’s ankles with a soft cotton rope, hobbling her like a horse.
“If I were to break my whiskey jug I expect I could glue it so it would look like a fine jug,” Augustus replied. “But it would still be leaky and let the whiskey run out. That’s the way it is with her, Woodrow. They might get her back in church and sing hymns at her till she stops screaming them screams. But she’ll always be leaky. She won’t never be right.”
“I can’t judge it,” Call said. “It’s our job to bring her home. Then the doctors can judge it.”
Finally they breasted all the rivers and came to the limestone country west of Austin.
“We’re coming back with a passel of extra horses,” Long Bill pointed out. “I expect we’ll be heroes to the crowd.”
Just then, Maudy Clark started screaming. She ran right through the campfire. Neely Dickens made a grab for her, but missed. Deets, who had been cooking, got up without a word and followed her into the darkness.
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