The Native American Experience

by Dee Brown

  “In the cantina round the corner, the Mexican coin that Mr. Lykins had given me bought hardly enough food for one strong man—six very thin corn cakes that they called tortillas, and two large bites of chopped meat mixed with hot peppers that had been cooked inside a covering of thick mush. With the help of a Mexican who understood English—and who was puzzled that I wore the clothing of his country but could not speak its language—I explained to the cook that I must take the food and some water to a sick friend. He wrapped the food in a napkin and gave me a jug of water, but only after making me swear to his Dios that I would return the jug and napkin within the hour.

  “When I went back to my wagon the guard challenged me. I called out my name and told him I would soon be going to bed under the wagon. I climbed inside, but the young woman was not there. I looked out, sick at heart because I thought she had run away. A few paces off in the shadows of some weeds growing along the rail fence of an empty corral, I heard a slight rustling. A moment later she appeared, moving like a silent spirit toward me. I reached out my hands and lifted her inside. She had gone to relieve herself.

  “She drank the water as though it was the most delicious liquid on earth, sighing after each long swallow. Then we sat far back in the wagon, treasuring every morsel of the shared food. After we had eaten, she put a hand against my cheek very lightly, but when I tried to embrace her, she drew quickly away from me.

  “How I wished that I could make her understand my thoughts with words! I was thinking of this, of the importance of words, when the sounds of an angry voice broke the stillness. It came from across the wagon yard, and most certainly was Flattery Jack Belcourt’s drunk and angry bellow. There was no doubt in my mind as to the cause of his outburst.

  “Indicating to the young woman that she should make no sound or movement, I unrolled a piece of canvas and threw it over her. Then I took my serape, jumped out of the wagon, and rolled up on the straw beneath, pretending to be asleep. The footsteps of the nearest guard clumped back and forth, and then, as I expected, came the solid tread of Belcourt, his slurred voice calling out: ‘Seen anything of a runaway Injun gal?’

  “ ‘Seen nobody,’ the guard replied.

  “ ‘I’ll have a look around your wagons,’ Belcourt said. He squatted, and through my half-closed eyes I could see him rocking drunkenly on his bootheels as he peered at me. ‘Who’s that under there?’ he asked.

  “ ‘One of the drivers,’ the guard said. ‘I told you no strangers been around here. Every wagon’s guarded.’

  “Belcourt wanted to look inside the wagons, but the guard refused him. ‘Where’s Lykins?’ Belcourt demanded.

  “ ‘Not here,’ the guard said. ‘Most likely gone to bed. You know every wagon is sealed till tradin’ time tomorrow. You come back then.’

  “Belcourt swore, but he turned his back and marched off, swaying, and talking to himself. I lay there wide awake, wondering what I was going to do about that young woman just above me in the wagon. If she remained there until daylight, Belcourt or somebody else was certain to see her. I thought of going to George Gant and asking his help, but I knew he would do nothing without Mr. Lykins’s approval. I had to find Mr. Lykins, and find him before sunup.

  “So there was nothing to be done but go in search of him. On one side of the plaza I had noticed a large adobe inn, and there I went through the thinning crowds of the late evening. The clerk at the desk frowned at me. I guess I did look out of place in that fine inn, my hair uncut for many days, my Mexican clothes greasy from wear and travel. ‘I’m one of Mr. Lykins’s drivers,’ I said, and was relieved to hear the clerk reply in English: ‘Mr. Samuel Lykins?’

  “I nodded, and told him some urgent business had come up. The clerk scratched at his ear. ‘Mr. Lykins dined here this evening,’ he offered, frowning at me again. Suddenly he turned and trotted over to a gray-haired man seated in a big chair. They both looked at me, whispering together, and I wondered if they were going to order me out of their fine inn. But the clerk returned to inform me that Mr. Lykins was occupying the house of another trader, Mr. Felix Aubry’s house, only a few steps from the corner of the plaza.

  “Thanking the clerk, off I went and found the house, and was glad to see candlelight in one of the curtained windows. At the doorstep, however, my courage almost failed me. I hesitated, fearing that Lykins would turn me away, order me to return the young woman to Belcourt, and bother him no more. I rapped on the door panel.

  “When he opened the door, Mr. Lykins was holding a candle, and he was quite surprised to see me there. ‘Something wrong at the wagons?’ he asked quickly.

  “ ‘Not with your wagons, sir,’ I answered, ‘but I do need your help badly.’

  “ ‘You have got yourself into trouble in Santa Fe so quickly?’ He was plainly annoyed with me. ‘Couldn’t Gant help you?’ His hand was on the door as if he meant to close it, but he must have seen the despair in my face. ‘Oh, come on in,’ he said.

  “The room he led me into was very small and simply furnished, one small table, two high-backed leather chairs, a painting of a horse on the wall. Scattered over the table were long sheets of paper covered with numbers, reminding me of Uncle Opothle and Okelogee. Mr. Lykins motioned me to a chair, but I remained standing until I told him everything I had done that evening. Seated by the table, he listened without the slightest change of expression.

  “ ‘I want nothing to do with wild Indians,’ he said then, ‘and I’m beginning to wonder about you civilized Cherokees. Wild Indians are much trouble. And their females are more trouble.’ His fingers tapped softly on the tabletop. That dreamer’s look came into his eyes, and he went on as though he was thinking out loud: ‘Yet there would be some satisfaction for me in confounding Flattery Jack Belcourt. He’ll undersell me tomorrow, force me to trade some of my merchandise at less than cost, because half his stuff is stolen. We honest traders know Belcourt’s ways, but there’s little we’ve been able to do about him.’ His lips twisted in a faint smile. ‘Can you get that Indian woman here, to this house, without being noticed?’

  “I assured him that I could.

  “ ‘Bring her here, then,’ he said. ‘By God, what a story this will be for me to tell Felix Aubry when next I see him. I, sharing his house with a wild Indian woman!’

  “Well, I brought the young woman to the house, and Mr. Lykins discovered right away that she was Cheyenne. In his years of trading he had acquired a few words of Plains Indian languages and he knew more of their signs than I did. Her name was Mae-ve-kse-a. ‘That’s Red Bird Woman,’ Mr. Lykins said, with a glance at me. ‘Not Red Bird. She’s a married woman.’

  “The Apaches had captured Red Bird Woman somewhere along a stream called the Nako southeast of Bent’s Fork. With several other young women of their buffalo camp, she had gone out to pick wild berries. The Apaches had surprised them, but while they were capturing Red Bird Woman the others managed to escape. Mr. Lykins asked her a number of questions in which the word Nako was used several times. He seemed quite interested in her replies, but not until he showed Red Bird Woman to her room for the night and then was bidding me good night did he tell me what he learned from her.

  “We were standing in his doorway and I was thanking him for helping me out of my difficulty. ‘What do you propose that we do with your Cheyenne beauty?’ he asked me.

  “ ‘I’d like to take her back to her people,’ I replied.

  “He smiled, shaking his head. ‘You might spend a lifetime doing that. Her people are Southern Cheyennes, of which there are dozens of separate small bands. They move constantly, following the buffalo herds.’

  “ ‘She would know where they travel.’ I was in no mood to be denied my dreams.

  “ ‘You are a romantic,’ he said. I did not know the meaning of the word then, but I suppose he was right. On that night, as I have said, I felt that nothing was impossible, that I could achieve whatever I desired, with Red Bird Woman riding at my side. What did I care if she had anothe
r man? What did it matter? I already knew from the gleam in her eyes when she looked at me that she recognized me as a man of magical powers. Or so I imagined.

  “ ‘She could be useful to me,’ Mr. Lykins said. ‘We traders have heard of a trail the Apaches use on their horse raids against the Comanches. Some say three days shorter than the Cimarron route. I tried to scout it years ago, alone. Failed to find a single water source. Had I not been fortunate enough to kill an antelope and drink its blood, I should have died of thirst. This Red Bird Woman was brought out on that trail, stopping at springs and water holes. She could be a useful guide if I decide to return that way. Good night.’

  “He had said nothing about me accompanying him and Red Bird Woman, and during the next two or three days I found myself growing jealous of Mr. Samuel Lykins. She had to remain in his house day and night. Even though Flattery Jack Belcourt apparently gave up the search for her after the second day, he was always watchful around the wagon yard, and whenever he saw me he gave me a hateful scowl, knowing that I was the only one outside his own men who might have helped her escape.

  “Every evening after dark at the time of the ringing of the church bells, I visited her and Mr. Lykins, and on each visit it seemed that more and more of the admiration for me that I had seen in her face that first night was being divided between me and the trader who had provided her with a refuge. After he paid me, I spent a good part of the money on clothing, discarding all my shabby Mexican garb except the serape for a leather hunting shirt, leather-seated jean trousers, and a pair of fancy boots. She silently approved of my new costume, but I was disappointed that she said nothing, even though I would not then have understood her Cheyenne words. You can see what a young fool I was, as full of myself as a mating prairie cock.

  “One evening I went there to dinner, at Mr. Lykins’s invitation, and after he gave me a cigar he told me quietly that we would be leaving Santa Fe before daylight the following morning. He had sold half his wagons and mules, and George Gant and the other drivers would be returning to Independence with the remainder. I was to accompany him and Red Bird Woman over the Apache trail to the Nako, that is, if I was willing to risk the dangers. If I had wanted to conceal my joy I could not have done so. I fairly leaped out of my chair, shaking the dishes on the table, and offered him my hand in thanks.

  “We were out of Santa Fe, traveling on the trail toward the deserted town of the Pueblos when the sun rose in our faces. Each of us had a good horse, and in addition Mr. Lykins brought along two led mules loaded with supplies that included several leather-covered water jars. My main duty was to keep the mules moving as fast as the horses, not an easy task by any means. When we reached the place in the trail where I had stopped my wagon and the Apaches had appeared, Red Bird Woman led us through the pine-screened rock cleft and down a winding passage so narrow in places that I was forced to dismount and lead my mules single file. For a while, then, we followed the level floor of a dry stream, the sand hard-packed, so that we could move at a more rapid gait. Yet during most of the afternoon we wound slowly up and down through wastelands of rock.

  “That evening when we camped, Mr. Lykins remarked that we had been skirting the wagon trail most of the day and could have traveled considerably farther on it in a day, but he wanted Red Bird Woman to follow the landmarks by which she had been brought south. Early the next day she turned us toward the east, following a small stream until we crossed the wagon trail at a place where our train had camped one night.

  “Each day after that we continued toward the rising sun, and each day the Apache trail became easier, the land flattening. The sparse vegetation had a gray look, the earth was dry, and the sun burned with the strength of fire. I thought to myself that the year would be in the Drying-Up Moon if we were back in the old Cherokee Nation. From Red Bird Woman I was learning Cheyenne words and signs so that we could make ourselves understood to one another. When I asked her what moon it was, she looked puzzled, then laughed and said that in her country it must be the Moon When the Plums Turn Red and that she would be happier if she were there. I told her that I was homesick for my country, too, but that I could never return because the land had been taken from my people. She could not understand this. How could land be taken away? Did the white men take away the sky, also?

  “She constantly surprised me with her ability to follow the trail over stones or through thick grass where I could see no sign of passage. One afternoon while we were crossing an immense plain, emptier and more level than any I had seen on the way to Fort Bent, the sky suddenly darkened behind us. I thought the wind was bringing rain. Instead we were struck by a wall of sand that stung my face, the fine dust penetrating eyes and nostrils. After the wind passed, the trail we had been following was no longer there, and with the sun still high in the sky I was uncertain of the four directions. Red Bird Woman reined in her horse, turning slowly in her saddle, and then pointed toward the horizon. There I saw the faintest outline of a reddish rock. Had she not directed our eyes toward the rounded knob, I am certain that neither Mr. Lykins nor I would have noticed it on that vast expanse.

  “ ‘That’s north,’ Mr. Lykins said. ‘If you came from there.’ She bowed her head and indicated by signs that she had come from that direction. Mr. Lykins dismounted, took a stick from one of the mule packs, and drove it into the ground. Then he scribbled something on a piece of notepaper, thrust it inside an empty bottle, and placed the bottle upside-down on the top of the stick. ‘Direction marker,’ he said. ‘In case I pass the word to my trader friends that I’ve found a better route. The Cimarron Trail is not far to our south. This may be the shortcut I’ve been looking for.’

  “Well, as it turned out, the almost invisible trail that Red Bird Woman led us over soon afterward came to be known as the Lykins Cutoff. Two or three times a day Mr. Lykins stopped and posted a stick-and-bottle marker. As hot and dry as it was, we never needed any of the water in those leather-covered jars the mules had hauled all the way from Santa Fe. It seemed that whenever we and our animals grew thirsty, Red Bird Woman always brought us to a spring or a little hidden creek. Mr. Lykins constantly expressed his surprise and gratification. ‘There’s more water, more wood, and more grass on this trail,’ he said, ‘than on the Cimarron route.’

  “About noon one day she sighted the Nako, crying out with joy, and whipping her horse into a fast run. We followed her to a low ridge covered with briers above the stream bank. It was the place where the passing Apaches had captured her. With one hand she shaded her eyes, gazing far across the shallow Nako to an abandoned campsite.

  “ ‘They’ve gone, yes,’ Mr. Lykins said. ‘Her people have moved on, following the buffalo herds. North, south, east, or west? What do you propose to do with her now, my romantic young friend?’

  “ ‘Help her find her people,’ I replied.

  “ ‘And her man. He may try to kill you if you find him.’

  “ ‘For bringing her back to him?’

  “ ‘If he thinks you’ve slept with her. Wild Indians. They’re unpredictable. I don’t understand them.’ He looked at Red Bird Woman. She had dismounted and was standing beside the horse, her shoulders drooping, a figure of despondency.

  “ ‘Well,’ he said, ‘if we follow along the Nako we can reach the Arkansas before dark, ford it there, and take the trail east for Independence.’

  “ ‘I’m staying with her,’ I said.

  “ ‘All right.’ He dismounted and walked over to the mules, unfastened two of the water jars, a pack of foodstuffs, and his spare carbine, and brought them over to me. He pushed a handful of paper cartridges and balls into one of my shirt pockets. ‘You’ll need my two horses,’ he said as he climbed back into his saddle. ‘But I’m taking my mules with me. Good luck.’ He started off without another word, but as he swung around a bend in the Nako he turned and shouted back to me: ‘If you find what you’re looking for, remember those horses are mine. You’d damn well better bring them on to me at Independence. My carbine,
too.’ That was Mr. Samuel Lykins. He was more like a wild Indian at heart than any white man I ever knew.”

  Dane stood up and stretched his arms. “By God, I am sleepy.” He stamped his feet and went over to the fireplace to warm his backside. “The Old West, it was a place of wondrous happenings, a place of magic. Sometimes what seemed real was not real. Maybe it was all a dream.” He scratched his buttocks and yawned. “I’d best get to bed before the coyotes come and start telling me about their dreams.”

  “Wait a minute,” I protested. “Did Red Bird Woman find her people?”

  29

  THEY SPLASHED ACROSS THE shallow Nako to the abandoned Cheyenne camp, where circles of yellowed grass ringed by stones marked the recent presence of tipis. Red Bird Woman said that her people had been gone for almost a moon, but there were still faint marks of travois poles heading toward the northwest. She followed these tracks until they reached a crossing of the Arkansas River, but so many travelers had come there in recent days, leaving a dozen or more trails pointing in different directions, that she confessed she could not distinguish one from the other.

  “The buffalo herds have turned back north,” she said, “for better grass and water.” Dane recalled that they had seen only occasional small herds since leaving the Cimarron country, all so far distant that Sam Lykins had not taken the time to venture in pursuit. “My people have gone to the Hotoa, or maybe as far as the Smoking Land,” she guessed, and led off toward the north.

  Late in the afternoon they sighted several antelopes feeding in a bowl of land between two low cedar-covered ridges. They exchanged glances; after several days of eating Lykins’s dried beef, both were hungry for fresh meat. Swinging to the right, they circled until they reached the base of the ridge. There they dismounted and picketed their horses. Taking Lykins’s carbine, Dane led the way up through the cedars. When they reached the top, most of the antelopes had moved out of range. There were hundreds of them, the same color as the brown grass. He loaded the weapon, took careful aim, and fired at the nearest animal. The bullet pinged off a rock inches to the left of his target. Leaping high in the air, the antelope spun around as though seeking the source of the sudden explosion. The others moved farther away.