Robson, Lucia St. Clair

by Ride the Wind

  Then the shriveled old man who sat silently, like an emaciated and unhappy gargoyle, reached for the pipe. Until then Noah had thought he was there by mistake, someone’s favorite grandfather, perhaps. A family retainer kept around out of kindness. Old Owl drew long on the pipe, his cheeks caving in until they looked like they would meet in the middle and be held there by the suction. Then he rose. His joints snapped loudly, and his breechclout hung between his bandy legs. After half an hour of rambling, he finally got to the point.

  “For as long as we can remember we have taken captives in war. We do it because our own children are taken. It is the custom. The lodges of the People are often filled with the mourning cries of the women for a dead child. Our women do not have enough children. If our people are to grow strong and prosper, we need children. And you Texans have more than you need. So we steal them and raise them as our own and love them.” Noah refrained from pointing out that no one loved Matilda Lockhart here. He wouldn’t have dared interrupt. No one ever did. And what the old man said was true as far as it went.

  “If we must part with our white children, it will cause us great pain. The grieving mothers and fathers, the uncles and aunts, sisters and brothers and cousins and grandparents must be compensated for their grief. And the slaves must be paid for, too. That is even your custom, I hear.

  “What is the White Father, La-mar, going to pay us for our children and slaves? We will need horses and mules and blankets. And many knives and guns, lead and powder and flints, as well as coffee and sugar and mirrors and cloth for our women. My own wife is fond of those fancy Mexican shawls, and I am too old to ride down and steal her one. When my horse runs I grunt.” He fingered his elbows, swollen with arthritis. “I would like a dozen of those shawls and a dozen more white vests like the one I wear now.”

  Solemnly, Old Owl detailed an impossibly long list of items that his people would want in payment. He ended with horn pocket combs, files, indigo and vermillion, brass wire, and silk handkerchiefs.

  Noah didn’t know Old Owl at all, much less well enough to know he was being taken. People who had been acquainted with Old Owl all their lives sometimes didn’t know it. Old Owl had no intention of either going to the treaty talks or of giving up his grandnephew. But he knew better than to refuse directly and for a purely personal reason. So he fanned the spark of greed in the others, in the expectation that the negotiations would go up in flames. He demanded more horses than existed in Texas, at least in the hands of the settlers. He was deliberately creating obstructions.

  Noah listened impassively to Old Owl and his mind raced ahead to his own response. He could promise them presents, but nothing in the way of payment. And not many presents either. He remembered Lamar’s purple face at the very suggestion. He had pounded the desk in rhythm to his own words. “We won’t be blackmailed by savages! We’ll pay them nothing. We won’t allow our women and children to be sold like cattle. Just get the Comanches here, Smithwick,” Lamar had said, his voice low and dangerous. “Just get them here and we’ll deal with them after that.” Just get them there. Noah knew he had to proceed carefully.

  But before he could reply, the second mistake at the council stood up. If Old Owl looked like someone’s moss-grown grandfather, this one was a kid who should be out playing pranks with the rest of the boys. How could he take a pudgy scamp seriously? Smithwick had never met Buffalo Piss either. Buffalo Piss’s style was direct. He wasted no time, and he aimed his words for the vital organs.

  “We of the Wasps do not deal with the white men. They bring sickness of the body, and worse than that, they bring sickness of the soul. We have seen what their stupid water does to a man’s reason. We have seen what their disease does to our children’s faces. We have seen warriors sell their manhood for the sweet sugar of the white men.

  “Last year Spirit Talker made treaty talk with the Texans. He has told us of it. He has told us that the People must not molest the settlers in any way. The People must not raid. The People must trade only with the government traders. The People must be punished by the Texans’ laws. The People must fight the Texans’ enemies. And what will the Texans do? Will they be punished under our law for the wrongs they do us? Will their traders treat us fairly? Will the Texans fight our enemies? Will they leave our land to us? No. They will not.

  “The Wasps are not so foolish as to expect any different of them this time. Nothing but bad comes from their sweet words, their honey talk. We will have the things that Old Owl said we wanted. But we will take them.”

  Buffalo Piss sat down hard, and there was a low murmur in the lodge. Pahayuca remained silent, his broad face unhappy. Like Old Owl, he knew his nephew’s wife would be brokenhearted if her white daughter were taken from her. And he knew better than to go into a white man’s town. He and his band had seen what smallpox could do, and he feared it. And he dreaded what Medicine Woman would do if he sold Naduah back again. There would never be a moment’s peace. On the other hand, all those presents would go to the other chiefs and to the people of their bands. The chiefs’ prestige would be enhanced. It was a difficult time for Pahayuca, but Buffalo Piss prevailed.

  The first pale wash of dawn was diluting the black night sky when the council finally broke up. All of the bands there had agreed to follow Spirit Talker to San Antonio in the spring, except Old Owl and Santa Ana and the Wasps with Pahayuca and Buffalo Piss. Spirit Talker said that others who were not camped here would join him also. There would be more than six bands of the Penateka represented at the council talks. It would be the biggest group of Comanche civil and war leaders ever assembled to meet with the white men.

  Smithwick was satisfied. Perhaps there would be peace after all.

  CHAPTER 30

  In late March of 1840, four months after the council with Noah Smithwick, Pahayuca and Buffalo Piss again sat on the crest of a high hill overlooking a town. This time it was San Antonio. The Alamo was still in ruins at the edge of town. Nearby were the lodges of Spirit Talker, the twelve leaders who had come with him and their families. They knew that treaty councils, honey talk, could take a long time, and they would all be safe while the talks went on.

  The chieftains’ camp was almost deserted. Everyone had gathered in the center of town. The Comanche and the Texans milled around in the square outside the small limestone courthouse where the talks would be held. The bright March sun seemed to whitewash the gleaming stone and adobe walls with light. The town’s plazas were paved in a shifting layer of gray dust, stirred by the sweeping hems of the Anglo women. The shorter, gaily colored skirts of the Mexican women fluttered in the breeze. A large crowd of people had come to see the wild Indians wandering so peacefully among them.

  Texans threw coins in the air for the Comanche boys to shoot at with their small bows and arrows. The chiefs’ wives were dressed in their finest clothes, and the bells of their fringed ponchos jingled merrily. From time to time one of the women would reach out and grab a handful of a Texan’s skirts, holding her captive while she fingered the cloth and discussed it with her friends.

  Several miles away, along the river to the southwest, Pahayuca and Buffalo Piss could just make out the vast camp of the six bands represented at the talks. The tips of the lodge poles, with feathers and streamers fluttering from them, could be seen scattered among the trees. They looked like new foliage growing along with the pale green canopy of the pecans and the brilliant rose patches of the redbud trees. The surrounding hills were speckled with thousands of ponies grazing.

  “Maybe we should have gone with Spirit Talker.” Pahayuca’s broad face was a study in misery. The other leaders would be flaunting their presents and new finery when this was all over.

  “No, we did the right thing.” Buffalo Piss stared across the gently rolling, green countryside. “I had a vision. I saw a buffalo pass by. A single buffalo walking very slowly toward the northwest. We must follow him.”

  “I’ve had bad feelings about these talks too. But what if we’re wrong?”<
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  “If we’re wrong, we’ll just start raiding. The whites will come to us to make peace, and you’ll get the presents you want.”

  “I suppose so.”

  “It’s always worked before. The bad Indians get the presents. The good Indians get their land taken from them. Look at the Wichita and the Cherokee up north. They tried to cooperate, and the Texans massacred them. They hadn’t even pulled the bodies off the battlefield before the stick men were there, dividing the land.”

  Pahayuca grunted. They sat a while longer, then turned and rode down the slope toward their camp, thirty miles away.

  Gonzales, the interpreter, was uneasy as he watched the twelve war and civil leaders follow Spirit Talker into the courthouse. The Comanche carried their weapons casually under their robes, sauntering in with an easy arrogance. But President Lamar’s two commissioners were tense. The hostility vibrated from them like heat waves shimmering on the plains. It would have been much better if the Indians had brought no captives to the talks than to have returned only Matilda Lockhart, and in that condition. The Comanche didn’t understand the effect her poor ruined face and body would have on the whites.

  Even Gonzales, who had been a captive himself, didn’t know how bad the situation was. He didn’t know that Secretary of War Johnston had wanted to kill Spirit Talker and the other two chiefs when they had ridden in asking for the truce a month before. Johnston refrained only because there hadn’t been enough Indians to make a difference. This wouldn’t be a council. It would be a fiat, a listing of conditions that must be met before the chiefs were to go free. They would be held as hostages.

  And the Penateka had come prepared with their own set of demands. They were under the delusion that they had come as equals. They were children, on both sides, playing with matches when they didn’t know what fire could do. It would be a miracle if the whole situation didn’t explode in that tiny room.

  “Dios me bendiga.” As Gonzales asked for God’s blessing, he crossed himself surreptitiously. Then he followed Colonel Fisher across the rickety porch and through the heavy door. It closed with a thud after him. A dozen soldiers lined up along the wall outside, their shiny new carbines planted in front of them, muzzle-up on the splintered floor.

  Inside the courthouse, with its small, barred windows, the air was becoming hard to breathe. If hatred had been edible, everyone would have been well fed. Gonzales was no fool. He stood by the door. Colonel Fisher waved away the amenities and pounced on the main point.

  “Where are the other captives? We know you have more than one. We must have them all here before we can go on with the talks.”

  Old Spirit Talker rose from the circle of painted chiefs sitting impassively on the floor in the center of the bare room. He held one wrinkled hand in front of him, as though calming troubled waters, and delivered his people’s position. He realized that these men weren’t like his good friend Noah, and he too dispensed with the preliminaries.

  “Our hearts are heavy that we are not able to return more of your people today. Bands that did not send leaders to this talk hold many of them. But I, personally, will try to convince them to turn their captives in. To do that, you must give me things to take with me to pay for them.” Spirit Talker chanted the list that he had memorized, a list at least as long as Old Owl’s had been. His plan was to ransom the captives one by one and receive a larger price for them that way than by delivering them all at once.

  “We wish to live in peace with our brothers, the white men. We will make a road to our red brothers who do not have the love in their hearts that we do. We will tell them of your generosity and return your people to you. How do you like that answer?” Spirit Talker finished on a high quaver and sat regally with a flourish of his breechclout. Gonzales translated his words while the old leader listened. Spirit Talker would have made a good poker player, but not a great one. There was a hint of satisfaction on his face at a hand well played.

  Colonel Fisher gave a loud command, and the door opened. Twelve soldiers filed in and positioned themselves along the wall, carbines aimed and at the ready. The chiefs stirred uneasily.

  “Tell Spirit Talker that until the captives are returned, all of them, he and the other chiefs will be our prisoners,” said Colonel Cooke, the second commissioner. Fear blanched Alirio Gonzales’s rich, dark skin.

  “Señor Coronel, I cannot. They will kill us all.”

  “Tell them, damn you!”

  “I cannot, mi coronel.”

  “Tell them or I’ll kill you myself.” Cooke’s patience snapped under the strain.

  Gonzales’s hand was on the latch as he blurted the message. He bolted from the room, slamming the door behind him. As he clattered across the porch, the sounds of gunfire, warwhoops, and shouts followed at his heels.

  The door burst open again, and old Spirit Talker appeared in the opening. He stood for a second, his hand out as if to speak, then fell. He toppled full length and lay still, blood spurting from the back of his head and his brains oozing out onto the dry wooden floor.

  The Anglos and Mexicans of San Antonio stood dazed, but the People reacted instantly. The circuit judge fell, a child’s tiny arrow sticking out from the rusty black coat over his heart. Skinning knives appeared from under the long fringes of the women’s ponchos. The Texan women ran screaming in all directions, their long skirts stirring up clouds of dust. Soldiers stationed around the area began firing into the Comanche families trying to escape the courtyard. But the shots hit more than just the enemy. Soon people were tripping over bodies in the dirt, and falling only to be trampled themselves.

  The Indian boys and men tried to cover the retreat of their women and children, but they were trapped in the stone labyrinth of a white man’s town. Texans who weren’t armed ran to get their guns. The fight became a hunt through the streets and from house to house. Two teenage boys darted into a cookhouse and it was soon surrounded by a mob of shouting, jostling men. Someone came with a barrel of turpentine, which was sloshed onto the walls and roof. Another man casually lit it with his cigar. As the flames billowed and the heat became intense, the boys ran out, coughing and choking. The Texans were waiting on each side of the door with axes ready.

  When the dust and the screams had settled, there were seven whites dead and ten badly wounded. Thirty-three Indians were killed, and twenty-seven women and children, many of them wounded, were herded into the city jail. One of the women, Spirit Talker’s wife, was released later that day. She would be the messenger.

  “Gonzales, tell her to tell her people that they can have their chiefs’ families back when the white captives are returned.” Colonel Fisher’s face was stern but triumphant, like a father who has just chastised his children. He had these people where he wanted them now. The only thing they understood was force.

  Gonzales closed his eyes wearily. The white captives. Always and only the white captives. The small Mexican knew that Fisher didn’t care about his interpreter’s people. There were Mexican women and children suffering too. Some of them were the families of men who had fought beside the Texans during the revolution. But of course they didn’t count, any more than the negro captives did. Gonzales tried once more to reason with the two commissioners.

  “Señor Coronet, I don’t think that’s a good idea…”

  The lid was beginning to jitter on the colonel’s simmering patience. His face reddened. He had the entire southern Comanche nation under his thumb and a stupid little greaser was arguing with him.

  “We don’t pay you for your opinions, Gonzales. Translate. Tell her they have twelve days to decide. If the captives aren’t returned by then, the chiefs’ families will be killed.”

  It was hopeless. It was the way of those in authority to assume they had all the answers without ever asking any questions. Gonzales had lived with the People for five years. He knew how they would react to the ultimatum. And no one asked him. He shrugged and translated the message.

  Spirit Talker’s wife listened st
olidly. She would have beaten her husband at poker. Not a flicker of expression passed over her broad, seamed face. She took the bag of food they offered her, mounted the pony they gave her, and rode slowly off toward the wooded hills and the camp to the northwest.

  “I would like my pay now, mi coronel,” said Gonzales. And he added under his breath in Spanish, “Make it thirty pieces of silver.”

  “You’ll get it in a few weeks. We have to make a written request for payment and send it to the legislature. These things take time, and there are important matters here to deal with.” Cooke shouted the last words at Gonzales’s back. The interpreter had mounted his burro and was riding out of town toward his tiny farm.

  Wailing, Spirit Talker’s wife rode among the first lodges of the enormous camp. She had slashed her arms in grief and her horse’s back was wet with blood. The People swarmed to meet her, taking up her cry when they heard the news. All night long the screaming went on, while the men sat rocking to and fro, sobbing and moaning under their robes. When morning came, three women lay dead. They had cut themselves fatally as they grieved. Then the slaughter of the horses began. It had been years since grief had taken such a toll, but never had the Penateka suffered a calamity like this.

  They had lost almost all the men who led them. It took two days to kill all the mules and ponies that had belonged to the chiefs. Their shrieks mingled with the People’s. Finally their carcasses lay everywhere and the odor of death soon joined the sound of death. The village looked like a sacked city.