The Penateka leaders filed solemnly around the fire, circling it from left to right in their traditional way. Each of them was dressed in his finest clothes, in honor of the occasion. Sanaco had spent two hours that afternoon in front of his mirror. He had plucked every hair from his face and body. When they were finally seated and the opening ceremonies observed Old Owl’s friend Santa Ana stood to speak. With his robe draped togalike around him and his classic profile, he reminded John Ford of a Roman addressing the senate. His big, good-natured face echoed the sincerity of his words.
He began by telling the white men how the People had come to this land in the beginning. And of how good the land had been to them. He gave a detailed account of their life-style and roamings, their wars and triumphs over the past few hundred years. He assured them that his people could lead their white brothers over every rise and through every arroyo of the territory around them. After an hour, he finished with a flourish. Placing his hand over his heart, he pledged his undying love for the white men. “There is no need,” he said, “to station soldiers on the People’s land. There will be no war with the United States. I am not a Comanche, but an American.”
Marcy took the pipe next, drew a puff on it, and rose to speak.
“We know of your love for us, and we return it. I myself am not really an American, but a full-blooded, true-blue, one hundred percent, dyed-in-the-wool Comanche.”
“Dyed in the wool?” Shaw looked at Marcy, unable to translate.
“Don’t worry about it, Jim. The soldiers are stationed here for your protection, jefe. They are to make sure that bad white men don’t take advantage of you.” When Marcy finished, Old Owl spoke.
“You tell us that the troops are placed here for our protection. That I know is not so.” He turned to Agent Neighbors. “When you set the line for us a year ago, you said we could go south of it to hunt if we wished. That I only had to ask the captain at the fort for permission. I wanted to go south to hunt with a party of eight old men and their women and children. I applied for permission, and the captain denied it.
“I told him that I had no warriors with me, only my friends, the old men. That we needed the meat for our families. But still he refused. I told him that I was an old man. And that I had hunted on these prairies before he was born, before any white men came. It made no difference. Now you want us to help you make a road for more white men. And how will we be treated when they come?” Old Owl had apparently been thinking about the project a great deal since he had agreed to it. Damn that officer, anyway, Neighbors thought. He rose to assure the chief.
“The road we will mark will lead people through your lands. They will not stay here. They are passing through to the other side to dig for the yellow metal that white men hold as sacred medicine.” Old Owl should be able to understand that. The crafty old goat had asked for his pay in coins. He must be planning another trip east. And he knew he couldn’t buy passage on a steamship with horses and mules.
“I promise you. Chief,” Neighbors held up his hand to give weight to his words. “The people who will use this road will mean no harm to you. They will not be Texans. They will pass through and you will see them no more. They will be as the wind that blows through your villages on its way to the ends of the world.”
Robert S. Neighbors was a good and honest man, a friend of the Indians. He believed that he told them the truth.
CHAPTER 44
Cub sat next to his grandfather’s bed. He had renamed himself Esa Nahubiya, Echo Of A Wolf’s Howl when he returned from his vision quest, but Old Owl continued to call him Cub. Now the boy sat with his head in his hands, his fingers pressed against his temples to relieve the throbbing there. His head ached from days of crying and nights without sleep. He had sent the medicine man away the day before, when it was obvious to everyone that the medicine was doing no good. Cub had known it wouldn’t when his grandfather had shown the first symptoms. He had recognized the sickness as cholera. That morning Old Owl had chanted his song welcoming death, and he now lay waiting for it to visit him.
Why did you escort the wagon trains. Grandfather? I tried to warn you, but you’re a stubborn old man. Once Old Owl had decided to walk the white man’s road, and when he had seen what lay along it to the east, he sought more contact with them. You were, looking for coffee, weren’t you? And the baubles that the white men buy cheap and sell dear. Buy cheap and sell dear. How much coffee is a life worth? Four thousand gold seekers had passed along Old Owl’s road that summer, and Old Owl was a familiar figure along it. He was the welcoming committee and the escort.
On the other side of the fire Cub’s great-aunt, Prairie Dog, had fallen asleep. She was nodding over the broth she was making in a futile gesture for her husband. Suddenly a wail rose from the lodge next door, a ululating cry that pricked Cub’s skin. It was the voice of Wild Sage, Santa Ana’s wife. Santa Ana must be dead of the cholera. Cub could no longer even feel grief for his grandfather’s old companion. But the sound awoke Prairie Dog, and she stood wearily, moaning and sobbing. Pulling her robe over her head, she went to comfort her friend.
“Cub.” The boy leaned down, putting his ear to his grandfather’s blue-tinged lips. “Santa Ana?” The old man panted with the effort of speaking.
“Yes, Grandfather. He’s dead.”
“My bag.”
Cub knew he could only mean one bag. He took the large, fringed medicine pouch from its peg.
“Yours, my son.” Old Owl’s cheeks were sunken by dehydration and starvation until the bones of his skull were clearly outlined. The bluish skin stretched across the bones seemed transparent. His eyes were closed, the chalky lids threaded with delicate violet veins. His dry tongue was too swollen to fit in his mouth, and protruded slightly.
Cub took one of his skeletal hands and rubbed it gently, trying to give some warmth to the clammy skin. He had to search for the pulse in the emaciated wrist. He almost panicked, thinking Old Owl had died. Then he felt the heart’s faint flutter.
There was a horrible odor in the lodge, intensified by the summer heat. Cub and Prairie Dog had cleaned him thoroughly after each siege of watery diarrhea and vomiting, but the smell permeated everything. Now Old Owl had nothing left to vomit. He jerked, seized with violent, painful cramps in his stringy muscles. As the dehydration drained him of life, he sank deeper into the torpor of shock.
“Water.” Cub was ready and poured a trickle of it between the shriveled lips. Then he sprinkled some onto the palm of his hand and washed his grandfather’s face and chest with it.
“Bag,”
“I brought you the medicine bag.”
“Bag.”
Cub held up one bag after another while Old Owl forced his eyes to stay open. He shook his head slightly each time. Finally Cub had shown him all of them.
“Bag.”
“Where?”
“Bed.”
Cub got on his hands and knees and searched under the tumble of boxes against the wall, next to his own sleeping area. He found a heavy leather bag hidden there. It was undecorated, but it clinked as it bumped into the other boxes and bundles.
“Yours.”
Cub untied the thongs wrapped around the neck of it and peered inside. The bag held a large pile of gold coins, the hoard that Old Owl had been saving for three years. They were the coins he had gotten from the young men when they came back from raids. He had convinced them that they were useless, and offered to dispose of them.
“Yours,” he repeated. And with something that was almost a smile on his face, the old man relaxed. “Love you, Cub,” he whispered. “Proud.”
“I love you too, Grandfather.”
Old Owl jerked once more and lay still, his face somehow peaceful, released from his body’s agony. Cub placed his hand on the cold, bony chest, searching frantically for a heartbeat. He knew his grandfather must die, but he wasn’t ready for it. He would never be ready for it. With both his hands flat on Old Owl’s chest, Cub tilted his head back and how
led. It was an animal sound, as devoid of human reason as the howl of his new namesake, the wolf.
Perhaps that was what the wolf was trying to tell him when its howl echoed through the hills and Cub saw his vision. Brother Wolf saw the future and tried to warn him. And Cub had ignored the warning. He should have prevented his grandfather from helping the whites. He should have stopped him the way Old Owl had once refused to let him go on a raid with his father, over ten years ago.
By now the noise in the village was deafening. The mourning for the two leaders crescendoed with Cub’s howls. Finally Cub shook his head and looked around him, as though waking from a nightmare and finding reality much worse. He pulled the buffalo robe over Old Owl’s face and went to help Prairie Dog, the woman he called Grandmother.
It was strangely quiet inside Santa Ana’s lodge. Cub peered in, squinting as his eyes adjusted to the dim light. There, in an expanding pool of her own blood, lay Prairie Dog. She had opened her throat with her skinning knife. The slash gaped like a grinning second mouth. Wild Sage lay next to her. He felt for her heartbeat and found it. His hand came away bloody from the deep gashes on her bared, pendulous breasts. She had fainted from exhaustion, hysteria, and the loss of blood.
Cub pulled the blanket over Santa Ana’s face. The skin hung in folds from his large frame. His shrunken cheeks were a mockery of the robust man he had been. Women began rushing into the tent, screaming and tearing at their hair and clothes. Cub left Wild Sage to them. He scooped his grandmother up easily and carried her back to his grandfather’s lodge. She had grown frail, resembling her husband more each year. He picked his way through Old Owl’s friends, huddled and sobbing under their robes. The crowd was growing as the villagers converged like wailing sleepwalkers on the smoking lodge of their leader.
When he had laid his grandmother gently next to her husband, he carried out the few things that he had to have, and those his grandfather had given him. Then he went back inside and, sitting crosslegged in front of the bodies, he lit Old Owl’s ceremonial pipe. He blew the smoke toward the hole in the top of the lodge, sending a prayer for the old couple’s souls after it. No one entered the lodge. It was as though they all recognized the special relationship Cub had had with his great-uncle, and they felt he should be alone.
At last Cub took a burning branch from the fire and set the things in the lodge alight. While the (lames slowly caught, he went outside and hacked a huge armful of brush to pile on them. He heaped more and more branches until the heat was too intense to approach, and sparks were showering from the smoke hole. He chanted a death song and prayer while the lodge burned.
As he watched the hide covering buckle and shrivel, consumed from within, he thought bitterly that he couldn’t even give Old Owl and Prairie Dog a proper burial. He couldn’t bathe them or paint their faces red, or seal their eyes with red clay. There would be no wake for the bodies, dressed in finery and laid out on blankets for all to pay respects. Nor could they be carried through the village on the backs of fine horses. He couldn’t even cut his hair to show his grief. The white people had already shorn him.
Old Owl and Prairie Dog would have to be buried in a cleansing fire that would help prevent the disease from spreading. He had his hand in the bag of coins, ready to throw them into the blaze and let it melt them. But he stayed his hand. His grandfather had insisted he take them. He’d find a use for them.
When the lodge was a ring of charred ruins, Cub headed for the horse pasture. Already there was chaos in the village as terrified families tore down their lodges and fled. They fled in disorder, and in all directions. They scattered to seek sanctuary with friends and relatives in other bands. And they carried the disease with them.
Cub methodically shot all his grandfather’s ponies, except
Eagle Feather and one packhorse. Old Owl had a herd of five hundred animals, and it took Cub all afternoon and all his carefully hoarded ammunition. The horses’ screams and the sound of his rifle could be heard over the din from the camp. Then he returned to Old Owl’s lodge to gather his grandparents’ bones. They were still warm, and charred black. He squatted in the ashes and sifted through them for the bones. He shook them before putting them in a large leather bag he had saved for the purpose. Cub packed the spare pony and mounted Eagle Feather. He rode slowly, one last time, through the camp. There were gaping spaces left by the families who had run away. Those who remained seemed insane with grief. It was a scene from Uncle James’ hell.
For the first time in his life, Cub felt totally alone. Even when he had been imprisoned with his white relatives he had known that Old Owl was here and that he would one day see him again. Old Owl had been a fixed part of his life, like the North Star even when obscured by clouds. And now he was gone.
With tears coursing down his cheeks. Cub left the village. As he rode, another horse ghosted from the bushes to join him, its rider shrouded. When she pulled the robe back, Cub saw that it was Small Hand.
“Small Hand, go back.”
“I’m going with you.”
“I have no ponies to pay for you. And many men will offer your father a handsome price.”
“I don’t care about the other men. I’m going with you.”
“I don’t even know where I’m going.”
“It doesn’t matter.” Small Hand rode in silence for a few minutes before she spoke again. “Will you go back to the whites?”
“No!” He realized how bitter his voice was, and softened it. “No, I can’t go back there.” How could he tell her? He remembered one of his uncle’s neighbors bragging that he had the answer to the Indian problem. How could Cub explain to Small Hand the satisfied look on the man’s face when he told of how he had inoculated a captured Comanche with smallpox and turned him loose to spread the disease. Cub had heard the story repeated in his Uncle James’ house, among righteous, God-fearing Christians. And no one had condemned the man. No. Cub knew he couldn’t go back there. He had seen what the white people’s ways had done to Old Owl. Besides, he thought pragmatically, if he went back, the Texans would hang him for a horse thief.
“I’ll probably look for my sister,” he said at last.
“Naduah? With the Noconi?”
Cub nodded.
“Small Hand.”
“Yes, Echo Of A Wolfs Howl?”
“I’m glad you came with me.”
Small Hand smiled shyly at him. Her eyes brimmed with love as well as grief.
Cub and Small Hand roamed the Comancheria, tracking down rumors and sightings of the elusive Noconi. At first the two of them had stayed with the bands they encountered. But almost every village they entered resounded with the wails of mourning, as cholera cut its way through Texas. Families, the basic unit of the People’s society, were broken and destroyed. Terror and despair were on every face they saw. Finally, sobbing, Small Hand refused to sleep in another camp.
From then on Cub rode into a village alone while Small Hand waited outside. As warriors gathered, their weapons ready, he held his hand up in the sign of peace.
“Hi, haitsi, hello, friends.” he called. Then he went to find the leaders of the band while the children swarmed after him. They were enchanted by his hair, bleached almost white in the sun. He smoked with the council in each camp and asked about Wanderer and the yellow hair, his wife. Then he rode away again.
Often a party of men and boys from the village accompanied Cub and Small Hand a few miles on their journey. They gave them gifts of food, and watched as the two grew smaller in the distance, leading their single pack pony after them. They had no lodge, no spare clothes, no cooking gear or personal possessions other than what Small Hand had hastily thrown into her saddle bags before she followed Cub from Old Owl’s village.
At night they sought shelter in caves, or under brush lean-tos in protected breaks and ravines. For their meals. Small Hand scooped out a depression in the ground and laid a buffalo hide in it. She poured water into the hide and heated it with rocks taken from the fire. W
hen the water reached the boiling point, she cooked a stew of whatever they had killed that day. When darkness fell, they slept in each other’s arms.
One night, Cub felt her shake him gently awake, calling him by her pet name.
“Sun hair, listen.”
Cub pushed to the surface of consciousness and lay still. He breathed shallowly, listening.
“Do you hear it?”
“You know you have better hearing than I do, small one. What is it?”
“I don’t know. It sounded like an animal in distress.”
“Maybe a rabbit caught by an owl.”
“No. There it is again. Can’t you hear it?”
Cub listened intently. Finally he heard the faintest of sounds, eerie and broken, carried on the light night wind. He pushed the robe back and searched for his moccasins. He shook them automatically to make sure they were empty, then slipped them on. Small Hand did the same. In silence they saddled their ponies, leaving the camp and the pack animal. Using the pale light of the moon, they picked their way over the sweeping hills. The sound grew as they approached it.
“What is it, sun hair?”
“Fiddles.”
Small Hand looked puzzled.
“A fiddle is a musical instrument that white people play and dance to. Like drums or flutes or rattles.”
“I don’t like it. It sounds like dead souls in agony.”
But Cub’s feet had begun jerking in time with the music, in spite of himself, and to his pony’s confusion. They dismounted just below the crest of the last hill and crawled to the top. On their bellies, they looked down at the wagon train below them. The wagons were in a circle, the tongue of one under the rear wheels of the next and laced with heavy chains. In the center of the ring was a huge bonfire, and the gold-rushers had gathered to dance around it. Over to one side stood two fiddlers, one of them a large man with a flowing red beard.
Robson, Lucia St. Clair Page 55