Below them there was a stir among the thousands of men. Criers from the various tribes were riding through their camps, beating their small hand drums and calling the warriors to the opening of the treaty talks. Most of them had been preparing all morning. Each man was carefully painted and dressed in his best clothes. Their shirts and leggings were heavy with decorations. The ponies were covered with streamers and feathers, bells and paint. The milling and confusion began to take on order as the horsemen converged on the plain where they would make their entrance. The leaders of the tribes had already decided what that entrance would be like.
“Will you join them, Quanah?”
“No. I will watch from here.”
“I must go, then. They need me to translate.”
Quanah embraced McCusker. He gripped him by the shoulders and stared him straight in the eye. Both men were over six feet tall.
“My friend,” Quanah said, “the news you brought was sad. But I am in your debt for bringing it.”
“Your mother and father were much loved by my wife and her family.”
“Tell Something Good and Weasel that my heart grieves with them over the death of Pahayuca. I heard here that he died, but not how.’.’
“Cholera. It was bad this summer.”
“Soon all the old ones will be gone. Their smoking lodges will be empty and their fires cold. Who will replace them?”
“The People’s leaders will have to change, Quanah. You can no more stop the white men than you can stop the wind or turn back the rivers. And you will be one of those leaders. You must make the choice. Continue stubbornly in the old ways and you will be like the buffalo that stampedes blindly toward a sheer cliff. I must hurry. The white men will be looking for me.”
The two men saluted each other, and McCusker ran down the hill, his arms out to keep his balance. Quanah stood watching the spectacle below him.
The cavalry was lining up four abreast, rank on rank of them. The four civilian commissioners and the three generals rode at the head of the long column. The Indians had formed a huge triangle, like an arrowhead with the point aimed at the soldiers. There was a long pause, the massed, armed horsemen splendid and dark and shifting against the yellow grass of the slope. Then suddenly the wedge was in motion. Each man spurred his horse forward as fast as he could fly.
When the warriors reached the edge of the huge, level plain, the point of the wedge swerved and began to circle. Riders peeled away from it in precise lines, until they formed five concentric circles, all moving at a headlong pace. The enormous rings moved toward the white men, shifting forward as the riders closest to the soldiers swung out in imperceptibly wider arcs and those farthest away closed in.
About fifty yards from the column of tense soldiers, the wheel stopped as suddenly as it had started. A wild, ululating war cry rose from several thousand throats. Black Kettle of the Cheyenne, Satanta of the Kiowa, Ten Bears of the Yamparika Comanche, and Sore-Backed Horse of the Dertsanauyuca rode slowly forward. Each of them accompanied a pair of commissioners back toward the wheel.
The warriors parted to make a neat aisle through the five circles. The chiefs led the commissioners through the rows of riders, silent except for the fluttering of feathers on their shields and lances and the jingling of bells on their shirts and leggings. In the center a young man waited with the ornate, three-foot long pipe with the bowl of smooth, polished red catlinite. He held it carefully in his outstretched palms. Groups of eagle feathers, strips of white ermine fur, and a panel of intricate beading dangled from the carved stem. After the smoking ceremony, the talks began.
Quanah stayed with the Quohadi who refused to participate in the talks. Big Bow reported back at the end of each day as they sat around their evening meal of roast mule. The lights from the campfires twinkled over the dark hills for miles in all directions. The night was cool, like black satin on the skin. The noises of the vast encampment were muted and remote. The starry sky seemed close enough to touch.
“How do the talks go? What demands are the white men making?” asked Quanah.
“The same as always. We must change the road we walk or we will suffer and die. The white men want to help us.”
“That much is the truth anyway. They want to help us suffer and die,” broke in Deep Water. Big Bow went on patiently.
“They say they’ll set aside part of the best lands for our exclusive home before the white settlers take it all away.”
“Let them try,” said Buffalo Piss angrily.
“They’ll set aside land that won’t support even a few families.” Sun Name of the Yamparika had grown rounder with the years, but he was still powerfully built. He glowered at those around him. “I told them I would rather stay out on the prairie and eat dung than be penned up on a reservation.”
“You won’t have to eat dung, brother. There will always be buffalo,” said Quanah. “When those on the reservation live better than we do out on the Staked Plains, then it will be time to come in.”
“What did the leaders of the People say, Big Bow?” asked Buffalo Piss.
“Ten Bears made the longest speech. He said, ‘You want to put us on a reservation, to build us houses and make us medicine lodges. I do not want them. I was born upon the prairie, where the wind blows free and there is nothing to break the light of the sun. I want to die there and not within walls. When I was in Was-in-tone the Great White Father told me that all the Comanche land was ours and that no one should hinder us in living upon it. So why do you ask us to leave the rivers and the sun and the wind to live in houses?
” ‘If the Texans had kept out of my country, there might have been peace. But that which you say we must live on is too small. The Texans have taken away the best places, where the grass grew the thickest and the timber was the best. Had we kept that, we might have done the things you ask. But it is too late. The white man has the country we loved. And we wish only to wander the prairie until we die.’
“He said more, but that was the important part,” finished Big Bow. “I sneaked among the wagons when it got dark,” he went on, with his old mischievous smile. “They really are full of presents. One entire wagon is piled with pots and pans and buckets. Another has mirrors and boxes of vermillion and beads. My women will be ecstatic. Ah.” A blissful, lascivious expression crossed Big Bow’s handsome, unlined face, “How they will love me when I bring them so many wonderful things.”
“Big Bow.” Quanah was shocked. “You won’t sign the paper!”
“Of course not. But I’ll collect the presents. One Indian looks like another to them.”
“What other presents were there?” asked Buffalo Piss. And the conversation went on through the night.
After the last day of the talks, outside their tents, the peace commissioners sat in canvas chairs and listened to the sounds of drumming and chanting, shouting and laughter that surrounded them. Philip McCusker sat with them, his long legs on each side of the chair, his elbows on his knees, and his chin propped on the palms of his hands. He stared into the fire as the men around him smoked and congratulated themselves on their work. McCusker ignored them and thought about his recent trip to Washington. Getting the chiefs to sign the treaty was simple compared to getting Congress to ratify it. And then follow through with the promises.
Washington City. The very words depressed McCusker. He had been relieved to return west. The city was still a shambles from the five years of fighting that had gone on in and around it. There were still temporary hospitals in the parks. The cobblestone streets were broken and pitted by the iron-bound wheels of the heavy guns and caissons. All the trees were gone, fed into the soldiers’ campfires. The Potomac was thick with raw sewage and debris. It stank. The whole city stank.
In the midst of it all, men tried to go on running a bitterly divided country. McCusker couldn’t blame Congress for not paying as much attention to the Indian question as they should. The problems of Reconstruction made it seem trivial. Three hundred and eight-four people
had been murdered last year by fellow Texans. Twenty-six had been killed by Indians.
Men in Washington cynically blamed the Indian troubles on vengeful whites and profiteers, crooked freighters and contractors and railroaders supplying the army. They pointed to the federal Indian administration, which was most certainly corrupt. And they accused the conquered confederate Texans of exaggerating reports of Indian raids. Chasing Indians gave the federal occupying troops something to do besides harass the Texans.
It was an impossible situation. McCusker could clearly see what would happen when this commission returned to Washington. Congress would tie the treaty up in endless debate, or table it altogether. The Indians would become impatient and disillusioned and hit the raid trail again. Some of those politicians meant well, but they had no notion of the complexity of the problem. And others gave the Indians no thought once they had gotten their land from them.
McCusker saw the war stretching out for years, and costing millions of dollars and thousands of lives. As long as there were young men like Quanah Parker around, there would be war. And it would be the ugliest kind of war, with women and children the victims. McCusker shook his head to clear it. He felt the need to get away from the white men and their talk of killing for sport and their discussion of tumbling Indian squaws. Their smug superiority sickened McCusker. He rose and mumbled his good-night. He collected his bedroll from his tent and ambled off in search of Quanah and the Quohadi.
He awoke the next morning to a bizarre cacophony. The men dozing around the glowing embers leaped up and grabbed for their weapons. McCusker began to laugh.
“What is it, Ma-cus-ka?” asked Quanah.
“Bugles. Good Lord, I forgot. One of those wagons had over three thousand surplus army bugles. The stupid sons of bitches must have just passed them out with the rest of the trinkets. Those Injuns must have started demanding their presents at cock’s crow. No more rest for the wicked, boys. Up and at ‘em. Any of that mule left? I’m hungry.”
They took their time eating and packing their equipment. Then they moved off slowly through the main encampment, looking disdainfully at the chaos around the army wagons. Indians were scattering in all directions with their arms loaded.
“Look at Kicking Bird,” said McCusker. The dignified Kiowa chief wore moccasins and a breechclout and a tall, black stovepipe hat resplendent with yards of red ribbons. Four ribbon streamers hung down his back almost to the ground.
“What will you do now, Quanah?” asked the interpreter.
“Can I trust you, Ma-cus-ka?”
“Yes, Brother. I interpret. I don’t carry tales or spill secrets.”
“We will raid the new cattle trails. The white men have started driving large herds north through Texas. We will steal their stock and trade it with Ho-say Tafoya near Quitaque.”
“Well,” said McCusker, “the meek might inherit the earth, but they’ll never possess its cattle. So you’re going back to Texas.”
“Of course. It’s my home. I’ll stay on the Staked Plains with the Quohadi and raid from there.”
“Then you won’t consider surrendering and collecting annuities on the reservation? They’ll pay you every year.” McCusker knew the answer.
“We don’t need their presents. We’ll take what we want. Tell the white chiefs the Quohadi are warriors. We’ll surrender when the yellowlegs come to the Staked Plains and beat us.” Quanah lifted his lance in salute to McCusker as he rode away with the Quohadi. “Good-bye, Ma-cus-ka,” he shouted. “Remember Quanah Parker. Maybe someday you’ll hear my name in Texas.” Quanah grinned.
McCusker waved back. I’m sure I will, Mr. Parker.
CHAPTER 57
In the summer of 1870, a blond, blue-eyed young hunter, fresh from the east, was killing buffalo to supply the army with meat. He shipped fifty-seven of the hides home to his older brother in New York City to see if they could be sold. As the hides were being trundled in an open wagon down Broadway, they were spotted by two tanners. The men followed the wagon to its destination and offered the hunter’s brother three dollars and fifty cents apiece for the skins.
After experimenting with them, they ordered two thousand more at the same price, seven thousand dollars worth in all. The new tanning process they had invented made hides collected at any time of the year usable. The brother took care of his affairs, packed up, and left for the Great Plains to help obtain the hides. The stampede was on. Thousands of men, eager to get rich quickly, followed him.
Christian Sharps obliged the buffalo hunters by producing a heavy rifle with an octagonal barrel that could stand great pressure. The gun’s rear sight was calibrated to one thousand yards. The rifle could drop a full-grown buffalo at six hundred yards, and a good marksman could kill two hundred and fifty animals a day with it.
Dodge City became the center of the trade as loaded wagons converged there to meet the new railroad. The huge mountains of hides and the men who brought them in could be smelled a long way off. And the hunters usually weren’t the type to be fastidious anyway. Signs saying “No Buffalo Hunters” began appearing in Dodge City whorehouses.
A little over a year later, in late October of 1871, Quanah and a party of young men rode south from the Canadian River toward Blanco Canyon at the edge of the Staked Plains. They were headed for the supply camp of Bad Hand, or Three-Fingered Kinzie, as Colonel Ranald Mackenzie was called.
Quanah and his war party had been harrying Bad Hand and his soldiers for weeks. The Quohadi would swoop down from the high ridges in a long flying-V formation and then scatter into the tall grass before the useless massed charges of the yellowlegs. Now Quanah was determined to find the supply camp his scouts had reported and relieve Bad Hand of the necessity of providing forage for his horses and mules.
Quanah’s pony snorted and skittered a few steps to the side. Quanah put a hand on his neck to quiet him. The horse was all black and groomed until he shone like obsidian. He was a descendant of Night through Raven, and old Polecat was intensely jealous of him.
All the ponies were nervous, and the men knew why. Circling above the ridge ahead of them were swirls of vultures. As the raiders topped the rise, the smell hit them. The plain below them was dotted with putrifying buffalo carcasses. But there was something strange about the kill. The buffalo had been skinned, but the meat had been left to rot.
“Who would waste so much meat?” At fifty-five, Cruelest One was by far the oldest in the group.
“White men,” said Quanah. He pulled his bandana over his mouth and nose to keep out as much of the stench as possible.
“Shouldn’t we go around?”
“No. There isn’t time. I want to find Bad Hand’s camp by nightfall. We’ll attack by the light of the full moon.”
Mackenzie and his officers were just finishing the evening meal when the attack came. They were relaxing with their cigars and pipes when they heard the hoofbeats. They leaped to their feet.
“Stampede?” called someone.
“No,” said Mackenzie wearily. “Quanah Parker.”
By that time they all knew who the young war leader was. The Texans were even taking a perverse pride in him. He was one of theirs, after all. And he was leading the damn Yankees on a hell of a chase all over the Panhandle.
“God damn it!” yelled someone. “Not again.”
The men ran for cover and grabbed weapons as the first riders thundered screaming into camp. The ponies’ hooves sent sparks flying from the scattered campfires.
Quanah led the raid. He was larger than the others, and to the soldiers stranded on foot, he looked even bigger. His face was painted as black as the horse he rode. His expression of fierce joy was grotesque in the fire’s light. The bells on his hunting shirt and leggings jingled madly as he pounded his pony’s sides to hold his lead over the others.
With his right hand he fired his father’s Colt repeater. With his left, he flapped a blanket over his head to panic the stock and send it stampeding in front of him. His men fol
lowed closely. They all careened through the camp. They leaped the small tents of the enlisted men, sometimes coming down in the middle of one and thrashing as it tangled around the horse’s legs. They overturned wagons and scattered equipment.
Then, as suddenly as they appeared, they were gone. Seventy of Mackenzie’s horses and mules went with them. The soldiers heard the Quohadi shouting insults and taunts. They yipped to their new livestock as they rode away into the cold, starry night. Mackenzie bent down to right his overturned camp chair and fold it. All the plains tribes are fine horse thieves, he thought, but you have to give the laurels to the Comanches.
“Round up what horses they missed. We’re going after them.”
“But, sir, there’s a storm a-brewing.”
“We’re going after them, Lieutenant.”
Overhead, the stars winked out like snuffed candles as clouds scudded over them. The wind began to blow colder. Damn, thought Mackenzie, another Texas norther. They always arrive at the worst time. But then, he asked himself wryly, when would be the best time? At least the same wind was blowing on Quanah Parker and his horde of ruffians. Somehow Mackenzie doubted that it bothered them as much.
He would have been gratified the next day to see his nemesis, wary of army reprisals, leading his entire village in a retreat through the blizzard. Men, women, and children braced against the stinging, blinding needles of ice that blew in their faces. When the sleet changed to a heavy, wet snow, they floundered through drifts of it.
In the three years that followed, the People’s numbers dwindled in the wild. Bad Hand and his soldiers continued to hound them, destroying their camps and food supplies, taking their women and children hostage. But in the end, it wasn’t the army that exacted the worst toll of them.
“The white buffalo killers, those are the ones you should fight.” Sun Name was an old man. He was still ready to go into battle, but he didn’t mind letting the younger men travel from band to band. Quanah was collecting warriors for the battle that would drive the white eyes from their lands for all time. And Sun Name was telling him where to concentrate his efforts.
Robson, Lucia St. Clair Page 73