Comanche Sunset

by Rosanne Bittner

  Soon the wagons were circled and the general din of making camp commenced. Men shouted back and forth, some unyoking oxen while others began a camp fire using buffalo chips and dry mesquite. Others assigned the job of cook would be opening their bins of flour and bacon and beans and the like. Vivian sat up and brushed her hair, then picked up her Bible, her main source of comfort on this long, lonely journey. She thought if not for Lester and her Bible, she would go insane in this desolate country.

  She opened the Good Book to her favorite passage, Ruth 1:16-17. “And Ruth said, ‘Entreat me not to leave thee,’” she read softly, “‘or to return from following after thee; for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God: Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried: the Lord do so to me, and more also, if aught but death part thee and me.’”

  Lester was at the back of the wagon then, and she looked up from her reading. “I want you to eat something this time, and no arguments,” he told her with his heavy drawl. His square chin was peppered with whiskers from two days of hard work without a shave, and his dusty clothes were damp with perspiration; but he was still the handsome, brawny man she had married.

  “I’ll try,” she answered, setting aside her Bible. She reached out to him and he helped her down from the wagon.

  “How are you feeling today?”

  “Better,” she answered, forcing back the tears of depression that were on the verge of falling. Lester was such a strong, able man. She hated showing weakness in front of him, even though he would understand.

  He slipped an arm around her. “When we get to California, I’ll build you a real fine home, Viv; and we’ll eat your fine home cooking.” He gave her a squeeze. “And you’ll have lots more babies.”

  They walked toward the growing camp fire, where one of the cooks was already stirring a pot of beans. “Beans again,” someone was grumbling.

  “Just pretend you’re eatin’ steak and potatoes,” the cook answered. “Use your imagination.”

  Vivian smiled at the remark.

  “Soon as we’re in higher country we’ll slaughter one of the cattle and have a feast,” Lester told them.

  “Sounds good to me,” another answered.

  Vivian frowned then at the sound of a strange crying. Lester left her for a moment to help a bullwhacker with an ox that was thrashing its head while the man tried to get its yoke off. Vivian strained to listen, sure she heard the strange cry again; but the noise of camp made it difficult to tell. She moved away from the camp fire, sure the sound was different from the bawling of a young calf. It sounded almost human.

  She circled the wagons, alert for the odd little cry. There it was again! It actually sounded like a human baby crying! She put a hand to her chest, wondering if she was indeed going insane from the loss of her own child. The cry became stronger, and she started to move between two wagons to go outside the circle.

  “Don’t you be walking out there in the dark, Mrs. Morrow,” a man called out, catching up to her. “Too dangerous.”

  She looked up at Stuart Jones, one of the wagon drivers. “But…I heard something.” The cry came again. “There! Do you hear it, Stuart? It sounds like a baby crying!”

  The man frowned, listening intently, trying to hear the sound above the bawling, shuffling cattle and oxen, and the noise of making camp. “Yes, ma’am, I believe I do hear something like that.”

  Vivian sighed with relief. “Good. At least I know I haven’t lost my mind.”

  “That’s something none of us are too sure of out here.” The man grinned.

  “Go and get Lester, will you?”

  “Yes, ma’am, but you have to stay put.”

  “I will.”

  Stuart left, and a moment later Lester was at Vivian’s side. “What’s this about hearing a baby?”

  “Listen, Lester. It’s crying harder.”

  The man frowned, listening closely. He looked at Stuart. “Could there be Indians out there?”

  “Could be. But they generally have ways of keeping their babies quiet. They’d never let one cry like that and give away their presence. And we could still see pretty good when we began to circle. There’s no big rocks or mountains or brush around here that Indians could hide behind.”

  “Get a couple of rifles and a lamp and we’ll check it out,” Lester told the man. Stuart obeyed, returning with the items. Lester turned to Vivian. “You stay here inside the circle.” He left with Stuart, and Vivian waited with curious anticipation. It was nearly twenty minutes before the two men returned, Lester carrying a bundle in his arms, something wrapped in an Indian blanket. “This is the damnedest thing I ever saw,” he told Vivian, stepping over the tongue of a wagon and closer to her. “It’s a baby—an Indian baby.”

  Vivian put her hands to her mouth in surprise. Lester opened the blanket and Stuart held up a lamp to reveal the tiny bit of life, which was still squalling. “Laying out there all alone,” the man told her. “All wrapped up and tucked away under a rock. I saw my sister’s new baby right after it was born, and I swear this one looks just like it—I mean, it looks like it can’t even be a day old yet.”

  Vivian’s eyes teared. “Oh, the poor thing.” She looked up at Lester. “Let me hold it. Did you look to see if it’s a boy or a girl?”

  “It’s a boy.” Lester eyed her warily. “Vivian, this is an Indian child, most likely Comanche. Some of these men would just as soon we left it. There’s some reason it was abandoned, and maybe that’s the way it’s supposed to be.”

  Her eyes widened in shock. “Lester, it’s just a little baby! You can’t leave it out there to die and be eaten by buzzards! Whatever reason its mother left it there, we can’t say it’s right. The Indians’ beliefs are far different from our own.”

  “Taking it away from where it was left could invite trouble for us.”

  “Lester.” Her eyes teared, and the pleading loneliness in them tore at his heart. He sighed deeply, looking at Stuart. “You know more about the Comanche than I do. What do you think, Stuart?” He bent a finger and stuck a knuckle into the baby’s mouth to make it stop crying.

  “Well, he ain’t deformed,” Stuart answered. “The only other reason I can think of why he’d be abandoned is that he could have been a twin. Normally Comanche kill twin babies—figure them to be bad omens. Maybe the mother had them alone and didn’t have the heart to see her babies killed, so she picked one to keep and left the other one.”

  “Oh, the poor woman,” Vivian spoke up. “How barbaric that she should have to make such a decision.”

  “Depends on how you look at things like this,” Stuart answered. “I don’t expect whites will ever fully understand the Indian’s way of thinking—but then they’ll never understand our way either. There is another possibility.”

  “What’s that,” Lester asked.

  Stuart removed his hat and ran a hand through his hair. “Well, the kid could have white blood. Thing is, though, the Comanche don’t always have a whole lot against a half-breed, especially if it’s a boy baby. Now if it was a girl, I’d be more suspicious it was a breed. But being a boy—I don’t know. Maybe some Comanche woman was attacked by white men and she’s ashamed of the baby.”

  Lester looked down at the tiny bit of life. “Or maybe it’s the other way around. Maybe a white woman was taken by Comanche men and—” He hesitated, wanting to spare his wife the horrors of such a situation.

  “I’d be less likely to suspect the mother was white,” Stuart answered. “There just aren’t any white women this far west. Your wife might be setting a record herself. I doubt any other white women have been into this part of the country yet.”

  Vivian put a hand on Lester’s arm. “Lester, it doesn’t matter who mothered the child. The fact remains we can’t just leave the baby to die. It would be unchristian. His cries would haunt me the rest of my life. I could never forgive myself.”

  “I’ll let you two
talk this out,” Stuart told them, putting his hat back on. He set down the lamp and left, and Lester studied his wife’s pretty face, loving the way her light hair fell around her soft cheeks, loving her soft brown eyes.

  “We have to keep this baby,” she was telling him. “We have a couple of milk cows along. I can help it live, I’m sure of it, Lester. Just as I’m sure this is some kind of gift from God to help me through the loneliness of this journey.”

  “And when we’re in California? Then what?”

  “Then we’ll…we’ll decide…”

  “You’ll be attached. In fact, you’ll be attached the minute I put this child in your arms. I know you, Viv.”

  A tear slipped down her cheek. “But he’s so little.”

  “Viv, he’s an Indian. Do you know what that means? It means a damn hard life for him growing up among whites, no matter how much love you might give him. And we’ll want kids of our own.”

  The remark hurt her, and he realized it as soon as he said it. “I’m sorry about the baby, Lester.”

  “Honey, I don’t blame you for that. You’ll have more. But taking in a strange Indian baby now—with you so worn out and half sick—having to set up a home in California and get back on your feet—”

  “Lester, what else can we do?”

  He looked down at the infant. “I don’t know. Maybe we could find some Indian family along the way that would take the child.”

  “You heard Stuart, and you know how suspicious Indians are. If they know this baby was abandoned, they won’t want near it. They would think it was bad luck. Maybe they would even kill it.” She touched his hand. “Lester, you don’t fool me. You brought this baby here because you didn’t have the heart to leave it out there to die. You certainly aren’t going to take it back there now. We’ve found it, and God expects us to care for it. It’s our duty. If it’s the right thing to do, then it will all work out as the Lord intends, Lester. Now give me the baby and have someone try to get a little milk out of one of the cows, if its calf hasn’t taken it all.”

  He scowled, looking out over the camp. “The men won’t like this.”

  “They’ll get used to it, and they trust your judgment. You’re good at handling them, Lester. You can make them understand.” She swallowed back a lump in her throat. “Lester, I need this baby. I think that’s why God put him here for us to find. I’ve been so depressed and homesick, more than you know. I just didn’t want to burden you with it. Please, Lester, let me keep him and care for him. We can’t leave him here to die. I promise that when this trip is over, I’ll trust your judgment on what we should do with him.”

  He grinned slightly and shook his head. “You really think after caring for him for two or three months you’d be able to hand him over to Indians or some orphanage or something? No, ma’am. Once you hold this baby, he’s yours for keeps.”

  “Ours, Lester, not just mine.”

  He frowned, looking down at the baby. “I’ve had too many bad experiences with Indians to take lightly to calling one of them my own.”

  “You have a big heart. He’ll grow on you.”

  He sighed resignedly, handing the baby over. “You might as well name him,” he told her.

  She took the baby, the motherly instincts that had been stolen from her immediately returning in full force. “Oh, Lester, he’s so pretty and looks so healthy. What if we name him after your brother who died last year?”

  “Wade?” He studied the infant. “Seems kind of strange calling an Indian baby by a white man’s name.”

  The child opened its eyes, and Vivian gasped. “Maybe not so strange after all,” she answered. “Look, Lester! I swear his eyes are light.”

  The man picked up the lamp and held it closer. “I’ll be damned,” he muttered. “He’s got blue eyes! He is a breed.” He closed his eyes, realizing the gravity of the statement. “That’s even worse than a full-blood, far as whites are concerned. That must be why he got left behind then. Still, it’s not like Comanche to turn their back on a boy baby, half-breed or not. Maybe Stuart’s first idea was closer. Maybe he’s a twin.”

  “It doesn’t matter. He’s just an innocent baby, Lester—a human being, nothing more…and certainly nothing less; and I don’t ever want you or anyone close to us calling him a breed.” She held him closer. “He’s a child of God, and God has given him to me.”

  Chapter Two

  Early spring, 1860

  Jennifer kept the hood of her cape drawn over her auburn hair, glad it was a cool day in St. Louis so that it didn’t seem unusual to be wearing the hood. She didn’t want to be recognized. Her Uncle John would be furious if he knew she had left the house alone, but he was preoccupied now with planning her aunt’s funeral. She would have to hurry in order to get back to the house before he returned from the funeral home.

  She forced back a renewed urge to cry at the thought of her Aunt Esther’s death, only yesterday. Esther Andrews had been her only mother figure for eight years now, ever since Jennifer’s parents had been killed in a riverboat explosion when Jennifer was ten. Jennifer’s memory of that night was vague. She remembered the sensation of hot flames shooting out at her back, catching her hair on fire. The next thing she knew, she was in the river, so numb from shock she didn’t even know her back had been badly burned.

  “It was by God’s mercy you were thrown into the river,” her aunt had told her often. “That’s what saved you, child, and saved your beautiful face.”

  The ends of Jennifer’s hair had been burned, but the lovely, lustrous waves of her auburn mane had grown back, and her only scars from the fire were on her back and around her right ribs, places no one ever saw except her aunt. She shivered at the thought that Uncle John had also seen them. She had never liked or trusted the man, ever since the time she was twelve and he had insisted one day when Aunt Esther was gone that she let him see her scars. She had been too young to understand or to object, and her humiliation at dropping her dress and the feel of her uncle’s hands touching her back had never left her.

  Ever since then she had been afraid of the man, uncomfortable about the way he often looked at her, feeling fear and revulsion whenever he came into her room at night to “tuck her in.” When she was younger she had let him touch her in ways that were too familiar, afraid of offending him or seeming ungrateful that he had taken her in after her parents died. But as she got older, womanly instincts began to tell her the man had no right to touch her at all. And she knew his reasons for not allowing her to see young men were not for her protection, but out of his own jealousy. The man wanted her for himself, and she suspected the only thing that had kept her uncle from more intimate advances was the presence of her aunt.

  Now Aunt Esther was dead. Jennifer would be alone in the house with Uncle John, and she knew instinctively she was in danger. After a feigned period of mourning, the man would come for her. Jennifer had made up her mind she would not be there. She had to get away, and quickly. But leaving would take money, and there again her uncle had left her helpless. She was aware that her parents had had money. Uncle John had been appointed executor of her parents’ estate, and Jennifer had slowly come to realize she would never see any of the money she surely had coming to her. Her uncle had kept her in the dark regarding just how much money there was. She didn’t even know what attorney or bank had handled it, if, indeed, there was any left. Soon after her parents’ deaths, Uncle John had built a new home and had begun wearing fancy suits. He had opened his own hardware business and had become a wealthy man. Jennifer had no doubt where he had gotten the money.

  All Jennifer had left of her own were a few pieces of jewelry that had belonged to her mother. Her aunt had given them to her. She carried that jewelry now in her handbag, realizing it was her only hope of getting away from Uncle John—that, and the letter she had secretly sent in reply to a newspaper ad for a wife. A soldier at a place called Fort Stockton in west Texas had placed the ad.

  “Wife wanted. Shortage of women in we
st Texas forces this lonely soldier to advertise. Will provide travel fare. Please send picture if possible. You need not feel obligated to marry but refund of travel fare will be required if marriage does not take place.”

  The thought of marrying a complete stranger was terrifying; but the thought of staying alone with her uncle was worse. Besides, she reasoned, the ad said she would not be obligated to marry the man, as long as she could reimburse him the cost of her trip. The trip would at least be an adventure, and she would be far away from her uncle’s clutches.

  She searched the signs along the street until she found the pawn shop. She stopped walking, again taking the soldier’s letter from her handbag. The man had replied to her answer to his ad. She had picked up the letter three days ago at her uncle’s post office box. She was glad her uncle had at least let her continue to get the mail by herself. Because their home was near the post office, Jennifer had been allowed to go there every day with her aunt to get the mail, something she treasured, since her uncle so seldom let her go out of the house. Since her aunt took ill, Jennifer had been going alone, and her uncle had said nothing. She thanked God for that, for she had been able to secretly reply to the soldier’s ad, and now had heard from him without Uncle John’s knowledge.

  She scanned the letter again:

  My dear Miss Andrews. Thank you for answering my ad. From your picture I can see you are a very pretty woman. I am happy to send you the three hundred dollars for travel fare. I have been building my savings over many years of working and from my soldier’s pay. It is a lonely life out here, and every day I risk my life fighting the hated Comanche, but someone has to do it. I have lived in Texas since I was fourteen. I am now thirty-four years old and have never been married. I would like to have a family before I am much older, which is why I am looking for a younger woman. I am pleased that you are only eighteen. Life is hard here at Fort Stockton, but you would be safe within the fort, and I will take good care of you. Please let me know when to expect you so that I can make myself presentable. I am enclosing a picture, which is about four years old. Thank you again, and I look forward to meeting you within the next couple of months. Sincerely, Sergeant Anthony Enders.