Kill the Indian

by Johnny D. Boggs

  Isa-tai spoke, and Daniel turned away from Nagwee. Isa-tai pointed at the pipe, made the sign to refill its bowl, and Daniel did as instructed. After Nagwee had finished his prayers, the three men smoked again.

  As Daniel cleaned the pipe, Nagwee moved back to Quanah. Now he knelt, and began rubbing herbs—Daniel did not know what kind—on the comatose man’s chest, over his forehead, his eyelids, his throat.

  At last, Nagwee straightened, and let the heavy buffalo robe slide off his body, which glistened with sweat. Suddenly he darted to the upright wagon tongue, and began shimmying up the pole. Daniel held his breath. The wooden tongue leaned slightly, and, for a moment, Daniel thought it might break or at least collapse under Nagwee’s weight.

  Isa-tai barked something, and hurried to the pole, motioning for Daniel to help him. They pressed both hands against the wagon tongue, putting their weight into it, grunting, straining, sweating. Daniel wanted to look up, but couldn’t, wouldn’t.

  Outside, a woman screamed, echoed by the shocked voices of men and women.

  “Look at that!”

  “My God!”

  “It’s a head!”

  “What the hell’s that buck doin’?”

  Nagwee had reached the top and had stuck his head through the opening. Now he announced that he was coming down, and Daniel and Isa-tai backed away. The holy man’s feet hit the sand, the wagon tongue quivered and tilted to one side, but did not fall.

  Daniel backed away, watching Nagwee as he ran around the fire before stepping, from the east, into the bed of coals. Daniel bit his lip. Tears welled in his eyes. He smelled the burning of moccasins, of flesh. He could feel the pain, yet Nagwee’s face showed nothing while he moved his arms like a burrowing owl flitting its wings. At last, Nagwee backed out of the fire, moccasins smoldering, and walked to the south, stopping at the western edge of the curing lodge.

  Nagwee moved to the south pond, where he chewed bark from the willow sticks. Tilting his head back, the puhakat let out a gush of air. The smell, Daniel remembered, reminded him of beaver.

  He looked at Quanah, who still breathed, still slept, but did not look any better.

  * * * * *

  The crowd parted as Isa-tai and Nagwee walked out of the Texas Wagon Yard. Daniel stopped outside the ditch as School Father Pratt, Captain Hall, and other men in fancy duds and worried expressions approached him. Kyne, the newspaper reporter, came with them.

  “What’s going on, Daniel?” Pratt asked.

  “It is what we call pianahuwait,” he said, and explained the Beaver Ceremony as best he could.

  “The singing?” Hall asked.

  Daniel had joined Isa-tai and Nagwee in the final song, as was custom for The People, then Nagwee had extinguished the fire inside the lodge, and, after each had left the teepee, they had jumped into the ditch and climbed out on the east side.

  “It is how we close the ceremony.”

  Church bells chimed. It was midnight. Nagwee had timed this perfectly.

  “Let me get this straight,” Kyne said. “Those two medicine men fetched Quanah out of the hotel, rigged all this up?”

  Daniel nodded.

  “Damn!” The reporter slapped his notebook against his thigh. “Wait till my editor hears about this. Comanche Indians are so discouraged with Fort Worth’s doctors, they decide to heal their chief themselves. That’ll make that ol’ miser Bode happy! Damn!” He tilted his head back and howled.

  Others were not amused.

  “How’s Quanah?” Captain Hall asked.

  “Better?” Kyne added hopefully.

  “It is just the first night,” Daniel explained with a shrug of his shoulders.

  “You mean,” said a man wearing a fancy badge, “this Beaver thing isn’t over?”

  Chapter Twelve

  “It lasts three days,” Daniel said, hoping he remembered correctly.

  “Three days!” The badge-wearer shook his head. “There’s no way this circus can stay here for two more nights.”

  “Hold on, Charley,” said a man in duck trousers and a sweat-soaked muslin shirt. “This here’s my property, and, if they want to work on their chief in my wagon yard, I sure ain’t complainin’.”

  The city lawman and wagon yard owner stared at each other.

  “Daniel,” School Father Pratt said suggestively, “Quanah needs a doctor’s care. He needs to be in his bed in the apartment.” He gestured behind him. “Look around. This is no place for a sick man.”

  “I will stay with him,” Daniel announced. He hated the look on Pratt’s face, felt the School Father’s disappointment.

  “This is going to be a nightmare, Zeke,” the city policeman said.

  “You tell Mayor Broiles that I’ll pay for a permit if that’s what it takes, but this is gonna be good for my business, Charley, and I say this is my property, and that teepee stays put.”

  “Good for you. Not me.” The marshal spit. “I’ll have to put two officers here all day, all night. You know what my force consists of? Two mounted officers, two patrolmen, a jailer, and two sanitary officers. Now how in hell can the city afford this? We’ve already blown our year’s budget just because of these red niggers!” He hooked a thumb angrily, just missing Daniel’s nose.

  “Marshal,” School Father Pratt said, “watch your tongue, sir.”

  There was no breeze, and tension hung in the air like humidity.

  Captain Hall stared at the teepee. “I’ll have some of my men help you police the wagon yard, too, Marshal. You can make them special deputies if you like, and the association will foot the bill.”

  * * * * *

  When most, but certainly nowhere near all, of the crowd had scattered across Hell’s Half Acre, Daniel returned to the teepee, stopping to pick up the metal he had left near the ditch. He found the badge. Some son-of-a-bitch had taken the coins he’d left. Sighing, he pinned the shield on the lapel of his vest, knowing he should feel some relief. Most thieves would have taken the tin badge, too, if for nothing more than a souvenir.

  “You held out on me, Killstraight. I thought we were pals.”

  He turned to find William J. Kyne standing on the other side of the ditch, dribbling his fingers on the Old Glory writing tablet.

  Daniel felt no need to explain, to tell this reporter that he had not known what had become of Quanah.

  Kyne tilted his jaw toward the lodge. “Be all right if I took a look-see in there?”

  Daniel answered with surprising venom, but Kyne appeared to take the rejection. To Daniel’s surprise, the Herald journalist smiled.

  “What would it take to show you that I’m not the typical white man? I don’t hate Indians, not even you Comanches. Hell, I don’t even hate Fort Worth. I’m just practicing what my paper preaches, and that’s that Dallas is a hell of a finer city than this cow town.”

  Daniel had been to Dallas. In fact, some roughnecks had beaten the hell out of him there. He didn’t care much for either Texas town.

  “What do you need? For Quanah? For your witch doctors? You tell me, and ol’ Billy Kyne’ll produce. Won’t cost you a thing.”

  Except my soul.

  Ignoring Kyne, he ducked inside the lodge. He could still smell the scent of beaver, over the last wisps of smoke from the fire. He scanned the teepee, then quickly pulled himself back outside.

  Kyne was walking away.

  “Are you serious?” Daniel called out.

  The reporter turned. Several long seconds passed. “You name it, kid. The Herald will get it.”

  Daniel pursed his lips, thinking, finally deciding to chance it. “I need the trunk of a cottonwood tree.”

  Kyne blinked. He found his flask, drained it, shoved it back into his coat pocket. “A cottonwood tree?”

  “Just the trunk,” Daniel said. “But …”—he glanced at the teepee—“it should be fifteen feet high or thereabouts.”

  “How big?”

  Big enough to hold up Nagwee, Daniel thought, and could not hide his
smile. He held out his arms in a circle. “About like that?” he requested. “And I need it by early morning.”

  With a chuckle, Kyne turned toward Rusk Street. “I’ll see what I can do, Killstraight.”

  * * * * *

  He jerked awake to the bells of St. Stanislaus Catholic Church. Groggily he stumbled out of the healing lodge, and headed for the water trough. Whispers reached him before he even realized he had an audience, and, after splashing water on his face and wetting back his hair, he saw the crowd. A few school-age boys, black men and women, white women and men, a family of Chinese, nowhere near the size of the throng last night, but plenty considering if the church bells were right, it was just 6:00 a.m.

  After filling the gourd, he returned to the teepee, squatted beside Quanah, lifting his head into his arms, pouring water down his throat.

  The canvas flap flew open. Charles Flint stepped inside. “How is he?” Flint asked.

  Daniel shrugged, and lowered Quanah’s head onto the blankets.

  Flint looked around, his face masked with a curiosity. “What … ?” He shook his head. “What is this?”

  Of course, Daniel realized. Having come of age on the reservation and at Carlisle, Charles Flint would not know about the Beaver Ceremony. Daniel barely comprehended it himself. Before he could explain, wagon traces sang out, accompanied by a squeaky wheel, braying mules, and a string of cuss words that left the God-fearing women in the Texas Wagon Yard gasping.

  Daniel followed Flint outside to see a gray-bearded Mexican in a battered straw hat snapping a blacksnake whip over the left mule’s ear. The crowd quickly moved to the Sixth Street side, and let the wagon ease past the wheelless phaeton and come to a halt near the ditch. A figure leaped off the back of the market wagon, and Daniel recognized Billy Kyne’s voice.

  “You fellas, lend a hand. Pronto, boys. Pronto.”

  Daniel moved around the ditch, and stared, unbelieving, as black and white men, under the supervision of Billy Kyne, pulled a huge cottonwood trunk out of the wagon.

  “Where you want this piece of fine furniture, Killstraight?” Kyne asked.

  * * * * *

  Nagwee grunted as he walked around the cottonwood, putting his hand against it, nodding, eyeing Flint and Daniel with suspicion, and finally looking at Isa-tai and asking something too low for Daniel to understand.

  Isa-tai snorted and spat.

  “It is better than that skinny thing that felt as slippery as a fish,” Nagwee said, and nodded his final approval at Daniel. “We will begin the pianahuwait soon,” Nagwee said. “When the bells ring again.”

  Flint struggled for words. “I do not know what to do.”

  “Then go do books,” Isa-tai said harshly in English, and his son’s head dropped.

  “I will tell him what he needs to do,” Daniel said, eyes angry, staring at the puhakat. Isa-tai wore the same red paint on his face.

  The Kwahadi spit. “How? You do not know the way yourself.”

  Daniel couldn’t deny that.

  A train’s whistle cut across the morning air.

  “They will do fine,” Nagwee said. “We must prepare for the Big Doctoring.”

  * * * * *

  “You’re a real bastard, Daniel.”

  Daniel dumped water from an oaken bucket into the pond, and stared at Flint.

  “You think my father did this.” Flint switched to the language of The People.

  “I do not think anything.” Daniel rose. “Yet,” he added, and he exited the lodge and walked back to the water trough. Flint caught up with him.

  “My father would not harm one of The People.” And in English: “No Indian would harm a member of his tribe.”

  Daniel shook his head, and dropped the bucket into the trough. “You have not been back from the East very long, my friend. Everything has changed on the reservation. And I remember the story of a powerful dohate of our friends the Kiowas. When the one that was chosen to speak for all the Kiowas told the Pale Eyes to send this dohate to the prison at Fort Marion, the dohate placed a spell on the peace chief. The peace chief died.”

  “I know that story,” Flint said. “Kicking Bird died, then Maman-ti went to Fort Marion, where he died. Of malaria. Or dysentery. But not because he had killed another Kiowa.”

  Angrily Flint sent his bucket splashing into the trough, jerking it up, letting water slosh over the sides as they returned to the healing lodge.

  “This was an accident,” Flint said after dumping water into the pond. He jutted his jaw toward Quanah. “Yellow Bear paid for his mistake, but that’s all it was, Daniel, a mistake.”

  Daniel glared at the bookkeeper. “It was no mistake,” he said flatly. “It was murder. Attempted murder.”

  An angry wail exploded from Flint’s lungs. “Do you hate my father that much?”

  “I do not know that it was your father,” Daniel said again, silently adding to himself: But he is certainly … what was it he had heard the taibo judge named Parker say in Fort Smith? A man of interest.

  Remembering seeing the bookkeeper wiping his hands, Daniel’s eyes dropped to Flint’s hands. And I would like to see your fingers, too.

  “I will prove to you that my father committed no crime,” Flint said.

  “Tzat.” Daniel nodded. Good. “I can use much help.”

  “Bávi, then it is a good thing we are here.”

  Daniel stepped back, his jaw dropping as Ben Buffalo Bone stepped inside the lodge. His best friend’s uncle, Cuhtz Bávi, followed, stopping and staring grimly at the unconscious Quanah. The flap moved yet again.

  “The former bluecoat called Pratt and the taibo Metal Shirt named Hall,” Ben Buffalo Bone explained. “They used the talking wires to tell the agent, Biggers, what has happened here.”

  Ben’s uncle looked around. “What has become of the one who journeys to The Land Beyond The Sun?”

  Daniel’s head dropped. How could he tell a man like Cuhtz Bávi that Yellow Bear had been given a white man’s burial? The undertaker had planted the corpse in some potter’s field the same day, had not even let The People attend the funeral.

  “Biggers gave us all passes to come to Texas,” Ben Buffalo Bone said. “Frank Striker came with us as he speaks English good.”

  Striker was the agency interpreter, a big Texian who was married to a Kiowa. Daniel was glad Ben had changed the subject from Yellow Bear.

  “Striker is outside. He talks to a Tejano Metal Shirt.” Suddenly Ben announced excitedly, “We took the iron horse.”

  “It stinks,” said Cuhtz Bávi. “Smells nothing like a good pony, and I do not like the places where they make us sit. It is not as comfortable, or as cool, as my brush arbor.”

  Daniel barely heard Ben Buffalo Bone’s uncle’s complaints. He stared at the woman who had followed Cuhtz Bávi into the healing lodge.

  Her hair, shining with grease, looked blacker than midnight, parted in the middle in the fashion of The People. Her face was round, and she wore copper bracelets adorned with bright stones, a bone necklace strung with sinew that held three German silver crosses. Her dress was made of doeskin. She looked away from Quanah, tears welling, and stared at Daniel.

  “You should not be here!” Daniel shouted.

  Immediately he regretted his sharpness, saw the hurt in her face, replaced almost immediately by anger.

  “I am here!” she barked back at him.

  Which she always was. Here. For Daniel.

  Rain Shower, perhaps with assistance from her mother and sister Oajuicauojué, who had just reached puberty, had made his britches. She had sewn the stripes—chevrons, they were called—on his jacket’s sleeve to show that he was a sergeant. After he had cut off the sleeves, she had stitched the stripes onto the front of what was now his vest. She had helped him find his way, his path, his medicine, since he had returned from Pennsylvania.

  If the government had paid him more than $8 a month, he would have bought many horses and brought them to her uncle. He would marry h
er. He …

  His lips tightened. And he remembered the nightmare. The hand grabbing Rain Shower, jerking her out of Daniel’s sight.

  Before he could speak, Nagwee returned to the lodge. “We will begin,” the puhakat announced. “It is time.”

  * * * * *

  By noon, the second day of the curing ceremony was complete. It had pretty much been a repeat of last night, but this time Rain Shower had cleaned Nagwee’s pipe, while Daniel, Ben Buffalo Bone, and Flint had sung while Ben’s uncle and Isa-tai had beaten drums.

  “So what happens next?” a reporter from some newspaper in Austin asked.

  Daniel felt uncomfortable talking to so many reporters, yet Nagwee had told Daniel that they must pacify the Pale Eyes, else they might take Quanah out of the healing lodge before it was time. Daniel would speak for The People. He would make the Pale Eyes happy, let them understand the ways of Nermernuh.

  But there are so many!

  A cacophony of questions assaulted Daniel’s ears. There must be more ink-slingers in this wagon yard than breast collars and buggy harnesses combined.

  “We will start again tonight,” Daniel said. “The ceremony will be over by tomorrow at noon.”

  Pencils scratched. Every reporter but Billy Kyne scribbled furiously.

  “Is it helpful to have more Comanches here?” a reporter asked.

  Daniel nodded.

  “So what happens at noon tomorrow?”

  A shrug. He would not tell them.

  “Will Quanah die?” a Fort Worth reporter asked.

  “I do not know.”

  “You must be thankful,” said a woman reporter from some Eastern paper, “to have so many of your own kind here to assist you.”

  “I am thankful,” Daniel said, “that a white man brought a cottonwood trunk this morning.”

  Leaning against the Sixth Street stone wall, Billy Kyne gave Daniel a mock salute.

  * * * * *

  By six o’clock that evening, the crowd at the Texas Wagon Yard had tripled. An hour later, that number had doubled. Now Daniel could see why the city marshal had been so worried, and he did not see any cowboys helping the police officers as Captain Hall had promised.