Winter Rain

by Terry C. Johnston

  How silly that would have been, Tall One thought. The People had rescued the two boys from pain worse than any death a youngster could imagine. While the white marauders and the Mexican comancheros had toyed with and tortured the two brothers, the wandering Kwahadi had given the white children shelter, food, a purpose to learn—had given them family once again.

  Their new family replaced that which the freebooters had destroyed more than three years before. It grew harder each day for Tall One to remember the faces of his mother, his sister, harder still to recall the face of his father. Seven years gone now. Tall One had been only four when his father walked away from that tree-ringed valley, marching out of Jeremiah’s life.

  “Do you remember Papa?” he had asked of Zeke in those early days among the marauders, the comancheros, and finally here among the Antelope People.

  Young Antelope could only shake his head. It made sense that there remained no memories: he was something on the order of two years old when their father marched off to fight the war.

  It all seemed so far away, and utterly meaningless now—something that made Tall One ultimately angry at his father. If anyone was to blame for what had happened to the farm and their family, to their life together, if anyone was to blame, Tall One figured, it was their father. Had he been there when the freebooters rode in, things likely would have been different. No one would have gone through the pain they had.

  But for the past two winters now, he and Antelope had a new home. Zeke was a runner. At nine summers he was faster than many of the older boys. So it was when the names were chosen, Antelope fit Zeke best. Tall One seemed to grow more and more overnight now, his toes repeatedly punching holes out the end of his moccasins, his leggings shrinking with the coming of each new moon, so it seemed. They had taken to their new life with unsated appetite. And with all they learned about the Kwahadi, the more they forgot of what life they had lived before.

  That remained like another lifetime for Tall One. Like it belonged to another person. It was, after all, a story he but dimly remembered: that story about … yes, his name was Jeremiah. Again, his other name came harder. And the face of his father, hardest yet to recall.

  For the longest time Tall One was unable to figure out exactly who these people were. He recalled what the Mexicans called the band of warriors on the morning the brothers were captured by the horsemen far out on the Llano Estacado, the Staked Plain of the Texas panhandle country.

  The Mexicans called the horsemen Comanche.

  Yet the warriors and their women never used that term. Instead, they referred to themselves as The People, and seemed to have some fuzzy and descending hierarchy for all the rest of the tribes and other-skinned people. Over the seasons Tall One came to discover that there were other bands of The People: Honey-Eaters, the Waterhole or River Pony, and Hill Falls Down, while the Buffalo Followers and Root-Eaters were among the most populous of the bands. But these Antelope, these Kwahadi, seemed to wander wider and farther than all the rest put together. Even so, never did they journey within sight of the white man’s forts nor the territory the white man had established for the Indian nations.

  The Antelope People stayed free, hunting buffalo, ranging long distances to kill the infringing white settler and steal his spotted buffalo, his horses and wagon mules. Then they returned to the nomadic villages to dance over the scalps, make love and more babies, sing their songs, and cast new lead bullets before riding out for more attacks on the white man.

  “It is a glorious life,” the pale-eyed war chief explained to a large circle of young boys, each of them naked but for his breechclout, painted according to his youthful imagination, and gripping his juvenile spears and bow, war club and crude iron knife. Each one hungrier than the next to be a full-fledged Kwahadi warrior.

  “There are only our people out here,” he taught them. “The rest are enemies we must be rid of. Grow strong, my young friends,” the war chief instructed them, striding over to Tall One. “There will come a time when each of you is called to make war on our enemies.”

  “Especially the white man!” young Antelope interrupted eagerly.

  Tall One glanced at his younger brother. “How can we prove we are ready to go with a war party?”

  The pale-eyed one laughed easily, joyfully, not in a way that made fun of the young, eager boys. “You will know—just as the rest of us will know. There will be no doubt in our minds, no doubt in your heart—when you are ready to ride and defend our land.”

  “Who of us will be ready first?” asked Coal Bear, Tall One’s best friend.

  A full-blood Kwahadi, he was more than a winter older than Tall One, yet stood nearly a head shorter. Most of the older boys seemed squat compared to the white boy, built squarely and closer to the earth than either of the two brothers. Their Comanche legs seemed to bow naturally at a young age as well—a trait that made them ready to ride the wild-eyed cayuse ponies early in life.

  “I will be ready first,” Tall One said, though he was not sure he really believed it. Although Coal Bear was shorter, he was older and native to this land, and because of it, wiser in living among these rocks and sand buttes, the watercourses far-flung like the shallow tracks of the gobblers he dimly recalled roosting in the trees back … somewhere … somewhere in his memory.

  Coal Bear laughed. “One day you will be ready. And one day, I am sure, you will be a powerful warrior. Perhaps even as powerful as I will be. But for now, you are still a white-tongue—wanting to be a Kwahadi!”

  Tall One dived for his friend, catching Coal Bear around the neck and driving him to the dirt where they grappled, punching and kicking, laughing all the while. It was the one thing that drove the white boy into a rage—this being called a white-tongue by the others, but especially by his best friend. And Coal Bear knew it. Soon they released one another and sat gasping for breath, smiling, choking for air as they laughed in spasms.

  “One day he will beat you good, Coal Bear,” said Antelope. “My brother will beat you good.”

  “He knows it, Antelope,” Tall One said. “That is why he pokes his fun at me now, while he still can.”

  “Yes—one day you will take many scalps from the white-tongues,” Coal Bear admitted. “One day when you are no longer a white-tongue yourself.”

  Tall One was finding it hard to wait for that day. His skin had become all the darker these last two years spent next to naked in the sun, year round, except the coldest days of winter. Now winter was approaching once again. They would soon be seeking out the deep canyons, as they had in autumns of old, there to sit out the onslaught of cold weather that would batter the Staked Plain. Tall One yearned almost as much for the coming winter—a time of sitting around the lodge fires, listening to the old men tell stories of the beginning of the earth, tales of the coming of the First Person, the very first Comanche and how he needed a woman to sleep with and have his babies and cook his meals. A woman was very important then, as now.

  As well the old ones taught Tall One and Antelope about their religion. At first Tall One had been afraid, remembering what his mother and father told him about Indians and how savage they were—utterly, hopelessly godless. As time passed, he had grown confused as the old men began to speak of their spirits in a reverential way. The way they held and handled their pipe, cut their tobacco, and handled their medicine objects—all of it was just the way the dark-coated circuit preacher would hold his communion goblet or pass out the broken bread or say his long ranting prayers, eyes uplifted to the top of the tent that passed for a church back in … back where he had come from in that other lifetime.

  While the Comanche had no pantheon of gods, no religious order to things, they nonetheless lived closest to the earth about them. Here, in this land, they revered the buttes and rocks, the summer breeze and the winter’s wind, the springs and creeks and rivers, along with the sky overhead that filled with lazy clouds, or with nothing more than endless blue. Easily and without fuss, they saw them selves as only part of
the greatness in a world where everything, from rock and leaf to animal, had a spirit.

  “Man is born evil,” his mother had taught him, drumming it into the minds and hearts of her three children. “He is evil and is saved only by the grace of God. Man will always be evil, and there is nothing we can do about it.”

  “But we try to be good,” he had told her, sitting at her knee before the fireplace, the light flickering on the pages of the family Bible.

  She always shook her head at him, smiling in that way of hers that softened her hard-bitten theology. “Try as we might, only the Lord Jesus Himself can make our way to heaven for us. For man was created to be evil—and evil he will stay until the day he dies and goes to dwell in heaven with the Almighty.”

  As much as he had feared these people when he had come here to become part of their life, frightened to his core when he was dropped from the back of a warrior pony, Tall One now feared all the more going back to what was before. It did not fit, like the clothes he had shed long ago, not only because he had outgrown them, but because he had quickly worn them out.

  “Let’s go down to the creek and watch the girls bathing,” suggested Coal Bear.

  The younger boys bobbed their heads eagerly, especially Antelope. It was a routine that Tall One enjoyed, almost every day in camp sneaking down to peek through the willows and rushes at the young girls bathing and washing their hair as they stood or sat in the creek. The boys stared goggle-eyed at those different bodies beginning to show the growth of pubic hair, beginning to soften with the curves of rounded rumps and widening hips, the swell of those budding breasts.

  “And we will pick out a wife for you, Coal Bear,” Tall One said.

  Coal Bear swung an arm up on Tall One’s shoulder, then draped his other arm around the neck of Antelope. “My two little white-tongues, when are you going to realize that soon enough there will come a time for marrying just one. But for right now—all these pretty girls belong to us!”

  The lot of them laughed as they strode from the lodge circle, heading downstream, where they would cross and double back toward the pool where the girls bathed.

  It had been a long, long time since Tall One had thought of his sister. She would be as old as many of the girls he spied on. If she had lived. If she hadn’t been killed by the white men who came and stole them away from … from the land where his family once lived. He could not remember her face any longer. Her name came even harder.

  Yet Tall One said a small prayer for her as he followed Coal Bear and the others. A prayer that the rest of his family would in the end find the peace and happiness, the contentment, he had with these people and this land, with a new family.

  For the longest time Jonah lay there while the dead man’s blood turned cold and sticky, the disemboweled body sprawled across Hook’s legs.

  He still had a grip on the knife, and somehow found the Mormon’s pistol, wrenching it from the dead man’s fingers. The gun was gummy with gore.

  It did not take long for things to grow as quiet as a graveyard in the desert night around him—except for the irregular wind that would gust from time to time to remind him that his ears still worked, heaving first from that direction, then circling around to blow from another. Below the wind keening through the sagebrush Jonah heard the nearby snuffling of the horses as they returned to grazing on the scant grass. He had cocked the dead man’s pistol some time back, though he constantly ran a thumb back and forth over the hammer pad to assure himself he was ready when the rest came out of what darkness the night had left it.

  How many, he could not be sure of—but likely the rest had taken care of Two Sleep. After that war cry and the explosions of white-hot light that rocked the night, Jonah couldn’t be sure who was still alive. Except for the pain here and there on his body. The pain reminded him he wasn’t dead and gone to heaven, not yet. One thing for certain: it was still too damned dark here to figure he’d landed himself in hell.

  Yet it was growing lighter, almost imperceptibly and as cheerless as a hangover slapping a drunk’s face. But day was coming nonetheless in the relentless crawl of the earth beneath the skies. Gray had begun to seep sluglike out of the east when he realized the horses were no longer just grazing—they were moving. Then footsteps, unsure and advancing quietly, inched toward him out of the murky dawn light.

  He tried to lie as quietly as possible, turning only his head slowly to follow the soft crunch of the footsteps. Jonah felt more than heard the movement on the earth as the feet circled around him many yards out. He tracked the sound with the barrel of the dead man’s pistol, knowing he would have to pray for one more loaded cylinder when the Mormon he was hearing came out of the dark.

  “Hook?”

  Calling to him like this, he could not be sure they didn’t know his name.

  “Hook? Where you?”

  Jonah thought he saw the movement of something dark off to his left and leveled the pistol in that direction.

  “C’mere and get me!” he whispered harshly.

  Ready to fire at the first shift in the dark shadow as it rose from the sagebrush, Jonah felt the breeze stiffen, and he suddenly recognized the long, loose hair.

  “Think you was one of them,” Two Sleep said as he strode up and crouched beside Hook.

  “I almost killed you, you stupid Injun.” He said it with relief.

  Two Sleep gazed around a moment. “All them gone. Make quiet so quick. Two for you. Rest for me.”

  “You’re bleeding.”

  Gazing down at the spot where his shoulder met the arm, the Shoshone replied, “Chew some root. Wrap up for two days. Something small. You hurt?”

  “No, don’t think so,” Hook replied as the Indian grunted, heaving the heavy body from Jonah’s legs. He sat up watching the ground turn gray in those moments while his head finished its wild, spinning dance. “They all dead?”

  Two Sleep nodded, finally stuffing a pistol beneath the belt that wrapped his wool coat around his waist. “You want scalps?”

  “No.” He shook his head, hanging it between his shoulders. “Only one scalp I really want.”

  “He not here?”

  With a struggle Jonah got to his feet, leaned on the Shoshone for a moment. “I got an idea where to find him.”

  “South.” Two Sleep turned and strode back to the fire pit, using one foot to push a body off the pit where the clothes had smoldered and the flesh begun to burn with a sickening stench. “Coals in fire hole cook our meal. We eat. Wait the day till you ready to ride.”

  “I don’t need no breakfast, you dumb Injun,” Hook snarled sourly. “You remember we lost more’n a day already—riding back to take care of this bunch. I don’t aim to lose no more time tracking Usher.”

  Two Sleep stared wistfully at the food and collapsed to one of the Mormon bedrolls. “Then we sleep. No sleep for me in night. Sit with you till ready to attack and fight. No sleep for me. I’m tired.”

  “Sleep if you want,” Hook growled as he threw the first of the Mormon’s weapons down onto a rumpled blanket. “I’m taking all the guns, and what food they got. I’ll leave you something to eat when you wake up from your nap. Figure to take any horses not lamed up to carry all of it.”

  “You go now?”

  He dragged another gun belt from one of the bodies and pitched it onto the blanket with a clatter of polished steel. “Soon as I get our horses down here.”

  Two Sleep grumbled as he clambered to his feet. “You make me sleep on horse again today, Hook. You a hard friend to have.”

  “Don’t have to go with me. Stay—take care of that shoulder.”

  The Shoshone stopped before the white plainsman. Staring Hook in the eye. “Yes. Yes I do have to go with you. Two of us. Not alone you go.”

  And Hook understood, staring into the dark pools of those eyes in the gray light of day-coming. “All right—I figure you do have to go with me after all is said and done. And I’ll admit I’m glad you’re along for the ride.”

&
nbsp; “I get the horses, Hook. Then we go,” he said as he turned away from the white man, striding off across the sagebrush flats toward the boulders where they had hidden their animals, slowly rubbing his wounded shoulder.

  Gazing for a moment to the east at the growing light, Jonah sensed more than ever the pinch of time, the way new boots pinched his feet. “Damn right we’ll go, Injun. Lost enough bloody time already.”

  15

  Moon of Ducks Coming Back 1869

  SPRING HAD COME to the southern plains. Flowers bloomed and birds flocked in great heaving clouds over every new pond tilled by the last thunderstorm. Chilled of a morning, the air nonetheless warmed long before the sun ever rose to its zenith. Shoots of young grass crowning the rolling hillsides nourished the winter-gaunt ponies with the promise of strength for renewed raiding.

  An endless wind blew out here, this far west beyond any white settlement—wind that tormented Tall One’s long hair, tied in braids now. It had been something on the order of four winters since last a pair of scissors had touched his hair. Filmy, milk-pale memories of a chair set on the narrow porch of a log building … a small boy seated there, a bed sheet swallowing him from the chin down … a dark, thin man busy above the boy with a comb and scissors. Cutting his hair.

  Hair. The source of the Kwahadi warrior’s greatest pride.

  Tall One touched a braid wrapped in the fur of a buffalo calf as he peered east, wondering about that man from his memories.

  Every day it seemed he grew more and more filled with doubt that he had ever lived another life, more than he was filled with yearning or remembrance of the past. Still, he could not deny that smoky wisps of ghostly trails troubled his mind when some smell, some sight, some texture, triggered recall. He always choked them down, afraid the memories would cause him doubt in what he was, who he had become with the Antelope People.

  Most of all, Tall One was frightened to death that the Kwahadi would find out he was not what he wanted most to be—a young Comanche warrior waiting for his first pony raid—but that he was nothing more than a lying, thieving, murdering white-tongue after all. No different from all the rest of the lying, thieving, murdering white-tongues.