Winter Rain

by Terry C. Johnston

  Because he had chosen to stay with the village, Tall One too used the growing strength of his back to drag a travois across the cold ground. Atop the bundles on that travois sat his young nephew, wide-eyed and silent. More and more the face of Antelope’s firstborn reminded Tall One of his mother.

  And because the village traveled so slow those last cold days of winter, Tall One was one of the last to know. It was Antelope who brought the news late of an early spring day as his warrior society rode back to rejoin the main village. What news they carried proved momentous.

  “Soldiers?” asked Tall One.

  “No,” Antelope answered his brother’s question. “But they are white men. Three-times-ten. With two mules along and many, many guns.”

  “How close are they from catching us?”

  “Two, maybe three days at the most.”

  Over the days that followed their discovery of the Comanche trail, Company C watched the spoor of their enemy freshen, found the camp fires and their beds, watched as here and there more trails converged.

  “Another bunch come in from the west, Cap’n,” Jonah told Lockhart.

  “That makes how many now, Sergeant?”

  Coffee consulted the small hand-stitched, leather-bound tablet he carried inside a vest pocket. “Near as we can count the tracks of them parties we’ve run across—we’re closing on seventy-five or eighty warriors now.”

  “Sniffing up their hind ends you mean!” roared June Callicott.

  Most of the rest laughed uneasily. It was better to laugh, Jonah knew, knowing they were already outnumbered three to one if things came down to a fight of it. And why wouldn’t things end up just that way? That was, after all, why Captain Lockhart’s men were trailing these Kwahadi, wasn’t it? To make a fight of it? But no one said anything of the odds. Though it might be there plain as paint on their faces if a man looked hard enough, long enough—no one said a goddamned thing about the odds that grew more stacked against them every day they dogged that Comanche trail.

  “How many more you figure on joining up?” Lockhart asked.

  Hook shrugged. “No telling. This could be most of the warriors. Could be just a small scouting party sent out to roam over this country.”

  “What’s your guess?”

  “I’d hate to hazard a guess, Cap’n.”

  “Hazard one, Mr. Hook,” Lockhart snapped, the tension of trailing the Comanche finally placing cracks in the captain’s implacable exterior.

  “All right. Were it up to me, I’d figure this is about half of what warriors there be in the village.”

  “This half meaning seventy-five or eighty?”

  “Yes, Cap’n.” As he said it, Jonah felt the palpable hush fall over the rest of those men as they sat their saddles stoically.

  “We might face maybe as many as a hundred fifty, Mr. Hook?”

  “Maybe.”

  Lockhart swallowed that one like he had been given a woolly worm to eat. Still, he straightened, and tugged down the front of his wide-brimmed hat before he said, “Men, if we prepare for the worst that things could possibly be, then nothing can deter us from the success of our mission.”

  The captain had looked at Jonah for a moment, as if measuring the plainsman one more time, as if to ascertain something before committing Company C to the do or die of it.

  Then Lamar Lockhart quietly said, “Sergeant Coffee—we have Comanche to track. Put out our scouts and let’s get moving.”

  There wasn’t a grumble, not a word one as Coffee put that outfit into motion again. Nothing but the creak of saddle and holster leather, the plodding of hooves and the silence of men in their own thoughts of what lay ahead. Still, one thing was plain as the sky overhead: Hook could see that this bunch would follow their captain not only to hell and back again, but six times around the devil on the way.

  A good leader was like that, able to lead men against daunting odds where a lesser man couldn’t budge his troops. It was just the way a certain gentleman general had led the fight of the Confederacy through all its battles, over all those years. In the end these sons of Texas shared the same feelings about just such a leader as Robert E. Lee, gone peacefully to the ages barely five years after he had handed U.S. Grant his sword at McLean’s farmhouse. These sons of Texas followed a good man in Lamar Lockhart. Bound to follow him now into the jaws of hell.

  A February sun continued its climb toward midsky, then fell back to their left as they pressed on, the trail they were following become fresher, the fire pits a bit warmer, the pony dung not near so dry. It was late afternoon when Two Sleep rode up, doing his best not to bring attention to himself, and signaled Jonah in the sign dance of the plains.

  Hook in turn pushed his horse ahead until he rode beside Lockhart. “Cap’n, seems we’ve found something ahead.”

  “Your Snake?”

  “He run onto a Comanche pony. Calls the Comanche ’yellow jackets.’”

  “Let’s go have ourselves a look, Jonah.”

  After crossing the crest of that last hill, Hook spotted the animal more than half a mile away, even before Two Sleep pointed.

  “I see him,” Lockhart said without being asked.

  The miserable creature stood with its head hung among the refuse of an old campsite: a pitiful few rings, many fire pits, scraps of meat and hide and ruddled bone the porcupines and magpies continued to work over until the white men drew too close and stopped. Only then did the predators and scavengers scatter, and all was silent again, save for the hiss of the wind in the scrub cedar and the bare, skeletal branches of the mesquite.

  Jonah’s eyes followed the moccasin tracks, the growing number of hoofprints. Another bunch had evidently joined up here at this campsite. And still the village moved north, rejoining in anticipation of the spring hunt. He gazed off at the path scoured in their leaving this place: a trail more than thirty feet wide pointing toward the Pease River country. Slowly he moved back and forth across the site with Two Sleep, absorbing every ring and pit, every gnawed bone and scrap of hide or discarded moccasin.

  He had to admire them—no matter they were savages. If this was truly the bunch caught in the Palo Duro by Mackenzie’s Fourth Cavalry more than four months back, then Quanah Parker’s Kwahadi were something, all right. Starting the winter with next to nothing, for them to come out this well the following spring. How he prayed the boys were alive. Prayed they were with Parker’s fierce and hearty holdouts.

  Eventually he walked back to the old pony the village had abandoned there when it had put to the trail once more. The animal suffered what looked to be a festering bullet wound low in the neck. The way the pus and blood had clotted and oozed around the bullet hole told the story.

  “This bunch been fighting its way north, Cap’n,” Jonah explained. “Likely this pony got hit on a raid and stayed strong enough to carry its warrior back to the village. But the Comanche plainly saw what you and me can see: this critter’s dying.”

  As Hook inched over to the pony, it vainly tried to move away, although it had strength to do little more than stay on its four wobbly legs. Carefully, moving slowly, Jonah inched up to stroke one of the forelegs before picking it up to inspect the hoof. He set it back down, patting the animal’s neck with one hand as he brought his pistol out.

  That country proved flat enough that it swallowed his gunshot in the time it took the pony to fall without a struggle.

  “What did the hoof tell you, Hook?”

  He gazed up at Lockhart. “This bunch has been running. That hoof was sore and bleeding. Near worn out. Some of their stock didn’t fare the winter so well. And still, this bunch is fighting on.”

  “Kwahadi, Mr. Hook,” Lockhart said respectfully.

  “Yes, Cap’n. I’ve come to know just what you mean.”

  “How long since they broke camp?”

  He returned to the pony, rubbing his hand along the inside of the rear flanks, under the neck. The dampness of the hide and the heat of the animal gave him something to
make his best guess.

  “We’re behind ’em less’n two days now.”

  Two Sleep came up. “Two days,” he agreed.

  “They find out we’re back here, they’ll bolt,” Lockhart said to no one in particular.

  Jonah shook his head. “I don’t expect this bunch will get worried all that much about our outfit.”

  “You don’t think they’ll make a run for it—try to outdistance us?”

  “No. From what all I’ve been learning about Comanche—I figure soon enough they just might turn around and wait for us to come right to ’em.”

  41

  February 1875

  TALL ONE’S EIGHTEENTH summer was not that far away. Already Antelope was eager for his sixteenth spring. Together they had fought and killed Mexicans, Lipan, and Tonkawa. Black scalp locks hung from their war shirts, from their clubs and at the end of their bows. And both had struggled against the yellow-leg soldiers at the bottom of the red canyon. Still, their belts held no white man’s scalp from that battle.

  It would be only a matter of time now.

  That small party of white men dogging their trail had the Kwahadi making no preparations for war. When the time came to turn about and strike, it would be nothing more than a brief inconvenience, a momentary interruption in their march north. To think that three-times-ten would have the gall to throw themselves against four times their number. It was nothing short of utter foolishness: these white men wanting to die so badly that they hurled themselves into sheer suicide.

  On its way north one of the warrior societies had bumped into a roving soldier patrol. Antelope’s hunting party had been of equal strength, so they had charged into the yellow-legs and made a fight of it. Two of the soldiers had been wounded, maybe bad enough to die. And one of Antelope’s young friends had been knocked from his pony.

  Antelope had joined another rider rushing in to pick the young warrior from the prairie and sling him to the back of his wounded pony. They turned about and headed across the rolling plain, in the direction they hoped to find the migrating village. By the time the warriors returned, the pony was clearly dying, its rider faring little better. The village war chief said they would have to abandon the animal. All the while the shamans continued to shake their gut rattles and beat on their hand drums—praying that the bullets left inside Antelope’s friend would disappear and he would come back from the near-dead.

  Antelope had grieved like never before when his friend failed to return to the land of the living. His spirit went on to cross the great Sky Road. That was the closest the lightning bolt of death had ever struck near Antelope. Like a passing spring thunderstorm, the death of his best friend heated the air and charged the ground where young Antelope stood, frightened him into greater resolve against the white man.

  “What about our mother?” Tall One asked one morning.

  “Big Mule’s wife? What of her?”

  “No. I am not talking about the mother who adopted you. I am talking about the woman who gave us birth.”

  Antelope stared at the ground, squeezing his eyes as if something must surely come of kneading his memory so hard. “I cannot remember her. There are no pictures anymore.”

  “Our sister?”

  The young brother eventually shook his head. “No. Do you remember them?”

  “Some things. If I try—I can remember.”

  “Pictures only?” Antelope asked, a little suspicion in his voice. “Or do you remember … words?”

  Tall One could not lie to his brother. Keeping silent about it was like being turned wrong side out, just like a snake shedding its skin, from the inside out. “The more I try, looking at things, thinking on it hard—I remember some of the words. I remember other things too.”

  Antelope’s eyes had darted back and forth like night birds, looking for anyone who might overhear. “Tell me.”

  “The touch of our mother’s hand.” He watched Antelope stare into the distance. Out there might prove to be his memories of her, of the life they once had. “Brother, can you remember how good it felt when she held us against her, rocked us to sleep?”

  With a wag of his head he answered, “No. I can only remember Rain Woman and how she cradled me when I grew frightened.”

  “We were frightened a lot those first days, Antelope. Rain Woman was a good mother to you.”

  “She is the only mother I remember. And Big Mule is the only father I know.”

  He bit his lip a moment, then grew determined to say it. “You were too young, perhaps. But we both had the same father long, long ago. A tall, thin man with a long face.”

  “Like many of the tai-bos, did he have hair on his face?”

  “Yes. I remember how loud his voice would get when I did something wrong. And I’ve been remembering how safe and secure I felt sitting in his lap when the sun had gone down at the end of a day, when he moved back and forth in a chair that rocked.”

  “I cannot remember such a thing. I know I have seen a chair—but not one that moves back and forth.”

  Tall One squatted slightly, then swayed forward and back in pantomime. Then he stood again and sighed. “A few days ago I remembered how it felt to lay my ear against Mother’s breast and hear her heart beating as she ran her fingers over my cheek. It was hard, and it took some time, but I remembered too the smell of our father—that fragrance of tobacco smoke from his pipe, and the rich smell of moist black earth that clung to him always.”

  “He was an earth-scratcher?”

  “Yes. Like these settlers who are moving into our buffalo ground,” he answered. “And just this morning before the camp awoke, I lay in my blanket thinking on those memories. Trying for more. And I did have a new one come to me: remembering the feel of his strong hands wrapped around mine as he taught me to shoot his rifle.”

  Antelope wagged his head, looking into his brother’s face. “I never learned to shoot a rifle.” Then his eyes brightened. “But I can use the lance, throw the tomahawk, use my knife, and shoot the bow as well as any.”

  He touched his younger brother on the shoulder. “Yes, you are as good as any Kwahadi warrior. But don’t you see? It was not the learning of the rifle that I remembered most, Antelope. It was the safe, secure feel I had when that man took my hands in his and wrapped them around the gun, or the handle of a hoe, or held me in front of him in the saddle, or even let me handle the two horses hitched to our wagon.”

  A sudden wave of excitement was heard washing its way across the camp that morning. Antelope turned to see what caused the noise, then looked back at Tall One.

  “I don’t know what to think, my brother—except that maybe these memories are not so good to have so often. Better that you think of the Kwahadi. These are our people now. Try as I might, I cannot remember being anything else but Kwahadi.”

  “You want me to forget? Forget all that is good in my memories?”

  Antelope nodded as they noticed some other young warriors hurrying their way. “You are strong enough to keep yourself from remembering. The tai-bos we lived among long ago are now our enemies. We belong to The People. You must tell yourself that the white people we once were are our enemies now.”

  “You mean our own white selves are now our enemies?”

  “Perhaps, I do not know for sure. But what I am certain of is that your memories of that life are as evil as anything can be to our way of life with the Kwahadi.”

  “Antelope!” cried one of the arriving warriors rushing up in a swirl of noise and excitement.

  Tall One’s younger brother turned away, but not without whispering, “You are a Kwahadi warrior now.”

  “Tall One! Our war chief has given the word!” said Burns Red.

  “Yes,” cheered Old Owl Man. “We are to paint ourselves and make ready.”

  “For what?” Antelope asked.

  “The white men,” Burns Red replied. “They are not far behind us, say the scouts.”

  “Won’t we pack up our belongings and move the village t
his morning?” Tall One inquired.

  “No. The war council says we will wait right here for the three-times-ten to put their foot into the trap.”

  “What trap?” Antelope asked.

  Old Owl Man chuckled, then said, “Not a real trap. Just that we are not running, not going anywhere. We know there are only a few tai-bos behind us—and their scalps will look good on our weapons, to decorate our war ponies.”

  “I want one of those big horses for my own,” said Burns Red.

  Antelope agreed. “My brother needs a horse.”

  Old Owl Man laughed. “I know—but Tall One has been pulling a travois and acting like a horse for so long, I am afraid he won’t remember how to ride a horse!”

  “I remember how to ride a horse—”

  “Can you still fight from horseback?” demanded Burns Red.

  His blood was warming. There was something about this friend of Antelope’s that Tall One did not like. Never had. He was a cocky one. “I fight on a horse. I can fight on my own two feet. Would you like to fight me here and now, Burns Red?” Tall One growled.

  The youth laughed, throwing his chin back and puffing up his chest. “No, Tall One. I want you to join us when we go fight these tai-bos.”

  “How close are they?” Antelope asked.

  “If we wait for them right here, the scouts believe the white men will arrive by the time the sun reaches the top of its climb today.”

  “I must make ready,” Antelope said, stepping away toward his friends.

  “Aren’t you going to make ready to fight the tai-bos, Tall One?” asked Burns Red.

  How he wanted to pound the smirk from the young man’s face. “Yes. I will go to my lodge now and ask Bridge for some of his paints and grease.”

  “You can use some of mine, Tall One,” Antelope offered.

  He shook his head, never taking his eyes off Old Owl Man and Burns Red. “Thank you, brother. But I will ask Bridge for some of his.”

  “It is good!” Burns Red mocked. “Dragging a travois is work worthy of only an old pony … work done only by a tai-bo who tries to be a Kwahadi. Will Tall One be a warrior today? Or will he fail and still be a tai-bo pony dragging a travois?”