Bill Dugan_War Chiefs 04

by Quanah Parker

  But Ross was too far away for the arrows to do much good. Most of them fell short and those few that managed to reach the attackers were spent, rattling harmlessly in the tall grass. Ross reached out and snatched one from the air, admiring the craftsmanship in spite of the circumstances. He wondered what it must be like for Stone-Age savages to face modern weapons. But the thought didn’t last long, and he flipped the arrow over his shoulder and pushed his horse toward the left flank, his pistol drawn as he dashed toward the would-be flankers.

  The Texans laid down a heavy fire, and the Comanche were forced to pull back, cursing in their fury and sending wave after wave of harmless arrows. Several dismounted and took cover in a clump of brush.

  Ross led a charge toward the embattled warriors, and as the Texans thundered down on them, they stood their ground. One Ranger was hit in the shoulder and fell from his horse, but waved Ross on when the captain turned to see if he needed help. “Go,” he shouted, “go on!”

  The thunder of the big American horses flushed the Comanche from their cover, and they sprang back onto their ponies and dashed back toward the camp.

  Ross could see women and children scattering in every direction, and when he noticed the small herd of Indian ponies, knew he had to capture them before the refugees managed to mount up.

  Leaving the small unit to chase the fleeing defenders, he shouted to Lt. David Anderson. “Bring some men and follow me,” he yelled, wheeling his mount and making for the horses down by the river.

  Some of the animals were already scattering, and three young Comanche were trying desperately to keep the herd together. Firing his pistol in the air, Ross frightened the ponies still further, and several of them broke free, knocking one of the boys to the ground. The boy scrambled on all fours, narrowly avoiding the bolting ponies.

  Anderson and his men were right behind him now, and Ross circled around the far side of the herd, driving several of the strays back toward the main body. The rest of his men had already broken toward the camp, and a ragged line of Comanche on foot was falling back, trying to force the Texans to take cover. But several had already fallen, and the incessant firing of the Texans’ weapons pushed the defenders harder and harder.

  It was a hopeless situation for the Comanche, but they refused to break. Several charged forward on foot, trying to drag the charging rangers from their saddles, but a flurry of gunshots sent three of the warriors sprawling in the dust and the rest were forced to break off their charge.

  Ross shouted for the men to cease firing, but if they heard him, they ignored him. He knew the cattlemen would be undisciplined, but it seemed to have spread to the Rangers, as well. The entire assault was teetering dangerously close to anarchy.

  Beyond the camp, he saw a woman running awkwardly, a child in her arms, and two warriors right behind her, running backward and firing arrows as fast as they could draw the strings of their bows. Ross charged toward them, waving his pistol. He didn’t want to shoot if he didn’t have to, for fear of hitting the woman, but the warriors refused to yield.

  Aiming his pistol, he pulled the trigger, and the hammer fell with a dull click. He pulled the trigger again, and this time nothing happened. The gun was jammed.

  One of the warriors cut loose with an arrow, and it caught Ross in the side, just above the hip. As his horse charged on, Ross ducked away from an outthrust lance, but it caught him a glancing blow and knocked him from the saddle. He sprawled in the grass, trying to get to his feet, but the pain was intense, and he watched helplessly as the woman ran on, toward some horses standing against a clump of trees.

  Jerking the arrow free, he felt blood seeping inside his shirt and glanced at the arrow, where a chunk of his flesh was impaled on the razor-sharp head. One of the warriors had retrieved a rifle from the ground and was pointing it at him. He heard a shout and then a flurry of gunshots and the warrior fell, two bloody holes punched in his chest.

  Anderson rode past, and Ross waved him on. “Get the woman,” he shouted.

  The charging Rangers overtook the squaw, and two of the men dismounted, grabbing the woman by the arms and spinning her around, then dragging her, shrieking and flailing her legs back toward Ross who sat on the ground with one hand pressed to his side to stop the bleeding.

  “This one looks like a white woman, Captain,” Anderson said. “Look at her eyes.”

  Ross struggled to his feet. Bending at the waist and propping his weight on one knee, he leaned toward the woman, conscious of the blood oozing between his fingers. “They’re blue,” he said. “By God, her eyes are blue.”

  “Never yet seen a Comanche with blue eyes,” Anderson said.

  “Are you white?” Ross asked.

  The woman spat at him, then lashed out with a moccasined foot, catching him in the knee.

  “Wildcat, more likely,” Ross grunted. Once more, he asked, “Are you a white woman? What’s your name?”

  But Naudah just glared at him, and he shook his head. “We’ll have to take her back, see maybe somebody knows her. Could be that Parker woman.”

  “Not likely, Captain,” Anderson said. “She’s been missing a long time. Twenty years or more.”

  “Isaac Parker would know. He’s her uncle. We’ll see if we can get him to camp to take a look at her.”

  The firing behind him had dwindled away and he turned to survey the camp. Several Comanche lay in the dust, one or two moaning and most deathly still. Pools of blood glistened in the sunlight, and flies already buzzed around the fallen warriors, filling the camp with a steady hum as Ross limped back toward the river.

  Behind him, Anderson and his men brought along the woman and her child, whom she refused to surrender to the Rangers.

  “You’d best sit down, Captain,” Anderson said. “We’ll get you bandaged up soon as we can.”

  Ross nodded. “See to the wounded, Lieutenant. We’ll have to get a couple of wagons up here to carry them.”

  “What about the redskins?”

  “Bring them, too. I don’t want any massacre here. You see to it, Lieutenant.”

  “Yes, sir, Captain,” Anderson said.

  Ross moved to a patch of tall, green grass under some willows, and sat down, propping his back against the rough bark and chewing on his lower lip to keep his mind off the pain.

  Two Rangers who had Naudah by either arm followed him, unwilling to let go of her arms.

  He closed his eyes for a moment, taking a deep breath and letting out a low moan. When he opened his eyes again, Naudah was sitting beside him, her hands tied and her ankles hobbled. The child, and Ross saw now that it was a baby girl, sat in her lap, head buried in her mother’s shoulder.

  Ross watched the woman, trying to decide if she could possibly be Cynthia Ann Parker, and thinking that if she were, then this camp must belong to Peta Nocona, now the most feared and certainly the most hated, of all Comanche chiefs. He studied the woman’s face for a long time, but she ignored him, busying herself with trying to calm the infant girl.

  He saw Anderson glance his way and waved him over.

  “Captain?” he said, when he reached his commander.

  “If that woman is Cynthia Ann Parker, then Peta Nocona is somewhere around here.”

  He watched the woman’s face as he spoke, and saw her eyes flicker toward him then away. The movement was so quick and so slight, he wasn’t sure it meant anything. “Check the dead and wounded. See if anybody in the company knows for sure what he looks like. I saw him once, but it was a long time ago. I’m not sure I’d recognize him.”

  Anderson nodded. “Yes, sir. I’ll check.”

  “And Captain?”

  “Sir?”

  “If he’s alive, I don’t want him harmed. Understand?”

  Anderson looked skeptical, but nodded. “Yes, sir, Captain Ross. I understand.”

  Ross turned to the woman again as Anderson moved off. “We don’t mean you any harm,” he said.

  Naudah looked at him with blank eyes, her lips curl
ed in hatred. She spat once more, and Ross shook his head. Twenty years, he thought, twenty years. Even if she is Cynthia Ann Parker, she’s more Comanche now than she ever was white.

  He closed his eyes again as a wave of nausea swept over him. He didn’t come to again until he felt hands lifting him into a wagon. He felt the hard wood under him, and opened his eyes. The woman captive was in the wagon behind him, her back against the back of the wagon bed.

  Once more, the pain overcame him, and he drifted off to sleep.

  The Rangers reached Camp Cooper, with nearly two dozen captives, in addition to Naudah and her daughter, Prairie Flower. Isaac Parker was sent for, and he hurried to the camp, hoping the white woman captive was his niece, but not willing to believe it. Twenty-four years was just too long a time.

  When he reached the camp, Naudah had been taken under the wing of the wives of the military men, bathed and given a new calico dress, not unlike a larger version of the one she had been wearing so long ago, when Peta Nocona had carried her away.

  When Isaac was ushered into the office of the camp commander, Naudah looked at him blankly.

  “Is that your niece, Mister Parker?” Colonel Ellington asked.

  Isaac, uncertain, moved closer, peering at her as if through a pair of spectacles, blinking his eyes and trying to see through a quarter-century’s mist. “How are you, my child?” he asked.

  Naudah shook her head. She no longer understood English, hadn’t used the language in so long the words had rusted and crumbled away.

  “It looks like her. It could be, I just don’t Isaac said, leaning still closer.

  Then, shaking his head sadly, he said, “No. That’s not Cynthia Ann.” He turned to go.

  Naudah, something triggered in her memory, thumped her chest. “Cynthia Ann,” she said, patting her breast. The alien words were little more than a croak in her throat. “Cynthia Ann.”

  Chapter 19

  THE HUNT HAD GONE WELL. The buffalo were plentiful, and Peta Nocona had organized his warriors well. Despite their small numbers, they had worked the surroundings to near perfection. Encircling the herd was not easy to do, because the buffalo, especially the big bulls, had a keen sense of smell. One had to watch the wind and make sure that he didn’t get too close until everyone was in position.

  Only then could they be sure of getting enough meat for the coming winter. On the signal from Nocona, the warriors had closed in, riding around the herd and keeping them off balance, taking the biggest bulls first, often with a single arrow. If a warrior was strong enough, and his bow good enough, he could often send an arrow clean through his target and someone would lean from his pony and pluck it from the ground without even slowing down, to use again and again.

  For Pecos, it had been the adventure of a lifetime.

  Quanah was already an old hand, and had been given the responsibility of seeing that his younger brother did nothing foolish. That had hampered Quanah somewhat, but he had been good-natured about it, and shared his recently gained knowledge with Pecos without missing out on his own kills.

  Now, with the buffalo downed and the pack horses loaded with fresh meat, it was important to make good time and get them back to the hunting camp so the women could begin the drying. The skins, too, had to be scraped and dried before they spoiled. There was plenty of work now for everybody, and even though the warriors were tired, they could not look forward to real rest for a few days. But at least they would eat well during the winter, and there would be plenty of new buffalo robes to keep the worst of the cold and snow at bay.

  Nocona was worried. Normally, the women would have come along, to be there when the herd was struck, but circumstances had disrupted the usual practice. It had taken longer to strike a herd than it usually did and, rather than risk losing it, the warriors had decided to surround and strike. The herd hadn’t been that large, and it seemed a foolish risk to wait for the women to catch up.

  Quanah was nearly exhausted, but when Nocona sent him on ahead to alert the camp, he was delighted. He knew from previous hunts the excitement news of success would generate, and he was looking forward to a chance to be the cause of such celebration.

  He saw the smoke from the camp, and something seemed odd. There wasn’t as much smoke as there should have been, and it was thick and black, as if people were burning wet, greasy wood. He pushed his pony hard to get to the ridge line, from where he might be able to see the camp. But when he broke over the rise, he was disappointed. There was still another valley between him and the camp. For a moment, he debated whether to ride back and tell Nocona that something was wrong, but he wasn’t sure, and if he made such a mistake, they would laugh at him all winter and all the following summer. He was too proud for that, and had too much sense to generate alarm where none was called for.

  Instead, he kicked his pony hard, and raced down the long, gentle slope into the valley, then up the far side, from where he knew he would be able to see everything. Then he could decide whether anything was wrong and whether it was necessary to run for his father.

  And as soon as he reached the ridge, he knew. He pulled up sharply, leaning against the ropes which helped him stay on the pony, and which let him lean far over one side or the other when hunting or raiding without danger of falling off.

  The smoke was not from campfires, and trickled toward the sky from a hundred mounds of burning trash. Lodges, knocked on their sides and collapsed, had been torched. Stacks of buffalo robes had been set ablaze, and the air was full of the stink of burnt hair. He saw bodies, too, and felt his heart hammer against his ribs.

  Nocona’s own lodge was one of those unburned, but it had been knocked over and collapsed. Quanah could see the long, dark place where a burning branch had been thrown on the skin and burned away without setting fire to the lodge itself, leaving an ugly scar nearly a yard long.

  But it was the bodies that held him. He had seen dead people before, but never this many, never this close and, except for Antelope Hills, always they were enemies. Now it was his own people who lay sprawled in the pasty mud of their own bleeding, and as he nudged the horse downhill, he could smell the stench of death. He knew the disaster couldn’t have been that long ago, because the ruins were still smoldering. And they had been gone only five days. But the wreckage was so complete, it seemed to him as if it had happened in one fell swoop, as if a thunderbolt had laid waste to the camp, flattening it and burning its ruins all in one instant.

  He pushed the pony harder and harder, until they were traveling at breakneck speed toward the valley floor and river beyond. He raced to Nocona’s lodge and leaped from his pony, calling, “Mother? Mother?”

  But there was no answer. He grabbed the edge of the overturned lodge, straightened, and peered inside as far as he could see, but he already knew that it would be empty, and let it fall again as he turned away, his eyes picking out first one body then another. There was Blue Elk, and Runs Fast, and over there was White Mustang. One after another, he ran to the bodies, checking to see whether they were alive, knowing they would not be, and turned from each bloated face, its black tongue lolling lewdly over a bloody jaw or straining upward as if to lick away the flies crawling on the staring eyes and buzzing angrily when Quanah came too close.

  There were women and children, too, but no sign of Naudah or Prairie Flower.

  Again, he called out, “Mother?”

  And again his voice fell dead, a single dead leaf on a windless day. Not even an echo bothered to mock him.

  There were dead horses, too, and he realized that all the arrows lying on the ground were Comanche arrows. This had not been a raid by Osage or Tonkawa or Apache. This had been done by Anglos. The mangled bodies lay beside a broken bow, a shattered lance, a handful of arrows. One, that of Green Horse, still had its fingers curled around the shaft of a war club, its face, even distorted by bloat, wearing an expression of outrage mixed with surprise.

  One by one, he examined the bodies. He knew them all. But Naudah was nowhere t
o be seen. Nor was Prairie Flower.

  Shaking his head as if to rid it of the horror he had just seen, he raced back to his pony, sprang onto its back, and slipped his legs under the ropes, slapping its side even before he was ready to ride.

  Quanah started lashing the pony with his bow, striking it again and again and again. The pony was straining as it tried to comply, but Quanah no longer realized what he was doing. Again and again, he smacked the pony on the flank as he charged uphill away from the devastated camp.

  By the time he reached the hilltop, each slash of the heavy bow scattered an arc of small rubies, and Quanah didn’t notice the blood flecking his chest and thighs as he drove on, yelling until his throat was raw and the words, if they were words at all, no longer meant anything to him.

  Once, he glanced back, half afraid that the ghosts of the dead were following him. By the time he spotted Nocona and the heavily laden hunting party, he was gasping for breath, despite the fact that it was the pony that was doing all the work. He felt his chest pounding, as if each rib wanted to pull away from his body, to get away from the madman whose skin restrained it.

  Nocona saw him coming, and his first instinct was annoyance at the boy, playing when there was such serious business to be tended to. But as he watched Quanah, still slashing at the hapless pony, he knew something was wrong. Goading his own mount, he dashed ahead of the others, heading straight for his son and yelling to Black Snake to keep Pecos with him.

  He met Quanah on the valley floor, the son panting, choking with tears, the father stunned and helpless as he waited for an explanation.

  “What’s the matter? Quanah, what happened?”

  All the boy could do was shake his head, trying to get rid of the thick paste that clogged his throat. Words fluttered from his lips, but they were unintelligible, and Nocona shook his head in frustration. “Tell me what happened!”

  Taking a water bag from the back of his horse, he handed it to Quanah, holding it while the boy sucked greedily, the heavy bag throbbing with every gulp. Then, licking his lips, Quanah rubbed a wrist across his cheeks and only then saw the flecks of blood on his skin.