He stared at them as if not quite certain what they were, until Nocona pointed to the bow. Quanah looked down at the blood-soaked bow and bowstring, then at his pony’s flank. He took a deep breath, whirled the bow three times overhead, then threw it as far as he could. Only when it landed in the grass, did he try once more to speak.
“The camp … they’re dead … gone … everyone. I …”
Realizing what his son was trying to say, Nocona gave a great shout, “Naudahhhh …” Then he kicked his war-horse furiously, prodding it again and again with his heels. Quanah was left behind. His pony was spent, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to return to the camp, so he turned about and sat there, watching his father disappear over the ridge and down into the next valley.
He could hear shouts now from behind him, turned and waved frantically. Several warriors had already sped ahead of the main party, and he saw Black Snake at their head. His father’s friend was jerking a spare along in his wake, and Quanah freed his legs from the ropes of his pony and slipped to the ground.
As Black Snake and the others thundered past, he grabbed the war rope and bounced onto the back of the spare. He saw Black Snake looking back over his shoulder and waved, shouting something that neither he nor Black Snake understood. Pecos was in the rear, his face a mask of confusion, and Quanah told him to wait with the others, then kicked the new horse, urging it to catch Black Snake and then on ahead.
When they broke over the ridge, the camp was just as Quanah had last seen it, and he heard the gasps as the others took in the devastating sight, then began to shout and wail, venting at one time their sorrow at the loss and their rage at its perpetrators.
Nocona was standing in the middle of the camp, his arms spread wide, his head tilted back as if to inquire of the sky why this horror had visited him yet again.
They could hear him screaming, but it wasn’t until they were halfway down the hill that Quanah realized Nocona was calling Naudah’s name.
Before they reached the flats at the valley bottom, Nocona was running for his horse again and swung onto its back as the others rode up.
“Come with me,” he shouted, heading back the way they’d come. He led a mad charge back to the main body of hunters, told them what happened in as few words as possible, and told most of them to follow him. He left just a few behind to tend to the dead and, if there were any, the wounded, and to guard what was left of their belongings.
“Where are we going, brother?” Black Snake asked. His voice was tight, but he sounded fearful that Nocona might do something foolish.
“To find the ones who did this. They can’t be far. We will catch them soon.”
“But … “
Nocona raised his face to the sky again. “No!” he snapped. “I don’t want advice. I don’t want an argument. I want my family back. And I want revenge for all those who have been taken from us.”
He started toward the camp, his eyes scanning the ground for signs. It wasn’t hard to find the tracks left by the iron-shod American horses and, like Quanah, he had noticed the absence of enemy arrows, leaving no doubt as to who had wreaked such havoc on the camp and its inhabitants.
They followed the trail for three hours before the sky began to darken. Quanah had spent his rage and settled now into an icy calm, not quite as arctic as that which enfolded his father. He looked at the sky, surprised that the sun should be setting so early, and saw the huge mass of boiling black clouds speeding toward them from the west.
Ten minutes later, the first drops of rain, large as sparrow eggs, spattered men and horses, each one feeling like a spent rifle ball, stinging the skin and hitting like a closed fist.
Puffs of dust mushroomed around those that hit the ground, and soon it was pouring steadily. Nocona raged against the weather, knowing that if it kept up very long, all trace of the raiding party would be wiped away.
It rained steadily, darkening continually until the sun was gone and two hours later there was no hope of following the trail in the stygian darkness.
Nocona told his warriors to rest, and sat all night, his back against a rock, the rain pouring down over him until he shivered and began to cough.
By sunrise, it was still raining, a drizzle now, but the damage had already been done. Nocona sent scouts in every direction, and paced anxiously while he waited for their return. It was nearly an hour before they were all in, and none had been able to find a trace of the Anglos.
Nocona ground his teeth, walked to his horse and climbed onto its back.
“Where are we going, Father?” Quanah asked, voicing the questions the others shared but were too nervous and demoralized to ask.
“To the camp,” he said.
“But, Mother … Prairie Flower … “
Nocona nodded. “I will look until I find them or until I die. But right now, we have to bury our dead.”
Chapter 20
Autumn 1862
IN CAMP, PETA NOCONA SPENT more and more time alone with his sons. When he went into battle, he was courageous almost to the point of recklessness, as if he wanted to make up for the loss of Naudah with as much blood as he could spill. But Quanah was worried. Nocona seemed not to care whether he lived or died. The raids he led were still as carefully planned as always, but the greater the odds, the more Nocona seemed to relish the fight.
In the summer of 1861, with the Rangers occupying Camp Radziminski, recently vacated by the army, skirmishes were frequent, sometimes planned, sometimes the accidental fallout of circumstance. And Nocona hated the Anglos now more than ever, even more than he hated the Osage. It was as if the loss of Naudah and Prairie Flower, so uncertain, not knowing whether they were alive or dead, was harder to bear than the loss of White Heron and Little Calf. Quanah sometimes thought there was a great abyss deep inside Nocona, one that had to be filled with blood to make him feel whole.
Pressed by the Rangers, Nocona kept his village on the move, even though he stayed deep in the Llano Estacado, where even the Rangers were reluctant to go. When he learned of the outbreak of the War Between the States, Nocona smiled, but it was a terrible smile, ghoulish and inward looking, as if the news satisfied some dark wish.
“Now,” he said, “the Anglos will help us. They will kill each other, and there will not be as many of them for us to kill. We will have our lands to ourselves.”
Quanah wasn’t so sure. He knew that some of the tribes already on reservations, especially the Caddo and the Wichita, favored the North, while others, especially the Tonkawa, favored the South. Because of his hatred for the Tonkawa, Nocona inclined the least little bit toward the North, and when word reached him that war against the hated Tonkawa was being planned, he attended the council to offer his help.
The Tonkawa heard rumors, and made a run for it, heading south and east, deeper into country firmly controlled by the Texans, but it did them no good.
Caddo scouts kept track of them, getting word back to the alliance of chiefs planning the attack, and when it seemed the Tonkawa had stopped running and established a permanent village, a great war party of Caddo, Wichita, and Comanche assembled in a river valley near Anadarko. They moved quickly, and in three days had surrounded the Tonkawa village.
The hope was that the Texans would be too busy with their own war to worry much about their Indian allies. Surveying the Tonkawa village under the cover of darkness, Nocona saw that it was so. Clutching Quanah by the shoulder, he said, “See, the Anglos don’t care about anyone but themselves. The Tonkawa sold themselves to the Texans and now that they are of no use, the Texans don’t care about them. These are the ones who killed Iron Jacket. These are the ones who roast our brothers over the fire and eat their flesh. These are the ones.”
Slipping away from the vantage point above the valley where the village lay, Nocona rejoined the main war party and told what he had seen. The attack was for the next night. It would be swift and it would be sudden. “If we are careful,” Nocona told them, “we can get them all.”
The following day was spent in preparation. More arrows had to be made, lances relaced, war clubs repaired. No one spoke much. Each man was busy seeing to his own weapons, knowing that the coming of night would present him with an opportunity to settle old scores, to get revenge for loved ones lost and to punish an enemy too long hiding behind the power of the Anglos. But this time, the Tonkawa were alone. They would have no one to turn to, nowhere to run.
As twilight began to darken the sky, Nocona pulled Quanah aside. “If anything happens to me,” he said, “I want you to promise me that you will look after Pecos.”
“You know I will.”
Nocona nodded. “I know. But I want you to promise me.”
“Nothing will happen to you.”
“Perhaps not. All the same, promise. I have lost too many people to go easily to the other side if those left behind are in danger.”
Quanah sighed. “I promise.” He was troubled by the request, because Nocona seemed resigned, as if he foresaw some terrible doom that he believed he could not escape. Even the moroseness of the last two years was nothing compared to the heavy sadness that seemed to surround the great chief now.
When darkness fell, the war party moved out. They had ten miles to go, and rode in a long file, whispering among themselves until the war chiefs passed the word that surprise depended on complete silence. From that point on, Quanah, riding beside Nocona, listened only to the drum of unshod hooves on the dry turf. He knew the white soldier columns always made noise, because the leather of their saddles squeaked, and the metal fittings of the bridles and the soldiers’ spurs jingled. Peering over his shoulder into the darkness behind him, he could make out only a handful of gray shapes, and could not have guessed the size of the war party from the little he saw.
When they reached the last hill before the ridge overlooking the valley where the Tonkawa village lay, the warriors spread in a long line, waiting for the word to advance up the hill. When it came, the line moved almost like a sidewinder, small groups getting out ahead a bit, then lagging, waiting for the others, who moved a little ahead. The battle line wriggled up the hill and stopped once more on the ridge overlooking the Tonkawa village. Large campfires, tended by shadows, filled the valley with light. The Tonkawa lodges were splashed with orange and black, the colors of the designs pale and dull in the flicker.
With an earsplitting shriek, Great Bull, a Caddo chief, led the charge, and then it was every man for himself as the war party swept down on the unsuspecting enemy. Quanah saw Nocona pull away, getting out in front of the small Comanche contingent, and he was among the first to reach the edge of the village. The Tonkawa spilled out of their lodges, jumping on the ponies tethered beside the entrances, grabbing bows and lances and trying to get their bearings as the war party swarmed over them.
Despite the alliance with the Anglos, the Tonkawa were not well armed. A few had pistols and old muskets, but after the first flurry of gunfire, the combat was too close and too furious for reloading. Comanche, Caddo, and Wichita thundered through the village, knocking lodges over, upending meat racks and sending defenders sprawling in the dust.
The shrieks of the warriors mingled with the wails of women and children as the furious battle surged like a flood among the lodges. Quanah leaped from his pony feet first, hitting a burly Tonkawa in the middle of the back and knocking him to the ground. He tumbled over once, sprang to his feet and turned to face the enraged defender, who charged with a lance held at his hip.
Quanah ducked under the thrusting tip, knocked the shaft aside, and closed with a war club held in his right hand. He swung wildly, nearly losing his feet as the Tonkawa whipped him with the lance, catching him on the hip with the flame-hardened wood.
Pulling the lance back, the Tonkawa made another vicious thrust, but this time Quanah closed a hand over the shaft and jerked the warrior off balance. The man stumbled toward him, letting go of the lance and flailing his arms. Bringing the war club down in a sharp arc, Quanah caught his opponent on the shoulder. He heard the crack of breaking bone, and the Tonkawa’s left arm went limp. Pulling a knife, the burly warrior charged into the slender Quanah, slashing back and forth with the broad blade. The knife caught the firelight and left smears of gold behind it after each vicious slice.
Timing the passes of the blade, Quanah danced backward, turning slightly, then brought the war club down again, this time striking the knife hand just below the wrist. The Tonkawa yelped as the knife flew from his hand, made a dive for it and closed his fingers around the hilt just as Quanah’s foot reached it, pinning both hand and knife to the ground.
With his other arm useless, the Tonkawa tried to wriggle free, then curled the wounded arm around his head as the war club whistled toward him.
Once more, there was a loud crack, this time sounding as if a tree limb had snapped in two. Blood poured from a ragged wound on the Tonkawa’s temple, and Quanah, feeling a rage he didn’t understand, slashed once more and then again with the heavy club, hitting the same place both times, and leaving the side of the warrior’s head a mush of red and gray.
Panting, Quanah backed away, turned and saw another Tonkawa racing toward a Comanche warrior whose back was turned. Shouting, Quanah charged, but the defender reached the Comanche first, thrusting the lance deep into the lower back above the right hip. The Comanche groaned, reached for the lance as he tried to turn, and only then did Quanah realize the target was Nocona.
Hurling himself at the Tonkawa, Quanah clawed at his bare back, whipped an arm around the warrior’s neck, and reached for the knife on his hip. In a single blinding arc, the knife slit the Tonkawa’s throat, and Quanah felt the rush of warm blood flood over his forearm and hand. He let the man fall and turned to Nocona, who had already snapped off the head of the lance, in front of his hip.
He lay on his side, and when he saw Quanah, he rolled onto his stomach. “Pull it out, Quanah, quickly!”
He gritted his teeth as Quanah grasped the lance, wincing with the pain. Pressing his foot right beside the wound, Quanah jerked the lance free, and Nocona groaned.
He knelt then to tend to Nocona, but his father waved him away. “Pay attention to what matters,” he said. “I’ll be all right.”
Reluctantly, Quanah turned back to the battle swirling around him on every side. It was apparent that the Tonkawa were getting the worst of it, and many of them were already dead or wounded. The Caddo, especially, were fiercely determined, and each time the battle seemed about to flag, they mounted a charge that rekindled the flames.
Lodges were in ruins, horses lay dead and wounded and bodies were strewn everywhere. Quanah threw himself back into the thick of the battle, as much to get his mind off Nocona’s wound as for the joy of the fight itself. For another hour, the combat raged, breaking down into smaller and smaller groups of hand-to-hand contests, and as the numbers of Tonkawa warriors able to resist continually dwindled, the pockets of resistance grew fewer and fewer.
Quanah managed one more combat, this time against a Tonkawa not much older than himself, but the defender had little heart for the battle, and it was over quickly, with Quanah once more victorious, whirling to look for his next challenge. But by then, it was over. He saw the Comanche gathering together, chattering among themselves, and noticed that Nocona was among them.
With a great howl, Nocona held his right arm high overhead, and the circle of Comanche around him echoed the howl with furious shrieks of their own. As Quanah approached, the Comanche parted to make room for him, and he saw a body lying on its back at Nocona’s feet, its arms limp, its legs twisted as if broken, and the glitter of orange light on naked bone where the scalp lock should have been.
One of the warriors noticed the baffled expression on his face. “Placido,” he said. “The one who led the fight where Iron Jacket was killed.” He laughed, and twisted his face into a smile that was so maniacal it frightened Quanah.
And it was time to go home, time to celebrate the victory. There were so few Tonkawa left
that, for all practical purposes, they had ceased to exist as a separate nation. Gathering their horses, the Caddo, Wichita, and Comanche chattered incessantly about the great battle, singing their own praises and those of friends. Endless waves of shrieks and howls rippled through the warriors as they mounted up and dug their knees into their ponies.
Quanah took his place beside Nocona, who was nearly doubled over on the back of his mount, and obviously suffering from the lance wound in his hip. Quanah wanted him to rest, but Nocona was anxious to get back home.
“I want to see Pecos,” he said, “to tell him of the great battle, and how his brother saved my life.”
Quanah tried to wave the praise away as if it were a swarm of gnats, but Nocona, through clenched teeth, went on and on. The ride home took four days, and Nocona’s condition worsened with every mile. He had difficulty sitting erect on his horse, and the shock of the thudding hooves made him grimace now and then.
He had stopped bleeding, and the wound had been packed with herbs and mud, but Quanah was worried. By the time they reached the Comanche village, Nocona had to be helped from his horse. His skin felt hot and stiff, like the white man’s paper. He was mumbling incoherently, and Quanah rushed him to his lodge and sent immediately for the medicine man.
Pacing outside while the shaman worked his magic, Quanah tried to explain to Pecos what had happened, downplaying his own role in the battle. The difference in their ages had never seemed so great. Quanah felt that they were standing together looking over the edge of a deep pit into which Nocona was falling, and when he closed his eyes, it was as if he could see Nocona sailing, drifting lower and lower, swooping in great circles as he shrank in size.
And when the medicine man finally left the lodge the following morning, he clapped a hand on Quanah’s shoulder. “I don’t know if my medicine is strong enough to help him,” he said. “He wants to see you and your brother. You’d better go in quickly.”
Bill Dugan_War Chiefs 04 Page 14