“Never mind me. I need to go talk to our guides and interpreters.” H. P. Jones seemed glad to have a reason to excuse himself. He rode over to where the Delawares and the Waco squatted in the shade of a live oak beside the corral.
Colonel Moore, the commissioner, and the man in the stovepipe hat dismounted and came up on the porch. Mrs. Ida took a seat in a wicker-bottomed chair and offered the remaining two to her visitors. Anderson and Moore took the chairs and the man in the glasses and tall hat sat on the edge of the porch. Placido stayed on his horse, his face bland and as inscrutable as ice. Red Wing was sure that if he smiled his face would break into pieces. He seemed oblivious to their conversation, but she thought she detected a slight twinkle in his eyes when he glanced at her.
She turned away from him and stood behind her mother with both her hands on the back of the chair. She realized that the newcomers were all looking at her, and the look on Colonel Moore’s face made her even more uncomfortable than the Tonkawa had. She fought down the urge to run once more.
“Why, Red Wing, I had no idea just how much you’ve grown and how beautiful you’ve become,” Colonel Moore said.
Red Winged tried to smile. “Thank you.”
“Quite beautiful,” Commissioner Anderson muttered like the observation bothered him.
“Just what have you come for? From the sound of it, I’d say it has to do with Injuns,” Bud Wilson said as he leaned up against a porch post with his rifle cradled in the bend of his elbow.
Colonel Moore looked down at the oak boards beneath his feet for a moment and then passed a look to Commissioner Anderson. He rose and walked over to the water barrel at the end of the porch and took up the dipper there. He stood quietly with his back to them and the dipper dripping and poised halfway to his mouth.
Commissioner Anderson cleared his throat and looked uncomfortably at Red Wing before saying to Mrs. Ida, “I’d think it best if we spoke in private.”
“Commissioner . . .” Mrs. Ida started.
“Call me Will. It will save you some confusion with so many men of rank present.”
“What have you to say that my daughter should not hear? I assure you that she’s no wilting lily and is quite levelheaded and capable of listening to men’s talk without fainting or becoming confused by any complex revelations you seem to feel you possess,” she snapped.
Commissioner Anderson winced. “I assure you that isn’t the case. Perhaps you should hear me out and then maybe you can relate what I have to say to her yourself.”
Mrs. Ida locked eyes with him for a long moment in a test of wills and then turned to Red Wing. “Go for a walk, girl, and let me hear this silly man out.”
Red Wing started to protest, but the fear and premonition that was steadily growing in her took the out that was offered. She passed a glance to Bud, and he gave her a slight nod as if to say that he would listen for her. She gathered her skirt and left the porch with her chin a little higher than normal. She wasn’t about to let them see her concern, and she was glad the folds of her dress hid her shaking hands as she walked away.
She passed by the corral and although she didn’t look their way, she could feel the eyes of the men on her. The Delawares in their white shirts and homespun pants looked at her the same as the wild Waco with the tattoos on his face and one side of his hair shaved close and the other hanging long in a braid. Captain Jones had taken a seat against the wall of the barn. She nodded at him, but he had already tipped his hat down over his eyes for a nap. Once she reached the creek, she quickened her pace and circled around back of the house. She stopped and began picking flowers fifty yards away, but she could plainly hear bits and pieces of the conversation on the porch.
“If you want to help with the Comanche problem, why don’t you bring soldiers and kill all of them you can? You can’t make peace with them; they don’t even understand the word.” Her mother’s voice rose loudly and Red Wing wondered what she had missed hearing that had the woman so stirred up.
She could hear Anderson speaking but couldn’t make out all of his words. He was talking about some Peace Commission out west, but that was all she could gather at a distance.
“Lord, no! Bud, give me your gun!” Mrs. Ida cried.
There was more hushed conversation, but that only led to Mrs. Ida bawling and sobbing and the sound of a scuffle on the porch. Red Wing started back to the house.
“Not my baby!” her mother cried again, and to Red Wing she sounded like she was dying.
Before Red Wing had taken more than a few steps Placido rode around the house to her. His face was as unreadable as it had been earlier, and even the twinkle in his eye was gone. She thought maybe she had just imagined it earlier.
“Come with me.” He sounded as if he thought she might flee.
It had been almost five years, but that day so long ago came back to her as more than a memory. In fact, she felt as if she was reliving the moment when Colonel Moore’s men had charged into her camp yelling and firing and had taken her away from all she knew. Truly, she did want to run like a little rabbit in the grass, because she felt like a captive once again.
“What do you want with me?” she managed to ask.
Placido glanced briefly over his shoulder at the house as if weighing what he should or shouldn’t say. “You’re coming with us.”
Red Wing wondered if she stood a chance of outrunning his horse the short distance to the timber along the creek. She wished her Odie had come home like he had promised.
Chapter 9
I hear what you’re saying, and I don’t like it any more than you do.” Commissioner Anderson dabbed at the fresh cut over his right eye with his handkerchief. “But for all that you’ve said, she’s still a Comanche, and there is no denying that.”
“She’s my daughter, and has been for nigh onto five years,” Mrs. Ida said. She was still crying, but she forced the words out between gasps and sobs.
“It’s Houston’s orders, and as the commissioner assigned to the Comanche, I have no choice but to obey them.”
Captain Jones and Colonel Moore had Bud Wilson disarmed and pinned against the wall. He wasn’t putting up a fight at the moment, but it was apparent that he’d tried to whip the commissioner. He was panting from his scuffle with the men and glaring hotly at the two who stood between him and Red Wing, who had come up to the edge of the porch. There was no blood relation between her and him, but it had been a long time since he had treated her like anything but his true sister. Even little Mike was hovering around with a stick in his hands ready to fight for her.
“If you take her back to those savages, it will be over my dead body,” Mrs. Ida said.
The commissioner sighed and rolled his hat brim around in his hands while he thought. “We’re taking her, but maybe the Comanches won’t even want her back, or won’t be willing to trade hostages for her. If so, I think we can manage to bring her back to you.”
Mrs. Ida steadied herself and lashed out at Colonel Moore. “You’re word isn’t worth spit. You look me in the eye and tell me you didn’t give this girl to me.”
The colonel didn’t meet her eyes; he couldn’t. He’d fought Mexicans and Indians more times than he cared to count, but he didn’t have the stomach to face her anguish or deny the truth of what she said. He cussed Sam Houston under his breath. The president thought you could deal with Comanches like civilized people when everyone in Texas knew that peace with them was a joke. Former president Lamar had been an ass, but at least he had understood that. The only way was to kill them all, or just outlast them, and the colonel had a sneaking suspicion it would be the latter of the two choices that eventually worked. Comanches were damned hard to run down, and harder yet to kill in a fight.
He watched Placido standing guard over Red Wing at the far end of the porch. She had changed much, but the colonel couldn’t quite shake the vision of her as a tadpole of a l
ittle girl with a dirty face and chopped-off hair, dressed in a tow sack of a deerskin dress. He remembered how he’d found her standing in the middle of the Comanche village among the dead bodies of her people. She’d looked up at him on his horse without a tear in her eye. After the long day’s fighting was over he’d taken her up on his horse and carried her in front of him for the first few days, while the rest of his captives walked before his volunteer troops.
Red Wing too was reliving that moment over and over again. Her capture from the Comanche had been more violent, but the thought of being carted off again was even harder for her than it had been on that day in her village. She had nothing to lose back then, an orphan even before Colonel Moore killed over fifty of the camp that had been her home at the time. The only thing similar for her about the moment was the numbness of mind and spirit that came over her when she heard what Commissioner Anderson intended to do.
She went into the cabin and gathered a few personal belongings from the house and stuffed them into a valise while the Tonkawa watched over her. She knew it was foolish, but she had a faint hope that some miracle would happen and keep her from having to go with the expedition. Such things only happened in the books she had read, and the only miracle she had ever known was the family she was about to be dragged away from.
“There’s no sense fighting us. Red Wing is a Comanche, and as a measure of our goodwill, Houston wants us to offer her back to them in hopes of having peace with all of the Comanches that we can get to come into Fort Bird and talk with us. He also hopes that they’ll be moved by such a gift and offer us white captives in exchange,” the commissioner said.
“She’s no more a Comanche now than you or I. Did you know that her father and mother were both dead long before Colonel Moore captured her? Did you know she can hardly even speak a word of Comanche anymore?” Mrs. Ida shook her finger under his nose. “You tell me, would you take a white woman and offer her to the Comanche even if it meant peace for all times? What if she was your daughter or sister?”
“Mrs. Wilson, you know that General Woll’s army sacked San Antonio again last year. The word is that the Mexicans are forming up again and sending ambassadors out to make agreements with the Comanche to aid them. President Houston believes that peace with the savages may be all that saves Texas from invasion.”
“You don’t need my daughter to bargain with the Comanche. It sounds like the Mexicans are doing fine without giving away their women,” Mrs. Ida snapped.
“I’m truly sorry, but I have my orders and will follow them as they are.” Commissioner Anderson got up from his chair and put his hat back on.
“Like hell you will.” Mrs. Ida produced a single-shot pistol from the folds of her dress in the wink of an eye. “I didn’t love and raise that girl all this time to lose her to the likes of you, Colonel, Commissioner, two-bit chicken thief, or whatever you call yourself.”
The hammer on that pistol was eared back and she was ready to shoot. The commissioner made a move to jerk the gun from her hand, and it would have proven a fatal tactic if it had not been for Placido bounding from the door and knocking off her aim with his long arm. As it was, the pistol sent a ball through the bookkeeper’s hat. The little man pushed his glasses up on his freckled nose and then jerked off his lid to study the hole in the crown. He measured the distance between where the bullet had entered and the silk band, as if to gauge how close the woman had come to putting the bullet in his head.
“I daresay, she almost killed me,” he said, and he had gone white around the gills.
“Agent Torrey, you’d best get on your horse,” Colonel Moore said.
The squeamish Indian agent looked at a loss for words but did as he was told. Nothing he had known in Baltimore had prepared him for what he’d seen in just a few years in Texas. There were no women where he came from to shoot hats off your head, or the need to trade civilized women to savages for goodwill. He found himself wishing he’d married that fat shoemaker’s daughter next door and stayed back in Maryland to raise fat little kids and sew on boot soles, happy in the ignorance of any place such as Texas even existing.
The Indians with the party had mounted and ridden up to the porch. They were well-armed and looked determined. Mrs. Ida didn’t care if there had been fifty of them; she continued to wrestle with Placido over her gun. The Tonk finally let her have the gun back, as it was empty and he thought it harmless enough. As soon as he let go she reared back with it like it was a tomahawk and swung it viciously at him. He ducked easily, but she did manage to hit Torrey in the back of the head just as he was stepping off the porch to go to his horse. He landed in the dust with all the grace of a sack of corn.
“Ho there, Agent Torrey, are you all right?” one of the Delawares asked.
It took Torrey a minute to find his glasses in the grass, but he finally swayed to his feet. Even after he had his spectacles back on, he had trouble making out anything. His head swam and he was almost too dizzy to walk. He somehow managed to reach his horse, although he nearly fell off the other side when he swung into the saddle. He teetered precariously until he finally righted himself. The Delawares laughed at him.
He supposed he might have almost fallen off the horse merely because he was too dizzy to properly mount, but he had no faith in his horsemanship even under good conditions. Horses vexed him, especially broncy, snorty Texas ponies, and they were almost as bothersome as women with weapons and Indians who mocked him. His head throbbed already, and he could hardly wait for whatever else the day had in store for him. He was sure it would be highly uncomfortable and humiliating. For the life of him he couldn’t even remember just how he’d ended up as one of Houston’s Indian agents. He chalked it up to bad luck and a serious lack of judgment on his part.
The commissioner took the pistol away from Mrs. Ida and fended off an assault of scratching and clawing until she finally sank weakly back into her chair. He tried one last time to talk with her, but her chin dropped to her chest and she cried quietly.
“My baby, my baby. Bud, get your gun back and shoot them. Don’t let them take your sister. It’ll kill me for sure,” she said softly.
Bud prepared himself to tackle the entire party, but Red Wing’s voice stopped him.
“It’s all right, Bud. There’s nothing we can do. Make sure Mama’s okay, and then go and get Karl once we’re gone. He’ll know what to do,” she said.
Bud studied her carefully. He wanted to fight, but she was right. There was no way he was going to whip the entire party. The best thing to do was for him to gather a party of neighbors and run the Peace Commission down and take her back. He took a deep breath to settle himself. Red Wing always made perfect sense. He’d known for a long time that she was the smartest one in the family, and maybe the bravest.
“Karl won’t let them get too far off with you. Just you wait and see,” he said.
The commissioner looked a question at Colonel Moore.
“You keep that Prussian out of this. There’s no need to get him stirred up. Houston wouldn’t like his representatives being harassed by foreigners,” Colonel Moore said. He knew the Prussian well, and was sure that if that German had an interest in Red Wing that Commissioner Anderson was going to have his hands full. He was glad he was leaving the expedition as soon as they got away from the Wilsons’ farm.
Red Wing hugged Bud and wiped the tears from Mike’s eyes before hugging him too. “Don’t cry, little brother, or you’ll make me cry too.”
Placido tied her valise on the saddle of the horse they had for her and stood back while she mounted. Red Wing looked at her mother, hoping to say good-bye, but Mrs. Wilson wouldn’t or couldn’t lift her head from her chest. She sagged limply in her chair, and the only sign of life in her was the subtle quiver of her shoulders and an occasional sob.
“Good-bye, Mama. I love you.” Red Wing hoped her mother was all right. She feared they had broken her emotiona
lly, if not physically.
“Mind that commissioner. He has eyes for you, and that won’t hurt your cause,” Mrs. Ida croaked in a ragged whisper when Red Wing rode close to the porch.
Red Wing looked quickly to see if the others had heard her mother. None of the men acted as if they had heard the whispered advice from a woman crazed by grief and rambling incoherently. Before long, the entire party was mounted and leaving. Red Wing watched her home disappear behind her as the trail west took her away from all she had come to know.
“Buckle down, girl. I won’t let the Comanches have you if it looks like it will be bad for you,” Commissioner Anderson said beside her.
She started to reply angrily but cut herself off short. She remembered her mother’s last words and tried to keep from crying. She steeled herself and gave the commissioner a smile she didn’t feel. “I’m sure you’ll look out for me, and I feel better knowing it.”
She wanted to spit out the bad taste in her mouth as soon as she said it, but her mother was wise. It might pay to use whatever weapons she had at hand, and young as Red Wing was, she already knew men liked to look at her. That knowledge scared her and intrigued her. She couldn’t muscle her way past the men around her, but she might outfox them with “feminine wiles.” She wasn’t sure what her mother always meant by the term, or if she even possessed such things.
She felt defeated but knew that would pass with time. Stubborn defiance was steadily gaining a hold within her, and she already felt better for it. Her chances of escape were slim, but she had to try. She was tougher and cooler-headed than any of them could have ever guessed. She had once been Comanche, and that old training wasn’t entirely forgotten. She was alone in the world once more, but patience could be the price of survival. She would have to wait until an opportunity for freedom came along.
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