“We don’t have time to dally here while you try and heal this village.”
“We have all summer to get as many Comanches as possible to Fort Bird. Unforeseen delays and difficulties are bound to happen.”
“I still say we ride on.”
Commissioner Anderson ignored the captain and dismounted. “Agent Torrey, it is said you have some medical experience.”
“I came to Texas overland with a doctor, but I wouldn’t say what little I learned gave me any skill to speak of.” Torrey looked extremely uncomfortable with where the conversation was leading, but then again, he generally looked uncomfortable.
“Nevertheless, you were given charge of outfitting us with the necessary medical supplies for our journey,” the commissioner said.
“We have little in our kit beyond bandage material, a bottle of laudanum, some herbal concoctions, and two quarts of whiskey.”
“Fetch the kit, and let’s get to work.”
“I wouldn’t even know where to begin. How can we doctor them without even knowing what they’re sick with?”
“Let’s just give it our best, and make a show of wanting to help.”
Agent Torrey wanted to stand his ground and refuse, but Commissioner Anderson intimidated him far more than pretending to be a doctor. He wasn’t an assertive man, and his whole life had consisted of taking orders that led him to do things he would rather not. He wasn’t even sure how he had ended up being chosen to go along with the expedition. It was readily apparent to him that such confident men as the commissioner seemed to look for adventure as a matter of everyday occurrence.
“Forget whatever you’re thinking about and get the medicines. The whole village is staring at us.” The commissioner’s voice was gentle, yet commanding.
Torrey started for the packhorses. The commissioner’s reminder made him all too aware of the crowd of Wacos surrounding them. Normally, a friendly arrival in an Indian camp was a noisy, happy affair, but the worried Wacos stood somberly with their dark eyes boring into him. Too many people’s attention on him all at once always left him feeling like he was too small for his clothes and awkward to the point that he wasn’t even inside his own body. At least walking to retrieve the medicine bag alleviated some of that shrinking, disjointed feeling.
Once he returned with the medical kit, Chief Squash led him and the commissioner into the lodge. Captain Jones with Jim Pockmark and the Delawares went off to tend the horses. Agent Torrey was surprised that Red Wing followed them inside. Her face was unreadable but calm, and somehow that soothed his shaky nerves.
The circular lodge was large with sleeping platforms spaced along the curve of the wall surrounding the center support posts and fire pit. The grass roof had a hole at its peak to vent smoke, and the only light within was a spear of sunlight that pierced down through it to ricochet in a small circle in the center of the room. The beds along the wall were partitioned for privacy, but the hide curtains were pulled back where Squash’s wife lay attended to by a small group of female family members.
Both white men were a little surprised at Squash’s demeanor. He exchanged a few quiet words with the eldest of the squaws before taking a seat next to the cold ashes of the fire pit. The commissioner and his group stood unsure while the squaws seemed to debate whether they should give way to the strangers or not.
“Wacos are like the Wichitas and Keechis. Women head the family,” Red Wing said.
“Ah, they are matriarchal,” Agent Torrey said.
“Matri-what?” The commissioner frowned.
“Family descent is through the mother rather than the father. I would assume that the lodges are family units ruled by an extended group of sisters and their female offspring. When a man marries, he goes to live among his wife’s people.”
“I thought what you said the first time sounded bad,” the commissioner muttered. “That just goes to show how backward Indians can be.”
“Comanches would never give their women such power.” Red Wing was more than a little surprised at the hint of scorn in her own voice.
“If these women don’t want to move, we may have some problem wading through them. That old crone with the soup bowl looks plumb mean. As well armed as we are I’d say it’s about a standoff.” The commissioner tried to keep smiling at the squaws even while he spoke.
The ancient matriarch said something loudly in her native tongue and pointed one bony finger at Agent Torrey, who had the bad luck to be standing slightly forward of the others. The old woman’s flat, bare breasts swayed against her potbelly as she waggled her finger’s aim back and forth from him to the sky. His pale face blushed red at the sight of the ponderously flapping remnants of what had once been the source of his greatest interest in the female anatomy. From his first arrival at the village he had been bashfully ducking his eyes and avoiding the ripe offerings of half-naked womanhood evident everywhere, but somehow he couldn’t look away from sagging teats of a toothless crone scolding him without concern for the discomfort her lack of dress was causing him.
Squash said something loudly, and the old squaw glared at his back and grunted. She gave Agent Torrey’s medicine bag a disdainful look and stepped aside. The younger women moved back to give him some room, but he still felt too crowded to move. The commissioner’s hand on the small of his back nudged him forward.
“I don’t have a clue what to do for her,” he said.
“Just act like you care. Do a little hocus pocus and give her something.” The commissioner was standing behind Agent Torrey and looking at the sick woman over his shoulder.
Agent Torrey couldn’t tell whether the patient was conscious or not. Her eyes were closed and her breathing was so shallow he couldn’t see the rise or fall of her chest beneath the robes she was covered in. Her forehead was hot to his touch, and his shaking hand came away wet. Gently, he pulled back her covering and the soured smell of sweat and sickness almost made him gag. Nobody around him seemed to notice that she was naked, and he forced himself to gently probe her abdomen. A faint moan issued from her lips, and she grimaced and tossed wildly when he pressed harder.
“What do you think?” the Commissioner asked impatiently.
“I think she’s sick and dying.” Agent Torrey lifted his ridiculous hat to wipe the sweat from his bald little head.
“Well, give her something.”
“I could kill her just as easy as I could heal her.” The press of bodies around Agent Torrey had him feeling jittery and sick himself. He sat on the edge of the bed and took a few deep breaths to steady himself.
Red Wing took a seat at the patient’s head and began to bathe the woman’s face with a wet rag from the pot of water the squaws had been using. She smiled at him and looked to the crowd around them. “Perhaps Agent Tom could work better if we could give him more room.”
Squash and the squaws had a short, contentious discussion. The result was that the women didn’t leave, but they did move back several steps and made a halfhearted attempt to appear busy with other things.
“Has she been vomiting or had any loose bowels?” Agent Torrey tried to sound more assured than he felt.
The commissioner repeated the question to Squash, and the chief replied with a negative shake of his head.
Agent Torrey opened his bag and stared dubiously at the contents within. The leather satchel had been the property of a drunken doctor who had fallen from his buggy in a state of intoxication and had his head run over by the rear wheel. His wife had been willing to sell her deceased husband’s tools of the trade on credit to the Peace Commission, even when many were beginning to scoff at the notion that the Republic of Texas ever paid its bills. Agent Torrey had been glad to check off another item on the expedition’s purchase list of supplies, but he didn’t have a clue what most of the various compartments in the medical bag contained.
He took out a few tiny jars and pap
er packets and stared at them dumbly while he stalled for time. Of all his choices, only a pint bottle labeled “Croup Tonic” showed any promise. People called any cough or winter illness “the croup.” While he had seen no signs of coughing or raspy lungs, he was almost sure that such a generic term was bound to encompass what ailed Squash’s wife. Spring rains and damp conditions could give anyone a cold. Very few people except children died of the croup, and surely the medicine required for such a simple illness couldn’t do any harm.
He considered himself a well-read man and abhorred most all kinds of ignorance. He had never claimed to be a doctor, and he was unable to make a random guess when lives were at stake. Just when he was about to give up hope and flee from the lodge a gleaming chunk of red in a paper sack at the bottom of the bag caught his eye. He immediately snatched it up and touched it to his tongue. A wry smile showed faintly on his face and he quickly slipped the large pill between his patient’s lips. She struggled for a moment to spit it out, but Red Wing cupped her hand gently over the woman’s mouth and held it there until she ceased to fight.
As if gaining courage by his choice, Agent Torrey uncorked the croup tonic. He squeezed the sick woman’s cheeks until her lips puckered open in a little circle, and poured a slug of the medicine into her mouth. Most of it leaked out over her chin, but she didn’t choke. Displeased with the dosage, he repeated his actions. He spilled less the second time and upon inspection found that she had swallowed the pill with the tonic.
He buckled the leather bag shut and looked up to the commissioner. “I understand that she hasn’t drunk for two days. Make it plain to Squash that she must have fluids or she will surely die. Broth and all the water she can be made to take would be best.”
“Squash does speak English.”
Agent Torrey looked timidly at the chief through the haze of his sweat– and grease-smeared lenses. He was sure that the biggest joke in the entire world was the fact that he had been appointed an Indian agent. Until coming to Texas he had never laid eyes on a wild Indian. His only qualifications were his reading of several journals by American naturalists. Upon his arrival in Houston he had attempted to sketch the natives he had met, and the president must have been highly impressed with his clerk’s renderings—as if simple sketches implied some knowledge of his subjects.
He was sure he was by no means qualified to speak with any Indian, much less a chief. “I think I need some fresh air.”
They all watched as he took up his bag and sidled his way through them and out the door. Red Wing handed care of the patient back over to her family and followed him while the commissioner relayed Agent Torrey’s instructions to Chief Squash.
When Agent Torrey burst out the door the first person he saw was Captain Jones squatted in the shade of a nearby arbor. He had his rifle across his knees and was watching the crowd of Wacos with no love at all. The Delawares were nowhere in sight.
“Don’t quit now, Doctor. There are more patients to attend to,” the commissioner said before Agent Torrey could take a seat.
Agent Torrey looked at his superior with horror but obediently followed him to the next lodge. More determined in his actions, he dispensed with the tonic all together. Twenty house calls later and his sack of red pills was all but empty.
The Wacos offered the party the use of an arbor with a raised floor for the night, but they refused and set up camp just outside the village. Spending the night in a village with sickness running rampant made them afraid of hospitality. The Delawares had killed a yearling deer and the group gathered around the fire and made quick work of the venison.
Agent Torrey found it amazing just how much food active men on almost a straight meat diet could consume. Normally, he could have eaten more than his share, but weariness and frazzled nerves had ruined his appetite. He dragged his saddle to the downwind side of the fire, hoping the smoke would keep the mosquitoes off of him. It was too sultry to need a blanket, and he simply flopped down with the saddle for a pillow. He stared sleepily between his outstretched feet at the flickering flames.
“Well, Agent Tom, did you cure them or kill them?” Captain Jones asked from across the fire.
“I don’t know.”
“What was that pill you were giving them? Some chewed it up before they swallowed it, and seemed to even like it. I’d swear it looked like hard candy,” the commissioner said.
Agent Torrey managed to laugh. “That’s what it was, just plain old red candy.”
Commissioner Anderson tried to glare a hole through him. “Just what good is that supposed to do them?”
Agent Torrey was too tired to cringe. His eyelids were impossibly heavy and he gladly closed them and forgot about the commissioner’s accusing stare.
“Well, one thing’s for certain. He isn’t going to kill them with candy.” The commissioner pitched the dregs of his coffee cup in the fire.
“No, but them dying of their own accord might be just as bad as if he killed them. The Wacos aren’t going to know the difference,” Captain Jones said.
The commissioner scowled at him and turned from the fire. He liked being in command when everyone wasn’t giving him bad reports or discomforting observations. While he thought about their predicament, it dawned on him that something didn’t seem right. He whirled back to the fire.
“Where’s Red Wing? We’ve let her run off again!”
Red Wing hadn’t run, at least not yet. She stood at the picket line beyond the fire and stroked the muzzle of her horse. She could hear the captain plainly, and her mind raced to determine if the night still offered her any chance of escape. Had she known the men were so tired and distracted she would have already been gone. Now the Delawares were probably slipping through the darkness searching for her.
The commissioner may have been proud of his tame scouts, but the way they looked at her sometimes made her skin crawl, especially Jim Pockmark. Thinking of his hungry, predatory eyes and the constant sneer on his face made her hand reach for the little antler-handled knife in the pocket of her dress. She had stolen it from one of the Waco lodges, and she turned the weapon in her hand slowly. It was a puny thing, more fit for cutting up supper than killing a man, but anything that might give her a fighting chance felt good with the Delawares prowling around.
She heard running footsteps to each side of her and made a beeline for the fire shining through the trees. She slipped the knife back into her pocket and smiled as she stepped into the firelight, as if she’d only left for an evening stroll.
Chapter 15
The Prussian stopped his horse in an oak thicket atop a little mountain and scanned the ground between him and the river for sign of his Tonkawa scouts. After a long look, he finally made out Placido loping back to him with three of his warriors, dodging and weaving through the sparse brush on the little stretch of prairie. From the Tonk chief’s demeanor, all seemed well with the trail ahead, but the Prussian paused before starting down the slope. He studied the men to either side of him with pleasure.
The Tonks under Chief Placido had been at the headsprings of the San Marcos River just as he had hoped, and thirty-two of them had been more than willing to ride against their ancient enemy, the Comanche. The Prussian was a well-known fighter, even if a strange and not particularly likeable man. Any company under his leadership was bound to mean there would be victory spoils.
What hadn’t been certain was his ability to locate and entice the kind of Texan fighters necessary to fill out his war party. A land where the threat of Indian attack was more certain than the weather was bound to produce men skilled in the ways of frontier warfare—survivors of a brutal testing ground where the weak were sifted like chaff on the wind. The problem was that such men were fiercely independent and notional to say the least. Any number of them could be counted on to ride to avenge an Indian raid, but the trick had been to get a suitable number of them to buck the will of Sam Houston and to convince
them that he could locate a Comanche camp without being ambushed first.
However, two things played well in the Prussian’s favor. Houston’s pet theories on peaceful relations with the tribes weren’t very popular with most Texans, and the Prussian let it be known that he intended to follow in the Peace Commission’s wake and let them lead him to the Comanche. The fact that the Wilsons were well-known and loved members of Stephen F. Austin’s original colonists, or the Old Three Hundred, didn’t hurt. No matter that Red Wing was Comanche herself, the audacity of Houston taking the Wilsons’ adopted daughter didn’t play well with the kind of men brave enough to do something about it.
The news that he was mounting an attack on the Comanche and going to get the Wilsons’ daughter back ran like wildfire along the frontier grapevine. The Prussian had spread the word as he traveled, and volunteers trickled in one at a time, and sometimes in bunches of twos and threes. They were all grim-faced men with good horses and well-cared-for weapons. They were the kind that needed little encouragement to fight and that died hard. Many of them had chased Indians for the government when it wasn’t too broke to pay such ranging companies. They had no official sanction for the Prussian’s expedition beyond his militia appointment, but then again many of them had been going out after the Comanche long before Texas was even a republic. By the time the Prussian struck the Colorado where it bent to the west, he had twenty-five of Texas’s finest at his side, plus Placido’s Tonks.
He looked to his right and the first man he saw was Hatchet Murphy. A Comanche war club had twisted and crushed his right cheekbone, and left the eye on that side of his face a sightless, weeping, white orb. He had once been a blacksmith, and besides the shotgun he carried like it was an extra limb, there was a blood-rusted, custom war hatchet stuffed in his belt. His wife and children had died at Victoria in the Great Comanche Raid of 1840, and it had driven him more than a little crazy. He had left his trade and disappeared for two years before anybody saw him again. When they did, he had five tanned Comanche scalps and twice that many ears hanging off one of his latigo saddle strings.
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