The Texans

by Brett Cogburn

  The captain apparently had some trouble communicating her status, but after a long discussion with the warriors he seemed satisfied. The Comanches talked among themselves in their native tongue while they stared up the hill at Red Wing. They didn’t seem impressed by her, or totally convinced that she was Numuunuh, or of the People. Finally, the talker of the two said something to the captain in Spanish.

  Captain Jones looked even more uneasy than before. “They say most of their band is gathering for a big hunt a little over a day’s ride south of here.”

  “Is that all?” the commissioner asked.

  “No, they said a bunch of things I can’t understand. Apparently, there will be many lodges present at this gathering, and some bigwig named Iron Shirt will be there. I get the impression he’s a pretty important fellow among them.”

  “Can we safely pay this camp our respects without getting killed?”

  Captain Jones sucked in a deep breath and looked at the commissioner like he was crazy. “These two are out scouting for buffalo, and they’ve offered to take us back to their village. I’ll let you be the judge of how safe that would be.”

  “So be it. Tell them we need a little time to pack our things and saddle up,” the commissioner said.

  The two Comanches said something to each other and pointed at the commissioner and laughed. Captain Jones asked them what they found so funny, then smiled at the commissioner.

  “They say you a have a very pretty coat.” The captain chuckled.

  “They can go to hell.” The commissioner looked down at his rows of brass buttons and slapped the dust from the front of his jacket. “But don’t translate that.”

  None of them knew that Red Wing spoke fluent Spanish, and she didn’t tell them either. She had listened closely to the conversation, and quickly learned that the captain’s Spanish was as bad as his whiskey breath. While he got most of the details right, the Comanches hadn’t meant to just poke fun at the commissioner’s fancy jacket. What they had meant was to call him the Pretty Man. Had it not been for her dire situation, she would have found that very funny.

  The commissioner went to bring up their horses, and in doing so he passed close to Agent Torrey and Red Wing. The little man wrinkled his nose and looked up at his superior with more than a little trepidation.

  “Did I hear you plainly? Are we to ride with those two Comanches?” Agent Torrey asked.

  “You heard right. Saddle up.”

  Agent Torrey sighed. “I was afraid that’s what I heard.”

  Captain Jones took up his saddle and stood before the Indian agent. “Don’t worry, Mr. Tom. You can draw the Comanches’ pictures in that little book of yours.”

  Although Agent Torrey had devotedly sketched the various plants and wildlife he had passed along the trail, somehow he had lost his once grand desire to paint the legendary Comanche in his native setting. Not only had he lost the urge, he couldn’t remember for the life of him what had led him to want to do such a thing in the first place. He could only chalk it up to naïveté and foolish, romantic notions of the frontier. Days and nights of hearing Captain Jones’s horrid tales of Comanche massacres had terrified him, and knowing that the commissioner was about to turn them over into the hands of such savages made his knees tremble.

  “Agent Torrey, saddle your horse. We have no choice but to be brave,” Red Wing said gently.

  Somehow he managed to saddle his horse. He felt as if the Comanches were watching his every move, and his hands and fingers were unusually clumsy. His three companions were already mounted and waiting for him. He could see the impatience written plainly on the commissioner’s face, but he couldn’t seem to make himself put his foot into the stirrup. The thought of getting on his horse and riding away with the Comanches felt comparable to jumping off a cliff.

  “Just think of it this way. You can either ride with us, or try to make it back home by yourself,” the commissioner said.

  Agent Torrey couldn’t deny the logic of that. If he was going to be killed by Indians, he would rather not be lost and alone when it happened. He took his ragged old wool scarf and snugly tied it over his stovepipe hat and knotted it under his chin. The tall crown seemed especially prone to catching the wind, and the commissioner had become angry in the past when they had to stop their travels for him to get off his horse and chase his lid.

  Captain Jones held his shotgun for him while he mounted. He had lost his gun sling somewhere along the trail and hadn’t gotten around to making another. He had not quite mastered the art of mounting with his shotgun in his hand, and it felt highly undignified to have to give up his weapon to a more competent man to hold for him while he climbed into the saddle. It was at least as embarrassing as having to tie his hat on.

  His little mustang was in a good mood that morning and didn’t try to throw him or run away with him. He took his shotgun back from the captain and tried to form an optimistic vision of the day to come.

  “Care for a slug?” the captain asked.

  Agent Torrey looked up from cleaning his glasses long enough to realize the captain was holding out a bottle of whiskey to him. While they all knew the captain was prone to drink, he usually attempted to keep his crutch hidden. However, he seemed to have been imbibing a little more freely as of late, and his saddlebag supply of liquor was in danger of running dry.

  “I daresay, Captain, I think you’re a little drunk,” Agent Torrey said.

  “I haven’t even begun to drink. Care to join me?” The captain smiled wryly and looked to him with his red-rimmed, hound-dog eyes. “I find that Comanches, and life in general, are much more bearable with a touch of the spirits warming my belly.”

  The commissioner was scowling at both of them. Normally, Agent Torrey would have been far too scared of displeasing the commissioner or of getting too drunk and falling off his horse. However, the thought of having to ride all day beside the captain while the man regaled him with tale after tale of their impending horrible deaths at the hands of the Comanches was too depressing for him to bear. He reached out for the bottle and took a healthy slug, and then another. The whiskey burned his chest like a dose of turpentine. He looked to the captain with tears streaming down from behind the thick lenses of his glasses, and gave the man a faked smile.

  “That’s the way, Mr. Tom. Keep it up and the day is bound to get better,” the captain said.

  And in fact it did. After following their guides five miles across the country, the prospect of dying a bloody death had lost much of its horror. Remarkably, Agent Torrey found himself scoffing at such trivial matters after several more slugs of whiskey. By the time they had ridden ten miles or so he had grown so bold as to ride forward to generously offer the Comanches a drink of the captain’s whiskey. He couldn’t remember why they had looked so scary to him earlier, but he felt sure that all of them would soon be the greatest of friends. The two warriors tried to shoo him away with fierce looks and threatening holds on their weapons, but he was having too good of a time to notice. Obviously they were shy sorts, and he felt it his duty to make them feel welcome. At least they weren’t so rude as to interrupt his trying to teach them his favorite song, although from their silence he assumed they had no voice for Irish pub ballads.

  Red Wing rode between Commissioner Anderson and the captain. The captain’s whiskey had made him quiet, and the commissioner seemed too ashamed to speak to her now that what he had set out to do finally appeared to be coming to fruition. Both of them kept their attention on the two Comanches, and a careful eye on the skyline for signs of any more of the tribe.

  She tried to keep her courage up, and to find whatever strength it was within her that had kept her going thus far. She thought the commissioner a fool to trust himself to the Comanches, and the feeling that the expedition was going to end badly for all of them wouldn’t go away. Comanches were no different than white men when it came to lies, and their
hatred of the Tejanos knew no bounds. She wondered why the commissioner couldn’t see that his ambitions were going to ruin all their lives.

  She stayed as far away from the Comanches as possible. The two warriors had said little to them since leaving the Washita, other than to relate that they would reach the main village the following day. Her Comanche was coming back to her enough to catch bits and pieces of the quiet conversations they carried on between themselves. She picked up nothing to confirm her distrust of the two, but she feared them nonetheless.

  Agent Torrey was staggering drunk by the time they stopped for the night. He tripped and fell while getting off his horse, and was unable to get back to his feet. He soon ceased his struggles and passed out, still holding the rein of his horse and with his tied-down hat squashed like an accordion over his face.

  But Captain Jones and the commissioner made it plain that one of them was going to stay on guard. The captain lay down across the fire from the Comanches with his weapons close to hand. The commissioner took the first watch and sat wide awake with his saddle for a chair and his rifle across his knees. He kept a careful eye on the Comanches, who appeared to be sleeping. Red Wing curled up in her blanket at the commissioner’s feet, clutching her little knife tightly in her hand.

  The Comanches woke early and full of vigor. Apparently, they had slept like babies and were ready for breakfast. Despite the attempt to stand guard in shifts, the commissioner and the captain didn’t look to have gotten much sleep. Red Wing knew that she hadn’t. She had jerked awake every few minutes to check if the Comanches were still in their beds.

  After a quick meal of buffalo meat, they started on their way. They crossed the Prairie Dog Fork of the Red before the sun was well up, and headed across a broad plain. By midday they were in sight of a line of hills rising up to the south. Soon, the smoke from a large number of campfires could be seen. Red Wing’s eyes could barely make out the pale gleam of many tepees scattered along the edges of some canyon lands south of the hills.

  The village spotted them quickly, and a large group of warriors raced out on their horses to surround them. Greetings and explanations were passed back and forth between the Peace Commission’s guides and the newcomers. The welcome the Comanches gave their visitors was a cold one, but they escorted them toward the camp just the same.

  The village consisted of at least sixty lodges, and the women and children stopped what they were doing to watch them pass. More warriors stared at them from where they sat in front of the tepees, and the camp dogs raced among the trotting horses, barking at all the excitement. Red Wing met the curious gaze of a woman fanning away the blowflies from the raw buffalo robe she was scraping. She was covered in grease and bloodstains all the way up to her elbows, and kneeling before the stretched hide like it was an altar. Red Wing had seen her own mother in just the same position many times.

  Their escort led them to a large tepee near the center of the camp, where a short, bow-legged warrior appeared to be waiting for them with a group of elder men. They pulled up before him, and the commissioner gave the old Comanches a broad wave. The bow-legged warrior slowly lifted his palm in greeting, while the entire camp pressed in around them.

  “Try that Mexican talk on them again. Tell him the same thing you told those two earlier, and make us sound impressive,” the commissioner said out the side of his mouth to Captain Jones.

  The captain spoke loudly, even if he did get hung up often while he searched for the proper words. The bowlegged warrior apparently didn’t speak Spanish, and he turned to a wrinkled old man beside him for translation. When the captain was through, the bowlegged warrior gave an equally long speech, and his old friend repeated what he said in Spanish.

  “His name is Iron Shirt, and I gather he is some sort of medicine man or chief, or maybe both. He says he will make no promises, but the men of his village will at least hear us out,” the captain said.

  Iron Shirt stepped to where he had a better view of Red Wing sitting her horse behind the commissioner. He studied her carefully and then said something for his interpreter to repeat.

  “Iron Shirt says that the woman we bring him doesn’t look like a Comanche. He wonders if we have made some mistake,” the captain said.

  Commissioner Anderson eased off of his horse and motioned Red Wing to do the same. She studiously ignored him and all about her and kept her chin lifted and her eyes on the top of the tepee.

  “Get down and meet your cousins,” the captain said dryly.

  Red Wing looked at him like he was trash. She held out a bent wrist to the commissioner and lifted her chin higher. “A lady should be given help dismounting.”

  Agent Torrey raised his eyebrows above his glasses at her demand. She had been mounting and dismounting on her own halfway across Texas, and he couldn’t imagine why she needed help. But then again, his hangover was too bad to think properly.

  The commissioner smiled wryly. “Nice act. I almost hope you succeed in convincing them that you don’t belong here.”

  He took her hand while she unhooked her leg from the sidesaddle’s post and steadied her stirrup as she stepped down. He watched as she tucked her hair in place and brushed down the front of her dress. She walked forward with a grace all her own and eyed the Comanches around her as if she was on a sightseeing trip that she found especially boring.

  Iron Shirt said something to her, but she frowned with feigned confusion. He quickly turned away from her with a dissatisfied grunt. He headed for the door of his tepee, saying something to his interpreter in passing. The old man heard him out and scowled at the Peace Commission. He and the captain had a brief discussion, and then he and the rest of the elders disappeared into the tepee behind Iron Shirt.

  “I take it that didn’t go so well,” the commissioner said.

  “Iron Shirt doesn’t believe that Red Wing was ever a Comanche, and if she was, she has been so long with us that she might as well be dead,” the captain said.

  “How did he take to the notion of the peace talks at Fort Bird?”

  “All he would commit to was to discuss the matter with you. He said that there are many more Comanches who will arrive this evening. Once most of his band is here they will call a council to hear what you have to say. For now, we are supposed to wait.”

  One of their earlier guides led them to an empty tepee a few yards from Iron Shirt’s. He told the captain that it was for them to use and quickly disappeared. Two young boys showed up to take their horses, and the commissioner knew he was too outnumbered to argue about giving them up. They unsaddled and pitched their gear into the lodge and watched their only means of escape led away.

  Commissioner Anderson casually surveyed the number of Comanches still watching them. Supposedly they weren’t captives, but it still felt that way. Agent Torrey and Red Wing had already gone into the tepee, but he didn’t want to appear to be so scared as to hide like a rabbit in a hole. He smiled at the Comanches and took his sweet time going into the lodge.

  “Well, we finally found them,” he said to the captain.

  Captain Jones spat in the dust. “Yes, sir, I’d say we’ve stepped right in the middle of it.”

  Chapter 23

  Patience was a virtue that Odell wasn’t sure he would ever possess. Red Wing was somewhere out there alone and in danger, and every single mile of the long journey to find her seemed more like five. Common sense told him that a horse could only travel so far, so fast, but the nervous energy inside him couldn’t be kept down. The only thing that soothed his impatience was the scouting and hunting trips he took away from the column with Son Ballard. There was something about the lonely, wide-open country that Odell loved, and the old scout was a veritable wealth of information when it came to living in the wilds.

  Son might grumble and growl about Odell asking too many questions, but he inevitably answered each and every one of them. Odell came to learn that there was
a difference between looking and seeing. Months on the prairies and plains had given him a crash course in survival, but Son taught him to observe his surroundings and to interpret what he saw. Reading sign wasn’t just the ability to track, but was instead knowing the land intimately.

  Water was everything in arid country, and the ability to find it was the difference between life and death. The Indians and the scant few seasoned plainsmen like Son read the minutest details of nature, from the wildlife and vegetation, right down to even the smallest insect. The tracks of wild horses going to water were easily separated from those they made going away. A thirsty herd traveled with a businesslike determination, while one with its bellies sloshing full scattered wider and grazed along at a more leisurely pace. Swallows built dirt nests, and a keen eye would notice that a mouthful of mud meant the bird was flying away from water. Doves drank often, and a scout could follow their flight just before dusk to where they watered. Cottonwood trees required regular moisture, but a belt of green in a distant drainage didn’t always lead a man to standing water. And as Odell had already come to know, a waterhole or a stream didn’t necessarily mean a healthy drink. Many of the waterings of that country, especially along the foot of the Llano, were so laden with salt and gypsum as to be undrinkable or were not to be counted on to be wet year around.

  Fire was as important as water when the weather could seemingly change in the blink of an eye. Wood for fuel was scarce, but dried buffalo chips made a hot fire. Son carried a length of hollow cane with cotton threaded through it, and a bit of the fluff twisted out one end of the stick readily took a spark from a flint and steel. On a rainy day, cloth soaked in corncob ashes or gunpowder and then dried was often the difference between fire and no fire.

  Odell had grown up among timbered mountains, and at first sight the open country seemed almost barren—nothing but brown grass and sky—but he was coming to know its bounty. Besides the buffalo, mule deer, and antelope, which were new to him, many of the game animals he had hunted in Georgia and the woods along the Colorado River made their homes on the plains, and it was just a matter of adapting his hunting techniques to different terrain and food sources. Less cover made ambush more difficult for the hunter, but it also made moving game easier to spot. A far-ranging hunter on horseback who knew what to look for usually could put meat in the pot. Instead of still hunting through the dense cover of acorn-laden oak forests as he had in the Southeast, he learned the art of spot and stalk and to accurately guess the range for longer rifle shots.