Red Wing saw Iron Shirt pointing her way, and she started to go back into the tepee. Just as she reached the door flap the warrior on the horse turned his head and his eyes locked with hers. She stumbled into the lodge with her heart hammering in her chest. She hugged herself tightly and tried to quell her trembling body and to convince herself that she hadn’t just seen a ghost.
Chapter 25
The buffalo hunting had been good, and there was plenty of food in the camp. The Comanches feasted and visited throughout the night while the Peace Commission cowered in their tepee. Once they thought they heard a great commotion just after sundown, and Iron’s Shirt’s interpreter soon came to tell them that more Comanches had just arrived. He told them that there would be a council held the next day to hear the white men out. The four of them passed the night in quiet contemplation about what fate held in store for them on the morrow.
They barely had time to eat the breakfast that had been given them before the same interpreter came to guide them to the council. There was no lodge big enough to hold the number of warriors present, so the meeting was held under the shade of a small group of stunted trees on the edge of a dry streambed. The Comanche men sat in a large circle with an opening at the bottom of it. The Peace Commission was motioned to sit in the gap provided, and all of them noticed Iron Shirt sitting on the opposite side of the circle. None of them could read the looks on the Comanches’ faces, but it was plain that they had already been discussing the white men in their midst.
While he waited to make sure that Red Wing was seated, Commissioner Anderson noticed another warrior sitting near Iron Shirt. It was the Waco chief, Squash, and the hateful look he was giving the Peace Commission sent cold chills up the commissioner’s spine.
“I saw him,” Captain Jones said before the commissioner could point out Squash.
Once they were seated, a middle-aged warrior with a crooked eye immediately began to talk. He didn’t speak long, but he pointed at them several times. When he was through the entire council looked a question their way.
“Stinking Tobacco asks what it is that you want. He says the white man always wants something when he comes to talk,” Squash said.
The commissioner got the impression from Squash’s cool demeanor that his presence foretold bad things. At least he didn’t have to rely on the captain’s stumbling Spanish to communicate with the Comanches. He was unsure whether he should stand to give proper drama to what he had to say, but he decided to remain seated just as the crazy-eyed warrior had.
He reached into his pack and began to scatter before him the trade trinkets he had brought. He paused to let them appraise the glass beads, ribbons, hand mirrors, and the few steel knives and pots. Some of the warriors’ eyes lit up with the sight of the small offering of plunder, but none of them moved or said anything.
He cleared his throat and gathered himself to give the speech he had been practicing in his head for months. “President Sam Houston has sent me here to speak with the Kotsoteka and all the Comanche who will hear. Long have we Texans and the Comanche fought, but Houston wishes those days to end. There is more than enough land for both our peoples to live in our own ways without killing each other. He asks that you come to Fort Bird on the Trinity in two months to hear his words of peace. He will give many gifts to those who come with good hearts and open ears. These few pitiful things are but tokens of his goodwill.”
Squash smirked and repeated the commissioner’s words in Comanche. The warriors seemed unimpressed, and the commissioner hoped that Squash had translated him correctly. A fat warrior on the other side of Iron Shirt finally laughed and pointed at Commissioner Anderson.
Squash laughed with the fat warrior before he translated. “Poor Coyote says that Pretty Soldier has many words but forgot to say what the Comanche must give up for the gifts he promises.”
“President Houston only asks that you stop raiding our farms, carrying away our women and children, and stealing our horses,” the commissioner said.
Poor Coyote crossed his forearms over his round belly and waited quietly for Squash to relay the commissioner’s answer. He grunted and shook his head and spoke again when he had heard the Waco out.
“And when there are more Tejanos and they move farther west, are the Comanche supposed to cower in their lodges like children?” Squash asked for Poor Coyote.
“Tell him we have no wish to live out here. It doesn’t rain enough to grow crops, and there’s a lifetime’s worth of better land along the rivers to the east.”
As soon as the commissioner’s words were heard, a young warrior spoke angrily. Earrings made of mouse skulls hung from each of his earlobes, and they rattled with every angry movement of his head. The wrath in his voice was just as fierce as the look on his face. Without knowing what he said, the commissioner was sure he would never come to Fort Bird to make peace.
As soon as the angry warrior had finished, Iron Shirt rose on his bowed legs. He wore a strange shirt that appeared to be made of metal. He glanced at the young warrior and then began to speak. He talked as much to the warriors as he did to the Peace Commission, and turned in a slow circle while his hands made signs to go along with the clear lift of his voice.
“I’ll be damned, that’s an old coat of Spanish chain mail he’s wearing,” Captain Jones whispered.
Iron Shirt ceased to talk, but he remained standing. Squash waited politely until he was sure his host was finished. He smiled wickedly. “Iron Shirts thinks you a brave man to come and spit in their faces and suggest that the land to the east where you now live belongs to you. But what he wants to know is why he should believe you tell the truth about the meeting at Fort Bird.”
“Tell him that my word is good, and that I always speak the truth, just as President Houston does. Tell him I know a man like himself would see through any lies as quickly as a hawk spies a mouse in the grass,” the commissioner said.
When Squash had translated, Iron Shirt rotated once again to look at the ring of warriors. There was a sly hint of a smile at the corners of his mouth. He turned back to face the Peace Commission and held out a hand before him. He stood there as if waiting for something.
Red Wing met his steady gaze and steeled herself. She did not move, and he beckoned her forward with his fingers without moving his arm.
“Come to me,” he said.
She noticed the commissioner looking at her helplessly, and Agent Torrey staring at her with wide eyes. She knew she was just prolonging the inevitable and rose to her feet on shaky legs. Faking a courage she did not feel, she strode forward and stood before Iron Shirt. She did not take the hand he offered, but he stepped quickly forward and grabbed hers anyway. His palm was hard and calloused and he gripped her tight while he looked into her face.
“Woman, have you come back to the People?” Iron Shirt asked.
She understood him plainly. “I’m not Comanche. I’m Mexican.”
“I think you lie.”
It was hard to look him in the eye and lie again. There was a power about him. “I tell the truth. I do not know you.”
He held her arm outstretched for a full minute while he stared at her. Finally, he dropped her arm and turned away. When he had walked back to the far side of the council circle, he turned back and pointed his finger at her. “She is not of us. I do not know her.”
“What’d he say?” the commissioner asked impatiently.
She took her seat again and tried to breathe normally once more. “He agrees that I’m not Comanche.”
Commissioner Anderson looked away from her just in time to see the angry warrior who had spoken earlier leaning forward tensely, as were many of the council. Iron Shirt noticed too, and he held up his hands to ask for patience while he studied the commissioner calmly. His speech was short, and when he was through he strode out of the circle and headed straight for his lodge.
Squash had pleasure wr
itten all over him when he finally translated Iron Shirt’s last words. “You do not tell the truth. All the warriors here know that you have come to trick us. Many Tejanos are camped a day’s ride south of here and they wait to strike the village.”
The commissioner and Captain Jones jumped to their feet, and Red Wing stood behind them. Agent Torrey stayed on the ground with a bewildered, disheartened expression on his face.
“You know that isn’t true. We came here to his village alone. Why didn’t you tell him that?” The commissioner threw at Squash.
The Waco remained seated. “I told him you weren’t to be trusted. I told him how my wife was getting better from her sickness until your four-eyed man put evil medicine inside her and she died.”
“Agent Torrey tried to help your wife,” Red Wing said, shocked and angry at the same time.
“Another lie. Three others in my village who were not as sick as my wife got worse the day you left, and they soon died too. Iron Shirt is wiser than I was to see your wicked hearts at first glance.”
“Are the Comanche so low as to murder their guests?” the commissioner shouted at Iron Shirt’s back.
Squash chuckled. “An enemy is never a guest, and nobody asked you to come here.”
The entire circle of warriors was on their feet and pressing close. The commissioner and the captain put hands to their guns, but both of them knew that to lift them was to die right there. The three white men were roughly disarmed and their hands bound behind their backs with rawhide straps. Somebody struck Captain Jones a nasty lick on the head, and when the Comanches finally drug him back to his feet there was a deep cut on his forehead. The warriors marched the prisoners toward the tepee where they had spent the night. Red Wing wasn’t bound but was made to come along.
“What are they going to do?” Agent Torrey’s voice sounded lost and far away.
Captain Jones reared back his head to try and keep the blood running down his forehead from getting into his eyes. “I reckon they’re going to kill us, Mr. Tom.”
Squash was standing halfway to the tepee waiting for them to pass. “They’re going to spend all afternoon killing you, and then they will feast and dance tonight. Come morning they will ride out and kill those Rangers across the river.”
Red Wing spit on him as she walked by, and the Waco chief was brushed aside by the Comanche warriors before he could react. He wanted to kill her right then, but she belonged to his hosts. What was about to befall the white men could happen just as easily to him if he crossed Iron Shirt. The goodwill he had created by lying about the Peace Commission might protect his village from the Comanches for a year or more, and perhaps Iron Shirt would bring his camp to the Brazos to trade horses for corn.
Squash’s woman had truly died, but she had been a hateful hussy and no great loss. The fact that he was sure that Agent Torrey had nothing to do with her death hadn’t fit with his plans. The death of a few Tejanos was meaningless to him if it served him well. He had hated the white man ever since Jim Bowie’s treasure hunters had whipped sixty of his warriors and shot off his brother’s bottom jaw on the San Saba many years earlier. He couldn’t believe Red Wing had dared to spit on him and embarrassed him in front of the Comanches. She had always been too sassy and proud to suit his tastes. He knew he should be riding back to his village before the Rangers got any closer, but he was going to enjoy seeing her well raped and beaten.
Chapter 26
The old lobo wolf came trotting out of a draw about a hundred yards away. He was a big, rangy devil with outsized feet and a hide the color of dull steel. He had his nose to the wind, but he traveled without a care in the world. He stopped from time to time to piss on a bush or sniff around for packrat nests and rabbit holes as he made his way toward where Odell, the Prussian, and Placido lay on their bellies on the lip of a canyon.
Odell eased his rifle forward and found the lobo in his sights before a large brown hand clamped around his double barrels and blocked his view. He looked up to see Placido shaking his head with a stern look on his usually unreadable face. He held on to the gun until Odell eased his hammer down.
“Sorry, do you think there are Comanches about?” Odell asked.
“Tonkawas don’t kill wolves for sport,” the Prussian said while he studied the rough breaks of the Pease River with his spyglass. “They call themselves the Wolf People, and only use their hides for warrior ceremonies and to grant them power in battle.”
“Wolves chose my people long ago.” Placido didn’t seem mad at Odell, but he kept his eyes on him long enough to make sure that the young man had heard what he said.
The lobo must have winded them, for he stopped in his tracks and looked up in the direction of where they lay before he bolted away. Odell would have liked to have had the lobo’s pelt. Placido wore a tanned wolf hide over his head and down his back, and Odell thought it looked pretty fetching. The Prussian had a sword and Hatchet Murphy had his hatchet. Odell had the hatband he had made out of the rattlesnake that bit him and the Bowie knife, but felt it wouldn’t hurt if he had something more to make him look equally fierce. He thought that maybe his lion pelt might make a fine-looking hat or robe.
“What do you think that is between the river and those hills to the north?” The Prussian offered Placido his spyglass.
“Many tepees,” Placido said without taking the Prussian’s optics.
Odell found it hard to believe the big Tonk could see so far with his naked eye. The area the Prussian pointed out was at least six or seven miles across the river. “I don’t see anything.”
“Do you see those hills?” Placido asked.
Once the rough breaks of the river ended miles to the north, there was nothing but a flat plain leading all the way to the horizon. Four low, cone-shaped hills rose up out of that plain.
“Placido told me the Comanches believe those hills are magic,” the Prussian said. “I guess they’re medicine mounds, or something like that.”
“Big medicine,” Placido grunted.
“How many tepees do you see?” Odell asked.
“They are too far to count,” Placido said, and the Prussian agreed.
“Do you think it’s a big village?” Odell wished he could see as far as the Tonk.
“We can ask the scouts.” Placido pointed to the maze of gullies and canyons on the south bank of the river.
After a long search Odell finally picked out the three Tonk scouts ghosting along below them afoot. The Tonks were as comfortable on their own legs as they were horseback, and their wiry, tough bodies and cast-iron lungs could easily keep up with trotting riders on long marches. He was ashamed he hadn’t noticed them without having them pointed out. They could have just as easily been Comanches stalking him.
“What do you reckon they’ve learned?” Odell asked.
The Prussian gave him a sour look. Lately, he had grown very impatient and more than a little on edge. “Herr Odell, you ask too many questions.”
Odell too had long since lost what little patience he possessed. He had left his home almost a year before, with nothing to show for it but months of hard living. He had done nothing to avenge his pappy’s death, and he was beginning to doubt he would ever find Red Wing in time to save her. It often seemed to him that he was fated to fail those who he loved.
They wormed backward until they were sure they wouldn’t be sky-lined atop the canyon rim, and then stood and went to their horses. They loped back to where the men were dismounted for a midday siesta to rest their horses and allow them to graze a little. Soon after they joined the men, the three Tonk scouts came running up. Despite their long journey to those medicine hills and back, none of them even seemed tired.
Placido spoke with the trio for several minutes and then came back to the Prussian. All the men ceased their casual conversation and storytelling to hear what Placido had to say.
“There’s a very big
camp of Comanches between those hills and the river,” Placido said. “There are many warriors.”
“How many?” the Prussian asked.
Placido had never quite learned all the white man’s numbers, and he was unsure if what he was about to say was correct. “It is the biggest camp we’ve seen since Buffalo Hump brought the Penatekas down the Colorado years ago.”
“Are you sure?”
“It would take three or four of our war party to equal the warriors they have.”
The men began to question Placido and to discuss the discovery of such a large Comanche encampment. Before they grew too worried with their own speculations, the Prussian asked them to hear him out. He waited until he had all their attention before he spoke.
“We’ve found the Comanche village we were looking for, and I say we ride across the river and attack it. We are outnumbered but we are not outmanned. Any one of you is worth ten of those Comanche, and if we fight smart I promise you we will deal those savages a hard lick. What say you?”
Every man one of them had come for a fight, and the Texans all nodded in unison. As for the Tonks, they were already painting their faces for war. They needed no speeches and were impatient to fight and plunder their age-old enemies.
“The scouts say there are white men in that camp,” Placido said.
The Prussian snapped to attention almost as if he were on a parade ground. “How many? Could they be the Peace Commission?”
Placido shrugged. “My warriors couldn’t get close enough to be sure of their numbers, but they saw the Comanches beating three white men.”
“Did they see Red Wing? Did they see a woman?” Odell asked.
“They saw a dark-skinned girl in a long, white woman’s dress,” Placido said.
“Well, what are we wating for?” Odell tightened Crow’s cinch and swung into the saddle without touching the stirrup.
The Texans Page 22