“He’s dead,” Jeremy said flatly.
His heart sank. Christa was still with the Comanche. She had caused trouble and Buffalo Run had caught up with her again. She might still be fighting him.
No, Christa, no. They’ll hurt you! I’ve warned you about the Comanche. I don’t know if he’ll remember that he’s my blood brother or not, or if he’ll see only that I was responsible for Thayer and that he was riding free. Christa, don’t fight him.
Move, fool, he warned himself. He was still at the very least a day’s ride from the encampment. Time might well be of the essence.
He turned to James, thrusting the wailing Mrs. Brooks upon his lieutenant. “I’m going on alone from here. I can ride faster.”
“It’s dangerous territory—”
“It’s Buffalo Run’s territory. If he sees me coming in with a company, he might decide to slaughter us all, and that will do Christa no good.”
“We can go back for reinforcements,” James said.
Jeremy shook his head. “If they were to see us coming, they might kill Christa and any other captives on the spot. We might annihilate half of them, but they’d do a damned good job on us too. I’ve no right to risk the entire regiment, although I’d do so if I thought it would save her life. But it won’t. I have to go in alone. I have to bargain with Buffalo Run.”
“Colonel, sir, I’ll come with you—” Darcy began.
“Darcy, I guarantee it—you’d be a dead man. You and Mrs. Brooks hurry straight back to the encampment.”
“Yes, sir, but I’d be willing to come with you, just the same. She was the bravest woman I ever saw, Colonel.”
“She’s a Reb,” Jeremy said softly. “She learned how to fight with some of the best.” He mounted his horse once again. “James, you’re in command here. Bring them all back. Jennings is in command at the encampment. He knows to move the men into the fort.”
James swallowed hard. “If you find her, sir—”
“If I find her, I’m going to do my best to convince her that the fighting is over,” he said. He tipped his hat to the company.
He turned away from them and rode on alone, only the Comanche girl, Morning Star, following behind him.
Twenty-two
They came to Buffalo Run’s encampment late that afternoon. It was a curiously peaceful sight. Perhaps two dozen tepees were set up along a slowly moving stream. Children were at play in the water and dogs roamed the camp. Women dressed in cotton shirts, skirts, and buckskin clothing were busy with their tasks, some sewing skins with large bone needles, some at work with what looked like mortars and pestles, and others working on skins that were strung across long frames by the sides of the tepees.
As they moved into the encampment, an old Indian with a broad, brown, and heavily leathered face came toward them, a wool blanket about his shoulders, his still pitch-black hair hanging in braids down his back.
Buffalo Run spoke to the old Indian with deference. The old man nodded, observed Christa where she sat before Buffalo Run, and nodded again. He raised his hands and spoke. The women, who had come running in when they had seen the braves returning, now milled around.
“Now you are with the Comanche!” Buffalo Run told her. He lifted her and set her down in the midst of the women.
They began shouting and poking at her. Some of them carried sticks. She tried to back away but she was encircled by them. She swirled, trying to see her tormentors, shouting at them in return.
There was a white girl among them, a long scar down the side of her left cheek. The lobes of her ears were missing. But whatever torture she had met at the hands of the Comanche, she was one with them now, shouting at Christa. She shoved at Christa so hard that she fell.
Christa rose and turned around. A very tall Comanche woman had joined in with the tormenting. Her eyes were obsidian dark, her words a singsong with a curious roll to the R’s that was almost melodic.
Christa nearly fell again, her knees shaking horribly, when she saw the newly arrived, tall Comanche woman.
She, too, had been mutilated. The tip of her nose had been clipped off. It seemed to have made a very vicious woman of her. While the others chanted and laughed and poked at Christa, the clip-nosed squaw struck her again and again with her pointed stick. Christa cried out, trying her best to fight off the woman.
There was a sudden, sharp roar of command. The women backed off. Christa found herself facing Buffalo Run again as he walked into the melee surrounding her. He called out orders and the women melted away, murmuring. Buffalo Run took her by the arm, shoving her into a tepee. She stumbled into it, then gained her balance, swirling back around, ready to face him. She was dizzy, and so terrified. All of the things that had been told to her about the Comanche came bubbling to the front of her mind.
She backed against the rear of the tepee, watching Buffalo Run warily. It was horrible to be so terrified, to be living with such terrible images of death in her mind, and to know that she had to keep some sense of dignity about her or lose all hope for a future.
“All right, we’re here now!” she said. She wanted her words to be so commanding! They were barely a whisper. After all, she had seen Jeff Thayer die. “What are you going to do with me?” she demanded.
He smiled, arms crossed over his chest. “You think that we are an exceptionally savage people, do you?”
“Yes,” she admitted flatly. “There is a Comanche woman out there with most of her nose cut off. She is one of your own. What should I think?”
“Basket Woman knew the consequences. It is the Comanche way.”
“The way for what?”
“She lay with another warrior.”
Adultery. It carried a heavy fine, Christa thought.
“You are savage to your captives!” she whispered.
“The white man has been savage to us,” he replied. “But perhaps we’re not the worst of the tribes,” he said, walking around the low-burning fire in the center of his tepee. “The Pawnee have an interesting ceremony—carried out with a captive man or maiden. It is a religious ceremony, a sacrifice to the god Tirawa. The Pawnee may take many captives and welcome all but one into their tribe. That one captive is given the finest food; if it is a man, women are sent to dine with him. He is treated with the most respect and deference. But then he is taken naked and tied to cross poles. The Pawnee who captured him shoots an arrow through him, in his one side, out his other side, while a fire is lit beneath him. Every male in the tribe then shoots an arrow into him, and the fire builds until he is burned to cinders. The tribe prays to Tirawa, especially the warrior who took the captive, so that he knows that a human life was taken. When this is done, the tribe has good fortune with its crops and does well in its wars. The captive can be a woman. The Pawnee hate to sacrifice their own. Perhaps I could trade you for many horses!”
“You’re not going to give me to the Pawnee,” she said. “And if you are going to kill me, why don’t you get it over with?” Christa asked. She wasn’t going to be able to stand much longer.
“We are masters of torture,” he told her.
She heard a soft voice speak suddenly, the R’s rolling, the whisper very gentle. She spun around and saw that a young Indian woman was curled down on a bearskin bed against the edge of the tepee. She hadn’t been sleeping, she had been waiting, sewing a shirt, and she watched now.
Buffalo Run answered her angrily at first, then seemed to soften. He looked back to Christa. “My youngest wife, Little Flower,” he said. “You will serve her and do as she says. It was her younger sister, Morning Star, who was taken by the outlaw soldier.”
“What?” Christa asked quickly.
“The white man we killed kidnapped and raped Morning Star, Little Flower’s sister, whom I meant to take for my fourth wife. They also killed the cavalry soldiers guarding a pay wagon and a white trader called Greenley. He deserved to die.”
He turned and started to leave the tepee.
“Wait!” Christa cried o
ut, and she was startled by the plea in her voice, and then more startled that he seemed to hear it and take pity upon her. He paused and turned back slowly.
“I—I didn’t know. I didn’t know until it was too late what kind of a man Thayer was. I’m sorry that he hurt Morning Star.”
Buffalo Run grunted.
“Please—what is going to happen to me?” she asked.
“That we will see.”
“But I—”
He seemed to relent, just barely. “You are my captive,” he told her. “Because you are my blood brother’s woman, I have already granted you mercy. The women will leave you be. You will serve Little Flower. And if you do not anger me, then you will live—until your fate is decided.”
“And that—”
“That will depend!” he said angrily.
“On—?”
He walked toward her. She forced herself not to shrink back. “It will depend on McCauley, and it will depend on you. If McCauley dies, perhaps I will take another wife, if Little Flower and the others find you acceptable. Then, perhaps we will sell you to the Apache or the Spaniards—when we are done with you. It is not decided.”
He turned and left the tepee.
Christa, aware of the Indian girl but heedless of her, gasped in a breath of air. She could stand no longer. She sank to the ground.
To her amazement, she felt a very gentle hand touch her hair. “You needn’t fear,” the girl said. Christa looked up. Her eyes were huge and dark and expressive. Her English was far more hesitant than Buffalo Run’s, but it was very good. “Buffalo Run does not like to hurt captives. He is against some of our ways.”
Christa looked at the girl and swallowed hard. “I just saw women out there who—”
“The white girl was not his captive. And Basket Woman was not his wife.”
She needed to take comfort in that, Christa thought. She needed to take comfort from anything that she could—it was the only way she would maintain her sanity.
Little Flower, she thought, studying the Indian. The name was fitting, for she seemed as gentle and tender as the petals of a rose, as soft, as beautiful. Christa was amazed to realize that she was still discovering all that had really happened.
“I am really so sorry that your sister was hurt. Is she—is she all right now?”
“I don’t know. She had strayed from her work by the stream. We found the basket of clothing she had been washing. We found some of her things, torn from her. But Morning Star was missing. Perhaps McCauley found her. We don’t know.”
“He will think I deserve to be hurt!” Christa murmured.
“He will be patient. He will not let others hurt you,” Little Flower said.
Christa hugged her knees and shivered, grateful at last to be able to show some of her fear. “But he may! It’s my fault he lost two other captives and two horses.”
Little Flower was silent for a moment. “Perhaps he feels that he was at fault himself for carelessness? But that doesn’t matter.”
“What does?”
“Your husband.”
Christa buried her face in her hands, fighting the savage wave of pain that streaked through her. Jeremy. Even when he wasn’t with her, he was protecting her. Just by being the man that he was, the man she hadn’t wanted to see for so very long because of the color of the uniform he wore.
“I don’t know if he will come,” Christa said dully. But she gripped the girl’s arm fiercely. “Little Flower, your English is so good—”
“Buffalo Run taught me,” she said proudly. “If I am to best whites, I must understand them, while they cannot understand me!”
Christa nodded. Buffalo Run could be an extremely intelligent man. “Little Flower, I’m going to have a baby—”
“Yes. McCauley told Buffalo Run.”
Jeremy had discussed her with Buffalo Run?
She inhaled and exhaled, praying suddenly that at least the baby was still all right.
“Little Flower, I know that my baby isn’t due for months, but if you have any influence with him and they should decide that something is going to happen to me, would you try to see that the baby is born first, that—that it is given to my husband?” she whispered.
Little Flower arched a dark brow. “That is what you wish?”
“It’s what I wish.”
“Then I will try. And I will try to help you while you are with us too. If you learn to work, you will be tolerated.”
“I can work,” Christa said simply. And she could. She had learned to work well on the plantation, and long hours and back-bending labor meant little to her now.
In the few days that followed, with help from Little Flower, Christa quickly learned about the Comanche way of life and tepee etiquette.
When the flap was open, a guest might enter directly. When the flap was closed, a guest announced his presence before being invited in. Guests invited to dine brought their own bowls and spoons—it was extremely rude not to eat everything offered. Guests did not pass between the fire and those seated around it, but around those seated who leaned in to afford room for movement.
Women did not sit cross-legged as did the men—they sat on their heels or with their legs to one side. Christa hated bowing down to Buffalo Run on any principle whatever, but she was too grateful to be alive and unharmed to fight with him—or even let him notice her—over such a small detail. All of society followed certain rules. Tall Feather was the peace chief, and in matters that did not concern warfare he was highly respected. He called his warriors to council and he looked to Buffalo Run for much of his advice, but all of the warriors had a say in things, and any one of them could initiate a raid or a battle. Young men did not speak unless they were invited to speak by an elder. Although some Indian societies were matriarchal, the Comanche society was dominated by the males.
She was expected to work with the women, and as long as she stayed with Little Flower she was glad of the tasks that lasted throughout the day. She quickly learned that the Comanche did not eat fish, nor did they, as did some of the Indians, eat dogs or coyotes, for one of their gods was a dog-god. They cooked fresh buffalo meat right over an open fire, suspended from a tripod, and they made stew from buffalo meat by making a cooking pouch from the lining of the animal’s stomach and dropping hot stones into it. They were never wasteful, drying strips of the meat into jerky and making sausages from it flavored with wild onions and sage. They made pemmican from the jerky, pulverizing the jerky into powder with a stone maul, then mixing it with dried berries and fat. The pemmican was stowed away in parfleches, or rawhide cases, where it could preserve food for the winter months when hunting might be scarce.
The night was another exercise in misery, for she was kept in Buffalo Run’s tepee. Besides Little Flower, Buffalo Run had two other wives and a growing family of children. His other two wives were sisters, Dancing Maid and Running Doe. Running Doe had a babe that was just a few weeks old, and Dancing Maid had a child Christa estimated to be about six months.
Throughout the night, the babies cried or gurgled off and on, or made suckling noises as they nursed. At night she could also hear Buffalo Run with Little Flower. She lay with her teeth clenched, her face flushed. She was horribly embarrassed—and cast into a realm of memory, thinking of her own husband. Thinking of him, tall and naked and sleek, coming for her, sweeping her into his arms.
But the cries in the night were not hers.
When he finished with Little Flower, Buffalo Run prepared to sleep. His eyes caught Christa’s, open in the dim firelight. He looked her way and smiled slowly, then laughed out loud.
She knew that he was aware that she was afraid he might decide she would do for an evening’s copulation, and he enjoyed tormenting her.
Christa couldn’t understand the lack of jealousy among wives, but Little Flower seemed very adapted to the lifestyle. In the morning she tried to explain it to Christa. “We each had our time alone with him when we were wed,” she said. “Dancing Maid and Run
ning Doe are now busy with their infants. My time will come, and I will tend to my child while they tend to Buffalo Run. And if he takes you on as a wife, you will have your time.”
“Oh, God!” Christa whispered. They had come to the stream to bathe. Little Flower, she had discovered, loved water. She didn’t mind that it was very cool. Christa had been terrified to part with her clothing, but Little Flower convinced her that the Comanche respected one another’s privacy.
She so longed to bathe. She had ridden so long, through so much dust and mud. And though none of the violence had actually touched her, she had felt as if she were covered in blood. Robert Black Paw’s blood. Anguish filled her. His death would lie forever on her conscience.
If she was with Little Flower, she tried to assure herself that she was safe. She had to change her clothing, for Little Flower told her that her dress had offended Dancing Maid, and as she was the first of Buffalo Run’s wives, she had the right to want their slave dressed as she pleased.
Dancing Maid wanted the dress, Christa was certain.
But Christa didn’t mind if Dancing Maid took her clothing. Not so long as Christa got to keep her nose, earlobes, and health intact. She meant to keep her peace with Dancing Maid. She had also discovered the doeskin she had been provided with to be very soft, and she knew it would be very warm against the coldness of the night.
Oddly enough, she also discovered that none of Buffalo Run’s wives really seemed to wish her any harm. She was careful to work as hard as the women did, no matter how exhausted she became. And it was easy to care for the babies. They didn’t know that they were Comanche, or that she was white, and Christa had long ago discovered that an infant was an infant, black, white, or red, and ready to love and trust anyone who offered it love and tenderness. Because she was so good with their children, Dancing Maid and Running Doe were more tolerant of her. She knew that if Buffalo Run decided to take her on as a wife, his wives would not protest. There was a great deal of work for a Comanche woman to do—less if she shared it. And since warriors died in battle so frequently, the Comanche would have found it foolish for a young woman of childbearing age not to have a husband. Christa would have been the only one to feel abject horror if Buffalo Run decided that he would have her.
And One Rode West Page 36