Ride the Wind

by Lucia St. Clair Robson

  Wanderer rose to go and Naduah didn't try to stop him. She knew he would probably be away all night. He would find a spot with spirits inhabiting it, and smoke and pray to enlist their aid. There were many places like that in Palo Duro canyon, places where the rocks had been twisted by time and kneaded by the elements into mystical shapes. Places where the wind whistled and moaned eerily out of dark side canyons, and shadows seemed to writhe in the full moon's light.

  "Yee, yee, yee!" Naduah screamed and leaped with the other women, waving her arms in time to the scores of drums. In the center of the cleared space the men of the raiding party had been dancing for hours. Silhouetted against the roaring bonfire, they leaped and stamped. Individuals stopped to tell of their bravery and to beg the others to shoot them if they faltered in the battles to come. They staged mock skirmishes, firing their rifles in the air. Outside the dance area, Wanderer sat watching on Night. When his men gave a screech that resonated against Naduah's eardrums and left her head ringing, Wanderer rode forward at a gallop. He ignored the bullets they shot over his head, and stopped at the center of the circle.

  There was a sudden silence, broken only by the snapping of logs on the fire, the occasional jingle of bells, or the dry crackle of a pebble-filled gourd rattle. Wanderer's face was painted black, as were the faces of his men. In one hand he held his carbine over his head, and in the other his bow and quiver. Night, as though he knew the effect required, turned slowly so all could see his rider clearly.

  "Men and women of the Quohadi," Wanderer's powerful voice rang in the stillness. "We are going on the raid trail. We will win horses and scalps, guns and captives and slaves to make us even stronger. We will take what we want, and we will leave our enemies crying in the ruins of their lodges. We are strong. We are fearless. We are invincible." He gave the People's unearthly, yodeling war whoop and his men joined him. The drums took up the war chant, and the dance began again.

  As it went on, into the early hours of the morning, the people of Iron Shirt's band worked themselves into a frenzy. Naduah was swept along by it, drunk with fatigue and excitement, delirious with the drumming and the swaying. She had lost her sense of self and become a part of something bigger and grander and more exciting. The rhythmic pounding seemed to radiate out from the marrow of her bones, vibrating every cell in her body. The flames of the huge fire leaped and danced too, as though nature were joining in the effort. The fire hypnotized her as it would a moth.

  It was almost dawn when she staggered to her lodge, fell onto her bed, and pulled the warm robe over her. As she drifted off to sleep her arms and legs felt light and alien, as though they belonged to someone else, and her head was whirling. She never knew when Wanderer joined her an hour later. He had only a few hours to sleep before it all started over again.

  Once more he got up, dressed in his war clothes, and led the parade of his men through the village. He carried his banner of red flannel streamers on a pole tipped with the eagle feathers of his coups. The older men lined the procession's path, cheering them on and urging the women to sleep with the warriors. The women and children followed behind, dressed in their best clothes and chanting war songs. When the second night's celebration was over. Wanderer hurried to catch Naduah as she walked toward home, her legs feeling light and wobbly from dancing.

  She laughed when he picked her up in his powerful arms and swung her around. He swept into the lodge with her and threw her gently onto the tumbled robes. He fell lightly on top of her. Neither of them said a word. As she had felt her mind and will blending with his during the dance, so now did her body seem to become one with him. The touch of him was intoxicating. He was slick and satiny with sweat and the beaver oil that made him impervious to bullets.

  She wrapped her arms and her long legs around him to pull him as close as possible. She wanted to meld their flesh together, to feel him push deep inside her. engorging her and making her complete. The lodge seemed to whirl slowly with her and Wanderer entwined at its very center, at the center of the universe.

  They coupled almost violently, silently except for her low moans. They were totally absorbed in the feel of each other's flesh and skin and muscle and bone. They were driven by the unspoken knowledge that he would leave in a few hours, and that she might never see him alive again.

  CHAPTER 39

  Sam Walker groped around him, feeling among the sticks and pebbles and spiny tufts of brown grass. He was searching for the, tiny screw that held his new Colt Paterson together. His fingers bumped into a tubby little barrel cactus.

  "Dammitall, Jack." He shook his hand. "If we had a fire I could at least see what I was doing with this infernal machine."

  "Sam, you know why we don't make fires after dark." Jack Hays' voice was low and pleasant.

  "Hell, Jack, there aren't any Indians within a hundred miles of here," said John Ford.

  "Not after yesterday. They must be at least a hundred miles away and still running," added Noah Smithwick.

  "That bunch is gone, but there may be others. We follow the usual procedure. Eat before sunset, then ride a couple more hours and camp."

  "Camp! I don't call this camping," grumbled Rufus Perry. "No fire. No grub, 'ceptin' old jerky that tastes like someone's been wearing it on their feet for a month. No smokes, no laughing. Can't even have Noah fiddle for us."

  "Thank you for that!" put in Ford. Rufe didn't usually mind Hays' rules, but after routing the huge Comanche war party the day before he felt they should celebrate a little.

  "Well, it isn't the lack of light that's a problem anyway," mumbled Sam. "It's this damned gun. You lose this little screw here, the one that connects the standing breech with the lock frame, and the infernal thing falls apart." He finally found the screw and held it up, as though the others could see it in the pale starlight. The fourteen men of Hays' Ranger patrol still sat in a circle around an imaginary campfire. They were vaguely silhouetted against the lighter sky. Far off an owl hooted and cicadas made the night air vibrate with sound.

  "You can't reload it while you're bouncing around on a running horse," Sam went on. "And it's too light to club anyone. Poorly balanced." He hefted it in his hand. "Man that made this obviously never hunted Comanches." The pistol's three pieces lay on his rumpled, grimy red bandana spread on the rough ground. Squinting and working mostly by feel, he began putting it back together.

  "You ain't tellin' us anything we don't know, Sam," said Perry. "But hell, who'd've thought we'd be close enough to Comanches to club them? We hardly even get a chance to see them."

  "Whooee." Ford let his breath out in a rush. "Didn't they run though!"

  "I don't care what you say, Sam. I'd like to find the man that made these pistols and kiss the hem of his robe. He's a savior. That's what he is." Noah kissed his pistol instead and cradled it to his chest. "How many Indians do you suppose there were? I didn't take time to count."

  "There were seventy," said John Ford.

  "How do you know, John?" asked Walker.

  "I did what Bill Wallace taught me to do," said Ford. "I counted their horses' legs and divided by four." Smithwick dove into him, a solid shadow in the dark, and they tusseled on the ground like children.

  "You boys keep the noise down. Or you can ride with another patrol." Hays said it lightly. He rarely gave orders. He rarely had to.

  "Wallace got a nickname down in Mexico," said Walker. "There wasn't a pair of shoes in the whole benighted country to fit him. So everyone started calling him Big Foot. Bill says he doesn't mind. He'd rather be called that than Lying Wallace or Thieving Wallace."

  "Big Foot. I like that," said Rufe Perry. "Remember when Johnny there was as verdant as a meadow in spring and fell under the influence of Wallace? Bill had him plumb convinced that the proper way to cook a buffalo steak was to put it under his saddle and ride on it all day. Told him it not only cooked the meat, but tenderized it and cured a sore-backed horse all at the same time."

  Ford stood, dusted himself off and helped Smith
wick up.

  "Best steak I ever had. You ought to try it."

  "Naw. The best steak is cooked over a buffalo-chip fire," said Smithwick. "Spices it just right. You never need pepper when you cook with buffalo shit. Remember when Wallace took John on his first Indian hunt? Damn. I wish Big Foot were here instead of rotting in that Mexican jail."

  Walker and Wallace had been two of the men who had joined the ill-fated expedition to invade Mexico in December of 1842. They'd all been captured in the small border town of Mier and marched southward by the triumphant Mexicans. Sam and two others had managed to escape, but the rest were still prisoners. It was a situation that galled the Texans a great deal.

  Hays and Walker strolled over to check the horses' tethers. In the two and a half years Sam Walker had been in Texas he had become one of Hays' most trusted men. The two of them were very much alike. Small, quiet, modest and deadly.

  The steep hills around the Pedernales River were covered with stunted, dark green cedars and oaks, but in the sheltered canyons laced with seeps and springs, the elms and oaks and basswood trees grew tall and thick. The Rangers were camped near one of the clear, cold springs that bubbled up, then joined the river in its wild, boulder-strewn gorge. The Pedernales cascaded down the tilted granite slabs of the river and into a crystal pool not very far from the ravine where the men were camped.

  "Listen, Jack, I didn't mean to mutiny back there. It has its faults, but that little pistol saved the day, didn't it!"

  "I don't know about the day, but it saved our hides and hairdos. But it's frustrating that it should be so close to what we need, yet still not quite right. Why don't you write Mr. Colt a letter and make some suggestions?"

  "I'm not much on letter-writing, but I just might. A few changes would do it. A pistol in each hand, and each one of them firing five shots without reloading. It'll solve our Indian problems."

  "Until they get their hands on them." Hays had been fighting Comanche for seven years. He had patterned his form of guerrilla warfare after theirs. He knew better than to consider the Comanche whipped because one band of them had fled in panic. "I've been trying to get Houston to buy the five-shooters in quantity since that stand-off at Enchanted Rock, three years ago."

  "They saved your scalp that day too, didn't they?"

  "They and the rock. I've never known any Indian who would climb Enchanted Rock for any reason."

  "Did you notice any haunts while you were up there?"

  "Well, Sam, I don't believe in spirits, but it even looks strange, you know. There it sits, four hundred feet high and all humped up out of nowhere. Looks like the back of some sleeping animal." Hays stared off to the west, as though he could see the huge rock hulking there. "And it makes a creaky noise at night. The top of it glitters in an eerie kind of way in the moonlight. I figure there's a reasonable explanation, but fortunately for me, Indians don't hold with reasonable explanations."

  "Three years, and we're just now getting the weapons that can mean the difference between defensive and offensive fighting." Sam shook his head as he absentmindedly stripped the papery bark from a cedar. "Houston seems to think the Indian troubles are over. That he can shake hands with them and buy them off."

  "In all fairness, Sam, there's no money in the Republic's treasury to pay for guns." Hays spent more of his time in Austin these days, dealing with government officials. He was trying vainly to obtain pay for his men and feed for their horses.

  "Lamar left the treasury busted, didn't he. A big spender."

  "A high roller, all right. Houston was ready to take the French up on their offer of a three-million-dollar loan. Did you know that? We'd be jingling sous in our pockets."

  "I'm glad it fell through. It would have given the Frenchies a foot in the door. A few more years and we'd be fighting them as well as the Mexicans and the Indians."

  Hays laughed in his shy way. "I hear it was quite a meeting, Sam Houston and the French count, with his chest paved with medals and his shoulders dripping with chicken shit. Did you hear about it?"

  "No."

  "Old Sam had his boots up on the desk as usual when the Frenchy came rattling in. All those medals sounded like a wagon full of spare machinery parts. Our illustrious president threw back that dirty old Indian blanket he always wears and pointed to his scars. He beat on his naked, hairy chest and roared—let's see if I can remember it straight. He said, 'An humble Republican soldier who wears his decorations here, salutes you.' "

  "Sam may be a lot of things, but humble isn't one of them."

  Still talking quietly, the two of them turned back toward camp. They sat down with the rest of the men again. The talk was about the fight of the day before.

  "I'll tell you, boys," said Smithwick, "I've fought a lot of Comanches, but never did I see the like of yesterday. I've seen them retreat in disorder, but never have they left their dead and wounded lying around like that. They usually sweep a battlefield cleaner'n my dear old sainted mother's kitchen floor."

  "The trick," says Hays, "is to keep them guessing. Indians always play their hand the same way. If you change the rules on them in the middle of the game and up the stakes while you're about it, they get confused. They cash in their chips, push away from the table, and run off to find another game." Hays took out his pistol and turned it over in his delicate hands. "Boys, Mr. Colt's invention has definitely changed the rules and upped the stakes."

  Naduah heard the slow hoofbeats, and she stepped to the door to look out. It was dark outside, but from the light of the lodges around her she could see Wanderer tethering Night. He left a pile of freshly cut grass for him.

  "Is there any water you can give him?" It was the only thing he said as he brushed past her and went inside. She brought out a stomach paunch and rolled the rim back to the level of the water so he could drink. When he finished, she took some of the grass and rubbed his lathered body. She did it as much to give Wanderer more time alone as to soothe Night.

  "Poor Night," she murmured. "You're getting too old for these raids." He shook his head slowly up and down, as though in agreement.

  He stood with his head drooping with fatigue and his tail hanging limply. It had been shaved in mourning, and it looked naked and ugly. The raid had not gone well. Naduah dreaded going back inside. She entered the lodge silently and sat opposite Wanderer, studying him through the flames of the fire.

  "Are you hungry?"

  "Yes."

  She sliced a piece of meat from the pronghorn she and Star Name had killed that day and hung it from a stick. Wanderer stared fixedly at it as its juices bubbled and hissed on the hot coals. The silence seemed to stretch out forever, but Naduah waited patiently. No matter what had happened, she was happy to see him back alive and unhurt. She inspected him with her eyes, going over every part of him, looking for wounds. Finally he spoke.

  "We left them." And he was silent again, gathering himself to admit his shame. "We left the wounded and the dead. For a hundred miles we ran, the wounded falling onto the trail behind us and no one stopping to help them. I picked up Tuhuget Naquahip, Sore-Backed Horse and brought him with me. But he was the only one I could save. There were too many of them. Almost half the war party is gone.

  "We had left our spare horses tied at a distance and we were preparing to split up and raid when we found the tracks of a party of ranging soldiers. There were fourteen of them and seventy of us, so we laid an ambush. It would be a simple thing to kill them, take their scalps and guns and horses." Wanderer sat as motionless as a statue polished by the fire's light. Only his mouth moved.

  "We attacked them, and they dismounted as they usually do. They fired their rifles at us while we circled them, but we kept out of range. When their rifles were empty, we charged, thinking they were helpless. But they remounted and raced to meet us, riding right through our arrows.

  "Knee to knee they rode with us. They fired into our faces with their little pistols. Our bows were useless at that range, and our guns had to be reloaded.
But theirs didn't. Again and again they shot, so close they burned us with their powder." He turned his head slightly so she could see the long black line that raked across his right cheek. "And their leader, never have I seen one like him. He was everywhere, screaming and shooting. He cannot be human."

  "What did he look like?"

  "A slender man, with black hair. He looks young, but it's hard to tell with white eyes. They all look alike."

  "Was there hair on his face?"

  "No. He was beardless."

  "El Diablo," said Naduah. "Pahayuca told us about him. They say he's a devil and not human. He strikes from nowhere, then vanishes."

  "I can believe what they say." Wanderer pulled the stake from the ground and cut off a piece of the half-cooked meat with his knife. "Whatever he is, his medicine is more powerful than any I've ever seen. My men panicked. They fled, howling. There was nothing I could do to stop them. The Texans chased us, their new guns still spitting death. They chased us for miles. We couldn't even stop for our wounded."

  "You're the first to return."

  "I pushed Night hard. He deserves a rest. But old as he is, he's still faster than any of them. I wanted to be the first to tell Iron Shirt. I'm going to see him now."

  "Won't you rest first and finish eating?"

  "No. I don't want anyone else to tell him of his son's shame. It's for me to do." He gave her his old sardonic grin, and she was relieved to see it. "At least I have the small satisfaction of knowing I was right. These guns are better than arrows. We have to get them." And he walked out into the darkness.

  The council members sat silently in Iron Shirt's lodge. Outside, the wails of the mourning women added to the tension. Buffalo Piss and other men who had been with the war party had made their reports to the council. Wanderer was just finishing his.

  "Many men believed the Texans were demons, that they had supernatural powers. They became too frightened to fight. Those of us who faced the Texans can understand how men could think that way. But I believe the Texans only have a new kind of gun. A small gun that can shoot as many bullets as I have fingers on my hand. We know they change the designs of their guns often. This is the latest. We must find out where they are made, or who has them for trade. Or we must steal them. But we must get them. No longer can we fire arrows while the white eyes are reloading. This new gun gives them the advantage over us."