Ride the Wind

by Lucia St. Clair Robson

  "Small Hand, Echo Of A Wolfs Howl," she called. "I put pemmican and jerky and stew near your shelter. And I'm leaving medicine for you. Hurry and get well and rejoin us."

  "We will. Mother," said Small Hand. Then Wears Out Moccasins was gone. They could hear screams. The women and children who had been taken captive in Texas were being killed. They might be carriers of the disease. Then they heard the sound of hooves diminishing in the distance. And silence. It had taken only minutes for the word to spread and the campsite to be abandoned.

  "Come, Husband." Small Hand put an arm around Cub's waist and helped him to his feet. "When you lie down and rest, you'll feel better. You'll get well. I promise you."

  Cub was too weak to argue with her.

  CHAPTER 46

  Naduah and Star Name rode toward camp. There were two carcasses slung across their pack mule's back. They had raced their ponies into the herd of pronghorns and had each lassoed one of the darting, dodging animals. Now, with a week's worth of meals taken care of, Naduah was thinking of something else.

  "They've been gone almost two months."

  "Yes. I doubt they'll be back before the next full moon. They'll use it to raid by. I hope they have a leisurely trip back. Because when they return, I'm going to wear Deep Water out. He'll walk around with his breechclout in his hand for a week."

  Naduah laughed.

  "Gathered Up had a visitor last night."

  "Gathered Up?" said Star Name. "I can't stop thinking of him as a small boy."

  "Not after last night. They thought I was sleeping. I could hear them giggling next door." The women had made Gathered Up his own lodge.

  "I miss Wanderer, Sister," said Naduah. "I worry."

  "Don't waste your time worrying about Wanderer. Worry about if it's going to rain. You can depend on Wanderer. He always comes back."

  "It always rains too," said Naduah.

  "Yes. But one never knows when."

  "And one never knows when Wanderer will be back either." They both smiled.

  "The river's too low to swim, but at least we can lie back in it and let it flow around us. I'm looking forward to that," said Naduah. "It's about the temperature of stew water, but it's better than nothing."

  Star Name wiped sweat from her face and slung it off her hand.

  She was too hot to even make her usual suggestion to race back to camp.

  The village was quiet with the men gone. The older men and boys and women defended it and carried on as best they could. But they were used to it. War parties were sometimes gone for years. Perhaps that was why it was so important for the older people to train the children. They were often the only ones around to do it.

  The two women were startled from their lethargy when Gathered Up came galloping toward them. He waved frantically for them to turn back. Little Pecan rode in front of him and Quanah clung to his waist, bouncing along behind. Without asking questions, Naduah and Star Name wheeled their ponies and raced for the cover of a high, dense growth of plum and oak and prickly pear. Once behind it, they jumped down from their horses and tied them to trees. They strung their bows and each nocked an arrow. Gathered Up arrived in a lather. He handed down the baby and turned to help Quanah, but the child had already tumbled off. He ran to his mother, his tiny bow drawn too.

  "White men. Mother, and they're asking about you. But I won't let them get you." Quanah planted his feet and raised his bow, taking steady aim in the direction of camp.

  "It's all right, Quanah. No one told them where your mother is."

  "What's happening, Gathered Up?" asked Naduah.

  "Traders. Sore-Backed Horse is talking to them. They asked about you. He told them you and your husband were visiting his father on the Staked Plains. That ought to discourage them."

  "If Wanderer were here, he wouldn't have let them in the village."

  "But Wanderer isn't here. Sore-Backed Horse said he'd get rid of them as soon as possible. Here." Gathered Up reached into a saddle bag and pulled out an intestine stuffed with pemmican. "I brought food so we can sleep away from the camp tonight."

  "We have food too, Gathered Up," said Naduah, nodding toward the two pronghorn carcasses. "Let's go." She led the small group back the way she and Star Name had come.

  "No bath in the river," sighed Star Name.

  Naduah didn't like the idea of traders in the village. Not only because she feared they would try to ransom her, but because of the death the white men were spreading. She was as fascinated with the mirrors and combs, the bright beads and cloth as any of the women, but Wanderer had planted a fear of them in her.

  Come back soon, Wanderer.

  Naduah and Star Name were digging a hole for Dog's body when Wolf Road entered the camp.

  "The raiding party is back," said Naduah.

  "They're back early," said Star Name. "Do you think something's wrong?" They hurried with their task.

  They had found Dog dead when they'd returned that morning after the traders had left. The white men had looked inside Naduah's lodge and Dog attacked them. The neighbor children said she'd tried to tear one of the men's legs off. He had kicked her hard in the head.

  Quanah and Turtle, Star Name's daughter, appeared around the side of the lodge. Turtle clutched a fistful of wilted flowers. Quanah carried wild grapes in his cupped palms. They carefully left the traditional offering on the small grave as the adults watched.

  They knew Wolf Road would come next to their lodges, so the two women waited outside. Lance was already announcing that no one had been lost in battle and that there were hundreds of horses captured, when Wolf Road walked up to them.

  "You're back earlier than we expected, Wolf Road. Is anything wrong?"

  "Your brother, Naduah."

  "What happened to him? Has he been hurt?"

  "No. He has the white man's disease. Ka-ler-ah. He told us to leave him. We didn't want to. Small Hand stayed with him. We left food. Perhaps he'll be all right. Naduah." There was a pleading tone in Wolf Road's voice. "He was my friend. I loved him like a brother. I didn't want to leave him. My heart is there with him still. And with his woman."

  "I know, Wolf Road. I don't blame you." We must leave them! She remembered telling Medicine Woman that. She remembered helping to pack while her friend Owl lay burning with fever. "There was nothing you could have done," she said aloud. "And maybe he'll recover. Cub said that some do." Absentmindedly, Naduah herded Quanah inside, her hand on his tousled head. Was Cub lost forever this time?

  The raid had been a success, even though it was cut short. But the image of Cub, dying somewhere in the bleak mountains of Northern Mexico, haunted her. She tried not to think of it, although the need to cry stung the linings of her nose and burned her eyes. Wanderer was back, and he was bringing seven hundred horses. He had lost no men in battle. Perhaps he had lost no men at all. Perhaps Cub was still alive.

  Somewhere out there, Wanderer was painting Night and himself, and dressing them both for his triumphal entry into the village. Naduah could feel her heart pounding. If she hadn't had two children to dress, she would have jumped onto Wind and ridden barebacked to meet him. Her fingers shook as she helped Quanah dress. She knelt in front of him and tapped his ankle.

  His feet were buried in the deep pile of the bear skin he stood on. He lifted one of them, and she put on one of the new leggings she had made him. They were painted red and the fringes were decorated with metal cones, each stuffed with a tassel of horsehair. As she pulled on his leggings, he balanced himself by putting a hand on her head. Then he drew on his hunting shirt. Its yoke was solidly sewn with rows of gleaming white elk's teeth. And she made him wear his good, beaded moccasins. "They're too tight," he protested.

  "That's because you don't wear them very often. They'll loosen up." Just in time for him to outgrow them, she thought. He squirmed while she brushed his hair and rebraided it. Then he adjusted his small squirrel-skin quiver across his back and picked up his miniature bow.

  "I'm going to show m
y new clothes to Sore-Backed Horse and Wolf Road," he said, posing for her in the doorway.

  "Stay out of the dust, gray eyes. And if you see Gathered Up, tell him to hurry and dress. Then come right back. We will ride to meet your father."

  Without answering, he ran out into the late afternoon sunshine. Naduah stood, trying to decide what to wear. She took one dress from its case, then another, until the bed was covered with them. She picked up the one in the latest style, with the blouse and skirt sewn together at the waist, the seam hidden under fringe and beaded panels. She had just finished it and Wanderer hadn't seen it. She laid it back down. It would be better to wear something familiar, something she knew he liked.

  She chose one of her older ones. The poncho was a creamy yellow, its yoke area painted a russet and outlined in thick fringe. Long tongue-shaped panels hung down the front and back. The front one was beaded with medallion shapes, and the back one had dark blue slashes painted on it, one mark for each of Wanderer's battle honors.

  There were clusters of blue and white beads with long leather thongs threaded through them and hanging in fringes. Red and white beads were scattered around the edges of the line of deep fringe at the sleeve hems. And there were the usual clusters of tiny bells.

  She pulled on her tight dress leggings and crisscrossed a lacing around each of them, tying it at the knee. She brushed the dust off the bottoms of her feet and stepped into her high, soft moccasins. They were smoked a pale yellow with green stripes up the front, and laced through holes along the sides. The moccasins ended in wide cuffs folded over and trimmed with long fringes.

  Studying her face in the mirror, she painted herself. Dipping her forefinger into bear grease and then yellow paint powder, she ran it from her nose across her cheek to her ear. She drew another line under that one, and repeated the pattern on the other side. She wiped her finger and drew three red lines fanning out from her mouth, over her chin. When Quanah came back, she would paint his face too. But there was no use doing it early. He would surely smudge it.

  She put on an otter fur choker with the bushy tail hanging down the back and a polished clam-shell disk in front. The disk looked just like the one Eagle had bet on the honey hunt fourteen years before. She slipped several Mexican silver bracelets over her strong slender hands, and brushed her hair. By the time she finished braiding it with otter fur strips. Pecan had awakened and was whimpering. She chewed some pemmican and fed it to him.

  Then Naduah went outside to saddle and decorate their horses. Finally, when they were all ready, they rode side by side to meet the war party. The rest of the village ranged behind them, drumming and shouting and chanting.

  Wanderer watched them coming. The edge of the red-trimmed mountain lion skin fluttered on Wind's haunches. Naduah sat tall and straight, her thin suede dress moving along her full, agile body. Little Pecan rode next to her leg, his cradle board swinging from her saddle. Quanah sat on his fat, sway-backed little pony like a miniature warrior. He was scowling fiercely under his paint. He had grown in the two months Wanderer had been away. And so had Gathered Up. Wanderer realized he would have to prepare him for his vision quest soon.

  As he watched Naduah approach he wished, for an instant, that he were the youngest, most insignificant herder in the war party. He wished he could sneak away, unnoticed, with his beloved. He wanted to take her to some isolated spot and love her the entire night. But he wasn't a herder. He was a war leader, returning with plunder and horses, and the news that he had abandoned his golden one's brother. He would have to tell her about it, and it would be hours before he could even be alone with her.

  He was expected at the feasts and dances in honor of the raiders. There would be visitors for days, coming to congratulate him and carry away presents in return. He would give away most of his share of the spoils and, in doing so, prove his disdain for material things. He would show that he knew he could always steal more whenever he wanted them.

  And he would be given presents too. Families would ask him to name their sons. Warriors would seek his advice. Boys would want to discuss the proper conduct for their vision quests. Or they would ask him to paint a holy symbol on their shields when they returned from their quests. He was expected to attend all councils and to maintain diplomatic relations with the other bands and allied tribes.

  Wanderer would have it no other way. He thrived on the responsibility. But just this once, for a few moments, he wanted to escape from it. To give Naduah the delicate white scarf he had brought her. To tell her of her brother. Most of all, he wanted to feel her naked body next to his again. To love her until he was exhausted, and then to lie, shrunken, inside her until her warmth aroused him again.

  She was almost even with him now, and he raised his shield and lance in salute. She and Quanah and Gathered Up did the same with their bows and arrows.

  Most of the village was asleep when the men of the council finally left their smoking lodge. Wanderer had gone home by way of the river to bathe. Dressed only in breechclout and moccasins, he carried his sweat-stained shirt and dusty leggings in his hand as he walked through the quiet camp. As he passed each lodge, he listened. It was a habit of watchfulness that was hard to break. He felt responsible for each family, and he smiled at what he heard. The returned warriors were being well received by their wives.

  His own family was asleep when he reached home, the familiar sun glowing softly on the lodge wall. Quanah and Pecan lay curled together among their sleeping robes on one side of the buffalo robe curtain. They had thrown the covers off themselves, and he pulled them back up. Then he stood looking down at them for a long time in the light of the embers. He watched their chests rise and fall rhythmically and their long lashes flutter as they dreamed. Quanah was already taller than the other boys his own age, and his legs were lengthening, giving him a coltish look.

  Wanderer slipped his breechclout and moccasins off in the gloom. He threw his clothes over the line stretched between two lodge poles. He luxuriated in the feel of the furs scattered on the floor, wriggling his toes and digging his tired feet into them. He felt clean, and weary and, in some way, let down. He wished he could wash the sorrow away as easily as the sweat and dust. As they had ridden to and from Mexico, he too had seen the devastation left by the latest white man's epidemic. And Naduah's brother might already be dead of it.

  He sat down cross-legged among the tumble of bedding. Naduah too lay uncovered in the warm night of early summer. Wanderer ran his hand very gently along her smooth body, feeling the familiar, rounded curves once more. She sighed and turned over sensuously so he could stroke her breasts. He started to speak, but she was ahead of him.

  "Wolf Road told me about my brother, beloved." She took Wanderer's hand, kissed it, and held it against her cheek. "I know there was nothing you could do."

  "It's as bad as he said in the south, golden one."

  "I want to go back for his bones, and those of Small Hand, if she died with him."

  "We'll go. We'll wait until the spring to give them a chance to return. Then we'll search for them." Wanderer started to lie down wearily, and felt something hard on his pillow. He picked it up.

  "Gathered Up made it for you," said Naduah. "He worked hard on it while you were gone. He thinks you're brother to the wolf and cousin to the bear."

  The object was a handsome quirt. A rawhide lash, two feet long, was doubled to form a loop and inserted into a hole drilled vertically in a polished bone handle. A bone plug was driven tightly into a horizontal side hole through the loop and then through the hole on the opposite side, holding the thong in place. The handle was beautifully carved with a picture of a wolf, and had a beaded wrist strap. Another smaller hole was drilled at the butt end of the handle, near the wrist strap, and a tassel of fluffy white breast feathers and a single crow feather hung from a braided horsehair thong.

  "I did the beading for him, but he made the rest of it."

  "It's well made."

  "Tell him so. Quanah has a present
for you too, although he's much more excited about presents he might get."

  "I brought you a present also, golden one."

  She rolled over and wrapped her arms around him, feeling the lean, sleek contours of his shoulders and haunches and legs.

  "This is the best present you could bring me," she murmured. "Welcome home, my wandering one."

  "You've been with me the whole way. The thought of you."

  She held his serious, handsome face between her palms and looked down at him in the dim light from the coals and the stars shining through the smoke hole. Words couldn't express her love. She would have to be content with showing him.

  Wanderer spent most of his time at the pasture, working intensively with Raven, Wind's colt sired by Night. The pony was already as well trained as the average buffalo horse, but Wanderer still wasn't satisfied. He was teaching Raven to signal with his ears, waving them if buffalo were near, pitching them forward if a man approached. Raven was a replica of Night physically, but there were differences in their personalities. The colt was eager to please, but Night had a more businesslike approach to his training. It was as though he knew it was to their mutual benefit to work well with Wanderer.

  Quanah had come along with his father, but had become bored. He had wandered off to practice shooting for distance with his bow.

  "Gray eyes." Quanah came at a run. "Mount and show me how well you ride."

  The child backed up and took a running start. He clutched his elbows to his sides and pumped his legs as hard as he could. At the last moment he leaped, grabbing for the loop woven into Raven's long, black mane. At the same time he hooked his toes into the stirrup loop on the surcingle and launched himself onto the pony's back. He adjusted himself and looked down, waiting for some comment. But while he concentrated on his father, Wanderer gave a cluck and Raven started off at a gallop. He threw Quanah backward, almost dumping him onto the ground. Quanah held on, grabbing frantically at the pony's mane. He bounced and slid, first to one side then to the other, until he managed to position his knees, grip with them, and bring the horse to a halt. He looked accusingly at his father.