Ride the Wind

by Lucia St. Clair Robson

  " You must let us help you." Quanah glared at him in exasperation.

  "No. Don't touch it."

  "Flies will lay their eggs in the wound. It'll become infected."

  "I know." Then Wanderer passed out again.

  By the time they reached the band's camp, the area around the wound was painful and swollen. It was foul smelling and cool to the touch. It was also alive with small white grubs eating their way into his brain. The men carried Wanderer into a lodge and laid him on the robes. Quanah and Sore-Backed Horse sat next to him. Most of the other people in the band gathered at the door, waiting outside.

  "Where's Pecan?" Wanderer asked in a whisper. "I don't know," said Quanah.

  Wanderer tried to raise himself, but was too weak. He could only open his eyes briefly.

  "You left your brother behind?"

  "We were trying to save your patched hide," said Sore-Backed Horse. "Pecan must be with Cruelest One. He was taking care of the ponies. He'll be all right. And Brother," Sore-Backed Horse leaned forward with the good news. "We took over a hundred scalps. Placido's people will never recover from that raid."

  Wanderer relaxed. His mouth curved slightly, but it was still a taut, white line holding in the pain. Quanah knew his father had decided to die, but he tried once more to save him.

  "Let me call Wears Out Moccasins. She can help you."

  "No. If your mother can't help me I want no help." His voice was a whisper, and Quanah bent over to hear him. "My son."

  "Yes, Father."

  "Fight them. Never become a red white man like the coffee chiefs. White men work. A man who works cannot dream. And it is only through dreams that we achieve wisdom."

  Then his voice failed altogether. He sang his death song silently, only his lips moving. His heart gave a final flutter and stopped.

  Daily, for three years, Naduah asked her uncle Isaac when they would go in search of Wanderer and her sons.

  "Soon," he always replied. "When the war has ended." But it never ended. White people didn't stop raiding when the weather was bad or when it was convenient to form temporary treaties with their enemies. They fought on and on, year after dreary year.

  "Cynthia Ann, it's getting dark and cold out there. You and the child come in now," Bess called from the door. Then she pulled her head back in and muttered to her husband, "That child oughter be in bed, sick as she is, and not sitting out exposed to the bad night airs."

  "Being in bed won't help her now, Mother. Let them be," said Isaac Parker.

  They' re afraid, thought Naduah. They're afraid of the night and the full moon. They're afraid of the People, of Wanderer. Comanche raiders were striking deeper and deeper into the settlements. The roads were crowded with people fleeing east. Naduah's aunt and uncle had packed as much as they could fit into their old wagon. They'd tied the cow to the tailboard and cages of squawking chickens along the sides. They'd called the hounds, shuttered the windows, and driven here, to the house of Naduah's younger brother, Silas, and his wife, Amelia. Naduah was one hundred miles farther away from the country of the Noconi.

  Every day she prayed for the raid that her family and neighbors dreaded. She begged the spirits, if there were any here, to send the warriors swooping down on this house, this kind prison with the white picket fence and the long, airy gallery covered with trumpet vine. She would protect the people in it, ask that their lives be spared. But she would ride away with Wanderer and the war party.

  "Cynthia Ann Parker, come inside."

  Naduah rose slowly and carried Flower to their rocker in the comer by the hearth. The child whimpered softly in pain, as though by now she knew that crying was futile. Her joints were red and swollen and tender to the touch. "The rheumatics," Bess called it. For three days Flower had vomited everything they fed her. She was weak and emaciated. As Naduah held her, she crooned a lullaby of the People.

  I will wrap you in a blanket of wind.

  I will swing you in a cradle of dreams.

  I will sing you a lullaby of grass.

  The child was five years old. She spoke the white man's tongue. She used the People's language only when she was alone with her mother. They sat for hours in the evenings on the porch until the mosquitoes or the cold became too insistent. Then they retreated to the chair by the hearth.

  Aunt Bess had tried to insist that Naduah speak English to Flower, but Naduah had only looked at her in that stubborn, silent way. And Bess let the subject drop. So every night, in a low voice, Naduah told her daughter stories about her people. Sometimes she had to stop, a cord of longing tight around her throat, throttling her words.

  In the winter she recited stories about Old Man Coyote. In summer she told about swimming in the river and the games the children played. Or she described riding across the plains on a pony that flew like the wind. And she told Flower about the father she couldn't remember. Naduah knew that the stories were all the same to the child. The trickster tales were as real to her as the stories of her mother's own childhood. Her father was a mythical hero, like Old Man Coyote.

  Naduah brushed the long, dark hair from Flower's dry forehead. She felt the heat pulsing under her hand. Aunt Bess had called a white man's doctor for her. He had stared down her throat and up under her eyelids. Then he had gone away shaking his head. Naduah had seen the defeat in his eyes.

  Naduah did what she could for Flower. But her bag of healing roots and herbs was gone. She was only allowed to gather the few plants that the whites knew about. And many of the ones that Medicine Woman had used didn't grow here anyway. Her power was gone too. As time passed Naduah felt it shrink within her, like the river as it dries in a drought. The spirits avoided this country, where the land was mangled by plows and the trees were cut and their stumps burned.

  Finally Flower slept for the first time in two days. Naduah held her tighter and willed her to live. Through both their dresses she could feel the heat from the child's body. Her arm began to numb, but she dared not move for fear of jostling her and waking her with pain.

  The Parkers seemed to understand. They blew out the candles that they didn't carry with them, and went quietly to their bedrooms. Mrs. Parker returned with a blanket and draped it gently over Naduah and Flower. Naduah looked up at her with tears brimming in her eyes.

  "Such a dear little girl. She's all you have, isn't she?" murmured Mrs. Parker, stroking Naduah's hair, and laying a cool hand on Flower's fevered forehead. "You poor, lost soul." She went to bed, her long, full skirts swishing like dry leaves across the clapboard floor. Huge, shifting shadows followed her candle across the room. Then there was only the fire in the hearth with its warm, flickering light and its comforting crackle. Naduah nodded and finally fell asleep.

  She awoke with a start and knew something was wrong. Flower was cool to the touch. Frantically Naduah felt for a heartbeat. She shook the child gently to waken her, but Flower's small soul had slipped away while her mother slept. She had set off on her long journey alone. Soon she would be stiff.

  Naduah's wail filled the room and pounded at the heavy walls. It burst from the cabin and spiraled off through the darkness in search of the child's spirit. The loneliness and grief pent up for years found a voice. Her screams were so intense and loud it seemed as though they would tear her inside.

  "Oh, good Lord!" Bess Parker stood in the door of her bedroom, her fists crammed into her mouth, her eyes wide with horror. Isaac Parker and his nephew Silas held long, tapering candles high so they could see.

  "Stop it, Cynthia," shouted Isaac. "Oh, my God." He gave the candle to his wife and rushed to grab her arm, but she was too strong.

  The knife grazed his hand, cutting through the skin. She had bared her own breasts. They were red with the blood from long gashes across them. Before Isaac could react, Naduah laid the first two fingers of her left hand on the table and hacked them off. Still there wasn't enough pain to blot out the torment in her heart. The blade was at her throat when Isaac grabbed it.

  Silas and
Amelia held her while Isaac twisted the butcher knife from her had. She collapsed onto the floor, sobbing and raking her fingernails across the boards. Bess ran around the room collecting all the knives and cleavers, axes and anything that could be used as a weapon. She fled into her bedroom to hide them, then returned to kneel next to Naduah. Ignoring the blood, she threw her arms around her and sobbed with her, rocking her as though she were a child.

  It took Naduah a week to cry herself dry. Then she sat out on the front porch in the sepia light of winter. All day and into the night she stared toward the west. With her tears went all hope of seeing Wanderer again. She refused the food that Bess and Amelia brought her. The only reason to eat was to live.

  CHAPTER 56

  The wonderful aroma of coffee lay over everything. Army cooks had emptied huge sacks of green coffee beans into iron pans. They had roasted them, then ground them. Now the coffee was steeping in thirty twenty-gallon iron kettles near Medicine Lodge Creek. The coffee was almost ready, and almost thick enough to slice. Crowds were gathering to dip their tin cups or their cups of horn or deer hooves into it.

  Even in October the south Kansas sun was hot. Under brush shelters the sweating, swearing cooks dispensed bread and beans and salt pork to hundreds of Indians who had no concept of waiting in line. Tin ladles clattered against tin plates as the beans were dished out. Beyond the tangle of massed army supply wagons and ambulances, cattle bellowed as they were killed and butchered for the evening meal. Flies buzzed in thick clouds around the area.

  The army field kitchens operated day and night. They had to. They were expected to feed four thousand warriors and their families and the one thousand soldiers who had come as an escort for the peace commission from Washington. It was autumn 1867, and the largest number of representatives from the southern plains tribes ever assembled had come for honey talk. There were Kiowa, Kiowa-Apache, Southern Cheyenne, Arapaho, and the People.

  Sam Houston had once said about the Indians, "Either feed them or kill them. And leaving out the humanity of the thing, it is cheaper to feed them." Congress agreed. The congressional committee set up to study the Indian question in 1866 had reported that it cost one million dollars to kill each Indian. And so they had arranged this meeting.

  It was a spectacle for the ears as well as the eyes. There were shouts and war whoops, galloping hooves, drumming and bugling and sergeants shouting orders. There were horse races and close-order drills, flannel and calico streamers and neat military flags. There were feathers and flashing sabers. The even white rows of A-shaped army tents, each with the black chimney of its Sibley stove precisely aligned, were surrounded by pale yellow conical lodges scattered over the grassy hills. Many of the lodges, especially those of the Cheyenne, were gaudily painted with hunting scenes and geometric designs.

  Everywhere, there were animals. Ponies and mules, cavalry mounts, oxen and cattle grazed for miles in all directions. Excited dogs ran about in packs, and so did boys.

  The Penateka had arrived the night before from their reservation in Oklahoma Territory to the south. The Yamparika and the Quohadi and the Noconi were there too. Wanderer's people were no longer called Noconi, however. In respect for their dead chief they had changed their name to Dert-sa-nau-yu-ca, Those Who Move Often. Or, as they were more simply referred to by some, Messy Campers.

  Sore-Backed Horse had taken over as civil chief of the band that Wanderer had led. He had adopted Quanah and Pecan, and when Pecan died of cholera, Sore-Backed Horse had mourned him as a son. But much as Quanah loved his father's old friend, he often disagreed with him. He was disagreeing with him now.

  "Uncle, how can you even consider signing the white man's paper? They always lie, those papers." Quanah was twenty-two and far along the trail to becoming a leader. Sore-Backed Horse's decision to join the peace chiefs was an affront to Wanderer's memory. It was also a threat to Quanah's future as a warrior.

  "We cannot fight change, my son. Even your father said that everything changes in a man's lifetime. One cannot kill change like one can kill a grizzly or a Ute."

  "Nothing could change my father. He would never have given away the country he loved."

  "We're not giving away anything. One cannot give away the land. Black marks on a paper mean nothing. The white people make promises and we make promises. They never keep theirs. So why should we keep ours? The blankets they promised us two years ago were so flimsy they fell apart under our saddles. We never bothered to go back for the rest of them. And most of the things they promise never arrive. But they're giving out presents here. They have saddles and bridles and sugar and coffee and tobacco and paint, too many things to name."

  "But not weapons or ammunition," Quanah reminded him.

  "No. We'll have to steal those or get them from Ho-say and his men." Sore-Backed Horse doubled over, wracked by a spell of coughing that wrenched his insides. He spit and saw that there were flecks of blood in the sputum. He had noticed them for the first time that morning. What a silent enemy age is, he thought, studying the red spots, like chips of bright paint. It has crept up on me like a spider stalks her prey, and it has clouded my eyes with webs. But in return, age had burdened him with a clear inner sight. He knew how the future would be. He could see what the white men could do. He wished he were still blind with the optimism and arrogance of youth, like his beloved friend's son. Life was so much simpler and full of promise when one was young.

  A tall, thin, slightly stooped figure approached the group of men sitting with Quanah and Sore-Backed Horse. Philip McCusker was an official interpreter for the treaty talks. He was liked and respected by all the tribes. He was the second husband of Weasel, Something Good's daughter. He had married her after her first man was killed in a hunting accident. He understood the People as few white men did.

  He sat down beside Quanah and accepted the pipe that was passed him. His thick, droopy mustache draped over the stem of it. He drew a puff and passed it on. He inquired politely about each man's family. He discussed the weather and praised the new Remington rolling block rifles that were beginning to appear on the frontier. Then he spoke in an undertone to Quanah.

  "May I speak with you alone?"

  Quanah nodded and rose. Together they climbed a high, grass-covered rise overlooking the vast encampment. "What is it, Ma-cus-ka?"

  "I have word of your mother."

  "Is she alive?" Quanah grabbed McCusker's arm as though to shake the information from him.

  "No, my brother," said McCusker. "The words I must speak are sharp and painful like knives. I do not wish to drive them into my brother's heart. But I must." He paused.

  "Did they kill her? Torture her?" Quanah looked ready to take on the entire white race single-handedly.

  "No. They were kind to her. They treated her as one of them. But she refused to become white. She was always one of the People. She died of a broken heart."

  "When?"

  "Three, maybe four years ago. They gave her a fine burial with an elaborate ceremony. The women wept for her, and they left flowers on her grave."

  "Do you know where she's buried?"

  "I can find out. But you can't go there, Quanah. They are so afraid of the People there that they would kill you."

  "And my sister?"

  "She died of a fever. She was five years old. Everyone loved her."

  Quanah felt bereft, totally alone. His mother had been dead for three or four years. What had he been doing when life left her? Had he been eating, sleeping, lying with a woman, gambling perhaps while she suffered? Why hadn't he felt her going? There should have been some message from her spirit, some disturbance in the daily order of things. Some farewell. What had her life been like among the strangers that were her family? There were so many questions he wanted to ask, yet he knew that McCusker probably couldn't answer many of them. He tried an easy one.

  "What manner of people are my mother's white kin?"

  McCusker pondered that question.

  "They're good pe
ople. They're very respected among the whites. And very religious."

  "The white man's religion," said Quanah contemptuously.

  "Religion is religion. You have to admit the whites have very powerful medicine."

  "Bad medicine. They use sickness and destruction of Mother Earth as their weapons."

  "The Parkers are far from the People's land. They do not covet it. Nor do they bring sickness."

  "Pau-kers?"

  "Parker. That's the name your mother's people use for then-whole family. They add Parker after their own names."

  There was a strange light in Quanah's gray eyes, the dawn of an idea that had never occurred to him before. Suddenly he saw his mother's wonderful deep-blue eyes. They were eyes that he had loved as a child for the light in them, for the laughter and tenderness in them, not for their strange color. They were the eyes of a white person. The realization hit him. He wasn't alone. He had kin he had never met. Might never meet. White kin.

  "My mother's family is my family. I too am a Par-ker."

  "Yes, you are. Fair and square."

  "Quanah Parker." Quanah liked the sound of it.

  "Pleased to meet you, Mr. Parker." McCusker laughed and stuck out his bony hand. Quanah shook it hard.

  "Ma-cus-ka."

  "Yes."

  "This changes nothing. The white eyes are still my enemies. I will make war on them until I die. They have killed my entire family. And they are destroying the band my father led. Soon Those Who Move Often will be as much a joke among the warriors as the Penateka are now."

  Below them there was a stir among the thousands of men. Criers from the various tribes were riding through their camps, beating their small hand drums and calling the warriors to the opening of the treaty talks. Most of them had been preparing all morning. Each man was carefully painted and dressed in his best clothes. Their shirts and leggings were heavy with decorations. The ponies were covered with streamers and feathers, bells and paint. The milling and confusion began to take on order as the horsemen converged on the plain where they would make their entrance. The leaders of the tribes had already decided what that entrance would be like.