Texans threw coins in the air for the Comanche boys to shoot at with their small bows and arrows. The chiefs' wives were dressed in their finest clothes, and the bells of their fringed ponchos jingled merrily. From time to time one of the women would reach out and grab a handful of a Texan's skirts, holding her captive while she fingered the cloth and discussed it with her friends.
Several miles away, along the river to the southwest, Pahayuca and Buffalo Piss could just make out the vast camp of the six bands represented at the talks. The tips of the lodge poles, with feathers and streamers fluttering from them, could be seen scattered among the trees. They looked like new foliage growing along with the pale green canopy of the pecans and the brilliant rose patches of the redbud trees. The surrounding hills were speckled with thousands of ponies grazing.
"Maybe we should have gone with Spirit Talker." Pahayuca's broad face was a study in misery. The other leaders would be flaunting their presents and new finery when this was all over.
"No, we did the right thing." Buffalo Piss stared across the gently rolling, green countryside. "I had a vision. I saw a buffalo pass by. A single buffalo walking very slowly toward the northwest. We must follow him."
"I've had bad feelings about these talks too. But what if we're wrong?"
"If we're wrong, we'll just start raiding. The whites will come to us to make peace, and you'll get the presents you want."
"I suppose so."
"It's always worked before. The bad Indians get the presents. The good Indians get their land taken from them. Look at the Wichita and the Cherokee up north. They tried to cooperate, and the Texans massacred them. They hadn't even pulled the bodies off the battlefield before the stick men were there, dividing the land."
Pahayuca grunted. They sat a while longer, then turned and rode down the slope toward their camp, thirty miles away.
Gonzales, the interpreter, was uneasy as he watched the twelve war and civil leaders follow Spirit Talker into the courthouse. The Comanche carried their weapons casually under their robes, sauntering in with an easy arrogance. But President Lamar's two commissioners were tense. The hostility vibrated from them like heat waves shimmering on the plains. It would have been much better if the Indians had brought no captives to the talks than to have returned only Matilda Lockhart, and in that condition. The Comanche didn't understand the effect her poor ruined face and body would have on the whites.
Even Gonzales, who had been a captive himself, didn't know how bad the situation was. He didn't know that Secretary of War Johnston had wanted to kill Spirit Talker and the other two chiefs when they had ridden in asking for the truce a month before. Johnston refrained only because there hadn't been enough Indians to make a difference. This wouldn't be a council. It would be a fiat, a listing of conditions that must be met before the chiefs were to go free. They would be held as hostages.
And the Penateka had come prepared with their own set of demands. They were under the delusion that they had come as equals. They were children, on both sides, playing with matches when they didn't know what fire could do. It would be a miracle if the whole situation didn't explode in that tiny room.
"Dios me bendiga." As Gonzales asked for God's blessing, he crossed himself surreptitiously. Then he followed Colonel Fisher across the rickety porch and through the heavy door. It closed with a thud after him. A dozen soldiers lined up along the wall outside, their shiny new carbines planted in front of them, muzzle-up on the splintered floor.
Inside the courthouse, with its small, barred windows, the air was becoming hard to breathe. If hatred had been edible, everyone would have been well fed. Gonzales was no fool. He stood by the door. Colonel Fisher waved away the amenities and pounced on the main point.
"Where are the other captives? We know you have more than one. We must have them all here before we can go on with the talks."
Old Spirit Talker rose from the circle of painted chiefs sitting impassively on the floor in the center of the bare room. He held one wrinkled hand in front of him, as though calming troubled waters, and delivered his people's position. He realized that these men weren't like his good friend Noah, and he too dispensed with the preliminaries.
"Our hearts are heavy that we are not able to return more of your people today. Bands that did not send leaders to this talk hold many of them. But I, personally, will try to convince them to turn their captives in. To do that, you must give me things to take with me to pay for them." Spirit Talker chanted the list that he had memorized, a list at least as long as Old Owl's had been. His plan was to ransom the captives one by one and receive a larger price for them that way than by delivering them all at once.
"We wish to live in peace with our brothers, the white men. We will make a road to our red brothers who do not have the love in their hearts that we do. We will tell them of your generosity and return your people to you. How do you like that answer?" Spirit Talker finished on a high quaver and sat regally with a flourish of his breechclout. Gonzales translated his words while the old leader listened. Spirit Talker would have made a good poker player, but not a great one. There was a hint of satisfaction on his face at a hand well played.
Colonel Fisher gave a loud command, and the door opened. Twelve soldiers filed in and positioned themselves along the wall, carbines aimed and at the ready. The chiefs stirred uneasily.
"Tell Spirit Talker that until the captives are returned, all of them, he and the other chiefs will be our prisoners," said Colonel Cooke, the second commissioner. Fear blanched Alirio Gonzales's rich, dark skin.
"Señor Coronel, I cannot. They will kill us all."
"Tell them, damn you!"
"I cannot, mi coronel."
"Tell them or I'll kill you myself." Cooke's patience snapped under the strain.
Gonzales's hand was on the latch as he blurted the message. He bolted from the room, slamming the door behind him. As he clattered across the porch, the sounds of gunfire, warwhoops, and shouts followed at his heels.
The door burst open again, and old Spirit Talker appeared in the opening. He stood for a second, his hand out as if to speak, then fell. He toppled full length and lay still, blood spurting from the back of his head and his brains oozing out onto the dry wooden floor.
The Anglos and Mexicans of San Antonio stood dazed, but the People reacted instantly. The circuit judge fell, a child's tiny arrow sticking out from the rusty black coat over his heart. Skinning knives appeared from under the long fringes of the women's ponchos. The Texan women ran screaming in all directions, their long skirts stirring up clouds of dust. Soldiers stationed around the area began firing into the Comanche families trying to escape the courtyard. But the shots hit more than just the enemy. Soon people were tripping over bodies in the dirt, and falling only to be trampled themselves.
The Indian boys and men tried to cover the retreat of their women and children, but they were trapped in the stone labyrinth of a white man's town. Texans who weren't armed ran to get their guns. The fight became a hunt through the streets and from house to house. Two teenage boys darted into a cookhouse and it was soon surrounded by a mob of shouting, jostling men. Someone came with a barrel of turpentine, which was sloshed onto the walls and roof. Another man casually lit it with his cigar. As the flames billowed and the heat became intense, the boys ran out, coughing and choking. The Texans were waiting on each side of the door with axes ready.
When the dust and the screams had settled, there were seven whites dead and ten badly wounded. Thirty-three Indians were killed, and twenty-seven women and children, many of them wounded, were herded into the city jail. One of the women, Spirit Talker's wife, was released later that day. She would be the messenger.
"Gonzales, tell her to tell her people that they can have their chiefs' families back when the white captives are returned." Colonel Fisher's face was stern but triumphant, like a father who has just chastised his children. He had these people where he wanted them now. The only thing they understood was force.
/> Gonzales closed his eyes wearily. The white captives. Always and only the white captives. The small Mexican knew that Fisher didn't care about his interpreter's people. There were Mexican women and children suffering too. Some of them were the families of men who had fought beside the Texans during the revolution. But of course they didn't count, any more than the negro captives did. Gonzales tried once more to reason with the two commissioners.
"Señor Coronet, I don't think that's a good idea..."
The lid was beginning to jitter on the colonel's simmering patience. His face reddened. He had the entire southern Comanche nation under his thumb and a stupid little greaser was arguing with him.
"We don't pay you for your opinions, Gonzales. Translate. Tell her they have twelve days to decide. If the captives aren't returned by then, the chiefs' families will be killed."
It was hopeless. It was the way of those in authority to assume they had all the answers without ever asking any questions. Gonzales had lived with the People for five years. He knew how they would react to the ultimatum. And no one asked him. He shrugged and translated the message.
Spirit Talker's wife listened stolidly. She would have beaten her husband at poker. Not a flicker of expression passed over her broad, seamed face. She took the bag of food they offered her, mounted the pony they gave her, and rode slowly off toward the wooded hills and the camp to the northwest.
"I would like my pay now, mi coronel," said Gonzales. And he added under his breath in Spanish, "Make it thirty pieces of silver."
"You'll get it in a few weeks. We have to make a written request for payment and send it to the legislature. These things take time, and there are important matters here to deal with." Cooke shouted the last words at Gonzales's back. The interpreter had mounted his burro and was riding out of town toward his tiny farm.
Wailing, Spirit Talker's wife rode among the first lodges of the enormous camp. She had slashed her arms in grief and her horse's back was wet with blood. The People swarmed to meet her, taking up her cry when they heard the news. All night long the screaming went on, while the men sat rocking to and fro, sobbing and moaning under their robes. When morning came, three women lay dead. They had cut themselves fatally as they grieved. Then the slaughter of the horses began. It had been years since grief had taken such a toll, but never had the Penateka suffered a calamity like this.
They had lost almost all the men who led them. It took two days to kill all the mules and ponies that had belonged to the chiefs. Their shrieks mingled with the People's. Finally their carcasses lay everywhere and the odor of death soon joined the sound of death. The village looked like a sacked city.
Leaderless, the men galloped off to take .vengeance on the town. In their hysteria, the women turned on the hapless captives who hadn't been adopted. They stripped them, children and adults, and staked them out on the stony ground. They tortured them all night, laughing as the victims screamed and pleaded for mercy.
Squatting around the captives, like crows picking at carrion, the women filleted the flesh from them, slicing and mutilating them. At last they burned them slowly alive, starting with their battered and crushed fingers and toes. With them, screaming under the cold moon, died Matilda Lockhart's six-year-old sister.
With them also died any hope of peace or trust between the Texans and the Penateka Comanche. In the months to come the two sides would glare at each other over a barrier of hatred much higher and more enduring than the limestone walls of San Antonio. For the People, raiding was not now merely a matter of sport or livelihood or even defense. It was for blood.
As he broke up the clods of dry, pebbly gray soil with his wooden hoe, Gonzales knew he shouldn't be out in his field. He knew there were parties of Comanche scattered throughout the hills around San Antonio. In their fury and frustration they were killing, aimlessly and wantonly, anyone foolish enough to go out unprotected. But two months had passed since the fight at the courthouse.
One white captive, a woman, had escaped the horror of the Comanche slaughter and had made her way to San Antonio. So the townspeople knew of the charred corpses that lay out on the rolling land near the river, but they were unable to go out to bury them. Nor could they bring themselves to exact a like retribution on the Indians within their grasp. Unwilling to kill the hostages, the army had allowed them to be divided out into the homes of San Antonio, for the women to train as servants. One by one the Comanche women and children had slipped away to join their bands.
It was spring, almost summer already. Gonzales knew if he didn't tend his crops, there would be none to harvest. And his whole family would starve. The government hadn't even paid him for his interpreting yet. At least his wife and children would have something to eat and sell in the fall if he planted now. If the Comanche left them alone long enough to harvest it.
Gonzales's wife and children were sheltering in town. The one-room jacal, a shack of twisted cedar poles, looked forlorn without them. The faded, torn curtain flopped listlessly in the glassless window. The wooden shutter, hanging on one hinge, banged gently in the breeze. Then Gonzales heard the other noise. He heard the hooves before he saw the lance points rise from the crest of the hill as though pushing up through the soil. They were followed by the heads of the warriors and then their ponies. Gonzales whirled, his hoe held up to fight.
He didn't return to his family that night. And in the morning an armed party of Mexicans went out to bring in what was left of his body.
He was the last casualty in the area. The Penateka disappeared from the hill country they had roamed for two hundred years. The people of San Antonio went back to their daily lives, grateful that the Council House Fight, as they chose to call the massacre, was finally over. They could at last bury the charred bodies that were weathering into the ground. They were relieved that the Comanche had admitted defeat and retreated to the north to live. The Texans were sure they would be bothered no more.
Pahayuca's camp was huge, swollen with refugees from the south. They had come straggling in for days, their hair shorn, their faces drawn. There was a hopelessness about them, a fear that they would never be able to replace the leaders they had lost. They gathered among the Wasps to ask the help of the one Penateka leader left who could take them into battle. While the haggard women set up their tents, the men went directly to Buffalo Piss's lodge.
Those who couldn't fit inside squatted around the door, smoking and waiting to hear the outcome of the council. The talks had been going on for three days, but there was little doubt after the first day about the final decision. Already the People were preparing for war. They didn't wait for Lance to ride through camp announcing it.
Word had filtered out from the secrecy of council. It spread invisibly, inaudibly. The shame and the sorrow would be washed away with white men's blood. And the mood of the camp began to shift from despair to a grim kind of elation. Drums throbbed ceaselessly, day and night. Hunting parties went out daily, and others returned laden with meat. The village was a forest of drying racks. Women gathered outside their lodges to mend and decorate their men's best clothing. They cleaned them by rubbing white clay into them, letting it dry, then brushing it off. Men repaired their equipment, and the pungent odor of glue permeated everything. The camp resounded with the chants of warriors, each calling his own spirits to aid him in the battle to come.
There was no way to hide the fate of the captives who had died, screaming for an eternity under the full moon that night outside San Antonio. Two white boys had been spared, their families refusing to part with them. They told Naduah and Star Name what had happened. Naduah went back to her lodge, stiff with dread. She was unable even to voice the fear that gripped her. But Medicine Woman noticed it almost immediately.
"What's the matter, little one?"
"The two tosi tuinahpa, the white boys, told me about the killing of the white captives."
"Surely you don't think you'll be killed?"
"How do I know? They hate Texans. They have reason
to hate them. I'm a Texan."
"No, little one. You're not a Texan. You are a Nerm. One of the People. No one will harm you. No one hates you. You have a big family among the Wasps. And the Wasps are the most powerful among the Penateka. You are safe here."
But still she felt uneasy as she went about the camp on her daily errands. She rarely went anywhere now without Star Name or one of her family. She let her hair get dirty, and she rubbed grease into it to darken it. She kept her eyes lowered and avoided strangers. Finally, after two days, Star Name became tired of it.
"Naduah, stop acting so humble. It's not your fault you're white. No one cares but you."
"I feel like they're all staring at me."
"So what if they are? They stared at Something Good too, remember. And she didn't go around all hunched over, with her nose dragging the ground. She held her head high. You're one of the people. And the People are proud. They don't hang their heads like the Nermateka, the People Eaters. Put your head up."
Naduah raised her chin, her eyes still shifting from side to side.
"Look me in the eye and say, 'I am Nerm, one of the People.' Say it."
"I am Nerm, one of the People."
"Say it again, like you mean it."
"I am Nerm, one of the People."
"Louder."
"I am Nerm." Those around them turned to stare.
"Now act like one."
"All right, Star Name." They linked arms and strode through camp, the two of them dressed identically, as usual. They were coming back two hours later, their arms piled with brush, when Naduah saw the black pony threading his way through the confusion of war preparation.