Ride the Wind

  "Bear Cub's father. He will tell the boy to go with us."

  Arrow Point leaned down with tears in his own hard eyes, and spoke softly in his son's ear. Jim couldn't hear but could guess what he was saying. Arrow Point would tell Cub to go with the men and escape at the first opportunity. Shaw neglected to tell the white man that. There was no sense complicating things even more.

  But even Arrow Point had a difficult time convincing Cub. The child spat out a flood of chopped, explosive Comanche. Shaw chuckled a little as he translated it.

  "Bear Cub says he has a pony and friends and a family here. He likes the taste of raw liver and he likes to hunt. He will be a herder on the next raid. When he grows up, he will kill Texans. And he'll start with you if you don't leave him alone." Shaw grinned, his handsome face mocking. "Do you think his white family will want him?"

  It was a good question, but there was no turning back now. It had taken David Faulkenberry six years to locate the boy, tracking down elusive reports from soldiers and hunters, trappers and traders. If it weren't for his robin's egg blue eyes Bear Cub would have looked like any other urchin in the village. His blond hair had been darkened with grease. This would not be a simple matter of exchanging the goods and horses David had brought and taking the boy with him.

  "What do we do now?" David asked. He was glad he had brought Shaw along. The man deserved his reputation, even if he was arrogant.

  "We wait. John Parker will be delivered to us."

  "If they want to keep him so much, why are they letting me have him at all?" Shaw answered with a shrug. They weren't letting the white man have the child. They were only loaning him, or rather renting him, until the boy escaped. Old Owl was putting on quite an act, though. He was a foxy old man. Shaw was impressed.

  But it wasn't an act. Under the stifling robe Old Owl was genuinely grieving, sobbing uncontrollably. He mourned the loss of his beloved grandnephew, and more. There was a sense of loss that he couldn't define. The lost honor at San Antonio and Plum Creek. The loss of his own youth. The loss of the past, and a feeling of impending doom. He could size people up well, and he knew that Cub wasn't likely to escape from this white man. From some other maybe, but not this one.

  He saw the stubbornness in Faulkenberry's face. Old Owl had stayed a leader of his band for thirty years because he could read faces. If he hadn't agreed to sell the boy, this one would have come back with soldiers. And there was no avoiding them. They would have hounded his people across the plains. They never gave up, the white man. Burn them out and they built again, in the same place. They didn't know when they were unsuited for a country. They stayed and changed the country to suit them.

  They were like the warrior ants that held on, their pinchers grasping their enemies, even after their lumpy heads had been torn from their bodies. They were like ants in many ways, the white eyes. They were everywhere and into everything. One year there were none, and the next their nests were spreading. Soon they'd be moving into the People's lodges and making treaties giving them rights to the honey supply.

  The white men were changing the very patterns of life. Old Owl knew, somewhere in his gut, that the People could no longer depend on their world to function as it had since before their ancestors could remember. White men disturbed the order of things, sent it off onto strange paths, until it might never find the main trail again.

  There in the dark under the robe, Old Owl came to a fork in his own life's road. If the boy came back, he would rejoice, and do whatever he had to do to keep him. If he didn't, there was no longer any reason for Old Owl to avoid the white men. He knew he and all the People's warriors could no more turn them back than they could turn back a flood, or the wind.

  He would start down their path and learn all he could about them. He didn't have many years left to him anyway, and as much as he disliked them, they interested him. As would any new species of animal that intruded into his world.

  Maybe, in the end, he would find that Old Man Coyote had been playing a practical joke and would resolve it, as he usually did. But Old Owl doubted it. Old Owl was sure of only one thing. Bear Cub, Wee-lah, was one of the People. He would never be a white man again. It gave him a grim sort of satisfaction.

  "God damn it to hell and the four quarters!" David felt the cactus spine drive into his foot like a hornet's sting. He swore again under his breath, determined that the boy wouldn't see him rattled. He had been stupid to take his boots off when he pulled his blankets over him for the night, but his feet hurt. They were swollen from weeks in the saddle hunting little John.

  He stubbed his toe and swore again, but he didn't slow down. He could see the small shadow flitting ahead of him, running straight for the horses. Cub had already slashed the tether and was leaping for his spotted pony's back when David lunged and caught him by one foot. They both rolled, kicking and struggling, under the horse's fidgety hooves. It took all David's strength to hold the boy. Jim Shaw came running to help.

  "Now I know why they call the Comanche Snakes." David was breathing hard when they hauled Cub to his feet. David couldn't understand the abuse John showered on him, but he knew it must be imaginative. John was certainly that. David was at a loss to know how the boy had gotten the line off his wrists without disturbing the other end, tied to David's own. He was like a little snake, wriggling out of anything.

  Faulkenberry and Shaw rode across the cold, flat Oklahoma plain toward Fort Gibson. A norther blew against the men's left sides, trying to shoulder them off the pale, narrow ruts of the trail. The sky was heavy and gray and immense. It hung so low it seemed as though it would smother them. As far as David could see, the prairie lay cold and brown and lifeless. Dead to the horizon.

  Dead to the horizon and beyond. One rode for days, expecting some change. And it never came. It was a place that bred loneliness like slums bred cholera. Let the Indians have it. David rode sunk as deeply in his own thoughts as he was in the heavy buffalo coat one of the captains at the fort had loaned him. He had a piece of wool blanketing wrapped around his head and face, and strips wound around the palms of his hands. His red, chapped fingers were bare to grip the stiff reins. It's the wind. It never quits. It's like a child whining and tugging at you day after day, year after year. No wonder the women go crazy here. He'd be glad to get back to the hills and trees of east Texas.

  Behind the two men, glaring from under his long, filthy tangled hair like a rat cornered in a haystack, rode John Parker. He was trussed as tightly as a bale of cotton on a gulf coast wharf, and David and Jim kept carefully out of spitting range. If Comanche boys had the same sort of contests white boys did, Bear Cub must be a champion.

  David almost grinned at the thought of Lucy Parker Usery's new husband being presented with Wee-lah Parker. Leaving him with them would be like dropping a hornet's nest into the middle of a Sunday school picnic. David thought perhaps he should take John to Elder James Parker first. If anyone could handle him, he could. It would be more charitable for Lucy, if not for the boy. James Parker didn't believe in sparing the rod and spoiling the child.

  Little James Pratt Plummer had been ransomed too, and was waiting for them at the fort. He would go home with his cousin. Jamie was younger and easier to handle. Luther and his second wife could take him back. Elizabeth Kellogg had been returned relatively unharmed just six months after her capture. And Rachel Plummer had died three years ago. Poor woman. David shook his head slightly at the memory of her.

  Now only little Cynthia Ann was left of those stolen at Fort Parker over six years ago. Six years ago. Was it possible? She wasn't little Cynthia Ann anymore. He wondered briefly what she must be like now. And how much she must be suffering. Perhaps John could tell them something, if he could ever be persuaded to speak a Christian tongue. And in time he could be. Children were adaptable. He'd forget all that Comanche barbarism soon enough.

  "So how did little John Parker get along with his Uncle James?" Abram Anglin lay back against the riverbank, drew his bony knees up
to trap his body's warmth, and pulled his wool shirt tighter around him.

  "You remember when that grizzly got into Old Man Lunn's cabin and rearranged the furniture and decorated the walls with the larder?"

  "Yep."

  "Well, just imagine how it would have looked if two bears had been in there, and you have the picture." David chuckled at the thought of it. "James figured to take the damages out of the boy's hide, but he must have grown several extra layers of it while he was with the Indians. He didn't even miss the little bit the willow switch took."

  "He'll give those Pre-destrian, whattayacallit Baptists a run for their money. Think I'll drop in on Elder James next time I'm Anderson County way and see the show. By the way, Faulk, there's something I've been meaning to ask you. Why'd you go after them boys? They ain't yours."

  "I don't know, Abram. Seems like I had to. To tie up the loose ends, if you know what I mean. It's like when you're driving a pack train and a load comes loose and pieces are flapping in the wind. You've just got to stop the whole train and see to it. I can understand James Parker's obsession with it. He won't rest until they're all accounted for. And the only one left is Cindy Ann."

  "It's a big country to go looking for a little flappin' end." Anglin's dark eyes drooped and he wriggled to dislodge a root that was poking him in the back.

  "Who are you telling, Abe? I rode over every spiny inch of it, seems like. But she's out there, and someone'll find her."

  David's son Evan shivered as the wind curled an icy paw over the edge of the bank and tousled his hair, like a cat batting at a ball. High overhead, the same wind whimpered through the naked tops of the pecans, swaying black against the steel gray sky.

  "Do you reckon Hunter'll be back soon with that canoe?" Evan muttered. "It's getting right cold.

  David grunted noncommittally. The remains of their foundered raft lay awash nearby. They had made it to cross the river and round up their scattered horse herd while Hunter and Douthit went back to Fort Houston for a canoe.

  Anglin dozed off, and the lullaby of his soft snores crooned David and Evan to sleep. It had been a long, hard day, and they were all tired.

  In front of them, along the edge of the river, a seam of moccasin tracks stitched the water to the sand. The men weren't worried about them. The massacre at Parker's Fort seemed to have settled the score in this area as far as the Indians were concerned. The Caddo had blamed the whole thing on marauding Comanche, and there had been no retribution. The Caddo had been quiet and docile ever since.

  The gunshots were so close they seemed to be going off inside David's head. His ears rang with them and his skull vibrated. He was running before he was fully awake.

  "Come on, boys, it's time to go." He plunged into the river, an arrow driven deeply into his back. Abram felt a blow on his thigh under his powder horn. The horn had been shattered by a bullet and splinters from it were driven into his leg. He felt the sting of them just before his leg went numb. He threw his gun into the river and leaped after it, swimming with powerful strokes toward the opposite shore. David was ahead of him, but tiring. The water faded from red to pink behind him, curls of blood swirling gracefully in the eddies of his passing.

  Anglin swam alongside, turned David on his back, and grabbed him around the neck. Stroking with his right arm, he pulled him toward the far bank. The lead raindrops of rifle fire sent up small geysers around them.

  When they reached the far shore, Abram felt the sting and burn of arrows slicing through his arm and burrowing in his leg. He hauled David into the cover of the brush, and they lay, panting, and gathered strength to go on. The arrow had punctured David's lung from behind, and his breath came in whistling gasps.

  "Abram, get away. Bring help. I'll hide here someplace." They both knew Faulkenberry wouldn't be alive by the time Anglin could run to Fort Houston and back, but neither of them mentioned it. Anglin broke off the arrow in his calf and quickly tied pieces of his shirt around that wound and the hole in his upper arm. He held one end of the bandage in his teeth while he knotted it. He lifted David and helped him further into the thick undergrowth before starting down the river toward Fort Houston.

  While David and Abram escaped, Evan held the Caddo's attention on shore. He took cover behind the trees while the renegades ghosted through the brush, circling him like hawks gliding lazily in for the kill.

  The relief party found David dead the next morning. He had pulled grass to make a soft bed near a clear pool of water, and he had laid himself down on it to die. They never found more of Evan than his tracks leading to the river. But the Caddo talked of him for years, until the story became one of their legends.

  He had fought like a cornered bear, they said, killing two of the renegades and wounding a third. One of the Indians crushed the back of his skull with a hatchet, and four of them held him down while a fifth scalped him. Still he found the strength to throw them off, dive into the river, and swim to midstream before sinking.

  David Faulkenberry had many friends around Fort Houston, and his funeral was a large one, though simple. Most of the Parker clan stood at the edge of the hole and watched the yellow pine box lowered. John Parker, scrubbed and brushed, dressed in painful shoes and a tight collar, stood with them. Cub's legs burned under the scratchy black wool pants that had belonged to an older cousin. His calves and upper thighs and buttocks were crisscrossed with red welts from a willow switch.

  Behind Cub's stony gaze, fury raged. They had cut his hair short, tying him up to do it. Now he looked like a girl in mourning. And his uncle had beaten him. Never in his six years with the People had anyone struck him. He had never seen a child, other than a slave, more than lightly slapped to get his attention.

  John's pony had been taken from him when he tried to escape again. And he wasn't allowed near the horses. They were kept hobbled with a steel contraption for which only Elder James had the key. Without a horse he was nothing, not a man and hardly a person. He had to ask permission for anything he wanted to do, and it was usually denied. He was forced to sit each day and listen to his uncle read from the big book. He read words Cub couldn't understand and refused to learn.

  He got up each dreary morning to face the same set of hills and . trees, the same smelly yard, beaten bare and filthy with the dung of the farm animals. He felt as though he were wading in the years accumulation of filth and being slowly poisoned by it. He had to go to bed when the sun did. And there were no dances or all-night talks to eavesdrop on. Other white people danced, but Elder James Parker did not believe in it. That's what he said. He didn't believe in it. Not to believe in dancing was like not believing in sunlight.

  Never would Cub ride at the head of that wonderful, laughing, jingling, clattering procession as the village moved. Never would he stage mock battles with his friends and hunt small game as they traveled. Never would he feel the wind blowing his hair as he raced for the horizon. Worst of all, the white eyes expected him to grub in the dirt like a Tuhkanay woman, a Wichita. They imperiled his soul by forcing him to desecrate Mother Earth. He could almost hear her cry out in pain as the hoe and iron plow blade bit into her, ripping her hair, the grass.

  Fighting back his tears, John stood absolutely silent and as straight as a lodge pole beside his uncle. He looked at his mother, her head bowed, on the other side of the grave. Next to her stood the stranger who was his stepfather. Of them all, he cared only for his mother. Their first meeting had been uncomfortable for him. She had cried and thrown her arms around him while he stood stiff and unresponding. But his heart went out to her, even if he couldn't show it.

  He would stay for a while, until his hair grew out. And he would try to get to know her. But as soon as he was old enough to make it all the way back to Old Owl's band on his own, he would leave. And he would go on his vision quest and receive his new name and become a warrior. And someday he would ride back here at the head of a war party and kill the man who stood next to him.

  The Caddo had saved him the trouble of
doing the same to the one who had ransomed him. As David Faulkenberry's casket was lowered and Cub's great-uncle, Daniel, stepped forward to read the burial service, there was another small revenge that Cub couldn't appreciate. It would have galled David to know that one of the Parker Baptists was mumbling prayers over him.

  Cub knew that word of his ransom would find its way to his sister. Old Owl had promised to tell her and to warn her and her family to take care that she not be caught. So he stood, forcing himself to remain absolutely still. He pretended to be a wolf keeping vigil on a mountain crest, looking out over his prey. And like the wolf, he would wait patiently.

  A stranger passing through stood among the mourners. He was watching silently and tasting Texas, getting a feel for it and its people. Samuel Hamilton Walker was on his way to Bastrop to join Jack Hays' rangers. After he'd spent five years fighting Seminoles in the mosquito soup of the Florida swamps, his home in Maryland had been too tame. He'd heard that the Republic of Texas was the place for excitement and opportunity, so he'd come.

  As he looked around him, Sam smiled a little. They do grow them big in Texas. There must have been a huge seine across the Sabine and Red rivers, sifting out men under a certain size and sending them back east. Or maybe they seemed big because they talked big. Or they just looked bigger under all that leather and fringe and those outlandish hats. Nothing like a pair of bear's ears on a cap to add inches to a man's height and pounds to his courage.

  Sam was a small man, and slender. He had a shy smile and wispy, curly brown hair. There was nothing remarkable about him, although women noticed him immediately. Maybe that was because he didn't speak much. And men who didn't speak much often were fascinating. Especially when their eyes were as eloquent as Sam's. Quietly, Sam turned and threaded his way politely through the groups of people. A man killed by Indians. This looked like the place for him, all right. He mounted his wiry, long-legged gray gelding and rode slowly away.