Ride the Wind

  "Soon. Drink as much as you want."

  "How will we find water?" asked Naduah.

  "The same ways you have always found it."

  "We just climb a high hill and look for darker colored trees along the riverbed," laughed Star Name. "That's where the pools will be in dry weather."

  "Star Name, you have no respect for maturity and wisdom." Wanderer looked aggrieved. "Look for ponies."

  "If they're strung out in a line and walking steadily without grazing, they're headed for water. Right?" Sunrise had taught Naduah and Star Name that.

  "Right."

  "Or look for mesquites," added Star Name. "Mustangs eat the beans and drop the seeds in their dung. And ponies rarely graze more than a few miles from water."

  "Right also."

  "It doesn't look like there's much water to find around here." Naduah was daunted by the immensity of the landscape. She was used to seeing plains that seemed to roll on forever, but never had she seen country as empty and monotonous as this. There was nothing to relieve the eye, nothing to soothe her mind or distract her from the barrenness. She longed for a big, cool cottonwood, with its rustling leaves that sounded like rainfall in the night.

  "It doesn't look like there's any water here at all," said Star Name.

  "There's water, but it tastes like piss," said Spaniard as he rode up to join them.

  "He's right. Remind me to tell you about keeping the horses away from alkali water. And what it will do to them if they drink it."

  "Hey, you Kiowa stud," Spaniard waved to Big Bow. "Get up here. I don't trust you back there with my woman."

  "Very wise, Spaniard," said Deep Water. "I wouldn't trust Star Name with him either." Star Name gave him an evil look.

  "I wouldn't trust any woman with him," grumbled Spaniard. "I don't understand it. I'm much better looking than he is. What makes him so irresistible to women?"

  "He has five hundred horses and half as many mules. And he has so many women, none of them has much work to do," said Wanderer.

  "That's why he goes on the war trail so often;" added Deep Water. "To get away from his women."

  Wanderer and Naduah rode ahead while the others bantered.

  "It's so empty, Wanderer. I feel lost and helpless here." Naduah looked around at the barren land lying inert under the weight of the wide sky.

  "It's not empty. It's boundless. Free. Nothing blocks your vision. Nothing stands between you and the horizon. Or you and the heavens. You'll like it when you get used to it."

  "I suppose so. You were telling me how to find water."

  He picked up the trail of his thoughts.

  "Watch for doves. They find water every day. They're usually not far from it. And the dirt daubers. If they have mud in their beaks, they're coming from water. And if they're going to it, they fly straight and low. Also, there's a type of grass that grows around water. I'll show it to you. Even if there's no water visible, you may be able to bring some to the surface by walking your pony back and forth in the sand. And listen for frogs. They'll lead you to a hidden spring sometimes." - "All those methods sound chancy."

  "Life is chancy. Maybe chancier here than in the country you're used to. But you'll learn."

  You'll learn. Naduah despaired of ever learning all there was to know. Just when she thought she'd done so, Wanderer or Sunrise or Takes Down The Lodge would spring something new on her. And she would feel like an ignorant child again. Wanderer went on talking in his low teaching voice.

  "Be very careful of the water, especially for your ponies. Always drink from a spring when possible. The rivers are safest when the water's low. When it's high it leaches the mineral salts from the banks, and it's worse. Don't even let a horse graze near an alkali river. Floodwater leaves deposits on the grass that can make him sick."

  "How do I know if a pony's been poisoned by it?"

  "His stomach and chest will swell. And he'll cough. If it's allowed to go uncured, it'll destroy his lungs."

  "How can it be cured?"

  "If you catch it early enough, you can pour grease down his throat." Wanderer swung a leg over and sat on Night's back as though on a log, with both feet swinging free. "Enough lessons. I'll race you to the next ravine. It's about three miles straight ahead."

  "How do you know there's a ravine three miles ahead?" Naduah was a little exasperated with him. How could anyone know where they were on this featureless plain?

  "You'll know in time too. There's a spring there where we can fill our canteens and water paunches."

  "A race with Night is no contest. Even for Wind."

  "I'll ride backwards."

  "You could ride standing on your head. It wouldn't make any difference to Night."

  "Mea-dro, let's go!" He swung the other leg over and sat facing her as Night surged forward. He made hideous faces at her, and she returned them. Unable to resist the challenge, she kicked Wind's sides and raced after him.

  For four leisurely days, the party traveled across the plain. They headed north and west into the sun. They took their time, stopping to chase buffalo or pronghorn, otherwise riding slowly so Naduah's dog could keep up. Dog was growing old, and sometimes rode on a travois, her nose on her paws, her liquid brown eyes staring serenely off into space. But she still chased anything that ran, her legs trembling with fatigue when she returned to them.

  The party spent the hottest part of each afternoon lying under small shelters of hides or brush, or in the wispy shade of stunted willows at the bottom of a ravine. One day, they found a clear spring gushing gallons of water from the bottom of a shallow, brush-choked canyon. As they lay around the spring lapping the cold water, Naduah sneaked up on Wanderer and poured a canteen full of it on his bare back. He leaped to his feet with a yelp, scooping up water in his cupped hands and spraying her face with it. Star Name came to her defense, and the war was on. They threw water until they were all soaked. All but Lance. He hunkered at the rim of the ravine and smiled down on them, like a fond parent on his mischievous children.

  But as they rode on and on across the flat plain, Naduah began to feel restless. Or maybe she was nervous, although she refused to admit she was afraid. They must be close to Wanderer's band by now. He had collected piles of green brush at the last waterhole and tied them onto two of the extra mules. He was planning to make a signal fire. And when they finally entered Iron Shirt's camp, what would she do? How would she be received? A white-eyes woman. Wanderer had told her of his mother's death two years ago. His sister had married and moved to another band. Now there was only his father.

  "Will we find Iron Shirt's band soon?"

  "Yes."

  "What's he like?"

  "Who?"

  "You know who, Wanderer. Don't play with me."

  "There's no reason for you to worry, golden one."

  "I just want to know what to expect. What kind of man is your father?"

  Wanderer rode silently beside her. The silence seemed to stretch and distort time, like the dancing mirages that shimmered constantly on the horizon.

  "He's a great warrior," he said finally.

  "So I've heard. What else?"

  "What else is there?"

  "There are other things about a man besides his ability in war."

  "I suppose. But that's the only thing that counts."

  Naduah tried another tack. "Is he kind?"

  "Kind? I don't know. He has great power. His breath is magic. It makes arrows fall harmlessly around him, like the gnats you slap away. He has a shirt of metal that keeps bullets from touching him. He has more coups than six average men put together. I never thought about whether or not he was kind."

  It was hopeless. Wanderer could see everything clearly, except his own father. Or maybe he didn't want to tell her. It would be like him to make her meet Iron Shirt knowing nothing about him but what was common knowledge. The stories were told around the fires of even her own band, far to the south. She would have to meet Iron Shirt and form her own opinions of him.


  Late in the afternoon, Wanderer called another halt.

  "There will be a celebration tonight," he said. "If you want to dress for it, now is a good time."

  Using their ponies as screens, they each searched through then-packs for their best clothes. Naduah and Star Name drew their horses close so they could dress together. Their new ponchos and skirts had been community projects. Takes Down The Lodge, Black Bird, Medicine Woman, Something Good, and even Blocks The Sun had helped with them.

  "We can't send you to the Quohadi looking like miserable Tonkawa," Medicine Woman said. She muttered it through the sinew thread she was softening in her mouth. She was splitting more of it by the feel of it under her deft fingers.

  Naduah pulled the clothes from their special rawhide case and held them a moment, remembering the afternoons spent with the women as they helped make them. Then she shook them gently to straighten the long, thick fringes. The bells on them tinkled. She dressed carefully, nervously, tying the new leggings to the thong around her waist and fastening the skirt over that. She pulled the poncho over her head, the horizontal slit in it forming a high, straight neckline. Finally she put on her soft, heavily beaded moccasins, lacing them up to mid-calf and letting the fringed tops fold down into a cuff.

  Star Name was humming to herself as she dressed. As usual, she didn't seem to have a care in the world. But then, her father-in-law wasn't Iron Shirt.

  "Sit on the edge of the travois and I'll do your hair." Star Name had finished and stood with her brush in her hand. She liked to play with Naduah's waist-length golden mane, and brushed it for her often.

  "All right. And I'll paint your face for you."

  "Be sure you make the lines neat," said Star Name.

  "What makes you think I won't?"

  "Your hands are shaking."

  Naduah fumbled with her round silver mirror, the one Wanderer had given her the day he had brought one hundred horses to Sunrise.

  She could hear her heart pounding in her chest, and rested her hand lightly there to still it. Then she walked over to help Wanderer finish braiding his hair and wrapping the braids with the otter fur that made him a swift runner.

  "You're even slower than I am, Husband. You're not nervous, are you?"

  "Of course not."

  But never had she seen him take such care with his appearance. For the wolf's rings around his eyes he was using his best paint, pure graphite from the Chisos Mountains four hundred miles to the south, rather than charcoal. He painted the circles painstakingly, dipping his fingers into bear grease and then into the black powder. The eagle feathers that marked his most important coups were reinforced with thin wooden sticks and fastened to his scalplock. Under them hung a vertical row of five polished silver disks on a thong. He wore a necklace of claws taken from the bear he had killed when he was fifteen. They were strung on a strip of otter skin, with the otter's bushy tail hanging down his back.

  What pleased her most was the fringed hunting shirt she had made him that summer. It was well made, and she knew it. And she also knew that no other man would look as good in it. That made her hours of work worthwhile.

  Finally he was ready, and he looked at her almost shyly for just a moment, as though asking for her approval. She smiled it. He was magnificent.

  It was late afternoon when the canyon yawned suddenly in front of them. From a mile away she would never have guessed it was there. Wanderer halted at the edge of it to build a fire and lay on the green branches that would make the column of black smoke that said "Attention." Behind them the plain lay as flat as the surface of a yellow pond. Six hundred feet below them was the bottom of Palo Duro canyon.

  The canyon was a fairyland of twisting valleys, dark green cedars, and sand-blasted sculptures in shades of pink and red, beige and orange. Water and wind had eroded the sandstone into weird shapes and figures. Bluffs had been terraced until they looked like the flounces of a Spanish dancer's skirts. The canyon was huge, one hundred and twenty miles long and twenty miles wide in places.

  To the west, the sun was setting. Enormous piles of cottony cumulus clouds seemed to rest on an invisible shelf in a bright turquoise sky. The clouds were turning pink and gold on their undersides. The stripes deepened to lavender while Naduah watched, and then to a rich rose color, like the heart of a cactus flower. The reddish-purple spread upward until the whole mountain of cloud seemed to glow with it.

  Patches of cloud tore off and floated free in the blue ocean around them. Shafts of golden sunlight poured in rivers and waterfalls through holes in the clouds. Outlined against the darkening sky, Naduah watched it in silence. She wanted to sit there on Wind forever. To halt time and keep the sunset from fading. She wanted to postpone the ride down the canyon's face and into the strange camp.

  Below, on the canyon floor, Naduah could make out miniature smoke-yellowed lodges spread among the trees. Hundreds of spirals of slate-blue smoke from the evening cooking fires curled upward and shredded in the eddies of wind frisking between the cliffs. Now and then she could hear the bark of a dog, or the bray of a disgruntled mule, the laughter of children and the voice of a mother calling her family to eat. The sounds drifted up lightly, as disembodied as the smoke. And with them Naduah's worries seemed to lighten and dissipate.

  I am Nerm. One of the People. Those camped below might be Quohadi, the fiercest of the nation's bands, but they were the People. And she was one of them. Resolutely she followed Wanderer over the cliff's edge and down the narrow path. The rest of the group came after them, with Lance bringing up the rear.

  The trail was long and tortuous and the day was fading. But the full harvest moon rose early over the rim of the canyon wall, and flooded it with pearly light. From the village they could hear the sounds of singing and drums, signaling their arrival. As they rode among the first bright lodges, they were engulfed by a swirl of happy people. Naduah could hear Iron Shirt shouting in the distance before she ever saw him.

  "Where is she? Where's the woman who stole my son? The women of the Quohadi must not be good enough for him."

  She sat quietly on Wind, waiting for her father-in-law. She held her chin high and stared levelly ahead. If Wanderer was magnificent, Naduah was a good match for him. At seventeen she was as tall as she would ever be, taller than any of the other women. Her long blond hair, bleached almost platinum, hung in thick braids that reached her waist. They lay along the curve of her large, firm breasts, then swung freely. White-gold tendrils escaped from the braids and blew around her face. She was tanned to a brown the color of rich, golden honey. Her features were even, but her mouth was wide and full over a strong, stubborn chin.

  At her waist the curve of her ribs flashed a paler color of honey with cream. Her long legs gripped Wind's sides, and her hips rode lightly in the saddle. She had a body that demanded to be touched, to be stroked. But it was her eyes that always made people turn to look at her again. They were sapphire, with inner adamantine sparks.

  "Where is she?" Iron Shirt called again. There was a shifting in the crowd, and an opening formed. Iron Shirt strode through it with the rolling gait somewhere between a yaw and a swagger that most of the older men had. He had spent most of his fifty years on horseback, and his legs had accommodated themselves to it. There were a few streaks of gray in his coal-black hair. A small, hard paunch was forming over his breechclout belt, as though he had swallowed an oak bole.

  He was shorter than his only son, and broader across the chest and shoulders. But Wanderer was in his piercing black eyes, the straight nose, and the arched lips. He scowled ferociously as he paced around the pair of them, inspecting them from all angles. I'm used to this, thought Naduah. Maybe this is where Wanderer learned the habit. Wanderer's leg brushed hers, as though by accident, before he swung down from Night. Naduah dismounted also. Iron Shirt stood in front of her, his hands balled into fists and digging into his hips.

  "You're the woman my son has been addled over for the past three years." It wasn't a questio
n.

  "I'm Naduah. And Wanderer isn't addled."

  "Who killed the mountain lion?"

  Naduah was startled. She'd forgotten the hide that still lay across Wind's hindquarters. She glanced at Wanderer to see if he would answer. He stood silent, watching her and his father with the old amused look on his face.

  "We did. Wanderer and I."

  The creases in the older man's face aligned themselves into a smile.

  "You did? You and Wanderer?"

  Naduah translated the smile as disbelief. "I wouldn't say I had if I hadn't."

  The words sounded harsh to her own ears. Two minutes in camp and she was fighting with her father-in-law, a legendary chief. But Iron Shirt didn't seem to mind. He grabbed her in a crushing bear hug, giving her a warrior's embrace. With one arm around her shoulder, he beckoned everyone closer.

  "This is my new daughter, Naduah," he bellowed. "My son has chosen well." He turned to grin at her. "He's chosen very well indeed, Are you sure you wouldn't prefer an older man?"

  Nadua smiled back.

  "I like the one I have."

  "Did you make his shirt?"

  "Yes." Naduah had the disorienting feeling that Iron Shirt was carrying on several trains of thought at the same time.

  "Would you make one for me? None of my women can sew that well. But don't tell them I said so." He didn't wait for her to answer. As they all walked toward the dancing area, he grabbed Wanderer's upper arm and shook it, like a dog worrying a bone.

  "No wonder you were restless and heading south at every excuse. I have a new wife too. She's younger than yours. Introduce me to the rest of your group."

  Star Name caught up with Naduah as Iron Shirt was leading Wanderer off, already firing questions at him about the Penateka and the situation in the south.

  "I hope you don't get too bruised," Star Name said in a low voice.

  "What do you mean?"

  "When they fight and you try to stop them."

  "Grown men don't fight."

  "You're right. Wanderer will probably just kill him."

  "I doubt it. But now I know why he left our packs near the edge of camp, away from his father's lodges."