Ride the Wind

  "They made me desecrate our Mother, the Earth. When I go to Medicine Mounds for my vision quest, I'll seek forgiveness. I'll do whatever I have to do to be one of the People again."

  "You're still one of the People, but you'll have to prove yourself a warrior. Just like every other young man."

  "I know. And I've lost so much time."

  "That never stopped you before."

  "I've tried to keep in practice, but it's been difficult. Your pipe, for instance. My uncle calls holy tobacco the devil's weed. He won't allow it in his lodge. And I didn't see a bow or arrow for five years.

  "For five years I've felt as though I were breathing and smelling and seeing through a heavy layer of dust. Their life chokes me, smothers me. I won't ever go back. I'm big enough to fight them this time."

  Cub brooded, his hair gleaming, tipped with points of flame in the fire's light. He had stripped down to his heavy, soft woolen homespun pantaloons. And he had cut the seat out of them, so he'd be more comfortable riding. He had discarded his shoes, preferring to enter camp barefoot. His chest and shoulders and back were pale. The deep tan of his arms and neck stopped in a ring where his collar and rolled-up shirtsleeves had been.

  "I didn't see my father's lodge when I came through the village."

  "Arrow Point left. He's gone to live with the Quohadi. It seems so natural to have you back, I forget how long you've been gone. There's so much you don't know. Your sister married Wanderer. They have a son. I suppose he must be almost three years old now. The seasons rush by as you get older, Cub. And for me they're starting to stampede like a herd of buffalo."

  "I heard about my sister's marriage from a man who tried to ransom her. He lives near my white uncle."

  "Many of the young men have taken their families to live with Wanderer and his band. They're called Noconi. Your old friend, Upstream, is there. He's called Wolf Road now. The northern bands roam and raid and cause trouble for us all."

  "Then you don't approve of them?"

  "Approve? Who am I to approve or disapprove? They do what they have to do. I understand how they feel. But we of the Penateka often pay for their raids. Our bands are large, although not half as large as they once were. Our lands are shrinking, like leaves in the hot sun. Each season they shrivel and grow more barren of game. Other tribes are being crowded into our hunting grounds, and we war with them constantly.

  "And we have become used to the white traders' goods. Our children cry for sugar and our women want the bright dyes and cloths. We can no longer avoid the white men. And they are too powerful to defeat. The young men don't know that, but I do. I have seen their cities and their numbers and their medicine." Old Owl's sight might be failing, but his vision of the future was terribly clear. It kept him awake at night.

  "Wanderer's band is small," he continued. "They move constantly. They refuse all contact with the whites. No one can catch them. Most of the time even we don't know where they are. And to the white people we are all the same. They punish us for the raids of others, even though we try to follow the white man's road." Old Owl yawned again.

  "You're tired, Grandfather. We can talk tomorrow. We have a lot of time to talk."

  "All right, my son. Sleep here with me." Old Owl began rummaging through his belongings for extra buffalo robes. He threw them over his shoulder and onto the ground for Cub to make a bed of. "My other lodge is full of women and children. I sleep here most of the time for peace. Where are the presents you brought?"

  "I left them piled outside." Cub knew they'd be safe there.

  "Did you bring any of the round yellow disks white men use to buy things?"

  "No."

  "Too bad. Don't tell anyone, but I'm saving them to pay for another trip to Wah-sin-tone."

  Cub smothered the fire, and the two of them slid into their robes.

  "Grandson, I'm glad you're back."

  "Not as glad as I am to be back, Grandfather." Cub paused, listening to the sound of insects, the howl of a distant coyote, a war pony's whicker, and a cough from a lodge nearby. "It's good to be home. I've missed you very much." He hadn't finished speaking before he heard his grandfather's deep breathing and a few light snores. He knew the snores would build in volume until they almost vibrated the taut hide wall next to his head.

  It didn't take Cub long to establish his reputation in the village again. He was bigger than everyone else. And although the men of the People made up in ferocity what they lacked in size. Cub was both big and ferocious. He had the graceful, catlike walk of a large, dangerous animal. He wore a neutral expression on his face, a look that didn't allow an opponent to guess what his reaction would be to attack or harassment. He had been fooling the white eyes for years, and he was a master at bluffing. Without a word being said, he was given a place in the life of the band and plenty of room when he walked down its streets.

  He wisely kept out of archery contests, but he could outshoot anyone with his rifle. He had had ammunition to practice with, while the men of Old Owl's band had none to spare. But most of the boys he had grown up with had gone on their vision quests and become braves. Some of them even counted coups and were warriors. He had already heard the story of Wolf Road's heroic ride during the raid on the wagon train the winter before. He knew he wouldn't feel like one of the People again until he had spoken with the spirits that would guide him through life.

  He was restless while he waited for his great aunt, Old Owl's wife, Prairie Dog, to make him a pair of leggings, a breechclout and moccasins. There were none in the village big enough to fit him. And he couldn't go to meet his spirits wearing white men's clothing.

  Cub lay awake one night, almost a week after he had backed Sanaco's horse into his grandfather's smoking lodge. On the other side of the tent Old Owl's snores had reached their maximum volume. But they weren't keeping Cub awake. His own thoughts were. He had to make his vision quest, and then count coup. To prove himself in battle. Until then his acceptance in the band was tenuous.

  There was a slight movement outside the lodge, and the hem of the wall was lifted. Cub felt for the large knife he always kept at the side of the bed. Someone the size of a large boy rolled under the edge. With one smooth motion she slid under the covers, leaving the robe she was wearing outside them.

  "Manita, Small Hand!" Cub was astonished. She had been staring at him for days, but he assumed she was laughing at him. He couldn't believe any woman would be interested in him with his ugly, hairy chest, his short, tousled blond hair, and the freckles spattered across his nose and cheeks. The girl laid her slender fingers against his mouth, silencing him. He put his lips to her ear.

  "It's all right," he whispered. "I could fire off a gun in here and Old Owl wouldn't hear it." He nibbled at her lobe, while he was in the neighborhood. Then, without thinking, he ran his tongue around the inside of her ear. She giggled, stifling the sound against his chest, sending chills through his body. He ran his hand hesitantly over her round, firm buttocks and up her soft, naked body, feeling the goose bumps his tongue had raised.

  Cub had never lain with a woman. His heart was pounding and when his tongue touched the roof of his mouth it was like licking a hot rock. He was grateful for the need to be quiet. He didn't trust himself to speak. He was more afraid of this small, pliant Mexican captive than the warriors he had faced down silently when he came here. He was used to fighting, ready for it and good at it. But this was different. Very different. He had missed more than target practice while he lived with the whites.

  Small Hand rolled on top of him and pressed sensuously against him, rotating her hips slightly, but urgently. She rubbed her cheek into the mat of hair on his chest, and he ran his hands all over her, stroking every slope and valley of her lithe young body. He felt his cock stir and swell, throbbing with pent-up pleasure against her hip. What would Uncle James and Elder Daniel say? He thought it with malicious glee before he lost himself completely in her.

  She turned onto her back and guided him, stroking his balls
with her fingers and firmly taking his cock, erect and hard now, in her hand. She spread her slender legs and pressed the head of it to her, easing it into the tight, slippery, wet hole. He whimpered as he felt her close snugly around him, felt the intense heat of her penetrate him, spreading through his groin. He was frustrated when he hit against a taut shield inside. He propped himself on his elbows to keep from smothering her with his weight. He looked down at her small, round face, and stroked her thick, wavy black hair.

  "Is this your first time, Small Hand?" he murmured.

  "Yes. The women told me it would hurt. I'm ready for it."

  "How old are you?"

  "I'm not sure. I was very young when I was captured. A baby. I've been with the People almost thirteen years. I'm old enough to bear children, though."

  "You're very beautiful"

  "So are you. Bear Cub. I heard you'd be leaving soon on your vision quest. I wanted to come to you before you left. Several of the young women teased about doing this themselves. They have never seen a man like you. You fascinate them. But I told them I'd cut off their noses if they even looked at you." She smiled wickedly up at him, and he lowered his face to kiss her gently on the lips. Her mouth was full and soft and for a second, yielding. Then she returned the kiss fiercely. They made love the rest of the night, to the serenade of Old Owl's snores. When Cub finally fell asleep, exhausted and happy, just before dawn, Small Hand slipped out and was gone.

  Cub awoke early that morning to a hand rocking his shoulder. His grandfather sat cross-legged next to him, shaking him. He held a neatly folded pair of leggings, a painted breechclout, and a pair of beaded moccasins in his lap.

  "Are you going to sleep all day?"

  Cub threw back the covers, and Old Owl wrinkled his mountainous nose.

  "Whew. What were you doing here last night?"

  Cub started to explain that it wasn't his fault, that he had been taken advantage of, but his grandfather held up a hand, palm outward and waved it from side to side. The stop signal in sign talk.

  "Never mind. I can tell. We'll have to burn sage in here before I can let anyone in. The smell of love is on everything. Somebody will think I've been entertaining women here. Santa Ana will never stop teasing me about it." Old Owl left the clothes for his grandson and bustled around. He piled green sage boughs on the fire and prepared meat for breakfast while the crackling fireworks from the green branches died down. As he scolded he kept his back turned so Cub wouldn't see him smiling.

  "You're about to start on your vision quest, the most important event in your life, and you're wasting your time with women."

  "The vision quest may be the most important event in my life, Grandfather, but now I know which event is the most fun." Cub yawned mightily and staggered to the fire. His legs felt a little wobbly. He sat with a thud, scratching his chest and looking very self-satisfied.

  "Smug pup. Foolishness! After we eat you can take a nap. Then we'll talk about your journey."

  Cub sat straighter, alert suddenly.

  "I'm not tired. I want to talk about it now, and start as soon as possible."

  "All right. Tell me what you're to do, my son."

  "I take only a few things with me—a buffalo robe, a pipe..."

  "I have a pipe for you."

  "Tobacco and a fire horn. I wear only a breechclout and moccasins. I stop four times on the journey to smoke and pray. I will stay on the south slope of Medicine Mounds so I can see the sun rise and set. I will eat nothing until I've had my vision."

  Old Owl gave Cub a small leather bag.

  "This is powdered willow bark. It's a very powerful purgative. It will clean you out and make you ready for your vision. And you'll ride Eagle Feather."

  "Eagle Feather's your favorite pony."

  "Take him. And take this too." The old man searched through the piles and bundles heaped around the side of the lodge. It was a lifetime's accumulation of things. He pulled out a battered rawhide tube and opened it reverently. The tube was more scarred than Cub remembered and it seemed smaller, but he recognized it instantly.

  "No, Grandfather. I can't take your sacred wolf skin."

  "It's time for you to have it. I promised it to you a long time ago. I don't need it anymore. And I'll give you one of my songs too. Listen carefully." Old Owl composed himself in front of the fire, facing east. He began to chant his favorite medicine song in a high, quavery, pinched voice. Cub listened intently, the wolf robe spread across his lap. He could almost feel the power seeping from it and into his legs. The hypnotic repetition of the song's words intensified the feeling. It was his grandfather's holiest chant.

  That afternoon, when Cub had hung the few things he was taking with him onto the surcingle, Old Owl embraced him. Cub was always surprised at how much power was contained in his grandfather's lean, bent frame. There were tears in Old Owl's eyes, and he wiped them on one corner of his filthy white vest, worn thread-thin now, and colorless with age. The white hairs on his head shone silvery in the bright sunlight. He looked old and fragile as Cub turned to wave his rifle at him in salute. He was taking the gun for food and for protection on the journey. It would be a longer trip than usual. Not everyone traveled all the way to Medicine Mounds to seek their vision.

  He had left the village and was on the trail to the river when a figure stepped from the bushes.

  "Bear Cub." Small Hand said it in a low voice. "I wanted to give you something to take with you." She held up a buffalo robe, straining under its weight. It was a large robe, five feet by seven feet. It was made of two separate pieces sewn down the center. A narrow line of red paint hid the stitching. It had a seal-brown coat of thick wool mixed with hair almost two feet long. It was warmer than four blankets.

  "May this keep you warm until you come back to me and I can do it instead."

  Cub rolled the robe into a tight cylinder and strapped it across his pony's back.

  "My heart is glad. Small Hand. When I lie under it at night, I'll think of your warmth. But my heart is gladdest for the gift you gave me last night." He leaned down from his pony to kiss her lightly on the mouth. Then he righted himself and rode off at a trot.

  In March of the next year, 1849, an army expedition left Torrey's trading post at the site of an old Waco village. The expedition's orders were to map a route for the emmigrants headed for the California gold fields. Its commander, Indian Agent Robert Neighbors, enlisted the aid of the Penateka to guide them. It was a peaceful expedition, and it was unmolested because of Neighbors' influence among the Comanche.

  In April the party bivouacked near one of the cold springs that gushed from a gravel bed to form a clear pool before joining a stream nearby. The high, rolling prairie along the Canadian was spectacular at any time of the year, but it was at its best in the springtime. A tall gallery of hardwoods towered over the camp. The air was crisp. Each star in the soaring sky looked as though it had been polished and set in place on black velvet.

  The horses and mules grazed on the thick, sweet rye. They had each cropped a neat circle, its radius the thirty feet of the tether line allowed them. If "Major" Neighbors was in charge of the party, Captain Randolph Marcy of the United States Army saw to its marching order and bivouack routine. He left nothing to chance. Each animal was double hobbled as well as picketed. Sidelines fastened their hind and fore feet on the same side. As added protection, the small A-shaped tents were set up neatly around the exposed side of the pasture. The pasture itself was in the wide curve left by the stream's meanderings. Attack from the water side was unlikely.

  Once Marcy had checked the mounted guards for the herd and the lookouts posted on the crest of a hill over camp, he was ready to relax. He unfolded his long camp chair with a clatter. It was an ingenious device of oak and canvas. He sank into it with a sigh, and rolled a cigarette.

  "That contraption looks like it's alive and about to swallow you, Randolph," said Neighbors.

  "Not at all. It's very comfortable. And after all, if you can't be
comfortable on these little jaunts, what's the use of coming?"

  "Seems to me if God had intended man to use a folding chair like that in the middle of the howling wilderness, he wouldn't have provided all these fine, soft rocks for us to sit on."

  "This is the life, isn't it, Major?" And Marcy blew a smoke ring. On the other side of the fire, John Ford was having a harder time relaxing.

  "How can a man concentrate with all that caterwauling going on?" He slammed the Bible closed so hard it blew out the candle by which he had been reading. Old Owl had been chanting his medicine songs for hours. Lying flat on his back, he sang to the huge, star-strewn sky. It was getting on Ford's nerves.

  "Don't get testy. Rip," said Marcy.

  "Actually, Rip, I prefer Old Owl's singing to your temperance lectures," added Neighbors.

  "Trouble with you is you don't drink enough," put in Marcy.

  "I don't drink at all, and you know it. Drink is the devil's crowbar, prying us off the straight and narrow." John Ford had recently joined the Temperance movement. It was one more thing to goad him about.

  "Now you've done it, Marcy. Don't get him started."

  "How'd you get your nickname, Rip?" Marcy changed the subject.

  "In Mexico, during the war. Just a year ago, actually. I was adjutant. It was my dolorous duty to write the families of the men killed in action. Of course, I ended each letter with R.I.P., Reseat In Pacem. Hence the name."

  "It's a good 'un." Neighbors twisted his bushy muttonchop whiskers around his fingers.

  Ford looked out into the darkness of the warm April night, toward the source of the chanting.

  "He stirs up recollections of boyhood, the chief does," Ford said. "The calling of hogs, the plaintive notes of a solitary bull frog, the bellowing of a small bull."