"Hark," Neighbors joined in, cupping his hand to his ear as though to hear better. "The awful melody of a sonorous gong. The mournful howl of a hungry wolf, fading into the gobble of a lovesick turkey."
"Hard to believe that dried-up old man is a ferocious, brutal Comanche chief," said Marcy.
"They're surprising people, the Comanches," said Neighbors. "I met with Old Owl and Santa Ana and Pahayuca. Even that scalawag Buffalo Hump was there, a couple of months ago."
Ford smiled to himself, thinking of Buffalo Hump's real name and of how he and Wallace and Ben McCulloch had rechristened him almost ten years before. Neighbors went on with his story.
"That's when I got them to agree to help us scout the trail and to leave the wagon trains alone. They were a very jovial set. We spent the evening eating and smoking and talking about war and horses and women. I found myself, in the end, upon a good understanding with them."
"Are you on a good enough understanding with Old Owl to ask him to shut up before I pin his ears to the wagon bed and force-feed him his own vocal cords?"
"Ford, since you've gotten religion you've lost your sense of humor," said Marcy mildly.
"It's teetotalling that has him out of sorts," said Neighbors. "Rip's always had religion. You obviously never heard his famous Sunday School lesson about the prophet Jeremiah."
Marcy shook his head in a cloud of cigarette smoke, and the Major continued.
"According to Ford, here, the man's name was just plain Jerry. Then one day his stubborn old mule bucked him off into the slimy black mud of a swamp. Well, he came a-staggering back into town all covered with black goo. And the folks dubbed him Jerry-mire. Called him that ever after."
"That's not true." Marcy laughed so hard he choked on his cigarette smoke. "Ford, you didn't teach that in Sunday school!"
John Ford looked solemn and placed his hand on his tattered bible. His pale blue eyes, high forehead, and arched Roman nose gave him a patrician look.
"Yes, I did."
Marcy laughed, and then turned when he felt a warm weight on his shoulder. Reflexively, Ford's hand went to his waist where his pistols were stuck into the waist of his pantaloons. Behind Marcy stood a hulking Comanche with a good-natured grin on his affable face.
"It's all right, Rip," muttered Neighbors. "It's just Sanaco."
The Comanche held his broad palm up in the sign of peace, and Marcy stood to face him. Sanaco executed a rather snappy salute, which Marcy returned, as much from reflex as anything else.
"Sanaco," the man said pointing to his broad chest and tapping his grimy fingernail on the crescent-shaped, silver gorget that dangled there.
"Marcy," answered the Colonel, clicking his brass coat button. Suddenly the Comanche lunged forward and enveloped him in a smelly hug, almost smothering him with the odor of bear grease and sweat and the dung he had rubbed in his hair for this special occasion. Sanaco had seen Marcy holding sway in his camp chair and had assumed he was a plenipotentary of some sort.
"Amigo," he said, pointing first to himself and then to Marcy. "Nermenuh, amigos, tabbay-boh, soldiers. The People are friends of the white soldiers."
"And we are friends of the People."
Sanaco beckoned to Marcy to step closer to the light. He tugged his arm gently with one hand, and with the other pulled a filthy, tattered piece of paper from somewhere within the fringes and folds of his hunting shirt. Ford was nervous, and by now his hand was resting firmly on his pistol. He had spent too many years tracking Comanche to trust them. Marcy squinted at the faded, smudged writing on the paper, being careful to keep out of line of Ford's fire, should it come.
"Major, would you bring me a light?"
Neighbors brought a burning branch from the fire and held it so Marcy could read. Sanaco peered over his shoulder, a worried expression on his face.
"Is it a testimonial?" asked Neighbors. "Many of the Penatekas carry them to gain safe passage through the territory."
"Looks like it." Marcy chuckled softly. Sanaco's worried expression deepened.
"Him no good?"
"Not as good as it could be, chief. Listen." He read aloud to his two friends. "The bearer of this says he is a Comanche chief named Sanaco; that he is the biggest Indian and the best friend the whites ever had, in fact, that he is a first-rate fellow; but I believe he is a damned rascal, so look out for him."
Marcy folded the paper and handed it back to Sanaco, who looked crestfallen. He crumpled the paper, then threw it into the fife. He turned to Marcy, and slowly and somberly he shook hands three times. Then, gazing at him with a steady, sincere expression, he locked right elbows with him and pressed both their arms to his side. He did the same with his left arm, repeating, "Bueno, mucho bueno," the whole time. He melted back into the night, leaving the three men laughing and shaking their heads.
Pahayuca was the last of the Penateka leaders to arrive. When he did they all were ready to meet with Marcy and Neighbors to discuss details. They would talk about the possible routes, the meals and the presents they would receive in payment for their services as guides. The Delaware scout Jim Shaw was there to translate.
The Penateka leaders filed solemnly around the fire, circling it from left to right in their traditional way. Each of them was dressed in his finest clothes, in honor of the occasion. Sanaco had spent two hours that afternoon in front of his mirror. He had plucked every hair from his face and body. When they were finally seated and the opening ceremonies observed Old Owl's friend Santa Ana stood to speak. With his robe draped togalike around him and his classic profile, he reminded John Ford of a Roman addressing the senate. His big, good-natured face echoed the sincerity of his words.
He began by telling the white men how the People had come to this land in the beginning. And of how good the land had been to them. He gave a detailed account of their life-style and roamings, their wars and triumphs over the past few hundred years. He assured them that his people could lead their white brothers over every rise and through every arroyo of the territory around them. After an hour, he finished with a flourish. Placing his hand over his heart, he pledged his undying love for the white men. "There is no need," he said, "to station soldiers on the People's land. There will be no war with the United States. I am not a Comanche, but an American."
Marcy took the pipe next, drew a puff on it, and rose to speak.
"We know of your love for us, and we return it. I myself am not really an American, but a full-blooded, true-blue, one hundred percent, dyed-in-the-wool Comanche."
"Dyed in the wool?" Shaw looked at Marcy, unable to translate.
"Don't worry about it, Jim. The soldiers are stationed here for your protection, jefe. They are to make sure that bad white men don't take advantage of you." When Marcy finished, Old Owl spoke.
"You tell us that the troops are placed here for our protection. That I know is not so." He turned to Agent Neighbors. "When you set the line for us a year ago, you said we could go south of it to hunt if we wished. That I only had to ask the captain at the fort for permission. I wanted to go south to hunt with a party of eight old men and their women and children. I applied for permission, and the captain denied it.
"I told him that I had no warriors with me, only my friends, the old men. That we needed the meat for our families. But still he refused. I told him that I was an old man. And that I had hunted on these prairies before he was born, before any white men came. It made no difference. Now you want us to help you make a road for more white men. And how will we be treated when they come?" Old Owl had apparently been thinking about the project a great deal since he had agreed to it. Damn that officer, anyway, Neighbors thought. He rose to assure the chief.
"The road we will mark will lead people through your lands. They will not stay here. They are passing through to the other side to dig for the yellow metal that white men hold as sacred medicine." Old Owl should be able to understand that. The crafty old goat had asked for his pay in coins. He must be planning another trip eas
t. And he knew he couldn't buy passage on a steamship with horses and mules.
"I promise you. Chief," Neighbors held up his hand to give weight to his words. "The people who will use this road will mean no harm to you. They will not be Texans. They will pass through and you will see them no more. They will be as the wind that blows through your villages on its way to the ends of the world."
Robert S. Neighbors was a good and honest man, a friend of the Indians. He believed that he told them the truth.
CHAPTER 44
Cub sat next to his grandfather's bed. He had renamed himself Esa Nahubiya, Echo Of A Wolf's Howl when he returned from his vision quest, but Old Owl continued to call him Cub. Now the boy sat with his head in his hands, his fingers pressed against his temples to relieve the throbbing there. His head ached from days of crying and nights without sleep. He had sent the medicine man away the day before, when it was obvious to everyone that the medicine was doing no good. Cub had known it wouldn't when his grandfather had shown the first symptoms. He had recognized the sickness as cholera. That morning Old Owl had chanted his song welcoming death, and he now lay waiting for it to visit him.
Why did you escort the wagon trains. Grandfather? I tried to warn you, but you're a stubborn old man. Once Old Owl had decided to walk the white man's road, and when he had seen what lay along it to the east, he sought more contact with them. You were, looking for coffee, weren't you? And the baubles that the white men buy cheap and sell dear. Buy cheap and sell dear. How much coffee is a life worth? Four thousand gold seekers had passed along Old Owl's road that summer, and Old Owl was a familiar figure along it. He was the welcoming committee and the escort.
On the other side of the fire Cub's great-aunt, Prairie Dog, had fallen asleep. She was nodding over the broth she was making in a futile gesture for her husband. Suddenly a wail rose from the lodge next door, a ululating cry that pricked Cub's skin. It was the voice of Wild Sage, Santa Ana's wife. Santa Ana must be dead of the cholera. Cub could no longer even feel grief for his grandfather's old companion. But the sound awoke Prairie Dog, and she stood wearily, moaning and sobbing. Pulling her robe over her head, she went to comfort her friend.
"Cub." The boy leaned down, putting his ear to his grandfather's blue-tinged lips. "Santa Ana?" The old man panted with the effort of speaking.
"Yes, Grandfather. He's dead."
"My bag."
Cub knew he could only mean one bag. He took the large, fringed medicine pouch from its peg.
"Yours, my son." Old Owl's cheeks were sunken by dehydration and starvation until the bones of his skull were clearly outlined. The bluish skin stretched across the bones seemed transparent. His eyes were closed, the chalky lids threaded with delicate violet veins. His dry tongue was too swollen to fit in his mouth, and protruded slightly.
Cub took one of his skeletal hands and rubbed it gently, trying to give some warmth to the clammy skin. He had to search for the pulse in the emaciated wrist. He almost panicked, thinking Old Owl had died. Then he felt the heart's faint flutter.
There was a horrible odor in the lodge, intensified by the summer heat. Cub and Prairie Dog had cleaned him thoroughly after each siege of watery diarrhea and vomiting, but the smell permeated everything. Now Old Owl had nothing left to vomit. He jerked, seized with violent, painful cramps in his stringy muscles. As the dehydration drained him of life, he sank deeper into the torpor of shock.
"Water." Cub was ready and poured a trickle of it between the shriveled lips. Then he sprinkled some onto the palm of his hand and washed his grandfather's face and chest with it.
"Bag,"
"I brought you the medicine bag."
"Bag."
Cub held up one bag after another while Old Owl forced his eyes to stay open. He shook his head slightly each time. Finally Cub had shown him all of them.
"Bag."
"Where?"
"Bed."
Cub got on his hands and knees and searched under the tumble of boxes against the wall, next to his own sleeping area. He found a heavy leather bag hidden there. It was undecorated, but it clinked as it bumped into the other boxes and bundles.
"Yours."
Cub untied the thongs wrapped around the neck of it and peered inside. The bag held a large pile of gold coins, the hoard that Old Owl had been saving for three years. They were the coins he had gotten from the young men when they came back from raids. He had convinced them that they were useless, and offered to dispose of them.
"Yours," he repeated. And with something that was almost a smile on his face, the old man relaxed. "Love you, Cub," he whispered. "Proud."
"I love you too, Grandfather."
Old Owl jerked once more and lay still, his face somehow peaceful, released from his body's agony. Cub placed his hand on the cold, bony chest, searching frantically for a heartbeat. He knew his grandfather must die, but he wasn't ready for it. He would never be ready for it. With both his hands flat on Old Owl's chest, Cub tilted his head back and howled. It was an animal sound, as devoid of human reason as the howl of his new namesake, the wolf.
Perhaps that was what the wolf was trying to tell him when its howl echoed through the hills and Cub saw his vision. Brother Wolf saw the future and tried to warn him. And Cub had ignored the warning. He should have prevented his grandfather from helping the whites. He should have stopped him the way Old Owl had once refused to let him go on a raid with his father, over ten years ago.
By now the noise in the village was deafening. The mourning for the two leaders crescendoed with Cub's howls. Finally Cub shook his head and looked around him, as though waking from a nightmare and finding reality much worse. He pulled the buffalo robe over Old Owl's face and went to help Prairie Dog, the woman he called Grandmother.
It was strangely quiet inside Santa Ana's lodge. Cub peered in, squinting as his eyes adjusted to the dim light. There, in an expanding pool of her own blood, lay Prairie Dog. She had opened her throat with her skinning knife. The slash gaped like a grinning second mouth. Wild Sage lay next to her. He felt for her heartbeat and found it. His hand came away bloody from the deep gashes on her bared, pendulous breasts. She had fainted from exhaustion, hysteria, and the loss of blood.
Cub pulled the blanket over Santa Ana's face. The skin hung in folds from his large frame. His shrunken cheeks were a mockery of the robust man he had been. Women began rushing into the tent, screaming and tearing at their hair and clothes. Cub left Wild Sage to them. He scooped his grandmother up easily and carried her back to his grandfather's lodge. She had grown frail, resembling her husband more each year. He picked his way through Old Owl's friends, huddled and sobbing under their robes. The crowd was growing as the villagers converged like wailing sleepwalkers on the smoking lodge of their leader.
When he had laid his grandmother gently next to her husband, he carried out the few things that he had to have, and those his grandfather had given him. Then he went back inside and, sitting crosslegged in front of the bodies, he lit Old Owl's ceremonial pipe. He blew the smoke toward the hole in the top of the lodge, sending a prayer for the old couple's souls after it. No one entered the lodge. It was as though they all recognized the special relationship Cub had had with his great-uncle, and they felt he should be alone.
At last Cub took a burning branch from the fire and set the things in the lodge alight. While the (lames slowly caught, he went outside and hacked a huge armful of brush to pile on them. He heaped more and more branches until the heat was too intense to approach, and sparks were showering from the smoke hole. He chanted a death song and prayer while the lodge burned.
As he watched the hide covering buckle and shrivel, consumed from within, he thought bitterly that he couldn't even give Old Owl and Prairie Dog a proper burial. He couldn't bathe them or paint their faces red, or seal their eyes with red clay. There would be no wake for the bodies, dressed in finery and laid out on blankets for all to pay respects. Nor could they be carried through the village on the backs of fine horses
. He couldn't even cut his hair to show his grief. The white people had already shorn him.
Old Owl and Prairie Dog would have to be buried in a cleansing fire that would help prevent the disease from spreading. He had his hand in the bag of coins, ready to throw them into the blaze and let it melt them. But he stayed his hand. His grandfather had insisted he take them. He'd find a use for them.
When the lodge was a ring of charred ruins, Cub headed for the horse pasture. Already there was chaos in the village as terrified families tore down their lodges and fled. They fled in disorder, and in all directions. They scattered to seek sanctuary with friends and relatives in other bands. And they carried the disease with them.
Cub methodically shot all his grandfather's ponies, except
Eagle Feather and one packhorse. Old Owl had a herd of five hundred animals, and it took Cub all afternoon and all his carefully hoarded ammunition. The horses' screams and the sound of his rifle could be heard over the din from the camp. Then he returned to Old Owl's lodge to gather his grandparents' bones. They were still warm, and charred black. He squatted in the ashes and sifted through them for the bones. He shook them before putting them in a large leather bag he had saved for the purpose. Cub packed the spare pony and mounted Eagle Feather. He rode slowly, one last time, through the camp. There were gaping spaces left by the families who had run away. Those who remained seemed insane with grief. It was a scene from Uncle James' hell.
For the first time in his life, Cub felt totally alone. Even when he had been imprisoned with his white relatives he had known that Old Owl was here and that he would one day see him again. Old Owl had been a fixed part of his life, like the North Star even when obscured by clouds. And now he was gone.
With tears coursing down his cheeks. Cub left the village. As he rode, another horse ghosted from the bushes to join him, its rider shrouded. When she pulled the robe back, Cub saw that it was Small Hand.
"Small Hand, go back."
"I'm going with you."