Buffalo Trail (13 page)

Since I left Glorious I have been in Texas and now Kansas still with hopes of getting to Californeya soon. Mister Leemond says that you have not married Joe Saint yet. This is very happy news for me. I still think of you all the time and am sorry for what I did to you back in Saint Louis. I want to come see you and tell you again that I love you and want to marry you. I am still trying to be a better man, the kind you dezerve. I will come as soon as I save enough money to take you to Californeya with me and your father also if he would like to come. I will take care of him and you there, I promise. You know I don't write nearly as well as I talk or read, if you marry me you could help me learn to write better. I would like that so much. You used to laugh at my poor spelling, and you are so pretty when you laugh.

I am coming to Mountain View no matter what and hope it will not be very long, by the end of fall maybe. I have a good job promised here and will save every pennie. I will come as soon as
I can. No matter how long it takes I will come, don't marry Joe Saint until I can talk to you again face to face. It's not that I hate Joe but I love you and can make you happier than he can. Don't say no right away, wait and see me first. Meantime if you want to write to me you can, care of Hanrahan and Waters, Dodge City Kansas. Pleaze dont tell that to anyone else. I dont want Killer Boots to find out, though I hope he isnt after me all the time anymore and I think we would be safe now in Californeya. Well I guess you can tell Joe Saint, you are truthfull and may want him to know that I am coming. But if you do I hope you tell him to keep where I am secret to.

I love you

Cash McLendon

The next morning, McLendon took the letter to A. C. Myers's Pioneer Store. He bought and addressed an envelope to Miss Gabrielle Tirrito in care of the White Horse Hotel, Mountain View, Arizona Territory, then sealed the letter in it and gave the envelope to a store clerk who served as the town postmaster. He paid three cents postage, plus another dime in return for the clerk's promise to personally see that the letter went out on the noon train. It would take at least two weeks to reach Gabrielle, the clerk noted, but in McLendon's quest to win her back, every hour counted. Then McLendon sat on the windswept Dodge City sidewalk, leaning back against the wood frame wall of the store, trying to calculate how many months it would take before he saved enough to go to Gabrielle in Mountain View. Even if he ate only one meal a day, he couldn't see any way to do it in less than ten.

T
he main Kiowa camp was north of the Quahadi village, high up in what the whites called the Texas Panhandle. As they rode there, Quanah cautioned Isatai about Kiowa customs.

“They have a chief, Lone Wolf, who leads them, and also a medicine man they believe has great power to prophesy. We, of course, are of the People and in all things know better than they do, but we must appear respectful.”

“Their medicine man is a fool,” Isatai scoffed. “I hear that he claims to talk to animals both living and dead. That's how he says he gets messages. Buffalo Hump says that this Kiowa faker should tremble before me.”

“I'm sure Buffalo Hump is wiser than that,” Quanah said. “He knows we need the Kiowa to cooperate with his great plan to drive away the whites.”

Isatai's eyes narrowed. “Remember that Buffalo Hump speaks through me, not you. Don't presume to tell me what he knows.”

“You're right, of course,” Quanah said. He had resigned himself to Isatai's pomposity. “But when we reach the Kiowa camp, perhaps it would be best for you to stand quietly and impress them with the power
of the spirits. I'll explain everything to Lone Wolf. If you talk much, they might be so afraid of Buffalo Hump—and, of course, of you—that their ears would not listen properly.”

Isatai grunted in agreement. “But I'll correct you if you say anything wrong.”

There was birdsong; the end of winter had arrived. It was still quite cool in the mornings and evenings, but in early afternoon Quanah and Isatai felt comfortable in shirts without blankets or fur robes wrapped around their shoulders. Some green shoots had popped out in valleys and along the tops of rolling hills. A few rabbits skittered in the brush, but no snakes slithered there. It was still too chilly for them to emerge from their snug winter holes.

As Quanah and Isatai approached the Kiowa village, they heard laughter and singing. Everyone was outside enjoying the weak sunshine.

Isatai sniffed the air. “They're roasting meat, probably deer, since it's still too early for the buffalo. I hope that they invite us to eat with them.”

The Kiowa camp was much more colorful than the Quahadi's. The people living there wore breechclouts and dresses dyed rich browns and crimson with berry juice. Their buffalo-hide tipis were decorated with many designs rendered in yellows and blues. Besides the usual clays and berry juices, the ingredients of their paint also included moss, pollen, and buffalo fat, all of which contributed brighter pigmentation. Kiowa men wore these same paints into battle. Warriors among the People would have considered such garishness weak and effeminate, but the Kiowa did not.

It was easy for visitors to identify the dwelling of the chief, whose tipi was adorned with the most pictures of all. Quanah and Isatai rode straight to it. They dismounted and handed their horses over to an old woman who led the animals off to graze. Lone Wolf emerged from his
tipi. He was impressive looking, like many Kiowa men taller than the average warrior among the People, but still a bit shorter than Quanah. His hair was cut in the traditional Kiowa manner, short on the right side to display bone pendants dangling from his ear, and long on the left side. The long hair was twisted into an intricate braid.

“We welcome our visitors,” he said courteously. “Come in and smoke.” Quanah followed him into the tent, taking care to let Isatai enter first. The portly Spirit Messenger glanced around the interior, taking in the thick robes arranged around a low fire, and various weapons stacked against the sides of the tipi. War shields hung from loops on poles, and caches of dried food, some stored in captured white Army packs, were stacked off to one side. Isatai sniffed, dropped down cross-legged on the finest robe, closed his eyes, and hummed.

Quanah said quickly, “That's Isatai's way. He does that so he can hear the spirits.”

“He's making so much noise himself, I wonder that he can hear them at all,” Lone Wolf said. “Well, we've heard about his great magic. Such special people often have strange ways about them.” He sat on a robe opposite Isatai and gestured for Quanah to sit beside him. There was rustling outside, and two more men entered the tent.

“I've asked them to join us,” Lone Wolf said. He gestured toward a short man wearing a headdress and shirt decorated with owl feathers. “This is Mamanti, our medicine man.” Mamanti nodded to Quanah, then fixed his eyes on Isatai, who paid no attention to the newcomers. His eyes remained closed and he continued humming. Lone Wolf pointed to the other man and said, “This is Satanta,” and even though Quanah considered himself the greatest of all warriors, he was still impressed. Satanta was legendary; he'd fought the whites for many years, plaguing soldiers and settlers alike. He was also famous for his oratory,
and for the Army bugle he blew when leading his warriors in battle. The bugle notes often confused the white soldiers and contributed to Kiowa victories. For a while he'd made peace and tried to follow the white man's way, only to be betrayed and sent off to one of their prisons in Texas. Lone Wolf, leading a Kiowa delegation to meet with the Great Father Grant in Washington, promised to ask the rest of his people to lay down their weapons if Satanta was released. Of course, Lone Wolf meant only that they would stop fighting for a little while, though maybe Grant didn't understand that. Still, he let Satanta go.

“It's good to see you back in your own land,” Quanah said politely. He studied Satanta carefully, trying to discern what made him such a great fighter. Satanta stared back. His forehead was narrow and his jawline was wide, making his face the image of a triangle with a wide base.

“My heart never left, just my body,” he said.

“Because he promised the whites to never fight them again, Satanta joins us to listen and give counsel only,” Lone Wolf explained.

“Of course,” Quanah said, but he immediately felt less respect for the old Kiowa. In the same position, Quanah would have gleefully promised the whites anything, then reneged the moment he was out of their clutches and back among the People. It was all right to lie to whites, because white people lied all of the time. They couldn't help it because that was their nature.

“Let's smoke, and then you can tell me what you want of us,” Lone Wolf suggested. They passed the pipe around, each man taking a few ceremonial puffs except for Isatai, who sat closed-eyed and humming as though he were the only one in the tipi. Mamanti, the Kiowa medicine man, smoked in his turn but never took his eyes off Isatai, obviously trying to take the measure of a rival shaman.

When the smoking was done, Quanah spoke. He explained how the
spirit of Buffalo Hump had communicated through Isatai that it was time for a great action to drive the whites out of Indian land. The old ways of small, unconnected raids no longer worked. A collaborative effort between the People, the Kiowa, the Cheyenne, and perhaps the Arapaho would convince all the soldiers and settlers to leave for good. The magic granted to Isatai by Buffalo Hump would render white bullets useless in the battle. A rout would ensue, and afterward the Indians would live uninterrupted by white intrusion. It would be a victory for all.

Lone Wolf and Satanta listened carefully. Neither interrupted with questions or observations, and for several moments after Quanah was finished the only sound inside the tipi was Isatai's incessant humming. Finally Lone Wolf asked, “Does your medicine man have anything to add?”

Without opening his eyes, Isatai murmured, “I'm not a medicine man. I'm a Spirit Messenger and I have magic.”

Lone Wolf exchanged glances with Satanta and said, “We've heard about that. I'm told that once you seemed to vomit up ammunition. Can you do that now for us?”

Quanah nervously tried to think of how to respond, but before he could Isatai opened his eyes and said calmly, “The magic must be saved for when it is really needed.”

Mamanti made a cawing, insulting sound, but Lone Wolf said politely, “You know best about such things. I think Satanta wants to say something.”

The renowned Kiowa rolled the end of his long braid in his fingertips for a moment, then stared hard at Quanah. The gray-eyed Quahadi was hard pressed not to blink. He did his best to calmly gaze back. Finally Satanta said, “It's interesting that two Comanche come with this request for the Kiowa to fight alongside their warriors. I'm an old man, Quanah.
I've known the Comanche since your father's time and long before that. You call yourselves the People, as though no one else is a human being. Comanche always believe that they are the best fighters, that they don't need anyone's help. You trade with us, but from the earliest time any Kiowa can remember, you made it plain that we live here only because you let us. You drove away the Apache; they went west to live in the dirt and dung where of course they, being too bandy-legged and untrustworthy, belong. You fought the Tonkawa and they ran away to serve the white men. If we try this thing that your medicine man's spirits suggest, one great battle instead of many small ones, and it works—if we join you and the whites are driven away forever—how do we know, once they're gone, that you won't turn on us next? Isn't that the Comanche way, to always find someone to fight?”

Quanah knew better than to disagree. “Before this, maybe. The times have changed. After we get rid of the whites, you'll live beside us as equals.”

“Perhaps,” Satanta said.

Lone Wolf leaned forward. “The Comanche have no single chief. You say that you and Isatai speak for all of your people, all the different camps.”

“That's true,” Quanah said.

“This has never happened before.”

“As I said, times have changed.”

Mamanti whispered something to Lone Wolf, who said, “Our medicine man wonders if it's really Buffalo Hump's spirit speaking through this man who sits and hums. There are bad spirits too. He might be possessed by one of those, Mamanti thinks.”

Isatai's eyes flew open. Mamanti, who'd been watching him carefully, jerked back. He raised a stick decorated with more owl feathers and
shook it in Isatai's face. Isatai squared his shoulders and Quanah feared that he was about to attack the Kiowa shaman, but instead Isatai smirked.

“The spirit in me has no time to waste on fools like this feathery idiot,” he said. “Lone Wolf, Buffalo Hump wants you to listen to Quanah. He says that you should do what he asks.” Isatai closed his eyes and resumed humming. Mamanti shook his stick again, but when Isatai didn't respond further he tucked it back in his leggings and sat down, shaking his head in exaggerated disbelief.

“Well,” Lone Wolf said, “I don't know anything about spirits and magic. Like Satanta, I do know about the Comanche. I'll think about what you've said, Quanah. I have no answer for you today.”

Quanah said desperately, “Not long ago, your nephew Long Branches came to the Quahadi village and asked us to fight with him in the old way. Some of our warriors did, and you know what happened. If you join us, if you help us do this thing that Buffalo Hump wants, you can have revenge on the whites for the death of your nephew. Don't you want that?”

Lone Wolf looked into the fire, then at Quanah. “In that raid, I didn't just lose a nephew. My youngest son died too. He had fifteen summers. He was a good son.”

“And Bad Hand's Tonkawa scouts ate his liver.”

The Kiowa chief glared, and Quanah feared he'd pushed too hard.

“Yes,” Lone Wolf finally said. “The Tonkawa are evil people, and you Comanche were right to chase them away from this land. Long Branches and your boy weren't looking for a fight with white soldiers. They were just raiding Mexicans.”

“They were being good warriors,” Quanah agreed.

“The whites say we can't fight anyone, but they fight whoever they please without respect to any promises they made,” Satanta said. For the
first time, he sounded angry. “I told them I would live at their agency and wouldn't fight them, though other Kiowa might. They said that they understood, but when something happened, they blamed me anyway. They put iron bands on my arms and legs and they put me in their prison. Lone Wolf had to beg the white chief Grant to set me free. It was a sad thing. I felt great shame. And before they let me go, they made me promise one more time to never fight them again, and I'm not a liar, I'll keep my word just as I did before they put me in their prison. But I won't be sorry if everyone else fights them and makes them run away for good.”

“We can avenge your son and Long Branches, and also the honor of the great Satanta,” Quanah said to Lone Wolf. “White blood must pay for these insults.”

The Kiowa chief stood and stretched. “Let's go outside.”

Quanah leaned over and grasped Isatai's arm. “Come on,” he whispered. Isatai opened his eyes again and stopped humming. He went outside with the others, though he ostentatiously avoided any contact with Mamanti.

“You see your Spirit Messenger, how he acts superior to our medicine man,” Lone Wolf said to Quanah. “I think this is still the way all of you Comanche feel about the Kiowa. You trade with us, but you mock our medicine men and our sun dances and all of our ways that are different from yours. We can sometimes be of use to you, but we're not as good as you. I said I would think on your words and I will. I ask that you think on this—do something to show me that if we join you in this fight and win, afterward we're all the same, not Comanche and, beneath you, everyone else. The Kiowa must stand beside the Comanche, not be ruled by them.”

“If the way to fight must be different, then the Comanche must be different too,” Satanta added.

Quanah said, “If we prove it, will you fight with us?”

Lone Wolf smiled. “First, show the proof. Then the Kiowa will decide. Meanwhile, I wish that your Spirit Messenger had made some of his famous magic. Besides vomiting up bullets, I've heard that he can fly.”