Comanche Heart (2 page)

This book is in memory of the Snakes Who Came Back—a great, noble people who still touch the hearts of everyone who reads about them and the trials they endured. Toward the end, just before the fall of the Comanche nation, the People often said,
“Suvate,”
which means, “It is finished.” What a heartbreaking word, encapsulating a tragic story that still haunts so many of us today.

It is my hope that it will never be finished, not for any one of us, for if we can’t learn from our past mistakes, we are doomed to repeat them.

Prologue

Texas, 1876

 

LIKE A FORLORN SOUL, THE WIND WHISTLED and moaned as it funneled around Swift Antelope, whipping his hair across his face so that he saw the lonely grave through a shifting veil of black. He didn’t blink. The sting in his eyes belonged to the living, and for this moment he lingered with the dead.

The rugged cross at the head of Amy Masters’s grave, buffeted by the weather, had long since lost its battle to stand erect. He studied the crudely carved lettering in the wood, nearly obliterated by the hand of time, and wondered if the words sang Amy’s life song. Somehow, he doubted
tivo tiv-ope,
white man’s writing, could draw a glorious enough picture to do her justice.

Memories flowed through Swift Antelope’s mind, creating such clear pictures of her that he might have seen her only yesterday. Golden hair, sky blue eyes, a smile like sunshine . . . his beautiful, sweet, courageous Amy. With the memories came tears, which he shed with no shame yet much regret, for he should have mourned her long ago. He hunched his shoulders against the pain. If only he had come sooner.
Twelve years.
It broke his heart to imagine her waiting here, bound to him by a lifelong betrothal promise, only to die before he could fulfill his part and come for her.

Henry Masters’s words, addressed to Swift Antelope only moments ago, rang inside his head.
She ain’t here, you filthy Comanch. And it’s a blessin’, if ya ask me, with the likes of you comin’ to court her. Cholera got her five years ago. She’s buried out back, behind the barn.

With an unsteady hand, Swift Antelope straightened the cross that marked Amy’s grave, trying to visualize what her life must have been like, waiting for him on this dusty farm. When she lay dying, had she turned her gaze toward the horizon, hoping to see him there? Had she understood that it had been only the great fight for his people that had kept him from her side? He had sworn to come for her, and he had. Only he had been five years too late.

Swift Antelope knew he should climb back on his horse and leave. His
compa˜eros
awaited him a few miles west, their saddlebags filled with gold pieces, their gazes cast northward where they hoped to drive their ill-gotten cattle. But the will to place one moccasin in front of the other had deserted Swift Antelope. His plan to own a prosperous cattle ranch no longer filled him with purpose. Everything that he was lay here, with Amy, in a barren farmyard.

Lifting his head, Swift Antelope stared across the rolling grassland beyond the farm. Within him an awful emptiness took root, similar to that which he had felt a year ago upon entering the Tule Canyon. There, the September before, Mackenzie and his soldiers had slaughtered fourteen hundred Comanche horses and left the animals to rot. Though Swift Antelope had heard of the attack on his people in the Palo Duro Canyon, though he had known they were defeated, it had not seemed real to him until that moment when he saw the thousands of sun-bleached bones scattered across the canyon floor, all that was left of the Comanche remuda. It was then that Swift Antelope knew, deep within, that his people were finished; they were as nothing without their horses.

Just as he was nothing without Amy.

Pushing to his feet, he pulled his knife from its scabbard and slashed his cheek from eyebrow to chin, his final tribute to the spirited
tosi
girl who had touched his heart with so much love. His blood dripped onto the mound of her grave. He imagined it being absorbed into the earth, mingling with her bones. In this small way, a part of him would be here with her, no matter how far he might travel or how many winters passed.

Swift Antelope straightened his shoulders, sheathed his knife, and strode to his waiting horse. After mounting, he sat a moment, gazing into the distance. His friends waited to the west. Swift Antelope wheeled his horse and headed south. He had no idea where he was going. Nor did he care.

Chapter 1

March, 1879

 

AMY MASTERS TOUCHED THE TOES OF HER shoes to the floor to keep the rocker in motion. Despite the heat from her fireplace, cold seeped under her wool skirts, penetrating her petticoats and ribbed-cotton hose. Lighting the lantern might have helped, but for now she preferred the shadows. Somehow the firelight soothed her as it played upon the floral-patterned wallpaper in her sitting room, bringing to mind those long-ago summer nights in Texas when firelight turned the tepees of Hunter’s village into inverted cones of glowing amber against a slate sky.

Faint voices and laughter drifted to Amy from outside. A door slammed. A moment later a dog barked, the sound distant and lonely. Everyone in Wolf’s Landing was retiring for the night, as she should herself. Five o’clock would come early. Father O’Grady from Jacksonville visited the settlement so seldom that she hated the thought of missing mass. He would leave the area tomorrow on a northward trek to his mission in Corvallis, then west to Empire on Coos Bay, then east to Lakeview. It would be weeks before he once again served mass at St. Joseph’s in Jacksonville, let alone visited Wolf’s Landing. With a husband, two children, and a visiting priest to feed, her cousin Loretta would need help preparing breakfast. Even so, Amy lingered.

Saying farewell to a cherished friend and precious memories took time.

Sighing, she lowered her gaze to the neatly folded page of Jacksonville’s
Democratic Times
that she clutched in her hand. The horrible rumors about Swift Antelope had been filtering in to Wolf’s Landing for a couple of years, but Amy had refused to believe them. Now that she had read this news story, she could no longer deny the truth. Her childhood sweetheart, the one and only man she had ever loved, had turned killer.

Leaning her head against the backrest of her rocker, Amy gazed at the charcoal sketch of Swift Antelope that hung above her mantel. She knew every line by heart, for she had drawn it herself. In the flickering light his profile looked so lifelike that she half expected him to turn and smile at her. Funny that, for she had little artistic talent. Such a beautiful face . . . Swift Antelope. His name whispered in her mind like a caress.

According to this news article, he went by Swift Lopez now; his Comanche name hadn’t served him well once he’d escaped the reservation and started working as a cowhand. Even Amy had to admit it had been clever of him, Mexicanizing the last syllable of Antelope to Lopez. Despite the fact that he had been adopted by the People and raised as a Comanche, Swift Antelope’s Spanish ancestry had always been apparent in his chiseled features. But, though she applauded his ingenuity and understood his need to escape the strictures of reservation life, she felt betrayed.

A comanchero and an infamous gunslinger. . . . The words from the news story replayed in her mind, conjuring images that turned her skin icy. For so many years she had held her memories of Swift Antelope dear, picturing him as he had been at sixteen, a noble, courageous, and gentle young man, a dreamer. Deep in her heart, she had believed he would keep his promise and come for her once the Comanches’ battle for survival had ended. Now, she realized he never would. Even if he did, she would despise him for what he had become.

A sad smile touched her mouth. She was a little old at twenty-seven to be building castles out of dreams. Swift Antelope had made that heartfelt betrothal promise to a gangly twelve-year-old girl, and though the Comanches believed promises were forever, a lot had happened since, the destruction of his nation, the deaths of so many people he loved. Though the child in her hated to admit it, he would have changed as well, from a protective, gentle boy to a domineering and ruthless man. She should be thanking God that he had never come for her.

He probably didn’t even remember her now. She was the strange one, living her life around other people, her heart bound to yesterday by promises that had drifted away on a Texas wind.

Bending forward, Amy tossed the newspaper page into the flames. The paper ignited in a
whoosh
of light. The acrid smell of smoldering ink filled her nostrils. She rose from the rocker and stepped to the mantel. With trembling hands, she grasped the sketch of Swift Antelope. Tears filled her eyes as she bent to toss the likeness into the flames.

When she looked at his face, she could almost smell the Texas plains in summer, hear the ring of youthful laughter, feel the touch of his hand on hers.
Keep your eyes always on the horizon, golden one. What lies behind you is for yesterday.
How many times had she found solace in those words, recalling every inflection of Swift Antelope’s voice as he had spoken them to her?

She couldn’t live the rest of her life trapped in the past. The Swift Antelope she had known would be the first to scold her for clinging to memories. And yet . . . She touched her fingertips to the paper, tracing the regal line of his nose, the perfect bow of his mouth, her own curving in a tearful smile.

With a ragged sigh, she returned the sketch to its place on her mantel, unable to surrender it to the flames, not quite ready to say a final farewell. Swift Antelope had been her friend, her innocent love, her healer. He had made her feel clean again, and whole. Was it so wrong to treasure those memories? Did it matter what he had become? It wasn’t as if she would ever see him again.

Feeling inexplicably lonely, Amy turned her back on the portrait and circled the small, dimly lit sitting room, coming to a stop at the curio shelf. She ran her fingertips over a wooden figurine of a bear, carved by Jeremiah, one of her students. One shelf down from the bear sat a vase of dried flowers, gathered by the Hamstead girl. Seeing the gifts, simple though they were, brightened her mood. She loved teaching. How could she possibly feel lonely when her life brimmed over with people who loved her, not just her students, but Loretta and Loretta’s family?

Though the deeper recesses of the house were dark, she turned and headed for the bedroom, once again forgoing use of the lantern. Afflicted since childhood with a severe case of night blindness, she had long ago familiarized herself with her home and could usually maneuver without mishap if she moved cautiously. Undressing quickly because of the damp chill that seeped through the walls, she tugged on her white nightgown and buttoned it to her chin. Shivering, she folded her underclothing and stacked it in a neat pile on her bureau, handy for morning. Then, drawing comfort from routine, she sat at her dresser, unplaited her hair, groped for her brush, and gave her long tresses their customary one hundred strokes.

She stared in the direction of her bed, unable to discern its outline. She should wrap some warm rocks in towels and slip them between the sheets, but she had no energy for it. It seemed to her that the impenetrable blackness drew closer, silent and oppressive. A peculiar tightness rose in her throat. She laid her hairbrush aside and, lured by the anemic glow of moonlight, went to the window, resting her fingers on the sash. Peering out through the steamy glass, she looked toward the main street of town, cheered by the glow of lights coming from the Lucky Nugget Saloon.

No stars peeked through the clouds. In March, southern Oregon got bursts of spring weather, but today had been drizzly. Fog hung in layers over the rooftops. In the muted moonbeams, she could see a mist of rain pelting the boardwalks. Tomorrow the streets would be a series of endless mudholes. Unlike the nearby town of Jacksonville, Wolf’s Landing hadn’t as yet undertaken the grading and graveling of its thoroughfares.

Another shiver ran up her spine. She hurried into bed, finding little warmth as the cold sheets settled around her. Pressing her cheek to the pillow, she watched a naked tree limb outside her window sway in the gusts of wind.

Amy dreaded closing her eyes, more so tonight than usual. Reading that newspaper article had resurrected the past, bringing to mind so many horrors best forgotten. In a few short hours dawn would break, but she derived small comfort from that when an eternity of darkness stretched before her. With that news story filling her thoughts, would dreams of the comancheros haunt her sleep? And if they did, would one of the brutal faces leering down at her be Swift Antelope’s? Always before, when she had awoken from the dreams, her memories of Swift Antelope had soothed her. Now he rode with the men of her nightmares, killers, thieves—and rapists.

She imagined daybreak on the Texas plains, the eastern horizon layered with muted wisps of rose, the sky lead gray. Would Swift Antelope watch the sunrise? Would the north wind, sweet with the smell of spring grass and wildflowers, play upon his face? When he looked to the horizon, would he, for a fleeting instant, remember that long-ago summer?

 

As the sun lifted higher and higher in the sky, Swift Lopez sensed a building tension in the men who rode with him. Even his black stallion, Diablo, seemed to feel it, snorting and doing a nervous sidestep. Swift knew boredom worked on Chink Gabriel and his men like locoweed on horses; just a little made them crazy. For too many days now they had been traveling without incident. It didn’t help that the warm morning air carried the scent of spring. This time of year made everyone restless. Only these fellows turned dangerous when they got to feeling edgy.

Tipping his black hat low over his eyes, Swift leaned back in the saddle and let the steady clop of his horse’s hooves lull him. Birds twittered in the field grass, frantically flapping their wings when the horses drew too close. He spotted a rabbit hopping off to his right.