Comanche Woman (4 page)

The hint of a smile curved the Comanche’s lips. Long Quiet shook his head and let his mouth slant upward at one corner.

“I am too proud,” the Comanche admitted.

“You have no horse or weapon. You are wounded. No insult was intended,” Long Quiet replied. “I would be honored if you will join me on my journey.”

“It is I who will be honored to journey with you. Will you give me your hand?”

Long Quiet reached out a hand in friendship to the wounded man. The Comanche took Long Quiet’s hand and at the same time reached for the knife Long Quiet had tied at his waist. Long Quiet stopped the Comanche’s outstretched arm where it was, suddenly aware what the warrior intended. He looked into the brave man’s dark eyes, moved by the emotions he saw there.

“Such a rich reward is not necessary.”

“Do you not wish it?”

“I did not say that.”

The lone Comanche smiled as he grasped the knife and quickly cut Long Quiet’s palm and then his own and pressed them together to allow the blood to mingle.

“Now we are brothers. What is mine is yours. You are welcome always in my tipi.”

Long Quiet mounted his pony and reached his hand down to the Comanche. “Shall we go,
haints?
”

The Comanche stared for a moment at the man who with that simple word had named him both friend and brother, before he allowed himself to be helped onto the pinto.

They rode in silence through the night. Both men enjoyed the quiet solace of the vast plains. Both men felt as one with the Earth Mother. Although neither man spoke, somehow each knew how the other felt. Their unspoken communication firmed the unusual bond of respect that had been steadily growing between them.

The Comanche grunted once in pain when the pinto stumbled, but otherwise Long Quiet was able to ignore the wounded man’s presence behind him. He let his imagination wander, his thoughts settling uneasily on the woman called Shadow. Was she the woman he sought? Three years ago he’d promised Cricket and Creed that he’d search for Bayleigh Stewart throughout
Comanchería
. He’d warned Cricket that after living among the Comanches, Bay might not want to return to the white world. Cricket had asked only that he continue his search. The decision about whether to bring Bay home could only be made if and when he finally found her.

He was less willing to contemplate the real reason why he’d searched so diligently for Bay Stewart all these years. No one who knew him would have believed it. He hardly believed it himself. For he was a man reputed to have only one use for women. Yet from the moment he’d first seen Bay Stewart in Boston, where she’d been sent to school by her father, she’d held a fascination for him. She’d stood along the wall at a cotillion, an ugly Texas duckling among the Boston swans. Tall. Gangly. Yet with a quiet dignity. He’d known she was different, as he was different.

He’d gone so far as to find out her name and where she hailed from, but he hadn’t done more than that. For he’d always planned to return to
Comanchería
, and he didn’t fool himself that she would willingly choose to share his world.

But then Tall Bear had stolen her from her father, and that had changed everything. If he could have found her in the first days and weeks of her captivity, he had no doubt she would now be his wife, the mother of his children. But though he’d searched like a man possessed, she’d eluded his grasp.

Now he was almost afraid to find her. What if she already had a Comanche husband? What if she already had half-breed children? The worst of it was, he could imagine things no other way. He knew The People too well to hope she could have escaped that destiny.

Long Quiet unconsciously pulled the pinto to a halt. Could he take her away from her Comanche husband and children to return her to the white world? More to the point, could he tear her from a Comanche family to have her for himself? He sighed. He was ahead of himself, imagining problems when he wasn’t even sure the woman called Shadow was actually Bayleigh Stewart.

The voice of the Comanche behind him interrupted Long Quiet’s musing. “My people are to the north. If you must leave me to go another way, I will understand.”

“I am also heading north,” Long Quiet said. “I seek someone in the land of the
Quohadi
.”

“I am
Quohadi
. Whom do you seek among us? Perhaps I know him.”

Long Quiet hesitated before he replied, “An elusive Shadow.”

The Comanche tensed. At that moment the sun cracked the edge of the horizon, sending a stream of sunlight into the shiny black curls that had escaped Long Quiet’s long, thick braids.

Instantly, the wounded man slid off the pinto. He stepped forward far enough to see Long Quiet’s gray eyes in the sunlight. His tone when next he spoke was no longer friendly. “Who are you? Who sent you here?”

Long Quiet hesitated before replying with forced calmness to the sharp demand. “No man guides my footsteps. I go where I will.”

“No
tabeboh
, no hated white man, moves at will in
Comanchería
,” he spat.

Long Quiet could see the Indian was furious at the discovery that he’d become blood brother to a man who didn’t look much like a Comanche.

But I am Comanche!

It was a cry Long Quiet left unvoiced. He held back the sneer that formed in response to the Comanche’s short-lived pledge of brotherhood. He should not have been so surprised or hurt . . . yet he was. With the last bit of courtesy he could muster, Long Quiet said, “I am no
tabeboh
. I am of The People.”

“You will tell me more of the one you seek.”

Long Quiet could hardly contain his wrath at the Comanche’s haughty command. “When you ask in the words of a friend, I will gladly tell you what you wish to know.”

The Comanche took a deep breath that made his massive chest appear even larger. His black eyes narrowed and his lips thinned in anger until they were nothing. Before he could snarl his response, a Tonkawa arrow landed in the dirt beside his moccasined foot.

Long Quiet extended his hand to the Comanche. “Mount quickly!”

For a moment Long Quiet thought the Comanche would refuse to join him on the pinto. But the whoops of the oncoming Tonkawas prodded him the way no simple words ever could have. His disdainful expression as he grasped Long Quiet’s large, powerful hand made it clear he hadn’t forgotten his animosity, only laid it aside.

Long Quiet leaned forward and spoke in the pinto’s ear, and the pony responded by fleeing like the spring winds before a summer storm. But the gallant pony could only gallop so far with its heavy burden. Long Quiet sought a break in the landscape that would indicate a haven where they could stop and face their enemies.

“There!”

Long Quiet looked where the Comanche pointed. It wasn’t much, a dip in the terrain, but Long Quiet headed toward it. To his amazement the ground fell away as they neared the dip, creating a gully. He urged his pony down into the wash, where both he and the Comanche dismounted.

“Here, take my knife. I have my bow and arrows,” Long Quiet said.

In movements as smooth, swift, and silent as a rattler on desert sand, Long Quiet loosed four arrows from his bow, one after the other. Each one hit its target, and the odds were suddenly four to two. The startled Tonkawas retreated in the face of such a show of deadly force, screeching insults as they fled.

“They will return,” the Comanche said, eyeing Long Quiet with new respect.

“I know.”

Neither mentioned that they had only the single knife and a couple of arrows left to defend themselves. They simply looked at one another, acknowledging that each intended to fight to the death.

The Tonkawas taunted their enemies from a safe distance. “Cowardly Comanches! Why do you hide from us? It will serve no purpose. We shall wait here while your tongues dry up of thirst and the heat of the sun boils your blood. We shall wait here for you to crawl out on your bellies to us. There shall be no warriors’ deaths for you skulking coyotes! Come out now and we promise to kill you quickly.”

Long Quiet soothed his nervous pony before turning to the Comanche. “I have only enough water for a day, maybe two.”

“Your horse cannot outrun them with both of us mounted on him. We will make our escape in the dark tonight,” the Comanche responded.

“They will be waiting for us.”

“I am not afraid to die. But before the sun marches farther in the sky, we have matters to settle between us.” The Comanche clutched the knife Long Quiet had given him. His eyes glittered with malice as he turned his full attention to the other man.

“What do you know of Shadow?”

At that moment a Tonkawa brave leaped onto the Comanche’s back, his knife poised to slit the Comanche’s throat. Acting on reflex, Long Quiet put his arm in the way of the upraised knife and took the slicing jab himself.

The Comanche whirled and made short work of the Tonkawa with Long Quiet’s knife. Then he stood for a moment with his head bowed as he thought of what he owed his blood brother. “You have given my life to me yet again.”

Long Quiet turned his back on the frustrated Comanche, seeking some of the remaining linsey-woolsey in his
tuna-waws
with which to wrap his arm. As he worked the Comanche joined him, taking the material from Long Quiet’s hands and binding the wound for him.

“I do not understand your willingness to risk your life to save mine,
haints
,” the Comanche said gruffly. “I made you my brother and then did not act as a brother should. Now I find myself unable to think what I can give you that is a fitting reward.”

“I have already said no reward is necessary, but you can tell me what you know of Shadow.”

The Comanche’s guttural voice shook with emotion when he spoke. “I do not know how you have learned of Shadow, but I will take you to her, if it is still your wish, when we have escaped these Tonkawa dogs.”

“Then she exists?”

“Of course.”

“What do you know of her?”

“I am Many Horses. Shadow belongs to me.”

Chapter 3

T
HREE
C
OMANCHE WOMEN SAT IN A SEMICIRCLE AT THE
edge of a colorfully decorated tipi preparing the ingredients for pemmican. Red Wing shelled pecans. Singing Woman beat dried plums into a pulp. She Touches First, sister to the
puhakut
, the village medicine man, pounded the main ingredient, dried buffalo meat, which she then dropped into a pot on the fire to be softened. As they worked, they talked.

A short distance away, far enough that her shadow would not fall upon any of the others, a fourth woman sat by herself. She combined tallow and marrow fat with the pecans, plums, and buffalo meat prepared by the other women and stuffed the resulting pemmican into large buffalo intestine casings. Later the casings would be sealed with melted tallow to make the container of pemmican airtight, so it could be eaten months, or even years, later. As she worked, she listened.

“Many Horses has been gone for two moons. He should have returned by now,” She Touches First said.

Red Wing frowned. She had good reason to be concerned because her son, and the son of Singing Woman as well, had accompanied Many Horses on his raid. “Yes, two moons is a long time,” Red Wing agreed. “I must admit I will not sleep well until my son, Eagle Feather, gives these old eyes a chance to see his face again. Do you think some ill has befallen them? Perhaps someone broke the tabu and spoke of Shadow’s presence here.”

“Surely not,” Singing Woman chided. “None would dare to risk the
tabebekut
. No one could survive such a curse. And Many Horses has such powerful medicine since . . . since that one came to live among us.” She paused in her work, and the lines of worry in her face deepened for a moment before she once again lifted her stone to pulp the plums. “They will surely be successful on their raid. I am eager to see what my son, He Follows the Trail, brings home for me.”