Come Sundown (35 page)

Read Come Sundown Online

Authors: Mike Blakely

BOOK: Come Sundown
2.08Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
The ransom trade kept me very busy that summer. I did not always bother with the captives who were well treated by their captors. But occasionally some squaw would see fit to torment a captive child in retaliation for a husband or brother lost on a raid. The unfortunate child was usually starved, beaten, and made to work every waking hour. Sometimes a captive boy would be pitted repeatedly against Indian boys in wrestling matches or fights in which sticks were used as weapons. These could be very cruel affairs, and I always tried to intervene. I would first attempt to trade for the captive. If successful, I had to decide whether or not to try to return the child to his home, or find a suitable adoptive family among the Indians. It was not possible to return every captive. There were just too many that summer.
If a trade for the captive was refused, I would attempt to get the camp to ostracize the aggressor until the beatings and cruelty ended. On a few occasions, I actually had to take abused children from their tormentors, at peril of my life. But when things cooled down, I always gave a couple of horses or something of equal value to the former owner of the captive to smooth things over.
Also, that year, I spent much time learning from the conjurer Burnt Belly. I think my reputation as Burnt Belly's pro-tégé helped me in the ransom trade, as well. The Indians were terrified of hexes and many of them worried that I or my mentor would put a curse on them should they cross me in a trade for a captive. In reality, I never knew Burnt Belly to even consider cursing another human. His medicine was all about healing.
The old shaman drew extensive maps, showing me the locations of springs and rivers of medicinal waters, and detailing the types of maladies each water source might cure. The maps also showed the locations and ranges of herbs and other curative
plants. He lectured on the power of smoke as a carrier of prayers to the Great Mystery, and used it to bless the new sacred hunting arrows he had instructed me to make. He taught me chants and drumbeats known to cure ailments, aid in meditations, and induce visions. I would observe for hours as Burnt Belly chanted, prayed, smoked, spat whiskey on coals, and fell into the deepest trances. I'm not sure I understood all I learned, but in regard to the medicinal qualities of plants, I excelled.
I learned to hear the voices of plants that summer better than I might ever have imagined. They would speak to me in whispers, shouts, or songs. Once, years later, while riding far to the north to ransom a captive for a wealthy ranching family, I camped high in the mountains in a grove of spruce trees. I happened to put my hand upon an ancient spruce that played a song for me with the voice of a violin. It almost broke my heart. I could have been a master luthier. This tree
wanted
to make music.
If Burnt Belly had become my mentor, I, in turn, became the mentor of young Quanah, the son of Peta Nocona. Quanah would ride with me to the Texas settlements to return captives. He seemed very curious about the whites, perhaps because he was half white himself. With Quanah along, I would usually bring captives to the German-settled town of Fredericksburg because this was the only town on the Texas frontier that had struck a viable treaty with the Comanches. The Germans had convinced the Indians that they were a different tribe, with a different language, and were not Texans. This treaty was never broken by either the Comanches or the German settlers, so Fredericksburg became a trade center for the True Humans. The Germans there would make sure that any captive I delivered would be returned to his or her home. They would also collect my ransom fee for me and hold it until I could return.
Quanah was fascinated by the whites and their strange ways. In days to come, he would rise to the status of a great war chief who valiantly fought white encroachment. Still later, he would negotiate treaties with the whites to save the Comanches from annihilation. I flatter myself to think that Quanah learned at least some of his diplomatic skills from me.
Anyway, while not ransoming captives, trading for horses, studying the Kiowa calendar, or learning from Burnt Belly, I spent my time with Westerly. She loved written language, so we spent much time writing with anything we could find. We made quill pens from wild turkey feathers, ink from berries. We wrote on deer hides, scraps of parchment, canvas, or anything else we could find. We would have entire lessons drawn with sticks in smoothed sand.
Writing supplies were hard to come by, but reading material was plentiful in camp that summer. The warriors were raiding the settlements so much that they frequently came back with newspapers and books. The Indians particularly liked books for several reasons. First of all, there were often woodcuts or line drawings in the books of the day. The Indians found these illustrations hilarious, for they usually depicted white people. Secondly, the Indians held a certain reverence for books as mystical objects. They realized that books held ideas and information that only one familiar with their magic could retrieve. But, mostly, the Indians valued paper for starting fires, and a bound book provided an easy, compact vehicle for carrying this kindling. Westerly and I would often trade a horse for a new volume in English or Spanish, for the book could take us to places no horse could go.
I devoured Indian life in the camps that summer, and into the fall of 1863, and the following winter. I knew that war was raging back East. I knew that Kit Carson had begun a campaign of attrition against the Navahos to the west. I knew that the Cheyennes and Arapahos were growing more and more frustrated with white attacks to the north. But in Comancheria life was good. We camped beyond the reach of Texans who attempted to follow Comanche raiding parties, and lived unmolested out on the wild plains.
In November, Satank's band of Kiowas joined Little Bluff's and Shaved Head's people, and we had a grand camp-together in the pecan groves of the San Saba River, near the ruins of a presidio that had been vacated by Spanish soldiers a hundred years before. Here, the women gathered and shelled a crop of pecans that beat anything even the oldest elders could remember.
While the nuts were being gathered and cracked, it was decided in council that scouts should ride out in every direction looking for buffalo. My brother, Kills Something, came to me after the council and asked if I would ride with him to look for the herds. I agreed to do just that, of course.
“My brother,” Kills Something said, after we made our plans to leave. “For riding with me on this search, I am going to give two very good horses to you.”
I knew I would insult him should I refuse, so I said, “Then I will ride even harder in search of the buffalo, so that the glory of finding a great herd will belong to my brother and me.”
“I staked the two horses near your lodge. The sorrel is named Tu Hud. The bay is called Castchorn.”
I knew by this that the horses must be fine ones, so I went to see them. The sorrel named Tu Hud, which meant “All Horse,” was huge for an Indian pony, standing over fifteen hands. He was light reddish with a long flaxen mane and tail. The bay pony had a black mane and tail and a star on his face. He stood about fourteen hands, which was plenty of horse for a scrawny rider like me. His name, Castchorn, meant “Buffalo Getter.” Both were excellent animals, and I was proud to own them.
The night before we left, Kills Something and I sent prayers up to the spirits to grant us the power of finding buffalo. The Indians were quite competitive in this business of scouting for herds. The bringer of meat was a hero second only to the slayer of enemies. Everyone wanted to locate the biggest concentration of buffalo, so we prepared to ride hard and cover much country. Kills Something and I vowed to ride all the way to Adobe Walls and back if we had to. We had both had fleeting dream-visions of buffalo coming down from the north.
And, of course, I remembered Burnt Belly's vision of me shooting sacred arrows. I had made four such arrows, which I carried in my quiver now, awaiting the chance to use them. Burnt Belly had personally blessed them with smoke and much chanting.
The next morning, I mounted Tu Hud. Kills Something and I struck out to the north, covering ground like few of history's horsemen could imagine. Tu Hud indeed proved to be “all horse.” We rode north until we crossed the Colorado River. We
then rode upstream, almost due north at that point, until we hit the old trail angling over toward the Double Mountain Fork of the Brazos River. We continued north, crossing the Salt Fork of the Brazos, and intending to head up the two forks of the Wichita and the three forks of the Pease River. We would split up during the day, in order to scout twice the country, then we'd rendezvous at prearranged camps come sundown. In those days, a man could see signs of buffalo a long way off, so we would put as much as twenty miles of space between us during the day.
Let me tell you, I did some tall riding. The air was cool and Tu Hud willing. I was lean and light, carrying nothing with me but my bow and arrows, a small stash of pemmican, a bundle of my medicinal roots, and a knife. The big sorrel ran as if he carried no burden whatsoever. I would pick a spot on the ridge before me and dash toward it at a trot, a lope, or even a gallop. Arriving at the ridge, I would stop to observe the country, and let my pony blow, then I would take off for the next ridge.
We encountered obstacles to negotiate, but that made the riding more of a challenge to horse and horseman. We might come to a thicket and have to pick our way through it, jumping dead timbers and ducking low limbs. We might come to a cutbank that ran for miles along a creek, but Tu Hud and I would jump off a bluff the height of a tipi, as long as a goodly pool of water waited to catch us. We might ascend a slope only to find a vast rimrock, taller than horse and rider, barring our way for miles on either side, but that sure-footed sorrel could find footholds a mountain goat would envy.
That
was the best riding I ever did—blazing my own path across a trackless wilderness, determined to meet my Comanche brother before sundown every night.
On the seventh morning of our search, I woke before dawn, feeling a strange voice speaking to me from the earth. As Kills Something and I found our horses in the dark, I said, “Do you hear it?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Can it be?”
“I pray that it can be, but I have never heard it—felt it—like this.”
We both heard it, though neither of us could explain it. If we strained to hear, we heard nothing out of the ordinary. But when we stopped trying, we sensed it—absorbed it. It was as if thunder were rolling somewhere so far away that we could not detect it, yet somehow we knew about it anyway.
We rode with the first birdsong. Before Father Sun even peeked over the horizon, we found ourselves approaching the divide between the south fork and the middle fork of the Pease.
“Now I see it, as well,” Kills Something said. “Yet I don't see it at all.”
“Yes, in the sky.”
“That color. Have you ever seen that color at dawn?”
“Never.”
We exchanged glances and urged our ponies to a run up the gentle slope of the divide. Then we approached the high ridge of land, and the country before us seemed poised to rise into view. Now the sound we could hear but not hear earlier hit us full in our faces like the crash of surf on a beach when you come over the last dune. Just then, Father Sun shot the day's first glance over the skyline, painting the dust-laden air the shade of autumn maple leaves. Another step brought into view the high ground ahead, and the sight of it bewildered the eye. It writhed with dark ripples, like mice scurrying about under a single buffalo robe.
But this was God's own buffalo robe, made of living bison. It shrouded His hills and valleys as far as the eye could penetrate through the haze of red morning dust that hung over it. It began just below us, at the headwaters of the middle fork of the Pease, and grew thicker with every wave of land until it disappeared in the haze. It was as if Mother Earth were too bashful to let Father Sun gaze upon her nakedness, and had pulled a living buffalo robe over her bare flesh to conceal her beauty.
“How can we explain it to the elders?” Kills Something said, his face blank and staring in wonder at the impossible herd.
“We must admit to them that we cannot explain it, and yet we must try.”
“Let us look upon it for a while. This may be the greatest herd we will ever see.”
I watched and tried to gather it in for a spell. Suddenly I realized how still my mount stood. Tu Hud didn't even seem to be breathing. He had never seen anything like this, either. The eyes of riders and horses alike stared in absolute wonder, trying to fathom how so many huge beasts could possibly come together in one place.
Of course, we had to turn our backs on the spectacle soon enough. The hard ride that had taken us seven days from the San Saba only took five days returning, for we held to the trails and rode for all the glory we knew we would win at camp. Our horses must have run off a hundred pounds each on that trek, earning a long rest and much grass.
T
he report we gave in camp called for a great council outside of Little Bluff's lodge. Some scoffed at our claims, but Kills Something and I stood firm in our insistence that the herd was truly historic. It took us hours to convince the whole village to move that far north, but no other scouts had found large amounts of game, so eventually the elders recommended the move. Shaved Head, Little Bluff, and Satank gave the order.
By the middle of the next day, most of the village was on the trail, with Kills Something and me scouting ahead. This village did not move nearly as fast as we had on our search, of course, and my Comanche brother began to worry.
“We will take at least ten sleeps reaching the buffalo,” he complained as we waited on a ridge for the camp to catch up.
I shrugged. “Maybe nine if the herd continues to move toward us.”
“That is still a long time. What if the herd scatters?”
“Even one half of one half of one half of that herd would satisfy this village.”
“What if the herd stops and turns back? Buffalo do strange things.”
“You worry too much, my brother. Your medicine is strong. We have both had visions of buffalo, yes?”
“That is true,” he conceded.
“I know why you worry.”
“Do you?”
“Yes. You know it is time to take your place as chief of the band. Shaved Head is old now. He thinks more like a peace chief than a war chief. That is good, for he has gained much wisdom and gives good counsel. But every band of True Humans needs a fearless war chief. You have already proven your courage in many battles, but if you deliver meat, the people will see you as a leader who can provide food as well as lead a war party. A great hunt will make you
Chief
Kills Something.”
He could not hold back a brief smile. “You see many things others miss, brother. Yes, I am worried about the great herd we saw. Anything could happen.” He gestured to the sky. “The Thunderbird could light the grass with his hot glare and fan it to a firestorm with his wings. The whole herd might stampede all the way to Osage country.”
I chuckled. “There is no need to worry. A hard winter always brings the herds south, and this will be a very cold one.”
“How do you know?”
“The thick winter coats started early on the horses. The cranes were almost as early as the teal as they flew south. And what of the big crop of pecans? The leaves dropping early from the cottonwoods? Other plants have told me in voices that only Burnt Belly and I can hear.”
“You are spending too much time with that old man. You must be careful. The people fear a conjurer.”
“Not one who conjures meat.”
Kills Something laughed. “True.”
“Everything will be good. Do not lose faith in your medicine, brother.”
He nodded. “You are right. It is up to the spirits. I can only pray and lead. I will not worry about it more.”
Eight days later, scouting ahead, Kills Something and I encountered the great herd, still en masse. We rode back and ordered an immediate return to the last creek crossed. It held but
little water, but would have to suffice as a campsite. The lodges were raised by sundown and preparations under way for a morning hunt.
Now Kills Something's leadership abilities began to show. He boldly took over the organization of the hunt, not even bothering to ask the permission of the three chiefs. From each band, he chose six leading men, including the three chiefs and himself. “You will each choose ten hunters,” he said to these men. This would put eighteen parties of ten organized hunters in the field—180 hunters. “Satank's band will be in the west, Shaved Head in the center, and Little Bluff in the east. Keep three arrow shots between each party of ten. My brother, Plenty Man, will give the first signal with his gun. When you hear the shot, each party will charge into the great herd and cut out a part of it—maybe one hundred animals. You will kill until your arrows are all spent.”
Chief Satank was skeptical, for no one but Kills Something and I had yet seen the herd. “Eighteen different hunting parties? This herd cannot be so large,” the Kiowa chief complained.
“You will see in the morning,” Kills Something insisted. “
Fifty
hunting parties could make meat from this herd. But we can raise only eighteen.”
“What about the younger warriors?” little Bluff asked.
“They will be allowed to ride in after the headmen. Plenty Man will give a second signal with his gun. The young hunters may go after the main herd, or chase buffalo that escape the hunting parties of ten men. Everyone will have a chance to make a kill.”
I realized that Kills Something had reserved a place of honor for me in the organization of the hunt. It would be my responsibility to judge when the young hunters could make their charge.
“Who will serve as Watchers?” Little Bluff asked.
Kills Something thought about this for a moment, for it was important. The Watchers were chosen from one of the warrior societies to police the hunt. It was their job to prevent anxious young hunters from sneaking away to get their kills in early, which could scatter the herd and ruin the great hunt for everyone. After due consideration, Kills Something gestured to Little
Bluff and Satank. “The Horse Headdresses will serve as Watchers over the Kiowa bands.” He turned to Shaved Head. “Uncle, I believe the Little Horses should be Watchers over the
Noomah
hunters.”
“That is a good choice,” Shaved Head replied. “They are young men and will remember when they, too, as boys, wanted to sneak away early.”
“Yes, and the boys will listen to them,” Little Bluff agreed, “for they are just a little older than boys themselves.”
“What will the punishment be for anyone sneaking away to hunt before the signal?” said Satank.
“The Watchers may destroy all the weapons and take all the horses of anyone who attempts to hunt early,” decreed Kills Something.
“And if someone should make an early kill? What will be done with the meat?”
“What do you suggest?”
Shaved Head tossed his one braid over his shoulder. “There is much excitement about this great herd you have found. Some boys might risk their weapons and horses if they think they can get meat. So I believe a kill made early should be destroyed. The hide should be slashed and the
kwitapu
from the guts should be rubbed on the meat to make it spoil.”
Little Bluff chuckled. “With my hunters, I will see that the
kwitapu
is rubbed on the hunter, as well as the meat.
That
should take away the desire for any boy to make an early kill.”
“Agreed,” Kills Something said, chuckling at the prospect. “Send the criers for your villages to my lodge and I will tell them what to say to the people.”
Shaved Head made no complaints about Kills Something usurping his authority. It was as if the old chief had grown weary of leading, and looked forward now to the less rigorous role of peace chief. He knew Kills Something was ready to take command.
The chiefs and the hunt leaders all went their own ways, but Kills Something held me back. “These hunters will be so far scattered that the ones to the far west and east will not hear your gun.”
“I thought of that,” I said.
“Do you know what to do?”
“I will find some young men who have guns. We will sit our horses all along the line, just far enough apart that we can each hear the next man's gunshot. I will fire first, and the man to either side will fire next, and so on, all the way down the line.”
Kills Something nodded. “Choose
Noomah
boys in the middle and Kiowa boys on either end. After they fire the second signal, they will want to hunt with their brothers.”
“Yes, of course.”
“Now, listen, my brother, you must choose the moment well for the second shot. If you signal too soon, the younger hunters will ride in and scatter the small herds that the older and better hunters have cut out. If you wait too long, the stragglers that escape the older hunters will run away too fast to catch. And also, the boys will get restless and charge before the signal is given. Then we will have trouble with the Watchers.”
“I will look over the hunt from high ground,” I promised, “with an eagle's eye, and the hunger of a wolf.”
 
 
THE HUNTERS ASSEMBLED in parties well before dawn and left for their positions to the east and west. At first light, I found myself waiting near the brink of a ridge. The main herd began on the other side of the ridge, and Kills Something had ordered no man to cross that high point of land before the signal shot. He sat his pony beside me, waiting.
“I had a very strange dream about you last night,” he said.
“About me?”
“You were lost in a snowstorm. Everything was white, and you were in it. But you did not complain. You had no warm clothes, yet you did not even shiver. You were happy in that blizzard, brother.”
“What does it mean?”
“Only the spirits know.” He judged the far hills, coming into view now out of darkness. “It is time.”
“I agree.”
“I will ride ahead and make the sign.”
Kills Something loped his mount up to the top of the ridge. Behind him, the organized parties of ten waited to charge. Next, the Watchers of the Little Horses brotherhood spread in a line, each within sight of the next, policing the front. And behind them waited the younger hunters who would make the second charge.
Finally, with gray light bathing the landscape, Kills Something waved his bow at me. I pointed my rifle skyward and fired, the charge kicking hard at my outstretched arm. Immediately, I saw the white smoke from the next riflemen in line, then heard the reports from their weapons. The veteran hunters charged forward in their parties of ten. Some of them yelped a brief note of joy before they thundered over the ridge.
The Watchers and the rest of the young hunters moved forward to the top of the ridge to look beyond and witness the hunt from high ground. When I reached the brink of the divide, the buffalo were already stampeding in terror. The beasts were so taken by surprise that they fled in every direction, some coming straight toward us. From my vantage point, I could see three of the parties of ten at work. Kills Something's band was in front of me, Shaved Head's to the right, and Fears-the-Ground's to the left. As Kills Something was closer, I watched him and his nine men with most interest.
As the buffalo dispersed, Kills Something took advantage of the distance between beasts. He charged right in among the terrorized bison, his riders following him, and began to cut off about eighty animals. Riding like a leaf in a windstorm, he passed lumbering beasts and began to make a circle around the herd he had cut off. A cow came near him, so he shot her through the ribs and charged on.
I glanced left and right. Fears-the-Ground's party was on the verge of circling a small herd as well, but Shaved Head's men seemed to have let their intended prey break back into the main herd, which was now rumbling the very earth under us so hard that we could feel it even through the legs of our mounts. The ponies became nervous and began to prance. A few crazed bison charged past the Watchers, and the nearest of the young hunters gave chase. The stray buffalos had charged into these youths, so I saw no harm in the boys pursuing them, but it only
made the rest of the young men more anxious and the Watchers were shaking their lances at the youths, trying to hold them back. Soon, it would be like trying to hold back a blue norther, but I waited as many more moments as I dared, though I raised my rifle as a hopeful sign to the young hunters.
I watched Kills Something lead his hunters around the bunch of animals they had separated. The moment I saw him making the final curve that would encircle the small herd, I let my rifle speak. An excited battle cry sounded all along the line, and all the remaining hunters charged, including the Watchers. Some of the young men had trouble with their horses, for few ponies had ever ridden into such a melee of hooves, hides, and horns.
I, myself, sheathed my rifle and pulled my bow from my quiver. Quickly, I strung the bow, then reached over my shoulder for an arrow. By now every hunter had ridden into the herd, save a few who had fallen from bucking horses. But I was riding Castchorn—Buffalo Getter. Kills Something told me that the good bay pony had been caught wild running with some buffalo, and he held no fear of the herd. He bolted into the midst of the chaos, huffing great blasts of hot breath into the cold air.
The nearest beasts were scattering with unexpected speed, and I knew I would have to ride into the escaping main herd to find a decent number of animals to bag. My bay seemed to sense my plan, and ran straight ahead at a full gallop while the thunder of hooves shook the ground and the sky from every quarter. The dust began to thicken and sting my eyes, but I charged on until I had passed every other hunter, and began to catch up to the slower buffalo.

Other books

Sweet Carolina Morning by Susan Schild
Paul Revere's Ride by David Hackett Fischer
The Marsh Hawk by Dawn MacTavish
Borden Chantry by Louis L'Amour
Weapon of Desire by Brook, L M
Reaper Man by Terry Pratchett