The Color of Lightning (27 page)

Samuel listened to the fragmented sounds of languages breaking up all around him and the laughter. He raised his voice.

“And also, tell him I could bring some Pueblo people to speak with them about raising crops and how it is done. They have always farmed, they were not made to do so by the white man. As the year goes around it is very beautiful. The green shoots come up and the bud and then the fruit, then the harvest.” Against the blank and polite silence he felt his words falter and his voice weaken and grow thin. “We will hold another council soon, with the Pueblo if they will come and they will talk about how they farm in the dry country. They have much to teach us. To teach me.”

Onofrio started to translate but Esa Havey said,
Who is he talking about, that word
Pueblo
?

He means the Tewa.

Oh, the filthy Tewa. They hide in their little square dwellings like rats. They stink. We kill some of them every year. I took three captives last year, I dragged them out of their square doors. Now they carry my water.

Samuel did not need this to be translated.

“And you will no longer go down and raid the Texans. You must stay north of the Red River, you must look for another way to live. This is how it is. This will happen whether you want it or not.” His voice was hard. He knew how to speak in a hard voice.

Onofrio took a breath and translated. The Kiowa language in

its floating tones murmured in the background against Onofrio’s Comanche with its hard and frequent
r
’s.

The Kiowa chief Satank said,
If you don’t want us to raid in Texas

then move Texas to some other place far away so the young men are not tempted.
A laugh ran around the agency storehouse.

Samuel said, “I am the agent here and I am charged with dis- cretionary powers. I want the stolen horses and mules returned. If I hear of more raids there will be no more rations. I mean that.”

The clutter of languages started up again, startled and rapid. The Kiowa and Comanche women spoke to one another and the children fell silent.

Eaten Alive said,
An agent cannot do this. You talk about the paper that was signed, the agent and Washatun signed it as well.

“It is being done now.” Samuel stood up.

I don’t want the mules. You cannot run buffalo on them.
Satank stood up as well, an old man but a dangerous one.

“Then bring them back.” Samuel and the elderly Satank were on their feet, facing one another.

If the young men feel like it, they might.

“We will speak again when you have taken thought and consid- ered.”

We don’t need this.
Esa Havey waved his hand toward the goods on the shelves.
And if we do we can get it from the Comancheros.

“I will stop the Comancheros. And their whiskey and arms.”

You will not. We have traded with them from the time they carried the banner of the king of Spain. Felipe Quinto.

“I have the power to stop them, and I will. By tomorrow morn- ing I want to see my buggy team here at the agency. Then I will distribute the rations.”

Samuel turned and walked out of the warehouse.

so me t i me in
the dark of night they brought his team in and tied the horses to the white picket fence in front of the agency house. They had placed hats on the horses’ heads. Someone had taken the

hats distributed to the Indians, unwanted headgear, had cut holes in them for the ears. The dispirited team stood with hat brims drooping over their forelocks and their great ears turning as if upon hinges.

More paperwork, another report.

He wrote slowly with a fraying pen nib in the light of his lamp. He spoke aloud from time to time. “No need to mention the hats,” he said in a low and private voice.

He walked up and down the agency house and realized he was listening for the sound of galloping horses. He washed in a basin of hot water as quietly as possible so that the noise of his splashing would not cover any sound from outside. He sat at the edge of his bed for a while in his wool long johns, clasping and unclasping his hands, and knew he would not sleep.

He had imagined himself teaching young men how to harness horses to a plow and then the red earth turning over in shining plates. The young men interested and attentive. A spring rain and the green spears lifting above the rows like the headdresses of little underground spirits bearing as their traveling loads the rich heads of mature wheat. It was difficult to let this go. Very difficult. He said a long and confused prayer and then at last lit the lamp and took his Bible from the mantel.

Thou visitest the earth, and waterest it: thou greatly enrichest it with the river of God, which is full of water: thou preparest them corn, when thou hast so provided for it. Thou waterest the ridges thereof abundantly: thou settlest the furrows thereof: thou makest it soft with showers: thou blessest the springing thereof. Thou crownest the year with thy goodness; and thy paths drop fatness. They drop upon the pastures of the wilderness: and the little hills rejoice on every side.

And still he was angry.

Chapter 21
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W

B

r i t t a n d h i s
son rode north with a white man named Ferguson who came from a forted-up farm on the Brazos River in Palo Pinto County. Ferguson was seeking news of his two daughters who had been taken in January, five months ago. He said the war is done for them other people back east but it is not done for

us. He had buried his wife and his aged mother.

They went on toward the Red River. They passed the Stone Houses on the second night out. Traveling at night and all the next day they came to the gentle bluffs of the Red River. They found the crossing at the gravelly shoal but Britt knew better than to try it, and so he led them downstream until he could see a solid bank on the far side. They rode wet and streaming through the breast-high water, and then onto reaches of white sand and then into the tall bottomland trees. Jube came through the currents riding the black horse, with his rifle held high over his head. He thought, if any- thing happened he would throw himself into the river and let the horse go. He was convinced that bullets could not strike him if he were under water.

The man with them slept badly. At night sitting in his blankets

in a fireless camp he said he hoped he would have a chance to kill an Indian, he would kill as many as he could for the rest of the time that he was alive. Then he went to sleep, and in the middle of the night he called out in a low, inhuman voice the names of his daugh- ters. It was as if he had left his body and had turned into a ghost and had gone out across the earth to haunt them.

Within the week they arrived at the Indian Agency. There were some Comanche and Kiowa camped around the agency. Maybe they had come for rations or perhaps they liked to be near the cool water of Cache Creek or some spirit had moved them to erect their tipis for a time near the agency merely to see what the soldiers and the agent would do next. The men watched as Britt rode past the tipis with his son on the black horse beside him. Father and son both looked straight ahead and regarded no one. The word would pass from one person to another. Britt was flushed with a feeling of tri- umph, of defiance. There was such a thing as Fate and these people were its agents and he had defied them all.

Ferguson said the agent was a Quaker and that Quakers do not believe in fighting or carrying weapons or that kind of thing.

“Then why the hell have they sent him to be an agent for the Comanche and the Kiowa?” said Britt. “They should have sent him to the Cherokee.”

“Got me,” said Ferguson. “It’s the government.”

The agent seemed a delicate man with a serious way of slightly dropping his head and looking up at them. He wore a suit of heavy woolens and a hat with a great wide brim. Britt watched him care- fully for signs and signals as to how he would treat a black man, but there was no hesitation in his manner. He was an easterner by his way of speaking. He looked up at Britt.

“The slaves are free now,” said Hammond. He glanced from Britt to Ferguson. The white man lifted both hands in the air.

“Don’t look at me.”

“I am a free man,” said Britt. “Have been for years.” Hammond brightened. “Excellent! A free Negro! In Texas!” Britt’s face was still. He said, “Are you?”

Hammond was silent a moment. “Am I what?” “Free.”

Hammond was silent for a moment. Then he gave Britt a quick nod. “An excellent question. One worthy of pondering.”

“Yes, sir.”

Then Britt stood down from his horse and drew the reins to- gether. Hammond called for someone to take their horses and see to their unsaddling and feed and water and Britt handed over the reins to a boy in a coarse suit of clothes and a flat, billed cap.

Jube slid down from his black horse. His war booty. He turned to the boy in the suit and said, “You get that saddle off first thing,” he said. “Hear me?”

The boy lifted his chin and stared, but Jube stepped toward him one step, his black eyes fixed and intent, and the boy backed off. Jube shifted his rifle under his arm.

Hammond said, “Young man, I would ask you to unload that weapon if you would. We are trying to practice nonviolence here, and just as a small beginning we try to keep weapons unloaded.”

Britt nodded to his son. Jube lowered his head and shifted his jaw from side to side and then opened the breech and extracted the load. If anything happened he would use the rifle as a club.

Hammond asked them to come into the agency house. It was chill and impersonal and strictly clean. They passed through the little decorative gate in the white picket fence and then Britt stood in the doorway, tall and bulky in his heavy boots and the revolver he did not unload. He stood with his hat in his hand until he was offered a chair. Ferguson sat with his hands in fists. He was choked with contained anger.

Samuel brought out a ledger and wrote down the names and description of the girls that Ferguson was seeking. His daughters. He asked Ferguson to stay at the agency until he, Samuel, could try for information from the Indians that were camped at Cache Creek. The man stared at him a moment and then nodded and got up and went out.

Britt said, “Agent Hammond, I am going to look for Elizabeth

Fitzgerald and her granddaughter Lottie. I would like a cavalry es- cort. I know where I’m going.”

“Very well.” Samuel smiled. “You seem very confident.”

“I think I can do it.” Britt turned to his son. “Jube, I want you to stay here at the agency while I go on to the Wichitas.”

“Yes, sir.” Jube was relieved. It was enough that the Kiowa and the Comanche who stayed around the agency would see him. They would talk about it when they went out again, they would unroll this gossip like a many-colored serape. The word would come to Old Man Komah and to Aperian Crow and all the others that he was with his own father again.

Britt turned to the Indian agent.

“Mr. Hammond, could my son stay here with you until I come back? He speaks some Kiowa.”

“Of course.” The agent regarded Jube. “Why does he speak Kiowa?”

“He was captive eight months.” “Really! How did you get him back?”

Britt lifted one shoulder. “Well, I met a Comanche who helped me.” He put his hand on Jube’s shoulder. “And they had his mother and sister as well. I got them all back.”

Hammond put one knuckle to his lips and then dropped his hand onto his knee. “That is astonishing.” He reached out and pat- ted Jube on the shoulder. “He is very welcome. I am not, as you pointed out, free to go myself. I will send the men with you as you asked. It will show that you are on agency business.”

“All right.” Britt sat carefully on the edge of the chair. “What do you need?”

“Whatever they want in trade,” said Britt. “Whatever it is they like.”

“I will find some supplies, some nice things.”

Britt put on his hat and touched his son’s shoulder and said good day and without another word walked out the door.

W

Lo tt i e w o r e h e r
Indian name in a kind of verbal badge blazoned on the spring air. She liked to hear Pakumah use it, call- ing her to come and eat, come and see something. Elizabeth did not pronounce the name correctly and had no intention of doing so.
Sikkydee
, Elizabeth said.
Sockadee. Sackado
. Elizabeth’s knuckles were growing large and swollen from the work but she kept on. She broke up the elk shoulder bones into hoes, the antlers into rakes. She learned to fasten the candelabra of bone to staffs. She cultivated corn in the valley of Cache Creek high in the Wichitas. She and the other women had poured in squash and corn seed early in the year. Seed carefully saved in bags in each woman’s tipi and left against the tipi walls during the winter. For each kind of seed a reverent name. The legends and the origins of the divine personages who belonged to each kind of seed had been lost but the seed names remained; all the more mysterious for being without provenance. The air was now full of oak pollen and Elizabeth sneezed and dug, wiped her nose on her arm and carried water from the pools of Cache Creek to throw on the rows of tasseling corn. She took up her antler rake and ripped out snarling nets of love vine as if they were entrails.

Pakumah was afraid of Elizabeth and her power to drive people to suicide. Her power of life, her ability to survive and hoard her fury like a treasure, like seeds in a bag that would later bloom out into someone’s death. Her sheer furious life force. Her husband said they ought to kill Elizabeth, then, if she was such trouble, but Paku- mah and three other wives cried No! No! because they had become convinced of Elizabeth’s ability to rise up out of water, earth, out of the moonlit nights, to strike at them even from the spirit world. To harry and hate until her victims hung themselves. She would be twice as dangerous if she were dead.

Elizabeth knew that as long as she kept her bullying ways to the society of women, she was safe. From time to time Elizabeth’s mind was overcome with images of herself driving a knife into Pakumah’s sternum, the resisting bone, the flash of blood. Of shooting some- body, an unspecified Comanche man, with a rifle or pistol. When this happened, she stopped what she was doing for a moment and