Michener, James A. (137 page)

emma: We had all the buffalo we needed, north of the river. We came into Texas to burn and kill.

earnshaw (weakly): Thee means . . . thy Comanche planned it that way? Strike south, then run back north?

emma: Why not?' Those were the rules. You made them, we obeyed them. (She spoke these sentences in Comanche, which gave them a lilting, arrogant echo which cut so deeply at Rusk s integrity that he shuddered.)

earnshaw: What will thee do now 7

emma: I know nothing. (She said this with such simplicity, such willingness to throw herself upon the mercy of God, that he was awed.)

earnshaw: Surely thee has friends. Thee must have family.

emma. I have no one. I am not like others.

earnshaw: Thee has the love of Jesus Christ. And thee can be like others. Thee can wear thy hair about thy ears, and no one will see.

emma: But this?

earnshaw: And thee can make thyself a nose. I'm not sure how right now, but I know it can be done. (He spoke with great force.) We will make thee a nose. We will make thee friends.

emma: Who would want me as a friend 7 You know I had a baby 7

earnshaw: Good God! (He stalked about the room.) Good God, thee hasn't told anyone, has thee 7

emma: Nobody asked.

earnshaw: Thee had a child?

emma: My moon period came. Like the others, I had a child.

earnshaw (totally disoriented): Thee must not speak of this, not to anyone. (Then, overcoming his embarrassment, he regained courage.) Thee means . . . the Indian men? They 7

emma: I told you they came to my bed at night. One after another. (At this appalling news, which he had not fully com-

prehended before, Rusk drew away from the girl, a fact winch she noticed and accepted.) I'm sorry 1 told you, Mr Rusk

earnshavv: Thee knows my name?

emma: We all knew your name. The-Man-Who-Lets 1 Anything they called you

earnshaw: Why did 1 never see thee at Camp Hope?

emma: They never brought us captives

earnshavv: There are others?

emma: Each tribe has many. They trade us back and forth

earnshavv: Always children 7 Always little girls 7

emma: The men they kill, always. Grown women they keep alive for a while, use them, kill them. The boys they tram as young braves. They become Indians. The girls then use, like me.

earnshavv: Oh, my God. What have I done?

emma: My child was a boy I do not want him.

earnshavv: But if he's thy child?

emma: I did not want him then. I do not want him now 1 want to forget them all.

earnshavv: Does thee know what prayer is 7

emma: We prayed here at Bear Creek. I prayed that I'd be rescued some day.

earnshavv: Will thee pray with me now 7 (She dropped to her knees, but Rusk caught her by the arm, the first time he had touched her, and brought her upright.) I am a Quaker, and we do not feel the necessity of kneeling. We speak to God direct

So the two casualties of the frontier prayed that God would give bewildered Earnshaw Rusk guidance to rectify the errors he had fostered, and that assistance would be provided Emma Larkin in the fearsome decisions she must make. He ended the prayer with the hope that Emma would find in her heart renewed love for her baby boy, but when the prayer ended, she told him bluntly: The child is gone. It is all gone.'

When he returned to Camp Hope, Earnshaw Rusk assembled his Comanche and berated them as never before: Thee has lied to me. Thee has crossed the Red River not in the chase of buffalo but to burn and kill. And thee keeps hidden from me other children like Emma Larkin. And such behavior must stop.'

Matark said boldly: 'We will go where we wish And we will give them the children when they offer enough money.'

Thee hides the man called Rattlesnake Peavine in thy ranks, and he is wanted for many murders.'

'He is our friend. We will always protect him from the army.'

Astonished by the boldness of the Comanche, Rusk pleaded with them to make an honest peace with the army and refrain from any further raids into Texas: 'Noble Chief Matark, I promise thee that even now it is not too late. If thee and 1 ride to Fort Garner and enter into solemn promises . . .'

'No Indian can trust their promises. They kill our buffalo. They ravage our camps.'

'Up to now, yes. It's been warfare. But warfare always ends, and peace brings consolations.' He was speaking in Comanche, most eloquently, depicting the longed-for solution to the Indian problem, and tears came to his eyes as he pleaded: 'Great Chief Matark, the grandest thing you could give your people, the gift that would make your name sing across the plains . . . peace. A final agreement to stay north of the Red River. An agreement to live a new life here on the vast reservations the Great White Father has promised thee.'

'They are big now,' Matark said with exceptional insight, 'but they will become very small when your people want them back.'

if we ride south,' Rusk said, imploringly, 'even now we can arrange a peace in which all past raids will be forgiven. Thee will return the stolen children, and thee will live here happily with me.'

'We cannot trust you.'

'Please, please!' the Quaker pleaded. 'Listen to reason. For the love of God and the safety of thy own children, ride with me and let us make peace.'

Matark's response was hideous. Enlisting more than a hundred chanting braves, he led them deep into Texas, where they burned six isolated ranches, killing the men with customary tortures and running off with seven additional children. After they crept back to sanctuary at Camp Hope, he actually boasted in the presence of the agent: "We taught the Texans a lesson,' and with insulting belligerence he refused to surrender the children, asking Rusk: 'And what are you going to do about it?'

NOW A BIZARRE CHAIN OF FRONTIER INCIDENTS OCCURRED. To THE

astonishment of Captain Reed at Fort Garner, Earnshaw Rusk rode south unattended and humiliated himself in the stone-walled headquarters: 'I was deluded. I was lied to. Chief Matark is a dreadful killer who keeps numerous white children in his camps. My way was wrong. I ask thee, Captain Reed, to send thy troops into the Indian Territory and arrest this brutal man.'

'Is this a formal request, Agent Rusk?'

it is.'

'You know that your superiors at Fort Sill and Washington

'I know they will be disgusted with me, going against our agreement. But even for a Quaker the tune conies when crime must be punished.'

'1 will have to have this in writing, Mr. Rusk '

'And thee shall.' Sitting at the captain's desk, he penned a formal request for United States troops to invade Camp Mope in the Indian Territory, and there to arrest Chief Matark of the Comanche for crimes innumerable. When he signed this document, which negated a lifetime of religious training and abrogated his promises to President Grant, his hands trembled But it was done, and then he surprised the soldiers by asking if he couli the girl Emma Larkin, for he had brought her something.

More or less in hiding, she was still living with the Wet/els, who were beginning to see in her a sensitive human being with the merits of courage, forthrightness and a surprising sense of humor as she went about the housework which the German family assigned her. When Mrs. Wetzel brought her before Agent Rusk she noticed that the girl actually seemed happy to see him, and he said: 'No, Mrs. Wetzel, thee must stay I need thy help.'

He took from his pocket a carefully carved wooden nose to which was attached two lengths of braided horsehair, and with Emma standing by a window, he placed the nose m the middle of her face and asked Mrs. Wetzel to hold \t firm while lie tied the horsehair braids behind the back of Emma's head.

'Oh!' Mrs. Wetzel cried with real joy. 'Now you have a nose!' And she hurried for her mirror, and when the girl saw the transformation that had occurred, she could only look first at Rusk, then at Mrs. Wetzel and then back at the mirror. Finally she put the mirror down and took Mrs. Wetzel's hands, which she kissed. Then she did the same with Rusk, but as soon as she had done this she grabbed the mirror again and studied herself, and as she did so, Rusk reached out and pulled strands of her hair across the stumps of her ears, and when she saw herself whole again she did not burst into tears of gratitude. She jumped straight up in the air and gave a startling Comanche yell: 'I am Emma Larkin. 1 am Emma Larkin.'

But she was not allowed to keep her nose,, because Mrs. Wetzel took it from her and left the room; when she returned she had replaced the horsehair braid with an almost invisible white thread, and now when Emma looked m the mirror that Mrs. Wetzel held for her, neither she nor anyone else could detect that it was the thread which held the wooden nose in place, and seeing this perfection and realizing what it meant—an invitation back into life—she wept.

The men at Fort Garner lost little time in mounting a massive attack on Camp Hope, and although other Quaker commissioners at posts in the Indian Territory tried to halt this breach of the Peace Policy, officers waved Agent Rusk's written request at them and plunged ahead. In a series of daring moves they caught Matark and three of his principal supporters. They also captured nine white children, whose stories inflamed the frontier so much that the court in Jacksborough sentenced Matark and his men to hanging.

However, the Quakers were not powerless, and they stormed into federal courts, getting not only injunctions against the hanging but also an agreement whereby Matark and his men would be assigned temporarily to a low-security Texas prison. They were there only a few months when another court set them free, on the theory that they had learned their lesson and would henceforth be reliable citizens. A month after their return to Camp Hope they broke loose and raided savagely along the Texas frontier, burning and torturing as before.

The response from Washington was swift. Gentle-hearted Benjamin Grierson would remain at regimental headquarters in Fort Sill to make way for a real fighting man, Ranald Mackenzie, who was brought in to lead one of five converging columns which would bear down on any Indians found outside their reservations. They would come at Matark and his killers from Texas, New Mexico, Arkansas and the Indian Territory, with Colonel Nelson Miles leading the force opposite to Mackenzie's. These two fiery colonels would form the jaws of a nutcracker in which the enemy would be caught.

When grim-lipped Mackenzie set out after Matark, Reed insisted on leading the three-company detachment from Fort Garner, with Wetzel left behind to defend the place with one company of infantry. As bad luck would have it, the Garner contingent found itself facing the most difficult part of the terrain, that series of smaller canyons which protected Palo Duro on the south, and Jaxifer told his men: 'Seem like we march one mile down into the canyon, then one mile back up to make half a mile forward.' Mackenzie, observing the brutal terrain the Buffalo Soldiers were struggling with, commended them: 'You men are fighting your battle before the battle begins.' Nevertheless he told Jaxifer: 'Hurry them up.'

The excessive heat was a more serious matter, for this was early September when the plains of Texas blazed their hottest; many a newcomer to the state moaned during his first x\ugust: 'Well, at

least September will soon be here ' But he was remembering tember m New Hampshire or New York, when that Texa: ber struck he shuddered

In 1874, September was exceptionally hot, with the entin face of the Panhandle becoming a mirage, dancing insultingly along the horizon. Mesquite trees huddled, scorched bv the sun, drawing into their limitless roots what little water they found deep down, and even jackrabbits hid m their burrows. Rattlesnakes appeared briefly, then had to seek shade to protect their body temperature, and those few buffalo that had survived the onslaught of commercial teams wandered aimless among the bleached skeletons of their brothers.

It was a huge concentration of Indians that gathered m the various canyons of Palo Duro as a last defense against the approaching army: Kicking Bird and his thousand Kiowa, White Antelope and his many Cheyenne; Matark and his nine hundred Comanche. They did not fight as a combined army; Indian custom would never permit that kind of effective coalition, but they did support one another, and to rout them out of their protective furrows was going to be difficult.

On came the five columns, with Miles and Mackenzie always supplying the pressure, but as they approached Palo Duro the ordeals of a Texas September began to take a heavy toll, and as water supplies diminished, the men learned the agony of thirst.

When Reed's 10th Cavalry ran completely out of anything to drink, Jaxifer, acting on his own, ordered one of his men to kill a horse so that his troops could at least wet their lips with its blood, and after Reed's infantry, lagging far behind, suffered for two days of staggering thirst, he ordered his men to take their knives and open veins in their arms so that their own blood could sustain them. When some demurred, he showed them how bv cutting into his own arm, then offering it to two soldiers while he pumped his fist to make the blood spurt. One of the men fainted

Texas weather, particularly on the plains, could provide wild variations, and in mid-September, at the height of the heat and the drought, a blue norther swept in, and during one daylight period the thermometer dropped from ninety-nine degrees to thirty-nine. For two days the freezing wind blew, threatening the lives of men who had been sweating their health away, and on the third day torrential rains engulfed the entire area. Now the war became a chase through mud, with the sturdier, slower horses of the cavalry having an advantage

From all sides the blue-clads began to compress the thousands of Indians, and although the latter, under the expert guidance of

chiefs like Matark, succeeded in avoiding pitched battles, they could not escape the punishing effect of the swift cavalry raids, the burning of lodges and the destruction of crops. Their most serious defeat came on a day when they lost only four braves: in drenching rain Mackenzie and Reed found a defile on the face of the canyon wall and with great daring led their cavalry down that steep and almost impassable route. When they reached the canyon floor they found a concentration of Chief Mamanti's Kiowa, Ohamatai's stubborn Comanche and Iron Shirt's Cheyenne. Thundering through the Indian camps, they scattered the enemy and burned all their lodges, but with even more devastating effect, they captured their entire herd of horses and mules, 1,424 in number.