Murder at Medicine Lodge (4 page)

“Tay-bodal, you will ride beside me.”

“Me?” I cried. “Why should I go? The sight of me will impress no one.”

Normally this form of sniveling made White Bear smile. Unless the conceit belonged to him or his favorite nephew, The Cheyenne Robber, White Bear loathed braggarts. But this time he was having nothing to do with suitably humble pronouncements. Moving through the crowd of men like the bear for which he was named, he came to stand before me, looming like a bulky shadow. As he spoke, his pointy finger jabbed my bare chest.

“You have lived among the Blue Jackets,” he said through clenched teeth. “You can advise me. So you will ride on one side of me and Skywalker on the other.” With a broad wave of his arms he bellowed, “That's all I have to say.”

Still looking for a means of escape, I stammered, “I—I walked here. I have no horse.”

“Then you will use one of my horses,” he scoffed. “The worst of mine are better than the best of yours.” He then looked me up and down, saying almost to himself, “And something must be done about your appearance.”

When a beefy arm slung itself around my shoulders, I knew I was thoroughly trapped. And afraid.

For, you see, the days I had lived among the Blue Jackets could be counted on the fingers of one hand and for over half those days I had been gravely ill, recovering from wounds suffered in an attempt on my life. The Blue Jacket doctor, Haw-we-sun, had saved my life, but while I was his patient, I had also been his prisoner. I had not, as White Bear chose to believe, roamed freely among the soldiers during my short time in their encampment in the Wichita Mountains, a place we Kiowa called Medicine Bluffs. For the first five years of its life, before it became known as Fort Sill, this most famous fort was nothing more than rows of tents and three log buildings. One building belonged to the commander, the second was for the supply store. The smallest building was Haw-we-sun's little doctoring house. The whole time I was there, I had barely ventured farther than the porch of Hawwy's little house, and so I had no idea just how White Bear believed I could advise him.

*   *   *

I felt overdressed for the occasion, wearing clothing borrowed from Skywalker, and riding a powerful warhorse belonging to White Bear. To make the disguise complete, I even carried a borrowed lance that was marked with the designs of the Jaifegau (Crazy Horses Society), the projectile point aimed at the sky while the rounded end was balanced on the toes of my right foot. I tried my best to look the part of a fiercesome warrior, but felt the fraud.

The other warriors were told to keep watch over me, make certain I made no mistakes. Meanwhile I did my utmost to mimic their every move. There was a certain expression warriors showed outsiders, an expression I've heard described as stoic. Actually, what they were going for was
surly,
but
stoic
has its merits.

At any rate, the men who convinced the world that they had only this one severe side to them were actually lively pranksters. All other emotions were intentionally hidden, resulting in a terrible misjudgment—that warriors did not laugh, did not cry. The greatest injury of this opinion is that it robs these men of their humanness. And so I tell you this truth: Those men laughed, they cried, they loved, and when they weren't involved in a fight to the death, they were happy rascals.

But on this day I am telling you about, they were being stoic and keeping sharp eyes on me so that I would not bungle.

The Blue Jackets' camp was sprawling and, as was their wont, organized into well-defined rows of two-man tents. To the back were the large tents belonging to the officers and dignitaries from Washington. There were about ten of those.

What immediately caught my eye were the two officers' tents set apart. I was looking at these tents when White Bear and Skywalker dismounted, their hands busily being shaken by the three greeting generals of the Blue Jacket army. I remained sitting stiffly on my loaned horse, trying very hard to remain blank-faced as I considered those curiously placed tents. During my brief stay among the Blue Jackets, I hadn't learned a lot, but I had learned enough to know that those two out-of-place tents went directly against their fervent sense of order.

While I studied them, the answer to the tent stuck off farther to the left became known, as an Indian woman dressed in white woman's clothing emerged. Seeing her, one of the generals smiled, extended his arm, indicating that she was welcome to join us. She proceeded forward, holding herself in a curious fashion, ample breasts hoisted up almost to her neck, rear end jutting out, the hem of the long skirt of her dress dragging on the ground. I could not see her feet, so I wasn't certain if she was walking, for I had never seen a woman walk with such a tottering sway. She was such an extraordinary sight that she held every warrior's complete attention. Realizing this, she deliberately slowed her approach, seemed to enjoy the effect her peculiar appearance caused. As she passed the mounted gawking Kiowa, I was instantly taken by her hat.

I love hats, but that isn't why I fixed on hers. My long-dead father used to sell feathers and inadvertently he had passed his love for feathers of supreme quality on to me. The feather sticking from the back of that woman's hat was the most marvelous red feather I'd ever seen. It was long enough to arch and hang far over the back brim of her hat. I learned later that this was a dyed ostrich feather. I have never seen an ostrich—not even a picture of one—but the memory of that single feather leaves me to believe that an ostrich is a formidable bird, one that must be as large as a buffalo. It would taken an even more formidable woman to dare to pluck a feather from it, and for this reason I have always held the Arapaho woman known as Mrs. Margaret Adams in my highest regard.

But I do try to forget that when she turned her back to us we were all further appalled that she'd chosen to accentuate her already high, round backside with a large, blindingly white bow. The sight of all that elevated whiteness put me in mind of a white-tailed doe coming into breeding season.

Evidently Dangerous Eagle was having the very same thought. As I was closest to him, I was the only one to hear the soft humming sound he made as he struggled not to laugh out loud.

The generals were at once deferential toward Mrs. Adams, placing her between themselves and White Bear. She made a grand show of speaking to White Bear, who wasn't listening. Then, too, she spoke only Arapaho. White Bear could not understand one word the woman rattled off, and he was already concentrating on her uplifted breasts, tilting his head in order to study them from various angles. It was with superhuman effort that the rest of us maintained dead-pan appearances, never mind that tears of mirth were beginning to shine in our eyes. Even the gloomy-of-late Skywalker was affected, having to turn away, run a hand over a tightly clamped mouth. When he was more composed, he turned again to the three generals who, seeing that White Bear's gaze had become quite fixated with Mrs. Adams' offered-up bosoms, were glowing with embarrassment. On the command of one of them, a white man came quickly forward, this man able to speak Comanche.

White Bear spoke pretty good Comanche but he was better at ordering Comanches to speak to him in Kiowa—a thing our Comanche allies complained about, saying our language is too hard, that it is the most difficult language of all the Nations. I'm afraid that this is true. Most of our words are identical, the meanings altered by the way the words are pronounced. For example, said one way, “A-ho” means
thank you.
Said another, “A-ho” also means,
Kill him.
As you might well imagine, when using this particular phrase it is imperative the speaker's pronunciation be exactly right.

And therein lies the problem. Every Nation has its own distinctive sound. Ours is a loud popping of the lips when saying words that begin with your letter
p.
Then, too, there is the overstressing the hard
s.
When doing this, a considerate speaker leans back slightly to avoid spitting in another's face. These little quirks require a lifetime to master, and even our own children have a tendency to mangle the language. My own son was at that time only just nearing six and the way he spoke was hilarious. I think his difficulty would be described as a lisp. The truth is, my son did not have a lisp. Until he was eight, he simply couldn't pop his
p
's.

As White Bear and the Comanche-speaking man made halting stabs at understanding each other, Skywalker stood quietly by his side. My attention was pulled away by movement to the extreme right. A small guard of soldiers had been present when we rode in, but due to our unexpected number, more soldiers were quickly arriving. As they came to a stop and formed two straight lines, an officer quietly walked before them, making certain that they stood just right, with shoulders almost touching. He was also concerned that they hold their rifles fixed tightly across their chests. The greatest number of these soldiers were the black-white men known to us as Buffalo Soldiers, on account of their short curly hair.

One soldier in their company was noticed by all of us, not because his was a white face set among the black, but because of a shiny thing hanging down from his belt. This shiny thing caught White Bear's attention. Dismissing both the Comanche-speaking man and Mrs. Adams' displayed breasts, White Bear turned to stare at the newly arrived soldiers. His hand toying with his chin, he muttered a question. The Comanche-speaking man answered in a voice loud enough for all of us to hear.

“Buug-lah.”

White Bear first looked to Skywalker, then, turning at the waist he looked back at me. I shrugged, indicating that I had no idea what a Buug-lah might be. Disgust creasing his broad face, White Bear turned back to the Comanche-speaking man.

After a bit of a conference with the generals, the Comanche-speaker beckoned the man called Buug-lah to step forward. That man came to stand before the generals, smartly saluting his chiefs. In those passing seconds, White Bear's hand went for the shiny thing the man wore on his belt. When this soldier felt the touch, he absently slapped away White Bear's hand.

The action instantly incensed White Bear's honor guard. Big Tree was the first to raise his lance and let go a murderous holler. Mrs. Adams gasped and the Comanche-speaking white man visibly paled. The Blue Jackets followed suit as more warriors raised their lances and hollered. I was doing my best to do that too when, not liking it at all that a soldier had struck him, White Bear grabbed Buug-lah by the throat. Using only the strength of one arm, he lifted the soldier from the ground, his hand squeezing the neck so hard that the man was going blue in the face. The warriors
kawed
louder, shaking their lances at the sky as both Skywalker and the Comanche-speaking man dove against White Bear, forcing him to let go of the offending soldier. The generals stepped clear, retreating a safe distance, and Mrs. Adams, lifting her skirts, fled. The soldiers in the recently formed line lifted their rifles awaiting the order from the officer poised with a raised saber.

There I was in what could have easily become a war—a thing both my wife and I worked very hard for me to avoid. Her first husband had been a notable warrior. So notable that he'd made her a widow with an infant child. She said she wasn't bitter, but I believe the thing that convinced her that marrying me was a good idea, was the nasty rumor that I was a sincere craven.

But anyway, at some point in the scuffle, Raven's Wing jumped from his horse and joined the fray. By the time I'd sufficiently recovered from fright, Skywalker and Raven's Wing had hold of White Bear and the soldier was lying like a broken doll on the ground. The warriors were
kiiy
ing and whooping, sending White Bear their very vocal support, and I heard my own voice blending with theirs but I was watching the officer with the sword. He was shouting sounds that reminded me of counting and his sword was beginning to rise. Even at a distance I could see beads of sweat breaking out on the faces of the soldiers sighting down their rifles. Seeing the muzzle of one rifle trained on me, I mentally kissed my beautiful wife good-bye.

“For God's sake, don't shoot!”

Haw-we-sun was running fast, long legs pumping. A half-step behind him was Billy. It was Hawwy who had yelled at the officer with the sword and Billy was yelling in Kiowa to the warriors. I have never, before or since, felt such relief. On White Bear's one-word command, all of the warriors fell silent. In that tense second, one of the generals also yelled, and the soldiers lowered their rifles and assumed their former stance while the officer, his expression livid, shakily resheathed his saber. White Bear threw off Skywalker and Raven's Wing, then, speaking in a querulous tone, he pointed to the soldier still lying at his feet.

Billy talked fast against Haw-we-sun's ear as Hawwy spoke to the generals. Grim-faced, a general turned away, his hands clasped behind his back. Haw-we-sun helped the prone soldier to his feet, dusting the man off. A young officer quickly came forward and led the dazed soldier away.

THREE

Of course, I should have known Haw-we-sun would be at Medicine Lodge; not because, as a Blue Jacket doctor, he was in any way crucial to the upcoming peace negotiations—but because of Cherish, the Kiowa girl he wanted to marry. I was opposed to the marriage. Quite frankly, for a long time into the courtship, I was astonished the army, too, was not objecting to it. Everything became clear when Hawwy mentioned that his superiors knew that Cherish was sister to The Cheyenne Robber, and the niece of White Bear. When one of their minor officers asked permission to marry such an important Kiowa girl, his seniors made haste to encourage the match for they saw this young couple as yet another means of securing peace.

As for how our own people felt about the marriage—well, as in the case of her older brother The Cheyenne Robber, you'd have to know Cherish to understand. Like her brother, she was a breathtaking sight, which is why Haw-we-sun fell immediately in love with her. But she was also terribly vain and ill-tempered. While at first it galled White Bear all the way to the bottom of his feet that a white man was offering for her, he quickly saw the advantage, winching up the bride-price to an unprecedented amount. Since Hawwy spoke very little Kiowa, he thought he was only agreeing to pay White Bear in mules. What he didn't know—because this term in the agreement had very carefully not been explained to him—was that he'd also agreed to pay with e-pe-tas (repeaters). The half-caste Kiowa known as Billy had used the money Haw-we-sun gave him, supposedly for mules, to pay a pair of white brothers who were longtime traders in the territory, for the guns. Then Billy slipped the guns to White Bear. On the whole I felt badly for Hawwy; but not so badly that, in the frightful moments a soldier was aiming at me, I regretted any reason that had brought Hawwy to Medicine Lodge.