Winter Rain (51 page)

And how many wrinkles would he have? Would the seams carve themselves deeply into his face, like the faces of the old ones in this camp in the canyon?

What of his hands—those hands that had brought calves and piglets and foals into the world, those hands that had struck out as he corrected his children, hands that had also caressed his sons and daughter with his crude, unsteady love. Would those hands now be gnarled and deformed as he had seen the hands of the old warriors become? Or would they still be strong and sure, unshaken as he took the reins of a team and moved them toward the field in need of planting?

Hands that would remain forever young with the elixir of a young boy’s dream.

Try as he might, even staring down at this wavering reflection in the cold stream, Tall One could not make himself believe this was a true picture of his father. The man would surely be much, much older now. After all, Tall One was himself.

Suddenly a cautious part of him reminded Tall One that it likely did not matter. Something mocked him—saying the man who had been his first father no longer existed. He had not come home from that war he marched off to fight, leaving his family behind. And even if in the realm of slim possibilities that man did survive the war… in the end his first father had simply ceased to exist.

No more did that life on that farm mean anything to him. It was something too remote, too foreign, too long ago to matter anymore. And those dimly focused people from his memories, the people who had shared his long-ago days and nights, the fights and the loving, the laughter and the tears—they too had simply ceased to exist in this new world of the Antelope People. That is, every one of those memory people except his brother, Antelope.

Antelope had always been, and always would be, Tall One’s brother.

It was that single handhold gripping something lasting and eternal that allowed Tall One to feel secure.

Over the seasons of wandering from camp to camp, from stream to stream, hunting and raiding, sleeping and eating in an endless cycle of nomadic wanderings, the boy had eventually grown accustomed to this life of change. Still, coming to accept it was nowhere like feeling secure. The way he had sensed a rock-steady security of day after day, season after season on that farm his family carved out of a valley so far, far away now. Secure in knowing what was expected of him by those he loved. Secure in knowing what to expect out of the turning of the seasons shared with those who loved him.

As much as the boy in him had reveled in the life of these nomads, the young man in him came to yearn every bit as much for something solid and lasting. To count on the rains of spring and the sun in summer, the chill of autumn’s harvest and the season of rest given a farmer come winter’s short days. If only …

It could not be! His life had changed irrevocably. The silly chores of a white man scratching at the earth no longer made any real sense to him. He was a warrior now—

Angrily Tall One plunged his hand into the cold stream; all the way to the muddy bottom he stirred savagely, his fury bringing the once-placid surface to a froth. Doing so, he churned the reflection as quickly as he dispatched all those memories recalled over all those seasons.

He would not allow himself to miss the life he had lived back then. For he never would live it again—

Turning at the distant sound, Tall One felt the sense of being out of place. If not he, then some thing.

A sound sullying the stillness of this morning. Low, rumbling, rolling downstream between the high canyon walls. Perhaps a warrior’s gun. Hunting—

The next crack in the pristine morning raised the hair on his neck. Another gunshot. And a third.

Then as Tall One rose on the muddy bank of the stream, there came a flurry of gunfire from upstream where the Kiowa and Cheyenne had camped. The medicine of those old Kiowa shamans had guaranteed this would be a sanctuary for them all—safe from attack by the pony soldiers.

Behind him the Kwahadi camp came to life. Men sprang from their lodges, pulling on clothing. Women began to drag sleepy children from the lodges, everyone clutching something important beneath an arm as they scurried downstream like a covey of frightened quail, away from the shooting. Into the noise and confusion Tall One raced, dodging little ones and old ones with big, frightened eyes, hurling himself around lodges and favored war ponies. Bridge stood outside the lodge, buckling on a belt shiny with cartridges.

“Your weapons—inside!”

Tall One plunged past him, finding the interior in disarray. He was alone. The rest of the family already gone
in those first moments of gunfire up-canyon. From the dewcloth liner the young man tore free his medicine bag, which he draped over his left shoulder, then pulled down the wolf-skin quiver that rattled, heavy with arrows, and his short cherry wood bow. He dived through the doorway as Bridge turned to him.

“Take this, Tall One!” he ordered, shoving an old pistol into the young warrior’s hand.

“It is loaded?”

“Yes,” the old warrior said.

“I … I never shot this before—”

“It does not matter. You will learn how to shoot it well before the sun rises to midsky,” he replied sternly, his eyes narrowing on the youth. “Fight well this day, Tall One. And remember: you are Kwahadi!”

Bridge whirled, setting off.

Tall One called out. “Four Spirits Woman? She and the children?”

Bridge turned, his face grim in determination. “I have sent them on downstream with the others. Into the rocks to hide.”

In the distance rose the brass-throated eruption of a soldier bugle echoing off the blood-red walls of this canyon.

Bridge stared for a moment as the sound echoed from the canyon walls. “They will be safe, Tall One. Be strong this day—we Kwahadi must not fall!”

He watched his second father wheel and disappear, melding into the confusion as people and ponies swept past him.

“Bridge, let me fight beside you!” he shouted. But it was too late. Already the man was gone too far, and the noise too great for Bridge to hear him.

The Comanche village was cleaving itself asunder: women and children, along with the old ones, all headed downstream while the warriors rushed upstream toward
the sound of the gunfire becoming more general now. As the women wailed and keened their mourning and death songs, men raised their voices in anger, rage, fury—in the terrible mocking of death.

Where was Antelope?

He feared fighting alone, perhaps even dying alone. Not having his brother by his side when they finally clashed with the soldiers. Grudgingly he admitted that his brother might be more Comanche than he was. Might be more Kwahadi than Tall One ever would be.

It had always helped to have Antelope beside him as they rode with the others, caught up in the swirl of things before he had time to think, to feel, to fear. To doubt.

He dared not allow himself any doubt—

Crying out with his own war cry, Tall One dived into the rush and blur with the others as they hurried, most on foot, some on horseback, to the sound of the fight upstream. Sharp cracks of the Indian weapons punctuated the low booming of the soldier rifles in a two-note symphony reverberating down the twisting path of the Prairie Dog Town Fork. The simple act of crying out, letting his lungs roar against what residue of fear he might still hide in his heart, helped Tall One once more shed the last paralyzing hold that fear itself had on him. It had always been easier to hurl himself in with the others, let them sweep him along, let them do the leading so that he did not have to think. Only follow.

As he joined them, Tall One was struck with a singular thought: that none of the men, young warriors or old, had painted themselves or taken any time to put on their hair ornaments. He fretted, creating an ever-tightening knot in his belly that this absence of ritual, this forfeiture of the tribe’s spiritual power, would spell disaster for them this day. Yet he calmed himself, reminded that all they had to do was what they had done so many, many times before: just cover the retreat of their families with
their own lives until it came time they too could escape downstream.

Just cover the retreat with their own lives.

“Tall One!”

Far ahead one of them stood against the rest, waving Tall One on as the others rushed by him. The warrior’s face flushed with excitement. Eyes lit with the flame of passion.

“Antelope!”

“Come, brother—we have
tai-bos
to kill! At long last—we have
tai-bos
to kill!”

When together they reached a bend in the canyon where their progress slowed, then ground to a halt, they found Lone Wolf’s Kiowa stalled among the rocks, taking cover behind the trees on the outer perimeter of their village, firing back at not-so-distant targets. Here and there a white face swam through the gun smoke and wispy trails of abandoned fires. Still, most of the faces of those making this attack were dark. Many times they had been told to expect that the first wave they might encounter in an attack on their village would be the Seminole and Tonkawa trackers. This day these were dressed in the same dark-blue shirts as the yellow-legs themselves, their hair tied up provocatively for battle. It was disturbing to see that many of those dark faces had been mockingly painted … while the Kwahadi had no time for their medicine toilet.

“Look!” Antelope shouted in his ear, nudging him sharply and pointing to their left.

Against the far side of the canyon wall snaked a dark column of more soldiers, leading their horses, winding their way down the thousand-foot descent from the prairie above. As fast as they could inch along the narrow footpath, the yellow-legs were coming to augment the Indian scouts who pressed the point of the attack.

Abruptly it seemed the Kiowa were up and moving, coming back toward the Kwahadi now. More noise crashed ahead of them in echoing reverberations as Lone Wolf’s
warriors fell back first at a walk, then one by one broke into a run past the Comanche who had just arrived on the battle line.

Then he saw them clearly—the Tonkawa trackers and soldiers draped in blue, down here in the cool, dark shadows, their horses snorting wispy streamers of gauze into the autumn air, horses’ legs like throbbing pistons hammering the streambanks as they charged among the rocks and trees the Kiowa were abandoning helter-skelter.

“Come, Tall One!”

Antelope hollered at him a second time, tugging on his elbow. Around them the rest of the Kwahadi and Kiowa were backtracking now like bits of ghostly flotsam adrift on the mist and canyon shadow—stopping hurriedly to turn and fire from behind a boulder, next time stopping behind a wide cottonwood, wheeling off again to reload quickly on the run before they would wheel and fire another shot at the pursuing soldiers and their Indian trackers.

Tall One found the pistol in hand, his arm outstretched without thinking, yanking back the hammer with the other hand before he squeezed the trigger—pointing the muzzle at one of the Tonkawa riding down on him. The tracker’s horse skidded stiff-legged to a halt, twisting its head savagely to the side, heaving its rider off in a tumultuous shudder, pitching the tracker into the brush as it went down in a heap, legs flaying.

Its unearthly cry sent shivers up from the base of Tall One’s spine.

A bullet’s snarl cut the air beside his ear angrily. He felt it pass so close, it smelled of brimstone and death. Suddenly the cold air hissed through the icy furrow along his neck where the bullet had creased him. Some of his long hair stung the open wound, matted in the first beading ooze of that raw tissue.

As quickly as he saw the puff of smoke from the enemy’s weapon, Tall One whirled on his heel and sprinted
off, his heart singing. He could not claim killing one of the enemy trackers—but there was little doubt he had spilled the rider and killed the Tonkawa’s horse.

To put an enemy afoot was a great coup!

But just as his heart began to soar with his brave feat, Tall One’s heart sank. Beneath his feet he felt the ground tremble. Around him the air reverberated with the thunder of hooves. Hundreds of hooves rising to a great, raucous crescendo as they charged ever on down the canyon, following the throaty call of those bugles.

While he had unhorsed one—there remained more than he and the rest could ever knock from their saddles.

Glancing over his shoulder as he ran, heedless of the brush he stumbled over, tripping only to pick himself back up and rush off again, Tall One sprinted along with the last of them, the warriors heading for the rocks against the side of the canyon where the women and children had gone to climb upward toward the prairie, toward the sun, to safety.

Where the thundering of those yellow-leg horses would not find them.

Where no man might know of Tall One’s doubts.

T
HE MONTH WAS
growing old. In less than a week, someone had said, it would be February.

February. Jonah laughed humorlessly. Why, he was still far from accepting the fact that another year had thrust itself upon him!

Still, five days ago there had come a break in the weather that imprisoned these southern plains, and Captain Lockhart had given them three hours to make ready for the trail.

They had left their station at the headwaters of the South Fork of the Pease River at sundown four of those days ago, riding the moon down that long winter’s night, marching west at a hand-lope, the hard breast of the wind fresh in their faces, so cold it brought tears to a man’s eyes without letup.

West toward the great monolithic wall of the Staked Plain.

Into the caprock of that barren buffalo ground they rode down the second and into their third day, stopping long enough to water the stock when they were lucky enough to run onto sinks and springs, unsaddling for a spare six hours each successive night—just long enough for the men to grab three solid hours of sleep, the captain having his men stand two watches at guard.

“If we’re up and moving now that the weather’s gone and broke,” Niles Coffee explained, “it’s bound to reason the Comanch’ are up and roaming too.”