Winter Rain (56 page)

Antelope had joined another rider rushing in to pick the young warrior from the prairie and sling him to the back of his wounded pony. They turned about and headed across the rolling plain, in the direction they hoped to find the migrating village. By the time the warriors returned, the pony was clearly dying, its rider faring little better. The village war chief said they would have to abandon the animal. All the while the shamans continued to shake their gut rattles and beat on their hand drums—praying that the bullets left inside Antelope’s friend would disappear and he would come back from the near-dead.

Antelope had grieved like never before when his friend failed to return to the land of the living. His spirit went on to cross the great Sky Road. That was the closest the lightning bolt of death had ever struck near Antelope. Like a passing spring thunderstorm, the death of his best friend heated the air and charged the ground where young Antelope stood, frightened him into greater resolve against the white man.

“What about our mother?” Tall One asked one morning.

“Big Mule’s wife? What of her?”

“No. I am not talking about the mother who adopted you. I am talking about the woman who gave us birth.”

Antelope stared at the ground, squeezing his eyes as if something must surely come of kneading his memory so hard. “I cannot remember her. There are no pictures anymore.”

“Our sister?”

The young brother eventually shook his head. “No. Do you remember them?”

“Some things. If I try—I can remember.”

“Pictures only?” Antelope asked, a little suspicion in his voice. “Or do you remember … words?”

Tall One could not lie to his brother. Keeping silent about it was like being turned wrong side out, just like a snake shedding its skin, from the inside out. “The more I try, looking at things, thinking on it hard—I remember some of the words. I remember other things too.”

Antelope’s eyes had darted back and forth like night birds, looking for anyone who might overhear. “Tell me.”

“The touch of our mother’s hand.” He watched Antelope stare into the distance. Out there might prove to be his memories of her, of the life they once had. “Brother, can you remember how good it felt when she held us against her, rocked us to sleep?”

With a wag of his head he answered, “No. I can only remember Rain Woman and how she cradled me when I grew frightened.”

“We were frightened a lot those first days, Antelope. Rain Woman was a good mother to you.”

“She is the only mother I remember. And Big Mule is the only father I know.”

He bit his lip a moment, then grew determined to say it. “You were too young, perhaps. But we both had the same father long, long ago. A tall, thin man with a long face.”

“Like many of the
tai-bos
, did he have hair on his face?”

“Yes. I remember how loud his voice would get when I did something wrong. And I’ve been remembering how safe and secure I felt sitting in his lap when the sun had gone down at the end of a day, when he moved back and forth in a chair that rocked.”

“I cannot remember such a thing. I know I have seen a chair—but not one that moves back and forth.”

Tall One squatted slightly, then swayed forward and back in pantomime. Then he stood again and sighed. “A few days ago I remembered how it felt to lay my ear against Mother’s breast and hear her heart beating as she ran her fingers over my cheek. It was hard, and it took some time, but I remembered too the smell of our father—that fragrance of tobacco smoke from his pipe, and the rich smell of moist black earth that clung to him always.”

“He was an earth-scratcher?”

“Yes. Like these settlers who are moving into our buffalo ground,” he answered. “And just this morning before the camp awoke, I lay in my blanket thinking on those memories. Trying for more. And I did have a new one come to me: remembering the feel of his strong hands wrapped around mine as he taught me to shoot his rifle.”

Antelope wagged his head, looking into his brother’s face. “I never learned to shoot a rifle.” Then his eyes brightened. “But I can use the lance, throw the tomahawk, use my knife, and shoot the bow as well as any.”

He touched his younger brother on the shoulder. “Yes, you are as good as any Kwahadi warrior. But don’t you see? It was not the learning of the rifle that I remembered most, Antelope. It was the safe, secure feel I had when that man took my hands in his and wrapped them around the gun, or the handle of a hoe, or held me in front of him in the saddle, or even let me handle the two horses hitched to our wagon.”

A sudden wave of excitement was heard washing its way across the camp that morning. Antelope turned to see what caused the noise, then looked back at Tall One.

“I don’t know what to think, my brother—except that maybe these memories are not so good to have so often. Better that you think of the Kwahadi. These are our people
now. Try as I might, I cannot remember being anything else but Kwahadi.”

“You want me to forget? Forget all that is good in my memories?”

Antelope nodded as they noticed some other young warriors hurrying their way. “You are strong enough to keep yourself from remembering. The
tai-bos
we lived among long ago are now our enemies. We belong to The People. You must tell yourself that the white people we once were are our enemies now.”

“You mean our own white selves are now our enemies?”

“Perhaps, I do not know for sure. But what I am certain of is that your memories of that life are as evil as anything can be to our way of life with the Kwahadi.”

“Antelope!” cried one of the arriving warriors rushing up in a swirl of noise and excitement.

Tall One’s younger brother turned away, but not without whispering, “You are a Kwahadi warrior now.”

“Tall One! Our war chief has given the word!” said Burns Red.

“Yes,” cheered Old Owl Man. “We are to paint ourselves and make ready.”

“For what?” Antelope asked.

“The white men,” Burns Red replied. “They are not far behind us, say the scouts.”

“Won’t we pack up our belongings and move the village this morning?” Tall One inquired.

“No. The war council says we will wait right here for the three-times-ten to put their foot into the trap.”

“What trap?” Antelope asked.

Old Owl Man chuckled, then said, “Not a real trap. Just that we are not running, not going anywhere. We know there are only a few
tai-bos
behind us—and their scalps will look good on our weapons, to decorate our war ponies.”

“I want one of those big horses for my own,” said Burns Red.

Antelope agreed. “My brother needs a horse.”

Old Owl Man laughed. “I know—but Tall One has been pulling a travois and acting like a horse for so long, I am afraid he won’t remember how to ride a horse!”

“I remember how to ride a horse—”

“Can you still fight from horseback?” demanded Burns Red.

His blood was warming. There was something about this friend of Antelope’s that Tall One did not like. Never had. He was a cocky one. “I fight on a horse. I can fight on my own two feet. Would you like to fight me here and now, Burns Red?” Tall One growled.

The youth laughed, throwing his chin back and puffing up his chest. “No, Tall One. I want you to join us when we go fight these
tai-bos.”

“How close are they?” Antelope asked.

“If we wait for them right here, the scouts believe the white men will arrive by the time the sun reaches the top of its climb today.”

“I must make ready,” Antelope said, stepping away toward his friends.

“Aren’t you going to make ready to fight the
tai-bos
, Tall One?” asked Burns Red.

How he wanted to pound the smirk from the young man’s face. “Yes. I will go to my lodge now and ask Bridge for some of his paints and grease.”

“You can use some of mine, Tall One,” Antelope offered.

He shook his head, never taking his eyes off Old Owl Man and Burns Red. “Thank you, brother. But I will ask Bridge for some of his.”

“It is good!” Burns Red mocked. “Dragging a travois is work worthy of only an old pony … work done only by a
tai-bo
who tries to be a Kwahadi. Will Tall One be a
warrior today? Or will he fail and still be a
tai-bo
pony dragging a travois?”

Antelope tried to protest, saying, “He helped move the village each day like many of the others—”

Tall One put his hand out against his young brother’s chest to interrupt him. “I did then what my people needed of me. And this morning I will make ready to fight these
tai-bos.
Because that is what my people need of me. Then—when we have killed these white men, and their scalps hang from our belts—I will call for you, Burns Red.”

“Why will you call for me, Tall One?” Burns Red demanded haughtily. “You want to carry my belongings and be my
tai-bo
pony?”

The small group laughed with Burns Red and Old Owl Man.

“No. Because at long last, after all this time, I will see you take back all the insults you have heaped on me for so many seasons.”

Burns Red laughed, and most of the others there laughed with him. “How are you going to make me take back these insults, Tall One, the
tai-bo
pony?”

“You will take them back—or I will kill you.”

Captain Lockhart had
kept the marches of the last two days as short as he could while still gaining some ground on the village moving before them. The Rangers were closing in, and their weary, broken-down stock had to be as ready as those men could make them.

Jonah felt proud to be among these men. Not one of them seemed concerned they were narrowing the lead on a force of proven warriors at least three, perhaps four times their own number. Instead of worrying about the coming fight, the Rangers instead talked about everything else but. Girls they left behind back home. What the coming spring meant to them as they were growing up. The smell of
laundered sheets taken off the line by their mother and spread atop their tick mattresses with that once-a-week cleaning. The proper cutting of a male colt that made for the least amount of bleeding, hence narrowing the possibility of infection after doping the wound. How best to judge the fine qualities of a colt to know if you were going to geld him or leave him stand to stud.

As well as talking about which weapons were better than others there among Company C as it went through the last hours before those thirty-some men rode into war with Quanah Parker’s Comanche.

That last day they had covered a minimum of twenty-five miles without unduly punishing their horses, but Lockhart urged them on just so they could reach this great depression in the prairie where cold rainwater had been trapped in the passing of a storm two nights back. It had been a damp dying of winter, cold and chill, and the Staked Plain was now dotted with many ponds, some as wide as a hundred yards or more.

The pond where the Rangers spent last night had been muddied by the village they were trailing. If the sediment hadn’t settled, Lockhart explained to men who really needed little explanation, then the village could not be more than a half day’s ride ahead.

They didn’t light fires, nor did the captain allow any of the men to charge their pipes. That was perhaps the biggest loss to many of them—in Indian country a bowl of tobacco was so often a man’s only consolation when he could not have a cheery fire at his feet, bringing his coffeepot to boil.

Instead, Lockhart would not allow the men to brood on what they were going to do without. He put them out in messes, separating the men as well as the horses they kept saddled in the event some of the Comanche had become aware of the Rangers on their backtrail and returned after nightfall to stir up trouble, attempting to run off their stock
or make a night scalp raid. The wind grew ugly, and already there was a cold spit to it that served to let no man sleep. Throughout the long hours of cold darkness beneath a crooked strip of sky filled with whirling stars above that rolling tableland, the men had for the most part kept to themselves. Few talked at all, and if they did, it was only to let others know they were moving off for a minute or so to relieve themselves.

Somewhere in the middle of the night as the sky swung around the north star, the wind swung down around them from the north. It tasted now of snow, guffawing around their cheerless camp like mocking swirls of Comanche laughter. Then the first of the icy snow began in that hour past midnight, pattering against the canvas and leather and wool felt of their hats like little feet come to steal away every vestige of their hope of catching the enemy.

The cold, utter silence of that high, barren land seemed to swallow all sound in huge, hungry draughts … the darkness of that sky overhead graced with but the thinnest rind of moon behind the icy clouds, and that steady, incomprehensible rhythm of the wind, all made for one of the longest nights in Jonah’s life. Without the talk of other men, without the luxury of being called to action, Hook was forced to talk to himself, forced to stay in one place where he could not flee his bitter memories. Bittersweet thoughts of the past, painful thoughts of what might have been, once more came to darken his mind like the spilling of a tin of lampblack.

What should have been.

Hattie was back there in the East, as safe as any man could make his daughter now. Learning about books and manners and cultured things and … great Lord! he thought. Hattie would turn twenty this spring. Was it still February? No sure idea what month it was—he would have to find out from Coffee. The sergeant kept his log for
Lockhart. And when they got down to Fort Concho, Jonah vowed to go in to the sutler’s there and find something to send his daughter. Maybe a dress he could have posted to the seminary school he sent money to regular. Maybe he could even find a music box. He remembered how she had always wanted one of those. The perfect gift for a girl her age.

Twenty—he marveled. She was near five years older than her mama was when he and Gritta had married back in the Shenandoah. So Hattie wasn’t a girl no more. She’d be a full-blown woman when at last he went back to get her.