But she only reeled away from me, still making strangling noises, to lean on the fence of the horse pen, where a hollowed-out log trough held water for the animals. She plunged her head under the water, then several times tilted her head back to gargle the water in her mouth and spit it out, and meanwhile, with her cupped hands, scooped water up under her mantle to wash her nether parts. When finally she felt clean enough or composed enough to speak, she did so, but disjointedly, gagging and retching between words:
"You saw... I could not... shout..."
"Do not talk," I said. "Stay here and rest. I must hide the bodies."
The very mention of the men made her face go ill and greenish again, so I left her and went into the shack. As I dragged one dead man, then the other, by the feet out of the door, I was struck by an idea. I ran again to the top of the knoll, and could espy no patrol or any other moving being either east or west. So I ran back down to the soldiers and clumsily, but as quickly as I could, I unstrapped their various pieces of metal and leather armor. When I could get to the heavy blue canvas uniforms beneath, I stripped those garments off the bodies, too. Several pieces of the clothing were ruined, either rent by the blast of my arcabuz or drenched with blood. But I salvaged and set aside one shirt, one pair of trousers, and a pair of stout military boots.
When they were unclad, the corpses were easier to move, but I was panting and sweating heavily by the time I had dragged each of them around to the far side of the knoll. There was thick underbrush there, and I thought I did a creditable job of hiding them and the remainder of their weapons in it. Then, with a torn shirt of theirs, I went back over the traces of our passage—my own tracks, their smeared blood, the broken twigs and disarranged greenery—doing my best to make them unnoticeable.
The smoke had cleared from the shack by then, so I went in and picked up the two arcabuces the soldiers had had no chance to use, and the leather pouches in which they kept balls and pólvora, and two metal water flasks and one fine, sharp steel knife. There was also a pouch of dried, fibrous meat that I thought worth taking, and some leather straps and lengths of rope. While I was collecting these things, I saw that the dirt floor was much splotched with clotting blood, so I used the knife to chop up the earthen surface, then started stamping it flat again. I was busy at that when something occurred to me, and I paused to look more closely around me on the ground.
"What are you doing?" Tiptoe asked urgently. She was leaning against the doorjamb, limp, looking still sick and wretched. "You have hidden them. We must get away from here." I could see that she was bravely trying to suppress those gut-wrenching spasms of nausea, but her breast throbbed with the effort of it.
"I want to hide everythingof them," I said. "There is—er—one piece missing."
Tiptoe suddenly looked even sicker than before, and the heaves of her breast became again violent retches between her words: "Did not mean to... but... the thunder-noise... I bit... and then I..."
She swallowed, with a phlegmy gulp, to fight down the gagging that strangled her next words. I did not need to hear the words. I had to swallow several times myself, to keep from vomiting most unmanfully.
Tiptoe disappeared from the doorway, and I hurried to finish tamping the shack floor. Then I ran once more to the top of the knoll to make sure that we were not yet in hazard of being interrupted by any patrols or passersby. Though I was by now getting very tired, I continued trying to behave manfully, to inspirit poor Tiptoe, who was again gargling water at the horse trough. Manfully, I overcame what would have been anybody'snatural timidity around such huge and alien animals as horses, and approached those in the fenced pen. I was somewhat surprised, and much emboldened, when they did not recoil from me or strike out at me with their massive hooves. All four of them merely regarded me with deerlike looks of mild curiosity, and one of the barebacked animals stood submissively still while I bundled onto its back the various things I had plundered from the soldiers and the shack, tying them on with the bits of rope and straps I had found there. When the horse still showed no signs of objecting, I added to its burden my traveling pack and that of Tiptoe. Then I went to where she sat huddled and miserable beside the trough, and bent to help her to stand. She flinched away from my hand and said, almost snarling:
"Please, do not touch me again. Not ever again, Tenamáxtli."
I murmured encouragingly, "Just get up and help me lead the horses, Pakápeti. As you said, we must be away from here. And when we are safely distant, I will teach you how to kill Spaniards with your very own thunder-stick."
"Why should I stop with Spaniards?" she muttered, and spat on the ground, and added disgustedly, "Men!"
She was now sounding uncomfortably like that Yaki witchwife, G'nda Ké. But she stood up and, evincing no nervousness at all, took the reins of one saddled horse and the rope I had tied around the neck of the pack animal. I led the other two horses, and kicked down a fence rail so we could get out, and away we all went.
I was trusting that when a patrol didarrive at that outpost, those men would be confounded by the inexplicable absence of the guards and all their animals, and would waste some time waiting for the truants to reappear, before going to search for them. Whether or not the patrol found the two corpses, they would almost certainly assume that the outpost had been attacked by some war party from the north. And they would hardly dare to go chasing after them into the Tierra de Guerra until they had assembled a considerable force of other soldiers. So Tiptoe and I and our acquisitions should be able to put ample distance between ourselves and any pursuit. Nevertheless, I did not take us straight to the north. I had already calculated, from where the sun stood in the sky at every time of day, that we must be almost directly eastward of my home city of Aztlan. If I was to start recruiting warriors from the still-unconquered lands, where better than there? So it was in that direction that we went.
On our first night in the Tierra de Guerra, we stopped beside a spring of good water, tied the horses to nearby trees—each on a long tether, so it could graze and drink—laid only a small fire and ate of the dried meat I had brought along. Then we spread our blankets side by side, and because Tiptoe was still being disconsolate and untalkative, I reached out a hand to give her a comforting caress. She irritably brushed the hand away and said firmly:
"Not tonight, Tenamáxtli. We both have too many other things to think about. Tomorrow we must learn to ride the horses and I must learn to wield the thunder-stick."
Very well, next morning we loosed the two saddled horses from their tethers, Tiptoe doffed her sandals and put a bare foot into the dangling wooden piece provided for that purpose. We both had seen many Spaniards on horseback, so we were not entirely ignorant of the method of mounting. Tiptoe required a boost from me to get up there, but I clambered onto my horse by using a tree stump for a mounting block. Again the horses made no complaint; evidently they were accustomed to being ridden not by a single master but by anyone who had need of them. I kicked my bare heels to make mine walk, and then tried to turn it leftward in a circle, to stay close to our camping place.
I had seen other riders do that, apparently by pulling one rein to tug the horse's head in the desired direction. But when I yanked hard on the left rein, I succeeded only in getting a sidewise stare from the horse's left eye—an almost schoolmasterish look, mingling "you are wrong" and "you are stupid." I took heed that the horse was trying to teach me a lesson, so I paused to reflect. Perhaps the riders I had watched had only seemedto jerk their horses' heads this way and that. After a little experimenting, I discovered that I had to do no more than lay the right-side rein gently against the horse's neck and it would turn left as I wished. I imparted that information to Tiptoe, and we both sat our saddles proudly as our horses sauntered around in leftwise circles.