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.
38
January 1875
THE 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.