Autumn 1862
I
N CAMP, PETA NOCONA SPENT
more and more time alone with his sons. When he went into battle, he was courageous almost to the point of recklessness, as if he wanted to make up for the loss of Naudah with as much blood as he could spill. But Quanah was worried. Nocona seemed not to care whether he lived or died. The raids he led were still as carefully planned as always, but the greater the odds, the more Nocona seemed to relish the fight.
In the summer of 1861, with the Rangers occupying Camp Radziminski, recently vacated by the army, skirmishes were frequent, sometimes planned, sometimes the accidental fallout of circumstance. And Nocona hated the Anglos now more than ever, even more than he hated the Osage. It was as if the loss of Naudah and Prairie Flower, so uncertain, not knowing whether they were alive or dead, was harder to bear than the
loss of White Heron and Little Calf. Quanah sometimes thought there was a great abyss deep inside Nocona, one that had to be filled with blood to make him feel whole.
Pressed by the Rangers, Nocona kept his village on the move, even though he stayed deep in the Llano Estacado, where even the Rangers were reluctant to go. When he learned of the outbreak of the War Between the States, Nocona smiled, but it was a terrible smile, ghoulish and inward looking, as if the news satisfied some dark wish.
“Now,” he said, “the Anglos will help us. They will kill each other, and there will not be as many of them for us to kill. We will have our lands to ourselves.”
Quanah wasn’t so sure. He knew that some of the tribes already on reservations, especially the Caddo and the Wichita, favored the North, while others, especially the Tonkawa, favored the South. Because of his hatred for the Tonkawa, Nocona inclined the least little bit toward the North, and when word reached him that war against the hated Tonkawa was being planned, he attended the council to offer his help.
The Tonkawa heard rumors, and made a run for it, heading south and east, deeper into country firmly controlled by the Texans, but it did them no good.
Caddo scouts kept track of them, getting word back to the alliance of chiefs planning the attack, and when it seemed the Tonkawa had stopped running and established a permanent
village, a great war party of Caddo, Wichita, and Comanche assembled in a river valley near Anadarko. They moved quickly, and in three days had surrounded the Tonkawa village.
The hope was that the Texans would be too busy with their own war to worry much about their Indian allies. Surveying the Tonkawa village under the cover of darkness, Nocona saw that it was so. Clutching Quanah by the shoulder, he said, “See, the Anglos don’t care about anyone but themselves. The Tonkawa sold themselves to the Texans and now that they are of no use, the Texans don’t care about them. These are the ones who killed Iron Jacket. These are the ones who roast our brothers over the fire and eat their flesh. These are the ones.”
Slipping away from the vantage point above the valley where the village lay, Nocona rejoined the main war party and told what he had seen. The attack was for the next night. It would be swift and it would be sudden. “If we are careful,” Nocona told them, “we can get them all.”
The following day was spent in preparation. More arrows had to be made, lances relaced, war clubs repaired. No one spoke much. Each man was busy seeing to his own weapons, knowing that the coming of night would present him with an opportunity to settle old scores, to get revenge for loved ones lost and to punish an enemy too long hiding behind the power of the Anglos. But this time, the Tonkawa were alone. They would have no one to turn to, nowhere to run.
As twilight began to darken the sky, Nocona pulled Quanah aside. “If anything happens to me,” he said, “I want you to promise me that you will look after Pecos.”
“You know I will.”
Nocona nodded. “I know. But I want you to promise me.”
“Nothing will happen to you.”
“Perhaps not. All the same, promise. I have lost too many people to go easily to the other side if those left behind are in danger.”
Quanah sighed. “I promise.” He was troubled by the request, because Nocona seemed resigned, as if he foresaw some terrible doom that he believed he could not escape. Even the moroseness of the last two years was nothing compared to the heavy sadness that seemed to surround the great chief now.
When darkness fell, the war party moved out. They had ten miles to go, and rode in a long file, whispering among themselves until the war chiefs passed the word that surprise depended on complete silence. From that point on, Quanah, riding beside Nocona, listened only to the drum of unshod hooves on the dry turf. He knew the white soldier columns always made noise, because the leather of their saddles squeaked, and the metal fittings of the bridles and the soldiers’ spurs jingled. Peering over his shoulder into the darkness behind him, he could make out only a handful of gray shapes, and could not
have guessed the size of the war party from the little he saw.
When they reached the last hill before the ridge overlooking the valley where the Tonkawa village lay, the warriors spread in a long line, waiting for the word to advance up the hill. When it came, the line moved almost like a sidewinder, small groups getting out ahead a bit, then lagging, waiting for the others, who moved a little ahead. The battle line wriggled up the hill and stopped once more on the ridge overlooking the Tonkawa village. Large campfires, tended by shadows, filled the valley with light. The Tonkawa lodges were splashed with orange and black, the colors of the designs pale and dull in the flicker.
With an earsplitting shriek, Great Bull, a Caddo chief, led the charge, and then it was every man for himself as the war party swept down on the unsuspecting enemy. Quanah saw Nocona pull away, getting out in front of the small Comanche contingent, and he was among the first to reach the edge of the village. The Tonkawa spilled out of their lodges, jumping on the ponies tethered beside the entrances, grabbing bows and lances and trying to get their bearings as the war party swarmed over them.
Despite the alliance with the Anglos, the Tonkawa were not well armed. A few had pistols and old muskets, but after the first flurry of gunfire, the combat was too close and too furious for reloading. Comanche, Caddo, and Wichita thundered
through the village, knocking lodges over, upending meat racks and sending defenders sprawling in the dust.
The shrieks of the warriors mingled with the wails of women and children as the furious battle surged like a flood among the lodges. Quanah leaped from his pony feet first, hitting a burly Tonkawa in the middle of the back and knocking him to the ground. He tumbled over once, sprang to his feet and turned to face the enraged defender, who charged with a lance held at his hip.
Quanah ducked under the thrusting tip, knocked the shaft aside, and closed with a war club held in his right hand. He swung wildly, nearly losing his feet as the Tonkawa whipped him with the lance, catching him on the hip with the flame-hardened wood.
Pulling the lance back, the Tonkawa made another vicious thrust, but this time Quanah closed a hand over the shaft and jerked the warrior off balance. The man stumbled toward him, letting go of the lance and flailing his arms. Bringing the war club down in a sharp arc, Quanah caught his opponent on the shoulder. He heard the crack of breaking bone, and the Tonkawa’s left arm went limp. Pulling a knife, the burly warrior charged into the slender Quanah, slashing back and forth with the broad blade. The knife caught the firelight and left smears of gold behind it after each vicious slice.
Timing the passes of the blade, Quanah danced backward, turning slightly, then brought
the war club down again, this time striking the knife hand just below the wrist. The Tonkawa yelped as the knife flew from his hand, made a dive for it and closed his fingers around the hilt just as Quanah’s foot reached it, pinning both hand and knife to the ground.
With his other arm useless, the Tonkawa tried to wriggle free, then curled the wounded arm around his head as the war club whistled toward him.
Once more, there was a loud crack, this time sounding as if a tree limb had snapped in two. Blood poured from a ragged wound on the Tonkawa’s temple, and Quanah, feeling a rage he didn’t understand, slashed once more and then again with the heavy club, hitting the same place both times, and leaving the side of the warrior’s head a mush of red and gray.
Panting, Quanah backed away, turned and saw another Tonkawa racing toward a Comanche warrior whose back was turned. Shouting, Quanah charged, but the defender reached the Comanche first, thrusting the lance deep into the lower back above the right hip. The Comanche groaned, reached for the lance as he tried to turn, and only then did Quanah realize the target was Nocona.
Hurling himself at the Tonkawa, Quanah clawed at his bare back, whipped an arm around the warrior’s neck, and reached for the knife on his hip. In a single blinding arc, the knife slit the Tonkawa’s throat, and Quanah felt the rush of
warm blood flood over his forearm and hand. He let the man fall and turned to Nocona, who had already snapped off the head of the lance, in front of his hip.
He lay on his side, and when he saw Quanah, he rolled onto his stomach. “Pull it out, Quanah, quickly!”
He gritted his teeth as Quanah grasped the lance, wincing with the pain. Pressing his foot right beside the wound, Quanah jerked the lance free, and Nocona groaned.
He knelt then to tend to Nocona, but his father waved him away. “Pay attention to what matters,” he said. “I’ll be all right.”
Reluctantly, Quanah turned back to the battle swirling around him on every side. It was apparent that the Tonkawa were getting the worst of it, and many of them were already dead or wounded. The Caddo, especially, were fiercely determined, and each time the battle seemed about to flag, they mounted a charge that rekindled the flames.
Lodges were in ruins, horses lay dead and wounded and bodies were strewn everywhere. Quanah threw himself back into the thick of the battle, as much to get his mind off Nocona’s wound as for the joy of the fight itself. For another hour, the combat raged, breaking down into smaller and smaller groups of hand-to-hand contests, and as the numbers of Tonkawa warriors able to resist continually dwindled, the pockets of resistance grew fewer and fewer.
Quanah managed one more combat, this time against a Tonkawa not much older than himself, but the defender had little heart for the battle, and it was over quickly, with Quanah once more victorious, whirling to look for his next challenge. But by then, it was over. He saw the Comanche gathering together, chattering among themselves, and noticed that Nocona was among them.
With a great howl, Nocona held his right arm high overhead, and the circle of Comanche around him echoed the howl with furious shrieks of their own. As Quanah approached, the Comanche parted to make room for him, and he saw a body lying on its back at Nocona’s feet, its arms limp, its legs twisted as if broken, and the glitter of orange light on naked bone where the scalp lock should have been.
One of the warriors noticed the baffled expression on his face. “Placido,” he said. “The one who led the fight where Iron Jacket was killed.” He laughed, and twisted his face into a smile that was so maniacal it frightened Quanah.
And it was time to go home, time to celebrate the victory. There were so few Tonkawa left that, for all practical purposes, they had ceased to exist as a separate nation. Gathering their horses, the Caddo, Wichita, and Comanche chattered incessantly about the great battle, singing their own praises and those of friends. Endless waves of shrieks and howls rippled through the warriors
as they mounted up and dug their knees into their ponies.
Quanah took his place beside Nocona, who was nearly doubled over on the back of his mount, and obviously suffering from the lance wound in his hip. Quanah wanted him to rest, but Nocona was anxious to get back home.
“I want to see Pecos,” he said, “to tell him of the great battle, and how his brother saved my life.”
Quanah tried to wave the praise away as if it were a swarm of gnats, but Nocona, through clenched teeth, went on and on. The ride home took four days, and Nocona’s condition worsened with every mile. He had difficulty sitting erect on his horse, and the shock of the thudding hooves made him grimace now and then.
He had stopped bleeding, and the wound had been packed with herbs and mud, but Quanah was worried. By the time they reached the Comanche village, Nocona had to be helped from his horse. His skin felt hot and stiff, like the white man’s paper. He was mumbling incoherently, and Quanah rushed him to his lodge and sent immediately for the medicine man.
Pacing outside while the shaman worked his magic, Quanah tried to explain to Pecos what had happened, downplaying his own role in the battle. The difference in their ages had never seemed so great. Quanah felt that they were standing together looking over the edge of a deep pit into which Nocona was falling, and when he
closed his eyes, it was as if he could see Nocona sailing, drifting lower and lower, swooping in great circles as he shrank in size.
And when the medicine man finally left the lodge the following morning, he clapped a hand on Quanah’s shoulder. “I don’t know if my medicine is strong enough to help him,” he said. “He wants to see you and your brother. You’d better go in quickly.”
Quanah ducked through the flap with Pecos on his heels and rushed to Nocona’s side, where the great chief lay on a buffalo robe beside the fire. He was wrapped in another robe, and his teeth chattered as he opened his eyes.
“I am very cold, my sons,” he said. “So very cold.”
Then, with a shuddering gasp, he closed his eyes.
P
ECOS DIED THAT SPRING.
Stricken with cholera in one of the waves of the deadly diseases that were sweeping the plains, along with smallpox and typhoid, he lingered only two days, and Quanah spent every minute with his younger brother, alternately swearing revenge on the Anglos for bringing the plague and promising anything and everything if only the boy would be spared.
When it was over, Quanah was alone. With Naudah and Prairie Flower taken away by the Texans, Nocona dead, and now Pecos, he had no one. Chieftainship was not strictly hereditary, but with Nocona’s help, Quanah knew he would have been a chief one day, but now there was no hope of that.
He drifted aimlessly, from the Noconi to the Peneteka to the Quohada. He even spent some time among the Kiowa. He was welcomed everywhere, not only as the son of one of the greatest of all Comanche chiefs, but as an outstanding warrior and hunter in his own right. But it was
cold comfort. He missed his father’s gentle lectures, the teasing of his brother. He missed Naudah’s comforting words when things went wrong. He felt as if he were alone on the plains. No amount of friendship could take the place of his family, and it seemed like he were looking for something to fill the void.
In 1863, he decided to join a band of Comanche led by the famous chief Yellow Bear, and quickly became one of the leading warriors in one of the most active of all Comanche raiding bands. With the Texas Rangers preoccupied with the Northern Army, and homesteads and ranches ripe for the picking, the Comanche swept over half of Texas, hitting and running, leaving little but death and embers in their wake.
Stealing cattle and horses, they roamed at will over the plains, seldom staying in one place for more than two or three weeks. The buffalo were beginning to dwindle now, and food was harder and harder to find. Whites had been slaughtering the great beasts in numbers, taking trophies and skins and leaving the meat to rot in the sun. Time and again, a Comanche hunting party would break over a ridge only to see the next valley full of bloated carcasses. The stink of the rotting meat swirled in clouds, and the drone of flies seemed to fill the whole valley. At a distance, it looked as if the carcasses were glistening with some sort of iridescent cloth. Only on closer approach could the individual
maggots be seen, swarming over entire carcasses, writhing in the putrescent fluids of the rotting buffalo.
But Quanah didn’t mind the long days on the trail. As long as he kept moving, he didn’t think about the fact that he had no real home. On the trail, all warriors were homeless. Only in the breathtaking excitement of a hit-and-run raid on a cattle herd or the breakneck thunder of an attack on a wagon train did Quanah feel comfortable.
There were some who thought he was courting death, as they had thought Nocona had done after Naudah was taken. Others just thought that he was trying too hard to live up to Nocona’s reputation. Still others, those few he allowed to get close, knew that he was mourning in the only way he knew how—living the life his father had taught him, the life he loved, and the only life he really knew.
He seemed to care nothing for the accumulation of possessions. Even the hundreds of horses taken on raids were given away. He kept only what he needed. He hunted as much for the solitude it brought him as for the meat, killed more game than he needed, and gave most of it to the needy, the old women with no one to hunt for them, or the old men whose sons were dead and gone and who could no longer wield the bow or the lance to feed themselves.
It was a harsh life, but Quanah didn’t seem to notice. He wasn’t morose, but he was seldom
cheerful, either. It seemed almost as if he wanted to be there without being there, to blend into the background, as if he’d rather not be noticed.
But there was one who noticed. And he found himself paying more and more attention to her. Weakeah herself was noticed by almost everyone, but she seemed to live only for Quanah. With her, he could be himself, tell her what he thought about, even what he dreamed about. The more time they spent together, the more time they wanted to spend together.
But Quanah was not the only one who fancied Weakeah. Tennap fancied her, too, and Tennap had a wealthy father, Ekitacups, a man who owned a hundred horses and more, and who could make a gift to Weakeah’s father that Quanah could never hope to match.
The more they saw of each other, the more they wanted to see. But Tennap was not prepared to give up easily. While Quanah and Weakeah sat by the river, spinning the silky webs of a glorious future, Tennap was working hard to ingratiate himself with Yellow Bear.
Tennap was a good warrior, hardly Quanah’s equal, but still a courageous fighter and good hunter. Yellow Bear had been friendly with Peta Nocona, and he was fond of Quanah, not just because of that friendship, but because of the qualities he recognized in Nocona’s son. As chief, he was concerned not just about the man who might one day marry his daughter, but also
about the man who might one day lead his people, and there was no doubt in his mind that Quanah would be a worthy successor.
That Quanah was half white was an issue that Yellow Bear chose to disregard, and Tennap, full of himself and confident that his father’s wealth would make up for any discrepancy in reputation, went out of his way to cultivate the chief’s affection.
But Quanah was impatient, and fearful that wealth would win what character might not. Rather than approach Yellow Bear directly, and risk getting a definitive answer not to his liking, he hatched a plan that was not without risk, but seemed the surest way to win Weakeah for himself.
One evening, with the moon full and flooding the plains with silver light, he told her that he had something very important he wanted to discuss with her.
“Tell me now,” she said.
Quanah shook his head. “Not yet. We’re too close to the village.”
“Is it a secret?”
“Not for long,” he said, giving her a cryptic smile.
He tugged her by the hand, moving down toward the river and past the last lodges. When he could no longer hear conversation from any of the tipis open to the evening breeze, he sat on the grass. Tugging her down beside him, he held her hand. Weakeah was surprised that he would
be so demonstrative, since it was frowned upon and was not his way.
“What do you want to tell me?” she asked.
“I have been thinking …” He hesitated.
“That will come as a great surprise to just about everyone,” she teased.
“I’m serious.” He seemed nervous, and she decided to let him have his say with no interruption.
“I’m listening.”
“You know that Ekitacups has many horses.”
“Yes.”
“And that I have only those I need for hunting and for war.”
She nodded, wondering what he was getting at.
“Tennap is a good warrior.”
“Not as good as you are. And not as good looking, either.”
“Please, be serious, Weakeah.”
“Well, please tell me what you have to tell me. You are making this as long as one of my father’s stories, and you know how long-winded he can be.”
“I am afraid that Yellow Bear will look favorably on Tennap, if he asks for you.”
She shrugged. “Maybe. But Yellow Bear will ask me what I want, and I will tell him.”
“And what will you tell him?”
“What do you think?”
“I don’t know. That’s why I am asking you to tell me.”
“I will tell him that I do not wish to be married
yet. And that when I do, I will tell him.”
Quanah seemed crushed. “Oh,” was all he managed to say.
“Why, was there something else you would want me to tell him?”
“No.”
They sat in silence for nearly a minute. Finally, Weakeah leaned over and tugged on his ear. “I am teasing,” she said. “Naturally, I will tell Yellow Bear that I prefer you.”
The news did little to lighten Quanah’s mood. “Suppose he doesn’t listen?”
“What else can we do? If you have a better idea, I’d be happy to hear it.”
“I thought we might run away together.”
“Alone?”
He shook his head. “Not alone, no. There are many warriors who will go with us.”
“And what do you think Tennap will do, if we run away?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t given that much thought.”
“You know he will feel cheated, and then Ekitacups will bend my father’s ear, and twist his arm. He will say that you didn’t play fair.”
“But if we are already gone, it will make no difference.”
Once again, silence filled the night around them. Quanah watched the current, and tugged at the grass beside him, tossing blades one by one into the river and watching them glide away. Once a fish, tricked by the grass, broke the surface,
then arced through the air and fell back with a splash, a blade no doubt clenched in its jaws.
Once more, it was Weakeah who broke the silence. “When can we leave?”
Quanah, as if he were uncertain of her words, said, “What?”
“I asked you when we could leave.”
“Do you mean it?”
She nodded. “Yes.”
“Tomorrow night, as soon as the sun goes down. We can be far enough away by morning that no one will catch us.”
“I wouldn’t be so certain of that. But I’m willing to take that chance. There is just one thing … “
“What?”
“If Tennap is prepared to fight, I want you to promise me that you won’t hurt him.”
“I won’t, unless he gives me no choice.”
“All right. I will be ready as soon as it gets dark.”
“Meet me here. I will have a horse ready for you. Bring only what you need. We will want to move fast.”
He leaned over and pecked her on the cheek, then said, “Promise me you won’t change your mind.”
“I promise.”
“Good. Then we should go back. There is no point in making anyone suspicious.”
He got to his feet, helped her up, and walked
her to Yellow Bear’s lodge, where he said a quiet good night.
Back in his own lodge, he lay awake all night. In his mind, he kept revising the list of whom he would tell and what he would need to bring along. Each time he thought he had made the final choice, something or someone else occurred to him. He knew pretty well which of the young firebrands would follow him, and which ones he could trust. But he wouldn’t be able to sleep until they were well away from the village, so he stoked the fire and packed his meager belongings, then covered them with a buffalo robe in case a visitor should pay a call during the day.