Comanche Woman (3 page)

Long Quiet grimaced. No, there was no mark.

“And even though he was drunk, his fear of the curse was very real,” Forked River added.

Long Quiet knelt to examine the dead man again. As a result of his sojourn into the white world, he was no longer as superstitious as his Comanche friends. He would have argued the young man had made up the whole story, except the youth had mentioned the name of the Comanche—Many Horses—who supposedly owned the mysterious woman.

Long Quiet could ill afford to ignore this clue to Bay Stewart’s whereabouts, coming as it did when he had all but given up hope of ever finding her. But the timing couldn’t have been worse. He had a mere four weeks before he was supposed to meet Creed in Laredo.

Yet now that the Great Spirit had smiled upon him, he could not turn his face away. He would find the village of Many Horses and see the truth for himself. If the woman called Shadow was Bayleigh Falkirk Stewart, his quest was over at last.

Chapter 2

C
OMANCHER
í
A
1843

A
T FIRST LIGHT
, L
ONG
Q
UIET LEFT HIS HUNTING PARTY
and headed north into
Comanchería
. For the next two days of his search for the
Quohadi
village of Many Horses, Long Quiet didn’t see another human being, but the land teemed with wildlife, all adapted by nature to the rugged terrain. Deer, jackrabbits, prairie dogs, foxes, snakes, lizards, and birds of all kinds crossed his path. Thus, the flash of movement in the late afternoon sun was not unexpected.

But Long Quiet had learned caution so long ago it was second nature to him. He stopped and squinted his eyes against the sun, waiting until he was sure of what lay ahead on the trail. He smiled when he saw the mustangs strung out and walking steadily along the sun-baked plains. In the sweltering August heat, the wild horses rarely strayed far from water. He need only follow them to find a respite from the desert terrain. He tightened his knees slightly and the pinto beneath him responded by breaking into a steady jog.

He’d followed the mustangs for no more than a mile when they stopped abruptly. The stallion leading them whirled on his haunches and, teeth bared, nipped savagely at the mare directly behind him. She turned and fled, sending the rest of the herd in headlong flight in the direction from which they’d come.

Long Quiet paused, all his senses alert. Whatever had frightened the mustangs was in all likelihood a danger to him as well. He was in no hurry to meet his death. He sought out an arroyo created over eons by the flooding waters of spring and settled down to wait unseen. He quivered involuntarily as beads of sweat dripped a ticklish path down the carved ridges and furrows of muscle on his chest and back. He ignored the flies that buzzed around him, while his slate-gray eyes searched the horizon.

His patience was soon rewarded. The quiet was broken by the bloodcurdling war whoops of one of the Comanches’ deadliest enemies. That was followed by the sight of nine Tonkawa braves in full war regalia chasing a lone Comanche brave across the desert.

“Aieeeee! Haiiiii!”

The bruiting war cry of the lone Comanche echoed over the barren land. Suddenly, the Comanche, whose face was streaked in macabre designs with black war paint, wheeled his pony around to race headlong back into the midst of the Tonkawas. As Long Quiet watched, one of the Tonkawas fell, the Comanche’s war club buried deep in his head. The Comanche screamed his defiance of the Tonkawas, who had momentarily retreated, and charged them again with only a knife to defend himself. Long Quiet admired the man’s bravery in seeking a warrior’s death.

Long Quiet headed up out of the arroyo to help the Comanche but jerked his mount to a halt when the warrior’s horse stumbled in an unseen hole and fell, throwing its rider to the ground. The Comanche was quickly surrounded by the screeching Tonkawas, who raced in a circle around their victim, brandishing lances and tomahawks. One of the Tonkawas dodged in and pierced the Comanche with his lance before quickly retreating.

The Comanche did not rise.

Still hidden by the arroyo, Long Quiet held his mount steady. The courageous Comanche must be dead, Long Quiet thought, for if the brave had been alive, he would have continued fighting to his last breath. However, it was also possible the Comanche had only been knocked unconscious by his fall. In either case, Long Quiet’s honor left him no choice except to retrieve the body of the Comanche brave.

He chafed at the additional delay this would mean to his journey north to find Bayleigh Stewart, but there was no help for it. He would not leave this brave Comanche in the hands of the Tonkawas, who ate the flesh of their enemies.

The remaining Tonkawas closed the circle around the Comanche, their vengeful bloodlust lending ferocity to their cries of victory. They retrieved the Comanche’s pony, which had survived its fall without injury, and tied the Comanche’s body on the animal’s back.

When the Tonkawas started back in the direction the wild mustangs had originally been walking, Long Quiet assumed they were headed toward the water that gave life to the desert. He took a drink from the gourd he carried with him and noted he had enough of the precious liquid to last another day, or maybe two if he were careful. He squinted at the glaring sun, which had begun its descent. He would wait awhile and follow the Tonkawas. By the time they’d camped and settled down to roast their victim, he would have caught up to them.

Darkness claimed the land, leaving Long Quiet to make his way in the scant light of a half-moon and a scattering of silvery stars. He’d begun to fear he might lose the trail in the dark when he was aided by the contemptuous confidence of the Tonkawas. The flesh eaters had had the audacity to light a beacon fire, daring their enemies to challenge them. Yet the same bonfire that exposed the Tonkawas to their enemies also exposed their enemies to them.

Long Quiet waited in the darkness outside the glow of the campfire as the Tonkawas prepared the Comanche for their ritualistic feast. He was glad he’d come, especially when he discovered the Comanche wasn’t dead. The brave, whose hands were tied behind him, was yanked to his feet by one of the Tonkawas. He stood swaying unsteadily in the ribboned shadows of the fire. The Tonkawa waved a sharp blade in the Comanche’s face, but the brave stared stonily back at him.

A shiver ran down Long Quiet’s spine as the Tonkawa slowly shaved a layer of skin off the Comanche’s upper thigh. The Comanche never blinked an eye.

Long Quiet didn’t think, he simply acted. He leaped onto the back of his pinto and urged the sturdy pony into a gallop. Often, as a boy, he’d practiced picking up various items from the ground at a full gallop. As a young man, he and his friends had practiced picking up a fellow Comanche between two riders, in preparation for the day when they would need to rescue a wounded friend from the battlefield. Only the strongest had been able to lift the full weight of a man by themselves. Long Quiet had been one of those, and his exploits had become legend. It was the legend who rode in fury toward the Tonkawas.

The flesh eaters were taken completely by surprise. It wasn’t the thundering hoofbeats that frightened them so much as the inhuman howl that soared on the night air. They stood in numb indecision as the pinto stallion hurtled into their midst. Their eyes widened in terror as a near-naked giant yanked their prisoner up behind him and galloped away.

Long Quiet knew it was unlikely the Tonkawas would follow him in the dark. The Indians wouldn’t take the chance of dying at night, leaving their spirits to wander in the darkness forever. Long Quiet also knew that with the first gray light of dawn, they would follow. He felt the man behind him attempting to free himself and pulled his mount to a halt. The wounded Indian slid off the pony’s rump to the ground.

Long Quiet dismounted and cut the thong binding the Comanche’s hands. “We must stop the bleeding of your wounds.”

“It is nothing,” the Comanche replied.

“Perhaps not. But I would not like to discover at first light that I brought you safely from the Tonkawa campfire, only to have you bleed to death later.”

“As you wish, then.”

Long Quiet reached into the
tunawaws
hanging from a thong at his waist, where he carried his mirror and war paints, searching through the tubular rawhide bag for something to tie around the Comanche’s thigh where the skin had been cut away and his hip where the lance had stabbed him. He came up with a white man’s shirt he wore occasionally. Neither man spoke as Long Quiet tore the rough linsey-woolsey into strips and bound the Comanche’s wounds.

The Comanche was a head shorter than Long Quiet, but he was powerfully built. There was hard muscle under Long Quiet’s hands where he wound the cotton strips. He marveled at the brave’s silent stoicism in the face of what must be horrible pain, but he wasn’t surprised by it. He’d already concluded this was an extraordinary man.

When Long Quiet was done, the Comanche said, “Two others who traveled with me died at the hands of the Tonkawas.” For the first time, the Comanche seemed to wilt a little. He turned his head to gaze away into the distance. His voice was gravelly with grief when he continued. “They were both on their first raid. Their families have reason to be proud of them, for they died very bravely. They should be properly buried.”

“Very well, then. Let us go and do it now, while the night hides us from our enemies.” Long Quiet mounted his pony and reached down a hand to help the Comanche up behind him. Iron strength met his grasp as the Comanche threw his leg over the pony’s rump. Long Quiet wondered how the man had managed to bend with the wounds in his thigh and hip, but the Indian sitting behind him gave no evidence of his recent travails.

When they located the two dead braves, Long Quiet saw what the Comanche hadn’t been able to express in words. He hoped the young men had been dead when the flesh had been flayed from their arms and legs all the way to the bone. The two men worked quickly to reform the bodies into burial position, tying them into place with their knees bent up to their chests and their heads bent forward to the knees. It was hard work and would have been impossible if so much of the muscle hadn’t been cut away. They moved the bodies to a deep arroyo and, after facing the two corpses toward the rising sun, covered them with rocks and dirt.

Long Quiet listened with respect to the chant sung by the Comanche on behalf of the dead warriors.

Mount your ponies and ride up to the sky

Brave warriors and strong of heart

Stay awhile in the Happy Hunting Ground

Then return to the bosom of the Earth Mother

And bring your power back to us.

Long Quiet reached over to support the Comanche, who seemed on the verge of fainting, only to have his hand brushed away.

“I must go home,” the Comanche said. “You will come with me to my tipi and be my guest.”

Long Quiet bristled at the Comanche’s invitation, which had been no less than a command.

“I will give you a gift of many fine ponies. I would see my debt to you paid,” the Comanche said.

Long Quiet’s response was curt. He hadn’t rescued the Comanche in order to be rewarded. “There is no debt.”

“You saved my life. I would not have asked it of you, but neither did I refuse your deed. The debt is there.”

“I have a journey of my own that must be finished,” Long Quiet said, “but I will stay with you until the Tonkawas are no longer a danger.”

“I do not need your help. But if you seek my protection, you may stay with me.”

Long Quiet’s eyes darkened as he fought to control his anger. “Do you question my courage?”

“Do you question mine?”

Muscles flexed and bulged and chests heaved as, like wild birds ruffling lavish plumage, the two men prepared to do combat. In another moment they would have attacked one another. The ridiculousness of the situation hit them both at the same time.