Michener, James A. (136 page)

After the annihilation of four ranch families well to the south and west of Fort Garner, Renfro sought permission to make a major sortie, and with innate cleverness he did not ride directly south to where the crimes had occurred, but in a contrary direction, far to the west toward the Palo Duro Canyon and the extreme limits of the Indian Territory, for he reasoned that the triumphant Indians would have sped away from the burning ranches, then taken their time to head for sanctuary.

He was right. He and his men attacked the celebrating Comanche from the north, sweeping down on them in a sudden shattering attack, and because newspapers throughout the nation gave much space to what happened next, it is essential that the exact details be understood.

With Renfro in the lead, the 10th Cavalry launched a major attack, and according to plan, at the height of battle half the troops swung west under Renfro, half to the east under Jaxifer. Renfro and his men performed with signal valor, everyone testified to that, and by tremendous exertion turned the flank of the advancing Comanche, throwing the rest of the Indians into confusion.

When this occurred, Sergeant Jaxifer on the east saw a chance to sweep in and disrupt the Comanche completely, and he did this, but as his men galloped through the Indian ranks he caught sight of what he believed to be a white girl, and the idea flashed through his mind: That must be the Larkin child. Reacting more to instinct than to conscious plan, he wheeled his horse and pursued that

group of Indians who held the girl. Alone and threatened h\ dozens of braves, he plunged on, overtook the fleeing Indians, reached out, and miraculously snatched the girl from her captors, clubbing with his gun the head of the brave who had been holding her.

Turning once more, he broke through the confused Indians to a point where his astonished black troops could give him coverage and for some moments a violent struggle ensued, but with the girl in his arms, jaxifer rallied his men until they prevailed. At this moment Renfro galloped up, saw the girl, and perceived at once her magical significance. Taking her gently from the sergeant, he held her close and asked: 'You are Emma Larkin?' and she replied, with full knowledge of what her words meant: i am.'

Thus the legend was born. Lewis Renfro, in an attack upon the savage Comanche when his men were outnumbered a hundred to forty-nine, had recovered the white child Emma Larkin, whose family had been murdered at Bear Creek in 1869 and who had been captive of the savages for five long years. Stories were written in such a way as to indicate that Renfro's feat was the more astonishing in that he was supported only by Negro troops, whose effectiveness in such warfare was not proved. Apparently it was his heroic persistence that had made the rescue possible.

The story proved wildly popular, with Harper's and the New York newspapers sending artists to Texas to depict the battle and the manner of Emma's rescue. Pictures proliferated, but they all faced two difficulties: it was not practical to show black troops at the scene, so faces were blurred, except for Lieutenant Renfro's, and the fact that Emma had no nose or ears meant that she could not be shown either, which meant that Renfro pretty well stole the show. In fact, on two occasions when the press were permitted to see Emma, some of the men vomited, and quite a few of their stories said merely that she had been 'poorly treated by her captors,' and even those two or three reporters who did mention the mutilations did not speak of the rapes. Americans then, as later, wanted their stories heroic but also respectful of the niceties.

More than two dozen detailed interviews spelled out Renfro's heroism and audacity; no one questioned jaxifer. At one point Emma told a woman reporter the facts, but when this woman searched out jaxifer, she was frightened by his bigness, his lack of a neck and his thick lips, so his part in the rescue was ignored.

This was the incident that Daisy Renfro needed to get her man back to Washington, and she orchestrated the affair skillfully. She sought a congratulatory telegram from Colonel Custer, and tender stories from other Texas settlers who said they wished that Lieu-

tenant Renfro would rescue their lost children from Matark. Before the month was out, Washington was clamoring for its newest hero to return, and when Daisy and Lewis left Fort Garner they took care to ensure that both Captain and Mrs. Reed received credit for the fine manner in which the fort had been administered. Said Renfro to the press: 'You cannot have brave soldiers at a lonely frontier unless you have a fine commander in charge of them. Than Captain Reed there can be no finer.'

When the train pulled out of the station at New Orleans, he told his wife: 'We'll never see Texas again. What a desolate land.'

Emma Larkin, a twelve-year-old captive of the Comanche, had been a kind of holy grail of the plains, with all decent men striving to rescue her, a challenge that would not dissipate even with the passage of years; but Emma Larkin, a seventeen-year-old young woman aged beyond her years, was an embarrassment, and after the first flush of her victorious recapture, no one knew what to do with her.

The women at the fort, of course, had rejoiced at her return, but quickly they realized that there was no place for her in their lives; nor anywhere else, for that matter. For one thing, she had no family, all of her immediate relatives having been exterminated at Bear Creek and possible ones back east having been lost in the normal experiences of immigration. But more important, she was hideously ugly, a frail, stringy girl with almost no bosom and those terrible scars where her ears and nose should have been. Furthermore, she had formed the habit of speaking in a whisper, so that she often seemed like a ghost wandering in from another world. And after a few days of compassion, no one wanted to have her around.

Mrs. Reed did take it upon herself to represent the girl's interests in the land court at Jacksborough, for it was clear that Emma must have inherited all the lands once owned by her father and her uncles; rapacious men had tried to obtain squatter's rights on the six thousand acres when no surviving Larkins stepped forward to claim them, but it was apparent that if poor Emma had experienced such tortures, the least society could do was return her patrimony. As always when Texas land was involved, the fight became vicious, and Mrs. Reed was advised to withdraw lest she endanger the good community relationship with the fort, and she would have done so had she not obtained unintended support from Earnshaw Rusk, up at Camp Hope.

Rusk now had Matark's fleeing Comanche living peacefully on his grounds, and they had many complaints against Captain Reed

and his soldiers: 'This man Renfro, he attacked us when we were hunting buffalo. We were doing nothing but hunting, and his Buffalo Soldiers charged upon us and killed our braves He also stole one of our women.'

This latter charge, delivered with much excitement and waving of arms, electrified Rusk, for it represented exactly the kind of army behavior that he was determined to stamp out, so on a clear day at the end of summer, 1874, he and two of his Comanche assistants rode the fifty-eight miles south to Fort Garner to lodge an official protest, but before departing he thought it prudent to inform his superiors in the Interior Department of what he was about, lest contrary reports filter in from the fort:

At last i have a fool-proof case against the Army at Fort Camcr. and I intend to pursue it vigorously. In August of this year, when my Comanche under the peaceful guidance of Chief Matark, about whom I have written before, were trailing buffalo, they did, 1 must admit, stray into Texas territory. But they were behaving like the good citizens I have taught them to be when they were fallen upon by Col. Renfro and a horde of his cavalrymen. Several braves were slain, and an Indian woman was taken from them.

I hold this to be a gross infraction of the rules which govern this area and I shall go personally to Fort Garner to seek redress for my Indians. I am leaving Camp Hope in the hands of Chief Matark during my absence, which ought not be prolonged, but I assure thee that I shall speak harshly to the Army.

When the righteous Quaker appeared at the fort, Wetzel wanted to arrest the two Comanche braves, but Rusk made such a howl that Reed had to promise safe passage, as the Peace Policy required. The discussions continued as before, with Rusk insisting upon the peaceful intentions of his Indians, and Reed enumerating the hideous roster of Texas ranches burned and Texas ranchers slain. None of these charges, which seemed so specific to the army men, would Rusk accept as proof of Comanche guilt, instead, he launched vigorous protest against army brutality, and there the debate hung suspended, with each man accusing the other of duplicity and moral blindness.

'Can't you see, Rusk, that your beloved Indians are a gang of murderers who should be shot?'

'Can't thee see, Captain Reed, that thy men are a gang of undisciplined bullies who love to harass my Indians?'

'What about the murders at the seventeen ranches I've listed?'

'What about your men kidnapping one of my Indian women?'

Reed stopped and gaped at the Quaker: 'You don't know who that woman was?'

Then thee admits the kidnapping?'

Reed almost laughed: 'Everyone in the world knows who she is, but you live a few miles to the north, and you haven't heard? Rusk, are you truly innocent, or are you stupid?'

'I expect to be abused at your hands, but I also expect—'

'Louise!' Reed shouted. 'Ask Bertha Wetzel to bring the girl here.' As might have been expected, Mrs. Wetzel, the practical frontier woman, had given the unwanted girl a temporary home, and now she grasped Emma's hand and brought her to the commander's office.

Mrs. W ; etzel entered the room first, with the girl lagging behind, so that Rusk could not see who was coming, but when the pair were well inside, Mrs. Wetzel stepped aside and Emma Lar-kin stood revealed. With the ability she had acquired to suffer anything, she kept her chin high and looked right at Earnshaw Rusk, and when he saw her he gasped. Trying to speak, he could not, and for a long moment these two stared at each other—the near-crazed child of torture and the near-godlike believer in the goodness of man. When the moment passed, Rusk stepped boldly to the girl and put his arms about her: 'Jesus Christ has thee in His heart.' He tried to say more, but he could not, and after a moment most embarrassing to Reed, Mrs. Wetzel and even the girl, he bowed his head and quiet tears welled in his eyes.

He was so shaken that he had to sit down, and as he huddled there, his world falling apart, Reed said with less severity than he had intended: 'This is Emma Larkin. Sole survivor of Bear Creek. Prisoner of your Comanche for five years.'

Slowly Rusk regained his feet, staring in anguish first at Reed, then at Mrs. Wetzel: 'Is this truly the Larkin child?'

'It is,' Reed said, 'and I want you to hear her story, every word of it, without my presence or Mrs. Wetzel's. Come, Bertha,' and he led her away.

'Sit down with me,' Rusk said when they were gone, and in the stone-walled office built with such care under the supervision of Mrs. Reed, began the conversation which would change so much along the Red River.

earnshaw: Is thee really Emma Larkin?

emma (in her soft whisper): I am. I remember my family, all fifteen. Do you want me to name them?

earnshaw: And thee was present at Bear Creek?

emma: This is Bear Creek. This is where it happened. My father and my brothers were killed in our house not far from here.

earnshaw: And thcc is sure Indians did it?

emma: They took me captive, didn't they?

earnshaw: But was it Matark?

emma: I have lived with Matark for four summers. Matark's sons . . .

earnshaw: Thy ears?

emma: His sons burned them off, slowly, night after night

earnshaw: That I cannot believe.

emma: Look at them.

earnshaw: Thy nose?

emma: They would take embers from the fire, and dance around me, then jab the embers against my nose. And when the scab formed ...

earnshaw: Please. (Fearing for a moment that he was going to be sick, he changed the subject.) Did they beat thee?

emma: Especially the women.

earnshaw: The men?

emma: They came at night. To sleep with me. 'Such a statement embarrassed Rusk so profoundly that once more lie stopped the conversation. He had never kissed a woman and deemed their behavior a great mystery.)

earnshaw: Thee mustn't speak of such things. Thcc must forget them.

emma: I've tried to. It's you who asked the questions

earnshaw: Did no one ever treat thee kindly?

emma (after a prolonged reflection): No one. But there w white man with a lame left arm. They called him Little Brother, because he sold them guns. I think his name was Peavine.

earnshaw: He was with them?

emma: Often. They told him what they needed and he went back and stole it.

earnshaw: Did thee ever hear them call him Rattlesnake?

emma: No, but things were always better for me when he came, because he brought guns and other things and for a while they forgot me. (She weighed her next comment carefully.; He always took me aside and promised that one day 1 would be set free. 1 dreamed about that day, but it never happened.

earnshaw: This man 7 Thee is sure he had a weak left arm?

emma: They also called him Little Cripple. (Since both spoke Comanche, she could report precisely what the Indians had called their Comanchero.) He never beat me or abused me. One tunc Chief Matark said, and I heard him say it: "Yon can sleep with the thing if you wish," but Peavine said: "I do not wish," and that night I was left alone.

earnshaw: Did thee ever ride with the Comanche when they came down into Texas?

emma: Many times.

earnshaw: And did thy Indians burn ranches in Texas?

emma: Like here at Bear Creek. Many times.

earnshaw: But that was long ago, I'm sure.

emma: It was one moon ago, when the black soldiers captured me.

earnshaw: Thee was hunting buffalo that time. I know thee was hunting buffalo.