[Texas Rangers 03] - The Way of the Coyote (16 page)

He watched for a landmark tree. He almost rode past, for it had fallen since his last visit. It lay dry and broken on the ground. A scattering of chips indicated that travelers had chopped up much of it for campfire wood. He rode a small circle and found the mound of stones just as he remembered them.

Stomach cold, Andy made himself dismount and tie Alamo's lead rope to the horn of his saddle. He hitched Long Red to a sapling at the top of the creek bank. He stood at the grave, skin prickling, his throat swelling to a rush of confused feelings.

This was where his white mother had died.

Rusty had told him how he and Daddy Mike and others had ridden this way, following the trail of a war party. The Comanches had taken many horses and carried with them two prisoners, a small boy and his mother. Here the pursuing Texans had found the woman cruelly butchered. Lacking digging tools, Rusty and Preacher Webb had covered her with stones the best they could.

They had not overtaken the warriors, and they had given the captive boy up for dead.

That boy had been Andy.

Rusty had shown him the place, hoping it would revive memories of his life before the Indians had taken him. Here Andy had imagined he felt the spirit of his mother, and images suppressed during his years with the Comanches had come rushing, overwhelming him. He had relived the horror of her death. He had tried ever since to rebury that memory, but the specter rose up now and then in the dark of night, chilling him, destroying any chance of rest.

Logic told him he should hate the Comanches for what they had done, but he could not. They had killed his original family—his mother and father—then in compensation had given him a new family, making him one of their own.

As he looked down at the grave now, a grief long denied came welling up. He tried to remember his mother as she was before her capture and not as she had been in the last terrifying moments of life. He could not quite see her face, but in his mind he could hear her voice. He remembered that she used to sing a lot. He tried to remember the songs. It was like trying to grasp a fluttering butterfly that remained teasingly out of his reach. As with the details of her face, the old melodies eluded him.

He said, "Mother." The word seemed strange on his tongue. He said it again, knowing he must have spoken it to her often when he was small. He had had an Indian mother too, but he had addressed her as
Nerbeahr
, in the Comanche tongue.

"Mother," he said, feeling choked, "I wish I could remember more. It's just not there. I wish ..." But there was nothing more to say.

A faint smell of smoke drew him back to the reality of the present. For a panicked moment he wondered if the Oldhams had outthought him, if they had already been here. Perhaps Clyde had guessed where Andy was headed and had cut around him. He found a disturbed spot on the ground beneath the creek bank, near the edge of the water. Campfire coals still smoldered beneath a cover of sand, which appeared to have been kicked over it to snuff it out.

The sorrel horse nickered, its alert ears pointed forward. Taking a quick breath, Andy saw a dozen riders spill over the top of the bank where it made a bend fifty yards away.

One glance told him they were Comanche. It was not Clyde and Buddy Oldham who had camped here.

Heart pounding, he ran for the horses, jerked the reins loose and swung into the saddle. He had to tug on the lead rope to get Alamo moving. The warriors shouted eagerly, yelping like coyotes. Andy set the sorrel into a run but quickly realized he had no chance. Though he turned Alamo loose, he saw that the Indians would overtake him in a minute.

Mouth dry, blood racing, he turned to face the threat. Trying to remember one of Preacher Webb's prayers, he made a show of dropping his rifle. He raised his hand as a sign of peace, or at least of resignation.

In the Comanche tongue he shouted, "Brothers. I am Comanche. I do not fight you."

They quickly circled around him. Several held bows with arrows fitted and ready to fly, but they hesitated.

One ventured nearer than the others, eyes narrowed with suspicion. "You are white. How is it you call us brothers? How is it you know our words?"

Andy swallowed hard. They could drive a dozen arrows into him before his heart could beat twice. He hoped they would give him time to speak. He hoped also he could remember the words, for he had not used them in a long time. He said, "I was raised to be Comanche." For emphasis he took off his hat and lifted one of his braids. "My heart is still Comanche."

The one he assumed to be the leader said, "We do not know you."

"I do not know you either." Andy struggled with the language. "But it may be that you know my brother. He is called Steals the Ponies."

Someone spoke from the edge of the circle. "I know such a man. Was not his father known for finding buffalo when others could not?"

"That is right." Steals the Ponies's father had been known as Buffalo Caller, but one avoided speaking the name of the dead lest it disturb the sleeping spirit. Andy said, "The one who was his father was a great hunter. So is Steals the Ponies a great hunter, and a brave warrior."

The leader was not quite satisfied. "How is it that you are white and you wear the clothes of a white man if you were raised Comanche?"

Andy's heartbeat began to ease. That they even listened to him was a favorable omen. He drew a deep breath and explained briefly the circumstances of his capture as a small boy. "It was here at this place," he said, "that those who took us killed my white mother. Then the one who was Steals the Ponies's father carried me away. I became Comanche." He told how years later he had foolishly followed his brother's raiding party, had broken his leg and had been found by friendly Texans.

He said, "They have tried to make me white again." He touched his hand to his heart. "But I do not forget that I am also Comanche."

The leader's face twisted as he pondered such an unfamiliar concept. "I do not understand how two men can live in one body. What medicine makes this possible?"

"It is not easy," Andy admitted. "For a long time I have had to follow the white man's road. But I still know the Comanche ways."

"Why have you not left the Texans and come back to The People?"

Andy was slow to reply, unsure how his answer might be received. He said only, "There was trouble. I cannot return." He did not want to tell it all, that he could not return because he had killed a fellow Comanche.

The leader speculated, "You were too young to have stolen another man's wife. Perhaps the trouble was over horses."

Andy sensed that this would he accepted. Technically he did not confirm that horses had been the cause, but he did not challenge the suggestion. He made a grunt which could be taken in any way the warriors chose.

The leader laughed. "At least it was over something of importance. A good horse is worth fighting for." The laugh faded. "Why are you here? Where do you go?"

Andy knew he could not explain the complex political struggle between the reconstruction government and the former rebels, for he did not fully understand it himself. He simply related that he was on his way to warn a friend and benefactor that men of bad spirit were after him.

The leader asked, "Can your friend not fight for himself?"

"He has been wounded. He will need help."

"Perhaps
we
can stop these bad spirits. We have taken horses on this trip, but we have not yet taken scalps."

Andy felt a surge of enthusiasm. The Indian side of him thought how perfect it would be if the Oldhams were brought down by Comanches. No one could blame Rusty or Andy for that. But a white man's doubts intruded. Not even Clyde and Buddy deserved to die the kind of death the Comanches could administer when their blood was up. "They may not come this way."

"But they might. We had started to make camp. You will stay with us. We want you to tell us how it is to live in the white man's country."

Andy felt trapped. He had no assurance that the Oldhams were trying to follow him. Though there had been enough travel along this way to beat out a faint wagon trail, they might not be using it. They might have realized where he was going. If so, they could miss this place by miles, circling and hurrying on ahead of him. But he could see that the Comanches had no intention of letting him proceed. Not yet. Perhaps when they were all asleep he could steal away in the dark. He would have to control his impatience, difficult as that might be.

The Indians stirred the fire they had hastily smothered and kindled the coals back into life. They took Andy's slab of bacon, though if divided equally it would not be large enough to provide much for each man. Most yielded their shares to the leader and a couple of the men who seemed closest to him. The rest ate typical Comanche traveling rations, dried meat pounded almost to a powder and combined with fat, berries, and nuts, whatever had been available at the time it was prepared. They shared this with Andy.

It reminded him of earlier times, and for a change it was pleasant. But it was not nearly so tasteful as what Shanty cooked up back home, or even Rusty.

Len Tanner, by contrast, could not boil water without giving it a scorched flavor.

Andy tried to feel at ease, but it was difficult so long as one warrior kept glaring at him and sharpening his knife.

He learned that the leader was known as Horse Runner, a name probably earned either snaring wild horses or stealing tame ones. Horse Runner and several others pressed him with questions. They exhibited much curiosity about the white man's world and the puzzling things they had seen on their forays through the settlements. Why did the white man tolerate the weak taste of his beef cattle when buffalo meat was available, so much stronger and more flavorful? How could he not be sickened by the stench of his pigs? How could the white man bear to live in a wooden tepee that could not be moved when the campsite became fouled with waste and when his horses had eaten off all the grass?

Most of all, why did each white man lay personal claim to one piece of land when the Great Spirit had provided so much to roam over and to share?

Andy felt that each question was a personal challenge, that he was called upon to defend the white man's ways. That meant these raiders did not entirely accept him as Comanche, just as many people around the settlements did not fully accept him as white.

He explained, "In the white man's eyes, to own land is a thing of honor. It means he is free and does not have to do as another bids him."

"But
we
are free," Horse Runner argued. "We do not have to do as any man tells us unless it is our wish. Yet we do not each claim one piece of land." He made a long sweep with his hand. "Together, we own it all."

You own it until the white man decides to take it, and he will, Andy thought. "All people do not have the same ways," he said.

Horse Runner grunted. "The whites are not true human beings. I do not understand how you can live among them."

""There are some bad ones," Andy conceded. "But there are many more who have good hearts."

"If their hearts are good, why do they take away what is ours? We won this land. Our grandfathers fought many battles to take it from the Apaches. The white man has no right."

Andy could see the inconsistency in Horse Runner's viewpoint. Rusty would say the Comanche had won the land by conquest from weaker people and now was losing it the same way to a stronger people. But nevertheless Andy's sympathy lay heavily with the Comanche.

He was relieved of the necessity for further argument when a young warrior hurried down the creek bank, motioning excitedly. "Three horsemen come. They are
teibo
."

White men. Andy moved up the bank far enough to see over the edge. The riders were three hundred yards away. They could not see the danger that awaited them, for the warriors had camped beneath the creek bank, out of sight. He wondered that they did not detect the smell of wood smoke, for the breeze was moving in their direction. They were blissfully complacent. Carelessness was a white-man trait that had brought many to a sudden death.

The warriors quickly caught and mounted their horses. Andy sensed the electricity of their excitement, though they remained quiet so they would not alarm their quarry too soon.

Horse Runner said, "Get on your horse and ride with us. Three good scalps are there for the taking."

"They may not be the right ones."

"It does not matter. They are Texans."

Andy wished he could be somewhere else, anywhere else. He had killed once and regretted it ever since. Though he occasionally made bold talk, he had no real wish to bloody his hands again, especially on strangers who had done him no wrong.

He squinted, trying to see more clearly. His breath stopped for a moment. One of the horsemen was Clyde Oldham. Andy had learned to identify him at almost any distance by the way he sat a little off-center in the saddle, comfortable for him perhaps but tiring to his mount. Another rider had but one arm. This must be Buddy Oldham. The third was probably the deputy who had been with them before.

Horse Runner grabbed the back of Andy's shirt and almost lifted him onto the sorrel horse. "Come on," he shouted. "You may take one of the scalps." Given no choice, Andy mounted as Horse Runner and the other warriors scrambled up the creek bank.

Around him, the men began whooping and yelping, eager for the kill.

The three riders instantly saw their peril and jerked their mounts around, whipping them furiously. Hooves pounded the earth and sent clods of dirt flying behind them.

Andy soon realized that the race was uneven. The Oldhams and the deputy rode grain-fed horses, whereas the warriors' mounts subsisted on grass. Andy found himself ahead of the Comanches, for the sorrel was stronger than their horses. But his incentive for catching the Oldhams was less compelling than the Oldhams' for getting away.

The chase stretched for more than a mile before it became obvious that the white men would escape. Andy began drawing on the reins. Most of the Indians pulled up on either side of him. A few were still determined to continue the contest though it was clearly lost.