The Comanche Kid, page 4
Then I couldn’t stop thinking about Ma and Pa and Jamie. Was it just this morning they died and how could that be? How could I be picking leaf buds one minute, then find myself with three Comanche ponies, a herd of cattle, and having killed five men the next minute? Yet here I was, dressed in Jamie’s bloody clothes, a dead man’s bloody leggings, and lost among some godforsaken hills and draws and mesas, looking for salvation from a bunch of cowhands trailing a herd north who would probably want to do to me whatever the Comanches would do to me, if any of them found out I was a girl.
And at that thought I stopped and slid off Buck and I went over to the Comanche ponies. Other than pulling the blankets off I hadn’t looked close at their saddles, but I found Pa’s clothes tied in a bundle and I opened them up. They were bloody too, which made me sick to my stomach, and I have no idea what they wanted with them unless they were some kind of trophy. I had to stop and hold still for a moment, but then I took the knife I had recovered and I cut a long, wide strip out of Pa’s shirt. I threw off Jamie’s shirt and I stood there half naked in the setting sun and I wrapped the strip around my chest to flatten my breasts out so if I lied about my age and told someone I was a fourteen-year-old boy, then maybe there would be less of a chance of being noticed for a sixteen-year-old girl. I tied the strip off tight under my arm, and I threw Jamie’s shirt back on.
I’m surrounded by blood, I thought, wrapped up in blood.
At that thought we moved out, and just before dark I saw a line of trees. Not just a copse of trees, but a line of ash and oak and cedar that stretched a distance and I thought, That has to be water, the bank of a creek, surely.
John Bell Hood smelled the water before I noticed the trees and he had been picking up the pace. I pulled back and watched the herd and like a line of soldiers they headed toward the water until they were trotting and bawling and sharing the word with each other that there was water ahead. They should have been guided in so John Bell Hood would hit the stream first and then all the rest shoved upstream so each one would be coming into fresh water, but I didn’t have the strength to do it, and even if I did, more hands were needed to swing them in the right direction.
When they got to the tree line they plowed in and drank and the whole herd was milling about and bawling, but it was a shallow, clear stream running over a rocky bed so I figured they were all safe. I led Buck and the Comanche ponies farther upstream and they all drank their fill and I slid off Buck and I drank too.
Then I took all my clothes off, throwing them down on the bank, and I walked into the clear, cold water and I knelt down on the rocks and I scrubbed myself all over, as if it was the day’s horror and not just the dirt and sweat and blood I was trying to wash off.
I still didn’t feel clean. Maybe I felt dirty from all the killing, I don’t know.
When I had washed off as best I could, I bound up my chest again and I threw Jamie’s clothes and the leggings back on, and I tried to take comfort in the fact that Pa and Jamie were still with me in some way, maybe like some kind of shield, but it was cold comfort.
It was getting darker and the sunset was bloodred and I thought, That seems just about right, the whole world is bloody, even the sky.
I pulled jerky out of a parfleche and ate it, then I pulled Buck’s saddle and blanket off and ran my hands all over him and thanked him and told him I’d brush him proper the first chance I got. I pulled the saddles off the Comanche ponies and I took a rawhide strip from one of their saddles and made a hobble out of it for each one of them and Buck, then I let them go. The rising grass was good here and there was water, so I hoped they’d stay nearby. I was too tired to nightguard the cattle, so I figured if they wandered off or stampeded I’d just resign myself to the loss. I’d lost everything else so I might as well lose the cattle too.
It was getting cold as the sun went down, so I wrapped the robes and blankets around me as best I could and I sat up against a tree, feeling tired and sick at heart. I knew One-Eye wouldn’t stop for the night and I knew Sally must be scared and cold and exhausted. I couldn’t quit thinking about her and wracking my brain for what I should have done to save her, and I kept imagining One-Eye turning around and coming back on me in the middle of the night and he would discover I was a girl and do to me what he had done to Ma before he cut my throat, all for vengeance. Vengeance must make the world go round, I thought, and I tried to resign myself to it being OK to die out here.
Then I had to ask myself, why did I take after the Comanches by myself? I could have ridden for help, but it was miles to another farm and miles and miles to a settlement, and what could I do but gather up a few men who wouldn’t have let me ride with them because I was a girl, and the men would all have farms and shops and families that had to be taken care of, so how long could they have tracked them in the first place, and if they had found them and attacked them, Sally could have been killed in the cross fire.
I kept going over it and over it, sick about Ma and Pa and Jamie and scared for Sally and afraid of One-Eye coming back, at the same time hoping the horses didn’t stray and the herd wouldn’t stampede, and wondering what should I have done other than what I did do. Then the words came to me.
“I have been assigned months of misery, and troubled nights have been allotted to me. My days come to an end without hope. Remember that my life is like the wind. I shall not see happiness again.”
I surprised myself because I sure couldn’t remember ever memorizing those words, so was Ma speaking to me now, or was I dreaming her reading from the Bible by the fire at night?
Then I heard Ma say, “Liebes Herz, dear heart, Job was in the slough of despond when he said that, just like Christian in Pilgrim’s Progress, remember, child? You’re in the slough of despond.”
She would have us read aloud from Pilgrim’s Progress, to teach us better English than hers and to give us good instruction, but I was tired and bewildered and I couldn’t figure out how Job got from the Bible into Pilgrim’s Progress.
I awoke with the sun in my eyes.
I was panicked, as if I had been caught sleeping on guard duty and I just knew I was about to be shot or have my throat cut, but I looked around and all seemed calm. I could spot the ponies in the nearby distance and the cattle as well and they were all grazing and there’d been no stampede. I’d only need to swing around them and push them back in together and get John Bell Hood out front.
I went to get up but every muscle in my body ached and I couldn’t even move my arm. I rolled over and pushed myself up on all fours, then stood up, using my good arm and hand to clutch the tree next to me. I felt as if I had been beat with a stick, so I slid right back down again, waited a minute, then reached over and pulled some jerky out of the parfleche and ate it. It tasted good because the Comanche women had pounded berries into the meat before it dried.
I got to my feet again and I tried to move my arm and the shoulder began to loosen up a bit. Then I did something I’d heard Pa talk about, what he had done as he walked home from the war with a wounded leg. I took Jamie’s shirt off and I walked down to the creek and lay down on my back by the edge of it and put my arm and my shoulder into the water, and the cold began to numb the pain and ease the swelling. While I was lying there my thoughts went back to Sally, wondering how she had survived the night and if they were still traveling hard and if One-Eye gave her something to eat and got her some water. There was nothing I could do about it, so I closed my eyes to it.
Finally I stood up and put my shirt back on and swung my arm some and I whistled for Buck and he heard me and came in from afar. I had intended to saddle up the paint and see how he rode and get him used to trailing cattle, but with my arm the way it was I couldn’t take the chance of being thrown, so I had to count on Buck one more time before I could spell him. If I could get my arm moving and if I could get the other ponies used to pushing the cattle, then I could switch them out and keep them all fresh.
After I unhobbled Buck I had a hard time getting the saddle on him. I got the blanket on but I didn’t have the strength to swing the saddle up on top of the blanket, so I got under the saddle and tried to push it up with my body but that just shoved the blanket off. I tried that two or three times before I asked myself what I thought I was doing, and I called out, “Down,” and sure enough Buck lay down. I put the blanket on him, then with my good arm I dragged the saddle mostly on him and I called out, “Up,” and as he rose I shoved the blanket and the saddle into position and there he was, standing, all saddled.
I tightened the girth and I bridled him as best I could, my arm starting to help somewhat, and that gave me some hope. “We may just get out of here yet,” I said to Buck, and he nodded and shook his head, adjusting the bit and the bridle.
I checked the ammunition to all the weapons and tied my robes and blankets back onto Buck, then I managed to crawl aboard. We rode out to the Comanche ponies and I took off their hobbles, and instead of leading them I hoped they’d act like a remuda and stay with the herd as it moved out. Buck and I swung wide around the herd and slowly pushed them back together, singling out John Bell Hood and trailing him northeasterly. Then I doubled back and hurrahed the herd and slowly they lined out and followed John Bell Hood, and the Comanche ponies stuck together and followed along off to the side.
By God it’s working, I thought, but I was begrudging in my attitude because I wasn’t in a mood for giving him much praise.
We traveled that way for a few days, I don’t remember how many, making maybe eight miles a day, before the blue norther hit.
FIVE
I knew my luck had been too good to hold. I felt the temperature drop, and then with every fresh blow the temperature was dropping faster. I pulled one of the blankets off the back of Buck and tied it around me as best as I could, and I rode out to the ponies and grabbed their reins to keep them with me. If it hit hard they would scatter, their tails to the wind, looking for shelter, and I knew I’d never find them.
I was freezing, thinking, what was I doing riding out without some kind of slicker or mackinaw? Where did I think I was going, on a picnic? I couldn’t help but think I’d made every mistake in the book, and now things were about to get worse. The wind blew harder and it got colder and colder and the cattle were looking for some kind of shelter, all of them thinking it lay to the south.
I rode up and down the line, over and over again, trying to shove them back together. They responded to the shouting and hurrahing, but as soon as I got them back some other bunch would spill out from the line. It was like trying to catch chickens. I was scared and I knew this norther could go on for days if my luck was truly run out.
It began to snow heavily and it was getting harder to see and for a long time I couldn’t even find John Bell Hood. When I did, he was headed for a shallow arroyo, so I doubled back and pushed as many cattle as I could in that same direction. The snow was getting heavier and I was freezing, my teeth chattering, the blanket hardly on me.
The snow was so thick I couldn’t tell how many were in the arroyo and how many were still out on the plain. I got worried I’d get lost if I went looking for more of them, and I was remembering awful stories of travelers getting caught in the open and freezing to death, so I gave up and listened for the bawling and made it back into the arroyo myself.
It was still freezing but we were out of the blast. I slid off Buck and untied the other robes and blankets and gathered them all around me as best I could and hunkered down, holding the reins of all the ponies to keep them from straying and making them a buffer between me and the cattle so I didn’t get trampled. I knew better than to unsaddle the horses. Pa had said when it got cold, the saddles and blankets would help keep the ponies warm.
I kept hoping it would all be over shortly and my luck would shift back, but it didn’t let up for two days and they were the longest days and nights of my life. I thought, They’ll find me here frozen and the reins will be frozen in my hand and the four horses will be frozen and all the cattle will be frozen, and all of us will be found like some kind of ice statues in this arroyo. Then I remembered more awful stories about buffalo and prairie chickens and pronghorns and such being found frozen stiff, or folks losing their way trying to get from a shed to their cabin and freezing to death only a few feet from a door, and even windjammers I’d heard about snow so deep horsemen and wagons rode over the tops of fences.
From time to time I got up and jumped up and down and moved around and leaned up against Buck, and I even crawled under him to keep the snow off me. I found myself wondering if I couldn’t walk into the middle of the herd and pick up some warmth there, but they were shifting and butting up against one another, and with those long horns I figured I’d be lucky if I didn’t get battered to death, so I just stayed under Buck and tried to make myself as small as possible.
When it got dark, I thought the nights would never end and the awfullest questions came to me all night long. How long did it take Pa to die and was he still alive when they scalped him, and did Ma see Jamie try to come to her rescue and did she see her boy get hit so hard it smashed his head and killed him, and did she wonder where was I, and when your throat gets cut how terrible is the pain and how long did it take her to bleed to death, and wouldn’t that be like choking and drowning in your own blood, and did Sally see it all. The questions went on and on but I could only imagine so far before I had to close my eyes to it and just weep, it being so bad.
When I wasn’t thinking about them, I remembered hearing that before you freeze to death you feel real warm and you just fall asleep. I thought maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad way to go, and I kept waiting to feel warm but it didn’t happen. I just shivered and chattered all night and all day.
At dawn on the third day the norther blew itself out. There must have been a good six or eight inches of snow on the ground and it was still freezing, but the sun come out and that gave me some hope, as if I could fool myself into thinking bright meant warm. I struggled to my feet and I led my string up and out of the arroyo and dropped their reins. Even they were too cold to go running off, and instead they started pawing through the snow looking for grass. I mounted up on Buck and took a look around.
Most of the cattle had already climbed out and were nosing through the snow for grass. A ways off, just as I feared, I could see several mounds covered in snow, cow brutes that hadn’t made it into the arroyo and had frozen to death, probably the weaker ones, only one was still struggling to get up. I dismounted Buck and grabbed the steer by the tail and twisted it, and sure enough I tailed him up and he started nosing for grass too. A few had weathered the norther, gathering around trees or bunching together. It took all morning to circle around and find them and drive them in, and I was sure some had wandered far away, always moving south, being driven by the wind.
When I got the cattle back together, it looked to me like I had lost about a dozen or so and I decided I’d ride along the line and count them once I got them strung out and moving. After I ate some jerky, and before trailing John Bell Hood northeast, I slid off Buck and took his saddle and I approached the Comanche bay. After having watched all three, it seemed to me he was the mildest-tempered of the ponies. He was skittish sure enough as I approached, but not so much that I wasn’t able to grab his reins. I talked to him for a while, and when he calmed down I threw a blanket on him and then I managed to throw Buck’s saddle on him and tighten the girth.
He pranced around but he didn’t get snuffy, so I mounted up slowly and again he pranced and danced, but before long he was responding to me and I knew I could give Buck a rest. I called him Dancer because of how he sidled and moved. I could deal with him dancing and I was just grateful he wasn’t pitching.
We got John Bell Hood moving northeast and I rode up and down the line, calling out and hurrahing them. They slowly fell into place, and we were traveling again.
We rode that way for what I think was maybe four or five days, making slow time but finding water when we needed it. The weather warmed up and the snow melted, and the rising grass was coming on strong and they grazed aplenty when we stopped at noon to rest, then again when I threw them off the trail and we bedded down.
We moved steadily and I took the time to break in the other ponies to trailing the cattle. The sorrel I named Blood because of his color and he responded well to my touch and would make a decent cowpony, but the paint took more time, being ornery and objecting to the saddle and not liking me being on top of him. He even threw me twice and thank God I didn’t land on my sore arm or among the prickly pear. I called him Paint because that’s what he was, with real pretty black-and-white markings.
Over the next few days I’d switch them off and slowly Paint got used to the idea he was someone else’s horse now. He pitched some, but I always knew when he was going to do it by the way he bogged his head down right before trying to cut loose. I think he got tired of me staying in the saddle, mostly. He’d usually do it in the morning when he was feeling fresh and salty, so I learned to line him out and get him into a run first thing, and that took the rough off him.
Once Paint got used to pushing the strays back into line, he got the idea and showed he had the makings of a good cutting horse. He was nimble and he began to get in front of the cattle before they could get hidden in the scrub, pushing them back without me having to rein him into doing it.
The jerky lasted, so I figured the Comanches had come from quite a distance because of how much of it they were carrying, and I found myself wondering what they thought they were doing, showing up and attacking everybody. Sometimes a Comanche or a Kiowa would come around begging or trying to steal something, maybe making off with an axe or demanding a beef or maybe just being bought off with biscuits or Ma giving them a meal. We knew they could be dangerous and there was always stories about someone being kidnapped, two kids being stolen from a field or a wagon being stopped and the driver killed and a woman outraged, so we knew to be wary, but it had seemed to be safe enough, and we carried a weapon at all times.
