Ride the Wind by Lucia St. Clair Robson
"Qué puedo hacer para tí, what can I do for you?"
"Nocona." Naduah began to cry, unable to hold it back any longer.
"Qué es, pobrecita, what is it, my poor little one?" Molly put an arm around her shoulders, and Naduah leaned against her, sobbing.
"Nocona" was all she could say. The two women sat, their arms around each other and the child between them, while Naduah grieved. When she finally quieted, Molly searched around inside the front of her bodice until she found a dainty, lace-edged handkerchief. She wiped Naduah's eyes and held it for her to blow her nose. She saved one corner of it to use for her own tears.
"Now lie down, my dear, and sleep. It's been a terrible time for you." Molly didn't bother speaking Spanish. The words were no longer important. Only the act of speaking was. She pushed Naduah gently back onto the bed and laid Flower next to her. She covered mem both with blankets, checked the stove, and tiptoed out.
She didn't see Naduah get off the wobbly cot and pull all the blankets onto the floor in front of the stove. She lay down among them and held Flower in her arms. She cried softly all night. Outside the perimeter of the fort, the wolves were howling as they coursed through the bare hills in large packs.
"Carry my words to Wanderer, Brother Wolf. Tell him where I am. Tell him I love him. Guide him to me. Please, my brother."
She had just fallen into a fitful, exhausted sleep when the bugle jolted her awake with reveille in the predawn darkness. She bolted up, her heart jumping in her chest. She tensed for another attack, then remembered where she was. She lay back down and closed her eyes as though that would shut everything out. She had an intense longing to hear Lance's morning song. To hear it would mean that the world had been set right again.
Camp Cooper's interpreter, Ben Kiggins, was playing cards in the shack that was officially called the enlisted men's barracks. The north wind whistled through the cracks between the logs where the mud had fallen out. The men stuffed rags into the holes, but they never managed to cover them all. Navy blue army blankets covering the windows of the north wall luffed slightly with each gust of wind.
The card players huddled in front of the stove. A battered black felt cavalry hat sat in the middle of the blanket they surrounded. The hat was full of IOUs, small bags of tobacco, a couple of small knives, and a few coins. No one ever had much actual money to bet. The men were so absorbed in their game they didn't bother to look up when the door opened.
"Ben," called the corporal who had just come in. Kiggins grunted.
"Kiggins, they want you in the squaw's tent. She's about to know somethin'."
"God damn it!" Kiggins threw down his limp, greasy cards. "The hell she is." He got up and stalked out, a straight lying face up on the blanket.
Naduah's tent strained at its tethers and billowed in the moaning wind. Inside, she sat on a small, rough pine box. Her elbows were on her knees and her jaw rested in the palms of her hands. She stared down at nothing, and tears fell silently into the dust. Her daughter napped in a nest of blankets near the stove. Naduah's uncle, Isaac Parker, sat gingerly on the edge of the cot. He leaned toward Naduah, resting his forearms on his thighs. His strong, gnarled fingers were intertwined between his knees. His gray hair was short and brushed in a wave away from his broad forehead. He looked up when Kiggins entered. His clear blue eyes were pale and kind and guileless. His mouth resembled Naduah's.
"I had almost given up," he said. "Nothing seemed to reach her. I was about to leave, and I said 'Poor Cynthia Ann.' The name touched something inside her. She patted herself and said 'Cincee Ann. Me Cincee Ann.' Praise the Lord! I know this is my long-lost niece. God has delivered her from bondage." It looked as though Brother Isaac was about to launch a sermon or, worse, a prayer, so Ben Kiggins hurried to stop him.
"What do you want me to ask her?"
"Ask her if she remembers her mother. Tell her that her mother passed on, but we can visit her grave. Tell her that her younger brother, Silas, and her sister, Orlena, want to see her. Tell her I'm her father's brother. My wife and I would be pleased to have her come live with us."
Kiggins held up a hand.
"Don't stampede this thing, Mr. Parker." He hunkered down to be eye level with Naduah. In Spanish and sign language and some Comanche, he passed on her uncle's message.
"Nocona," was all she would answer.
"Is that the chief who was her husband?" Isaac Parker didn't flinch when he said it. He had prepared himself for what he would find when he met his niece.
"Yeh. He was killed defending her. She took it pretty hard." Kiggins turned back to Naduah and reminded her that Nocona was dead. He asked if she wanted to go back for his body. Comanche were great ones for carrying bones around with them. Disgusting, grisly custom. Naduah signed rapidly, fighting back tears.
"She says he ain't dead. She wants to find him. Says her sons are with him."
"Tell her if she'll go with us, we'll do everything we can to help her find her family again. I promise her that."
Naduah didn't believe him. She stared at Kiggins, then at the tall, smooth-faced old man on the cot. Isaac Parker stared back at her with a compelling intensity. His blue eyes held hers. They spoke to her without words, pleaded with her. She shook herself to break their spell, and looked stubbornly back at the pebbles and dust and twigs of the tent floor. She liked him. His eyes had the power to bewitch her into liking him. It was a trick.
Parker's knuckles were white with tension as he clenched his interwoven fingers together. So close. He had almost reached her.
"Mr. Kiggins," he said in a low voice, "explain to my niece that I am her uncle. How do you say uncle in Comanche?"
"Ara."
"Ara." He repeated it, and Naduah looked up at the familiar word.
"Tell her she is the daughter of my dear, dead brother. We share common blood, she and I. Tell her she has a large family in East Texas. They all want to see their beloved daughter again. I understand that she loves her husband and sons and wants to see them. We will help her. Tell her we have waited long years to see her. Our hearts are full of joy. Explain it to her." Parker spoke to Kiggins, but he never took his eyes off Naduah.
It was a long speech. When Kiggins finished, she searched her uncle's face, reading it and interpreting it. She inspected the lines around his eyes and mouth. They were made of laughter, not anger. The steadiness of his gaze and the size of his pupils showed he told the truth. His eyes were alive and eloquent, not blank, like so many here. His mouth was relaxed and tranquil, not tense and petty. He had the eyes and mouth of a storyteller, like Kavoyo, Name Giver.
For the first time since that terrifying, wrenching afternoon of the sandstorm, she felt hope. It was as light and fragile and drab as the bruised wing of a moth, but it was hope. She said one short word in Spanish.
"Voy, I go."
Isaac Parker wasted no time leaving with his niece. It was one thing to go in search of a Comanche chief. It was quite another to have one come searching for him. On the advice of Tom Kalliher, he sold the coyote dun to the camp's quartermaster.
"That snip-nosed nag is fast," said Kalliher. "Believe me, if you keep her and your niece gets aboard her, the last you'll see of them will be shoe soles and assholes. Pardon the expression. If I were you, I'd remove temptation."
But when Isaac loaded his wagon with her possessions, Naduah refused to go without the horse. She folded her arms across her chest and used the single word of English she had learned.
"No."
"I thought Comanche squaws were obedient and downtrodden," grumbled Parker as he bought the pony back.
"You must never have had one shooting at you," said the quartermaster.
The wagon finally rumbled out with a small escort of troops headed east. The women of Camp Cooper stood in the wind, the dusty hems of their long black coats blowing around their ankles. Molly waved as she watched them go, and the colonel's wife noticed the worry on her face.
"She'll be all right," she said.<
"I hope so."
"I know so."
"How do you know?"
"I checked the seat on her uncle's wagon."
"What could you tell from that?" Molly looked at the colonel's wife as though she had changed into a completely different person.
"The seat was worn toward the far edge. You can tell a man's character by where he sits in a wagon. A generous man always sits on the side so there's room for the people he picks up by the road. A stingy man sits in the middle. She'll be all right."
As the wagon cleared the last of the buildings, Naduah began scanning the hills for signs of Wanderer and a war party. Her ears strained to hear his signal. She listened closely to each bird call. She knew he would come for her, but she also knew how futile it would be for him to attack the fort.
She tried to analyze his chances of finding this small party. He wouldn't be able to trail her, although she had insisted on keeping the dun in hopes he could pick up the horse's hoof marks. The countryside around the camp was a lacework of tracks left by wood and water and game details. There were tracks of the men who hauled garbage away in wagons and dumped it in the surrounding ravines. There were patrols and freighters, sutlers and traders and visitors. There were the trampled areas where the men held their Sunday horse races, and the trails that led off to the "flats," the small collection of shacks that housed camp followers.
But though she knew how impossible the situation was, she couldn't stop looking. And she couldn't stop imagining him swooping down from one of the thick stands of cedar and oak on the hills. She saw the scene over and over as the mules plodded along.
While Naduah was traveling slowly east with her uncle, Wanderer sat with Deep Water and Sore-Backed Horse and the other men of the band's council. They were gathered around a fire at the mouth of a large limestone cavern, out of the worst of the north wind. Behind them, in the cave, they could hear Wears Out Moccasins complaining loudly to her friends. It sounded as though she were trying to organize a revenge raid on her own.
Families had gathered what few belongings they could salvage from their old camp and had fled here. Now they clustered together, the lucky ones under the shelter of this cave and another one nearby. The others built makeshift lodges of brush and hides and blankets. They shared what food they had, but there wasn't much. A few boxes of pemmican had escaped the flames and had been strangely untouched by scavengers. When the women opened them, they discovered why. The white men had urinated in them, soaking the food inside.
The men of the council discussed the losses. It was a desperate situation. The worst of winter was waiting for them, patiently, inexorably, like an owl perched over a mouse hole. Life would become harder, not easier, in the months to come.
"I say we head for the Staked Plains," said Deep Water. "We can find the band of Wanderer's father, or camp with other Noconi bands. They will help us and loan us the ponies we need to hunt."
"No one's ponies are in shape to hunt," said Wanderer.
"Then we should walk to the nearest settlements and steal some of theirs. They grow food for their horses to eat in winter."
"Go where you will," said Wanderer. "I will go my own way."
"To the east?" asked Sore-Backed Horse.
"Yes."
There was silence. This would be hard for Sore-Backed Horse to say. But perhaps it would be easier for him than the other men, who were younger than Wanderer or who knew him less well.
"Wanderer, look around you. These are your people. They left their bands, their families to follow you. They left because they admire you. They believe in your power, in your medicine. They are Noconi now. Wanderers. You have made them as respected as the Quohadi. Now they need you. You can't abandon them."
"There are other leaders."
"No. There are few leaders left. And there are no more like you. Not among the young men. If you leave, these people may give up and die. You have strong medicine. It will bring us through this. Without it there will be more grief among them."
"My medicine hasn't protected us. It didn't even protect my family." His voice was bitter. "If only I'd been there when the Texans raided."
"Will you come with us?"
Wanderer stared into the fire, his face immobile. But Sore-Backed Horse knew what was raging behind it.
"Wanderer, when the people have recovered, when the children no longer cry with the hunger that cramps their bellies, when the men are not ashamed because their families are starving, I will go with you to find her."
"You're asking me to decide between my woman and my people."
"Yes."
No one else said anything. It was as if the two men were alone. Finally Wanderer spoke in a low voice.
"I thought I already knew every reason to hate white people. But all the reasons put together aren't as fierce as this."
Behind Wanderer's impassive face, Sore-Backed Horse could see the anguish. It shone from his black eyes like signal fires on a hill at night. He would stay with them.
"My heart is with your heart, my brother," said Sore-Backed Horse. "We'll find her, no matter how long it takes."
CHAPTER 55
The huge harvest moon was brilliant, drifting in and out behind luminous, pearl-gray clouds in a black velvet sky. The ruined fort was ghostly in the moonlight. There were gaps on the stockade, and trumpet creeper had taken over large sections of what was left. Most of one wall was gone. Only charred stumps stood where a campfire had blazed out of control. The cabins inside had been dismantled over the years, cannibalized to build other houses. Weeds stood chest-high in the yard beyond the collapsed and rotting gate.
Wanderer sat astride Raven for an hour, staring at Parker's Fort near the Navasota River. Quanah sat patiently next to him, but Sore-Backed Horse was restless.
"We must go, Brother. There is nothing more we can do here. These walls will never speak to us. They give us no clues of where she is. And the white people are as thick as mosquitoes around a stagnant pond."
"We'll go soon."
"Is this where you found Mother?" asked Quanah. "Yes. On this slope. She was a child then. A blue-eyed, golden-haired child."
"How can we find her again?"
"I don't know. I was sure they would have brought her back here. To this place." He couldn't believe she wasn't here.
"There are hundreds of whites' lodges scattered over a hundred miles," said Sore-Backed Horse. "We can't ride up to one and ask for her. We can't scout every lodge. We can't gather the men and attack them. There are too many. And she may not be anywhere near here." Sore-Backed Horse hated the harsh sound of the words as he spoke them. But they had to be said. He would follow Wanderer anywhere. He would fight by his side against any foes. But he would not allow him to fool himself.
Sore-Backed Horse had known how this would end when they first found clumps of houses instead of isolated cabins. The rest of the large Noconi war party had divided then to raid. But Wanderer had continued stubbornly eastward. And his friend and his son had come with him. Finally they were threading their way through a precarious maze of trails and roads, fields and fences and ragged stumps. The lights from faraway windows flickered like beacons on the hills.
There were no traces of Caddo or Wichita, Tonkawa or Kichiwa or Karankawa. It was as if they had never existed. As if the whites had medicine to wipe out even memory. If Wanderer had not been staring at the fort, he might have wondered if it had all been a dream. The land seemed different. The forests had been cleared, and the grass replaced by neat rows of crops.
You were wrong, Father, he thought. Iron Shirt had once said, "We grow old and die, but the land never changes." The white eyes had changed the land. They had destroyed so much in twenty-five years. In twenty-five more years Wanderer would be sixty-seven, as old as Pahayuca was now. What changes would he see if he lived that long? Suddenly he saw the future. He saw himself as a stranger in his own land. The shudder that passed over him wasn't caused by the cold autumn wind. If he couldn't fin
For the first time, Wanderer admitted that he might not find her. He knew Sore-Backed Horse was right. Never had he felt this weak, this helpless. He wanted to ride pell-mell through the countryside calling her. He wanted to burst into every squat, square wooden lodge and demand her return.
In sheer desperation, he threw his head back and gave a ringing wolf's howl. As the last echoes died mockingly away, he waited for an answer. He knew Naduah would recognize the call as his. If she were anywhere within hearing, she would answer. But all they heard was the hysterical barking of dogs from some dooryard shrouded in darkness.
"Now will you return, Wanderer?"
"Not yet."
"Then we will stay with you."
"No. It would be better if the two of you rejoined the others. It will be difficult for me to hide here. Harder for three of us."
"She may not be in Texas."
"She's here. I know she is. I can't give up yet, Sore-Backed Horse."
"I'll stay with you, Father."
"No."
"She's my mother. I love her too." Quanah never argued with his father. He knew better. But this once he had to try. Wanderer seemed to understand.
"No." He kept his voice low and gentle.
Quanah and Sore-Backed Horse turned and were soon out of sight in the darkness.
In the fall of 1861, while Wanderer was searching for Naduah around Parker's old fort, she was one hundred miles away. Her uncle, Isaac, had built his small frame house near Fort Bird twenty years before. Birdville became the first permanent settlement on the upper Trinity, but it never grew much. The village to the southeast, Fort Worth, had just been voted county seat.
Isaac and Bess Parker's house faced west, like a gambler who sits where he can see the door. West was wild, unpredictable country. The Comanche raided out of the west. Late every afternoon, when Naduah had finished her chores and the sun was sinking, she sat in a hard, straight-backed chair on the sagging wooden porch.
Her face was always remote, but at those times she was even farther away. Her eyes refused to focus on the frame of rambling rose around the porch or on the tall trees and small hills hunched up around the cabin. She looked instead for the far horizon she had ridden toward all her life. She was used to wide spaces and vast distances that beckoned her, offered her freedom and change each day. "The prairie stare," her uncle Isaac called it.