Come Sundown (34 page)

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Authors: Mike Blakely

BOOK: Come Sundown
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“You really
have
gone Indian if even your ass is red.”
George burst into laughter, which very soon infected me with its contagious nature. Charles tried to be angry, but soon the laughter got even to him and he begrudged himself to chuckle and shake his head.
The following morning, as we rode into a perfect crimson fireball of a rising sun, pulling our meat-laden pole drags behind us, I asked the boys whether they would like to ride with me and Westerly back to William's stockade, and perhaps even go trading with us among the Comanches.
“I don't know why I'd go back to that goddamn stockade,” Charles said. “The old man never has anything good to say to me.”
Later, Charles's pony pulled a little ahead of me and George. The elder brother leaned toward me and said, “I'm going to visit Father in a month or so. I'll try to bring Charles with me, but he's got a mind of his own, you know. It wouldn't hurt if you'd talk to Father and tell him to ease up on Charles a little.”
I thought about this as my eyes habitually scanned the far horizons for trouble. “The idea of my lending advice and counsel to the wisest man I've ever known makes me very uncomfortable.”
“You're no idiot yourself. You can find a way to say it without really saying it. And William Bent is not perfect. He's made mistakes like everybody else.”
“He thought he was doing the right thing sending you boys east for schooling.”
“He sent Charles too young. It was me and Mary and Robert ended up raising him, and we didn't know anything about raising a brat kid. We were brat kids ourselves. The whole business has made him mean. He drew blood in the Confederate Army. He told me he killed a Yankee or two, and I believe him. He wants more killing now, and I'm afraid he'll find it.”
“He wants to kill white men, doesn't he?”
George nodded. “He hates being half white. He'd kill it inside himself if he could.” George twisted in the saddle to check the load behind him on the pole drag, and to glance across the
horizon for trouble. When he turned back to the rising sun, he said, “The Cheyennes don't call him a half-breed.”
 
 
GEORGE DID RETURN to William's stockade for a time, but Charles did not come with him. The younger brother had absorbed a passion for the unbridled life of a rising Cheyenne warrior. George soon went to rejoin the Cheyennes, as well. In the years that followed, William would always give me credit for saving his relationship with George. Still, I always felt that I had failed him for not reuniting him permanently with both sons.
And remember the wretched squaw man, Carter? The man who claimed he was hard of hearing because he couldn't speak Cheyenne, though he was married to one? Well, Carter, I would learn in later years, rode to Denver and managed to obtain an audience with Governor Evans. He told the governor that the Cheyennes and the Sioux had smoked the war pipe together out on the Smoky Hill River and that both tribes were going to unite for a war on whites come spring. For this colossal lie, Governor Evans granted Carter the rank of lieutenant in the Colorado volunteers.
H
ome
collects your powers while you wander, and holds them for you until you return.
Home
goes with you when you drift away again.
Home
returns to you in your dreams far afield.
Home
gives you life, but
home
wants your corpse when your life has flickered and died.
A true Comanche could call several places home. All over the plains and mountains and woodlands, mystic locales called to the True Humans, the
Noomah,
the Comanches. A single warrior could seek medicine in many far-scattered points on the sacred Mother Earth. This was one of the disturbing realizations
that made me know I was not a true Comanche. I called only one place home—the place where I now spend my last days, awaiting my ultimate end. This crossing on the Canadian. This canyon basin along this bend in the river. This prairie guarded by bluffs, tickled by spring-fed creeks, dappled by timber, gouged by the talons of the thunderbird, smothered by the blankets of blizzards, seared by the wrath of a vengeful Father Sun, drenched by impossible deluges, galled by falling fists of ice, and goaded to whistling madness through the teeth of the wildest storm. This is the only place that charges me with medicine, heals me, holds me, and needs me almost as much as I need to call her home. Without this hallowed mother soil to catch my tears, and these brotherly bluffs to echo my crazed screams of anguish, I would surely have gone mad long ago.
You have come to hear things about Kit Carson and young Quanah Parker. Things worth my telling. I apologize for my digressions, but there is so much to tell. Too much, in fact. Most of it will be lost; that which has happened. Lost forever. I was lucky to have seen it, I suppose, though its memory has become my lament. You want to know about the battle? Yes, the battle is coming. Yes, I was there when Kit died. I will tell about that, too. The sun has raged across the sky like a flaming chariot and I have reduced winters to minutes, moons to moments. I will render the rest in good time. I will take up the story right here. Yes, home.
 
 
I AWOKE IN my lodge to the smell of tallow cooking in an iron skillet. I had slept hard for many hours—an uncommon but welcome thing for me. Though my eyes opened, the sleep demons still had hold of my body and for a time I could only blink and glance about. The sky through the smoke hole above me was the color of a great blue heron. Dawn was coming, and Westerly was preparing breakfast. I smelled bone marrow and cornmeal now, in addition to the tallow, and I heard the pleasant sizzle of the corn cakes on the skillet. My face was cool, but my body warm under the heavy buffalo robe. I could feel
the warmth of the place to my left where Westerly had lain not long ago. She had risen to add sticks to the small fire so she could cook our morning meal.
Unable to move, I nonetheless rested easy. My lodge was secure and I felt happy, though I needed to go outside into the cold and relieve myself. Soon enough. For now I lay there and blinked up at the inside cone of my lodge. The lower ends of the lodge poles were covered over by hides hung inside, providing a second wall of protection from the cold. With the tiny cook fire going, my home was cozy. I raised my eyebrows and got the rest of my face to move. Now the demons lost their hold and I felt movement twitching down through my torso and into my limbs.
I rolled to my side. Westerly glanced at me and smiled. I smiled back at her and admired her graceful movements by flickering firelight.
“The skillet is good,” she said. “I like using it.”
“You are quite progressive for an uncivilized squaw.”
She knew I was joking, but she threw a stick at me in retaliation. “It remembers the flavor of things,” she said.
“The more you use it, the more seasoned it becomes.”
She nodded. “I suppose you heathen palefaces have come up with a few good ideas.”
I lobbed the stick back at her. She smiled, quite proud of herself for the jibe, and continued her cooking.
Boldly now, I threw the warm covers aside and summoned my adopted Comanche vigor to face the cold. Wrapping only a blanket around my naked body, I slipped through the smallest opening I could make between the buffalo hide and the bearskin door covering. My bare foot landed in snow that came to my ankle. I took but a few steps from the lodge and let go a steaming stream as I looked around at the dark blue lines of the horizon. The fragrance of wood smoke tinged the frigid air. A vagrant flake of snow landed on my face. I heard muffled laughter from a nearby lodge. An owl hooted, and another answered. My feet were aching by the time I turned back to the lodge, and I thought about the vulnerability of naked humans in such a wild land.
I stepped back into the welcome warmth of the lodge and
got dressed in breechclout, leggings, moccasins, and buckskin shirt as Westerly finished cooking. She had honey to pour on the corn cakes and cold spring water to wash it all down. After breakfast we sat and talked about how long our meat supply would last, about our neighbors, about the weather and grass for the horses, about the dreams we had dreamt last night, and what they might mean.
In the middle of our conversation, we were startled by a voice that sounded as if it came from someone sitting right between us: “I am coming in, Plenty Man.”
I recognized it as Burnt Belly's voice and rose to greet him as he stepped in from outside. He had a finely tanned buffalo robe pulled over his head and around his shoulders. For his conjures and cures, Burnt Belly had earned many fine things.
“Aho,”
I said. “Sit here, grandfather.” I offered him the buffalo hide couch with the back rest.
“I will,” he replied. “But only for a moment, to warm my old bones.”
“We have corn cakes and honey.”
“Had I known you were coming, I would have cooked more,” Westerly added.
Burnt Belly brushed the offer away. “My third wife—the one who is young, but not so pretty—is a very good cook. She does almost nothing all day but tend the fire and prepare food, so I always have plenty to eat. Look …” He let his buffalo robe fall open. He was shirtless underneath, for he liked to show off the scar of the lightning bolt that had charged him with strange powers many years ago. It angled across his shoulder and chest, and broadened over a belly that indeed revealed a degree of prosperity. He held the paunch proudly in both hands and smiled at us across the fire.
I laughed and said, “My heart is glad that you have come to visit this morning, grandfather.”
Burnt Belly put his hands together in front of him as if cupping something between them and said, “I have brought some things you will be needing.”
When he opened his hands, a bundle of deerskin appeared, though it was too large to have been concealed by his hands just moments before. I was fairly adept at sleight-of-hand
tricks myself, but was frequently amazed by the skills of old Burnt Belly.
“Thank you,” I said, rising to take the bundle from the old shaman.
“I discovered a surplus of dogbane and moccasin flower, and I thought of you.”
It was unusual for Burnt Belly to bring my cures to me without my asking for them, so I was a bit confused. Quite the haggler, the old man never gave his treatments away except to those afflicted with absolute poverty. I was considered quite wealthy in this village, so the offering from the old man surprised me. I could only assume that he wanted something of me.
“My supply has been dwindling rapidly,” I said. “I thank you for bringing these things to me.”
“Do the nightmares still visit you?”
“Only when I am away and run out of the cures.”
“You will never be completely cured. You must always keep a supply of your herbs and roots on hand. You had better start taking time to collect them yourself. Do you think I will live forever?”
I smiled. “No, but I think you may outlive me. Only the Great Mystery knows.”
He scoffed knowingly. “The Great Mystery tells those of us who listen. The time will come when you must seek your own herbs.”
“I have begun to collect some for myself, and my wife is learning to help me.”
“That is good,” he said. “Very well, I must be going now. There is a child across the village with a case of colic. I have been summoned.” He rose with much greater agility than one would expect of a white-haired old man, wrapped his robe about his shoulders, and stepped toward the door. He paused before he stepped out.
“Is there anything else you wanted to say, grandfather?” I asked.
He turned and smiled. “I had a strange vision. You must make new arrows.
Sacred
arrows.”
“War points?”
“No. Hunting arrows.”
“Why, grandfather?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “I do not know. The vision was like a blizzard. I could not see much. Only you, shooting an arrow from the back of a fast buffalo horse.” He looked at the skillet next to the fire. “Perhaps I
will
have a taste of one of your corn cakes.”
Westerly darted to the skillet and scooped up a cake to give to the old man.
“A person should never pass up a chance to eat or sleep. Remember this when you are tired and starving.”
I nodded and smiled as the shaman stepped out.
After a few moments, Westerly whispered, “His voice came into our lodge when he was still outside.” Her eyes were wide with wonder.
“He has the power to make his voice speak wherever he wants it to speak.”
“And the bundle in his hands,” she hissed in a whisper. “Where did it … How?”
“He has the power of the Thunderbird in his blood. You saw the scar.”
“It is a wonder it did not kill him.”
“It is a wonder. He is a man of great powers and wisdom. His advice should always be heeded.”
“Yes. I think you should fashion new arrows, as Burnt Belly says.”
“I was thinking more of the other advice. Never miss a chance to eat or sleep. We should share another corn cake and take a siesta.”
Westerly smiled. “I know the kind of siesta you like.” One eyebrow lifted seductively.
I shrugged innocently. “It is the advice of the medicine man.”
She scolded me with her expression, yet nonetheless took a bite from the delicacy she had prepared and handed the rest to me. As she licked her lips, she loosened her deerskin shirt and pulled it over her head. Laying it neatly aside, she wriggled out of her finely tanned skirt and slid under the buffalo robes, the nipples of her firm breasts pointing through the cool air to the
narrowing peak of the lodge. Once under the covers, she removed her breechclout and tossed it aside. I did not take long in joining her, naked, under the warmth of the buffalo robes.
 
 
I SPENT SOME of the happiest days of my life in the summer of the year the white men numbered 1863. On the Kiowa calendar, this time was called the “Summer of No-Arm's River Sun Dance.” Yes, the Kiowas had a calendar. And they still maintain it, I assure you. I became well acquainted with the Kiowa calendar in 1863, for Kill Something's band of Comanches decided to join Little Bluff's Kiowa band to travel, hunt, camp, and raid together. I spent hour upon hour with old Little Bluff himself, studying the symbols on the calendar.
The Kiowa calendar was actually a history that recorded past events through symbols. The seasons got their names on the Kiowa calendar through remarkable events. Take, for example, the case of the “Summer of No-Arm's River Sun Dance” in 1863. That summer, a large bunch of Kiowas gathered on Walnut Creek, a tributary that joined the Arkansas River on the south bank of the Great Bend. A white man named William Allison kept a trading store nearby. The Kiowas called him “No-Arm.” He actually had one arm, but the other had been shot off in a gunfight with his stepfather, whom he had killed in the same violent affair. In the Indian way of thinking, if a man had no arm where once an arm had grown, then he should be called “No-Arm” even though he still had his other arm. The Summer of No-Arm's River Sun Dance was named for the large Kiowa Sun Dance that occurred near No-Arm's trading post that summer.
Some of Little Bluff's warriors rode to Kansas for the gathering and came back to tell us all about it. But Westerly and I were content to stay in the Comanche camps that summer, moving with the Indians, making trades for horses and captives. There were plenty of both that summer. The Comanches and Kiowas were raiding extensively along the Texas frontier and on into Mexico.
That summer, in fact, some of Little Bluff's warriors rode
south to Mexico and stayed gone so long that we began to fear their entire party had been wiped out. When they finally returned safely, laden with spoils, they told stories of riding far, far to the south where they found strange forests. In these forests, fantastically colored birds flew and little people with long tails swung through the treetops. Those Kiowas could ride.

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