The Color of Lightning (28 page)

got hold of herself and then went on slamming the antler into the earth and raking out the tangling wild buckwheat and greenbrier. On a fire nearby the women had taken the ripest of the ears and laid them on a green-stick grill over the coals to roast. They were ears with red and purple and blue-black kernels, Indian corn.

Elizabeth knew that they had driven off most of her cattle and horses. She saw her own horses now in the Comanche herd as the young men and boys took them to grazing and to water. She wrapped her swollen knuckles in strips of scrap buckskin and turned weeds out of the red earth. She would get it all back. Her anger was like sweet water to her, her plans of revenge a biblical text that she read over to herself every night, and Lottie would become herself again when they got back to Elm Creek and not the Comanche princess she was now. Petted and strung with glass beads.
Lottie girl, things are going to change.
Above Elizabeth the metallurgical peaks of the Wichitas rose in a blue early-summer sky, their red granite boulders rounded and smooth, studded with juniper and live oak and pine. She could smell the roasting ears. When she returned to her own house she would have her own roasting ears with butter and salt and pepper.

Several Comanche men came riding up the valley toward them. Elizabeth turned with the rake in her hand to watch them. Their hair looped behind them as they trotted their horses. A feeling of dread crawled up her back with a thousand legs. Something told her to prepare to defend herself against them. That the end might have come. The other women stopped and straightened up with their worn bone hoes glittering. All of them turned to look at Elizabeth.

Taibo,
they said. Soldiers.

Elizabeth immediately thought of Lottie, and where she might be. If there were to be a fight with the soldiers, would they come and kill her and Lottie.

One of the men on horseback gestured to Elizabeth and told her to follow. His eyes were a thin hazel color with a fixed look.

They have come for you. They will decide your price.

She only understood part of what was said. “Sackado,” she said. “Sikkydoo where?”

The man’s look of contempt did not change. He gestured for her to come along and then they turned and rode back at a walk. Eliza- beth ran after him. Then in a moment, so did Pakumah.

br i t t sat do w n
on his heels in front of the fire. He did not look at Major Semple or the soldiers. He regarded only the Co- manche across from him and their bright trade blankets and serapes from the Mexican settlements, their earrings and the rosary beads worn as necklaces. When the sentries had brought in word of their coming, the Comanche headmen put on their best ornaments and prepared for a day of bargaining and food, a pleasant amusement.

In the Wichita Mountains the Comanche had come upon some others who had just arrived from the agency with flour and sugar, baking soda and coffee, and they had traded for these things with ammunition and tobacco from the Comancheros.

Thus the smell of baking bannocks that turned lightly brown in skillets, the odor of coffee and bacon. Britt sat down on the ground cross-legged and removed his spurs and buckled the straps together through his belt. If there were trouble he did not want to jump to his feet and get caught up in his own spurs. The Comanche men across from him saw him do it and noted it and Britt did not care one way or the other. The soldiers did not sit down but stood behind Britt and the major with their arms grounded. A pipe was brought to mark the meeting as a social occasion. Britt sat in the familiar smells of burning sumac and tobacco leaves, the coffee and woodsmoke. He passed the pipe to his left, holding the bowl in his hand, and the carved face on the bowl looked out from between his fingers.

Then food came and Britt ate what was given him with good appetite. The major sat beside him and after a moment, seeing that what he had been handed on a wooden tray was not raw liver or intestines or eyes, ate as well.

“Ah, Brreet, Brreet!”

Britt looked up. Tissoyo strode across the beaten red earth be- tween the tipis. Tissoyo had a burst of snowy egret feathers on the

top of his head like a minor white explosion of down and plumes. His arms jangled with silver bracelets and he wore an enormous, ostentatious rosary around his neck.

“There you are,” Britt said in Spanish. He smiled. Tissoyo sat down beside Eaten Alive. He settled himself gracefully and dusted his hands. Eaten Alive glanced at him with a faint trace of annoy- ance and a bannock in one hand.

“Yes, here I am.” Tissoyo gracefully opened one hand as if to present himself.

“Did you win your horses back?”

“They would not put them up, the cowards. The Medicine Hat stallion, they wanted him to make babies. But I won a great deal of other things.” He jangled the silver bracelets. They were wide and beautifully chased. They had crawled up his arm almost to the el- bow and Tissoyo shook them down to his wrist. “Now, I will trans- late.” Tissoyo was then quiet and deferential because most of the Comanche understood at least some Spanish and so Tissoyo was limited in his desire to make remarks, to relay secrets, inside infor- mation. “This man is called Horseback, and this one Eaten Alive, and this is Toshana. I don’t know how to say Toshana in Spanish.” Then Tissoyo turned to the headmen and said the names of Major Semple and Britt, and, far away, in a wave of his hand to the south, the name of Hammond, the Indian agent who was called Keeps- All-the-Stuff because he was refusing rations if captives were not brought in. By making these introductions Tissoyo had effectively taken over the meeting.

The major said, “I would appreciate a translation.” “You don’t speak Spanish?” Britt half turned to him.

“No, I don’t. You know this young Indian here? With the brace- lets?”

“I do,” said Britt. “I will translate as we go on.”

“Very well,” said the major. “But please first indicate that we, ah, come in peace. We are only interested in the captives and nothing else.”

It was too soon to start mentioning the captives. Britt had come

to understand they should finish the food first, but after a pause he relayed this in Spanish to Tissoyo.

Eaten Alive refused to speak Spanish but turned instead to Tis- soyo and spoke in Comanche.

Tissoyo pushed a wedge of bannock into his mouth and swal- lowed, and then straightened his back to a perfect horizontal and became erect and dignified.

“He says, you, the underwater man, you went to the Kiowa and you paid very well for your wife and your girl child.” He made the sign for
Kiowa,
a cupping gesture at the right side of the head where they cut their hair short. “You did not pay for the boy. Later the boy ran away and joined you. He says this was a trick and it was not a good one. He said you had it planned out that way so you did not have to pay for the boy.”

Britt said, “My son is very brave and clever. He came on his own. He is very strong. He crossed the country between the Cimarron and the Canadian by himself in three days.”

Toshana said,
He took Aperian Crow’s best horse. The black one. It was a warhorse.

Britt said, “Too bad for Aperian Crow.”

Toshana snorted in a short, surprised laugh. He turned the carved pipe over in his hand and knocked the dottle from it on a smooth stone. Then he spoke again.

Tissoyo listened and then said in Spanish, “He says there are captives here with us Comanche, it’s true. The soldiers know there are captives here.” He signed as he spoke in Spanish. It was a habit of many translators. It was a way of gesturing and also so that ev- eryone would know what he was saying. He made the sign for
Co- manche
, a wavering snakelike motion for the Snake River far away in Idaho where the Comanche had come from in centuries past and still retained that territorial name.

Britt turned to the major and told him what had been said so far.

The major nodded in an agreeable way.

Britt said, “Where is the two-year-old girl that the Kiowa took?

Her name is Millie. Do you have her?”

Eaten Alive shook his head.
She is dead. The Kiowa told us she got sick and died.

“Where did she die?”

Up near the Cimarron. By Black Mesa.

Britt kept his eyes on Eaten Alive for several blank and dubious seconds. Then with a small movement of his hand he said, “Now, a grown
taibo
woman and a
taibo
girl about three or four years old. Are they here?”

Eaten Alive nodded. Before he could speak a small boy ran up and fell to his knees in the dirt beside him and whispered anxiously in Comanche. The headman nodded. He waved his hand at the boy to send him away. The boy retreated behind Eaten Alive’s back where he could not be seen and stood listening. Eaten Alive then turned his attention back to Britt and the soldiers.

They are here. The woman is mine, she is a slave. I want a rifle and ammunition and three horses, two packages apiece of coffee and sugar.
He indicated the size of the packages; to Britt it looked like about twenty pounds each.
And a hundred dollars.

Tissoyo bent over and spoke to Britt rapidly in Spanish, so quick that Eaten Alive could not keep up. “The little boy has come from Eaten Alive’s wife with a message. She says sell the
taibo
woman for anything at all, just sell her.” Then to cover his words Tissoyo opened and shut both hands twice, indicating twenty. “That many in pounds.” He turned innocently to Eaten Alive. “Is that right?”

“Hm.” Eaten Alive fixed Tissoyo with a stare for a moment and then over his shoulder he handed the carved pipe to a thin adoles- cent boy to clean and put back in its case. The young man flushed with pride and carried it carefully away between his two hands as if it were explosive.

Tissoyo said, “He wants to know if you will give this for the big loud woman.”

“No,” said Britt. “I will give twenty-five dollars in silver money for her.”

That’s not enough.

“Then keep her.”

The boy behind Eaten Alive listened and then turned quietly and walked back toward the village and after a few moments began to run and disappeared among the tipis.

I will think about that,
said Eaten Alive.
And now the girl. My wife loves the little girl very much.

To give himself time to think, Britt turned to the major and told him what had been said so far. The major nodded. He shifted on the ground. His hip joints were hurting from sitting cross-legged.

Major Semple said, “Britt, you have a future in the army.” “Maybe so.” Then Britt said to Eaten Alive, “For the little girl,

I have some jewelry for your wife and two mirrors and a serape and a horse. To make Eaten Alive’s wife feel better about giving up the girl, I will add the coffee and sugar and fifty dollars. This is to wipe away her tears.”

Britt turned and made a motion to one of the soldiers to bring the trade pack and open it. All of them sat and watched as two soldiers opened the pack and spread out the ornate jewelry, the two framed mirrors, the serape, and the coffee and sugar. The serape was of that design called
jorongo,
a brilliant series of red and white stripes in varying widths overwoven with black diamonds. This was to wipe away Pakumah’s tears and in truth Pakumah sat in the farthest tipi stroking Siikadeah’s hair and weeping as if she would never stop. She wiped her face on her shoulder and then sent the boy out again with another message.

“Don’t open the money,” said Britt.

Eaten Alive rested his hands on his kneecaps and bent forward over the jewelry and serapes. Then he heard behind him the foot- steps of the small boy. The boy again dropped to his knees behind the war leader and Britt heard the rapid whispering. Eaten Alive made a waving motion of his hand and the boy rose and stood off a few paces.

Britt could tell that Tissoyo was longing to tell him what the message was but he was waiting for Eaten Alive to answer.

“He says to give him two serapes instead of one, and the other things and the horse and the fifty dollars in silver and then that

would be all right as payment for the little girl.” Then Tissoyo spoke to Britt in rapid, slangy Spanish. “The wife sent a message to pay the underwater man to take her away, if he has to.” Tissoyo shook down his bracelets again. They had crept up his arm as he translated because he made sign to accompany his words but in an amazing display of double-speak he had signed one thing and said another. Eaten Alive watched the signing and so did not pay any attention to the quick Spanish. Tissoyo had signed
His wife is sad to hear her husband will sell the little girl, and so you must add another serape,
even as he told Britt in Spanish that the wife was willing to pay him to take Elizabeth away.

Britt held one wrist in the other hand and rested his forearm on his thigh. He leaned on the forearm and stretched his back muscles. His admiration for Tissoyo’s ability to deal in intrigue had increased greatly in the last fifteen minutes.

“As you say, I will give an extra serape for the little girl and the other things and fifty dollars in silver Spanish milled dollars,” he said. He turned to the soldier standing behind him. “Open the other pack and get out the black and yellow
jorongo
.”

Good
.

Eaten Alive and Wolf Escaping and the other men nodded. The soldier brought out the black and yellow
jorongo;
it was newly made and the fine wool shone. And so that, at least, was settled.

“And so we are agreed? I will take the little girl, and you will keep the woman.” Britt reached to his belt to unbuckle the spurs.

“Wait.” Tissoyo lifted a hand. “He wants you to wait a mo- ment.”

“What’s going on?” said the major.

Britt said, “I closed the deal on Lottie Durgan and we are talking about her grandmother, Elizabeth Fitzgerald. I can get her cheap.”

“Jesus,” said the major. Here was a black man bargaining for the price of a white woman. The world had turned upside down. He shifted his eyes sideways to the pile of goods being laid on the se- rape, the bags of coffee and the sugar, the ornate mirrors. Britt was still holding back the money.