The Son

Chapter Thirty-one. Eli/Tiehteti, Late Fall/Early Winter 1851

After we buried the last of the dead, the fifty of us still alive had gathered the few remaining horses and were making our way southwest, mostly on foot, hoping to find the buffalo, or to at least cut their trail. There was no fresh sign. It was clear the numu kutsu had not been in the area for over a year.

No one knew where the good grass was or where the buffalo might be headed. Later we found out they had stayed north, with the Cheyennes and Arapahoes. Meanwhile, the snow was beginning to fall and there was not much to eat.

With the exception of Yellow Hair, myself, and a few old Comanches who’d been exposed in previous epidemics, there was no logic to who had survived. The tasía had killed the weak and the strong, the smart and the stupid, the cowardly and the brave, and if the survivors had anything in common, it was that they had been too lazy or fatalistic to run away. The best of us had either fled or died in the plague.

No one spoke. There was nothing but the wind, creaking of packs, the travois poles scraping over rocks. If we did not see enough deer or antelope, we would kill a horse, further slowing our progress. There was no plan except to find the buffalo; we did not know what we would do if we ran into the Tuhano or the army; there were less than ten of us who could still fight; many of the children had gone blind.

One day, as we watched another norther blow in, the sky behind us the color of a bruise, a cold I knew would cut through my robe, it occurred to me that I had missed seeing many of the children at breakfast. I could not recall seeing them the previous night, either. I looked behind me and made a count of our long slow column and it was true. Half the children were missing. Their mothers had taken all the blind ones out onto the prairie and killed them, so that the rest of us would have enough to eat.

That night we ran into a group of Comanchero traders who saw our fire in the storm. They were loaded down with cornmeal and squash, powder and lead, knives and steel arrowheads, woolen blankets. We had nothing to give them. Apparently all the other bands were decimated because they decided to keep us company a few days. They gave us a few sacks of cornmeal but we had no hides and our few remaining horses could not be traded.

As they began to repack their mules, a sense of despair came over everyone; a few people sat down in the snow and refused to be consoled. The night had cleared and I walked away from the fire to look at the stars. There did not seem to be much point in continuing. The few people like me, who could still hunt, could simply ride away, but that was out of the question. I was standing there thinking when our surviving chief, Mountain of Rocks, came up next to me.

“I would like to speak quickly, Tiehteti.”

“All right,” I said.

“Obviously,” he said, “we may not make it through the winter.”

“I can see that.”

He looked out over the prairie, now covered with a light dusting of snow, which would soon turn into several feet.

“There is a way for you to help.”

I knew what he was getting at. The government was still paying high prices for returned captives.

“You yourself may survive this winter here. Most of us will not. Maybe none of us will. But if you return to the taibo…” He shrugged. “You can simply come back once the traders are paid.”

I didn’t look at him.

“It is your decision, of course. But there is talk that you might volunteer to do this, especially given the sacrifices that many of the families have already made.” He meant the children. “Still, you are one of us and we would prefer if you stayed.”

FOR THE GERMAN girl and me, the Comancheros left twenty bags of cornmeal, forty pounds of piloncillo, ten bushels of squash. Twenty pounds of lead, a barrel of powder, some gun lock screws, a thousand-pack of steel arrowheads, a few rough knife blades with rawhide handles. It was considered quite generous, though the traders had no doubt they would make a large profit, as I was still young, and the German girl still pretty, her face unmarked. Many captives, especially women, were returned with ears and noses cut off, faces branded, but Yellow Hair looked unscathed, and it was obvious that she would be beautiful once cleaned up. I was asked a few questions in English, to see if I still knew how to speak it, which I did. After nearly three years living among the wild Indians, that was not common, either, and by any measure our return would look like a great success and the Comancheros would be well paid.

Mountain of Rocks asked me to leave him my Colt Navy, one of the two I’d gotten off the scalp hunter, but it was out of the question. I had buried the other with Toshaway. And I did not like the look of the traders, or Mountain of Rocks, for that matter.

THE FIRST NIGHT Yellow Hair stayed close to me, away from the Comancheros.

“Don’t let them touch me,” she said.

“I won’t.”

“Make them think I’m your wife.”

“They’re trying to get money for us,” I said. “I don’t think they’ll do anything.”

“Please,” she said.

The next night I knew she was right: one of them kept sitting closer until finally he put his arm around her. He was a big man with a large gut; he looked like an unwashed version of St. Nicholas. I stood up and pulled my knife and he put up his hands, laughing at me.

“You look a little young, but I won’t fight you.”

“We don’t have to fight for her,” I said. “We can just fight.”

He laughed some more and shook his head. “Boy, I can see you are holding on to her like death to a dead nigger. I already said I won’t fight you. I’m going to sleep.” He got up and went to his pallet under the wagon.

That night she slept in my robe. I hadn’t touched a woman or even myself in nearly two months, because all I could think about was Prairie Flower, and her ruined face when I put the dirt over her.

But spooning with Yellow Hair, part of me seemed to forget all that. I could smell her sweet unwashed hair, and finally, when I couldn’t stand it, I began to kiss her neck. I wondered if she was asleep but then she said: “I won’t stop you, but I don’t want to do that right now.”

I kissed her behind the ear and tried to make out that I had just been being brotherly. She moved my rutter so that it was not poking into her. We fell asleep.

The next night she said: “We can make love if you want to but you know I was raped by maybe ten men in our band. I tried to talk to you about it many times.”

I felt so ashamed that I pretended to be sleeping.

“It’s okay,” she said, patting my hip. “I doubt they would have let you into the tribe if you’d been nice to me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Just don’t let these men rape me. I don’t think I could stand it.”

On the third night I asked her: “Do you think I am not attracted to you because you slept with all those men in our band, or do you just not want to sleep with me?”

“I don’t want to sleep with anyone,” she said. “But especially not these Comancheros. St. Nicholas showed his cock and balls to me and they are covered with a disease.”

On the fourth night I persisted: “But what about me?”

“Would you kill these Comancheros if I asked you?”

“Yes.”

“In that case I’ll sleep with you. But we have to be quiet so they don’t hear us or you might end up having to kill them.”

“I’ll kill them,” I said, though in truth I thought it was unlikely, as we represented a year’s wage for them.

She looked at me. She was a sensitive one. “Forget it. I’ll sleep by myself.” She got out of the robe. “I’d rather be raped than have sex with a liar.”

“I’ll protect you,” I said. “Let’s not do anything. I’m sorry I mentioned it.”

The last time I asked her anything about sex was: “Did you ever get pregnant?”

“Three times, but they all came out after a couple of months.”

“How?” I said.

“I beat myself in the stomach with rocks. Also, no matter how hungry I was, I would not let myself eat.”

“If you’d had a baby, they might have made you a tribe member.”

“That would have been great except every night I was there, all I dreamed about was going home.”

“To where?”

“Anywhere there were white people. Anywhere I wouldn’t have to live with men who’d raped me.”

I should have felt sympathy for her, but it just made me angry. I missed Toshaway more than I missed my own parents and the thought of Prairie Flower made me so empty that I wanted to put my gun to my head. I rolled over and went to sleep.

We rode together for three weeks, sharing the same robe so the Comancheros would think we were married, and every night I expected we would make love, as we slept spooning in the same robe, but it was true what she had told me, she had no interest at all. Even the one night we drank whiskey with the traders and she let my hands wander more than normal and I thought this is the night I might get inside her, but soon realized she was breathing very deeply and was no longer awake. I let my hands wander over her a little longer. The Comancheros knew their buyers, they were feeding us four or five times a day and Yellow Hair was looking healthier every minute, her ribs softening, her breasts and hips filling out, though still she cried every night in her sleep.

“I guess if I had a fantasy,” she told me, “it would be to rape all the men who raped me. Bring them back from the dead and rape all of them, over and over. With a big jagged stick, I mean. I would push it in and out and I would not stop until I was good and ready.”

I didn’t say anything. I thought about Toshaway and Nuukaru and Pizon, and Prairie Flower and Fat Wolf and Grandfather, and Hates Work, who was really Single Bird, Escuté and Bright Morning, Two Bears, Always Visiting Someone; I guessed I might kill Yellow Hair quite happily just to have a single one of them back.

But she did not appear to notice. “I’ve actually thought about it quite a lot,” she said. “I mean raping them. It was what got me through the day sometimes.”

She was smiling.

“But now I don’t have to think about it anymore.”

I didn’t talk to her that night, or the next day, either.

THE LAST WEEK we spent on wagon roads, passing villages, settlements, the first white people I’d seen in three years who hadn’t shot at me. Yellow Hair waved at everyone. But the whites did not think it was a special occasion, seeing other white people. The land was settling up.

When we reached the Colorado, close to Austin, I could not believe the roads; they had doubled in width and the ruts were all filled. Yellow Hair was happy, unusually talkative, and she had kissed the traders on their cheeks and thanked them and cuddled very close to me during supper. I could see their looks of jealousy, but St. Nick kept them in line. He knew what we were worth. He offered me a spare cylinder for my pistol if I would let him wash and cut my hair, which had grown halfway down my back. I thought about it, then agreed.

When we went to bed that night, Yellow Hair allowed me to put myself partway into her but she was very dry, and after moving around for several minutes she got no better, and I was so ashamed I removed myself.

“Go ahead and finish,” she said.

“I can’t with you not wanting to.”

She shrugged. “I really don’t mind. You kept your word.”

I thought about it and then got out of the robe, stood up, looked at the sky, and finished myself off. The grass was not even covered with frost, it was so much warmer in the hill country than on the plains. I got back into the robe with her.

“You’re a good man,” she said. “I’ve never known anyone like you.”

THE NEXT DAY we rode into Austin. We were taken to the house of a merchant the traders knew and then to the state capitol. A bunch of white men came and asked our names. It took most of the day but eventually three hundred dollars each was raised for us; the traders were paid and rode off without a word to me, though they tried to kiss Yellow Hair good-bye. She turned away from them. Now that we were in public, she would not even allow them to touch her.

Her real name was Ingrid Goetz. The word spread and various wealthy women adopted her. When I saw her the next day she was wearing a blue silk dress, her hair washed and braided and pulled into a bun behind her head. Meanwhile I had refused to let them touch me — I was wearing buckskin leggings and a breechcloth, no shirt, and while they had insisted on holding on to my revolver, I would not let them take my knife, which I kept tucked into my belt.

And so I slept on a spare cot at the jail while Yellow Hair stayed at a plantation east of town, the home of the U.S. representative and his wife. After a few days there was a reception for us at a judge’s house, a Georgian-style mansion near the capitol with a nice view over the river. The judge was a big redheaded man who could have hoisted a barrel in each arm, though his hands were soft as a child’s. He’d been educated at Harvard in his youth, then became a senator in Kentucky, then swore off politics entirely and moved to Texas to increase his fortune. He read a lot of books and his words ran eight to the pound, but he had a good spirit and I took to him right away.

Yellow Hair and I made quite a pair. She looked like she’d lived in town all her life; I’d taken a bath and lost my long braids but otherwise I looked like a feral child. Several reporters gathered and they asked if we were husband and wife and looking at her, with her hair washed and her face clean, she struck me as even more beautiful than I had ever thought and I wanted her to say yes.

Everyone else wanted her to say yes as well, as it made a good story, but Yellow Hair was a selfish creature. No, we were not connected in any way, I had simply protected her honor from the Comanches, she was returning with her honor intact thanks to me, honor honor honor, she still had it, that was all.

I was speechless. No one except the Yankees believed a word of it. The Indian’s appetite for his female captives was well known to all Texans.

WE WERE FED big meals with fresh bread and beef and a roasted turkey, which I would not touch, as the Comanches thought that eating turkey made you a coward, and staring at the bird I was reminded of Escuté, who liked to tell the joke, if eating turkey makes you a coward, what does eating pussy make you? There was also roast pig, which I would not touch, as the Comanches knew it was a filthy animal. I ate about five pounds of beef and two rabbits and it was commented what a good appetite I had. Yellow Hair ate a small amount of bread and turkey and, looking at me directly, helped herself to several servings of pork.

That night, despite the breezes flowing through the house, it felt so hot and still, and the beds so soft and smothering, that I went outside and slept in the judge’s yard. Yellow Hair, meanwhile, was already telling people that she had come from an aristocratic German family, though, as they had all been killed, there was no way to verify it. I was certain she was lying, as I knew where her family had been living, and the others doubted her as well, but no one was going to say anything. They had never seen a female captive returned in such good condition. You did not look a gift horse in the mouth.

A few days later, the judge gathered several of the town’s influential people in his yard for a barbecue, along with a few reporters from the East. I was asked to dress in my garb and do some tricks. Of course most of what an Indian knows cannot be shown in a circus, like how to follow game, or read a man’s mood from his footprints, so I asked for a horse and galloped it up and down the yard bareback, while shooting arrows at a hay bale. The judge had first suggested I shoot a stump but that was out of the question, as it would ruin my arrows, and as both they and my bow had been made by Grandfather, I had no desire to damage them except on a living target. I sat there on the horse and people gave suggestions. The judge pointed out a squirrel that was high up in a live oak and I shot it off the branch and then shot a dove off a different branch. The onlookers applauded. Not far from them was a black eye in the grass that I knew belonged to a rabbit so I put an arrow through that as well. Several of the eastern reporters looked sick at the rabbit shrieking and flopping itself into the air but the judge laughed and said, He’s got quite an eye, doesn’t he? Then his wife gave him a look. He called an end to the demonstration. The Negroes stomped on the rabbit to quiet it and trampled the divots in the lawn as well.

We sat and drank tea and finally they got to quizzing me about Yellow Hair, or Ingrid Goetz, as they insisted on calling her. During my demonstration she’d claimed to have a spell and they’d taken her back to the plantation. Of course I knew better.

The judge, who was sitting in, said: “Did you know her well?”

“We were captured at the same time,” I said.

“So you did know her.”

“Somewhat.”

“And it’s true she wasn’t misused?” said the reporter. He was from the New York Daily Times.

I considered throwing her under the wagon, because she clearly wanted nothing to do with me, but I couldn’t. “For sure not,” I said. “They never touched her. She was a member of the tribe.”

“That is somewhat unlikely,” said the judge. He looked embarrassed but continued: “If that is true she would be the first case I have ever heard of, as most female captives are misused by the entire tribe. And often by any visitors to the tribe as well.” He coughed into his hand and looked at the ground.

“That is not what happened to her,” I said. “A lot of the braves wanted to marry her but she wouldn’t allow them. She was kept separate from the men.”

The judge was giving me a strange look.

“I guess there was one young chief who wanted to marry her but he was killed in a battle with the army and maybe that broke her heart.”

“Was she ever attached to this chief, matrimonially or otherwise?”

“No,” I said. “The Comanches are real strict about that stuff.”

“Poor girl,” said the reporter. “She might have ended up a queen.”

“Probably would have.”

The judge was staring at me, as if trying to deduce why I would tell such an outrageous lie.

“I guess that proves the red man can be noble if he wishes it,” said the reporter from the Daily Times. He looked at the judge. “Contrary to what I am told.”

The judge didn’t say anything.

“It is as plain as day,” said the reporter. “If the Indians were left in peace…” He shrugged. “There would not be any trouble with them.”

“May I ask where are you from?”

“New York City.”

“I know that, but what tribe are you from? The Senecas? The Cayugas?”

The reporter shook his head.

“Or perhaps you are Erie, or Mohawk, or Mohican, or Montauk or Shinnecock, or Delaware or Oneida or Onondaga. Or, my favorite, Poospatuck? I suppose they are your neighbors. Do you attend their scalp dances?”

“Come off it,” said the reporter.

“There are no Indians left in your part of the country because you killed them all. So we find it interesting you have such a fascination with making sure we treat ours humanely. As if, unlike the savages your grandfather wiped out, ours are thoughtful and kind.”

“And yet look at this woman. She was taken as a prisoner, but not mistreated.”

The judge began to speak, then thought better of it. After a time, he said: “So it seems.”

Two weeks later, Ingrid Goetz was traveling east with that same reporter. I never saw or heard from her again.

AROUND THAT SAME time Judge Black came to me and told me my father was dead. He had been killed somewhere near the border, riding with a Ranger company. A woman claiming to be his widow, who had seen the announcement of my return in the newspaper, had written the judge and offered to let me stay with her.

From what anyone knew, my father had signed back with the Rangers after coming home to find his house burned and his family dead or missing, and while he had survived his first two years, he had been killed the third. The Texas Rangers in those days had a 50 percent fatality rate per tour; they lay buried all over the state, three or four to a grave. My father had been killed by Mexicans. That was all anyone knew.

I took my bow and a pair of trousers the judge had bought for me, so I would not be mistaken for an Indian, and went walking by the river. I expected to blubber, but nothing came out, and then I wasn’t sure if I was betraying Toshaway or not and I decided to stop thinking about it. That night I had a dream in which my father and I were standing together by the old house.

“You couldn’t have caught us,” I was telling him. “No one could have.”

But then he was gone and I was not sure if I was saying that to him or to myself.

THE JUDGE CLAIMED it was no problem but I could tell I was disturbing his household, as his three daughters had taken to painting their faces and making war whoops and practicing their ululations. His wife suspected this had something to do with me. She was the type who liked saving people but she had so many rules I couldn’t keep them straight.

I took to excusing myself after breakfast and spending the day along the river, looking for things to shoot. The judge made me promise to wear the white man’s clothing. He was worried I’d be killed by a citizen.

I was careful to hunt the birds I knew his wife liked and one afternoon I returned and laid out four ducks and a pheasant for the servants to pluck.

“Good day at work, I see.” The judge was sitting on the gallery, reading a book.

“Yessir.”

“It will be difficult to get you into a proper school, won’t it?”

I nodded.

“I have always found it interesting that white children take so quickly to Indian ways, while Indian children, when brought to be raised in white families, never take to it at all. Not that you are a child.”

“No sir.”

“Of course there is no doubt that the Indian lives closer to the earth and the natural gods. There is simply no question.” He closed his book. “Unfortunately there is no more room for that kind of living, Eli. Your and my ancestors departed from it the moment they buried a seed in the ground and ceased to wander like the other creatures. There can be no turning back from that.”

“I don’t think I’m going to school,” I said.

“Well, if you stay around here, at some point you will have to. Especially in m’lady’s house. It’s not quite proper to have wild Indians sleeping under one’s roof.”

I considered pointing out that I had two scalps under my belt, that I was a better hunter, tracker, and horseman than any white man in town. The idea of putting me in a school, with children, was ridiculous. But instead I said: “Well, maybe I should go check in with my father’s new wife.” She lived in Bastrop, which had never really settled up.

“No hurry,” he said. “I enjoy your company. But even there, if you want to have a future, you’ll have to acquire some education, however painful that might be.”

“I could sign with the Rangers right now,” I said.

“Of course. But I think it might be in you to do something more important than living among outlaws and mercenaries.”

I got sore at this but kept quiet. I tried to consider by what measure I might be thought to need further education. It was just that the whites were crazy for rules. And yet they were in charge. And I was white myself.

One of the Negroes brought us cold tea.

“Something’s been bothering me,” he said. “Ingrid Goetz wasn’t really treated any differently than any other captive, was she?”

“She was treated just as you thought she was.”

“So you made that story up to protect her?”

“Yes.”

He nodded. “Glad to see your time with the savages has left your humanity intact, Master McCullough.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“One other thing.”

I nodded.

“M’lady’s favorite Persian cat is missing and she is worried you might have had something to do with it.”

“Absolutely not.”

“How are the Indians on cats?”

“I never saw one. Plenty of dogs, though.”

“They eat the dogs, don’t they?”

“That’s the Shoshones,” I said. “A dog or coyote is sacred to a Comanche. You would be cursed.”

“But they do eat human beings occasionally?”

“That’s the Tonkawas,” I said.

“Never the Comanches.”

“A Comanche who ate a man would be killed by the tribe immediately, because supposedly it becomes an addiction.”

“Interesting,” he said. He was scratching his chin. “And this Sun Dance they all talk about?

“That’s the Kiowas,” I said. “We never did that.”

SHORTLY AFTER INGRID left, two more captives, sisters from Fredericksburg, were brought in by traders. There was a big fuss until people got a look at them. One had her nose cut off. The other seemed normal but her mind was gone. There was a big announcement in the paper but no one knew what to do with them; they were not talkative and very upsetting to be around so they ended up living in the spare house of the minister, behind the church. I went and visited them at the judge’s request, to try to communicate with them, but as soon as I spoke to them in Comanche, they didn’t want anything to do with me. They both drowned themselves a few weeks later.

Which, of course, saved everyone a good deal of trouble, as proper society now regarded them to be roughly the same as whores, being they’d been raped by buck Indians. And, unlike a whore, who might renounce her immoral choices and properly redeem herself, these women had no power over what had happened to them, and thus had no power to undo it, either.

I WAS ALREADY getting tired of the judge’s house and had taken to sleeping outside. I’d gotten in small trouble for borrowing a neighbor’s horse and for shooting various of the neighborhood hogs full of arrows, not to mention that all the other petty larcenies, which had nothing to do with me, were now attributed to my presence.

I admitted to the judge that the Comanches hated swine and I guess I’d inherited that from them. I was severely understimulated. I had no idea what white children did to occupy themselves. They go to school, he told me. I told him the slaughter of the pigs would look like nothing if I was put into school. Which of course was an exaggeration — I would simply walk out. Meanwhile the judge told the neighbors that the state would reimburse them, as I was still adjusting back to civilized life.

One afternoon he sat me down: “Master McCullough, I don’t mean to suggest you aren’t welcome in my house, but it might be time to pay your father’s new family a visit down in Bastrop. M’lady believes this might do you some good, if you know what I mean.”

“She doesn’t like me.”

“She admires your spirit greatly,” he said. “But one of the Negroes discovered a few items that he believed to be human scalps and reported as much to m’lady.”

“The niggers went into my bag?”

“They are naturally curious,” he said. “My apologies.”

“Where is it now?”

“It has been deposited above the stables for safekeeping. Don’t worry, I told them they would be whipped if even a single item was missing.”

“I guess I will leave today, then.”

“No need for that,” he said. “But soon.”

I gathered my things and asked the Negroes to return the scalps they’d stolen, along with my madstone.

Then I went and found the judge in his study and thanked him and made him a present of my butcher knife and beaded sheath. I had liberated a better one, a fine bowie knife, from one of the judge’s neighbors who had kept it in a glass case: supposedly it had been owned by Jim Bowie himself. I would have given it to the judge, but I did not want to get him in trouble. As for my Indian knife, the judge asked: “This ever raise any hair?”

“Some,” I said.

He raised his eyebrows.

“Only Mexican and Indian,” I lied.

He looked at the knife.

“I’ll have a display case made for it. I know just the man to do it.”

“Whatever you like,” I said.

“I’m honored to meet you, young man. You’re headed for great things if you don’t get yourself hanged. I think you’ll find that not all servants of the law are as liberal minded as yours truly; that judge in Bastrop is a real prick, in fact, he’s one of my greatest enemies and I would not mention our friendship to him if you can avoid it.”

That night I left for Bastrop, over the judge’s objections, as he said I ought to catch a wagon in the morning. I could see the mistress felt guilty about having me removed, and the children, when they found out I was leaving, wept and could not be consoled; their eldest daughter jumped on me and began kissing my neck and crying hysterically.

But I felt free again, as the judge’s forty acres, though he was quite proud of it, seemed to me like a postage stamp; I was used to having twenty or so million at my disposal. And Austin was overrun with people, five thousand and climbing; it was impossible to walk along the river without being interrupted by the clinking of horsebells and the cries of boatmen. Anyone could see there were too many pigs for the tits.