The Son

Chapter Thirteen. Eli/Tiehteti, 1850

By the time I’d been with them a year, I was treated the same as any other Comanche, though they kept a bright eye on me, like some derelict uncle who’d taken the pledge. Dame Nature had made my eyes and hair naturally dark and in winter I kept my skin brown by lying out in the sun on a robe. Most nights I slept as gentle as a dead calf and had no thoughts of going off with the whites. There was nothing back there but shame and if my father had come looking for me, I hadn’t heard about it.

Escuté and Nuukaru still ignored me so I spent my time with the younger boys; we’d graduated to breaking the band’s horses and soon we would go to hold the remuda during the raids. A steady trickle of unbroken ponies came off the plains: whenever a herd was spotted, the fastest braves would ride out and rope them and the animals whose necks didn’t break would be brought back to camp. Then their nostrils were held shut until they sagged to the ground. They were tied that way and left for us to handle.

There is something in the white man that loves a sorrel but the Indians had no use for them; there were only five horses we cared about: red paints, black paints, Appaloosas, red medicine hats, and black medicine hats. The medicine hats had dark bands around their heads and dark ears and a blaze in the shape of a medieval shield on their chests. There was one type — the pia tso?nika or war bonnet — that had black eye patches as well and from a distance looked like a skull or death’s head. Centuries of hard living had made them as frothy as panthers; they had as much in common with a domestic horse as a wolf has with a lapdog and they would stave in your ribs if you gave them half a chance. We loved them.

I SLEPT WHEN I wanted and ate when I wanted and did nothing all day that I didn’t feel like doing. The white in me expected any minute that I would be ordered to do chores or some other form of slave labor but it never happened. We rode and hunted and wrestled and made arrows. We slayed every living thing we laid eyes on — prairie chickens and prairie dogs, plovers and pheasants, blacktail deer and antelope; we launched arrows at panther and elk and bears of every size, dumping our kills in camp for the women to clean, then walking off with our chests out like men. Along the river we dug up the bones from giant bison and enormous shells turned to stone and almost too heavy to lift; we found crayfish and shards of pottery and carried it all to the tops of cliffs and smashed it on the rocks below. We arrowed bobcats at night while they stalked ducks in the cane and the weather was warming and the flowers coming out, the yucca had shot their stalks and big white flowers hung ten feet in the air; there were patches of bluebonnet or blanketflower or greenthread that went on for miles, now it was green, now it was blue, now it was red and orange as far as the eye would carry. The snow was gone and fat high clouds hung everywhere, and the sun blinked on and off as they moved across the wind, heading south toward Mexico, where they would burn away forever.

It was considered a sure thing that a few of us would be asked to go raiding. I was the oldest, the only one whose short hair had come in, but I was also deficient; I shot fine from the ground but the other kids could hit pheasants and rabbits from a gallop. Still, when Toshaway came out to the pasture one morning carrying his pistol and a new buffalo-hide shield, it was me he picked out of the crowd. The others made comments but I ignored them.

We walked a good distance and set the shield against a runty cottonwood and he handed me the gun.

“Go ahead.”

“Just like that?”

“Sure.”

I shot and the shield fell over. It was smeared with lead but not dented. He grinned and set it up again and I shot it until the gun was empty.

“Okay,” he said. “A shield will stop a ball. But if a ball ever hits a stationary shield, you are an idiot.” He put the straps over his arm and moved it in quick circles. “Always it’s moving. Of course the feathers hide you, but more important is that a stationary shield will only stop a pistol ball. A rifle ball will go through it, the same as if you jump from a high tree and land on flat ground, you will break your legs, but if you land on a steep hill, you will be fine. A moving shield will stop a rifle ball. Nahkusuaberu?”

I nodded.

“Good,” he said. “Now we come to the fun part.”

We walked a few more minutes to the middle of an old pasture at the edge of camp. Whatever was going to happen, everyone would see it. A dozen or so braves were sitting in the sun playing tukii but when they saw me they got up and retrieved some equipment. Each man was carrying his bow and a basket of arrows.

“Okay,” said Toshaway. “This will be very easy. You will remain standing here and these men will shoot you. I would prefer if you used the shield as much as possible.”

“Where are you going?”

“I don’t want to be shot!” He grinned and patted me on the head.

The braves formed a skirmish line a hundred yards away and when everything was arranged Toshaway shouted at me and waved an arrow. “Ke matuu mutsipu! They are blunt!” The warriors found this humorous. “They have no spikes!” he repeated.

People were trickling out from their tipis to watch and I wondered if Toshaway had actually checked each arrow, as by certain lights it would be a very funny joke if there were a few spikes mixed in with the blunt ones. I was only worth a horse or two and plenty of people in the village still had no use for me.

“Tiehteti tsa maka?mukitu-tu!”

I nodded.

“Keep the shield moving!”

I made myself small. Arrows take a few seconds to go a hundred yards, which seems like forever unless they’re coming toward you. Most thumped off the shield; one or two missed entirely; others hit me in the thigh and shin and then again in the same shin.

This was thought hilarious and several of the warriors began to imitate me, hopping around on one foot and calling out anáa anáa anáa until Toshaway made them go back to their places.

“You have to move!” he shouted. “It is too small to hide you!”

The hilarious Indians opened fire and my legs took another pounding. One arrow grazed my forehead where I had looked over the shield.

“You don’t have to block the ones that will miss you,” someone shouted. I was in a crouch, trying to make myself as small as possible; it was the funniest thing the Indians had ever seen and it went on until they were out of ammunition.

I started to limp back to the village, but there was an uproar from the audience so instead the braves and I switched sides so they could collect their arrows.

“It is for your own benefit,” someone yelled, but now the sun was in my face. I squinted at one particular arrow that seemed to not be moving at all.

Sometime later I woke up. Toshaway was standing over me, murmuring like a pulpiteer.

“What?” I said.

“Are you awake now?”

“Haa.” I felt my breechcloth. It was dry.

“Good. Now if you can listen for a moment I will tell you something my father once told me. The difference between a brave man and a coward is very simple. It is a problem of love. A coward loves only himself…”

I got very dizzy and I could feel the cold ground. I wondered if my skull was cracked. You could shoot a blunt arrow through a deer if it was close enough.

“… a coward cares only for his own body,” Toshaway said, “and he loves it above all other things. The brave man loves other men first and himself last. Nahkusuaberu?”

I nodded.

“This”—he tapped me—“must mean nothing to you.” Then he tapped me again, on my face, my chest, my belly, my hands and feet. “All of this means nothing.”

“Haa,” I said.

“Good. You’re a brave little Indian. But everyone is bored. Get up and let them shoot you.”

A short while later I was down again. The warriors went back to the shade and gambled while Toshaway gave me cool water and wrapped my head with a blanket scrap. Only my eyes were exposed. This caused more hilarious laughter but it worked like a helmet and I stopped being afraid. By the end of the day they had cut the distance in half and the shooters were working hard to get their hits. After a week they couldn’t hit me at all.

As A GRADUATION ceremony I held the shield while a big fat buck named Pizon, who made no secret that he thought I ought to be a na?raiboo rather than a member of the tribe, aimed at me with Toshaway’s pistol. All the slack went out of my rope but I blocked each shot and kept the shield moving the whole time. Pizon gave me a look that said he would have liked if I had gotten my lamp blown out, but I got to keep the shield. Being a sacred item, it was kept in a protective case far from camp. If a menstruating woman ever touched it, it would have to be destroyed.

THE HUNTING THAT spring was the worst anyone could remember. Toshaway had grown up with herds of buffalo blackening the prairie for weeks, but none of the younger Indians had seen anything like it. There had been a drought in parts of the plains, but mostly it was because of the eastern tribes, whose numbers were growing by the month in the Territories. They all took liberties in our hunting grounds and we spent as much time killing them as we did the whites. It was considered a good way to break in the youth without having to ride too far.

When the yucca were done blooming Toshaway and I and a few dozen others rode out to patrol for buffalo or trespassing Indians. After a few days we came on a small herd moving west, toward New Mexico and the drier part of the plains, which meant something was disturbing them. The scouts rode east while the rest of us killed buffalo and then it came back that a group of Tonks had been seen. Some of the fort Indians were treated with caution, but the Tonkawa had a great taste for firewater and it was not considered much to kill one. A decade later they would be wiped out completely.

Nuukaru, who had been coaching me on the skinning, put his knife into his sheath and was into his saddle in three long steps. I had misplaced my bow and by the time I got mounted the entire party was riding to haul hell out of its shuck.

The prairie is not as flat as it looks, it is more like the swells of an ocean, there are peaks and troughs, and, being in less of a hurry to kill a Tonk, it wasn’t long till I lost sight of the others. It was a nice day, the grass going down and standing up in waves, in all directions, the sky very clear and blue with a few clouds lingering. The sun was nice on my back. The idea of running down a Tonk could not have seemed less appealing. I was not allowed to carry a firearm and even with both feet on the ground I was only average with the bow; unless the target was standing still, directly in front of me, shooting from a moving horse was impossible.

The horse knew something was wrong and he kept trying to catch the others. He had a good smooth lope so I held him there. I made a note of the sun and it occurred to me that I might just turn southeast, toward the Llano breaks; I could hunt easily enough with the bow and it was maybe a two-week ride to the frontier if I wasn’t caught. There were patches of small red flowers, puha natsu. I thought about the English name but I didn’t know it. I thought about my father. Then I gave the horse his head and we were running.

A few minutes later I could hear shots and hollering and then there were riders and horses. Toshaway and Pizon and a few others were standing around a man on the ground. He was lying in a patch of blanketflower with several arrows sticking out of him. He had lost enough blood to paint a house and it was bright in the greenery around him.

“Tiehteti-taibo, very nice of you to come.”

The Comanches were breathing easy and their sweat was dry and their horses were off grazing. Except for Nuukaru, who was holding his lance in case the Tonk got his sap back, not one of them had a weapon in hand. They might have been judging the quality of a deer or elk they’d brought down. As for the Tonkawa, he was chanting and wheezing, his torso smeared and his chin dripping with blood as if he had been feeding on human bodies.

Toshaway and Pizon had a word and then Pizon took an old single-shot pistol from his sash and handed it over butt-first. It was a.69 caliber, a cannon as handguns went.

“Go ahead, Tiehteti.”

Pizon added: “If it were him, he would be slicing off your breast and eating it in front of you.”

The man looked up and recognized me, then stared out over the prairie. His chanting got more insistent and there was no point lingering so I squeezed the trigger. The gun snapped into my wrist and the man leaned farther against the rock. His music stopped and his legs began to twitch like a dog in sleep.

He was a good-looking brave with long beautiful hair and Pizon took the entire scalp beneath the ears. The ball must have loosened something because when Pizon ripped off his hair, the man’s head fell open as if it were hinged at the bottom, his face going forward and the back of his head going the other direction. No one had ever seen a pistol ball do that. It was good medicine.

The others got distracted but I continued to stare, the man’s face looking down at his own chest, all his secrets open to the wind.

“You’re acting very strange, Tiehteti-taibo.”

“Haa,” I said. “Tsaa manusukaru.”

NUUKARU AND I were sent to retrieve the dead man’s weapons and anything else he had dropped and there was something about him lying there with the blanketflowers all around stained with blood and I rode after Nuukaru as quickly as I could. After an hour we found the Tonk’s rifle. It was a fire-new Springfield musket and Nuukaru couldn’t believe it — the Tonks were poor and their equipment was usually poor as well. “This thing must have come from the whites,” he said. “And his horse also.”

I didn’t care. I was bored looking for the man’s valuables — I doubted he owned much and didn’t intend on spending the rest of the day looking for a filthy war bag. I wondered if I was the only one who knew how many rifles and horses the whites had.

The rest of the group was out of sight; it was waist-high grass in every direction, then sky. My horse was eating flowers; bluebonnets were hanging from his mouth. I wondered if they would let me keep the Tonk’s scalp.

ONE OF THE Tonks had gotten away, but as he was afoot in unfamiliar territory, and being a reservation Indian probably only a few notches above a white man, he was almost certain to die eventually, so we didn’t bother chasing him. Not to mention that with the confusion of the fight over, he would easily spot us before we spotted him, making it likely he would be able to shoot at least one of us. Unlike the whites, whose noble leaders were willing to sacrifice any number of followers to kill a single Indian, the Comanches did not believe in trading any of their own for the enemy. It was another unfortunate character trait, as far as fighting the Anglos was concerned.

So instead of following the lone Tonk, we prepared for a celebration, taking their scalps and horses and brand-new rifles, whose newness, though no one said it, was another sign of a storm coming. Nuukaru found the Tonk’s war bag, which contained dozens of paper cartridges, another luxury from the whites.

“Look at this shit,” he said.

No one paid any attention. We made our way back to the buffalo we’d killed, having a big feast of the liver and bile and then building a fire of mesquite and buffalo chips and roasting the meat and marrow. The Tonk’s scalp belonged to Pizon. My shooting him was just a formality.

THE NEXT MORNING the wind had shifted and there was a faint rotten smell. I could barely pick it up and of course things were always dying on the prairie, but the other Comanches thought it noteworthy, and after we packed the buffalo’s meat back into their skins and tied the bundles onto the spare horses, we began to ride. A few hours later we came to a small canyon, the grass tall and a creek running down the middle, and as we rode into it the smell became worse, and then the horses refused to go farther.

There was no sound except the wind and the running of the stream and the flapping of tent skins. There were several hundred tipis, with thousands of black vultures tottering among them, as if they had decided to give up their wild ways and become civilized.

I leaned over and retched and someone behind me did the same. It was decided that I would go in alone and make an inspection while the others stayed back.

“Are you joking?” I said.

“There are no living people in this drainage except us,” said Toshaway. He gave me a cloth to tie over my mouth and nose.

“Then give me your pistol.”

“You won’t need it.”

“Let me have it anyway.”

He shrugged and handed over the revolver, then leaned to help me tie the cloth over my face. “Remember to lift it if you have to vomit. Otherwise you will be very sorry.”

A few of the buzzards flew off, others stepped aside to let me through, and the flies took off and landed in great black waves. The ground was covered with human bodies, whether hundreds or thousands I couldn’t tell; they were all pulled apart and rotted, partially eaten, blackened and contorted and uncountable. My horse stepped gingerly at first, but soon saw it was hopeless and began to tread directly on what was left of the people.

There were heads and sections of spine, feet and hands, rib cages, the muscle black and the bones very white, lumps of fat stuck to rocks, arms and legs wedged in the branches of cottonwoods where they had been dragged by cougars or bobcats. There were rifles and bows and knives scattered and starting to rust. There were so many dead that not even the wolves and coyotes and bears had been able to eat them. The sun had blackened everything but I could see that none of the people had been scalped. I could not think of who had done this to them.

Most of the horses had been driven off by the wolves, or eaten, but a few dozen of the most loyal or helpless grazed the periphery; there was a big dun mare still saddled, though the saddle had rolled all the way under her belly and she could barely walk. I nickered and rode up next to her and she stood resigned to whatever I might do. I cut the cinch and at the sound of the saddle hitting the ground the mare stepped away, then shook herself and broke into a trot. She had an army brand on her hip, though she had been wearing an Indian saddle, and I wondered about the things she had seen.

One of the tipis had been sealed shut, rocks and brush piled around it, and without dismounting from my horse I took hold of the flaps and cut the ropes. Inside there were two dead vultures and dozens of small bodies, carefully placed in rows and stacked on top of one another. Whoever had put them there was too weak to bury them, or maybe they had been dying too quickly; it was either smallpox or cholera or some other disease and I turned my horse and kicked him and went back to where the others were waiting for me.

“They still had their hair?”

“Yes,” I said.

“How many?”

“Hundreds. Maybe thousands.”

“I think around one thousand. Did you touch anything?”

“Not really. A tipi that was in the sun.”

He squinted and looked around. It was a pleasant little canyon. “I guess there are worse places to die.”

“Who were they?”

“I think that is Kicking Dog’s band. Tenewa Comanche. They are outside their territory so something was not going well when they put their camp there, they were running from something. Tasía, probably.” He dotted his face with a finger. “The gift of the great white father.”

I RODE MY horse into the middle of the stream and scrubbed his feet and legs with sand, then did the same to my own body. I slept by myself that night, a good distance from the others. A few days later, before we reached camp, I went to the river to scrub myself again and asked Nuukaru to bring me a bowl of yucca soap and place it on the ground. I cleaned the horse again as well.

When I reached the village they were preparing a big celebration and scalp dance. One of the medicine men took me into a tipi and made me strip. He swallowed breaths of cedar and sage smoke, blew them onto me, then rubbed my body with leaves. I told him I had already used soap, but he figured the smoke was better.

A FEW WEEKS later a group of Comancheros came through the camp and said they had seen more Indians killing buffalo. Toshaway told me we were going on another scouting trip. I acted enthusiastic.

“Give me one of the Tonk rifles,” I said.

He must have thought something would happen because he handed it over without comment, along with a dozen of the paper cartridges.

At night we had fires but only in gullies and far away from any trees so there was nothing to show the light. Finally the scouts came back and reported a party of Indians cutting up buffalo: they appeared to be Delawares, who, though the Comanches would never admit it, were the best hunters of all the eastern tribes, good trackers and men to be taken seriously.

We decided to make a cold camp and sleep before we laid into them. The Delawares made a cold camp as well, though they did not know they’d been seen, and I thought of them out there in the dark, they’d once been the kings of the east as we were the kings of the west, but now they’d killed twenty buffalo and couldn’t even have a fire to celebrate.

THE LIGHT WAS flat and gray and a slick mist was rising from the grass. There were horses going in all directions and everyone shouting and I was staring at one man who had taken four or five arrows but stood calmly tamping a charge into his musket. Someone came from behind and pinned him with a lance. It was Nuukaru. There was something about the man squirming on the ground but Nuukaru didn’t seem to mind.

The rest of the Delawares were quickly unroostered, but one managed to make a clear swing. I had stayed on the outskirts and he went right past me; he might as well have been standing still, though he didn’t react to the shot and with the smoke I wasn’t sure I’d hit him.

I watched him ride off. I knew what I had to do. There was no time to reload the rifle, and even with all the fighting I knew Toshaway and Pizon were probably watching me. While I was thinking this, the two of them finished killing the man they had started to kill, saw the escaping Delaware, and took off after him.

I fell in behind. I had never whipped a horse so hard but the four of us were strung out in a long line across the prairie with the Delaware at the head. He was riding a legendary animal, putting ground on us with each step, he was nearly a half mile ahead, but there was nowhere to hide, no canyons, no forest, just open prairie, and we began to close. Then Toshaway’s pony stumbled and collided with Pizon’s and I went around them.

As for the Delaware, I could see a shiny slick down his back where my ball had gone in and I whipped the horse even harder, though I had no plan for what I would do if I caught him.

Then he was on the ground. There was a gulch he’d tried to jump and the horse had thrown him. He was lying in the tall grass.

I was on him before I knew it and I nocked an arrow but it went several feet wide. I tried to nock another but my hands were shaking and the horse was skittering so I slid off onto the ground.

The Delaware hadn’t moved. I felt better about everything, I was looking down at my string, trying to get the arrow set, and I looked up to see him spin and draw and shoot in the same movement.

There was an arrow sticking out of me. It seemed like I ought to sit down. Then I was looking at myself; then I decided there was nothing wrong. I grabbed the arrow and pulled it out.

Later I realized that the Delaware was so weak he hadn’t been able to fully draw his bow. My quiver strap had stopped his arrow — but right then I picked up my own bow, which I had dropped, aimed carefully, and shot the Delaware in the stomach. The arrow went to the feathers.

He was looking around for his quiver. It had gotten separated in the fall. I shot another arrow, then a third, which went between his ribs. He was tugging at the one where it was stuck into the ground and I knew he would send it back to me. I shot the rest of the arrows I was holding and he gave up, though he was not quite dead. I knew I should go and thump him but I didn’t want to get any closer, I was ashamed of his breathing and gurgling, of my bad shooting, of being afraid of a man who was nearly dead, and then someone kicked me in the backside.

It was Toshaway and Pizon. I hadn’t heard them come up.

“Ku?e tsasimapu.” Toshaway nodded at the Delaware.

“Do it quickly,” said Pizon. “Before he dies.”

The Delaware was lying on his side and I rolled him onto his belly. I put my foot on his back and grabbed his hair and he raised his arm to stop me, but I cut all the way around. He was slapping at my hand the whole time.

“Snap it off,” called Pizon. “One big motion.”

The scalp came off like a cracking branch and the Delaware lost his fight. I walked a few yards and looked at it: it could have been anything, a piece of buffalo or calf hide. The sun was coming up and my leg began to hurt: I’d cut myself on my own arrow spikes where they’d come through the Delaware’s back. He gave a last moaning rattle, and, looking at him there on the ground, stuck through from every direction with my spikes and the grass matted with his blood, it was like a haze clearing from my mind, like I’d been dunked again, like I’d been chosen by God Himself. I ran over to Toshaway and Pizon and grabbed them.

“Fucking white boy,” said Pizon. But he was smiling as well. He turned to Toshaway. “I guess I owe you a horse.”

THERE WAS A big dance when we got back, eight scalps had been collected, but before it began, Pizon told the story of how I’d gone after the Delaware alone, like a proper Comanche, with nothing but my bow, and he said we know what a great talent Tiehteti is with his bow. There was general laughter, which annoyed me. But this is serious, he continued, this was not some filthy Numu Tuuka, but a warrior, and Tiehteti’s only weapon was one he cannot yet use from his horse. And to be shot in the heart, only to have the arrow refuse to go in? What does that say about Tiehteti?

For the rest of the night the medicine man who’d cleansed me of smallpox told everyone that he had given me his bear medicine, as only that could have stopped the arrow, but no one believed him. I knew the Delaware was almost dead when I reached him, that he had taken a ball in the lungs and been thrown from his horse onto the rocks, that if I had caught him five or ten minutes earlier he would have driven his arrow to my spine. That even in his final condition, if the buffalo-hide strap of my quiver hadn’t been hanging just so, the spike would have reached my heart. But by the end of the night those details meant nothing, and this was the point of the scalp dance, we were eternal, the Chosen People, and our names would ring on in the night, long after we’d vanished from the earth.

SOMETIME BEFORE MORNING I opened my eyes. I was lying in the yard of our old house and there was an Indian standing over me. I was watching the arrows go in but decided not to believe what I was seeing; I remembered I’d hit my head and was probably confused. The Comanche was young and there was something familiar about him and after a time I began to recognize his face.

WHEN MORNING CAME I could still feel the hollow where the arrows had gone. The sun had risen and was shining directly through the open door of the tipi and Nuukaru and Escuté were outside smoking. I went and sat with them. The three boys who had taken me hunting, all of whom were still better hunters, riders, and bowmen than I was, came over and said hello, but didn’t sit — I was now their superior — and then Nuukaru waved them away. “You’re done with those kids,” he said.

Escuté called his mother to bring us something to eat and then there were sugarberry cakes, which were hackberries and tallow mashed together and cooked over a fire. Nuukaru and I thanked her. Escuté just took the food and ate. He must have seen the way I looked at him because he said: “We could get killed every time we leave camp. They all know this. Half of us will be dead by the time we reach forty winters.”

A short time later Fat Wolf, Toshaway’s eldest son, came by with his wife.

“So this is the famous white boy?”

Escuté said, “You’re a man now, Tiehteti, and I’m sure Fat Wolf appreciates the respect but you don’t have to stare at the dirt.”

Fat Wolf leaned over and gripped my chin, then his hand softened. “Don’t listen to my asshole brother. I always put him in a bad mood.” He pointed over his shoulder. “This is Hates Work. Obviously you’ve noticed her before, but as you are a man now, you may talk to her, and take note of her unfortunately soft hands.”

Hates Work, who was standing a ways back from her husband, smiled and waved, but didn’t say anything. She was by far the most beautiful Indian I’d ever seen, in her early twenties with clear skin and shining hair and a good figure; it was widely thought a tragedy that she would soon be ruined by children. Her father had asked fifty horses as a bride-price, which was outrageous according to Nuukaru, but Toshaway, because he spoiled his sons terribly, as anyone spending time with Escuté might notice, had given the fifty horses and the marriage had been approved.

Fat Wolf himself was as tall as his father, but while his face was young, he already had the thin arms and heavy paunch of a much older man. He looked as Toshaway might if Toshaway had stopped hunting and raiding. I nodded at Hates Work and tried not to show too much interest.

Fat Wolf had lifted my poultice and was touching me gently, the open skin and bone, the cut still weeping. “Motherfucker,” he said. “I have never seen a wound like that on a living man.” He looked me up and down. “My father talked about you, but he likes everyone and we thought he was going soft. Now we see he was right. It’s no small thing.” He took me by the shoulders; he was a very touchy Indian. “You ever need anything, you come to me. And don’t hang around my brother too much, he’s a bitter little fuck.” Then he walked away with his pretty wife.

“What a fat fuck,” said his brother, when the pair were out of earshot.

“Escuté has been hoping that Fat Wolf will send her his way, but Fat Wolf is not interested in sharing yet.”

“I get plenty of tai?i on my own. I don’t need a handout from the fat one.” He looked at Nuukaru: “You, on the other hand…”

“I get plenty.”

“From old women, maybe.”

“Like your mother.”

“I wouldn’t put it past you,” said Escuté.

It was quiet. I’d invented a number of stories about the various girls I’d been with, but Nuukaru and Escuté knew better than to ask.

AFTER LUNCH I went to the stream to clean my trophy. I scraped the inner skin to remove all the meat and fat, rinsing it in the water, rubbing it with a coarse stone and rinsing it again, teasing off the silverskin with my fingers, repeating until the inner scalp was white and full and soft. Then I took a wooden basin, filled it with water and yucca soap, and carefully washed the hair, separating the strands, trying not to pull too hard, as if the Delaware might still feel what I was doing, teasing out each burr and grass seed, the dandruff and dried blood. I rewove his braids, replacing all the beads, which were turquoise and red glass, in the same places he had put them. I made a paste of brain and tallow and rubbed it into the inner skin, allowing it to dry and then rubbing in more of the paste. I stretched it on a willow hoop to dry, then carried it back to the tipi to hang in the shade.

THAT NIGHT WE stayed up late talking. I’d hung the scalp above my pallet and I watched it turn all night in the warm air from the fire. The embers went dark and we all drifted off and there was a rustling at the tipi flap and the sound of someone trying to come inside and I heard the other two wake up as well. By her hair I could tell the visitor was a woman, but otherwise it was too dark.

“If you are here for Escuté, I am over here.”

“And Nuukaru is straight ahead of you, on the other side of the fire.”

“You are both dreaming,” said the woman. “Forget I am here.”

“The wife of Fat Wolf. You are joking me.”

“Where is Tiehteti?”

“He is right here,” said Escuté. “You are talking to him right now.”

“Is he in here or not?”

“I don’t know. Tiehteti, are you here? Probably not. I saw him heading out to the pasture; Fucks a Mare was going to show him something.”

Hates Work said: “You are a serious asshole, Escuté.”

“But funny?”

“Sometimes.”

“Nuukaru, I have bad news. For the one-thousandth time, a woman has come to the tipi and she has no interest in you.”

“Fuck off,” said Nuukaru.

“As for Tiehteti,” he pronounced, “it is time for him to become a man. It is a process that requires physical contact, and so at some point, unless you would simply prefer to watch a master at work, you will have to tell this woman, who is among the most beautiful of all Comanches, though also the laziest, where you are located in the tipi.”

“I’m over here,” I said quietly.

“Nuukaru, you skinny pervert, don’t think you can lie there and masturbate; get up and give Tiehteti his privacy.”

“Noyoma nakuhkupa.”

“I would prefer not to,” said Escuté. “For I am wise, and a great leader, and one day I’ll be your chief.”

He and Nuukaru took their blankets and left.

“Tiehteti? Say something so I can find you.”

“Follow the wall to the right,” I said.

I felt her touch my pallet. It was too dark to see her, or to even know who she was except by her voice, but I could hear the rustling as she took off her dress. Then she slipped under the robe. Her skin was smooth against me. She began to kiss my neck and drift her fingers along my stomach, I tried to touch her, but she put my hand back and continued to rub my belly, then my thighs, it seemed I ought to be doing something, I tried to reach between her legs, touched hair, but she stopped that hand as well. I began to feel docious. Nothing was expected of me; she was a grown woman and she had the reins.

She was of this same opinion. She ran her fingernails up and down, across my chest and down my legs, while slowly kissing my neck. This went on much longer than I thought it properly ought to, but finally she climbed on top of me and then I was inside.

There was a noise. Escuté poked his head into the tipi.

“How long, wife of Fat Wolf? One minute? Or, let me guess, he is already pua.”

“Out,” she said. “Go masturbate yourself with Nuukaru.”

She kissed me on the nose. She was leaning over me, being very still. I wanted to start moving but she held me in place.

“How does that feel, brother-in-law?”

I made some noise.

She moved her hips. “Should I do this?”

“Yes.”

“Hmmm. Maybe not.”

I didn’t say anything.

“I think we will just stay like this,” she said.

I cleared my throat.

“It feels good to me also,” she said.

This seemed like an unbelievable coincidence. At some point she began to move slowly. She was leaning forward and our foreheads were touching and she was holding my hands. Her breath was sweet. “Hates Work is not my real name,” she said. “My name is Single Bird.”

BY THE TIME Nuukaru and Escuté came back, I had slept with Single Bird five times. I expected Escuté to have something to say but he didn’t; he and Nuukaru whispered something to each other and then Nuukaru went to his pallet but Escuté, instead of going to bed, slipped over to us very quietly. He felt Single Bird’s hair, and then he gently felt my face, and then he patted me on the chest and said something in Comanche I did not understand, and Single Bird murmured something in her sleep, and Escuté leaned forward and kissed her hair and patted me again and then kissed me on the forehead. Then he went back to his pallet.

I was awake. I woke up Single Bird and we did it again.

IN THE MORNING, when the faintest of gray light was coming through the smoke flap, I felt her get up. I pulled her back.

“No,” she whispered. “It’s already late.”

“Tell me why they call you Hates Work.”

“Because I only do the work of ten men. Instead of fifty.” She leaned over and kissed me. “Don’t look at me in public. This will probably never happen again. This is the first time my husband has sent me to anyone, and I don’t know what kind of mood he’s going to be in when I get back.”

A few hours later, Nuukaru and Escuté and I were sitting around the fire, eating dried elk and watching the bustle of the camp. Something was wrong with Escuté; normally he did his hair carefully into an a fan on the top of his head but that morning he had not even painted himself.

“Is Fat Wolf going to be angry at me?” I said.

“He’s going to cut your dick off. I hope it was worth it.”

“Don’t listen to him,” said Nuukaru. “Everyone wants to sleep with Hates Work and you’re the only one who has, except the guy who paid fifty horses for her.”

“My father paid fifty horses, not my fat brother. If it was my father getting her I wouldn’t care.”

“Escuté is especially pissed, as you can tell.”

“Why shouldn’t I be? Where are my fifty fucking horses if I wanted to marry? Meanwhile, Hates Work gets sent to Tiehteti.”

“Who do you want to marry?” I said.

“No one. That’s the point. Who the fuck can I marry now that the fat one has taken the best-looking girl anyone has ever heard of?”

“Her sister is not bad,” said Nuukaru.

“I am fucked, is the point. He is a fat coward but I still end up looking like the bad one. Eight of the horses that went to her bride-price were horses I gave to my father. When was the last time my brother even went on a raid?”

“You should stop,” said Nuukaru.

“I don’t care who hears me.”

“You will later.”

We sat for a while. I couldn’t see what Escuté had to worry about. He had six scalps and while he was shorter and slimmer than his father and brother, he was nicely built and had an easy way of moving and all the young Indians, men and women alike, looked up to him. Then I thought maybe he was right: Hates Work was his only real equal in the band.

“There is a very beautiful captive owned by Lazy Feet, the blond one? The German?”

“Yellow Hair,” I said.

“Yes, her. She is the equal of Hates Work.”

“I’m not marrying a fucking captive. No offense, Tiehteti.”

“We’re all from captives at some point,” said Nuukaru.

“Yes, but still I am not doing it.”

“You weren’t angry last night,” I said.

“No, I wasn’t. I’m not angry at you, Tiehteti; I’m glad you got a taste, you deserved it. It’s just my father, because the fat one is the oldest, he can do no wrong, and fifty fucking horses, he didn’t even try to negotiate.”

“We all know you’ll be a chief,” said Nuukaru. “Everyone knows that. Your brother won’t be. He’s just a man with a rich father.”

“Yes, and if I get killed on a raid before I get to be a chief? While my father supports the fat one and buys him a few more wives?”

“Then I’ll make sure you don’t get scalped.”

“Unbelievable,” said Escuté, and shook his head.

“You still have a father,” said Nuukaru. “This is something to be grateful for.”

“Your father died well and he wasn’t scalped,” said Escuté. “He is already at the happy hunting grounds.”

“Thank you, Escuté, and where is that, exactly? I’ve heard it’s beyond the sun somewhere, in the west. You know it’s strange, because sometimes I get the urge to ask my father’s advice on various matters, or feel his hand on my shoulder, but everyone assures me he is in the west, just past the sun, though Tiehteti, who does not know our ways, tells me that if you follow the sun to the west you eventually reach a limitless expanse of salty water, rather than a land where horses run fast enough to fly, where it is neither hot nor cold, where game impales itself on your lance and is magically roasted and you eat everything with an accompaniment of the richest marrow.”

“I’m sorry,” said Escuté. “I have no right to complain.”

“Ah. For once your lips move and there is truth.”

“On a different matter,” I said, “do you think it’s likely I’ll see Hates Work again?”

“Knowing my brother, no.”

“Impossible to say,” said Nuukaru. “But it would be an extremely bad idea to think about her at all, as Fat Wolf might be sensitive about it. That was incredibly generous, what he did, and he may have done it just to look good.”

“She enjoyed herself, I think.”

Escuté shook his head. “Be careful, boy.”

“She enjoyed herself because her husband gave her permission. If it ever happens without his permission, or he even suspects it has happened, he will cut off her nose and ears and slash her face. And you will develop similar problems yourself.”

“In your favor,” said Escuté, holding up a hand, “your accomplishments notwithstanding, he still considers you to be extremely young, and not so much of a threat. So it is possible.”

“You are better off thinking about her sister, Prairie Flower, who is unmarried.”

“Also not as lazy. Or as good-looking, for that matter.”

“But still very pretty. And intelligent.”

“And thus pursued by plenty of men with more to recommend them than you have, who have killed more than one enemy and stolen many horses.”

“Not to mention Escuté fucked her, so she almost certainly has a disease.”

“Perhaps,” said Escuté, “you should concentrate your efforts on your riding and shooting, which are known to need attention, and consider this as you might consider a visit from the Great Spirit.”

“Scalps and horses, my son.”

I didn’t say anything.

“But if some other girl decides to come to your tipi at night, of her own free will, and manages to make it past Nuukaru and I, which is unlikely, then you can safely fuck her. While the opposite situation — let’s say you have been talking to a girl, and she has given you certain signals, such as letting you put a finger inside her while she is out gathering firewood, and, being certain she likes you, and being desirous of a respectable place to make love to her, you decide to visit her tipi one night—”

“You will be instantly killed by her father,” said Nuukaru. “Or some other family member.”

“Who will then give Toshaway a horse in compensation for your death.”

“In short,” said Nuukaru, “until they get married, the women get to be with whomever they want and are the only ones allowed to choose. Afterward, if they behave like that, they get their noses cut off.”

“So what do I do now?”

Escuté was shaking his head. “Listen to the white one. He lost his virginity only eight hours ago.”

“Horse and scalps,” said Nuukaru. “Horses and scalps.”