The Son

Chapter Twenty-two. Eli/Tiehteti, Spring 1851

To white ears, the names of the Indians lacked any sort of dignity or sense and made it that much harder to figure why they ought to be treated as humans rather than prairie niggers. The reason for this was that the Comanches considered the use of a dead person’s name taboo. Unlike the whites, billions of whom shared the same handful of names, all interchangeable in the end, a Comanche name lived and died with a single person.

A child was not named by his parents, but by a relative or a famous person in the tribe; maybe for a deed that person had done, maybe for an object that struck their fancy. If a particular name was not serving well, the child might be renamed; for instance, Charges the Enemy had been a small and timid child and it was thought that giving him a braver name might cure these problems, which it had. Some people in the tribe were renamed a second or third time in adult life, if their friends and family found something more interesting to call them. The owner of the German captive Yellow Hair, whose birth name was Six Deer, was renamed Lazy Feet as a teenager, which stuck to him the rest of his life. Toshaway’s son Fat Wolf was so named because his namer had seen a very fat wolf the previous night, and being an interesting sight and not a bad name it had stuck. Toshaway’s name meant Bright Button, which had also stuck with him since birth, but that seemed a strange thing to call him so I thought of him as Toshaway. Spanish-sounding names were also common, though they often had no particular meaning — Pizon, Escuté, Concho — there was a warrior named Hisoo-ancho who had been captured at the age of seven or eight, whose Christian name was Jesus Sanchez, and, as that was all he would answer to, that was what he was called.

Many Comanche names were too vulgar to repeat in print and thus, when the situation required, were changed by whites. The chief who led the famous raid on Linnville in 1840 (in which a group of five hundred warriors sacked a warehouse full of fine clothing and made their escape dressed in top hats, wedding gowns, and silk shirts) was named Po-cha-na-quar-hip, meaning Cock That Stays Hard Forever. But neither this nor the more delicate translation, Erection That Will Not Go Down, could possibly be printed in newspapers, so it was decided to call him Buffalo Hump. He was thusly referred to until he died, many years later, attempting to learn farming on a reservation, having lost both his land and his good name to the whites, though in his own mind he remained Cock That Stays Hard Forever.

The medicine man who, along with Quanah Parker, led the entire Comanche nation against the whites in the Red River War of 1874 was named Isahata?i, meaning Coyote Pussy. The newspapers called him Ishtai, Eshati, and Eschiti, no translation offered. Toshaway had a nephew called Tried to Fuck a Mare, a name acquired in adolescence, and Hates Work, as previously mentioned, was originally called Single Bird. The Comanches were a good-natured sort and names were accepted with humor, though after Tried to Fuck a Mare got his first scalp and it was decided to change his name to Man on a Hill, he was not heard to complain.

BY FEBRUARY THE tribe was starving. There had not been a big buffalo kill in over a year, and most of the local deer, elk, and antelope had been hunted down over the winter. The few animals still alive moved only at night, surviving on twigs and dry brush. By then we had taken to tracking packrats back to their nests and eating their stashes of dried fruits and nuts, along with the rats themselves if we could catch them, and everyone in the tribe knew that the very young, the very old, and the sick would soon begin to die, and they would have, had we not discovered a buffalo herd beginning to drift north.

Everyone took this as a sign that our bad luck had ended, and the Creator-of-All-Things had forgiven us. By the time the first Spring Beauties appeared we had replenished our stores of meat and hides and begun to look forward to the summer, when the weather would be warm, though this also meant that the women in the band were put to double work preparing all the hides, so that they would be ready by the time the Comanchero traders arrived.

IN MAY IT was time to go raiding again. A third of the band had been killed the previous year, most of its horse wealth lost, and if this summer’s raids were not successful, it was not clear how much longer we would survive. Toshaway would go again, though Escuté, who still could not quite draw his bow, was ordered to stay in camp, and I would be sent in his place. Nuukaru was also going but, unlike the other young braves, he was quiet about the deeds he would commit.

“Don’t look so down in the mouth,” said Escuté. “You can bring back a beautiful Mexican girl and listen to me fuck her.”

Nuukaru shook his head.

“Let me guess. You have a bad feeling.”

“Stop,” he said, indicating me.

Escuté looked over: “This one always has a bad feeling. Don’t listen to him.”

“I had it about the last one, too.”

“Ah, the great puha tenahpu. I had almost forgotten.”

“Things are changing,” he said. “Whether or not we admit it. The Penateka…”

“Fuck the fucking Penateka. They were the white man’s tai?i and they got what was coming to them.”

“They were four times our size.”

“And they were the white man’s bitch and got all his diseases.”

“Ah, of course. The ones who make the greatest-ever raid on the whites were also his bitch.”

“Ten winters ago.”

“They had horse herds as thick as buffalo.”

“Nuukaru, we had one bad year, and you are a gloomy cocksucker, and you might ask to stay behind because if you continue to talk like that, instead of singing the woho hubiya, someone will shut your mouth with a tomahawk.”

“If we have another raid like last year,” said Nuukaru, “there will be no one left to shut my mouth at all.”

“Ignore him, Tiehteti. This is what gets people killed.” He shook his head. “You will bring back a thousand horses and a hundred scalps and fifty Mexican slaves. That is what you will do. Talking about it is a waste of time.”

“All right,” said Nuukaru.

“My arm hurts so bad I can’t sleep but you don’t hear me whining like a child. Kill some Mexicans, die a hero, I don’t give a fuck, but this talking is pointless, you might as well cut your own throat, and the throats of your people while you’re at it.”

“WE ARE PLANNING to avoid the whites,” said Toshaway, “but…”

“You don’t have to worry about me,” I told him.

“Good.” He looked out across the village, noticeably smaller than it had been the previous year. “I wish you had been born twenty years ago, Tiehteti, because those were real days. The buffalo wolves used to follow us on our raids because they knew they’d get something to eat.” He scratched his chin. “But perhaps those times will return.”

WE DESCENDED FROM the plains and the land became mesas and canyonlands again, there were trees, mostly cottonwoods and oaks, the grass was tall and the blanketflowers were thick, patches of color going on for miles.

Toshaway had relatives along the San Saba headwaters and while looking for them we found a freshly raided Comanche camp, around seventy bodies, all scalped. There were a few warriors, but mostly it was women and children and old men. Toshaway had found his relatives. They were a splinter band of the Kotsoteka. Many of the women and girls had been treated the same as my mother and sister, cut up in the same way as well. We spent the day burying them.

“Their men must still be out,” said Pizon.

There were boot prints everywhere, boots made in Austin or San Antonio or somewhere in the east. There was a strange litter of musket balls on the ground and the hoofprints of shod horses. The tipis, weapons, and camp equipment had all been thrown into a fire and burned. I was dauncy with shame, but the other Comanches kept their faces hard, and the only thing said was that a few years earlier, the nearest white settlements has been hundreds of miles away, and it was a bad sign that they had found this camp.

“How many whites are there?” said Toshaway. “Do you know?”

“They say about twenty million.”

He grunted and looked at me.

“Come on.”

“It’s a fact.”

“Okay, Tiehteti.”

We rode in a wide circle around the camp, taking a break from digging. It could not have been a Ranger squad because twelve men could not kill seventy-three Comanches, even women and children. Toshaway guessed three hundred riders, but there were so many tracks on top of each other, as they had spent at least a day raping and sacking the village, it was hard to be certain.

I thought about my father’s tracks, he had a strange duck-footed walk and his left foot stuck out more than his right, and for a tall heavy man he had very small feet. I decided not to look.

At the top of a hill we found ruts as if a pair of wagons had been parked. The grass was burned down to the dirt.

“Strange,” said Toshaway.

“Those were cannons,” I said. “That’s why the grass is burned.”

“Those are very heavy, no?”

“A mountain howitzer can be pulled behind a horse. The army used them against the Mexicans all the time.”

The hill was maybe a furlong from the village and I knew the musket balls littering the ground must have been canister. A mountain howitzer loaded with canister was like two hundred rifles firing at once, or as my father used to say, like the hand of the Lord Himself.

“Tiehteti, it is very strange. For instance, how did they get into position without being noticed? And why would they have brought cannons all this way unless they were sure that Indians would be here? That is what I find strange.” He shook his head. “Someone was leading them.”

“They put the guns in place in the dark.”

“Of course in the dark. But still. They knew Indians were here.” He stood looking down at the ruins of the camp.

“Unfortunately most of the men seem to have fallen into their cooking fires and I could not tell if my cousin was among them. Though I did recognize his wife and two daughters.”

By then the other men were washing the ash and gore off in the river. Before we left, we hacked a flat place into a cottonwood and carved a note in hieroglyphics, telling what had happened, and how many we had buried, in case there were other members of the band who had not yet returned.

THE NEXT NIGHT we saw campfires in the distance, fires as only the whites made them, twice as large as they needed to be, nearly two dozen in all. It could only be the army, as there were not that many Rangers in the entire state of Texas.

There was discussion about whether to steal their horses but we decided to keep going. It would be safer to get them from the Mexicans, and instead of sleeping we rode all night to put distance between us and the soldiers. We crossed the Pecos without seeing anyone else, though there were recent tracks of shod horses, a small party of travelers. There was a debate about following them but the army was still close and it was again decided to wait. Climbing out of the Pecos Valley, the land became flat and dry. Long patches of caliche, clumps of oaks, mesquites, and huisache, the occasional cedar. We didn’t relax until we’d reached the Davis Mountains, where there was another debate about using the standard route past the old Presidio del Norte, which was well watered and had good grass and involved the least climbing, or going farther east into the mountains, where it was steeper and less watered but also less traveled. The younger men — who needed scalps — were annoyed we hadn’t taken on either the army or the travelers whose tracks we’d crossed, so it was decided to go past Presidio.

We stayed at a distance from the town, dropping gradually into the valley, then the river itself, and then back up into the mountains. A day’s ride from the border was a latifundio that was known to have a thousand horses.

THERE WAS A small village attached to the latifundio and we left the remuda with a half-dozen young Indians to guard the animals. Most were better hands than I was at riding and shooting, but that did not matter, because I had gotten a scalp and they hadn’t.

The rest of us picked the best horses, covered our faces and bodies with red and black and yellow paint, put on silver and brass armbands and bracelets, and tied feathers to the manes of our horses. Toshaway made sure I got a medicine hat with a large brown shield and I spent a long time painting it. I emptied my bowels three times, though the last time it was all water. I kept my eye on Toshaway and Nuukaru. Toshaway was laughing and joking with various people, making sure everyone was ready; Nuukaru was keeping to himself, and looked serious, and I also saw him go into the bushes and then a second time a few minutes later. I tried to eat some pemmican, but my mouth was too dry. I decided that was fine. If you were hit in the guts you did not want them to be full.

The sun was close to setting when a bell in the hacienda began to ring, probably the supper bell, but the Comanches thought we’d been spotted and then everyone was on their horses, moving toward the village and the ranch. Shields were adjusted. A few riders carried cut-down shotguns or repeating pistols, but most had their bows ready with a half-dozen arrows clenched in the hand that held the bow, the seventh arrow nocked, quivers adjusted so they could get to more arrows when they needed them. Reins were tied short so they would not be in the way. You were expected to steer only with your knees.

We came at them with the sun behind us, making our way quietly through the brush until we were nearly at the edge of the village. Then we kicked the horses into a run. There was a small open area to be crossed and there was whooping and ululating as if we were celebrating a great occasion, white-clad Mexicans fleeing for the chaparral, a general cry of “Los bárbaros,” a single puff of gunsmoke from between two houses, another musket pointing from a window. I aimed just to the left of the barrel but the horse was running too fast and I missed. I fumbled away my rifle and took out my bow and we were into the village, a wide main street with white adobe houses on either side; I wondered how many people there were and saw more puffs of gunsmoke but all I heard was the whooping and ululating and I started to think I would not be hurt. Everything was moving slowly. I could see each stone and clod of dirt, arrows falling toward men on rooftops or behind walls, a boy holding an escopeta sprinting down the street in front of us, his hat fell off, his arm went back to reach for it and an arrow stuck into him, then a second arrow hit and then he turned suddenly and dodged between two houses.

Then we were at the end of the village. There was only one street so I turned around and went back down it. An old man stepped out with a pistol; he was pulling a careful bead and I felt the wind as the ball went. Before I could get my bow aimed the horse changed course and ran him over and I could tell by the sound that he would not be getting up. Then I was going by a long adobe wall and there were puffs of clay the whole length and I realized people were shooting at me. Somehow I was at the front, but the arrows were still going past on both sides and then I reached the end of the village again.

A man wearing the black coat of a hacendado was crouched behind a mesquite, calmly letting off a repeater. I shot two arrows but they went rattling off the branches and then another arrow came from behind me and cut through a small opening and the man fell backward. There was a whoopwhoopwhoop and Toshaway shook his bow, then turned away to look for more people. I realized I had not been shooting enough. I stopped to situate my arrows. My shield popped me in the nose; there was a white-shirted man surrounded by a cloud of gunsmoke and I shot a quick arrow. He dropped his musket and took a few drunken steps, then ran into the chaparral with the arrow wagging in front of him. I shot another into his back, which didn’t slow him down either. He disappeared. I noticed I’d been standing still. I kicked the horse and we went back down the street.

There was no longer a charge as much as a general melee. Arrows kept flying past me; people kept falling over; I would look at someone — they would get hit by an arrow — I would look at someone else — they would get hit as well. I was beginning to feel like the hand of God Himself, then remembered my shield and got it up and moving just as it was knocked into my head again. I tried to wipe my eyes and kicked the horse just as the shield was hit a third and fourth time. I was rowing it in huge circles; I crouched and reached the end of the village and charged directly into the chaparral to gather myself up.

A woman with a child appeared in front of me; she was running blind and the horse turned to trample her. I kneed him away, missing her, then made a big circle in the brush and headed back to the village. By now the street was nothing but bodies and dismounted Comanches taking scalps. Most of the riders had gone somewhere else. There was shooting a few hundred yards away, at the main ranch house. A person with a musket came out from behind a wall, looked around, and sprinted for the chaparral. I cut his shirt with an arrow but he kept running and I knew I’d been missing most of my shots. I sat there a minute and nothing happened. I rode toward the shooting.

A dozen Indians had surrounded the house and were shooting arrows and occasionally a rifle toward it. The inhabitants were alive and well as there were regular puffs of smoke coming from the gunports and windows. On a stone patio, two men were lying next to a stub-barreled cannon, a ramrod and barrel of powder turned over next to them.

The main body of Comanches was off rounding up the horses, and I got a strange feeling watching the siege of the house so before I could be recruited I rode off to help gather the animals.

WE RODE ALL night but everyone was in a good mood, a thousand horses stretched out in front of us, enough to get our band back on its feet. I thought about the man I’d shot in the back and stomach and the other man I’d run down with the horse, and the others I had shot at but was not sure if I had hit. I figured it was possible they were all dead. None of them had given me the feeling of the Delaware and I wondered if I would ever have that again. I told myself they were just Mexicans and they would have done the same to me. My father always said the Mexicans had as much fun torturing people as the Indians.

Around midday we were into the foothills, driving the horses up a dry streambed. At the top of the hill, opposite the side we’d climbed, we stopped to collect our thoughts. I rode to find Toshaway and found him standing with Pizon, refilling his waterskin at a stream and cursing the Indians who had driven the horses through the water instead of along the banks.

“Ah,” said Pizon. “The Great Tiehteti.”

“He who charges at the front.”

I started to grin.

“Oh, that was quite beautiful, Tiehteti, you charging through the middle of them like that, missing with every arrow you fired, then meanwhile every single one of them was trying to kill you, and they were missing as well.” He chuckled and shook his head. “It was something to behold.”

“I did hit one of them,” I said.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, in the stomach. And in the back. And I killed another one with the horse.”

“Did you scalp them?”

“No, I kept going.” I couldn’t quite remember why I hadn’t scalped them. “The one had a musket,” I said.

“Oh, a musket.”

“Pizon and I were maybe ten paces behind, but it was as if all the rays of the sun were shining only on you, you were like the prize that every man in that village wanted and they had no eyes for the rest of us.”

“And you were riding so fucking fast.”

“That’s what you said to do.”

“If you are attacking, you don’t ride faster than you can shoot.”

“Don’t worry, we killed them all for you. And Saupitty and Ten Buffalo killed the ones we didn’t see. What a beautiful fucking massacre.”

“How is it possible I missed?” I said.

“I would say that you shoot like a woman,” said Pizon. “But it would not be fair to the women.”

“Tiehteti, if you are charging directly toward someone, it does not matter that you are moving. But if they are off to your side, it matters a lot. If your horse is running, you aim one step behind your target if he is close, so the arrow will be carried into him, but if he is far away you might aim five steps behind, though of course it depends on the angle, and on the wind, and how fast you are moving. When the horse is running, you have to remember the arrow is falling both down and forward. Last night you shot ahead of every target, as if you were aiming directly at them.”

“I was,” I said.

“Fuck it,” said Pizon, “he deserves a scalp anyway. I have never shot so many people in my life who did not even know I was there.” Then he added: “You are fucking brave, Tiehteti. I was very worried for you. And Toshaway is right, you cannot shoot for dogshit.” He saw the look on my face. “At least not from a horse. I have seen you shoot from the ground, and you are okay. But perhaps for the rest of this year, when we return, you will practice only from horseback and only at targets that are to one side of you.”

“And perhaps we will make sure you have a few pistols in the future. The white men all have them now anyway. It is not such a crime to use them.”

“I’ve been trying to ask for one.”

“If I had given you one, where would you be with the bow?” He shook his head. “You are very good with the pistol, we all know that, but there is no point practicing what you are already good at.”

We stood there. I filled my pihpóo with the muddy water. To the north we could see the river and the mountains rising up from it, blue and purple with the distance. Then Nuukaru came bounding over the rocks, followed by another young mahimiawapi.

“We are followed. Maybe a hundred men, maybe more.”

We stood looking at him.

“Did you hear me?” he said.

“You are like a little girl, Nuukaru.”

“We need to get moving,” he said.

“Where the fuck did a hundred men come from?” said Pizon. “There are not one hundred horses left in this entire province.”

“A hundred, fifty, there are a lot of men. I am not sure how else to explain it.”

“First it’s one hundred. Now it’s fifty. Soon it will be five old men herding goats.”

“Toshaway,” Nuukaru said, “bring your spyglass, but you won’t need it.”

He ran back up the hill.

Pizon looked at the boy who’d come down with Nuukaru. “Is he just being a woman?”

“I can’t see if it’s men or horses, but there was a lot of dust.” Then he added: “His eye carries farther than mine, though.”

“Probably some asshole driving cattle.”

“They are following our route.”

“It’s a dry riverbed through chaparral. With a spring at the top of the hill. Every animal within five miles is going to use this path.”

“I think they are men, Pizon.”

Pizon dismissed him. “Do not let yourself become like this, Tiehteti. There are many things to worry about, but when you think every bush is hiding something, you soon become tired, and then you will not see the man who really is waiting to kill you.”

He spat into the dirt.

“Yee, this is making me crazy. When we get to Presidio, it will be time to worry.”

No one said anything.

“You fucking kids.”

Toshaway came back.

“Tuyato?yeru, the young ones are right. When we reach the river, you’ll take the horses and the north trail, the rest of us will make tracks going west.”

Pizon looked at him.

“They are right. It is far and the dust is thick, but they are men, and they are chasing us for sure.”

WHEN WE REACHED the river it was dark and we were barely a few miles ahead of them.

The water was shallow; the summer rains hadn’t yet come. That was lucky and the moon was not up yet, which was also lucky.

Pizon and twenty or so others took the horse herd downriver, directly through the middle of the water. They would ride that way before turning into the Texas mountains. The rest of us rode up and down the banks trampling their tracks, leaving obvious sign pointed upriver and also directly up the opposite bank, any direction except the one they’d taken. Then we headed upriver.

“We’re the bait,” I said.

“If they are stupid they’ll presume we crossed directly and they will enter the rocks on the Texas side and become confused about where we went. If they are smart they will presume we went upriver.”

“What if they go downriver?”

“Let us hope for the sake of our band that they do not do that.”

“So they will follow us.”

“Most likely.”

When we reached a point where the ground was rocky, we climbed out of the water in single file and, after a brief discussion about where to meet, split into three groups heading in different directions. Toshaway and I continued west, along with a few others.

“If they are Mexicans, maybe they do not follow us,” he said.

The moon had finally come up and we could see where we were. Then there were sounds and a dozen riders were coming upriver and then another group came out of the brush and the shooting started and didn’t stop. I took off into the chaparral. When I looked back the only one still mounted was Toshaway; he had another Indian riding double behind him. I stopped in a thicket with my rifle pointed toward a gap, watching as the men approached the opening and squeezing the trigger as they passed. One of them doubled over and I turned and rode straight into the thorns; there was a lot of shooting and bullets cracking branches all around but they couldn’t see me and I didn’t slow down. After a few minutes I couldn’t hear anyone. It was a miracle my eyes had not been torn out by the brush. I continued uphill another half mile or so, then circled and waited.

There were a few shots down toward the river and I stopped to recharge my rifle then rode toward the noise. Then I saw a man crouched in the brush. It was Toshaway. He was naked and his breechcloth was tied around a wound on his leg. All he had was his bow and a handful of arrows; his knife and pistol were gone. He mounted behind me and kicked the horse and we were moving again.

“Are you shot?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Then your horse is.”

He was right. Its flank was streaked in blood, which I had mistaken for sweat. “You’re a good horse,” I said.

“Use him up, but do it gently.”

“How’s your leg?”

“It must have missed the artery or I would not be alive.”

We rode for two hours, climbing into the barren mountains, keeping to the drainages to stay hidden. Whatever water had carved them was long gone; the streambeds were as dusty as the flatlands. We stopped at a ridge top. While I was watching our backtrail, Toshaway slashed the needles off a pear pad, split it, and packed it into his wound. I tied the poultice on with his breechcloth. The muscle was badly bruised. Behind us the mountain dropped steeply toward the river; we had not made much distance but we had climbed a lot. I could see riders moving where the moon came off the water and I knew they could see us against the pale rocks.

“Now we ride.”

“Does it hurt?”

“Does it hurt. Oh, Tiehteti.”

There was shooting along the river — they had found someone from the band. The noise slowed and then stopped. I wondered who it was.

“Keep going,” said Toshaway.

BY THE TIME the sun came up, the horse was nearly dead. Toshaway was pale and sweaty and we were looking north into a dry basin that went on for dozens of miles.

“How is your water?”

“The pihpóo was shot at the river.”

“Very bad,” he said.

The horse was lying on its side. There was no hope for it.

He cut a vein on the animal’s neck and drank for a minute. Then he made me do the same. The horse didn’t protest. Toshaway began to drink again. My mouth was full of hair and my stomach was full of blood and I wanted to air my paunch. He made me drink some more. The horse’s breathing got quicker.

“Now we walk,” he said. “And hope the buzzards don’t lead our friends to the tusanabo.”

I inspected my rifle and saw the lock was wrecked so I threw it into the brush.

“Those were fucking Indians leading them,” he said. “Lipans. And there were white men as well.” He shook his head. “The Apaches sucking the cocks of the Mexicans who are sucking the cocks of the whites. The world is against us.”

BY AFTERNOON WE had dropped into the basin. From the top we could see a tree line farther north — a stream — but to reach it we would have to cross miles of open ground, no cover but cane cholla and giant dagger. Anyone looking would see us right away.

“Unfortunately I do not think I will make it if we skirt the edge.”

“We’ll cross the flat.”

“No,” he said. “Give me a few of your arrows. You will take the long way and stay hidden.”

“We’ll cross the flat,” I repeated.

“Tiehteti,” he said. “It is good to give your life, but not for a dead man.”

“We’re crossing the flat,” I said.

By late afternoon we were in the shade along the creek. It was not much more than a muddy trickle and as gyppy as I’d ever tasted, but we both lay drinking for several minutes. I left Toshaway and went off with my bow to see if I could find a deer or something we might eat and also we needed a stomach for a water carrier.

I had been sitting in the willows, hoping to see some game, when I noticed a man on a bay horse picking his way up the stream. He was leading a small paint that was saddled and covered in handprints, similar to the horse Ten Buffalo had been riding.

The man was white and wearing new buckskin and there were scalps on his belt. I began to shift my weight. Then he stopped. He was staring at my footprints in the mud. I had been drawing my bow so slowly he would not have seen it even if he’d looked directly at me, and the way the light came through the leaves there was a pattern all over him and I found a bright spot and popped my fingers. He saw the arrow and then his horse turned and pitched through the bushes. There was more crashing. I moved about another ten yards and nocked another arrow and waited. I thought I could see his horse just past the trees. Finally I circled around.

He was lying in the grass in the shade. He had pulled out the arrow and it was still in his hand and something made me think of my father, but there was only a slim resemblance, dirty black hair and bloodshot eyes and pale skin under his hat. He looked right at me but it was an illusion; I counted the scalps tied to his saddle and then rolled him onto his belly to take his.

In addition to the two horses, he had a pair of brand-new Colt Navys, a.69 rifle, a nearly new gun belt, a powder flask, a knife, a heavy bullet pouch, three water gourds, and a wallet full of food. I notched the arrow with an X, then stripped off all his clothes and bundled them in case Toshaway wanted them.

The paint was grazing at the edge of the stream. I nickered and it came immediately. I was no longer sure it had belonged to Ten Buffalo but it was wearing a Comanche saddle and there were red and yellow handprints all over it.

I was looking out over the mountains to the north where I could see trees and good grass; it would be nothing to ride away, there would be no more ambushes, I could reach Bexar in eight days. But the feeling soon passed and I went to find Toshaway.

WE SAT EATING the man’s dried beef and drinking his clean water and eating the dried plums and apples he’d been carrying as well. I was starting to feel good about things when Toshaway decided it was time to cut the bruised parts out of his leg. He had split and cut more pear pads and gathered up creosote leaves for a poultice and mashed them with water and soaked two clean pieces of the man’s shirt. Then he sat down near the stream.

“Don’t be a fucking butcher,” he said, “but don’t take your time, either.”

He put a stick in his mouth and I took up my scalping knife and cut around the bullet hole. His eyes rolled and the stick fell out of his mouth. I finished cutting, then rolled him over and cut out the bruise from the other side. Then I pushed the pieces of the man’s shirt through the wound and drew them out. I was packing it when he woke up. Piss continued to run out from between his legs, but he did not seem to notice. The wound was bleeding freely and he told me that was a good sign. When I had packed it full and covered it with the split pear pads, we tied a tight bandage with another piece of the scalp hunter’s shirt.

As we were sitting there he told me he knew on the night I was captured that I had been the one to shoot Skulking Bear, but he had not told anyone else in the tribe.

“It did not make sense to me, either,” he said. “I knew you had done it and yet I did not tell anyone.”

I was quiet.

“I knew what you had in you,” he said. “Now everyone else will see it as well.”

I wasn’t really listening. I was thinking about the night I was captured, about my mother and brother and sister. He saw something in my face and told me that his grandfather had been a captive Mexican — the tribe was all from captives — it was the way of the Comanche; it had kept our blood strong all these years.

WE CONTINUED TO ride and change his poultice. A few days later we found a honey tree and filled our wallets from it, eating some but saving the rest to pack his wound, resting while the sun was up and traveling only at night.

By the time we reached the plains, two weeks later, there was still a gash in his leg, but the redness and swelling were gone. In another two weeks we were back in camp.