The Son

Chapter Seven. Eli McCullough

Two days after my brother died I was still in a fever. The Indians kept me tied to my horse. I was still in a fever and we were still on the Llano, and on the morning of the third day I saw something shining in the distance, which I took to be a city, and as we got closer I saw it was floating in the air, a shining city on a hill, and I knew my mother had been right, that the heat or my fever or some hilarious Indian had killed me and I would soon be joining the rest of my family. I knew I ought to be happy but I felt sadder than I’d ever been.

When we got closer I saw it wasn’t a city at all. It was a box canyon and it was still floating miles above us, as if a range of mountains had been carved out of the earth; there was a long shining river and drifting herds of deer and my mother had not been right at all. I was being taken by the Indians to their happy hunting ground, where I would remain their prisoner even in death.

I had a dauncy spell but no one heard me over the wind. Soon after, we reached the thing itself. It was a proper canyon cut into the earth but some mirage in the sky was reflecting it. It was even larger than the mirage made it look — a dozen miles across and a thousand feet deep, with fins and towers and hoodoos like observation posts, mesas and minor buttes, springs flowing brightly in the red rock. There were cottonwoods and hackberries, and the valley floor was thick with grass and wildflowers.

We took an hour dropping into it, then made an early camp next to a clear stream. There was a skull with an enormous tusk all turned to stone and sticking out of the bank. I wondered what my brother would have made of it. The Indians were relaxed. For my own protection I was kept tied to a tree, though the Germans were allowed to wander and by her yellow hair I could see one sitting on a far butte. The Indians were not worried; there were wolf and grizzly and panther tracks everywhere and it was no place to be playing a lone hand.

A few deer were killed and a yearling buffalo. Wild potatoes and turnips and sweet onions were dug up, braided, and roasted in the fire. The animals were carefully skinned, the meat filleted from the bones, coals raked out and the big roasts placed on them. The bones were put in the fire and when everything was ready they were cracked and the marrow spread on the potatoes. There were handfuls of chokecherries for dessert and a lemonade made from sumac. Everyone was full as a tick but finally the hump of the buffalo was dug out of the coals; it was dripping with fat and came apart in our fingers. It was the best I’d eaten since I’d left home and at the thought of that I got dauncy again and Nuukaru came over and slapped me.

By sundown the walls of the canyon looked to be on fire and the clouds coming off the prairie were glowing like smoke in the light, as if this place were His forge and the Creator himself were still fashioning the earth.

“Urwat leaves tomorrow,” Toshaway said. When the others turned in I was tied down for sleep as I’d been since my brother died — my arms and legs roped to separate stakes in the ground. Toshaway put his buffalo robe over me. The stars were too bright to sleep, the Dipper, Pegasus, the serpent and dragon, Hercules; I watched them turn while meteors left smoking trails that stretched across the canyon.

A few of the Indians had their way with the Germans. This time I tried not to listen.

THE NEXT MORNING the spoils of the raid — weapons, tools, equipment, horses, anything valuable including the German girls and me — were set out and divided. The older girl went with Urwat’s group; the younger girl and I with Toshaway’s. The younger girl was crying as Urwat’s group rode away with her cousin, and there was a patch of long dark hair, my mother’s, tied to the saddle of a horse in Urwat’s band. Nuukaru came over and slapped me. I knew he was doing me a favor.

After climbing back onto the Llano we didn’t see water all day. A few hours before sundown we camped at a small playa lake sunk beneath the level of the grass. It was invisible from more than a hundred yards distance and how the Indians had navigated to it, I had no idea, as the plain was so flat and empty you could see the curve of the earth.

Toshaway and Nuukaru led the blond girl and me to the far end of the lake and after we washed ourselves we lay on our bellies while they lanced all the boils and blisters from riding and cleaned our other wounds as well. Our legs and backsides were rinsed with a bark tea and covered with a poultice made from pear pad innards and coneflower root. Despite the sunburn and saddle sores on her legs and rear end, now that she was cleaned up, the German girl was quite beautiful. I looked at her and hoped we might connubiate but she ignored me. I guessed she’d been a haughty one like my sister. Then I couldn’t look at her.

Mostly they treated her like an expensive horse, taking care with her feed and water but hitting or throwing sticks if she did anything that got their ire up. I was given plenty of lather myself but never without an explanation; Toshaway and Nuukaru spoke to me constantly, pointing things out, and I was picking up the language already: paa, water; tuhuya, horse; tehcaró, eat. Tunetsuka—keep going.

A few days later we came to a big river that I guessed was the Canadian. The country improved. By then, neither I nor the girl were tied up at all. We’d been riding at an easy pace, eating and drinking and nursing our wounds, and even the horses were putting on flesh.

Two buffalo calves were killed and for a change the liver was put on the coals along with all the heavy bones, the warm marrow spread on the liver like butter. Toshaway kept passing me more meat and there was more curdled calves’ milk, which got sweeter each time I tried it.

The next morning I woke up thinking about my father and how even with a group of willing men he never would have been able to catch us. Even a young Indian like Nuukaru would have lost them. The Comanches left conflicting trails at every patch of soft ground, changed direction at every stretch of rock or hardpan, took note of the natural line of travel across a landscape and rode a different way. A detour that cost them a few minutes would confuse a pursuer for hours. I had never felt so alone in my life.

I got up to find the Indians. I could hear voices at the river and found all the warriors bathing themselves, scrubbing off the dirt and old war paint. Some were sitting naked in the sun, looking into tiny hand mirrors or small pieces of cracked glass, and, with steel tweezers they must have gotten from the whites, they were plucking all the hair from their faces. When that was done they took small pouches of vermilion and other dyes from their possibles, which they ground with spit to form a paste, then put on their paint, color by color. Each man parted his hair down the middle and rewove his braids and dyed the part red or yellow. Puha nabisaru, said Toshaway. He was working on his braids as well. Everyone was feeling grandacious, as if getting dressed for a night of beauing.

I was put to scrubbing down the horses with grass. Each warrior repainted his pony with stripes and handprints. Two of the younger Indians rode away over the hills and didn’t return.

The captured scalps were washed and brushed and attached to the tops of lances. I knew my mother’s was gone and I couldn’t see my sister’s, either. I decided it had been Urwat’s men who’d killed her.

The girl and I were tied to the horses for the first time in days. To our left the southern bank of the Canadian was a sheer cliff and to the north it was shallow breaks and hills and buttes. We followed a small stream up into the trees and came on a procession of Indians, hundreds of them, all in their best bib and tucker, painted leggings and buckskin dresses, copper bracelets and earrings sparkling and jouncing. The younger boys were naked and they came shouting and dodging among the horses. We kept going and reached the main body; it was like the parade they had when my father returned from the war. Women were calling to men and neighbors calling to neighbors and a somber old grandmother was carrying a pole with scalps attached. Some of the braves tied their scalps to the pole. The children avoided me but the adults all pinched or slapped me as I rode past.

Then we reached the village. The tipis went on out of sight, swirling designs of warriors and horses, soldiers stuck with arrows, soldiers without heads, mountains and rising suns. The air smelled like green hides and drying flesh; there were racks standing everywhere with the flayed meat hanging in the sun like old clothes.

A group of angry-looking Indians pushed through the others. The women were wailing and keening and the men were thumping their lances in the dirt. They beat my legs and tried to pull me off my horse. Toshaway let this go on until one of the old women came at me with a knife. No one paid any attention to the German girl.

There was a long negotiation over my future, with the group of wailing women believing it should be settled with a knife or something worse. Toshaway was defending his property. I was sure it was the family of the man I’d shot, though Toshaway was the only person who could have known I was the culprit.

Nuukaru later explained that the dead man’s family was expecting spoils from the raid, but what they got instead was news that their man had taken a ball in the chest. They asked for a white scalp only to hear that my mother’s and sister’s scalps had gone north with the Yap-Eaters, that my brother had not been scalped as he had died too bravely, and that I was innocent (a lie) and more important I was Toshaway’s property and he would not allow them to give me a haircut. They asked after the three scalps on his belt, but those had been taken from soldiers during such legendary combat that he could not be expected to part with them. He could offer them two rifles. An insult. A horse, then. Five horses would be an insult. In that case he could offer them nothing. They knew the risks and they would be well taken care of by the tribe. Fine. They would take a horse.

Meanwhile, as it was a big haul of guns, ponies, and other supplies, the village was preparing a party. Of the seventy-odd horses captured, Toshaway gave most away to the men who had gone on the raid, one to the family of the dead man, and a few to some poor families who had come to him directly. You could not refuse to give a gift if someone asked for it. He was left with two new horses and me. Stingier war chiefs might keep the entire haul for themselves, but Toshaway’s status was greatly improved.

After Toshaway settled with the dead man’s family, he and I and Nuukaru rode to all the tipis. I stayed tied to the horse. At each place an old squaw would come over and pinch my leg to bruise it. There was frantic talking and laughing. After several hours I was hot and bored, stiff from being tied up; I could tell there were stories being told about me. Finally we arrived in Toshaway’s neighborhood. Everyone was standing waiting. There was a good-looking teenage boy and girl, who I gathered were Toshaway’s children, a woman in her late twenties, his wife, and a woman in her late thirties, his other wife.

When everyone finished catching up, three old men came over and untied me and told me to follow them. We were off just like that, between the tipis, around cookfires and staked-out hides, racks of drying meat, tools and weapons scattered everywhere. An old squaw came out of nowhere and slapped me between my legs. I was already sick from nervousness and the rotting meat and the flies swarming. Then a young brave came out of nowhere and hit me in the jaw. I turtled up as he kicked but then he stopped and had a talk with the old men. He had blue eyes and I knew he was white and after a few minutes he walked away as if nothing had happened.

The three old men found a place to sit near someone’s tipi. It was late in the afternoon and nice in the sun, the land was open and rolling, the forest was behind us, there were horse herds grazing in the distance, several thousand animals at least. I sat listening to the creek. I’d dozed off when two of them pinned my arms back and rolled me over. The oldermost squatted at my head, I could smell his reeking breechcloth; I was sure I would air my paunch, which bothered me more than the idea of dying, and then Nuukaru came over and I relaxed.

The oldermost was doing something in the fire. When he came back he knelt next to me with a hot awl that he stuck through my ears a few times. Nuukaru was sitting on top of me so I had no air to protest. They threaded strings of greased buckskin through the holes in my ears and let me up.

Then I was given some sumac lemonade and some meat was skewered on sticks that were poked into the ground over the fire. As we sat waiting, a young fat squaw came up and hugged me, slapped me, pushed me into the grass, and climbed on top of me, wrestling the way you might with a dog. I let her drag me around and sit on me and stick my face into a mud puddle that smelled like feet. She held my nose so I’d have to open my mouth to breathe in the mud. After a while she got bored. I went back to the fire. Someone passed me a gourd of water to wash up. Someone else was heating up a kind of sauce in a small metal pan, honey and lard, stirring it with the rib bone from a deer. Everything was smelling finer than cream gravy, but just when we began to eat, Toshaway’s son came over and said something. The old men clucked and shook their heads. I saw the family of the dead man making their way toward us and I knew they’d decided to dig up the hatchet.

Nuukaru clapped me on the back for support, then everyone followed as I was led by the neck to an open area in the middle of the village. A big post had been driven into the ground. I was tied to it. From looking at the people gathered it was clear Judge Lynch was holding court and then three teenage Indians were pacing around me, pointing pistols at my head.

Their sap was up and I expected them to shoot but they were waiting for more people. Finally most of the village was there; children running in and out of the crowd, putting pieces of wood and brush around my legs until there was a pile to my waist.

The young Indians cocked their pistols and pressed them to my temple, into my mouth. My guts went loose. An old squaw came over with a skinning knife and I nearly released my innards, thinking I was about to be unshucked whole, but all she did was give me a few bleeders. Then I had to let some air out, which everyone found hilarious because they knew I was scared. Pakatsi tsa kuya?atu. Pakatsi tsa tu?uyatu!

Nuukaru was standing at the front of the crowd, watching things; he was the same awkward age as my brother, tall and gangly, he would not be much help. The old woman walked away and one of the boys aimed his pistol and pulled the trigger. It pocked my face and singed my eyebrows but he hadn’t loaded a ball. The other two did the same. Then a kid ran up with a torch and feigned at lighting the pile of brush. I nodded at where I thought he ought to start the fire. I encouraged him and finally he lit the brush. The hair between my thighs began to sizzle and I was about to give up when Toshaway walked over and kicked away the burning sticks.

Toshaway made a speech to the villagers, the gist of which was I hadn’t minded the idea of being burned or shot to death. The Indians highly approved of that outlook and a few of them slapped me on the back as I returned to Toshaway’s tipi. His wives poured tea over my cuts and burns and cleaned my face and dressed me in a new breechcloth. But before all that I went and squatted in the brush till I’d got the evil out of me.

THE PARTY BEGAN at suppertime. Later Nuukaru told me this wouldn’t normally have been done because a man had been lost on the raid, but in this case no one liked the family and it was hoped they would move on.

There was venison, elk, and buffalo, quail and prairie dog, bones roasted so the marrow could be spread on meat or mixed with mesquite beans and honey for dessert. There were potatoes and onions, corn bread and squash they’d gotten from the New Mexicans. The Comanches traded with the New Mexicans for nearly everything, and also the people at Bent’s Fort on the Arkansas River. For corn, squash, and pumpkins, white and brown sugar, tortillas and hard breads, guns, powder, bar lead, and bullet molds. Ornaments for horses, percussion caps and steel knives, hatchets, axes and blankets, ribbons, linens and shrouds, gartering and gun screws, lance- and arrowheads, barrel hoops, bridles, steel wire, copper wire, gold wire, bells of all sizes, saddlebags, iron stirrups, iron pots, brass pots, mirrors and scissors, indigo and vermilion, glass beads and wampum, tobacco and tinder boxes, tweezers, combs, and dried fruit. The Comanches were the wealthiest of all the Indian tribes and spent half of what they made on baubles and cheap jewelry, though they did not, as some have written, care much for the white man’s clothing, for top hats or stockings or wedding veils.

After everyone had eaten his fill the oldermost of the tribe began the dance and a warrior was called out and handed a long slender pole with scalps attached. The warrior told a story of bravery and called another warrior, who took the scalp pole and told a story and called up someone else. To tell a lie would bring a curse on the entire tribe and finally a brave was called who didn’t have any story better than the ones already told, and instead of talking he took up the scalp pole and began to dance. The people followed him in a big milling circle. I was standing watching. I had been scrubbed clean and painted and was wearing my breechcloth. The three old men had plucked out my eyebrows and the few scraggling hairs off my chin and upper lip. The drums beat and the Indians stepped in time; I was put into the circle and the scalp pole was handed to me and I was pushed to the front. After a few minutes I tried to hand it to the man behind me but he shoved me forward. The drums went faster, the air was red from the setting sun, I saw the wives of the man I’d killed and the next time I saw them they hadn’t moved and I knew the scalp pole was protecting me. They would not touch me as long as I held it. Several hours later the moon was up and I could barely stay awake, my feet hurt from stamping and my shoulders burned, but the Indians kept me at the front; there was grunting and whooping, the calls of bear and buffalo, panthers, deer, and elk.

WHEN I WOKE up everything was black. I was under a robe. A small disk of dark sky over my head, a dying fire off to one side, the sound of someone breathing. It was peaceful. I was in a tipi on a soft bed of skins; I’d been washed again and rubbed with oil and my wounds dressed; I was clean and warm and rolled in a soft blanket. There was something about the person breathing, I got to feeling dauncy and it was like the Bible-thumpers say when you’re dunked: you think the world is one way and then you come up and find you’ve been wrong about everything.

I got up from my pallet and went outside. There were stars and as far as I could see there were tipis glowing from their nightfires, around the bonfire people were still awake, talking softly. Women leaning on their men, children asleep against their parents. From some of the tipis there was snoring and in others there was giggling and in others there were women moaning, which went on for a long time and I got excited and then I thought of times I had heard my mother and father doing that, not to mention the few times I had imagined doing it to my sister, which of course I was ashamed of, more now than I’d been before.

I heard someone rustle in their sleep, either Nuukaru or Toshaway’s son Escuté. I decided I would find Urwat and the rest of the Yap-Eaters and I would take from them a collection of scalps so long it would trail behind my horse ten miles.

As for Toshaway and his family, he had saved me and he had tried to save my brother. He might have saved my mother and sister if he had known better. But the Indians had their rules same as we had ours. My father and I had once shot at a pair of runaway slaves collecting pecans from under our trees. My gun snapped and misfired and my father’s shot went yards high. I couldn’t understand as the niggers were barely at eighty paces and my father the best rifle shot in the county. Then they were dark streaks running through the forest. I said we ought to get Rufe Perry and his nigger dogs but my father said it was likely to rain and we had rows yet to hoe. I asked where the slaves were headed and he said Mexico, most likely, or to live out with the Indians, who would take in Negroes and other types as long as they lived according to their laws. I said how can they take in niggers to live among them? He said plenty of people do. I could not think of anything except I was sorry my gun had snapped and he told me one day I would be thankful for small mercies.

I could hear Nuukaru and Escuté breathing deeply. I listened as long as I could before I fell asleep myself.