THEY FIRED THEIR PISTOLS AND SQUALLED LOUDLY. The Indians’ horses broke into a hard run down the creek. One of the herd boys was still trying to fight his way out from under his fallen pony. The other shouted angrily at Cloud. He stooped and picked up a rock, hurling it and striking Guffey’s horse.
In the village, every dog was awake and barking. Men shouted. Squaws screamed. Cloud slowed and looked back over his shoulder. Comanche men came running out from under the arbors and from the tepees. A couple or three who carried rifles fired futilely at the Tejano horse thieves. Several braves came running afoot. Two had horses staked near their tepees. These swung up and struck out after the horse herd, short-bows in their hands.
“Guffey, Tommy, look out,” Cloud shouted. He stopped his horse and wheeled about as the first of the braves came riding. Cloud’s rifle was empty, for he hadn’t
taken time to reload. He fought his mount to a standstill, held up his left arm and steadied the pistol over it with his right. He fired and saw the Indian go down.
The kid was on the ground and running to the end of his stake rope, rifle in hand. He brought up the rifle just as the second Indian rider let loose an arrow. The arrow pierced the boy’s arm and he went down with a cry of pain. Guffey turned around and stepped off his horse, grabbing up the boy’s rifle. As the Indian brought down his bow for a second shot, Guffey fired. The Comanche’s mount fell kicking. The arrow plunked harmlessly into the creek mud.
The Indian scrambled to his feet and grabbed up the bow. He pulled another arrow from the quiver and was fitting it to the bowstring when Cloud spurred back by him, pistol in hand. The pistol flashed. The Comanche fell.
By then, gunfire had erupted at the far end of the village. The Comanche warriors who pursued the horses afoot turned and faced the terror that came galloping at them, twenty shouting Tejanos with guns ablaze, sharp hoofs cutting deep into the foot-packed sod. Barcroft was in the lead, pistol spitting fire. Warrior after warrior fell beneath the savage hail of bullets.
On either side of the creek, women and children ran for the brush, screaming, crying for help. Some warriors followed suit, only to be cut down by a relentless wave of angry Texans.
Cloud saw Barcroft signal the men to swing about and circle the outside of the camp. Cloud then spurred out around the horse herd and began slowing it down. With Guffey’s help he soon had the horses milling. Slowly the pair of them started the horses back toward the village.
Gunfire had stopped. The surprise had been complete. So had the victory.
As the horses came up even with the fallen kid, Cloud signaled Guffey to hold them up. Then he rode out to the boy and dismounted. Tommy Sides sat on the ground, face twisted in pain. He held the wounded arm, blood flowing out around the wooden shaft.
Cloud examined the stone arrowhead. “Went clean through.” He realized the boy knew it well enough without his saying it. With a sharp bowie knife Cloud whittled the shaft off well above the head.
“Now,” he said, “I’m goin’ to pull it out. Yell, cuss, do anything, but just see that you hold still. It ain’t goin’ to be fun.”
He yanked, and the bloody shaft drew out. The kid gave a sharp cry of pain, then sobbed quietly. In a moment he managed to stop. “I’m sorry,” he choked. “I’m actin’ like a baby.”
Cloud shook his head and gripped the boy’s knee with a touch of pride. “When a man hurts, he’s just naturally got to make a little noise. That takes the edge off of it. Grown men cry too, so you don’t need to worry over that. Now the bleedin’ ought to’ve washed that hole clean. We got to stop it before it drains the life out of you.”
He had nothing to wrap with except the handkerchief in his pocket. It was dirty, but he had to use it. He bound the wound tightly.
“Come on,” he said, “I’ll take you in and see if somebody’s got somethin’ better to do the job with.” He turned back to Guffey. “Think you can hold them horses by yourself?”
Guffey nodded. “I’ve got ’em. You take care of the kid.”
Tommy paused, despite his pain, to pick up the arrowhead and the whittled-off shaft. Something to show his grandchildren someday, if he lived to have any.
In the village, Texans were rounding up the women and
children, moving them into the center of camp. From the far side of the creek, from out of the brush, they came herding the crying squaws and squalling children like so many cattle. One Indian boy five or six years old hit a trooper in the face with a rock. The trooper swung down and grabbed up the boy. He bent him over his uplifted knee and thrashed him as he would his own.
Passing the bodies of their fallen men, the squaws would drop to their knees and begin to cry out a painful chant. The Rifles would let them carry on a moment or two, then would make them get up and go on with the others.
Cloud rode up to the captain. “We got a hurt boy. Anybody here better than average at fixin’ ’em up?”
Barcroft motioned with his chin. “Back yonder somewhere. Walt Johnson’s a doctor of sorts. He’s taking care of the wounded.”
Young Walt Johnson had his hands full. A Texan shot low in the chest lay dying on an Indian buffalo robe Johnson had spread out beneath a brush arbor. Other men with lesser wounds sat patiently waiting while Johnson gave his attention to the dying man.
Tommy Sides, pale from shock, said, “I’ll make it, Mister Cloud. You don’t have to worry about me no more.”
Cloud touched his shoulder. “Good boy.” He turned away.
By twos and threes, the men were moving up the creek to water their horses and drink a fill for themselves. One corner of the meat rack had gone down, just as Guffey had said, but most of the meat still hung above ground. The Texans were taking it. In some of the tepees they also found Indian pemmican tied up in gut casings.
Captain Barcroft looked over the group of women and children. There must have been fifty or sixty women, and even more children than that.
“Are you sure this is all of them?” he asked Elkin.
“All that’ve been found, Captain.”
The captain turned to Miguel Soto. “Tell them to form a line. I want to look over these children.”
Soto barked something in Comanche. The women were slow to comply, and he said it again, rougher this time. They strung out in a long line, clutching their children to them. Some of the women wailed as they stood there. A plaintive chant began.
“They think we shoot them, Capitán,” Soto explained.
Barcroft nodded grimly. “They know that’s what would happen if we were Comanches and they were white women. That, or worse.” He stepped forward. “All right, Miguel, let’s see these children.”
Cloud stared in wonder as Barcroft started at one end of the line, carefully looking over the children. Seeing Elkin nearby, Cloud edged up to him and said, “What’s he up to?”
“Looking for captive children,” Elkin replied. “Any captives, but especially his own.”
“His own?” Cloud’s mouth dropped open.
Elkin nodded. “About three years or so ago, it was. The Comanches captured the captain’s wife and his three-year-old daughter. He found his wife later, up the trail. She was dead.” Elkin dropped his chin, staring at the ground. “He never did find his daughter. But he’s still looking, Cloud, still looking.”
Cloud turned back toward the tall, grim man who slowly moved down the line, examining the children. Cloud let his own gaze streak swiftly ahead, at the rest of the line. There wasn’t a fair-skinned child in the bunch. But the captain wasn’t letting himself do it that way. He was looking the children over, one at a time. He probably already knew; his child was not here. But he wasn’t admitting it to himself. He was slowly, painfully working
his way down this ragged line, avoiding as long as he could the admission that he was looking for something he would not find.
Cloud felt his throat tighten, and he turned away. This, then, was the torment he had seen in Aaron Barcroft.
“Miguel,” he heard the captain say, “this girl doesn’t look Comanche. I think she’s Mexican.”
Cloud faced back to see. Stark fear lay in the black eyes of a girl seven or eight years old. A squaw had a tight grip on her arm. Miguel touched the squaw’s hand and spoke sharply. The squaw loosened her hold, and the girl suddenly ran forward, throwing her arms around the captain’s legs. She began to sob out something in Spanish.
Barcroft leaned down and touched his hand to her hair and looked to Miguel. Miguel listened to the girl cry out her story. Finally he said, “She is captive, Capitán, many months. She begs for us to take her home.”
“Where is her home?”
“Mexican settlement west of San Antonio. The Comanches they take her last spring.”
What Cloud saw then made him shake his head in.disbelief. A tear worked a thin trail down the captain’s dusty cheek. Barcroft’s voice went soft. “Tell her we’ll get her home.”
The captain didn’t finish looking at the children. He seemed to know he wouldn’t find what he had been searching for. He stood with his eyes closed, his hands gentle on the shoulders of the little Mexican girl.
Cloud turned and walked away, wondering how he could so misjudge a man.
Later, when the men had eaten and filled their canteens and drunk all the water they wanted, the captain said, “We’ll catch fresh horses and take that herd back with us. But first, search out all these tepees. Anything that can be used for a weapon, bring it and pile it up here.”
In short time there was a small pile of lances, bows and arrows. What rifles and other firearms the men found, they kept for their own use.
Miguel brought out a hide bag of poor gunpowder he had found in a tepee. He poured this over the pile. The captain said, “Is that all?” No one had anything else to add, so he said, “Burn it.”
Miguel fired his pistol into the powder and set it ablaze.
As the flames licked up into the pile of weapons, the captain turned to Elkin. “Originally I had thought we’d burn all the tepees and make it a clean sweep. But with all their men dead, I suppose we can afford a little mercy for these women and children.”
“Maybe it will teach them to have a little themselves,” Elkin commented.
“Never,” Barcroft gritted. He moved away from the fire and walked toward the arbor where Johnson had been taking care of the wounded. Hesitantly, Cloud followed after him.
“How’re they doing, Johnson?” Barcroft asked.
The young medic replied, “Rough in spots, but I suppose they’ll be able to travel. All except one. He just died.”
Barcroft nodded grimly. Then he looked at Tommy Sides as he said, “It won’t be easy, but a man can take a lot when he’s riding in the direction of home.”
Pale, his eyes sick with shock, the kid managed a weak smile. “Yes, sir, I’ll make it.”
“Sure you will. You’ve made a good soldier, son.”
“Thank you, sir,” the boy whispered.
As Barcroft turned away, Cloud said uncertainly, “Captain, I’d kind of like to have a word with you.” He motioned with his chin. “Over here someplace.”
The stiff reserve was still in Barcroft’s eyes as he looked at Cloud. But he said, “I suppose so. Why not?”
They walked together out away from the tepees. Barcroft found a place on the green grass of the creekbank and sat down. Cloud squatted on his heels. He fumbled a little, hunting for the words.
“You see, sir, well … I sort of got started on the wrong foot, so to speak. I think maybe you got an apology comin’. What I mean to say is, I said some hard things. I thought some things even harder than what I said, after what happened about that squaw. I sort of got the notion you had a big chunk of lead instead of a heart … or somethin’ like that.
“I didn’t know about your wife and your little girl then. Man goes through a thing like that, he sees things different from other folks, I guess.”
Barcroft didn’t look at Cloud. A vague wall still stood between them. Cloud guessed it always would.
“Cloud, killing that squaw was a thing somebody had to do, and I did it. I took no pleasure in it. But I’ve not let it haunt me, either. What does haunt me is the way my wife looked when I found her. It wasn’t the bucks who finally killed her. They turned her over to the squaws. It was a terrible death.”
Barcroft rubbed his face, and Cloud could see the bone-weariness that had settled over the man. Barcroft said, “They’re still women, and I try to avoid killing them when I can. But if I have to do it, I don’t back away. When I look at a Comanche—man or woman—I can still see my wife the way she was that day.”
Cloud pulled his gaze away from the captain’s face. “What about the little girl? Have you ever found any trace of her?”
Barcroft shook his head. “Never a trace. The federal government had an Indian reservation in Young County then. I trailed my wife’s killers back onto the reservation. The Indian agent and Yankee troops turned me back at
the line. They said I was wrong, that none of their Indians had been out. I tried to slip in, to hunt for my little girl. One of those Yankees shot me.” Hatred colored his voice as he spoke. “A little later a bunch of the Comanches jumped the reservation and headed for the high plains to join the wild tribes. If my little girl was still alive, they had her with them.”
He paused a little, remembering. “She’s six now, if she’s living. She was so little she probably wouldn’t even remember anything about me, or about her mother. She probably wouldn’t look the same. Maybe I wouldn’t even know her.” He clenched his fist, then let it go. “Sure, she’s probably dead. Most likely they killed her early and left her somewhere. In a way, I guess I hope they did. But I don’t know, Cloud, that’s what drives me crazy, I don’t know. I keep thinking to myself, maybe she’s still out there. I wake up in the middle of the night seeing her face. Maybe if I look long enough I’ll find her.”
With his thumb and forefinger he rubbed the bridge of his nose, his eyes closed tight. “I’ve got Miguel down there now, questioning those squaws. Someday perhaps we’ll find someone who knows something. Someday …”
He broke off and looked away, down the creek.
Cloud stood up. Uncomfortable, he started to say something more, reconsidered and backed off, leaving the captain there alone.
Cloud caught the slight movement beyond a fringe of brush, far out in the grass. He didn’t believe it at first. He tried to find it again, and it had disappeared. The wind, he thought, a glimpse of shadow as the grass bent aside. Then he spotted it again, just for an instant.
A squaw? A buck who had gotten away? It didn’t seem reasonable. The Texans had made a good search of the whole camp.
The third time he knew it was more than a shadow, more than just the play of the wind. He caught his horse and moved out that way for a closer look. Whatever it was, it was a good three hundred yards from the village.
Tensing, he drew his six-shooter, holding it high and ready. At first, it was hard to tell where the thing had been. Then he caught it—something light brown—out there in the sun-cured grass. An animal—a dog, perhaps?
Suddenly it leaped up and began to run. A woman—a squaw with a bundle in her arms—a baby.
“How in the …” Cloud choked off the question and touched spurs to the horse.
Rapidly overtaking the woman, he shouted, “Stop there!” He didn’t know how to say it in Comanche, but he figured she would know well enough what he meant. She kept running. He put the horse in beside her and slowed it down. “Now looky here, woman … .”
She jerked away from him and suddenly headed off at an angle, fleet as a deer.
“Whoa there,” he shouted. “There ain’t nobody goin’ to hurt you.” He reined after her. For an instant she looked back over her shoulder at him. That was her undoing, for she tripped and sprawled in the grass. The bundle went rolling, and Cloud heard a baby’s plaintive cry.
He slid his horse to a stop and jumped down. He reached the baby before the mother could get up. He unrolled the blanket for a quick look. He carefully examined the small brown head, the arms, the legs.
“Don’t seem like he’s hurt none, ’cept his feelin’s,” he said, knowing as he spoke that the woman couldn’t understand him. She dropped to her knees and examined the baby for herself. She grabbed it up then, wrapping the blanket around it and smothering its cries. She turned her blazing eyes on Cloud.
Cloud gasped. They were blue eyes!
For a moment he just stood and stared at her, struck dumb. Then he said haltingly, “Why, you’re … you’re a white woman!”
She drew back from him as if she understood nothing. She held the baby tighter against her breasts and looked at him with defiance flaming in her eyes.
“L-look, ma’am,” Cloud stammered, “d-don’t you understand? You’re a white woman, like I’m a white man. You’re not no Indian.”
He took a step forward, and she stepped backward, her eyes wide.
Crazy woman. Cloud thought then. That’s what she must be, a crazy woman. She’s forgotten about her own kind.
“Look, lady,” he tried again, “I just want to help you. Help you. Can’t you understand?”
She trembled, but she held her ground. A question formed in her eyes. She tried once to speak, but nothing came. Then she said haltingly, “Help? … Help me?”
A long breath went out of Cloud, and he smiled thinly. “Well, you do know English after all.”
“English.” She studied the word a moment. “Yes, I know English.”
The words came hard for her, as if she were reaching somewhere far back to find them, somewhere back in distant memory.
“How long have you been with the Comanches?” Cloud asked.
“How long? Very long. Very long.”
Cloud reached out to grasp her arm, to start her toward the village. She pulled away again, frightened. Patiently he said, “Look, ma’am, I told you I ain’t a-goin’ to hurt you. We’re goin’ to take you back—back to your own people.”
“People?” Again the question in her eyes. “My people? My people here.”
“No, I don’t mean the Indians. I mean white folks—your folks.”
“No white people mine. I am Nocona. Nocona.”
Nocona, Cloud thought. Sure, that’s one of the Comanche bands. He shook his head, pitying her. He studied her face. She was so brown from the sun that she could pass for an Indian unless a person looked closely. But there were the blue eyes, and her hair was only brown—not Indian black. She did not have the typical round face one usually found in the Comanche. Hers was oval, a white woman’s face. Very likely an attractive face, if it had had the chance. But a silent tale of hardship lay in her eyes, the sun-parched skin, the work-rough hands.
“Come on,” he said gently, “let’s go back to the village.”
Plain enough that English was hard for her. He had heard it was that way with people who were in an alien land and never used their own language. With time, they lost it.
Miguel can talk to her in Comanche, he thought. Then maybe we can find out something. Maybe she’ll understand what we’re going to do for her.
“Come on,” he said again. “Don’t be afraid.”
No one paid much attention as they first came in. Just a stray squaw Cloud had found. Then the word spread like wildfire. White woman!
Captain Barcroft came on the run. He shouldered roughly through the crowding circle of curious men. “Where is she?”
Cloud said, “This is her, Captain.” He motioned toward the pitiable little figure who stood fear-stricken in the center of this group of staring men. Afraid of the other Texans, she somehow moved toward Cloud for protection.
The captain saw the fear in her eyes. He removed his hat, bowed from the waist in the old Texan style and said quietly, “You’ve got nothing to be worried about from now on, ma’am. You’re with your own kind now.” When she made no reply, Barcroft glanced at Cloud. “Who is she?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
“Who are you, ma’am?” the captain asked.
Hesitantly she said something in Comanche. The captain looked puzzled. Miguel Soto spoke up. “She use a Comanche name, Capitán. It mean Little Doe.”
“But I want her white name, her real name.”
Cloud spoke up. “Maybe she doesn’t remember it, sir.”
Incredulous, the captain demanded, “What do you mean she doesn’t remember it? How long has she been with these Indians, anyway?”
He reached out and uncovered the baby’s face. He stepped back in shock. “That’s not her baby. It’s an Indian baby.”
Cloud said, “I reckon it’s her baby, all right. She’s been with these Comanches a long time.”
Slowly the shock in the captain’s face turned to revulsion. “My God,” he breathed. “A white woman, an Indian baby. My God!” He stepped back again, shaking his head. “Why didn’t they kill her when they took her? She’d have been a lot better off.”
Cloud said, “She’s bound to have people somewhere. They’ll be glad to get her back.”
“Will they?” the captain asked, bitterness in his voice. “Will they?”
The men parted to make way for him as he walked off. He strode out to the creek and stood a while looking down into its clear water. Cloud watched him, wondering what Barcroft was going to do. Then he watched the woman, watched how she tenderly rocked the baby in her arms to
quiet its crying. He remembered how he had seen Mrs. Moseley doing the same.
Presently the captain came back, his head bowed. “I’ve decided what has to be done,” he said huskily. “It’s hard, but it’s the only way. Miguel, she seems to know Comanche better than English. Tell her we’re taking her back to her people. But tell her she’ll have to leave the baby here.”
Miguel hesitated. “Capitán, she is the mother.”
Sharply Barcroft said, “I gave you an order, Miguel! Tell her!”
Miguel spoke quickly, plainly hating what he had to say. The woman cried out and clutched the baby tightly. She tried to break away, but stopped at sight of the Texans standing behind her. She broke into English. “No, no. My baby! My baby!”
Barcroft could not bring himself to look at the woman. “Cloud, take the baby and give it to one of the squaws.”
Cloud stood with his fists tight, anger swelling in him. He didn’t move.
Barcroft’s voice lashed at him as it had at Miguel. “Doesn’t anybody here understand an order?”
“She’s the baby’s mother,” Cloud argued, his face darkening. “You don’t just pull a mother away from her own child that way.”
“It’s for her own good, don’t you see? How will she be treated when she goes back to civilization with an Indian baby in her arms? She’ll be cast out like a leper.”
“She might prefer that to losin’ her baby. You ought to know how it is, Captain, to lose a baby.”
That hurt. Cloud could see the pain of it in Barcroft’s dark eyes. Some of the anger went out of the man’s voice, but the resolve was still there. “Yes, I know. I know better than any man here what it’s going to cost this woman. But in the end, she’ll know it was for the best.
When she’s back with her own, she’ll forget all this. Perhaps she’ll marry a good man and have more children, and she’ll forget this one was ever born.”
Cloud argued, “No woman ever forgets a baby.”
Seeing no one else would do it, the captain stepped up to her and said, “Let me have the child.”
She cried out, but he took the baby from her arms and turned away. He walked between the silent men, pausing long enough to say, “Get ready, men. We’ll be riding in a minute.”
A wrinkled old squaw walked forward to meet the captain. She took the baby and folded it tenderly to her bosom.
Cloud saw the woman’s eyes pleading with him.
Stop him! a voice cried in Cloud. Stop this thing now, before it’s too late!
“Ma‘am,” he said, “there’s nothin’ I can do.”
She fell to her knees, sobbing in anguish, and the heart went out of him. He said it again, for his own benefit rather than hers:
“There’s nothin’ I can do.”