Toohmah methodically emptied his rifle into the backs of the unsuspecting Whites. Coolly, without the rage of bloodlust, he reloaded and once more emptied the weapon. To each side of him, Quinne and Chana knelt on one knee; blue-and-yellow blossoms of flame leaped from the muzzles of their rifles as they followed his lead.
Taken unawares, the white men twisted and jerked in a macabre dance, their forms dark silhouettes beneath the moonlight. Two of the men managed to swing their weapons toward the canyon’s north wall and the shadows that cloaked the three Comanches. Each fired a single shot before the hail of lead cut him down. Their bullets whined off rock, an empty gesture in the face of death.
The old Comanche raised a hand, halting his young companions, who prepared to fire their reloaded rifles into the bodies that were strewn beside the outcropping of rock. There was no need to waste ammunition. The moon’s soft glow revealed no movement among the Whites.
“We have done enough.” Toohmah’s stoic mask gentled to an expression of satisfaction. Their attack had come quick and heavy. He was not fool enough to believe all the Whites had been killed. The only way to be certain of that was to walk among them and place a bullet in each of their heads. To do that would be too dangerous. To leave the concealing shadows, to expose themselves, would be suicidal madness. A wounded man, even a dying one, can lift a rifle, aim, and squeeze a trigger.
Quinne and Chana rose. The latter’s breath came heavy and uneven. Hidden in the darkness, Toohmah frowned. Perhaps his earlier praise for Chana had come too soon. Fear moved within the young man. His heart still was not one that belonged to a brave of the People.
“Uncle, the horses!” Quinne grabbed Toohmah’s arm and pointed.
The Whites’ horses had broken their tethers during the attack, frightened by the sudden gunfire and confusion. Scattered wildly across the gorge, they bolted toward the mouth of the canyon.
“Should we chase them?” Quinne questioned.
A low curse pushed its way over Toohmah’s lips. He had wanted fresh mounts to replace those the Whites had killed. Now ... he could not risk the chase. The satisfied expression faded from his face.
“We will go deeper in the canyon. Come.” Pivoting, he started down the gorge in a loping run. Quinne and Chana followed at his heels.
The horses were not necessary; time was essential. The Whites would not stop, Toohmah realized. Even if they had killed all those by the outcropping, there would be others who would eventually take up the trail, their determination fired by the shame of repeated defeats at the hands of three lone Comanches. The white man’s pride could not suffer that.
Toohmah hastened his strides. He would lead the others up the canyon wall. Once atop the caprock they would find a ranch and steal horses to carry them southward to the land of the Mejanos.
He smiled. Freedom in Mexico, that would be the supreme victory, to completely evade the Whites when he crossed the Rio Grande. He pushed the thought from his mind. Mexico lay too far in the distance. To walk the High Plains would be enough. It would be a victory that no White could ever conceive of. Were he to die the instant his feet touched the caprock’s soil, he would have won what no man could snatch from him. Tomorrow morning, anticipation ran like lightning through his body, he would tread the High Plains.
His strides lengthened, the age of his legs melting away. The frailties of the flesh fled before his soaring spirit. The chase, the hunt, the attack, they fed his soul, fired the strength of his muscles. The years, the reservation, were meaningless. He was Comanche and a Blood Moon ruled the night sky.
A mile, perhaps two, from the outcropping, Toohmah had lost judgment of distance in the rush of exhilaration, he stopped after rounding a sharp bend in the canyon’s wall. He smiled. A second bend lay but five hundred feet farther into Palo Duro. The second bend provided the shelter they needed for the night. In the morning, they would climb atop the caprock. If Younkin and any other Whites followed ...
Younkin? Doubt, a possibility Toohmah did not wish to face, niggled at the back of his mind. Surely the scout lay dead with his companions ... or wounded. Yet ....
Toohmah walked toward the second bend, trying to shake the uneasiness that dampened his spirits. If Younkin had survived the attack, he would lead the Whites. Alone, if necessary, the scout would come after him. As surely as Toohmah would sacrifice his own life to kill this enemy come from the past, he knew Younkin would follow though his body were mortally wounded.
What drove such a man? The white man’s years equaled his, yet Younkin was relentless in his pursuit. Did the man’s hate equal the hate that the Comanche carried in his chest? For what? Toohmah shook his head, puzzled by the forces that worked within such a man.
“We’ll camp here for the night.” The thought of Younkin alive and behind him darkened his soul. He turned to his two companions. Only Quinne was there. He glanced at the son of his sister’s daughter. “Chana?”
Quinne swirled around, searching for the third member of their band. He looked back at Toohmah. “He was right behind me.”
The old man’s uneasiness increased. “Wait here. I will go back and find him.”
He started to retrace their steps, stopped, and looked back at Quinne. “If I do not return within the hour, climb the wall and flee to the south.”
Not waiting for Quinne to question his instructions, Toohmah trotted off. Where his legs had seemed so strong but moments ago, they now carried the full weight of his age. Each step hurt, arthritic pain cutting into his knees. He grimaced, gritting his teeth.
A quarter of a mile from where he had left Quinne, he found Chana. The youth lay on his side close to the canyon wall. Both his hands clutched his stomach. Toohmah squatted beside him.
Chana’s eyes opened. “You came back. The Whites ... I’m hurt.”
He removed his hands to reveal the dark wetness that covered their palms. Blood stained the front of the shirt he wore. It couldn’t be. Toohmah had heard the ricochet of the Whites’ bullets. It just couldn’t be. Yet it was.
Against hope, Toohmah tore open the shirt. Like a second navel, the small bullet wound sat at the center of his belly. He had seen many young braves die from such wounds, knew the prolonged agony such a death brought. Yet Chana gave no outward display of pain.
“Am I dying?” A stream of blood flowed from one of the young man’s nostrils.
“Yes.” It never occurred to the older man to hide the truth. “Soon you will ride with the braves in the Valley of Ten Thousand-fold Longer and Wider. You will hunt and ride to war as befits a warrior.”
“And the Whites?” Chana’s voice was a soft whisper. “Will they hunt us there?”
“The valley is not for the Whites.” Guilt coursed through the older man. He remembered Chana’s ragged breaths after the attack. He had mistaken the younger man’s heavy breathing for a sign of fear. A man could be no more wrong. Chana had contained the fire that devoured his entrails when other men would have screamed in fear and pain. Only the bravest of warriors held such strength. “You will ride with the mightiest of the People, and they will call you by the name Permero Okoom.”
“Permero Okoom, the Bull. It is a good name.” Chana coughed. Blood and phlegm sprayed from his lips. His face contorted as pain racked his body. “It wasn’t supposed to end like this.”
“It will be over shortly, then there will be no pain.” Toohmah rested a hand on Chana’s shoulder. “I will stay with you and see you on your journey.”
The younger man did not answer. His eyes gazed vacantly out onto the canyon; his chest did not move. Toohmah leaned over. He felt no breath come from Chana’s lips.
Mentally chanting a death song, the old brave rose. He grasped his dead companion by the arms and dragged him behind three fallen boulders. He then gathered rocks and covered the body. It was not a fitting grave for one so brave, but it was all he could offer the warrior as a final resting place.
“Permero Okoom,” Toohmah whispered to his dead companion, then turned and began walking back to Quinne. It wasn’t supposed to end like this. The youth’s final words refused to leave his mind.
Chana’s hopes had taken him to Mexico, where he would have spent his life in freedom. Now, he lay dead because of an old man’s insistence on once again walking the land of his birth. Had Boisa Pah’s dreams been different? He now lay dead, killed by the same old man’s hunting knife. Toohmah’s eyes closed tightly in an attempt to hold back the welling tears of guilt and anger.
No, Toohmah told himself. Both young men had been given the choice to ride with him or to make their own way to Mexico. They had made their decision and followed him. The choice had been theirs alone.
He deceived himself. There had been no choice. On their own, neither Chana nor Boisa Pah would have made it to the land of the Mejanos. They had been soft, unable to scrounge the land for food and shelter. They would not have survived for more than a few days before the Whites had ridden them down. Boisa Pah had seen that. His anger had stemmed from his frustration at being trapped by an old man.
Toohmah had given them but one choice, his way, the old way of the People. And they had died.
They had died!
A high-pitched wail of shame and mourning rose from the old man’s throat and tore from his mouth, rising to the Moon Mother. The burden of the two deaths was his alone, bowing his shoulders with an unbearable weight.
Youth had died. He had tried to return to a world that no longer existed. Was that the old ways of the Nermemuh ? Was that the way of old men, to kill the young? Did he harbor some jealousy for those who would inherit the land after his death?
He cursed himself and his blindness. The irony of the past months writhed and knotted within his gut. Three young men had come to him for aid, to draw upon the experience of his years. Had he provided the counsel that reflected the wisdom of those years? No, he had assumed leadership of the small band. The old never had led the People, that was reserved for the young whose lives remained before them. What war chief could truly claim success if he rode back to camp with the bodies of companions killed under his leadership?
The horror of what he had blindly done railed within him. There was no escape from the results of his greedy selfishness. He had placed his desires, those of a dried-up old man, above those of youth. His world was not the world of the son of his sister’s daughter, nor was it that which had belonged to Chana and Boisa Pah. He had hoped to give them the world of his own youth, what had once been his. What use did they have of that? The world he now walked was theirs. He could never regain that which time had stripped away.
Glancing up as he rounded the canyon’s first bend, Toohmah saw Quinne standing where he had ordered him to wait.
Waiting for what? Death.
The truth squirmed free within Toohmah’s soul. He was death that walked on two feet. Death was all that awaited Quinne if he remained at the side of his grandmother’s brother. Twice the old Comanche had killed his own people. Now he offered the same fate to one that carried his own blood. Had age made him so contemptuous of youth’s vitality?
No! He refused to rob the son of his sister’s daughter of the right to find his own world and life. He would lead Quinne from the canyon this very night. They would raid a ranch. With fresh horses they could reach Mexico within three days. It would be hard riding without sleep or food, but it could be done.
Toohmah caught himself. Mexico? What had seemed the way to a complete victory over the Whites but moments ago now seemed hollow and meaningless. Mexico held no place for him. This, the High Plains and Palo Duro, was his land, his world. It was all he had ever truly known. Mexico was but another reservation, the borders of which would hold him as surely as had the White guards at Fort Sill. Mexico could never offer him the peace he found here.
“Chana?” Quinne stared at his uncle. “Is he dead? I heard a wail of mourning.”
“A belly wound. He died bravely.” Toohmah nodded. His eyes rode up the full height of the canyon’s wall. He could climb it with Quinne. But what would remain? There was no purpose in fleeing with Quinne.
The son of his sister’s daughter could fend for himself; he had learned much in the past months. There was a better use for the last moments of an old man. Something he could do to assuage the guilt he carried and aid Quinne’s escape.
Toohmah’s gaze returned to the young man. “You must prepare to go now. To stay would only mean death for you.”
“We should rest before starting the climb. You are tired.” Quinne stripped off his shirt and tied it to the muzzle and stock of his rifle, making a sling. He slipped it around head and shoulder.
“Only you will go. I stay.” He reached into the saddlebags and produced two boxes of cartridges that he handed to Quinne. “The nenuhpee was right. The High Plains are not meant for me.”
“Uncle, I will stay—” Quinne began.
“You will climb the canyon.” The muzzle of Toohmah’s rifle rose, leveled at the younger man’s stomach. “Your arm will slow you, but there are handholds and footholds, enough for a child to make the climb. Go slowly and carefully. Once on the caprock find a ranch, steal a horse and ride to Mexico. You will be free there.”
“Uncle, I have no wish to—” Quinne protested. “Climb.” Toohmah jabbed the youth’s belly with the rifle. “In Mexico find a woman. When you have a child, remember me to him. Now climb.”
Hesitantly, Quinne started up the sloping foot of the canyon wall. He stopped and turned back to his uncle. “I shall call my son Toohmah.”
“Name him Cona cheak, the name given me by my father’s brother. It is a good name,” Toohmah answered.
Standing at the foot of the wall, Toohmah watched Quinne resume the climb. Cautiously, favoring his injured arm, the young man picked his way up the rocky face. Eventually, he crawled over the rim, vanishing for a moment. Then he was there again, standing, peering down at his uncle.
Toohmah raised his rifle high above his head and swung it to the south. Without a word, Quinne turned and walked away, disappearing behind the canyon’s rim.
For a moment, the old man stood staring above at the place his sister’s daughter’s son had stood. He smiled. He had made the right choice; youth would live. He turned and started deeper into the canyon. When morning came, if it brought Younkin and other Whites, he would be waiting. He would delay their search, giving Quinne the time needed to make his way beyond the Texas border.