Comancheros (A Cheyenne Western. Book 7) Page 2

  “I not only authorize Tangle Hair to go,” he said, “but Little Horse and Touch the Sky also.”

  Black Elk and Wolf Who Hunts Smiling both spoke up at the same moment, protesting this decision.

  “Spotted Tail is a troop leader,” Chief Gray Thunder said. “If the Bull Whips may send out a band, so too may the Bowstrings.”

  “She is my wife,” Black Elk protested. “This pretend Cheyenne wants to put on the old moccasin by marrying my squaw. Only loin heat makes him so eager to ride after her!”

  “Even now,” Touch the Sky said, “he cheapens his good wife with this low talk. She has always behaved as what she is, the daughter of a great chief. Yet this mighty war leader has lately taken to cutting off her braid and beating her!”

  Rage turned Black Elk’s face scarlet. But before he could reply, Gray Thunder spoke up again.

  “I have no more ears for this clash of jealous bulls! Unless we act quickly and well, it hardly matters about Honey Eater’s braid. This is no time for bickering amongst ourselves. We must stand shoulder to shoulder. I do not agree with this thing, this sending out of two separate bands. But the troop leaders have spoken, and Hunt Law is clear on the point of their authority.”

  ~*~

  Soon after the council disbanded. Touch the Sky watched Black Elk, Wolf Who Hunts Smiling, and Swift Canoe quickly form a little group on the far side of the clearing. They were joined by two of the Bull Whip soldiers. Now and then one of them would cast a malevolent glance toward him.

  Old Arrow Keeper too watched Black Elk’s little band. Clearly Touch the Sky’s enemies were once again plotting against him. Pulling his red Hudson’s Bay blanket tighter around his shoulders, the medicine man crossed the clearing to speak with his young apprentice.

  “Carry these words away with you, little brother,” he said. “Black Elk is baiting you for a fight to the death. I know you hate him, and I understand why. I also understand why he hates you. Things are the way they are, and if forced to it, you must defend yourself. But I am not teaching you the shaman arts so that you will freely shed Cheyenne blood and stain the Sacred Arrows. Do you understand this thing?”

  Slowly, reluctantly, Touch the Sky nodded. The old man had the most important responsibility in the tribe: protecting with his life the four sacred Medicine Arrows which symbolized the fate of the entire Shaiyena people. For this sacred task was he named Keeper of the Arrows. They must stay forever sweet and clean. Any Cheyenne blood shed by another Cheyenne would stain the Arrows—and thus the entire tribe, ruining the buffalo hunts, bringing the red-speckled cough and other misfortunes.

  “This mission will be among the most dangerous of your life,” Arrow Keeper added. “You are learning to be a shaman. You must rely on the language of your senses and strong medicine too, not just the warrior way.”

  Abruptly the old man turned and walked off.

  “Clearly, brother,” Little Horse said as he and Tangle Hair prepared to ride out with Touch the Sky, “Black Elk plans to leave first.”

  Touch the Sky nodded. “He is eager once again to play the big Indian. He is more concerned about his reputation than his wife and the others.”

  “Should we hurry and leave first?” Tangle Hair said.

  “Not at all,” Touch the Sky replied. “If we race them, we will only put the prisoners at more risk by forcing Black Elk to his hotheaded foolishness. I see that his band are taking no lead lines with them. This means that in their hurry they are not bothering to take remounts. Against Comanches and Kiowas, with their powerful ponies, this is a mistake. We will cut extra mounts from the herd before we leave.”

  “Not one buck in Black Elk’s band would mind seeing carrion birds pluck out your eyes,” Little Horse said, his voice troubled. “I fear they are planning more than the rescue of our women and children. They also plan to send you under.”

  Touch the Sky nodded. But that thought was less important than the menacing refrain of Chief Gray Thunder’s words, which had struck Touch the Sky like lance points: Unless we act quickly and well, it hardly matters about Honey Eater’s braid.

  Chapter Two

  A rifle bolt clicked in the chilly darkness just outside the cave, and Victorio Grayeyes woke instantly.

  Moonlight as pale as ice slanted in past giant boulders which formed a natural rampart at the cave entrance. The dry bunchgrass mat under his blankets rustled when the young Apache brave sat up. The sound was exaggeratedly loud and called attention to itself in the cold stillness of the limestone cavern.

  A full moon outside limned much of the interior in a soft glow. He could just make out dim mounds where the others huddled together for warmth. There was a creaking like stiff saddle leather as one of the infants moved in its wicker cradle.

  Victorio’s pulse slowly stopped throbbing so hard in his palms. The sound he’d heard was nothing, he assured himself. Just a memory from the hard days spent fighting and running from the bloodthirsty Spaniards. Now the Apache-hating Mexicans were taking over where the Spaniards left off, and the Americans were no better. But his clan was safe here, high in the mountains of the New Mexico Territory. Victorio’s father and uncles had selected this stronghold because they knew Mexican Federales and Anglo bluecoats alike were too lazy to search it out. Only with the help of a turncoat Apache, his father had said over and over, will anyone find us here.

  Just then Victorio smelled the bitter smell of the cactus liquor known as pulque. No one here had drunk any for days now. But he knew someone who liked to drink it all the time—someone who had fled from this place after stealing everything of value.

  A cold tickle of fear moved up his spine. A moment later he spotted a Mexican soldier.

  Everything happened fast after that, though to Victorio it felt like he was trying to run in thigh-deep water. It was a Federale officer. Victorio glimpsed the familiar kepi and crossed bandoliers. He made out the coarse-grained face, eyes far too small for the huge skull, a weak chin stubbled with beard. Victorio opened his mouth to shout a warning to the others. But the first gunshot beat him to it.

  At night Victorio always tucked his rifle into his blankets to protect it from dew. He drew it out now, his fingers struggling in dream-time clumsiness, his index finger groping to find the trigger guard.

  We’re all going to die, Victorio thought as he struggled with the weapon. Again he heard his father’s voice: Only with the help of a turncoat Apache!

  A moment later he saw his clan cousin, Juan Aragon, step inside, followed by more Federales. Juan brought the strong smell of pulque with him. He had stolen all of it when he left.

  Victorio finally found the trigger even as another Apache discharged his weapon at the intruders. But when he aimed it into the middle of Juan’s body and squeezed the trigger, the hammer clicked on a damp primer cap.

  Victorio’s grandfather, Atoka, had been asleep about fifteen feet to the youth’s right. Now Victorio watched Juan move as swiftly and smoothly as a wraith. Victorio glimpsed Juan’s empty shoulder scabbard, glimpsed moonlight glinting cruelly off the curved blade of his upraised machete.

  Atoka struggled to free himself of his tightly wrapped blanket. There was a swishing whisper as the machete sliced through air, then a sound like a hoe digging into flinty dirt. Victorio heard his grandfather grunt in death, heard the blood splashing heavily onto the stone floor of the cave.

  White-hot rage replaced the numbing fear in his veins. He could hear his cousin’s little babies crying, his younger brother and sister wailing. More guns, mostly the intruders’, spat fire into the night, and there were more curses in Spanish. Victorio grasped his sturdy trade rifle like a club and rose even as one of the soldiers fired his pistols point-blank into the wicker cradles, killing the infants one by one.

  Victorio swung hard at a shadowy figure, heard a surprised grunt as a soldier slumped to the floor. He moved forward amidst a hell-spawned clamor of shouts, screams, and gunfire. He was forced to watch, unable to move fast enough in the
confusion of flashing weapons, as his mother and father rose together, still naked, and lunged toward the outcropping where Victorio’s six-year-old brother Delshay and nine-year-old sister Josefa slept. Victorio knew they hoped to grab the children and escape through the hidden tunnel behind the limestone outcropping.

  It all happened too quickly for Victorio to stop it. His mestizo cousin Juan drew his famous Anglo pistol, the heavy-bore Smith & Wesson cavalry gun with its huge muzzle. Victorio could see his mother’s bare back in the stark moonlight, slim and muscle-ridged. Then Juan fired, and Victorio saw his mother collapse like a rag puppet as the huge-caliber slug punched into her. Another percussion cap cracked, and his father tumbled dead to the rock floor.

  The acrid smell of spent cordite was thick in the air. Victorio swung on another Federale, felt the satisfying thud of solid contact with his skull.

  Suddenly Victorio’s bare feet hit a smooth patch of water-covered shale, and he went down hard on the rock, cracking his head.

  For some time he lay balanced on the feather edge of awareness, drifting between cold, dark sleep and a blurry confusion like a waking dream. He was unable to move, had fallen half wedged into a fissure. Each time he even attempted to move, pain exploded inside his skull and sent him reeling under hot, red waves.

  “Maldita sea!” he heard one of the Mexicans curse. “Someone has laid Jorge out like a corpse!”

  “Never mind that,” said another. “Make sure all the Apaches are dead.”

  “Not all of them. Kill the babies and the adults. But you gave your word. The boy and the girl are mine.” Victorio recognized this last voice as Juan Aragon’s.

  “Madre de Dios, do you believe this Comanchero half-breed?” one of the soldiers exclaimed, laughing. “Shoots his own uncle and aunt in the back, then reminds us we gave our word! Our word that he might sell his own cousins to the whoremongers!”

  “Basta ya!” Shut up! I said to make sure they are all dead before you start crowing like a rooster! Check that one over there. I thought he moved.”

  Victorio heard steps coming closer to him, braced for the bullet which would surely be put in his brain to make sure he was dead. But now the pain was sucking the breath out of him, and he slipped into unconsciousness even as his dead father’s voice still repeated its accusing litany: Only with the help of a turncoat Apache could they find us here.

  Chapter Three

  “So much for the tall Cheyenne ‘shaman’ who strikes fear into the Pawnees!” Hairy Wolf said scornfully. “He may conjure up grizzly bears and insane white men, as the Pawnee claim. But his big medicine could not stop us! Ahead only one sleep lies Blanco Canyon, brother! We are safe! Even the blue-dressed soldiers know better than to attack us here.”

  The Comanche leader named Iron Eyes nodded in agreement with his Kiowa ally. The two braves had halted their bands in the midst of the vast, sterile wasteland known as the Llano Estacado or Staked Plain. This remote wilderness, covering much of the Texas Panhandle and eastern New Mexico Territory, was an unsettled, almost treeless expanse seldom visited by the hair faces.

  It was divided, near its center, by Blanco Canyon, home to Iron Eyes and his Quohada or Antelope Eater band of Comanches. Hairy Wolf had led his Kiowa warriors from Medicine Lodge Creek in Oklahoma to join their longtime battle allies for this important raid against their joint enemy, the Cheyenne.

  “Soon,” Iron Eyes said, “we will be rich in whiskey and new rifles. Aragon tells me he cannot find enough good women and children to supply those who wish to pay handsomely for them. He will take every one of these Cheyennes.”

  All around them stretched the endless, barren desert plains broken up only by sterile mountains and bone-dry arroyos. The setting sun was a huge, dull-orange ball on the western horizon. Its dying light turned the chalky alkali dust into a strange yellow fog. By day, that sun burned with a merciless intensity that kept even the jackrabbits and rattlesnakes in hiding.

  Hairy Wolf rode a huge sorrel with a fine, hand-tooled saddle stolen from the Mexicans. The Kiowa leader was a member of the elite Kaitsenko—the ten best warriors of the entire Kiowa tribe. He wore captured Bluecoat trousers and boots. He was bare from the waist up except for a bone breastplate. Like most Kiowa men he was tall and broad-shouldered, and wore his flowing black hair well below his waist unbraided.

  He turned in his saddle to glance back toward the rear of the column.

  “Aragon will not buy every one of them,” he said. “Our men will want to celebrate their victory. We have one or two prisoners who will not be worth much. There is blood to atone for. Do not forget those who may no longer be mentioned.”

  Iron Eyes nodded, understanding his meaning. Though the recent raid had been successful, several Kiowas and Comanches had been picked off by the sharp-shooting Cheyennes. Their bodies had not been recovered. Thus, by custom, their names could never again be mentioned.

  Physically, Iron Eyes was a stark contrast to his companion. Unlike the handsome Kiowas, the Comanches were small and bandy-legged and considered homely by most other Indians. Yet in fierce temper and love of battle the two tribes were one. They were also one in their love of inflicting torture on captives—an entertainment that ranked above even pony races and gambling.

  He too turned around to glance back. His eyes landed on the beautiful Cheyenne girl with the jagged crop where her braid had been cut off. Even without her long hair she was clearly a beauty: skin the color of wild honey, huge, wing-shaped eyes, delicately carved cheekbones.

  Iron Eyes lifted one hand to touch the ragged laceration on his left cheek. The girl had fought like a she-bear when he snatched her up, cutting his face open with the suicide knife Cheyenne women wore on thongs around their necks.

  “Yes,” Iron Eyes agreed, “the men will want to celebrate. We will give them one of the children. And perhaps there is one more Aragon will not get—though surely he would love to have her for she will bring the most money.”

  Hairy Wolf narrowed his eyes, studying his friend’s face. His eyes too looked where Iron Eyes was looking. Then he smiled, understanding. He too had been thinking that this one should be kept back when the sale was made. There still remained the problem of deciding which one of them would own her as his personal slave. But this thing could be worked out. Women were like horses—arrangements could be made.

  “We will ride a little further, then camp. We will keep a guard out on our back trail,” Hairy Wolf said. “In one more sleep we will reach the Blanco Canyon. Not even carrion birds will follow us into that stronghold.”

  “No,” Iron Eyes said. “But Cheyenne warriors are braver than carrion birds. They must be respected. We will need to hold the prisoners there until we are convinced their tribe is not on the warpath against us.”

  Hairy Wolf nodded, his long hair whipping out behind him as the dust-laden wind picked up. “Then we can send a word-bringer to Aragon.”

  As the two men spoke, they shifted fluently from Kiowa to Comanche to Spanish. Both tribes spoke all three languages and used them interchangeably, especially to fool their enemies. It was the Spaniards who had taught them the pleasures of torture. It was also the Spaniards who had taught them the value of slave trading. Now both tribes were active in the Comanchero trade conducted with New Mexicans and Mexicans, supplying various Indian captives as slaves in exchange for firearms and alcohol and rich white man’s tobacco. Slavery was technically illegal in both Old Mexico and the New Mexico Territory. But a constant market for cheap labor and prostitutes, combined with a lack of lawmen, made it very profitable—much more so than selling hides or even fine horses.

  Behind them, one of the captured children raised his voice in a pathetic wail. A moment later, the sound was lost in the fierce shrieking of the wind.

  Hairy Wolf lifted his streamered lance high overhead. The long column moved forward into the dying sun.

  ~*~

  The Comanche warrior named Big Tree spoke some Cheyenne, a language he had learned sev
eral winters ago when the mountain men known as the Taos Trappers still hired Indian scouts to lead them into the north country. Now he led a small chestnut pony by a rawhide lead line. Honey Eater rode the chestnut, her ankles lashed together under the pony’s belly.

  Occasionally, in the dying light, the Comanche turned around to stare at her. He was big for a Comanche, though he had the characteristic bowed legs which were only at home on horseback. Of all the tribes to the north which had driven his people to this desolate land, he hated the Cheyennes the most. They had killed his father in the famous battle at Wolf Creek, a Cheyenne throwing ax opening his skull like a melon.

  But Big Tree was a Quohada and knew that revenge was a dish best served cold. Patiently, over the many years since Wolf Creek, he had honed the warrior’s skills until he had become the deadliest and most feared Comanche in the Southwest. In the time that it took a blue-blouse soldier to load and fire a carbine twice, Big Tree could ride a horse three hundred yards while stringing and firing twenty arrows with deadly accuracy.

  “Your Cheyenne bucks have already had a taste of my skill as a warrior,” he told Honey Eater in her own tongue. “They will taste much more if they are foolish enough to pursue us. And perhaps you will learn one of my skills too, haughty Cheyenne she-bitch!”

  Once he had ridden back and shoved one calloused hand into her doeskin dress, fondling her breasts. Too weak to pull his hand away, she had bent quickly forward and gripped his forearm between her teeth. With a harsh yowl he had pulled his hand back out. But the glint in his eyes had hinted that he would be back for more—much more.

  Honey Eater was numb with shock and fear, as were all of the prisoners. For days they had been forced to ride hard, existing only on alkali-tainted water and the hard, unleavened bread the whites called hardtack. She had been unable to sleep, to bathe. Now her pretty face was streaked where sweat had mixed with the chalky alkali dust.