Later, as I smoked and drank scalding hot coffee, I looked from the sheltering trees, my eyes searching beyond the teeming deluge to the west, where the Staked Plains stretched away forever, their vast distances now lost behind an iron gray curtain of rain and low cloud.
My mind fell to remembering my first trip up the trail, when I’d seen the last of the buffalo on those plains, and the last of the free, wild Comanche.
The Comanche had come out of that barren vastness one late afternoon under a burning scarlet sky and for a while they’d ridden alongside us, keeping pace, so we were maybe just a couple of hundred yards apart. Simon Prather yelled for us to keep our rifles handy and to bunch the herd and when I looked into his eyes I saw nothing but worry.
The Comanche were strung out over a quarter of a mile, fifty or so warriors in the lead, proud lords of the plains with fine hands unsullied by manual labor. The warriors hunted and made war, knew only the lance and the bow; all else was left to the women. Unlike other plains Indians the Comanche wore no feathers, their long hair hanging loose over their shoulders or bound up in red-ribbon braids.
Behind the warriors the young women, some in beaded buckskin, others in skirts and embroidered Spanish shirts, rode paint ponies that dragged travois, the thin pine poles hissing like snakes through the long blue grama grass.
Next came the old people, wearily trudging on foot. The Comanche had no respect for the aged, figuring that a man who lived long enough to have gray hair and a big belly had not been a gallant enough warrior. On the plains, the truly brave died young. Old men were not listened to in council and in lean times were abandoned to starvation and the wolves. Old women, well past childbearing age and beyond their strength, fared no better. They were useless mouths to feed and as expendable as the men.
Last came the slaves, overburdened and abused, staggering through the dust bent over from their heavy loads, Mexican mostly but with a sprinkling of white and black faces, all of them considered by the Comanche less than human and treated as such.
Finally, as the day was just shading into night, five of the warriors swung out of line and rode up to Mr. Prather. They were ready for war, the bottom halves of their faces from the eyes down painted black. The Comanche made it clear by sign language and a smattering of Spanish that they wanted a dozen cows, but in the end Simon gave them six young calves he would have shot anyway since they couldn’t keep up with the herd, a side of bacon, salt and some lye soap.
The Indians also wanted whiskey and ten dollars, but this they did not get.
At full dark we kept the herd close and stood to arms. I took up my rifle and waited by a wheel of the chuck wagon, listening to the dim drums throbbing in the distance of the night and the rise and fall of the wolf wail of the warriors.
The Comanche hit us at dawn, but since there was a dozen of us punchers, all well-armed and determined, they were content to trade rifle shots at long range and no execution was done on either side.
Through it all, Simon Prather walked among us, exhorting us to be steadfast in our time of peril and to keep our faces turned to the enemy.
In the end, the Indians did drop one old cow that Mr. Prather let them have, telling us that it didn’t make no never mind because they would stop to butcher and eat the cow and not follow us. And indeed, that turned out to be the case.
Now, as I looked out on their bleak vastness, the Staked Plains were empty of life. The long shadows of the buffalo were gone and with them those of the Comanche and neither had left a mark on the land.
I finished my coffee, threw the dregs on the fire and swung into the saddle.
By midafternoon I was riding back along the trail we’d made in the spring, crossing the divide between the Red and the Wichita. This was hilly country, the black soil heavy with salt, and I let my horse graze on a clump of salt weed for a spell before urging him on again.
I found wagon tracks in the mud a few minutes later.
The tracks were heading due south, and I figured they were of a four-wheel wagon drawn by two oxen. Judging by the way the iron wheel rims had dug deep into the mud, it was heavily laden.
Teamsters sometimes traveled this route, carrying supplies to Fort Worth and other places, but they always cut across the Western Trail, heading west, not south.
I swung out of the saddle and checked the footprints by the tracks, trailing the black behind me. The wagon was not far ahead because, despite the rain, the prints were still fresh.
One set was small and neat, obviously made by a woman, the others those of a booted man.
Bullwhackers don’t ride on the wagon, but walk alongside the oxen with a whip to urge them on, and these two were no exception.
What a man and a woman were doing in this country in the middle of an Apache uprising I could not guess. But something, maybe the way the man’s prints now and then suddenly veered away from the wagon and slipped and slid all over the place, told me these were pilgrims and the husband, if that was what he was, seemed to be either staggering sick or staggering drunk.
If there were Apaches close, they would have seen those tracks and would know there was a woman with the wagon, a valuable prize they would use to while away a few pleasant hours before they killed her.
I swung into the saddle and followed the tracks. Ahead of me they led into a narrow valley between shallow hills before disappearing into gray distance and rain.
Heavy drops hammering on my hat and slicker, I reined in the black and looked around. The surrounding hills seemed empty of life, but that was no guarantee the Apaches weren’t around. It’s when you don’t see them you worry, and right now I saw nothing but the rain on the hills and the lowering blackness of the sky, lit up now and then by the flash of lightning.
The past weeks had taught me caution, and I eased my Winchester from the boot and laid it across the saddle horn.
A few yards ahead of me a covey of scaled quail, soaked and unable or unwilling to fly, ran from one mesquite bush to another, rattling the plants’ stick arms with their small bodies. Then the land fell silent again but for the hiss of the rain.
I leaned over, patted the black’s neck, and urged him forward. He tossed his head, his bit ringing like a bell in the quiet, took off at a canter, then settled back into an easy, distance-eating lope.
My eyes constantly scanning the hills and surrounding stands of oak and mesquite, I rode into the mouth of the valley. A quick glance at the sky told me there were at least four hours until nightfall. Until then, me and the two people who were walking with the wagon would be out in the open and dangerously exposed.
I slowed the black to a walk and rode alert in the saddle, my nose lifted, testing the breeze, but smelled only wet grass and rain and the dank, menacing odor of the dead silence.
Five minutes later, as I cleared the valley and rode into a mesquite-studded flat, I found the wagon.
I reined up when I was still a hundred yards away and stood in the stirrups and studied the wagon, the two people beside it and the lay of the land, not wishing to blunder into trouble.
My first glance told me this was a tumbleweed outfit and my second confirmed it. The wagon was old, the planks warped, the whole sorry wreck held together with baling wire, biscuit tin patches and string.
Off to one side two huge oxen trailed a broken wagon tongue as they grazed, still hitched together. A young girl in a hooded cloak stood by the front of the wagon, looking down helplessly at the shattered, raw stump of the tongue.