But they were taking no chances. Gods could do many fantastic things, particularly when angered. The boys didn’t stop for any backslapping. They rode full-out, determined not to slow until they’d reached the safety of the village.
They weren’t two miles from the fort, however, when Cisco decided to exercise his will. And it was not his will to go with these boys.
They were at a full run when the buckskin wheeled sharply away. Horn Bull’s son was pulled off his pony as if he’d been low-bridged by a tree limb.
Frog Back and Smiles A Lot tried to give chase, but Cisco kept running, the long lead line trailing behind him. He had true speed, and when the speed gave out, his stamina took over.
The Indian ponies wouldn’t have caught him if they’d been fresh.
Dunbar had just gotten a pot of coffee going and was sitting morosely by his fire when Cisco trotted casually into the flickering light.
The lieutenant was more relieved than he was surprised. Having his horse stolen had made him mad as a hornet. But Cisco had been stolen before, twice to be exact, and like a faithful dog, he had always found a way to come back.
Lieutenant Dunbar gathered in the Comanche lead line, checked his horse for cuts, and, with the sky turning pink in the east, led the little buckskin down the slope for a drink.
While he sat by the stream, Dunbar watched the surface. The river’s little fish were beginning to bite at the hordes of invisible insects lighting on top of the water, and the lieutenant suddenly felt as helpless as a mayfly.
The Indians could have killed him as easily as they had stolen his horse.
The idea of dying bothered him. I could be dead by this afternoon, he thought.
What bothered him even more was the prospect of dying like an insect.
He decided then and there that, if he was going to die, it would not be in bed.
He knew that something was in motion, something that made him vulnerable in a way that sent a chill up his spine. He might be a citizen of the prairie, but that didn’t mean he was accepted. He was the new kid in school. Their eyes would be on him.
His spine was still tingling as he led Cisco back up the slope.
Horn Bull’s son had broken his arm.
He was given over to Kicking Bird as soon as the bedraggled trio of would-be warriors entered the village.
The boys had begun to worry from the moment Horn Bull’s son found that his arm would not work. If no one had gotten hurt, they might have been able to keep their botched raid a secret. But immediately there had been questions, and the boys, though they might be given to sprucing up the facts, were Comanche. And Comanches had great difficulty lying. Even Comanche boys.
While Kicking Bird worked on his arm, and with his father and Ten Bears listening, Horn Bull’s son told the truth of what had happened.
It was not unusual for a stolen horse to break away from its captors and return home, but because they might be dealing with a spirit, the matter of the horse took on a great importance and the older men questioned the injured boy closely.
When he told them the horse had not spooked, that he had broken away deliberately, the faces of his elders grew noticeably longer.
Another council was called.
This time everyone knew what it was about, for the story of the boys’ misadventure quickly became the talk of the camp. Some of the more impressionable people in the village suffered brief bouts of the jitters when they learned that a strange white god might be lurking in the neighborhood, but mostly everyone went about their business with the feeling that Ten Bears’s council would figure something out.
Still, everyone was anxious.
Only one among them was truly terrified.
CHAPTER X
She’d been terrified the summer before, when it was discovered that white soldiers had come into the country. The band had never met the hair mouths, except for killing several on isolated occasions. She had hoped they would never meet them.
When the white soldiers’ horses were stolen late last summer, she had panicked and run off. She was sure the white soldiers would come to the village. But they didn’t.
Still, she was on pins and needles until it was determined that, without their horses, the white soldiers were practically helpless. Then she had been able to relax a little. But it wasn’t until they broke camp and were on the winter trail that the awful cloud of fear that followed her all summer finally lifted.
Now summer was on them again, and all along the trail from the winter camp she had prayed fiercely for the hair mouths to be gone. Her prayers had not been answered, and once again her days were troubled, hour by hour.
Her name was Stands With A Fist.
She alone, among all the Comanches, knew that the white man was not a god. The story of Kicking Bird’s encounter did puzzle her, however. A single naked white man? Out here? In the Comanche homeland? It didn’t make sense. But no matter. Without knowing precisely why, she knew he was not a god. Something old told her so.
She heard the story that morning, on her way to the once-a-month lodge, the one set aside for menstruating women. She’d been thinking of her husband. Normally she did not like going to the lodge because she would miss his company. He was wonderful, a brave, handsome, and altogether exceptional man. A model husband. She had never been struck by him, and though both their babies had died (one in childbirth, the other a few weeks later), he had stubbornly refused to take another wife.
People had urged him to take another wife. Even Stands With A Fist suggested it. But he said simply, “You are plenty,” and she had never spoken of it again. In her secret heart she was proud that he was with her alone.
She missed him terribly now. Before they broke winter camp he’d taken a large party against the Utes. Nearly a month had passed with no word of him or the other warriors. But because she was already cut off from him, going to the once-a-month lodge had not seemed as hard as usual. As she made ready to leave that morning, the young Comanche was comforted by the notion that a close friend or two would be sequestered with her, women with whom the time would pass easily.
But on her way to the lodge she heard of Kicking Bird’s odd story. Then she heard the story of the foolish raid. Stands With A Fist’s morning had exploded in her face. Once more a great dread had settled on her square straight shoulders like an iron blanket, and she entered the once-a-month lodge badly shaken.
But she was very strong. Her beautiful light brown eyes, eyes that with intelligence, revealed nothing as she sewed and chatted through the morning with her friends.
They knew the danger. The whole band knew. But it served no one to talk about it. So no one did.
All afternoon her tough, tiny frame moved about the lodge, showing nothing of the heavy blanket hanging over it.
Stands With A Fist was twenty-six years old.
For almost twelve of those years she had been a Comanche.
Before that she had been white.
Before that she had been . . . what was it?
She only thought of the name on the rare occasions when she could not avoid thinking about the whites. Then, for some inexplicable reason, it would pop up in front of her eyes.
Oh, yes, she thought in Comanche, I remember it. Before, I was Christine.
Then she would think of before, and it was always the same. It was like passing through an old, misty curtain and the two worlds became one, the old mingling with the new. Stands With A Fist was Christine and Christine was Stands With A Fist.