Chapter five
They lived three weeks in the Tonkawa village on the west bank of the Brazos River. The river was dark green and full of fish, and the canebrakes along the banks were ten feet high and so thick that a rifle ball couldn’t pass through them. Each evening the winter sky was lighted with sunsets of scarlet and turquoise and pink clouds, and in the morning the mist hung on the river and in the cane and the sun burned through it like a slow orange flame. The Tonkawas were a strange people who lived in conical thatched huts and married their in-laws, and neither Son nor Hugh could ever figure out their family relationships. The women covered their breasts with circles of yellow and black paint, and there was one large hut where they were forced to go during their menstrual cycle.
Sana found two of her uncles and three cousins in the village, and she spent most of her time with them, but each night she went with Son to gig bullfrogs by the light of a Mexican angle lamp along the river bank or string trot lines through the cattails. But he also knew she was gradually becoming one of her people again. On the third night he could tell she had painted her breasts, and she wore a coup feather tied to the end of her long black hair.
“I didn’t think you was supposed to wear one of those unless you killed somebody,” he said.
“I kill a Comanche when I was fourteen,” she said. “He and two others try to take my mother.”
Then sometimes in the stillness of cicadas she would squeeze his arm, kiss him on the neck and cheek, and whisper to him in her own language. She wore a string of blue morning glories on her shirt, and her black hair shone in the light from the angle lamp.
“What’s that mean?” he said after the first time she did it.
“I not tell you.”
“What kind of dumb game is that? I could say things you don’t understand.”
“What?” she said, smiling, her brown eyes moving over his face.
“A lot of things people say back in Tennessee.”
“You such strange, nice boy. One day Indian teach you how to laugh. But you nice boy, anyway.”
On a late wind-burned afternoon three Tonkawa hunters rode back into camp with their horses spent. The lead rider slipped off his horse without bothering to untie the bloodied and stiffened doe from the withers, and went directly into the chief’s hut. A few minutes later the rider, the chief, and Sana found Son and Hugh fishing with throw lines on the edge of the canebrake.
“You all sounded like a buffalo coming through that cane,” Hugh said.
“You leave, quick,” Sana said.
“What is it?” Son said.
The chief and the hunter began to speak at once. The insides of the hunter’s buckskin breeches were still wet with horse lather.
“He says many Mexicans and some strange Americans stop him earlier. He think they look for you,” Sana said.
“Ask him about these Americans,” Hugh said.
She spoke rapidly to the hunter, and he began to gesture in the air with his hands.
“He says they Americans who talk different and wear tall hats. They tell him they looking for two murderers. One is an old man with a big eye, and the other a tall boy with blond hair.”
“Back in the shithouse again,” Hugh said.
“How’d they get the Mexicans with them?” Son said.
“You remember that little horse raid we made with Iron Jacket? Them Mexicans ain’t dumb. They know them and Landry want the same two skinned asses tacked up on a tree.”
“Ask him how far away they are,” Son said.
The hunter understood and pointed at the sun and motioned twice at the air with his cupped hand.
“He says they be here soon after the ducks fly down on the river,” Sana said.
“Shit, that gives us till about a half hour after sunset. Let’s pack it and haul ass,” Hugh said.
“Where?”
“We go west, then head south behind them. This time we don’t stop till we find Sam Houston’s army. We could use a lot of company if Landry’s got the Mexicans riding with him.”
They walked back through the canebrake in the fading light, loaded their guns, saddled their horses, and stuffed one canvas bag from Tyler’s full of smoked fish and venison. The sun had become a small crack of fire in the violet clouds on the horizon when they rolled their second change of clothes in their blankets and tied them on the backs of their saddles.
“You do what Hugh tell you. Stay with the Americans till those bad men go away,” Sana said.
“I’ll be back after we get finished soldiering. If this war comes out right, I’ll have six hundred and forty acres of land, too,” Son said.
“You not come back.”
“I sure will.”
“You change when you go away. You be like other Americans. It not bad.”
“Hell, I’m not like other Americans. I’m a convict. I ain’t got no more in common with the Americans you’ve knowed than them Frenchies that’s chasing us.”
“You want to set here and talk some more, or just invite the Mexicans to hang us up on their pig stickers?” Hugh said.
They rode in a gallop toward the low brown hills west of the village, and by the time they reached the first rise, great flocks of mallards and teal were winnowing across the sky and breaking formation to land on the river. The land was awash with the sun’s red afterglow, and in the distance to the south they could make out two long black lines of riders.
“Stop it in them oaks over the top,” Hugh called over his shoulder.
“We better pour it on while we got the chance.”
“I don’t think they seen us in all this shadow, but they will for sure when we come off the other side.” They made the top of the hill and rode into the trees. Hugh got down from his horse and tethered it to an oak limb. He squatted in the grass at the edge of the trees and stared back down the river at the column of riders.
“You got better eyes than me. Can you make out them men in front?” he said.
“No.”
“They ain’t army.”
“I’m for hitting it, Hugh.”
“Look behind you. There must be five miles of open country out yonder. Give it another ten minutes and we’ll be gone into the dark like a couple of owls.”
They watched the column turn into the village and the Tonkawas begin coming out of the circle of huts. The last of the twilight’s shadows seemed to gather into the earth, and the wind blew off the river and rattled through the canebrake.
“Somebody’s starting a fire down there,” Son said.
“They’re probably going to pass some whiskey around till somebody gets drunk enough to tell them where we’re at. There’s always two or three that’ll skin out a bunkie when their grog starts to run short.”
They saw a small flame glow on the ground in the middle of the village, then the fire leaped higher in the wind and silhouetted the two men throwing dried brush into it. The flames cracked upward in a spray of yellow sparks and burned away the shadows back to the ring of huts.
“Look in front of the fire. It’s him,” Son said.
“It sure is. Or one just like him. No other man in Texas would wear pantaloons and a tall hat like that.”
“I don’t know why, but I feel funny looking at him.”
“He ain’t exactly the person you was most wanting to see.”
“No. It’s different. I don’t know how to say it. It’s almost like I feel scared.”
“You’re seeing yourself back in prison again. Forget it. We ain’t never going back there.”
“You was right about the whiskey. That mule must have four or five kegs slung on it.”
“In a half hour that camp is going to be like a crazy house. Out on the plains I seen them trade off everything they owned to keep the spigot open.”