Robson, Lucia St. Clair Page 3

  There was little chance of hitting anyone at that range anyway. The Indians rode low on their mounts and moved fast. The flapping cloth and feathers whipping in the wind blurred them as targets. The last one of them cleared the gate and his black pony pulled up on the rear horses, passing them one by one. The rider lashed him on with a long quirt, heedless of the small child clinging to his waist, her blond hair streaming behind.

  In silence the men watched Wanderer and Cynthia Ann Parker top the next hill to the northeast. They seemed to pause a moment at the crest, outlined against the sky, hock-deep in waving grass and flowers, before they disappeared over the edge and into legend.

  CHAPTER 3

  David Faulkenberry and James Parker returned to the fort late in the afternoon of that same day. They knew that someone had to search for wounded survivors and collect supplies for the refugees hidden in the thickets of the river bottom. From the bushes at the base of the hill they scouted the slope leading to the back of the fort. James laid a hand on David’s arm.

  “What is it?” David whispered. James pointed.

  David raised himself on his elbows to peer through the bushes. Three-quarters of the way down the hill between their hiding place and the back stockade wall, the grass was waving as though a large animal were pushing through it. Whatever it was, it moved slowly and low to the ground.

  As they watched its approach, David listened to the cricket’s twilight celebration of spring. Black vultures, like angels of death, circled silently over the toothed walls, silhouetted against the pink and gold sky. They had to hurry. There was barely an hour of light left.

  “I’m going to take a shot at it,” James’s jaws were clenched.

  “No. Wait a few more minutes. Whatever it is, it will hit that stretch of rock soon.”

  David readied his carbine, tracking the path of the animal. The minutes inched by. Then a clawlike hand reached through the edge of the thick grass. It was followed by a thin arm caked with dried blood. The dirt-encrusted fingers clutched a gash in the rock and pulled the body forward as though scaling a sheer, vertical cliff. Granny Parker’s coarse, gray hair lay spread across the lighter gray of the limestone. The blood-soaked rag tied clumsily around her shoulder clung to the yawning wound there. Her frail form was blotched with purple bruises and crosshatched with red gashes and scratches.

  All caution forgotten, the two men raced up the hill. Granny moaned as David picked her up in his arms. He lifted her as easily as if her translucent skin were filled with feathers and not flesh and bone. He carried her back down into the trees. James cleared a spot, and he laid her gently in the bushes, hidden from view. He took off his shirt and draped it across her, almost covering her entirely. James brought her water in his leather hat.

  “We’ll be back, Mother,” James whispered close to her ear. She couldn’t see the tears in his eyes and David ignored them. The old woman barely nodded, her eyes closed. Her cracked and swollen lips twitched in something like a smile of recognition. David and James started wearily up the hill, foreboding churning in their stomachs.

  David stared down at Elder John’s eyeless sockets, crawling with jewel-like flies. The crows had already begun turning the day’s dead into useful forage. They delicately picked out the choicest morsels, the eyeballs, first. There wasn’t time to dig holes for the bodies, and when help finally arrived from Fort Houston, there would hardly be enough left to bury. But under no circumstances would he allow any of the Parker people back up here for a burial detail. He could at least spare them that last horror.

  Shadows crept across the compound floor, yet Faulkenberry continued staring at Elder John, whose thick, steel-gray hair and beard had turned snow white. He was over eighty years old, yet he had been tall and robust. He had always looked the part of the religious patriarch he had played for so long. Now his stripped, mutilated, and drained corpse was shriveled and old. The buzzing of the flies set David’s eardrums vibrating. He had seen war and death in quantity, but never anything like this.

  Forgive me for cursing you, John. If you erred, you paid a higher price than ought be demanded of any mortal.

  David leaned one hand against a log in the stockade wall, lowered his head, and retched helplessly. James was silent, his face rigid as he stared at his father’s body.

  “It looks like there’s no one here alive,” said David, knowing there were no words that could comfort James. “Lucy Parker says Rachel and little Jamie were taken, and she thinks Elizabeth was too. We have to be sure, though. You start checking at that end of the cabins, James, and I’ll look here.”

  Puddles of night collected in the hollows and angles of the debris in the yard. They lapped around the men’s ankles as they searched and called through the jumbled desolation that had been home for thirty people. David picked his way around the huge, groping talons of a broken grain cradle. Angry at being disturbed, crows cawed from their perches along the cabin roofs and stockade walls.

  A patch of snow stood out against the darkening earth, flour that the raiders had scattered in a blizzard of destruction. Shattered hand-hewn furniture lay about. A small china doll, its face crushed by a horse’s hoof, sprawled like an elfin corpse. David knew he would find no metal or weapons, nothing the Indians could use to pursue their favorite pastime of war.

  He and James filed silently out past Silas Parker, a lonely sentinel hanging against the gate. His brother Benjamin still lay where he had fallen. They had to hurry down the hill before it became too dark to find Granny and the path to the river. David turned one last time to look up at the fort standing starkly against the wide sky, an abandoned ship on a desolate ocean. Each of the logs in it had taken days to cut. The settlers’ axes had bounced off the rigid hardwoods. Their lives were bound up in it, committed to it. He wondered if they would come back, bury their dead, clean up the mess, and start over. He felt sure they would. They or others like them.

  He shuddered as the cool evening wind blew across his bare shoulders, raising chicken flesh along his back and arms. The cricket chorus was pulsing steadily around them, background noise to his thoughts. He and James would carry Granny Parker to where the others were hidden. She needed care and water badly, but she was amazingly tough. They all were.

  Tomorrow he and some of the men could scavenge food, clothing, and horses at his and Lunn’s and the Bates’s cabins, if there were no signs of Indians returning. He’d send one man ahead on the fastest horse, Old Blue probably. The other animals could carry the worst of the wounded. The rest would have to walk the fifty miles to the nearest settlement. He didn’t relish the prospect. And by tomorrow two of the wounded women would probably be dead. More death and more suffering for the living. He didn’t even want to think about Rachel and Elizabeth and Cynthia Ann. For them it was just beginning.

  Oh God, he was weary with the weight of worry and sorrow. But methodically he resumed planning for the next day. The survivors could hide and rest by the river and start out late in the afternoon. The moon would be up shortly after dark. It was at the round, ripe, luminous phase, so bright you could read by it. The Comanche preferred that kind of raiding, or so he’d heard. He’d circle his people away from the fort. The buzzards might upset the women even more. And by evening, who knew how far the innocent breeze would carry the smell.

  Rachel Plummer’s hands were bound to the rounded pommel of the saddle that was chafing her hour after hour. The skin on her inner thighs was raw and bleeding. Matted blood pulled at the hairs on her legs, but that was minor. A rawhide noose choked her, now loosening, now jerking her up tight as her horse fell behind the one leading it. When the rope tightened it gagged her until her gorge rose, washing her mouth in the sour taste of bile. The pain in her neck then shot down across her breast bone in a spasm that almost paralyzed her arms and left them tingling.

  It took all her concentration to keep her balance, even though her feet were cruelly bound by the horsehair lariat passed under the animal’s belly. The coarse black rope le
ft a bright red circle around each ankle. Blood ran in rivulets across her bare, swollen feet. Her shoulders cramped and her muscles ached from the tension of fighting the forces pulling on her hands, feet, and neck as her pony raced headlong after the one ahead of it.

  When she fell behind, pulling too hard on the leash that held her, the short, stocky Indian at the other end of it wheeled back and lashed her with his quirt or beat her with his bow. Her blouse hung in tatters from her shoulders and her back was ridged with long, purple welts. Her dark brown hair stood out in a tangled thicket around her face, blinding her when it blew into her eyes. Her head drummed with pain and her mouth was parched. The heavy, swollen club that had been her tongue stuck to her lips when she tried to coax moisture from it. The flaring sun burned her raw back, and the constant jolting jarred even her internal organs. Her poor unborn child could never survive this.

  The throbbing pain burrowed its way into her pores, spread out under her skin, and wrapped around her bowels until she could no longer imagine being without it. The raid that morning seemed to have happened years before.

  The sun had already been hot and high five hours earlier when the twenty Comanche warriors had ridden out of the glare into the cool shade of the pecans and sycamores along the Navasota River to the north of Parker’s Fort. They had left their spare pack animals there before the raid. A whinny was the only sign of the two dozen or more horses hidden in the dense growth of bushes. Two boys about fourteen years old appeared soundlessly from among the trees. Without a word they began leading packhorses and fresh riding mounts into the clear area at the edge of the copse.

  In an eerie silence amid deep shadows, strong, calloused fingers swiftly freed the stolen loot from the sweating war ponies and transferred it to the fresh animals. Pots and tools and other metal objects were wrapped in rags and hides to muffle them. Smaller things disappeared into heavy leather pouches hanging like huge bloated ticks from sweat-stained surcingles.

  Tiny, wiry, nineteen-year-old Mo-cho-rook, The Cruelest One Of All, stuffed Elder John’s big black Bible into the square deerhide pack he carried at his side. He would have looked like a puckish schoolboy off to classes with it except that one half of his pinched face was painted red and the other black. The paint extended down onto his naked, pigeon-breasted chest. His thin mouth looked like a gash, and his large black eyes held only hatred.

  As Wanderer untied his captive’s chafed ankles, Night curled his short, sleek neck around. Puckering his velvety lips, he nibbled his friend’s shoulder. Wanderer swatted him absentmindedly as he worked at the knots. In pique Night snorted and turned to nuzzle the pinto next to him. Cynthia sat mute, trying to make herself as small as possible, her mind and body numb. She knew instinctively that if she made any trouble at all she would be killed as casually as her mother would pick a louse and crush it between her fingernails.

  The thought of her own death shouldered everything else out of her mind. How would it happen? She’d heard that Indians took babies by the ankles and dashed their heads against trees or rocks. Did she weigh too much for that? She saw the gnarled cream-and-brown-mottled trunk of the sycamore spattered with her own brains and blood like the plank floor at hog-killing time. Maybe they ate children. Would they roast her alive? Were the rest of her family dead? Why wasn’t anyone trying to save her? Where was her mother?

  Wanderer pulled her roughly down from the horse, yanking her back to reality. He signed that she was to take care of any physical necessities right there. She hid herself in the long tail of the shirt she wore and squatted at his feet like a dog. To deflect the shame, she stared fixedly at the bright brass cones hanging from the fringe on his leggings. Then he lifted her onto another horse, a red piebald with wild eyes that seemed to leer at her. The horse pulled his blotchy upper lip back over his long yellow teeth as though smelling something rotten. He laid his pointed ears back, sidestepped and half reared on his bandy legs, but Wanderer held him and retied Cynthia as she’d been before.

  One of the boys brought water in a rounded pouch that looked like the stomach of some large animal. Wanderer took a long drink while the boy led Night away to water him lightly with the other war ponies. Cynthia looked longingly at the drops running down Wanderer’s chin. Without thinking, she passed her tongue over dry lips.

  For the first time since her capture, she found herself staring into the tall warrior’s deep, aloof eyes, made even larger by the black paint around them. She tried to keep her face neutral, not knowing what expression might enrage him. He glanced around as though to make sure no one was watching. Then he handed her the water. She had barely wet her lips before he snatched it away and passed it to his friend who had John. Since Eagle had knocked the breath out of John, neither of the children had tried to speak to each other. John must have displeased Eagle somehow though. One of the child’s eyes was purple and his mouth was swollen and bleeding.

  The Indians divided into small parties, separating the captives. In less than half an hour they all had mounted and headed east toward night and the Trinity River.

  By the time darkness fell, Cynthia was only aware of the pain in her body and the rhythmic movement and incessant pounding of the horses. She still rode behind Wanderer, and both of them were drenched in sweat. Her face was burned and raw from the stinging wind and sun. The men and horses had to be phantoms, demons, despite the smell and feel of them. No mortal beast could run like this, hour after hour across the sweltering prairie. They moved on relentlessly, alternating their pace from a fast walk to a canter and then to the stomach-jolting trot. Cynthia felt like her insides were bruised.

  Just after sundown a brilliant full moon rose over the hills ahead, spilling light across the rounded peaks and sending it flowing down into the valleys. The sea of grass shimmered silver as the wind brushed it into rippling patterns. Dappled nighthawks swooped across the moon’s bright face like moths at a candle. Far away a wolf howled a cry of despair. Cynthia’s flesh crawled, as much from the lonely, wailing sound as from the wind’s chill breath on her wet skin. All she saw of the ethereal landscape was the bronzed, smooth back ahead of her. She had memorized its cordillera of vertebrae and the long ridge of a scar that curved around under the left shoulder blade.

  The moon was high, marking the hour of midnight, when the group rode into another stand of tall trees. They picked their way single file among the massive columns, dodging the thickets of thorns that reached out to rake their legs. The friendly moon followed, winking through openings in the leafy roof overhead. Through the trees flames flickered as though the forest were ablaze, yet the men continued to thread their way toward the fire. An eerie howling and moaning grew louder as they moved deeper into the woods.

  They began to pass the shadowy forms of hundreds of picketed horses cropping leaves, bark, and the sparse grass of the small clearings. The fire was so big that the crack of burning logs could be heard above the whoops and howls. As Cynthia peered around Wanderer’s back, she knew that Elder John had been right. And he had been wrong. There was a hell, and it was just as he’d described it. But you didn’t have to die to be condemned there.

  The vast tree trunks circling the clearing towered eighty feet into the air. Their columns turned the space into a pagan temple.

  The incandescent frenzy there was intensified by the looming black maw beyond the inner ring of trees. Reality became as tenuous as the flames that leaped and twisted, making even the trees and bushes undulate and dance. Daylight’s smudged, painted faces became ghastly, demonic masks. Light flickered across shining mahogany cheekbones and shadows formed gaping black pits where eyes should be. Leaping and whirling and waving bloody scalps, dozens of raiders celebrated.

  Wanderer slid down from his pony and flexed gracefully up on his toes. Casually, he sauntered toward the circle of watchers, calling to some of the men swaying and chanting there. Cynthia’s stomach and chest felt cold where his warm back had been pressed against her. She bit her lip to keep from crying out afte
r him, begging him to stay. As bad as he was, he was the only security she had.

  A few men from the circle came toward her. She jerked futilely at her tether and flailed with her small arms and fists as fingers dug into her ankles and held her while others untied the knots. The memory of her grandmother threw her into a panic. She fought as she was pulled headfirst from the horse and dumped on the ground. Urine stung her chafed legs as terror made her lose control. Struggling like a beached fish, she was flipped on her stomach and her wrists and ankles tied. Choking in the churned-up mold of the forest floor, she was dragged by her hair into the ring of dancers.

  They dropped her near the sprawled forms of John and her cousin and aunt. As the men passed, they kicked the cringing bodies or lashed them with their bows. She could only see and feel their moccasins as they thudded into her stomach and ribs, and she wondered bitterly if a pair of them belonged to her captor. The fire was so close that she feared her clothes would flare up from the intense heat. The pounding of the drums never ceased, and the monotonous chanting was punctuated by screeches that hurt her ears.

  She could see John and her Aunt Elizabeth from where she lay. Their backs and legs were bloody and lacerated. From the feel of warm, sticky wetness on her own body she knew she must look the same. Each blow sent a crest of pain breaking over the general ache. She sobbed, her tears turning the black soil to mud under her face.

  After what seemed like hours, the dancers tired of the game. Two of them dragged her and John out of the circle and threw them against a tree trunk, as though they were rubbish swept out of the campsite. As her head hit the knotted root of a gnarled old oak, she slid gratefully down a ringing well lined in black velvet.

  Someone was slaughtering hogs and doing a sloppy job of it. Their shrill squeals meant the sticker had missed the vein and the animals were bucking and twisting to escape. Cynthia hated hog-killing time, and ran and hid when she could.