Robson, Lucia St. Clair Read online

  Tonight had been the worst, standing there waiting for them to do something horrible to her. Even Star Name had deserted her, hanging onto Wanderer. Wait until she could tell Star Name how he had treated her. Then she wouldn’t snuggle up to him or hold his hand or chatter to him. She probably had no idea what a monster he was away from camp.

  What did it matter? She’d be leaving soon. There must be search parties scouring the countryside for her even now. She lay listening to the night sounds of camp. The last drummers had stopped and there weren’t many noises, besides the dogs’ growling and whimpering as they slept in heaps. Not even the babies cried at night. She strained to hear the furtive snap or clank of a Ranger company coming for her, perhaps the very one her father had belonged to. A small jingle jerked her eyes wide open, as she listened for their horses. Then she closed them again, her heart pounding when she realized it was the metal cones of a shield cover blowing in the wind.

  She listened to Star Name’s even breathing and envied her serenity. She breathed the leather smell of the wall so close to her face. It reminded her of the corner of the cabin where her father had stored his bridle and saddle and harnesses. Tears stung her eyes when she thought of it. She longed to hear his voice and feel his arms holding her safely again. She reached out from under the light robe and stroked the smooth, freshly peeled pole that was one of the lodge’s main supports. It was new and hadn’t had a chance to soak up the dust that made most things smell alike. Its rich cedar odor was comforting, like the shavings in the trunk of clothes back home.

  She had to get home. They had to find her. What had happened to them? Where were those who had been away when the Indians struck? Were they all dead? Was her mother dead?

  Oh, that I had wings like a dove:

  For then would I fly away and be at rest.

  Silently she recited the Bible verse. Then she repeated to herself, over and over, Please come soon. Please come soon, until she finally fell asleep.

  James Parker leaped into the river after the skunk. He grabbed it as it swam frantically, its wet body almost slipping through his fingers. He squeezed it tightly and held it under water, even after it had gone limp, to make sure it was dead. Dripping, he waded ashore and clambered up the bank, dangling the sodden corpse by the tail. It hadn’t had a chance to spray him, but the heavy odor of musk was still there. The ones who would eat it waited for him, their eyes following the body as it swung back and forth. Eighteen people and one small skunk. It was the only food they’d had to eat in the two days since they’d left their hiding places downstream from the fort. To James Parker it seemed like a lifetime ago that he had covered his father’s mutilated corpse and lowered his brother’s body from the gate.

  The ten children old enough to walk sat resting in the grass, their eyes empty of everything but hunger and pain. Becky Frost was still holding little Sam White, and Mrs. White carried her baby. Only the two men and Mrs. James Parker and Mrs. Frost had shoes. The others’ bare feet were red with blood. It would be easy to track them by that alone. Everyone’s clothes hung in shreds, clawed by the riverbottom brambles. It would be much less painful if they could leave the dense thickets along the rivers, but there were too many Indian signs to risk it. They didn’t know that they were trailing the outriders of the raiding party back to the Trinity. They thought they were being hunted, and they would have been if they had been discovered.

  Traveling only at night, they forced their way through the tightly woven, head-high growth, tearing at it with their hands. Tall trees blocked most of the moonlight, and they knew they were passing through patches of waist-high blackberry thickets only when they were torn by them. They found the huge bull-nettle bushes when their fingers closed around the hairy stems, burning and stinging their hands until it was agony to touch anything.

  Parker and White took turns using their bodies to clear a path, often shielding their eyes with an arm and falling onto the green wall to batter it down with their weight. The other man carried whichever child was the most exhausted. Mrs. Frost had been crying for her dead husband and son for two days, and there was nothing anyone could say to calm her. The children were quiet, too worn out and terrified to whimper. They seemed to know it wouldn’t help.

  The water at least soothed James’s hands a little. He would have everyone bathe their hands and arms and feet. His nose twitched as he looked at the dead creature swinging in front of him. They would have to make a fire. He offered a small prayer of thanksgiving for the flint in his pocket. Indians or no Indians, the children had to eat. He wondered briefly if he would be able to cut the throats of the women and children if they were caught. He had abandoned his gun, hiding it when it ran out of ammunition at the fort. But it wouldn’t have been fast enough to dispatch everyone in time anyway.

  Faulkenberry and Anglin must be having a hard go of it too. They had taken another route, carrying the wounded on makeshift litters of torn blankets and poles. At least they didn’t have to see the children suffer, since only Lucy and her two were with them. The eighteen survivors stood around the naked, half-cooked skunk. Stripped of its black and white pelt, it didn’t look as bad. More like a squirrel or a rabbit or opossum.

  “Oh, Lord, for what we are about to receive, we thank you.” He cut the carcass up, neglecting to serve himself a piece. There was hardly a mouthful for each as it was. Then they lay down to sleep, generally keeping their family groups together and huddling for warmth. James Parker’s eyes filled as he watched his children try futilely to pull their tattered clothes around them in the wind. The Lord was testing them. James prayed that He would also give them the strength to endure.

  John Carter and Jeremiah Courtney were repairing a hole in the side of the ferry when James Parker limped and staggered into the clearing at Timmin’s Crossing on the Trinity. He had eaten nothing for six days and had still walked the last thirty-five miles in eight hours. Carter and Courtney saddled their five horses while James told them the story. He was with them when they rode out after the others, who had been too weak and footsore to walk any further.

  Around midnight of May 25, the same time that Pahayuca was carrying Cynthia Ann Parker toward Sunrise’s lodge, her uncle and cousins and friends shuffled into the bare dirt yard of Carter’s cabin. The soft dust felt like velvet under their feet, and the candle shining through the open doorway seemed to dance and beckon.

  Soon the yard was littered with bodies as the women and children slumped where they stood. They lay or sat, too exhausted even to walk to the house. Anna Carter bustled among them, giving out blankets and what little food she had. The men carried the weakest and most badly hurt into the tiny cabin. The others spent the night on the ground, sleeping as soundly as if they were in featherbeds.

  James Parker was up at dawn. Borrowing one of Carter’s horses, he set out for Fort Houston to recruit volunteers for a rescue party. But there were none to be had. Rumors were flying that Santa Anna was gathering a force to invade Texas, and once again the men marched off to stop him. The women grimly piled their pitifully few belongings beside their doors and prepared to flee again. No one could even spare horses to go looking for the captives.

  In despair, Parker made his family as comfortable as he could in a crumbling abandoned cabin, one they would share with the Whites. He built a box to hold the bones of his father and brothers and friends, and went back to bury them. It was July before he could travel to San Augustine to beg General Houston for soldiers to help him in his search for the captives.

  Martha Parker was emaciated and her eyes had black smudges under them from the weeks she had spent with the measles. The settlement’s doctor had given her and her child up for dead, but James had begged medicine from him, and nursed and swore and prayed them back to life. He had only left to ask for troops when he was sure they would live. Now Martha could tell the news wasn’t good as soon as he came in the door.

  “What did he say, James?” She sat halfway up in bed, supporting herself on one elbow o
n the hard frame.

  “He says he’ll send someone to talk to them.” James sat wearily on the bed next to her. It was the only piece of furniture in the room besides the splintered puncheon table and a log bench.

  “Talk to them! How can you talk to savages?”

  “‘Force won’t do,’ he says. We have to make treaties with them.”

  “But doesn’t he realize what must be happening to Rachel and Elizabeth and little Cynthia Ann?”

  “I suppose he does. But he won’t send troops. I told him there was no use talking to them until they’d been whipped, and soundly at that. But he won’t listen. Said he was sorry. Sorry!” Parker stood and began pacing, his hands jammed into his pockets. Above his long, unkempt beard his eyes were glittering with fury. “Talk to them. I wish he had been with me when I gathered up my father’s bones. The buzzards and coyotes had scattered them all over kingdom come. I wish he had seen my mother when David carried her to the river. Seventy-nine years old and you know what they did to her. It’s a miracle she lived. Talk to them. ‘Let death seize upon them and let them go down quick into hell: for wickedness is in their dwellings and among them.’ “

  “What will we do?”

  “Trust to God and keep trying.”

  James Parker and others who had lost loved ones to the Indians would never understand Houston’s policy of treating with them. But he was right in a way. If a force had attacked the band that held the captives, the Comanche would have slaughtered them rather than let them be retaken. It was a tragic lesson the people of the frontier would learn over and over again.

  CHAPTER 8

  When Something Good had asked if Naduah and Star Name could come with her on the honey hunt, Cynthia had begged Takes Down The Lodge to let her go. She would have three days with Something Good almost to herself. Three days to be in her company and not have to watch her talking to dozens of people, always working, always busy. Cynthia was so excited that Takes Down couldn’t say no. As the girls rode away, Cynthia turned and waved to her and Black Bird. She didn’t notice the worry on her foster mother’s gentle face. Takes Down spoke without taking her eyes off her daughter’s diminishing back.

  “Maybe I should go with them.”

  “Something Good knows what to do. She’s a better shot than some men her own age. But I’ll deny it if you tell anyone.”

  “Yes. And an old woman like me would spoil their fun.”

  “I wonder why Something Good didn’t take her own friends along, though. It’s strange that only the three of them are going.” Black Bird was even quieter than Takes Down, but she had a keener eye for brewing gossip. Nothing escaped her, especially breaks in the pattern of camp life. And Something Good was no longer spending as much time with the other women.

  “The child has been with us less than fourteen days. She is so new. What if she tries to escape?”

  “On that mule? I know you’re fond of her, Sister, but you have to admit she’s not much of a rider.”

  “She’ll learn. She learns everything fast.” With her hand shading her eyes, Takes Down The Lodge stood stolid and unmoving in front of the doorway until the small group was out of sight, lost in the bustle of camp. Short and square in her buff-colored dress, Takes Down The Lodge looked like a block of limestone that the ground had eroded away from, leaving her standing solid and firmly planted.

  Naduah learned fast, but would she learn fast enough? The People’s world had little patience for learners. Only survivors. And if she did try to escape, she wouldn’t survive long. If the bears and snakes didn’t find her, Piam-em-pits, Cannibal Owl, might. Or nenepi, the malevolent little people. And there was the tribe to the south, the Nermateka, People Eaters. The sun had been up almost an hour, and it shone in Takes Down’s face. She blinked her big, dark eyes to dismiss the thought of her new daughter alone and hurt somewhere, and squeezed out a tear in the process. From the sun perhaps. She turned back to the hide she was scraping. It was only for three days. And Naduah would be all right.

  “We have to kill a deer before we can collect the honey.” Cynthia was sure that was what Star Name was telling her, acting it out as they rode double on the old, swaybacked mule. Cynthia slid sideways on his scabby, broad back so she could look over her shoulder at Star Name, and shift her weight off the cutting edge of his backbone at the same time. They were riding on a pad saddle, a leather bag stuffed with grass and held on by a strap. After a long day it had flattened out until it was little use in separating Cynthia from the mule’s bony spine. She clutched his short mane for balance as they jounced along.

  They had to kill a deer? What could killing a deer have to do with honey? Was it for some crazy religious reason? They had plenty of those. Would they eat the meat for strength? At any rate. Something Good was carrying a bow and a quiver of arrows as she rode next to them on her skittish, clay-colored pony. Surely she wasn’t going to shoot the bees with it, and women usually only carried knives. Takes Down had given Cynthia one, and it rode strapped to her waist, over her dress. She rested her hand on the polished antler hilt, feeling grown up and brave.

  Although she had been with Pahayuca’s band less than two weeks, her vocabulary was growing rapidly. She could only pick out isolated words and phrases in the constant flow of conversation around her, but it wasn’t for lack of teachers or ability. She just needed time. Everyone taught her, pointing out objects and repeating their names’.

  Even the children sometimes stopped in the middle of a game to quiz her. But though she could usually see what people were doing, she couldn’t ask why they were doing it. And she always wanted to know the how and why. Like this business with the honey, and the deer. They had come out here to hunt honey, not game. She could ask Star Name why, but she’d learned that why was much harder to explain. She’d have to wait patiently. Perhaps the doing of it would explain the why.

  Why, for instance, did Tse-ak, Lance, drone and chant every morning when he woke up? And why did everyone enter a lodge and turn left, then pace around to the right? Why did the women paint red lines down the parts of their hair? And why were even fierce warriors terrified of thunder and lightning? Why did Takes Down insist that she lay one end of the stick in the fire, rather than just dropping it across?

  Maybe Something Good could answer some of her questions. From the corner of her eye Cynthia studied the girl’s delicate profile as they rode along, and watched how she handled her pony. Her long, bare legs gripped the mare’s sides, lifting her body slightly in time with the stride. Her thin suede dress was hiked up past her knees, and the fringe at the hem had fallen away to show her strong, smooth thighs. She sat lightly and swayed from side to side, as gracefully as tall grass rippling in the wind.

  Long curtains of fringe swung from the high curved pommel and cantle on her saddle, and from the V-shaped yoke on her dress. The reins lay loosely in her right hand as it rested on her thigh. Her left arm was bent, her hand riding at the crease where her leg met her body. She sat straight and supple, moving in perfect time with her pony. Her hair was tied into two thick braids wrapped with thongs, but wisps of it blew around her face in the wind. The bells and dewclaws dangling from the side boards of the saddle made a lilting castanet clatter.

  Something Good was the wife of Pahayuca, who was Medicine Woman’s brother and Sunrise’s uncle. That made fifteen-year-old Something Good Cynthia’s foster great-aunt. Around camp Cynthia watched her, finding excuses to stay near Pahayuca’s group of lodges. Once she had even ventured into Something Good’s own tent, and stood in the doorway while Star Name delivered the message they had been given. Star Name walked in casually, calling out only to make sure Something Good was inside. Cynthia followed her timidly and stood mute, as usual.

  Something Good had handed them each a piece of the bread she had just baked on a flat stone propped in front of the fire. The bread was thin and brittle, and made of a meal of ground pecans, sweet mesquite beans, and honey. It had a delicious, nutty flavor, and Cynthia nibbled h
ers to make it last longer and to give her an excuse to be silent. While Star Name and Something Good talked, Cynthia looked around, missing very little.

  Old Owl, Something Good’s father, was a civil leader, and his daughter’s possessions were beautiful. The poles were hung with necklaces of shells and beaten silver and brass disks and bone cylinders. There were dozens of fringed leather bags, most of them beaded or painted. Hanging between two of the lodge’s support poles was a painted buffalo robe such as only a chief or a chief’s wife would wear. The dresses and leggings hanging from a rack along one side were dyed in pale yellows and greens and decorated with bells and fur, shells and tassels. Against a pole leaned Something Good’s four-foot-long, L-shaped shinny stick, the shaft smooth and polished from the oil of her hands. The floor was covered with buffalo robes, and a saddle sat on top of her folded red saddle blanket. Her bridle, braided of rawhide and red flannel, hung nearby. On the bed, pulled up like a quilt, was a robe made of ermine fur.

  The only war gear had been the bow and quiver that Something Good now carried, its strap loosened so that it rested on her pony’s back. But what caught Cynthia’s attention that day in Something Good’s lodge was a stuffed doll sewn of soft doeskin. It was dressed in a perfectly detailed woman’s outfit. Its painted face was almost rubbed blank, and it was worn from years of being carried around. It had been patched, but a bit of white cottonwood fluff was leaking from a seam. Next to it stood a miniature beaded and tasseled cradle board. Over everything, even the smell of the baking bread, was the faint perfume of sage. Something Good burned it often in her fire.