CHAPTER TWO
1
TWO HOURS LATER THEY WERE ON THE MOVE AGAIN. The afternoon sun made Moses drowsy, and he found himself not paying the sharp attention that the situation demanded. His thoughts were dreamily clouded with the vision of Aggie Sterling’s loveliness, and while he entertained no ideas of doing more than looking at her again, he found that he couldn’t get her entirely off his mind. He strained to remember a Bible lesson from the lips of some old black woman who had conducted crude services in the slave quarters around the Grierson plantation. Moses had never paid much attention to the old woman’s religious mutterings, and on most Sundays he was hunting with Grierson. But he remembered the phrase “forbidden fruit.” It seemed remarkably applicable to the way he felt about this strange, forward white girl. In a frightening way, it reminded him of how he had once felt about another girl—a black girl—named Amy.
Distracted or not, his eyes automatically scanned the horizon. He kept the mental picture of the small copse of trees on the great mesa that would mark the crossing he sought.
There was more than Indians to worry about, he reminded himself. There were hidden sinkholes and prairie dog villages. Although they were moving slowly enough not to have to worry about the pervasive little rodents’ holes trapping an animal’s leg and breaking it before a rider or driver might see them, Moses had heard of villages so large that the whole prairie concealed a honeycomb of tunnels and burrows. Once, he had heard, an Army supply train had collapsed into the ground underneath it, its weight too great for the thin covering of soil remaining above an enormous underground village.
The blank, unpopulated plains of Texas had held an appeal for Moses from the first time he had seen them, before he ever considered being in charge of a train of people crossing them. At first he had been almost frightened. All he had ever known was the thick forest and lush underbrush of the South and of East Texas. It was physically intimidating to be surrounded with so much space. At first he felt like climbing down from his horse and cowering underneath it, although there was nothing threatening. It was just there, all around him, all around itself, really.
But after a few days, after he watched the spectacular panorama of a western sunset, the gentle warming glow of an eastern dawn across the sky that gradually gave up its darkness to the pale blue of day, he found himself captivated by the raw beauty of the place. But when confronted with the waving grass and vastness of an unpeopled landscape, he found himself making comparisons to the woods where he had stalked deer, wild pig, squirrel, and other game, and he sometimes found that he couldn’t wait to return to East Texas and the forests surrounding Jefferson.
On balance, though, he had come to the decision that he would rather be out here among the wild animals—and even the wild Indians—than back there where every year there were fewer gators to hunt, where the black bear and deer were thinning out as people pushed farther and farther into the forest, where even squirrels had become too chary to be hunted easily. Out here he could be a man. There was no one to call him “nigger,” no one to remind him that he had been born in bondage, conceived out of the forced—at least he believed and hoped that it had been forced—copulation of a white man and a piece of female property over which he had total control. Out here, his ability with a rifle, a pistol, even the Bowie knife he wore strapped to his leg beneath his boot top mattered more than what color he was or where he had come from. The sweat that formed briefly on his skin in the arid climate of the plains was no match for the drenching perspiration that even minimal labor could bring forth under the shady cypress and pines lining the swamps and bayous of Marion County. But never, not once, had he felt that sweat arise out here because of a name he was called or because he was discovered to be standing somewhere or doing something that he shouldn’t. In fact, the only word that ever brought sweat to his brow out here was Indian—particularly Comanche—and that could cause the bravest of men—white or black—to sweat nickels.
The land out here seemed wicked and almost possessed of evil, Moses sometimes thought. It was overrun with things that could hurt, maim, even kill. Wildcats, scorpions, red ants, wild horses, gray wolves, javelina, cougar, black bear, coyotes, and rattlesnakes lurked in the plum thickets and arroyos and along the breaks where the juniper and scrub cedar dominated the mesquite and rare cottonwood, live oak, or hackberry trees. Horseflies, yellow jackets, hornets the size of a man’s thumb buzzed in the sloughs and creek bottoms, and centipedes and scorpions lurked under rocks and along the bases of cactus clumps, their thin poison sufficient to make a man or even a horse sick enough to die. But there were also other things for men who could use a rifle to defend their homes and families against such inhospitable creatures. There were wild turkey, beaver, antelope, deer, rabbit, and bobwhite quail and gray dove; geese and ducks came down in the fall, along with a huge, long-legged bird that Grierson had brought down with a shotgun. It was a sandhill crane, he told Moses, and when the black gunbearer prepared it by stuffing it with wild onions and spitting it over an open fire, he found it tasted like roasted pork.
And there were buffalo. There would always be buffalo, Moses knew. For years beyond memory the Indians had made a way of life from the buffalo, and if Comanche could do it with their dogwood shafts and flint arrowheads, then he knew that men with good-quality firearms and sharp steel butcher knives could do it as well. In fact, he knew, men were doing it all the time.
But then, he remembered as his eyes surveyed the horizon, there were still the Indians. That was one obstacle to his dream. It was formidable, but again, men with guns could hold them at bay. He had seen it done, and he knew that given the right men, he could do it as well. Somehow, they could be moved back a bit more, beaten off, or they could be dealt with reasonably. Black men weren’t white men or tejanos, he mentally argued with an imaginary Comanche chief. They didn’t want it all, they didn’t even want much. They just wanted to be left alone. Surely that could be arranged. Yes, Indians could be dealt with, or they could be killed, he assured himself. He had spent too much time in the service of the Army, listened to too many conversations around Ranger fires not to believe, as well, that unlike the buffalo, there would not always be Indians.
But now, as the fear of what he couldn’t see gripped the base of his spine in a cold fist and hardened his stomach into a sour rock, he wondered if he shouldn’t return to Jefferson permanently, find himself a job with the tanners or even the iron smelters and try to earn a living through his labor rather than through a cunning and expertise that he often doubted he really had. He was grimly satisfied that no one had connected him to the murder of the drooling idiot Jimmy, or the theft of Grierson’s guns, which he thought of as “Grierson’s legacy.” And now he had almost enough money to buy himself a piece of property. If he couldn’t find work to his liking, he could live on squirrel, gator meat, and catfish, and it would be his game, caught or killed by him on his land.
But then he thought of the former slaves, some of them just as chained now as they had ever been, only now shackled with poverty and the hopelessness of never being more than what they were—nigger laborers. Slavery, Moses understood, was more than a set of chains or a matter of being owned. It had to do with attitude. He had watched himself and others step off a boardwalk into ankle-deep mud just so some cracker could lumber past. He had seen his fellow blacks doff their hats whenever a white man approached them, cast their eyes down at the ground, and grovel for a kind word or compliment no more stirring than a nod of the head or a muttered “‘Day.” He hated it when he saw it. He hated it worse when he himself did it.
It perplexed him, and it angered him. It was as if they had been caged animals who were now set free. But there was nowhere for them to go. Whips and brands and knotted ropes had been replaced by a confusing array of papers and debts, obligations that few of them could even name correctly, let alone understand well enough to meet. They used to fear overseers and straw bosses. Now they spoke with the same quiet terror of the laws, the landlords, the banks.
Finally, Moses understood that any idea he had of returning permanently to Jefferson was foolish. He was a Negro, and nothing would ever change his status in Jefferson or in any town that had existed before the war. The Southerners hated him for being a former slave. The Northerners hated him for being a new burden. Only on the empty plains of the unsettled West could he feel like a whole man, for here he had a chance, day by day and even hour by hour sometimes, to prove his worth to other men, white or red.
No, Moses thought while his bay climbed another rise in the prairie, if a man had to keep his ear peeled for night riders, better they be Indians coming for an honorable battle than angry white men who were still fighting a war that was over ten years ago.
2
THE HORIZON’S ALMOST FEATURELESS LANDSCAPE HAD made a subtle change, and on the distant border between yellow and blue, there was the very mesa and its identifying pecan grove. His heart seemed to grow a bit in his chest. The crossing was still a long way off. If he held his hand out at arm’s length, the tip of his gloved finger could blot out the whole landmark. But it was there. It was the source of Blind Man’s Creek, which was increased in its flow by an ancient abandoned beaver dam at the mesa’s opposite end. At the north end of the flat-topped mountain’s termination he would find the crossing.
He rode back quickly to tell Graham about it. He felt excited, relieved. He wanted to whoop, and he removed his hat and spanked the bay up to a trot. He knew they had a chance of making the crossing by nightfall now, if they didn’t have to stop for anything and had no trouble with the wagons.
The wagons themselves were a big part of the problem. Other wagon masters insisted on some uniformity in the vehicles that made up the train. The wagon of choice was the traditional huge Conestoga with its larger rear wheels, bowed middle, and enormous capacity. Eight of the wagons in the train followed this pattern, although several had been modified in various ways. In addition to those and the buckboards, there were some old Studebakers. Their shorter, narrower beds made for rougher rides, although they traversed the arroyos and gullies better than the Conestogas. The other three wagons on the train, except Graham’s, which was nothing more than a light buckboard that lacked even the high rigging for canvas, were of no particular type other than reworked Army castoffs. They had in common only one thing with the others. With the exception of the wagon master’s lighter rig, all of them were loaded with junk. Most of them, Moses realized, had been purchased used, and every one of them was subject to breakdowns.
Because of their heavy loads, the teams were larger than usual. Six mules or four oxen pulled some of the heavier wagons. Even Graham had hitched four of the huge, smelly beasts in front of his own wagon, although aside from the whiskey kegs and water casks he carried, Moses saw little beyond fodder to add weight to the wagon master’s vehicle.
Graham grunted and lashed at the backsides of his oxen with his whip when Moses yelled the news that the crossing was in sight. He looked hard at the black man and returned a steady, impassive face to the scout’s offer of a grinning fever of excitement. It was a confirmation of Graham’s wisdom in taking the time to stop for a meal, Moses knew, and the one-handed wagon master wanted to milk the moment for all it was worth.
Moses was undismayed by Graham’s lack of enthusiasm. He tallied the wagons in the line, noting that none seemed to be wobbling or threatening breakdown, and tried to remember if there were any particularly deep arroyos or gullies to cross before they got to the crossing. He couldn’t recall any that couldn’t be easily traversed, and he wheeled his mare around and almost galloped out front again, fighting the temptation to doff his hat at the grim-faced Graham as he passed.
Then he stopped short, fifty yards in front of Graham’s grunting, slobbering oxen, and he reined the mare in so hard she nearly fell over. Moses found himself confronted with a dozen brightly painted Comanche warriors.
They seemed to have sprung from the buffalo grass that softly brushed their ponies’ bellies. They were deeply tanned, and no sweat glistened on their sleek oiled and tattooed bodies or on their painted horses. They had been there awhile, waiting on the colored scout who rode out in advance of the wagon train.
Moses stared at them wide-eyed. He couldn’t move, but his mind was working rapidly. If a dozen suddenly appeared, that meant that they had been hiding in a concealed dip in the plains someplace close by, and likely a dozen or more were there now, waiting in case somebody started something foolish. They weren’t attacking, not yet anyhow. They wanted to parley, find out how many white men there were, how many rifles, how much stock, how many women and how young they were. Moses prayed that the settlers behind him remembered his instructions and would hide the women deep inside the wagons under quilts and comforters, invisible to the eyes of these savages.
The scout stood up on his stirrups, prepared to raise the Springfield at the slightest indication of hostility from the band, but the large buck on the pinto pony in the group’s center—a war chief, judging from the confidence he showed and the way the others glanced at him for possible signals for action—sat quietly. The scalps dangling from his lance and shield spoke eloquently for his experience in spite of his apparent youth. At his side was another young man of obvious importance. He wore a large buffalo headdress which sat down on his forehead so low it almost covered his eyes. He also had scalps dangling from his shield, and he moved his horse up next to the young chief and sat staring at Moses with a deep scowl. Finally, he raised his hand in greeting and studied the black man, who clearly mystified him.
They had seen Negroes before, but they were unused to seeing a colored man dressed in buckskins and carrying what was obviously a very large and powerful weapon in front of him. Surprised or not, the young chief wasn’t giving up one inch of advantage. They had the train by surprise, and they wanted to keep their edge.
The Indians’ faces were painted vermilion with black stripes on their foreheads. White and red traces descended from their eyes. The chief was even younger than he first thought, Moses realized, no more than seventeen or eighteen. He had but one long braid, but it was stiff with buffalo dung, and a single owl feather was dangling from the stub of the other. His muscular chest was covered with a breastplate of bone and buffalo sinew, and on his legs were bright blue pantaloons that had been cut away to make leggings that descended to beaded leather moccasins. A large spiral of concentric tattoos circled the scar of a bullet wound in his side. Braided into the pony’s mane and tied to the young Indian’s body in various places were several mirrors. He carried a bois d’arc bow and a quiver of dogwood arrows across his back, and the crude, flat saddle had a rawhide sheath lashed to it from which stuck the brightly decorated stock of a “Yellow Boy,” a Winchester ‘66. In the waistband of his breechcloth was a rusty Colt’s Walker .44, and a large butcher knife was lashed to his right leg. All of the band were well armed, the scout noted, and except for the chief, all were carrying lances and tomahawks in addition to an assortment of firearms of various vintages and qualities.
Moses heard the wagons creaking to a halt behind him, but he dared not look around or make any sudden movement. To his dismay, the cocking of hammers also reached his ears, and he feared Graham and the rest of the fools back there would do something stupid. He turned his body in the saddle, slowly, trying to keep one eye on the chief in front of him, and shouted as loudly as he could, hoping to reach the ears of any Indians who might understand him while they hid in the buffalo grass out of sight, “Hold your fire! They want to talk.”
He sat back down in his saddle and nudged his mare forward toward the heavily muscled brave with the lance, noting that he made no motion toward any of his weapons. He lowered the Springfield across his saddle in what he hoped would seem to be a peaceful gesture. For a long moment they contemplated each other.
Finally the Comanche moved his arm up and then pulled his hand backward in a wiggling motion across his chest.
“Idahi,” he said. Moses was surprised to hear a deep bass voice emerge from this boyish warrior. He knew that the Comanche were supposed to understand Shoshone and some Spanish. There were men who claimed that they could communicate with them in Cheyenne and Sioux as well, but Moses knew none of these tongues. He nodded in agreement to the Comanche’s word, and then sat dumbly and waited for the Indian to make the next move.
The scout tried to look as confident as he could, but his mind raced in a whipsaw panic, recalling all the lessons he had learned by listening to the Rangers, other scouts, and anyone else who professed to have direct experience with the Comanche. Although he had been around many Indians during his service with the Army, he had never been this close to a hostile Comanche warrior, not a living one anyway, and the sight of the dark-skinned, heavily muscled man in front of him awed him and froze his tongue. After a moment he was glad it did, as he suddenly recalled that it was impolite for him to speak first. The greeting of the chief had been nothing more than a formality. It was up to this well-armed youth to initiate anything like a conversation. Technically, they were the guests of these wild men, and it was their responsibility to initiate the parley.
The brave with the buffalo headgear urged his pony out in front of the young chief’s. He was wearing a light robe of deerskin over a bare chest that rippled with muscles, and his eyes were set in a glare that reminded Moses of a defiant child. He also had leggings on, only his were also made of untanned doeskin, and a rattle and tomahawk were dangling from leather thongs around his neck. He was, Moses deduced from these devices, a shaman, medicine man, but his youth belied his confidence, and he was trying hard to impress everyone with his presence. Around his waist and draping down over the lance he also carried was what Moses immediately recognized as a torn and bloody Confederate battle flag. He wondered where these Comanche had obtained the filthy rag, but he didn’t have time to worry about it. The second Indian spoke quickly.
“Many white mans,” the medicine man said, gesturing briefly with his lance toward the wagons. It was Moses’s turn.
“We’re passin’ through,” he said slowly, pronouncing his words carefully and a bit too loudly, wondering just how much English the Indians spoke. “We are goin’ to Santa Fe.” A silence fell as the Indians looked around Graham’s leading wagon toward the train behind him. “We can pay. Trade,” Moses offered hopefully, and he thought he saw a softening in the chiefs dark brown eyes.
“Look,” the shaman said suddenly without consulting with his chief. It was half command, half statement of fact, and with only a nod from the chief, the twelve braves split into two files and began riding down the length of the train. The chief led one group, the medicine man the other, and they rode toward the white settlers, tiny bells that dangled from their horses jingling quietly in the wind.
Moses followed behind the last brave. He glanced nervously over his shoulder, trying to spot any other Indians lurking in the waving grass. He saw none, an observation that gave him small comfort, and at Graham’s wagon, he stopped his horse.
“What’re they doin’?” Graham demanded in a loud voice, foolishly moving his rifle up a bit. The trailing braves turned slightly on their mounts and looked at him.
“Shh!” Moses hissed at him. He gestured with his eyes for the white man to put the gun down. Graham scowled and lowered the weapon. The braves walked their ponies on.
Slowly, the band moved down the length of the train, studying each wagon and its driver carefully. No women were visible, Moses noted with relief, but he also realized that the total absence of family members would give the Comanche an overwhelming curiosity about how many were hidden behind the canvas.
As the two lines reached the last wagon, they crossed behind it bread-and-butter-fashion and started back as slowly and carefully as they had gone. Going and coming, both lines had stopped to observe Jack Sterling’s small herd of cattle with interest, but they didn’t seem to know what to make of the hogs who noisily rooted around in the buffalo grass every time the train pulled up. The chickens, by contrast, amused the braves and seemed to frighten them a bit as they clucked and chuckled when the Indians leaned over to peer through the wire into their crude coops. In spite of the animals’ antics, the tension in the air seemed to lay the wind and become more intense with each pony’s step.
Moses gently spurred his horse down toward them, whispering to each driver as he passed, “Don’t do nothin’. No matter what, don’t do nothin’ less I signal you.”
Except for Karl Runnels, the drivers said nothing or just nodded at the advice. But Runnels, a big German tailor with a red face and a wagonload of cloth, turned even redder when Moses whispered to him and demanded loudly, “Und vot iff you’re dead? Vot kind uff zig-e-nal vill dot be?”
Moses looked up sharply to see if the Indians had heard and understood the word signal, which the German had almost shouted in his mispronunciation. He saw them glare at the tailor and urge their ponies into canters toward Runnels’s wagon. Moses slipped his gloved finger into the Springfield’s trigger housing and prepared to die.
But it wasn’t the German’s voice that attracted them. They had spotted the bright green and red cloth that appeared in the canvas folds in the rear of his overloaded Conestoga, and they rode their ponies right up behind it and began pulling out the bolts and stringing them out onto the dusty grass.
“Gottdamnit!” Runnels shouted, and he began scrambling down from his wagon seat to collect his goods before they were entirely ruined by the ponies’ hooves. Before Moses could do anything, the burly tailor was swearing loudly and shaking his fist at them as if they were malicious schoolchildren.
By the time Runnels found his footing, a scream tore the afternoon’s warmth. The German’s wife, Golda, was discovered by the Indians as she tried to hang on to a piece of lacy white material that one of the bucks had pulled out of the wagon. She held frantically on to the cloth while the startled and amazed braves rode around her body and studied her thick, black-stockinged legs kicking out from under her petticoats.
So red in the face that he seemed about to explode, Runnels was swearing inarticulately as he brushed by Moses’s shying bay and started for his wife, who was now totally entangled in the fabric and was clawing at the prancing Indian ponies with her fingers. He had left his rifle up on the wagon and wore no pistol, but he pulled out a lock-back jackknife and started for the ground among the horses, apparently intending to slice the lace away from his wife’s clutching fists, thereby freeing and rescuing her.
Regardless of his intent, the Indians took a knife-wielding white man more seriously than a hysterical woman’s screams, and their grins suddenly became fierce grimaces. The brave holding the bolt of cloth in his hand dropped the lace, and with little more than a flick of his wrist, he flung his lance directly at the charging German. The spear pierced Runnels’s boot and brought forth a scream, which was cut short by the sudden arrival of three more lances that knocked him down flat and pinned him to the dirt.
Golda, seeing her husband down, pulled free of the cloth and started toward him, but the chief deftly moved his pony between her and her husband’s body and cut her off. She bounced hard off the Indian’s painted horse and fell backward, emitting a new shriek of terror that ended when her body struck the ground and air whooshed from her lungs. She lay there in a faint. The chief walked his horse around her, raised her skirts with the tip of his own lance, and inspected her fat legs briefly before shouting something to his comrades. They all laughed, then rode off twenty-five yards and took up a line together to wait.
3
THE INCIDENT BEHIND THE RUNNELS WAGON TOOK LESS than a minute, and Moses and the other settlers who leaned out from their own wagons to find out what was going on were frozen by the suddenness of the Indians’ actions. The scout moved his horse up beside the fallen German and looked down to see if he was still alive. He was amazed to see that Runnels’s eyes were open and his mouth working in a kind of silent prayer. Except for the first lance, which had pierced his boot and brought forth gouts of blood, no other spear had wounded him. They had simply nailed him to the ground by piercing his coat and holding him there. He was hurt, Moses noted, but he would live. That, and the almost playful way the Comanche had dealt with Frau Runnels, made him think that maybe they might want to trade after all. Certainly they could have killed them both had they wanted to. For the briefest moment he triumphed in his idea that the Comanche could be dealt with.
Golda groaned loudly, and Moses turned to a man named William Golden, the wagon driver behind the Runnels wagon, and ordered, “They ain’t hurt much. Get ‘em up an’ inside, an’ for God’s sake, keep that knife away from him.”
The driver didn’t move but simply stared stupidly at Moses, and the scout wondered if he was going to have to dismount and deal with the fools on the ground himself. But before he could act, he spotted a swatch of golden hair underneath the Runnels wagon. He opened his mouth to say something, but then he recognized Aggie Sterling, and his words stopped in his throat.
She moved rapidly to Golda, applied a wet cloth to the woman’s face, and helped her up. Down the line of wagons, Moses could see Jack Sterling’s face staring in a great, silent rage. There was nothing he could do without inviting the Indians’ attention, and, Moses assumed with relief, he knew it. Finally, Golden found his legs and climbed down and obeyed Moses’s command, helping the large German free himself from the lances. He and Aggie started the couple toward their own wagon as Moses rode out to deal with the Comanche, who were talking among themselves and pointing at the beautiful yellow-haired girl who had come out from hiding to help the great fool of a white man.
The chief was not engaged in the excited reaction to Aggie’s appearance. He stared at her with eyes that seemed to reflect a mixture of fascination and horror. Moses saw that he was almost transfixed, and he didn’t look away from her until she disappeared into the Runnels wagon. What remained was thoughtful, Moses saw, not lustful. It perplexed the black scout, but he had no time to dwell on it.
When Moses reached them, the Indians turned their ponies and rode back to the head of the train. Moses followed at a short distance until they were about where they had met, and then the chief regained his composure, turned, and began talking quickly to the medicine man.
Although younger, the chief carried himself with a lot more confidence. The black scout studied the markings on the savages in front of him. Each rawhide shield revealed the bearer’s personal medicine. None of them was particularly scratched and torn; in fact, a number of them looked as if they had been recently constructed. There were scalps hanging from several, to be sure, but his mind quickly drifted from such idle recognitions to one that was more startling. These weren’t Penaterkuh, the band of Comanche which for years had terrorized the Hill Country and central Texas and had in recent years displaced themselves to the reservation around Fort Sill. Nor were they Nocona or Yampareeku or Kutsukuh, nor any of the other Comanche bands that had sometimes dealt peacefully with whites. These were Quahidi, Antelope Eaters, the most feral of the bands that roamed Comancheria. They had never signed a treaty and sometimes made war on other Comanche bands. They regarded the white man as only slightly more tolerable than rattlesnakes and scorpions. They had ravaged forts and settlements from San Antonio to Colorado and were famous for taking hostages. Little was even known about them apart from their distinctive fierceness and the markings on their shields and ponies that distinguished them from the other bands. Moses blew softly between his teeth in an inaudible whistle. It was a miracle that Runnels and everyone else weren’t already dead or being carried off across the backs of the brightly painted ponies.
Moses conversed with the shaman for a time in broken English and crude signs. The Indian’s voice was guttural, and his vocabulary was sprinkled with the dialect of a man who was unpracticed in any tongue other than his own, but he managed to make himself understood well enough, even if phrases of Comanche and Shoshone mixed awkwardly from time to time with the few Spanish and English words he proudly used. The other braves and the chief sat their ponies in silence, but Moses noticed their eyes playing across the train behind him, assessing men and strength, plunder and loot, and, he added with a shudder, how many more beauties like Aggie might be secreted in the wagons. After a few minutes, he wheeled his horse around and rode back to Graham’s wagon.
Frank Herbert and Jack Sterling and one or two others including Virgil Hollister had come up and were hanging on to Graham’s wagon, staring out at the Indians, who patiently waited about fifty yards out.
Sterling’s face contorted itself into a fierce scowl as Moses reined his horse up on the opposite side. His dark eyes danced with hatred.
“I’m fixin’ to kill me a nigger if anythin’ happens to my girl!” he announced, not exactly in Moses’s direction but generally.
Graham waved the comment off with his stump but not before shooting Sterling a quick, hard look. “What do they want?”
“Says he wants to trade for some fresh meat an’ other stuff.” Moses forced his voice to be calm while dealing with the men’s collective ignorance.
“Meat!” Graham sniffed. “We got no fresh meat. You know that.”
Moses glanced down at the oxen, who stood switching flies away from their rumps with their stubby tails. “They see it diff’rent.” He saw Graham’s eyes widen. “They see these here oxes an’ the cattle—”
“Them cattle’s breed stock!” Sterling cried. “They’re not for butcherin’. If they was, I’d already have—”
“Look.” Moses tried to sound reasonable. “They don’t care ‘bout none of that. The medicine man there says they’s white men up on the plains been killin’ buffalo left an’ right, antelope too. His people’s hungry, an’ he sees somethin’ that looks one hell of a lot easier to butcher than buffalo draggin’ these wagons, an’ some prime meat on the hoof back there, an’ he don’t give a good goddamn ‘bout no ‘breed stock.’ ”
“Well, I’ll be goddamned,” Sterling said and shook his head.
Graham settled back on the wagon seat with a gesture that indicated that he understood. “Well, hell, there’s only twelve of them. I reckon I could take on six right now, an’ you could handle a couple yourself—or that’s what I hear—an’ between Jack an’ Frank here—“
“You don’t understand, Mr. Graham,” Moses pleaded suddenly when he realized what the wagon master was contemplating. “That’s Comanche out there. They don’t mess ‘round with no dozen braves. Like as not they’s twenty or more has rifles pointed at us right now.” Graham’s eyes strayed unsteadily across the impenetrable grass. “These here is jus’ a bunch come to size us up,” Moses went on. “Jesus God, Mr. Graham! Why you think they didn’t kill ol’ Mr. Runnels back there? If he was any kind of threat to ‘em, he’d be dead right now. They knew they was covered, else why would they waste their lances jus’ havin’ fun with him?”
Frank Herbert spoke up. “Makes sense, Cap’n,” he said. “This boy jus’ might know what he’s talking ‘bout. Least, that’s what we’re payin’ him for.” The black scout stared at Herbert in surprise. He had assumed this wide-eyed, talkative man was a near moron. He was uncertain how to regard such support, but Graham further surprised Moses by staring at Frank and nodding.
“I know my job, Mr. Graham!” Moses insisted. “They’s mean sons of bitches sittin’ out there. They’d jus’ as soon take what they want, an’ to tell you the truth, they’re prob’ly fixin’ to try sooner or later anyhow.”
Sterling spoke up. “What’s stoppin’ em right now, then? Answer me that one.” He glanced up to Graham for approval of his logic. “If there’s as many as you say sneakin’ up right now, what’s stoppin’ em? This ain’t nothin’ but nigger foolishness, Graham.” Sterling spat into the grass beside the wagon. “I say we start shootin’ an’ see what happens.” He glared at Moses. “What makes you think we’d be any worse off doin’ that ‘n just handin’ em what they want?”
“Nothin’,” Moses said. “Not one goddamn thing. But right now, this is how they want to play it, an’ we ain’t hardly ready—”
“I say let’s shoot it out here an’ now an’ get on ‘bout our business. I ain’t givin’ em one heifer.”
“They’re goin’ to hit us anyhow,” Moses argued. He pulled out his bandanna and wiped his face. Fear climbed his back like a centipede. He could feel the braves watching him.
“Then I don’t see what advantage there is in tradin’ anything with them,” Graham said.
“Look.” Moses felt patience slipping away from him as a desperate fear began to flood in and replace it. “If we give ‘em what they want, we still might make the crossin’ by dark. They’s some caves there, an’ we could fort up real good. After a while, they’ll get tired an’ go ‘way, especially if we show ‘em we can shoot straight.”
Graham stroked his beard with his stump. Moses could see he was thinking it over.
“If we get caught out here,” the scout pressed his argument, “we got no cover, no water. Hell, we ain’t near ready. Least on the creek we got a fightin’ chance.”
“I just hate to give away good cattle to a scrawny bunch of half-starved hunters,” Graham said, but he was swayed, and Moses breathed a bit more easily. “We’ll likely need those beeves. We’ve already traded away our eatin’ stock.”
“Them’s breed stock! Damnit!” Sterling said. “They’re not for eatin’.” But Graham ignored him.
“Mr. Graham, that ain’t no huntin’ party,” Moses said definitively. “That’s a war lance that shaman is carryin’. Them’s scalps hangin’ from their shields. That paint on their faces means death. That’s Quahidi Comanche. That chief an’ them braves may look like a bunch of young’uns, but they could take this train an’ ever’body in it if they’ve a mind to, an’ I s’pect there’s a hundred more braves in shoutin’ distance if he wants ‘em. You don’t want to mess around with this thing.”
Graham still said nothing. He was, Moses surmised, lamenting the dilemma of being caught between red men and a black one and not being able to get out of the crack without having to pay. “I think we can buy some time,” he said finally, more to Herbert than to Sterling. “Maybe we can save the rest of the stuff.”
“An’ our women,” Moses added helpfully.
“They ain’t your women!” Sterling shot back at him. “Goddamnit! An’ it ain’t your beef, neither. Why can’t we give ‘em a mule?”
“Comanche won’t have nothin’ to do with mules,” Moses explained with a patience he didn’t feel. “They think a mule’s some kind of freak.”
“That’s a point I’d agree on,” Graham muttered. “You’re going to give up a cow, Jack.” His voice was rock-hard. It left no room for argument.
“Well, I’ll be plum go to hell.” Sterling’s face was a mask of pure contempt for the black man who was taking away his cattle. “I seen you talkin’ to my girl today, an’ if I catch you at it again, I’m goin’ to have me some black balls for a necklace. Savvy, nigger?”
“Shut up, Sterling,” Graham ordered, and again Sterling looked startled, as if he had been slapped. Graham did not look at him but continued to divide his glance between Moses and the distant Indians. “Oh, what the hell,” he finally sighed. “Give them a goddamn cow.”
Moses tried to calm his voice. Sterling’s attack on him had been so violent that he had trouble maintaining anything like a professional tone, and his nervousness angered him and made his voice quaver a bit. “It’s more’n a cow,” he said. “They want three beeves, maybe a ox or two.”
“Goddamnit, Graham!” Sterling swore, but Moses went on before he could say anything else.
“That’s what makes me think there’s a bunch of ‘em. They’re askin’ for too much for any twelve braves, I don’t care how hungry they are.”
“No oxen,” Graham said flatly. “Three of Sterling’s cattle, but no oxen. We need the oxen, goddamnit.”
“I need the cattle, too,” Sterling said sullenly.
Moses noted that the Indians were beginning to walk their ponies around a bit and to show signs of impatience. He pressed on, “They want the cloth they took off Runnels’s wagon, an’ . . .” He trailed off.
“What?” Graham demanded.
“Well, they asked for some rifles an’ bullets—which we ain’t goin’ to give ‘em.”
“That’s the first thing you’ve said that makes sense, boy,” Sterling said. Graham nodded in agreement.
“An’,” Moses finished the list of demands, “they want some whiskey.”
“Whiskey!” This time it was Virgil Hollister who shouted. “That’s pissin’ in the wind for sure. I’ll be damned in hell ‘fore I’ll give whiskey to a heathen Indian. I’d sooner give ‘em rifles.” The man’s eyes were narrowly set on either side of a huge axblade-shaped nose. “Far as I’m concerned, we can pour all that devil’s brew out on the ground right now an’ get on ‘bout our business.”
“We ain’t got no whiskey,” Graham said to Moses. Hollister made a braying noise with his lips.
“Mr. Graham,” Moses said, again more patiently than he felt, “we got barrels an’ barrels of whiskey on this train. I know it, an’ you know it. Half the wagons here got least one, most two or more, includin’ yours. I know you prize it, ‘cause any damn fool knows that he can trade whiskey for damn near anythin’ in Santa Fe or anywhere else. But them Indians ain’t blind. They seen the barrels, an’ they want some.”
Graham studied the black man sitting on a horse before him. His hand tightened on the stock of his rifle, but he said nothing. His lips were tightly pressed together under his beard, and his eyes quiet.
“Well, we ain’t givin’ em no keg of whiskey,” Sterling said with finality, breaking the tension. “I think I got me a half-bottle of rotgut someplace. I’ll water it down with that damn creek water everybody drunk, an’ they’ll shit fire an’ save matches.” He chuckled at the prospect.
“I think we’re better off givin’ em a barrel or two,” Moses said. He held up his hand to stave off the objections. “It’ll slow ‘em down, since they can’t carry it, an’ they sure as hell ain’t fixin’ to leave any of it behind.”
Graham thought for a minute more. All the Indians were now walking their horses around in a slow circle. “Jack,” he said, “you go back there an’ cut out three beeves.”
Sterling shot a hateful look at Moses. “I’ll do it, but I don’t like it.”
“Too damn bad,” Graham replied. “Frank, you cut a keg of juice off the Sterling wagon.”
“Off my wagon!” Jack Sterling shouted. “Why not your wagon? Why mine?”
“Because you come up here an’ poked your nose in where it doesn’t belong,” Graham replied. “An’ because I wouldn’t be here in the first place if it weren’t for you. Now get to it, Frank.”
Herbert muttered a “Yes, Cap’n,” and walked off behind Sterling, who was kicking angrily at the grass. Hollister followed behind him, glaring alternately at the Indians and at the wagon master as he stalked away.
“Three beeves,” Graham said to Moses and held up three fingers as if it were the black scout and not the Indians with whom he was bargaining. “No oxen, not one. No guns, no powder, no cartridges. The whiskey, an’ they can have the goddamn cloth.”
Moses nodded and turned his horse to return to the waiting Comanche. He believed they might take the deal, for the moment. He had no doubt they were certain that they would own the whole train and its contents soon enough anyhow.
“Say,” Graham called to him in a mocking tone, “what do we get?”
“What?” Moses turned around in the saddle.
“I say, what do we get out of this? You did say it was some kind of trade.”
“Well.” Moses brought a hand up and rubbed the short, stubby beard he wore on the end of his chin. “He didn’t come right out an’ say so, but for now, I reckon, we get to keep our hair.”