Winter Rain

In the nine winters Tall One had spent with the Kwahadi, he had seen the tribe teeter, then slip, from their one-time greatness. No more did they roam in such numbers. Summer after summer of warfare against the growing legions of yellow-legs, winter after winter as they hunted the disappearing buffalo—it took its toll year after year after year. One had only to look around him to see that the number of lodges had been whittled down by nearly half. Yet something in these proud people kept them alive and off the reservation that winter.

They raised their crude shelters in the arroyos, out of the wind, until they could find enough old bulls to begin curing lodge skins once more. Again they hunted antelope and deer for clothing and moccasins. The few ponies they had escaped with had to be cared for more watchfully than ever, for those animals would allow the tribe’s finest horse thieves to strike once more come spring. Soon they would ride out as the grass shoved its first green shoots from the winter-weary ground.

Once the weather began to moderate, they broke into six small groups, Antelope riding with one of the four scouting parties sent off to wander in search of buffalo and to clear the path for those to come. The other two warrior societies escorted the women and old ones, stayed with the children who rode atop the few drags they had left. The strongest of the women pulled the travois now, the ponies gone with the warriors, gone with the hunters. Antelope’s wife struggled as best she could, young and strong as she was with one child barely walking, another infant lashed in a blanket at her back as they plodded north, waiting for spring.

Because he had chosen to stay with the village, Tall One too used the growing strength of his back to drag a travois across the cold ground. Atop the bundles on that travois sat his young nephew, wide-eyed and silent. More and more the face of Antelope’s firstborn reminded Tall One of his mother.

And because the village traveled so slow those last cold days of winter, Tall One was one of the last to know. It was Antelope who brought the news late of an early spring day as his warrior society rode back to rejoin the main village. What news they carried proved momentous.

“Soldiers?” asked Tall One.

“No,” Antelope answered his brother’s question. “But they are white men. Three-times-ten. With two mules along and many, many guns.”

“How close are they from catching us?”

“Two, maybe three days at the most.”

Over the days that followed their discovery of the Comanche trail, Company C watched the spoor of their enemy freshen, found the camp fires and their beds, watched as here and there more trails converged.

“Another bunch come in from the west, Cap’n,” Jonah told Lockhart.

“That makes how many now, Sergeant?”

Coffee consulted the small hand-stitched, leather-bound tablet he carried inside a vest pocket. “Near as we can count the tracks of them parties we’ve run across—we’re closing on seventy-five or eighty warriors now.”

“Sniffing up their hind ends you mean!” roared June Callicott.

Most of the rest laughed uneasily. It was better to laugh, Jonah knew, knowing they were already outnumbered three to one if things came down to a fight of it. And why wouldn’t things end up just that way? That was, after all, why Captain Lockhart’s men were trailing these Kwahadi, wasn’t it? To make a fight of it? But no one said anything of the odds. Though it might be there plain as paint on their faces if a man looked hard enough, long enough—no one said a goddamned thing about the odds that grew more stacked against them every day they dogged that Comanche trail.

“How many more you figure on joining up?” Lockhart asked.

Hook shrugged. “No telling. This could be most of the warriors. Could be just a small scouting party sent out to roam over this country.”

“What’s your guess?”

“I’d hate to hazard a guess, Cap’n.”

“Hazard one, Mr. Hook,” Lockhart snapped, the tension of trailing the Comanche finally placing cracks in the captain’s implacable exterior.

“All right. Were it up to me, I’d figure this is about half of what warriors there be in the village.”

“This half meaning seventy-five or eighty?”

“Yes, Cap’n.” As he said it, Jonah felt the palpable hush fall over the rest of those men as they sat their saddles stoically.

“We might face maybe as many as a hundred fifty, Mr. Hook?”

“Maybe.”

Lockhart swallowed that one like he had been given a woolly worm to eat. Still, he straightened, and tugged down the front of his wide-brimmed hat before he said, “Men, if we prepare for the worst that things could possibly be, then nothing can deter us from the success of our mission.”

The captain had looked at Jonah for a moment, as if measuring the plainsman one more time, as if to ascertain something before committing Company C to the do or die of it.

Then Lamar Lockhart quietly said, “Sergeant Coffee—we have Comanche to track. Put out our scouts and let’s get moving.”