Return of the Tall Man Read online

  The thoughts in the minds of the four men on the pole had long since ceased to dwell in speculative channels. Deadening half-consciousness had drugged three of them. The fourth, Lame John, had fainted an hour gone, was not revived even by the cold gustings of the rain.

  About seven, supper out of the way and the wet weather having blown off inland toward the settlements, the flints were struck, the damp kindling fanned into smoky life. Before the wood was well caught, Quanah rode in from the southeast. At once the camp was in an uproar.

  The raid had been a good one. Over seventy head of fine horses ran in the loose herd driven by Quanah’s braves. And the gods had been good in more regards than the quality of the animals. The feared Tejanos, the Rangers, the Devils in the White Hats, had run them hard and close as far as the Kickapoo Fork. But there this lovely summer storm had met them, moving against the Rangers. Its downpour had drowned out every pony track on the liano. Wagh! With luck like that, who could complain about a little wet and a little weariness? Tsh-t! Raise the victory whoop and get on with the work at the waiting pole.

  A hurried meal wolfed down, Quanah inspected the prisoners and ordered them stripped to the waist. This was for the delicate first procedure, a cutting of the torso in the nerve-ending places designed to produce the maximum of pain with the minimum of blood loss or debilitation. It was at this point that the particular old squaw who had stepped forward to rip Ben’s shirt away paused for a searching look at the tall white man with the Indian-long shock of coarse tawny hair and the slanted, light-gray eyes. For a moment it appeared she would question him. But she did not. Shaking her head as if something hung in her mind which would neither divulge nor dislodge itself, she reached upward and tore Ben’s rags from him. It was when she did this that her rheumy eyes opened wide, and she stood back pointing dramatically at the odd, penny-sized discoloration on his left breast.

  “Sa’m-bou!” she cried out. “Look at this! The mark of the Water Horse!”

  19

  Quanah Parker’s Cousin

  The Comanches gathered around in greatest excitement. Ben and the others were cut down. A robe was spread for Ben, the headmen summoned to question him. Their tongue sounded oddly familiar to him, but he could make no answerable sense of it. Hand signs were tried with some better, but not enough, luck. An impasse loomed. Then someone recalled the remark of Dominguin’s Kwahadi mother that the tall white man might carry some of the true blood in him. How had she found that out? Perhaps Dominguin had found a way to talk to the tall one. At once riders went after the Comancheros who, Ben was partly able to determine from the swift Kwahadi signs, had departed scarcely an hour since, waiting only for nightfall to put more ground between themselves and the Apaches of Mano Roto. Should Broken Hand decide, the signs continued, as had his Cheyenne and Kiowa brothers previous to him, that the northern

  woman was no bargain, Dominguin apparently wanted to move the complaints department as far south as he could. With any other Indians, the Comanches, the Lords of the South Plains, would have welcomed a clash. But between them and the Mimbreños of Mangas Coloradas, the infamous and already legendary Red Sleeves, there existed a truce of mutual understanding; the understanding being that both were such merciless fighters that warfare became pointless. Why start anything when neither side would quit? Bou’ou, clearly there was no point in such wastefulness of warriors. So likewise, if fearless, pit bulls, the Mimbreños and the Kwahadi looked the other way when one passed the other upon the prairie. Of course, if one band were far stronger than the other, that was a different matter, and it was then understood that life belonged only to the swifter riders among the outnumbered group. But by and large, the people of Mangas and those of Quanah avoided seeing one another where possible.

  So it was that Soledad Dominguin and his aged mother, the one cursing, the other croaking, drove their oxcart back into the camp of the Kwahadi sometime after eight o’clock that evening. The young braves who had galloped out to return them had said nothing of the reason for their order. The Lords of the South Plains were not in the habit of explaining commands to Comancheros. Hence, the first idea Dominguin drew of his forced delay’s motivation was when Quanah pointed out to him the mark of the Water Horse on Ben’s breast and growled at him in guttural Kwahadi that he, Dominguin, was to serve as interpreter, since the Ta’k’ae-kiH spoke no language save his own, despite the Comanche symbol on his body.

  “You mean, don’t you,” said Dominguin acidly, “that he doesn’t speak your tongue?”

  “Why, yes,” replied Quanah. “Is it not the same thing?”

  “Yes, it is not the same thing,” gritted the Comanchero. “Did you ever think he might know another tongue? How do you think my old mother talked to him?”

  “Do you mean the hand signs? We tried those. He is pretty good with them, but we couldn’t get him to understand what it was we wanted. We don’t use the signs as much down here as they do up north where he came from.”

  “No,” snapped Dominguin, “I don’t mean the hand signs. I mean my own tongue, my father’s tongue.”

  “Spanish?” said the surprised Quanah.

  Many of the Comanches spoke the Mexican language, both from their contacts with the brown-skinned traders of the Sonora country and with the Spanish-speaking white settlers of Texas. But it had not occurred to them to try it on a captive from far Montana.

  “Yes, Spanish!” Dominguin now declared. “Your precious Ta’k’ae-kiH, your damned northern white man, speaks better Spanish than do I. Go ahead, ask him, see for yourself. Goddam, even with a Kwahadi mother, it’s difficult for me to follow your thoughts, Quanah. Now why wouldn’t you have thought of a simple thing like trying Spanish on him?”

  “Perhaps because I had a white mother,” answered the Kwahadi chief. “I was thinking of him as a white man.”

  “Well, think of him as you like. He’s your purchase and your problem. Now how about me? What are you going to do about me? Here you have dragged me back, and I have lost two hours on the trail and those Apache devils only twenty miles away when last seen. Wagh! You have got to do something for me.”

  Quanah had so far spoken with the utmost gravity and dignity. Ben, recovering sharpness of mind during the questioning period, had been amazed at the famed chief’s gentleness and soft-voiced tolerance of the Comanchero’s petulant responses. Now he saw the steel come into Quanah Parker’s level gray eyes.

  “Yes,” he said, “I will do something for you, Soledad. I will give you until daylight to be across the Pecos. Comprende usted?”

  “The Pecos? You must be having a Kwahadi joke. That’s Apache country.”

  “Sure, that’s the Kwahadi joke of it.”

  “But, Quanah—”

  “Soledad, the choice is yours.” Ben had never heard a man put more menace into such innocent words. “You asked me to do something for you, and I am doing it.”

  Dominguin lost several shades of his saddle-leather color. He licked his lips, quick and flicking as the lizard he resembled. He glanced at Ben, then back to Quanah.

  “It’s almost certain death, cousin. You’re ordering me to go kill myself very nearly.”

  “You have the choice. You earned it with your own big words. No man talks to Quanah in the tones you used just now to me. Not in front of Quanah’s people.”

  “Por Dios!” cried Dominguin. “I didn’t mean anything! I was only angry at being brought back here for such a stupid rea—” He checked himself but far too late. In desperation, he wheeled to Ben.

  “Listen,” he pleaded in English, “see if you can’t do something. You realize the choice he has given me? You’re a white man; you can’t let him do this to me.”

  Ben, still working to loosen and restore the life to his numbed limbs, shook his head.

  “I don’t follow you, Soledad. What does being a white man have to do with it?”

  “He has said
to me that I must cross over into Apache land before sunrise. That’s almost sure to get me killed. But if I stay on this side in my own country, there’s no almost to it; I will be killed—by him, Quanah. He’s just promised it.”

  “I didn’t hear him. He just told you to get out of his sight by daybreak. That don’t sound deadly.”

  “Goddam it, patrón, don’t argue it with me! Please! Use your influence with them. Quanah will listen to you. He’s got to.”

  “What in the name of hell,” asked Ben incredulously, “are you talking about? Have you gone daft?”

  “Por Dios! Don’t you know? Haven’t you followed this talk of the mark on your breast? You’re a Water Horse. That’s the family mark, there, that you have on you. The Water Horses are the rarest Comanche secret family there is.”

  “Secret family?”

  “Sure, they’re like the hidalgos in Old Spain—you know, the rulers behind the rulers. The Comanches have maybe eight, ten, who knows how many of these family bands. There are the Wasps, the Wanderers, the Yap Eaters, the Antelopes—my mother is an Antelope—the Liver Eaters, the Burnt Meats, the Wormies—some others maybe. But the Water Horses, they are the most powerful and feared of all. And you have their mark on you.”

  “Well, good Lord, even if I do,” said Ben, completely puzzled by now, “how’s that give me any edge on this here Quanah?”

  “You fool! He’s a Water Horse, too. The head one.”

  Ben stared at him, the idea too remote for ready acceptance.

  “You mean to say—” he began, but Dominguin cut him short.

  “Yes,” he said, “I mean to say just that; you’re the same blood as Quanah. My old mother was right. You’re a Comanche.”

  “My God,” breathed Ben, “it ain’t possible.” But he turned, none the less, to Quanah and put the question to him in halting Spanish.

  “Is it true what he says,” he asked, gesturing toward Dominguin, “that you and I have the same blood?”

  Quanah’s calm eyes studied him a moment. Then he nodded slowly.

  “Yes,” he said. “Mira.”

  He opened his shirt. Ben leaned forward, a strange feeling growing within him. Then he felt the small hairs lift at his nape. The blue mark on the Kwahadi chief’s left breast was the same as that on his own.

  “T’ou Tsei,” said Quanah Parker, indicating the symbol. Then in Spanish again. “The Water Horse. We are true cousins, you and me—what the Indians call near-brothers. What I have is yours.”

  “Lord, Lord,” said Ben, “I can’t believe it.”

  “Cómo se dice?” asked Quanah politely.

  “Oh.” Ben grinned. “Dispense me, usted. I’m still a little confused from being strung up. I said I couldn’t believe that I was part Comanche—Kwahadi, that is.”

  “Our grandmothers were sisters. It is as I said; we are near-brothers, once removed. You are welcome in this camp for the length of your life, and who is your enemy cannot be my friend.”

  Ben looked at Big Bat, Frank Go-deen, and Lame John where they lay beneath the waiting pole. He pointed to them, inquiring anxiously.

  “How about those who are my friends?”

  Quanah glanced around at the reviving captives. It was clear he had forgotten them entirely. He turned back to Ben, making the apology sign.

  “Now it is your place to forgive me,” he said. “I am weary. We came many miles this day. Rode very hard. Be at rest in your mind. Your friends are the guests of my people. They will be restored quickly.” He wheeled to bark some Comanche orders at the old women standing near. From the hand signs accompanying the commands, Ben understood he had instructed the squaws to care for the exhausted men and thanked Quanah in Spanish for the courtesy. The chief shook his head, saying it was nothing and asking Ben to follow him to his lodge where they might talk in confidence and at ease.

  “I want to know why it is that you did not tell us of your Kwahadi blood,” he said, turning to lead the way. “If Soledad’s mother had not made the remark to old Spider Woman,” he waved to the squaw who had discovered Ben’s tattoo, “we would have killed a true cousin; a very bad thing to do.”

  “To be honest,” said Ben, catching Go-deen’s eye and throwing him the “all is well” hand sign, “I didn’t know about my Comanche grandmother.” He twisted his wry smile at the somber Kwahadi. “To tell you the entire truth,” he added, “I still don’t know about her.”

  Quanah stopped.

  “What do you mean by that?” he asked. “Do you call me a liar?”

  “Por Dios!” protested Ben. “Never!”

  “Well, then?”

  “It’s a long story,” said Ben, “and I, too, am weary. May I tell it to you resting in your lodge?”

  “Yes,” replied Quanah Parker, eying him closely, “you may do that.” He looked at him a moment longer. “Indeed,” he added softly, “you will do it.”

  20

  Comanche Compliment

  As they entered the lodge and Quanah busied himself bringing sitting robes, two pipes, tobacco, and, to Ben’s amazement, producing and lighting a fine Rochester hand lamp brought from the Texas settlements at what price of life no white man would want to speculate, Ben studied the Kwahadi chief whose evil reputation had filtered even as far north as Big Bat’s and Frank Go-deen’s Montana.

  Quanah was, first of all, surprisingly young. Ben guessed he could not be more than a few months either side of twenty. He was very tall for a Comanche, a race inclined to short, wide bodies and huge heads, and, like Lame John, an extremely handsome man. His skin was quite dark, his teeth white, strong, perfect, his hair raven black and worn braided in two rolls wrapped with red cloth. Upon his forehead he wore a dollar-sized swirl of hair puffed and tangled in the Plains Indian sign manner which indicated, as nearly as it might in white translation, “If you want a fight, you have come to the right place.” His body was muscular, straight, deep-chested. His legs were bowed and his toes turned in like any pureblood horseman of the prairie tribes. Positively, the only sign of white blood which might be detected in his physical appearance was the light-gray color of his fine eyes.

  Surprising Ben’s glance, Quanah smiled quickly, setting those gray eyes alight with friendly warmth.

  Seating himself beside the small lodge-fire’s clear flame, he waved his left hand gracefully in the beginning sign.

  “First, cousin, let me tell a little about myself; then to you and your life since you were known to the Kwahadi.”

  He paused, thinking, his dark face seeming to grow more shadowed with the thoughts.

  “I am of less years than yourself, as you can see,” he resumed. “I have never seen my mother since the Rangers of Captain Ross captured her and killed my father, Peta Nocona. This was on the Pease River in 1860. The Rangers killed seventy-seven Comanches on that day, other than the chief, my father. You can see how my heart turns against them. I will always hate the Rangers.

  “I had a younger brother and baby sister when my mother was taken, both since dead. Prairie Flower, the little girl, I loved more than my own life. She died like a small wild bird of a broken heart in those ugly settlement camps. They killed her like the Rangers killed my father. First they wounded her; then they finished her.

  “I won’t burden you with all this, though. You will excuse it, please. Also, please forgive it that I cannot speak your tongue better. I am learning it, for I know I must. But it is slow work. Many think my mother taught it to me. That is a lie. She was but nine summers when taken by my father from the settlements. She spoke no English at all when I knew her. See how these white lies get started?

  “So that is enough of me, Cousin Ben. Now for you.”

  Ben thanked him, told him briefly of his loss of memory in the Montana snowslide, his saving from a frozen death by old Chilkoot Johnston, his subsequent promise to the old man and his long, frust
ratingly near-successful search for the Indian-reared daughter. The tale completed, he made the returning-to-you sign to Quanah, who accepted it gravely.

  Fascinated, Ben leaned forward. Quanah spoke in slow, deliberate Spanish, mixed in with frequent hand signs and occasional usages of the few frontier English phrases at that time within his command. His manner was entirely assured, his mind plainly superior. His humor, if subdued, was nimble and ready. Ben found himself immediately lost in listening; and the time flew like ghost arrows.

  The name Ben had found burned upon his gun belt, Quanah said, was his true white name. And his people lived where the belt stated, over east of Kickapoo Fork of the Little Colorado River, near the tiny settlement of San Saba. That is, they had lived there. Now, after the great war among the white men, no more Allisons were known around that place.

  Ben’s Kwahadi grandmother, the older sister of the squaw Spider Woman, had died long ago. Her daughter by a white captive from Arizona, Ben’s mother, had been caught by the Rangers when but six years old and reared in the Texas settlements. The grandmother had kept in touch with the daughter through the years, even when the girl had married Ben’s father, an army lieutenant from the Tejanos’ war with Mexico. The latter, at the last, had been stationed at Fort McKavett to the south of San Saba, his family staying in the settlement for safety. Ben and his one younger brother, Clint—Quanah said, “Klee-n’t,” but Ben understood him to mean the common Texas name—had come not infrequently to see their Indian grandmother. These visits had been in secret from the army father, conducted by the half-Kwahadi mother at the old grandmother’s urging.

  In this way the boys had been taught some of the Comanche life. Although Ben had forgotten what little he had known of the difficult spoken language, he had remembered its sound and also the signs and the general knowledge—the blood-brother instincts—of the South Plains Tshaoh; this memory explaining, no doubt, his good ability to get along with the other horse Indians on his long search for the missing white girl.