Brothers of the Buffalo Page 20

  Although the army might still end up fighting the Indians they were feeding, on that day there was a feeling of good will worth more than any paper treaty ever signed.

  Wish our government was able to see just how simple it is, Wash thought. Just make a promise and then keep it.

  The sun was close to sinking by the time all the food was distributed to the happy families of Kiowas and Comanches. The order was given for the bugle to sound retreat. The cannon was fired, signaling the end of the day.

  As Wash and Josh lowered the flag and folded it, the last of the Indians filed out of the fort and disappeared into the dark.

  Wash, he said to himself as he dropped into his bunk, today was one of the finest days you and the 10th has ever seen.

  At least he thought he just said it himself. But he must have been saying his thoughts out loud, for a voice spoke up from the bunk next to his.

  “A-yup,” Josh said. “I do agree. Today was a fine day indeed. But what about all them buffalo hunters who are still killing off the herds? What will happen when our Indians have gone and eaten all of that food, which will not last them more’n a week at best? Today is fine. But what about tomorrow?”

  What about tomorrow?

  Long ago the buffalo were much stronger than the People.

  The People had no weapons,

  and the buffalo hunted the People and ate them.

  The buffalo boasted that

  they were the strongest beings on the earth.

  Maheo, the Great Mystery, heard those boasting words

  and knew they were not good.

  So Maheo sent a dream to a certain man.

  When that man woke, he did as the dream taught him.

  He made a bow, strung it with sinew,

  and made arrows. He practiced hard

  till each arrow he shot struck where he aimed.

  Then he went to the People, who were surrounded

  and trying to fight off the buffalo with clubs.

  He fired one arrow after another.

  Each arrow brought down a buffalo.

  Run, the buffalo cried, this one knows how to kill us.

  So, from that day on, the buffalo

  have never again hunted the People,

  and the buffalo run when they see a human.

  And as long as humans do not boast

  that they are the strongest on the earth,

  they may hunt the buffalo.

  UNEXPECTED NEWS

  Petersburg, Virginia

  March 23, 1874

  Dear Private Vance,

  As I am sure you have gathered by both my salutation and the fact that this letter is not in her handwriting, your sister is not writing this letter. Allow me then to introduce myself. My name is Henrietta Ames, and I am the new schoolmistress for the school that was recently built to serve the colored children of your community. It is a job that I hold in large part or perhaps entirely because of your father. But I shall explain that later in this epistle.

  Your mother asks me now to tell you that she is well and that all is well. They have planted the fields and hope for a harvest as good as last year’s. They have received the money you have generously been sending from your pay. Because they have done so well with their crops, they have not had to spend all of the money and they have begun to put some of it aside so that when you return home you will have your own money to use however you wish.

  She and your stepfather are proud of you. They and your sister eagerly read every word in your letters again and again and imagine you are having a great adventure. They fear for your safety but are glad that you have good friends. I, for one, admire your attitude toward the Indian. At home in Boston, my father is a member of the local Friends of the Indian and works in his own way to bring peace and civilization to our red brethren.

  Although your mother asked me not to mention it, I feel it is necessary to explain why I am writing this letter and not your sister—who has been one of my finest students. Your sister is too ill to write. She came down with a fever and for a time it was uncertain whether she would recover. It was a long struggle. Now, however, she is improving. I am sure the next letter you receive will be one that she writes. Your mother and stepfather were by her side every minute, and she could not have had better care. I admire your stepfather, Mr. Moses Mack, for his devotion to your family. And it is very pleasing to see how much he and your mother care for each other.

  Before I close I should explain my rather mysterious reference to your father in the first paragraph of this missive. Like your father, my own father was a Union soldier. He was a lieutenant, and your father served under him. In the Battle of the Crater where your own father perished valiantly, my father lost his arm. But he would have lost his life had it not been for your father defending him and shielding him with his own body. All of the negro soldiers in my father’s company fought with incredible bravery and honor, but your father was the best of them all, a man of both courage and intelligence with whom my father enjoyed discussing great literature.

  When my father returned to us and told his story, I vowed, though I was but eleven years old at the time, to find some way to repay your family and those brave negro martyrs. I decided to become a teacher and travel to the South to teach negro children. It took me some years to gain my education, but I did not waver in my vow. I sought out the community where your family lived and took up my post four months ago.

  I shall close by sending you my best wishes and my prayers for your continued health and safety. Your mother says to tell you that she loves you. She hopes all is well between you and Miss Bethany Brown. She is proud of you.

  I remain most sincerely,

  Henrietta Ames,

  Schoolmistress

  Hope School for the Colored

  Wash put down the letter. Then he picked it up and read it again from start to finish. He shook his head and then read it a third time. There were so many conflicting emotions in his mind that he felt as if a hive of bees had taken up residence between his ears.

  “You all right?”

  Wash turned to look up at Charley, who had come into their tent without his noticing it.

  “I reckon.”

  “Bad news from home?” Charley asked.

  Wash let out a deep breath. “Well,” he said, “my sister Pegatha been real sick for a while and nobody told me about it.”

  “That’s bad.”

  “But she is getting better.”

  Charley grinned. “So that’s good.”

  “My mama is married to Mr. Mack, the man who was my father’s friend.”

  “You never told me that,” Charley said.

  Wash sighed. “Just like my mama never told me. I wouldn’t know it now if it hadn’t been for this letter written by the new schoolmistress, who must have figured I already knew about it.”

  Charley opened his mouth as if to say something, then closed it. He sat down next to Wash and put a hand on his shoulder. “Families is funny things,” he said. “Sometimes our mamas just don’t tell us everything. Like my own mama. She always say, ‘What you don’t know won’t hurt you, son.’ And most of the time she’s right.”

  “I suppose,” Wash said. “It just seems as if I think I know what is right, and then the next thing I just don’t even know what I know.”

  The next evening was a Sunday. It had become Wash’s favorite day of the week, for every Sunday now he was invited to dinner at Sergeant Brown’s. The food was better than anything served in the mess hall. A far cry from Cincinnati chicken, as they called salt pork, or Stars and Stripes, the troopers’ name for beans and bacon. But Mrs. Brown’s home cooking was far from the best thing about those Sunday evenings. When dinner was over and the dishes cleared, he and Bethany would be left alone in the little combination dining room and sitting room while Sergeant Brown and his wife repaired to the third of their house’s four small rooms—leaving the door open between them, of course. The door to the outside and the few windows in th
e small building were left open as well, for it was one of those hot nights in early summer where every evening breeze was like a blessing.

  Wash bit his lips, looked up at Bethany in her chair not three feet away. Noticed a small bead of sweat on her perfect brown forehead. Then, even more quickly, he looked down. Some of the shyness he’d felt back when they first began to talk had come back to him. He didn’t know what to say.

  But Bethany smiled and broke the ice.

  “So,” she said brightly, “we are in the midst of Act Two, Scene Two, are we not, Private Vance?” Then, leaning close to him, she whispered, “Just read, Wash.”

  And, taking a breath from the air that suddenly seemed even warmer, he read:

  “See, how she leans her cheek upon her hand!

  O, that I were a glove upon that hand,

  That I might touch that cheek!”

  His voice failed him, and he found himself squeezing the book tighter than he’d ever held the reins of any horse.

  “Go on, Private,” Bethany said.

  Wash took a breath that was almost a sob. He knew he was speaking but couldn’t hear his own voice or the words of the Bard who’d always delighted him. How can I be saying this to her, to her! he was thinking. Does she understand how much these lines echo my own thoughts?

  “Ay me!” Bethany replied.

  Wash sat up straight, as startled as if he’d been jabbed with a sharp stick.

  “Ay me.” Bethany repeated. “That’s Juliet’s line. Now go on with Romeo, Private.”

  Wash swallowed hard and began to read again:

  “She speaks:

  O, speak again, bright angel! for thou art

  As glorious to this night, being o’er my head

  As is a winged messenger of heaven…”

  Wash closed the book. “Can we just stop there?” he said in a soft voice.

  “You wish to leave now?” Bethany said. She sounded uncertain.

  “No, not at all. But...can we just talk some?” As he spoke those words it was with a double worry. One was that, overhearing what he was saying, the sergeant or Mrs. Brown would step into the room and order him to leave. Or worse, that Bethany would be the one to say no. But neither happened. Instead, her long elegant hand reached across and touched him lightly on his right wrist.

  “Go on, Private Vance,” she said, her voice as soft as his own.

  Wash sat there in silence, a confused but somehow happy silence despite his uncertainty about what he wanted to say or even why he’d said he wanted to talk. And then it came to him. He believed somehow, without knowing how, that Bethany would understand the confusion he was feeling about every part of his life that had seemed so simple and clear mere months ago.

  “I got this letter from back home,” he said. “It confused me.”

  “From a sweetheart, I suppose,” Bethany said, straightening up a bit, her voice more careful than before.

  “No,” Wash said, “not at all. I never had a girl back home. There was always too much work to be done. It is from my mother.”

  “Oh,” Bethany said, leaning forward again, “is it bad news?”

  “Well, yes it was and, well, no it wasn’t. That is what has me confused. And it was not from my mother. She never learned to read and write, so my sister usually wrote the letters. Except my sister was sick, very sick, and so this letter was written by the new schoolteacher.” He took a breath. “From Boston. I mean the teacher is from Boston. Now why did I tell you that?”

  Bethany smiled briefly, then quickly returned a serious look to her face. “That doesn’t matter, does it? So just tell me about the letter, Wash. And your sister.”

  “Right,” Wash said, rubbing his thumbs over the raised lettering on the book in his hands. “My sister was sick, but she is much better. The letter said my mother and my stepfather had been taking good care of her. My stepfather, Mr. Moses Mack. And she said, the teacher said, that my mother and my stepfather are proud of me.”

  The smile returned to Bethany’s face. “Why, that is lovely, Private Vance,” she said. “How nice to know that. And I could see why they would be proud of you.” She paused and lowered her voice. “From what my uncle has said of you. He never praises any of the men as highly as he does you, Wash.”

  That stopped Wash. He had to take another breath on that thought, then realized it was probably just that the sergeant was being polite to his niece seeing as how she was enjoying talking about books so much with him. Nothing more than that.

  “So,” Bethany said, “what confused you in that seemingly lovely letter?”

  Wash looked up at her. “I didn’t know any of that before the letter.”

  “Any of what?”

  “That my sister was sick or that my mother had gotten married again. That teacher just assumed I knew. But I darned well did not!”

  “Oh,” Bethany said.

  “Why would they do that, keep all that secret from me?”

  Bethany looked over her shoulder. The silence coming from the room on the other side of the open door was eloquently still. She shook her head, then placed both of her hands on top of Wash’s where they rested palms down on Shakespeare’s works.

  “Sometimes,” she said, “people who love you, truly love you, do not tell you everything because they do not wish to worry you or burden you. I think that is what your mother and sister were doing. I think that is what you have probably done in your letters to them.”

  “Maybe so.”

  “Did you know Mr. Moses Mack?

  “Yes.”

  “A good man?”

  “He was my father’s best friend and took me fishing. I liked him well enough. But when my father died in the war, Mr. Mack went away for a good many years before he ever came back. I didn’t even know he’d come back. My mother never told me he’d come back.”

  Bethany looked at Wash for a moment without saying anything. Then she folded her hands together and tapped her chin with them.

  “Private,” Bethany said, “have you ever killed anyone?”

  It shocked Wash. He stared at her.

  “Have you?”

  An easy thing to deny, but not to Bethany, not with the way she was looking at him. Plus he had no doubt that word of what had happened in the Flat had long ago reached every corner of Fort Griffin, even though no official mention was ever made. And Bethany had been at Fort Griffin.

  “Yes,” Wash said.

  “Was it justifiable?”

  Wash nodded. “He would have killed my friend and me. He certainly tried.” He found that he was holding something in his hand, holding it out to Bethany. It was his watch. The Vance watch. He had not realized he’d taken it from his pocket.

  Bethany took the watch and opened it, looked at the picture inside. “These people,” she said, “you knew them, didn’t you?”

  “The white Vances,” Wash said, taking back the watch and studying the picture, wondering as he often did now if those faces had always been smiling up at him like that. “They owned us, me and my family. And the man I killed used to be our overseer. He whipped my father. And when the Yankees were coming, he dry-gulched the Vances and killed them all and stole this watch from them.”

  “Ah,” Bethany said. “Your owners. It is interesting how often we look a bit like the white people who owned us, isn’t it?”

  Wash started to say something, but Bethany held up her hand. “But we are not them, are we? We have our own lives and our own destinies. Just as your mother has a life of her own. And do you know why I asked you if you ever killed a man?”

  Wash shook his head.

  Bethany held her index finger up to her lips and then moved it forward. “Because I intended to ask you this question next. Did you write home to your mother and sister about killing the outlaw Tom Key in a gunfight? Or do you ever intend to do so?”

  “No,” Wash said. “I did not. And I do not.” And then, in spite of himself, he had to laugh. “You made your point.”

  Bet
hany nodded. “I certainly did,” she replied.

  It was the same now for all of the tribes. After years of resisting the call to turn from the old ways, it was over. Their only chance to survive was to accept life at the agencies. A few had tried the path of raiding into Mexico. If they avoided the American settlements, they might not stir the anger of the army. But it did not work. When they took horses and cattle from the Mexicanos, they were attacked on their way back across the border by American soldiers.

  Among the Kiowas, only Lone Wolf would not give up. His heart still burned over the death of his son Tau-ankia and his nephew Gui-tain. Lone Wolf stayed out with a little band of his relatives and followers.

  The Comanches were ready to quit—aside from the Quahadis. They were being urged on by Quanah Parker. He was half-white, the son of the Nokoni chief Peta and a captive white woman. But his mother had loved his father. She had become as much a Comanche woman as any born to their nation. She and Peta raised their son to be a fierce and intelligent fighter. When the Nokonis came in to the agency, he refused to join them. He joined the Quahadi band because they were not ready to accept quiet ways. Soon he had risen to be their war leader.

  The Cheyennes, too, did not want to quit. But it seemed hopeless. By the end of the Moon of Drying Up, they realized what they had to do. If they wished to live, they had to come in to the agency.

  Winter Man had finally let go his strangling grasp. Now they could travel. Gray Head, Heap of Birds, all of the chiefs of the Council of Forty-four came in with their many lodges. Into Darlington came one hundred forty lodges led by White Shield, Old Wind, and Eagle Head. Most of the people were walking and limping behind the few who still had horses. White Horse, the head chief of the Dog Soldiers, was with them. His return to the agency showed that even the fiercest fighters were ready to accept peace if it meant food for their family. The war leaders came in—even those who had urged the people not to rely on government rations. All they asked for now was food in exchange for peace. They knew that the rations they might receive would be small. But they also knew that some food was more than the nothing they had before.