Is-A-Man (A J.T. Edson Standalone Western) Page 10

  Accepting and donning the clothing, the girl had told herself that her rescuer having scalped the dead warriors did not preclude the possibility of him being employed by the Army. According to what she had heard around camp fires whilst hunting with her father and those of his friends who had had experience in the West, such scouts were not prevented from treating hostile Indians they killed in such a fashion. Nor did discovering he did not understand English when she tried to thank him cause her to change her mind about his occupation.

  Seeking for a way of communicating with the warrior, so as to be able to satisfy her curiosity, Becky had thanked him for clothes in Spanish. Her delight at finding she was understood had been tempered by the limitations caused by their respective knowledge of the tongue. The dialect she had learned from ‘Dona Conchita Alvarez of Madrid, Spain’ was different to the one in which he had replied and, because she had not learned the appropriate terms needed to pose the questions, there had been much which she could not have explained.

  On being asked and having admitted she was hungry, the Tshaoh had formed the correct deduction from the way the girl’s face had twitched in revulsion as she gazed at the scalped bodies of the Kiowas. Telling her to accompany him, he had led the way to where three horses which had clearly seen recent considerable hard use were standing ‘ground hitched’ by their dangling reins. Collecting pemmican and jerky from the buckskin parfleche bag fastened to the cantle of one of the saddles, he had offered some of each to her. Having partaken of both when on hunting trips with her father—except the meat used to produce them had always been beef and not, although she was unaware of the fact, the flesh of buffalo with which she was presented xvi —she had eaten ravenously.

  By the time the meal was over, the sun had been sinking beyond the western horizon. After helping her rescuer to bring the property of the dead Kiowas to the woodland and to tend to the horses, she had been so tired from the stresses of the day that she had made an extemporized bed from fallen leaves and slept without being disturbed until morning. Over a breakfast of pemmican and jerky, hoping the name would be familiar to him, she had asked the Tshaoh if he would take her to Fort Worth. Although it was obvious he had not understood the name, he had inquired whether she could ride and, receiving an answer in the affirmative, told her to select a horse so they could be on the move.

  It was not until the pair had left the woodland and were heading across more open, rolling terrain in the middle of the afternoon that the girl had realized they were heading in a westerly instead of the more southerly route she had been travelling before the massacre. On asking why this was, the Tshaoh had pointed to their rear to where a small party of riders were following in the distance and explained they were the rest of the band responsible for the murder and mutilation of her friends. Assuming he was taking a roundabout way of returning to whichever Army post he belonged, instead of rejoining the soldiers who had sent him to her rescue—unless he had been on a mission alone and acted of his own initiative—she had not been unduly worried by him continuing to lead her in the same direction.

  After making camp at sundown, without the pursuers having closed the distance more than marginally, the Tshaoh had satisfied himself that Becky knew how to load and shoot a rifle. Then, telling her to watch over the animals, he had set off on one of his horses and armed only as he had been when she first saw him. This time, having witnessed how efficiently he was able to use the weapons, she had had no misgivings. Nevertheless, something else had puzzled her and it went unexplained. While making preparations to leave, he had taken a pair of old and obviously worn out moccasins from his parfleche and tucked them under his waist belt.

  Left alone, the girl had forced herself to remain awake, ready to use the two rifles if necessary. The need had not arisen. Returning as daylight was starting to lighten the sky, it was obvious her rescuer’s expedition had not been without success. He had brought three horses with him and there was another scalp hanging from his belt. However, he no longer had the old moccasins. Nor had there been any further sign of the pursuers as they continued to ride to the west. xvii

  Finding their mutually restricted knowledge of Spanish did not extend to posing the main questions which plagued her, Becky had taken consolation from the thought that her rescuer had not tried to molest her in any way. Rather he had treated her with a consideration she would not have expected from all the information she had acquired about Red Indians over the years. Not only did he show no interest in her as a woman, but he never offered to keep any of the captured weapons out of her reach or to restrict her freedom of movement in any way when they were camped for the night. Therefore, she had told herself that he must be taking her to the Army post at which he served instead of returning to the trail. The supposition had grown weaker with the passage of time. Nevertheless, realizing she would have the greatest difficulty in even finding her way back in the direction from which they had come, she had made no attempt to do so.

  When she saw the Indian village, Becky realized her belief that the rescuer was a scout for the Army might have been completely wrong. However, she told herself that there was just a chance that he was a scout and had come home to dispose of his loot before taking her back to her own kind.

  Accompanying her rescuer down the slope, leading four of the captured horses, the girl studied her surroundings. Constructed of animal hides—buffalo, she was to discover later—over a conical framework of long, straight poles, xviii they looked much the same as she had seen depicted on paintings of Indian villages although she felt certain the decorations painted on the walls of the tipis must differ from tribe to tribe. Fires were burning outside them, some with cooking pots bubbling as meals were being prepared for the occupants. Elsewhere, men and women sat or stood around performing a variety of tasks. Beyond the stream which flowed through the center of the camp, in addition to mounts picketed close to the dwellings of their owners, many horses and ponies were grazing under the watchful gaze of boys approaching adolescence.

  No matter what was occupying them, with the exception of the horse herders, the people started to hurry forward as the newcomers reached the edge of the village. All were tallish and slender in build, clad in clothing made of buckskin and with the men wearing blue breechclouts no matter what else they had on. Asking questions in their own tongue, some of which Becky realized must be about her, it was obvious they were delighted by the arrival of her rescuer. Signaling for her to dismount, he slipped from his saddle and, she assumed, started to explain what he had been doing and how she came to be with him.

  ‘How’d he take you, girl?’

  Hearing the words, spoken in English which was hesitant as if from lack of recent use, Becky turned towards the speaker. She proved to be an elderly and white haired woman clad like the other females in the crowd, but whose features were undoubtedly European in spite of being tanned to almost the same shade as the Indians.

  ‘Take me?’ the girl repeated in puzzlement. ‘I thought he was a scout for the Army and had been sent after some Indians who’d massacred my friends.’

  ‘I can tell you’re not a Texan,’ the woman stated, her accent that of a Southron. ‘But what in the Good Lord’s name made you think a thing like that?’

  ‘He risked his life to save me from some of the Indians who did it,’ Becky explained, the tone in which the question had been posed giving further evidence that she had been wrong in her assumption.

  ‘Seeing’s he’s come back, I figured he’d caught up with them,’ the woman admitted. ‘But it wasn’t to save your life. Three Kiowa bucks took his wife while she was out food hunting and had their way with her afore they killed her. So he took him a blood oath to get revenge and, from the looks of things, he’d done that and more.’

  ‘He did,’ Becky confirmed and she could not restrain a shudder as she thought of the bodies she had seen on recovering from the faint. ‘But, if he isn’t a scout for the Army, who is he?’

  ‘His name’s Singing Bear,�
� the woman replied. ‘This here’s the Waterhorse Band’s, so they’re called. Honey, he’s a Comanche.’

  ‘A Comanche?’ Becky Ingraham gasped, putting the same emphasis on the name of the tribe as had her informant.

  Even before she had reached Texas, the girl had heard of the Comanches. They had a reputation for ferocity and hostility towards white people which no other tribe yet possessed. Many and lurid were the tales told of their skill at waging war and the atrocities which followed every victory they achieved. Yet she could hardly reconcile such stories with either the way in which she had been treated by her rescuer, or the appearance of the people who were gathered about her.

  While Singing Bear had killed and scalped six men in the fight following his first appearance, then taken the life of another to dissuade the remainder of the war party from following them, the girl had no complaint about the way he had treated her. Not only had he refrained from molesting her in any way, but he had fed her and helped with the chores such as tending to the horses. Nor did the people look in any way filthy, vicious and depraved. Their appearance was cleanly and their behavior reminded her of the villagers amongst whom she had grown up when welcoming one who had been absent for some reason and returned in triumph.

  ‘They’re Comanches all right,’ the elderly woman confirmed.

  ‘But he’s treated me well,’ Becky objected, unable to reconcile her rescuer’s conduct with what she had heard. ‘He didn’t—didn’t—!’

  ‘He loved his squaw and’s still in mourning for her,’ the woman pointed out. ‘And, even happen he wasn’t, he’s not bad mean like some’s you could’ve got took by.’

  ‘Have you been—badly treated?’ the girl asked, deciding her informant looked nothing like the ill-used and abused drudge she would have expected a captive of savages to be.

  ‘Not over bad,’ the woman admitted, then looked around as the newly return brave spoke to her. Returning her gaze to Becky, she continued, ‘Singing Bear says I’ve got to take you to his tipi.’

  ‘Then I’m—?’ the girl gasped.

  ‘You’re to stay here,’ the woman affirmed and her voice took on a timbre of warning. ‘Don’t refuse to come along with me, nor start acting foolish, honey. You can’t do nothing, ’cepting make things bad for you happen you even try. ’

  ‘But—But—!’ Becky gasped, gazing about her and needing to call upon all her self control to prevent herself from leaping to and mounting a horse so as to take flight.

  ‘Come on,’ the woman said, gently yet firmly, taking the girl by the left arm. ‘I know how you feel, honey. I did the same when I was brung here.’

  ‘You mean—?’ Becky began, as she was urged by a gentle tug to start walking away from the horses, having concluded from what she had been told that her informant was living with the Indians by preference and free choice.

  ‘My name’s Annie Wishart,’ the woman introduced. ‘I was the only one they took alive from a village they massacred. They’d come looking for revenge, ’cause some lousy scalp-hunters’d killed a dozen or more of their women and kids, I found out later. I felt real bad about being took at first. Then, after a spell, I got around to figuring I wasn’t all that bad off at all.’

  ‘You mean you like it here?’ Becky asked.

  ‘Took a spell, but I come ’round to just that,’ Annie replied. ‘I was still alive and in some ways better off. I’d been took from a husband’s worked me finger-raw ’n’ got mean drunk and whipped me at least once a week, and I wound up with one’s worked me no harder, fed me better and never laid a hand on me. Yes, honey, I’ve knowed worse than living with the Comanche and, was I you, I’d try to start thinking along them same lines. ’Cause you’re likely like me, to stay.’

  ‘You mean there’s no hope of being rescued, or escaping?’

  ‘The first just might happen, only it hasn’t during the six years they’d had me. But was I you, I’d give up all notion of escaping. This’s the furthest east I’ve been with ’em and, ’less’n I’m mistook, we’re still a far piece from the nearest white folks and it’s all bad mean land along the way to get there. Even happen you got a hoss, lit out and they didn’t run you down—which ain’t likely, way the bucks can follow sign ’n’ ride—there’s some worse things than living among ’em’s you’ll be like to meet out there.’

  Engrossed in the conversation, Becky suddenly became aware that she and Annie were being followed. Not by any of the men, but by five Indian girls forming a half circle about them. All were younger than her, not bad looking and simply clad in undecorated buckskin dresses which were tight enough to show off each’s trim figure to its best advantage and moccasins. However, she was less interested in their looks and clothing than in their attitude. Moving closer, they were passing remarks between themselves to the accompaniment of gestures her way which she sensed were far from complimentary or friendly.

  ‘Keep going, honey,’ Annie instructed, after saying something in what Becky assumed to be the Comanche language which failed to either stop the girls following or reduce their all too obvious hostility.

  Doing as instructed, the brunette felt her temper rising as hands reached out to push and grab at her clothing. Then one of the girls, made bolder by her apparently meek acceptance of their abuse, snatched a slender branch from outside the tipi they were passing and lashed her across the shoulders.

  Such was not, anybody who knew her could have warned, the kind of treatment which the girl who called herself ‘Becky Ingraham’ would allow to pass without retaliation!

  Letting out a gasp of pain mingled with anger, the brunette quickly spun on her heel until locating who had struck her. Bringing around her knotted right fist, she delivered a power packed punch to the jaw of her assailant. It was a beautiful blow, sent with skill and precision. The kind which she had learned could end hostilities before they could go any further. Certainly it had that effect as far as the recipient was concerned. Sent in an uncontrollable twirl, the branch flying from her grasp, she did not stop until sprawling limply and unconscious on the ground.

  Angry yells burst from the rest of the girls. Two of them were delayed by having to shove the white haired woman aside as she tried to stop them, but the other pair were able to leap straight at Becky with hands reaching for hair. Their attack was purely feminine and far less skilled than she had become accustomed to dealing with in the ring. Darting between them, she dealt each a backhand slap to the face which spun them away before either’s fingers could take hold. Having done so, she twirled to meet the rush towards her being made by the first two. Ducking her head, she charged to ram it into the midsection of the closest and, emitting a startled squawk, the girl was thrown backwards by the impact.

  As Becky came to a halt and was straightening up, the other Comanche threw both arms around her biceps and pinned them to her sides. Only for a moment, however. Putting to use all the strength in her sturdily curvaceous body, the brunette threw off the restraining grip with a force which caused her attacker to stumble away. Turning to continue the offensive, Becky was seized in a similar manner from behind. This time, before she could try to escape in the same fashion, two of the girls rushed towards her. Bracing herself against the one to her rear, she swung her legs up and, getting a foot against each of the approaching pair’s breasts, she gave a thrust which sent them reeling backwards. Having done so, feeling the arms around her relaxing as her feet returned to the ground, she reached over her shoulders. Grabbing two handfuls of black hair, she bent at the waist and catapulted the girl in a half somersault over her.

  Although she had liberated herself once more, the freedom gained by Becky was only brief. Almost as soon as she escaped, still gasping in air to replace that driven out by the force of the butt, the girl not involved in the latest attack returned to the fray. Tackled around the waist, the brunette was starting to deal with the one responsible when the two she had thrust away came rushing back. For a moment, there was a confused staggering scrimmage with han
ds grabbing hair or clutching at clothing. Then their legs became entangled and, locked together, they went to the ground and engulfed the fourth Comanche before she could recover from being dumped supine.

  Churning over and over, the five girls formed an incredibly interwoven, yet ever altering mound of furiously struggling female flesh from which arose a variety of screeches, yelps, croaks, gasps, groans and screams to give testimony to how much pain was being inflicted upon every one of them. Attracted by the commotion, everybody who had gathered to welcome back Singing Bear hurried up. However, none made any attempt to intervene. Instead, they formed a large circle and made it plain they were enjoying the spectacle. What was more, following the trait common amongst members of the Pahuraix—Water Horse—band of the Comanche nation, many of them soon started betting upon what would happen next as well as the eventual outcome.

  However, it was doubtful whether the spectators—or the combatants, for that matter—could have said exactly what was being done by any of the quintet at a given moment!

  Regardless of what was taking place, to Becky, it seemed she was constantly being mauled by dozens of pairs of hands and at least a similar number of legs were also assailing every portion of her body. Fists and flat palms pounded her head, shoulders and body from groin to bosom, back and front. Soon blood was flowing from her nostrils and her right eye started to swell and discolor, but she had no idea whether knuckles or some other portion of her attackers’ anatomy was responsible for either. Her limbs were jerked, twisted and tugged at. While this was going on, knees and feet too inflicted suffering wherever they made contact and this too was happening with great frequency. Nor was her brunette hair ignored as a means of adding to her pain and there were moments when she thought not only handfuls, but her very scalp would be torn away.