Who had attacked the village? We gathered it was a tribe from the south, the Tensas, but they were led by a man not a Tensa, and some of the warriors had been Natchee.
“They look for woman,” the Quapaw said, “a beloved woman.”
I knew the term from the Cherokee—a beloved woman was one who through wisdom, bravery, or both had won a revered place among her people. She was a woman whose word could stop or turn aside a war party, could overrule a chief. They occurred but rarely.
“A Natchee woman?” I asked.
“Natchee … gone, long time gone.”
We had fumbled together a way of speaking. He knew some Cherokee, as we did, although Indians who knew the language of another tribe were rare, usually the sons or daughters of captured women or adopted sons. It was a custom among many tribes to adopt a son from among prisoners taken to replace one lost or slain.
“Big Natchee warrior want her. He lead war party. Say to Tensa he get many scalps for them. Come with him, his medicine is strong.”
Kapata …
Yet why attack a village where he must know she would not be? To win prestige and gain followers?
Keokotah agreed when I expressed my thoughts. “He big man now. Take many scalps. His medicine strong.”
Young warriors eager for renown would follow any leader who promised success. Now, after taking the Quapaw scalps, the young men of the Tensa would be eager to follow this leader. No matter that he was not of their tribe. Such things had happened before and no doubt would again.
Kapata would have no following from among the Natchee beyond the two or three who had come west with him. He would need to win followers to make up a strong party.
Who knew with what eloquence he had spoken to persuade them? But the young men of all tribes were eager to take scalps and the prestige that followed. No doubt Kapata had scouted the Quapaw village and knew that most of its young men were away and that it would be an easy victory. He would have known that Itchakomi was not there.
The passions that stir Indians are no different from those of Europeans or Asiatics. Ambition, hatred, fear, greed, and jealousy are ever-present. Kapata was the son of a Natchee man and a Karankawa woman, and the Karankawa were despised by the Natchee. Kapata must have grown to manhood righting to overcome that stigma and striving to assert himself and his manhood. To marry a Sun would be the ultimate, to be himself regarded as a Sun … He knew of no such thing happening before, but his fierce Karankawa mother had instilled in him the feeling that he could do anything. She must have told him of the Karankawa warriors, feared by all.
Sitting beside the wounded warrior, who was now either unconscious or asleep, I tried to understand he who had become my enemy.
It was not until the third day, when we had moved well upstream, that the men of the massacred village returned. We heard their wailing and I went down by canoe, approaching them warily.
Seeing me, they rushed to the shore, and I motioned for them to follow. After a moment of hesitation, several armed and dangerous warriors did follow.
Akicheeta—for that was the name of the wounded Quapaw—was awake when they entered our camp, and he explained what had taken place. He also explained that we were seeking the Natchee woman.
I asked about the river. “Spring much water,” he drew a route with his finger in the earth. Making zigzag lines to indicate mountains, he showed how the river emerged from a great cleft in the rock. Between us and where the river emerged from the canyon he showed a place where the waters would be shallow at midsummer. “No canoe,” he said, making signs to indicate the water would be only a few inches deep.
“How far to the mountains?” I asked.
He shrugged, and I held up ten fingers. “More!” he replied.
“Spanishmen?”
He shook his head. “Conejeros!” He swept a wide area before the mountains and made a gesture of lifting my scalp. “You see!” he warned.
The name was strange to me, but Keokotah spoke longer with him and told me later it was the name of a very fierce tribe of Indians who lived at the edge of the mountains. They hunted buffalo and then retired in the hotter months into higher country. In the winter they hid their lodges in sheltered places where there was wood to burn.
The Quapaws treated Keokotah with respect while he ignored them, holding himself aloof for the most part.
Several commented on my scarcely healed wounds, the deep claw marks on my body, and Keokotah told them, with some embellishment I am sure, of my killing the panther with a knife when I had a broken leg. I could grasp enough of what he was saying to know that I lost no stature in the telling and that the panther had suddenly grown larger than I remembered.
Suddenly, and for the first time, Keokotah brought out a necklace of the panther’s claws. Evidently he had taken them from the dead cat while I had been sleeping, and he had carefully strung them on a rawhide string. Looked at now, the claws were formidable and longer than I remembered. To tell the truth, I had been rather too busy to notice dimensions.
The Quapaw had treated me with respect before, but now my stature had grown. With a gesture, Keokotah put the necklace around my neck. He had said nothing about the cat’s crippled leg, and who was I to spoil a good story, especially when it made me look so good?
All I could remember was the sudden attack, the wild, terrible scramble among trees and brush, and the hot breath of the panther, the scrape of his teeth on my skull and my stabbing and stabbing with the knife. All I had been was another animal fighting wildly, instinctively for life. The cat, in all honesty, had been a big one. I could remember its weight on me and my frantic efforts to escape it.
My broken leg had knitted well, though I still limped a little, but whether it was necessity or habit I did not know and began consciously trying to correct it.
We left the Quapaw and moved upstream slowly. The current was still strong, but there were fewer obstructions. We rarely saw drifting trees, although once we did paddle through a dozen or so dead buffalo. The stench was frightful, and we paddled vigorously to escape them.
Only rarely did we see the smoke of a village, and we passed no canoes on the river. There were trees close to the banks but we often caught glimpses of bare, grass-covered hills beyond.
Coming upon a clump of chokecherry bushes we camped to make arrows—many Indians favored the slender branches of the chokecherry over all others, although reeds and some other woods were used by some tribes, with much depending on what was available and light enough. The arrows made by Keokotah were about twenty-eight inches in length, and those I made for my longbow somewhat longer. His bow was about four feet long and he could use it with amazing speed and skill.
Every move was made with caution, as ambush was a favored tactic of the Indians, and we knew not what awaited us. Food during those weeks was no problem. There were fish, ducks, and geese, and now we found wild turkeys again and occasionally a deer. Lower down we had had to be watchful for alligators, but we saw them no longer.
On the second day after the arrow making we saw where several canoes had been drawn up at some time not long since. Edging in, we found a camp, now abandoned.
Three canoes, good-sized ones. Several warriors, maybe as many as a dozen. Keokotah found Kapata’s moccasin print among them. After we had studied the ground we decided there were at least ten of the Tensa as well as Kapata and his few Natchee. They were but a few days ahead of us. Somehow, if we were to warn Itchakomi, we must overtake and pass them without their being aware.
Every day we saw buffalo, usually in small herds of two dozen or less, but many herds within a short distance of each other, so we might count fifty such within the range of our eyes.
Our supply of food was running low and so we needed to hunt, not only for food but for the warm robes of the buffalo. The cold season was coming on and the nights were already growing chill. Despite the numbers of the buffalo, we had no success in getting near them, for they had been lately frightened, no doubt by Kapata and his people.