We might never know.
So far as I knew I was the first Anglo white man to come so far west. But who could actually know? Always there was some venturesome one who would not be content with the limits set by others.
When spring came we would put in our crop again, and once more we would take to the mountains and seek out the far lands. There was in me a driving wish to see, to know, to feel.
Westward loomed the mighty peaks of the Sangre de Cristos, mountains where the caves were, mountains I must explore. And beyond them? Who knew?
A great valley, we heard, a greater valley by far than this where we lived. And beyond it? The sunlight glinted sometimes on snowcapped peaks, or so the Ponca woman said, of far-off mountains, incredibly high.
Night came and the stars, but Keokotah did not come and our hearts were heavy. We did not speak of him nor of our fears, but each knew what the others thought and each knew the fear in his own heart.
Yet he came! A stirring in the night, a faint sound at the door. I drew my knife and stepped forward to meet whatever was there.
The door opened. It was Keokotah.
“Ah!” I said.
He looked at me. “They are gone … gone!”
“Gone? Who?”
“The Natchee, the Tensas … gone.”
“You mean they have given up and gone home?” This I had been expecting. The Indian does not like long, drawn-out battles. He wishes to do it quickly, get it done, and go home.
“Gone … dead. All killed.”
All? I could not believe it.
“Who?” Although I knew without asking.
“The Komantsi. They have killed them. Taken their hair.”
“Kapata, too?”
“No Kapata. He is gone when they come, I think. I think he come back after. I see big tracks.”
Kapata! Would we ever be rid of him?
THIRTY-THREE
They came down the canyon in a straggling line, two dozen of them at least, with three horses and a half dozen miserable dogs. Most of the men were wounded and some of the women, and all were about to fall from exhaustion. They stopped abruptly when they saw us, hesitating until I walked out to meet them.
In sign language we told them we were friendly, and they explained they had been hunting buffalo across the eastern mountains when attacked. Their warriors had been scattered and the Komantsi had killed many. They were Pawnees, seeking a place to rest and gather themselves for another fight.
The old man who came forward to meet me carried himself with pride. He was Asatiki. He had lost half an ear in some bygone battle, and his body was criss-crossed with ancient scars. The mighty muscles of his youth had turned to sagging flesh, but in his eyes the fierce pride had not dimmed.
His people were beaten but not whipped, that I saw at once. They needed to recover from their wounds and make arrows for another fight. But they were ready to fight.
My gesture included the meadow. “Stay. We are friends. If the Komantsi come we will fight them together. Only,” I added, “do not kill the young buffalo you see here. He is a medicine bull. He is Paisano.”
The place they chose was several hundred yards from our fort, near a small stream and a stand of trees. They gathered sticks to build their fires and I went among them to treat their wounds.
“I am Sackett,” I said, “a man of mysteries.” The simple treatments I used were adequate, and I had gathered herbs against such an event. Best of all, these were a strong people and the air was fresh and clean.
In their own land they lived in earth lodges that would shelter twenty people or more, domed structures built upon a framework of timbers, but here they built of bark, for these were but temporary shelters.
Asatiki had no memories of his people that went beyond the time of his grandfather. He could tell me only stories told about the campfire in winter.
I spoke of the Tensa and Kapata. “That one is our enemy. If he comes among you, know him not. His medicine is bad. He carries the seeds of evil.”
My questions were about the Komantsi. “Strange Indians,” the old man said. “I do not know them. They come to steal Spanish horses, but they attack all they see. They boast of many warriors to the north, many who will come. Maybe they speak true.”
He knew nothing more. There had been sporadic attacks before this, hit and run attacks by Komantsi seeking horses and stealing women.
His people, the Pawnee, had a very old tradition that the Pawnee came from the southwest and once lived in houses built of stone. Another story had it they came from the southeast. Arriving in the land where they now lived, they encountered the Skidis, with whom they fought. Later, the two tribes became friends, intermarried, and became as one people.
When we had talked much I asked about the yellow earth that both smelled and burned. There was such earth far to the southeast, he said. His Caddoan relatives used it for medicine. The old man had not been to the place where it was found, over a month of travel, but knew of it from other Indians.
Our corn was growing, and the hunting had been good. A small herd of buffalo had strayed into the lower valley. Keokotah no longer spoke of his village, and when I spoke of it he said, “My village is here.”
Often I wondered about his visit to his own people at the time of my visit to the caves of the mummies. He did not speak of it, but I believed he had found himself no longer at ease among them.
The Englishman had begun it. In his loneliness he had talked long hours with the boy, until the thoughts of Keokotah had made him a stranger among his own people.
When alone Komi and I spoke of this, and she looked into my eyes and spoke of herself. “I, too, miss my people. Here we have no fire. There is no temple and no priest.”
“Are you not a priestess?”
“I am.”
“There can be a sacred fire.”
“It would not be the same. Our sacred fire was a gift of the Sun.”
“Am I not a master of mysteries?”
She looked long into my eyes, seeking the truth.
“Did not the Ni’kwana see me as such?”
“Yes, but—”
“If a scared fire will make you happy, I shall give you such a fire. I will give you fire from the sun.”
“You?”
“Soon, when the time is right, I will bring fire from the sun.”
She did not believe me. “You do not worship the Sun.”
“The sun gives life to all things. Without the sun this would be a dark, dead world. Perhaps,” I added, “the spirit we worship is the same, and only the names are different. The message from He who rules over us all may come to each people in a different way.”
Our family had had little to do with organized religion, although my father when young had gone often to a village in Lincolnshire named Willoughby. This was the same village from which Captain John Smith of the Virginia colony had come. There had been a young minister there named Wheelwright, considered a dissident, but my father had liked his ideas and enjoyed his preaching. My brother Yance, who had married a girl from the Massachusetts Bay colony, had told me Wheelwright had come over the ocean and was known there.
That night I began again the study of the stars. My father and Jeremy Ring, who both knew of navigation by the stars, had taught us much. Sakim had taught us more. How much Itchakomi knew I had no idea, but I was sure she had been instructed in such lore. To produce a sacred fire I must choose the right time and the right place.
We had much of which to talk, for Itchakomi was endlessly curious about the English way of life, and often I wished I had listened more when my parents had spoken of their lives before coming to America. It had all seemed so remote and so unimportant to our lives in the colonies.
The Pawnee were skillful hunters and often shared their kills with us. In the first days we fed them and they simply rested. One woman died of her wounds, and two of the warriors were long in recovering.
It was an opportunity to learn their language and I did so, not enough to speak it well, yet enough to exchange information and for general talk. Their villages, they said, were along another river north of the Arkansas.
We gathered nuts, roots, and berries against the winter’s coming, and fuel, also. Always, at home or on the hunt, we were alert for enemies, but when they came it was not the Komantsi but the Spanish.