Comanche Dawn Read online

  Shadow inhaled through his nostrils, trying in vain to smell the faraway thundercloud. Instead, he smelled only the dung of horses, which pleased him nonetheless. “Why did you leave the arrow in the ground between the two Raiders?”

  The warrior rubbed his full stomach and closed his eyes, speaking groggily now. “This, too, I was instructed to do. My markings were on the arrow shaft, so that the Northern Raiders would know who crept among them and killed their fellow warrior. This brings greater glory to the spirits who guide me and greater medicine to me.”

  Shadow smiled with admiration upon the resting form of his father. He was proud to be the son of Shaggy Hump, greatest war leader of the Burnt Meat People. Shadow believed his father must even be the bravest warrior of all the True Humans of all the bands. His arms and shoulders looked like the burls of an ancient tree, his scars like battle wounds upon a great bear. He now owned enough horses to ride and ride hard every day, and still have a rested mount always ready. Shaggy Hump went almost nowhere afoot, preferring to mount a pony even to cross the camp.

  “Father,” Shadow said, speaking softly in case Shaggy Hump had already fallen asleep.

  His father grunted.

  “When I go to seek my visions, what kind of spirit do you think I might meet?”

  Shaggy Hump opened his eyes, smiled, and propped himself up on one elbow. “You have no need to think about it. The spirits are wiser about such things than we are. Anyway, I think you will know very soon. It is just about time for you, my son.”

  Shadow’s heart felt as if birds were fluttering in it, trying to escape. Soon, he would have medicine. Then, he would hunt the buffalo and the bear. Finally, he would become a warrior. Since that day at Red Canyon, the war cry of Black Horn, his uncle, had dwelled within him like an echo that never died, but only came again and again and again. Sometimes, even when that day was the most distant of his thoughts, he would suddenly hear his uncle’s scream of courageous rage pass again, out of nowhere, into nothing. He would hear it so clearly that once he had even asked one of his playmates if he too had heard it. But that echo of days behind him was for his ears alone, for he was meant for great things. He had been born on the day the spirits gave First Horse to the True Humans. First Horse had made a circle of tracks around his birth lodge that was as perfect in its roundness as a full moon. This he had been told since he could remember, and Shadow yearned for the chance to fulfill the prophesies of his elders.

  “What will be my new name, Father? After I seek my visions?”

  “That is not for me to decide,” Shaggy Hump said. “My only task is to choose your Naming Father. It is very important. I am waiting for a sign or a dream to tell me who I must choose. Your Naming Father must be a puhakut of great power. Greater than great!”

  Shadow grinned and rolled back onto the robe, feeling a cool wind come under the hide walls from a new quarter. It was at this moment that he heard his playmate, Whip, his boyish voice squeaking as he yelled excitedly.

  Crawling forward, Shadow stuck his head out underneath the hides. “Whip! What are you yelling about?”

  Shaggy Hump lay back down on his cushion of robes.

  “The Corn People are coming to camp with us, Shadow!”

  Shadow looked back at his father, who smirked with more than a little interest, for the Burnt Meat People seldom came across other bands of True Humans across the far ranges of their hunting grounds.

  “They have thirty lodges!” Whip reported.

  “But how many horses?” the boy asked, knowing the question would please his father.

  Whip threw himself to the ground outside the lodge of Shaggy Hump, dust flying around him. “The scout said only five.”

  “My father alone owns more than that.”

  “Yes, the Burnt Meat People have more horses. Still, the Corn People have thirty lodges, Shadow. Do you understand? They have plenty of girls!”

  Shadow smiled. “When will they get here?”

  “Before the sun goes behind the mountains.”

  “We must run to meet them!”

  Shadow started to crawl out under the lodge cover, but his father called his name, stopping him.

  “My son, you should go through the opening. It is bad luck to crawl under, unless you have crawled in that same way. And tie your skins on about your loins before you go. You are old enough now to wear your skins all the time, especially if you are going to meet strange girls. Look how big your pecker has grown! It looks like the pecker of a yearling! Do you want to frighten the girls of the Corn People with that thing?”

  Shadow and Whip laughed like turkeys gobbling, and Shadow found his loin coverings and the thong that held them on.

  7

  Shadow and Whip were running with their new friend, Trotter, of the Corn People, when they chanced to jump a rabbit from some bushes near a stream called Sometimes Water. Their eyes gleamed like the eyes of their wolf ancestors as they pursued with pack-hunting skills they didn’t even know they possessed. Clad only in moccasins and loin skins, they tore through tangles of undergrowth in the shade of the huge sohoobi trees, their locks of long hair streaming behind them like the tails of black ponies.

  “Ha!” Shadow shouted, spooking the harried rabbit from a moment’s respite taken in the thick of a raspberry vine. Trotter descended upon the opposite side of the bramble, and the rabbit dodged, only to find Whip circling into place with a stick he had scooped from the ground at a dead run. The stick drove the rabbit onto a trail, and the boys hit their longest gait trying to keep up with the fleeing prey.

  Near a place where the roots of a big tree collected the waters of the stream, making them sing, the rabbit sought protection in the hollow of a fallen tree, years in the rotting.

  Whip prodded the rotten wood with the stick he had picked up, but the log was long, and the rabbit had crawled beyond his reach.

  “I know a way,” Shadow said. “Whip, run to the village and bring a burning coal.”

  Whip bolted as if a great bear had come after him. By the time he returned with a buffalo-horn fire carrier containing a smoking ember, Trotter and Shadow had plugged the opening to the hollow log with sage brush and had gathered a mound of moss and grass moist enough to smoulder. Shadow placed dry grass and sticks so that they would burn and make coals. Whip and Trotter admired his skill in constructing the pyre, applying the brand, and fanning it to a small flame.

  When the coals had been mounded high enough, the boys snuffed out the open flame with moss and half-rotten grass, making smoke billow up from the coals. Shadow looked around for strange girls, then took off his loin skin and used it to fan the smoke into the opening in the end of the hollow log. He would let the smoke gather under the skins, then force the small cloud through the sage brush, into the hollow. Some of the smoke would escape and rise in a free cloud that Shadow liked to watch go up among the tree branches. He studied each puff of smoke that rose this way, until the squeal of the rabbit in the hollow log distracted him.

  When the shrill screaming of the doomed rabbit began, the boys ceased their joking and looked soberly at the log, but Shadow only fanned the smoke in with increased enthusiasm. Then they could hear the animal trying to push through the sage brush blocking the entrance to the hollow, and finally, they could see it trying to push through the brush, its piercing scream of distress coming loud enough to make Trotter put a finger in one ear.

  “We will have him!” Shadow said. “He sings his death song!”

  Whip grinned.

  Trotter lay down on his stomach to watch the rabbit struggle. He laughed. “His medicine fails him,” he said.

  The plaintive squeal of the rabbit weakened as the sting of smoke caused tears to streak down Shadow’s face.

  When Shadow was satisfied that the rabbit had suffocated, he began clawing the sage brush from the hollow. Trotter and Whip tried to push him away from either side, starting a rough wrestling match. But Shadow had seized the advantage and reached in first for the long
ears. He kicked and elbowed the other boys aside and pulled the limp animal from the hollow. Taking the rabbit by the hind feet, he thumped its head against a tree several times to make sure it was dead, then raised it above his head.

  “Aaa-hey!” he shouted, mimicking the cry of a warrior claiming the first stroke on a fallen enemy. Whip and Trotter scrambled and pushed each other to get at the carcass, Trotter finally touching it with a slap of his palm.

  “Aaa-hey!” Trotter wailed, his voice somewhat higher than Shadow’s.

  As only two strokes could be claimed on a fallen foe, Whip hissed at his friends as if to make fun of them, though he had tried as hard as they to claim the honors. “It is only a rabbit!” he said. “My elder sister could count a battle stroke on a rabbit!”

  “Let us go and show it to her then,” Trotter said, for he had seen Whip’s elder sister, and considered her as pretty as any girl the Burnt Meat People had to offer.

  Whip’s mood brightened. “My sister has her own lodge now, at the far end of the camp. We can run through the whole camp with our rabbit and make her cook it for us!”

  By the time they neared the lodges, they had contrived the device of tossing the rabbit to one another through the air. At the edge of the camp, they avoided the tripods of lances holding the sacred buffalo-hide war shields off the ground, protected by rawhide covers. They dodged fires and darting dogs, flinging the rabbit all the way over the short, four-pole lodges of the poorer horseless warriors. They shouted as they swerved among fires and scaffolds stretching deer hides in the sun.

  Spying a group of girls walking through the village, Shadow motioned with his head for Whip to run around the opposite side of them so he could fling the dead rabbit over their heads, thinking this would impress them. Trotter saw the strategy quickly and took up a third position flanking the girls, who were still so engrossed in conversation that they hadn’t taken much notice of the boys.

  When the carcass sailed over them, one of the Corn People girls ducked, shrieking her amusement, while the others giggled at the boys, who continued to throw the rabbit over their heads. Shadow saw that there were two girls of the Corn People in this group, and three girls he knew from his own band. Ignoring the familiar girls, he stole glimpses of the two others between his athletic capers with the dead rabbit.

  One of them seemed a year or two older than the rest, and older than Shadow himself. She was attractive merely because she was nearer to maturity and exotic to Shadow, hailing as she did from another band of True Humans.

  But when Shadow caught the eyes of the second Corn People girl, he was so taken by her that the rabbit hit him in the face, causing all of the girls to laugh uncontrollably. Pretending to have let this happen on purpose, he quickly grabbed the rabbit and tossed it back to Whip.

  “You see that I am a Foolish One!” he said, looking at the girl who had distracted him so. “The Foolish Ones are the bravest of warriors among all the True Humans!”

  The girl was his age or younger, and prettier than any girl he could have imagined. She smirked at his boast, but said nothing.

  The older Corn People girl stepped boldly up to Shadow. “If you are so brave,” she said, “you will give that rabbit to Teal’s father, and prove that you are not afraid to mount her in your lodge!”

  The girls shrieked with scandalous laughter, except for Teal herself, who gasped and struck the older girl with a sunshade she carried.

  “Pookai!” she said. “Hush, Slope Child! You are wilder than wild!”

  Whip held the rabbit at his side in dumb disbelief of Slope Child’s candor, but Trotter only laughed, for he knew Slope Child and her ways.

  Shadow flung aside a morsel of embarrassed surprise and framed a reply. “One dead rabbit?” he said to Slope Child. “Her father would laugh at me. I will wait until I have ten horses to present to Teal’s father!”

  This surprised the girls even more than Slope Child’s suggestion, and seemed to embarrass and please Teal all at once that Shadow should consider her worthy of ten horses.

  “Forget about Teal,” Slope Child said. “You may mount me in your lodge for less than the price of the whole rabbit. I only want the fur.”

  The girls of the Burnt Meat People gasped in disbelief. Never had they heard a girl, or even a full-grown woman, speak so freely. All of them—boys and girls—knew of the sensual pleasures, for the nights were often quiet and the hide walls of the lodges were always thin. But among the Burnt Meat People there had always existed a certain reserve regarding intimate matters.

  “Besides,” Slope Child continued, “no warrior has ever owned ten horses.”

  “Teal’s father shall,” Shadow replied. “I shall own a hundred!”

  The children of the Corn People laughed at this reckless boast, but Whip and the three Burnt Meat People girls only smiled.

  “Come on, my friends,” Shadow said. “Whip’s elder sister is going to cook this rabbit for us.”

  “Keep the fur!” Slope Child said, as the boys broke away from the five girls.

  As he left, Shadow heard one of the Burnt Meat girls say, “Shadow is the one. First Horse circled his birth lodge.”

  Trotter came to his side as they ran. “Do you have your own lodge yet, Shadow?”

  “Yes. My mother built it for me before last winter. She said I was getting too old and hairy to sleep in the same lodge with my younger sister.”

  “It is good. Now Slope Child will come to your lodge in the dark. I will tell her where your lodge is if you will show me. She is a good teacher, my friend.”

  Shadow grinned. “I will leave the entrance uncovered for her. I know how it is done, but I have never done it. I will lie with Slope Child if she comes to my lodge, but it is Teal that I want as my wife.”

  Trotter laughed, but Whip said, “Shadow will have her! His words are like a circle and always come around!”

  When they reached the far edge of the village, where Whip’s elder sister had raised her lodge, Whip tossed the dead rabbit at her feet. “Shadow, tell my sister to roast this rabbit over the fire,” he said, as boldly as a war chief bringing home a scalp.

  She looked up from the rack she was building of willow limbs and rawhide to stretch and dry a beaver skin. Her face revealed her lack of enthusiasm for serving her younger brother.

  “Tell my brother to skin it,” she said to Shadow.

  “She will skin it herself!” Whip insisted.

  His sister scowled. “My brother must build the fire while I skin it. I do not have time to do everything.”

  Whip threw his chest forward. “She will skin it and build the fire. We will catch and ride some horses while she cooks our kill for us.”

  Whip’s sister jerked a knot into the rawhide and snatched the rabbit from the ground. “Is my brother too lazy to drive a stick into the ground to roast the rabbit over the fire?”

  Whip marched to the sticks piled near his sister’s lodge and rifled through them, testing each one for toughness and flexibility. “Here is a good one,” he announced, shaking the stick in the air.

  Suddenly, he ran at his sister, striking her across the shoulders and back with the stick, hitting her again and again until she dropped the rabbit and fell to her knees. “My sister will drive it into the ground herself!” he said, throwing the stick down beside her.

  The boys turned away to catch the horses they wanted to ride.

  “Now your sister will roast the rabbit well,” Trotter said. “You have prepared her to make a good wife for some warrior, and she is very pretty as well.”

  They walked several steps in silence.

  “You could have struck her just once,” Shadow said, “and she would have remembered the lesson. Now she will only remember the beating.”

  8

  After riding three of Shaggy Hump’s horses, they ate their rabbit, roasted whole over the open fire. They stripped the intestines between their fingers and divided them equally, wrapping the slick gut around a hand to tear off chunks
with their teeth.

  They had held a horse race to determine choice of heart, liver, and brains. Shadow had won easily on his father’s fastest horse. He chose the heart. Whip, who had come in second, chose the brains. As the Corn People owned few horses, Trotter had ridden very little, so he had come in last in the race, but he claimed to prefer liver more than heart and brains anyway. They gnawed every morsel of meat from the bones of the rabbit, then broke the bones to suck out the delicious marrow.

  “Tell my sister you want the rabbit hide, Shadow. You will need it when Slope Child visits your lodge.”

  Shadow laughed, but Trotter said, “I think she will go to your lodge, my friend. Slope Child is that way. She has no brother to beat her, and no mother to shame her. Not even an aunt or a sister. She does not want to be a wife of any one warrior. The young men with no wives give her gifts.”

  Shadow looked across the open grounds beyond the tipis and saw his father’s horses looking back at him, as if they were waiting for him to come and play some more. “I will give the rabbit skin to Slope Child if she wants to come to my lodge, but I think she is foolish. A woman must have a husband, and sons. Who will take care of her when she is old and ugly?”

  After they finished their meal, they borrowed some arrows from Whip’s grandfather, who always made plenty of arrows for the boys. The three friends made a game of throwing the arrows at a circle they scratched in a part of the creek bank that water had worn away. They gambled the things they owned—flints and elk teeth and feathers. Shadow was winning this game, but when he looked over his shoulder he saw the horses watching him again.

  “Look,” he said. “The ponies want to play.”

  Taking the war bridles from their shoulders, the boys approached the band of horses. The animals started to break away from Trotter and Whip, so Shadow told them to stand still.

  “I will teach you how to talk horse,” he said. He walked toward his father’s fastest horse, a big dun saying, “Huh, huh,” in a low tone. The animal stood still, as if charmed. He came closer, and the horse tossed his head and nickered. Then something happened that Shadow would never forget. The ponytalk changed between the horse’s mouth and Shadow’s ears. The spirits made the horse-sound into a word, and the word was Noomah.