We decided to make a cold camp and sleep before we laid into them. The Delawares made a cold camp as well, though they did not know they’d been seen, and I thought of them out there in the dark, they’d once been the kings of the east as we were the kings of the west, but now they’d killed twenty buffalo and couldn’t even have a fire to celebrate.
THE LIGHT WAS flat and gray and a slick mist was rising from the grass. There were horses going in all directions and everyone shouting and I was staring at one man who had taken four or five arrows but stood calmly tamping a charge into his musket. Someone came from behind and pinned him with a lance. It was Nuukaru. There was something about the man squirming on the ground but Nuukaru didn’t seem to mind.
The rest of the Delawares were quickly unroostered, but one managed to make a clear swing. I had stayed on the outskirts and he went right past me; he might as well have been standing still, though he didn’t react to the shot and with the smoke I wasn’t sure I’d hit him.
I watched him ride off. I knew what I had to do. There was no time to reload the rifle, and even with all the fighting I knew Toshaway and Pizon were probably watching me. While I was thinking this, the two of them finished killing the man they had started to kill, saw the escaping Delaware, and took off after him.
I fell in behind. I had never whipped a horse so hard but the four of us were strung out in a long line across the prairie with the Delaware at the head. He was riding a legendary animal, putting ground on us with each step, he was nearly a half mile ahead, but there was nowhere to hide, no canyons, no forest, just open prairie, and we began to close. Then Toshaway’s pony stumbled and collided with Pizon’s and I went around them.
As for the Delaware, I could see a shiny slick down his back where my ball had gone in and I whipped the horse even harder, though I had no plan for what I would do if I caught him.
Then he was on the ground. There was a gulch he’d tried to jump and the horse had thrown him. He was lying in the tall grass.
I was on him before I knew it and I nocked an arrow but it went several feet wide. I tried to nock another but my hands were shaking and the horse was skittering so I slid off onto the ground.
The Delaware hadn’t moved. I felt better about everything, I was looking down at my string, trying to get the arrow set, and I looked up to see him spin and draw and shoot in the same movement.
There was an arrow sticking out of me. It seemed like I ought to sit down. Then I was looking at myself; then I decided there was nothing wrong. I grabbed the arrow and pulled it out.
Later I realized that the Delaware was so weak he hadn’t been able to fully draw his bow. My quiver strap had stopped his arrow—but right then I picked up my own bow, which I had dropped, aimed carefully, and shot the Delaware in the stomach. The arrow went to the feathers.
He was looking around for his quiver. It had gotten separated in the fall. I shot another arrow, then a third, which went between his ribs. He was tugging at the one where it was stuck into the ground and I knew he would send it back to me. I shot the rest of the arrows I was holding and he gave up, though he was not quite dead. I knew I should go and thump him but I didn’t want to get any closer, I was ashamed of his breathing and gurgling, of my bad shooting, of being afraid of a man who was nearly dead, and then someone kicked me in the backside.
It was Toshaway and Pizon. I hadn’t heard them come up.
“Ku?e tsasimapu.” Toshaway nodded at the Delaware.
“Do it quickly,” said Pizon. “Before he dies.”
The Delaware was lying on his side and I rolled him onto his belly. I put my foot on his back and grabbed his hair and he raised his arm to stop me, but I cut all the way around. He was slapping at my hand the whole time.
“Snap it off,” called Pizon. “One big motion.”
The scalp came off like a cracking branch and the Delaware lost his fight. I walked a few yards and looked at it: it could have been anything, a piece of buffalo or calf hide. The sun was coming up and my leg began to hurt: I’d cut myself on my own arrow spikes where they’d come through the Delaware’s back. He gave a last moaning rattle, and, looking at him there on the ground, stuck through from every direction with my spikes and the grass matted with his blood, it was like a haze clearing from my mind, like I’d been dunked again, like I’d been chosen by God Himself. I ran over to Toshaway and Pizon and grabbed them.
“Fucking white boy,” said Pizon. But he was smiling as well. He turned to Toshaway. “I guess I owe you a horse.”
THERE WAS A big dance when we got back, eight scalps had been collected, but before it began, Pizon told the story of how I’d gone after the Delaware alone, like a proper Comanche, with nothing but my bow, and he said we know what a great talent Tiehteti is with his bow. There was general laughter, which annoyed me. But this is serious, he continued, this was not some filthy Numu Tuuka, but a warrior, and Tiehteti’s only weapon was one he cannot yet use from his horse. And to be shot in the heart, only to have the arrow refuse to go in? What does that say about Tiehteti?
For the rest of the night the medicine man who’d cleansed me of smallpox told everyone that he had given me his bear medicine, as only that could have stopped the arrow, but no one believed him. I knew the Delaware was almost dead when I reached him, that he had taken a ball in the lungs and been thrown from his horse onto the rocks, that if I had caught him five or ten minutes earlier he would have driven his arrow to my spine. That even in his final condition, if the buffalo-hide strap of my quiver hadn’t been hanging just so, the spike would have reached my heart. But by the end of the night those details meant nothing, and this was the point of the scalp dance, we were eternal, the Chosen People, and our names would ring on in the night, long after we’d vanished from the earth.
SOMETIME BEFORE MORNING I opened my eyes. I was lying in the yard of our old house and there was an Indian standing over me. I was watching the arrows go in but decided not to believe what I was seeing; I remembered I’d hit my head and was probably confused. The Comanche was young and there was something familiar about him and after a time I began to recognize his face.
WHEN MORNING CAME I could still feel the hollow where the arrows had gone. The sun had risen and was shining directly through the open door of the tipi and Nuukaru and Escuté were outside smoking. I went and sat with them. The three boys who had taken me hunting, all of whom were still better hunters, riders, and bowmen than I was, came over and said hello, but didn’t sit—I was now their superior—and then Nuukaru waved them away. “You’re done with those kids,” he said.
Escuté called his mother to bring us something to eat and then there were sugarberry cakes, which were hackberries and tallow mashed together and cooked over a fire. Nuukaru and I thanked her. Escuté just took the food and ate. He must have seen the way I looked at him because he said: “We could get killed every time we leave camp. They all know this. Half of us will be dead by the time we reach forty winters.”
A short time later Fat Wolf, Toshaway’s eldest son, came by with his wife.
“So this is the famous white boy?”
Escuté said, “You’re a man now, Tiehteti, and I’m sure Fat Wolf appreciates the respect but you don’t have to stare at the dirt.”
Fat Wolf leaned over and gripped my chin, then his hand softened. “Don’t listen to my asshole brother. I always put him in a bad mood.” He pointed over his shoulder. “This is Hates Work. Obviously you’ve noticed her before, but as you are a man now, you may talk to her, and take note of her unfortunately soft hands.”
Hates Work, who was standing a ways back from her husband, smiled and waved, but didn’t say anything. She was by far the most beautiful Indian I’d ever seen, in her early twenties with clear skin and shining hair and a good figure; it was widely thought a tragedy that she would soon be ruined by children. Her father had asked fifty horses as a bride-price, which was outrageous according to Nuukaru, but Toshaway, because he spoiled his sons terribly, as anyone spe
nding time with Escuté might notice, had given the fifty horses and the marriage had been approved.
Fat Wolf himself was as tall as his father, but while his face was young, he already had the thin arms and heavy paunch of a much older man. He looked as Toshaway might if Toshaway had stopped hunting and raiding. I nodded at Hates Work and tried not to show too much interest.
Fat Wolf had lifted my poultice and was touching me gently, the open skin and bone, the cut still weeping. “Motherfucker,” he said. “I have never seen a wound like that on a living man.” He looked me up and down. “My father talked about you, but he likes everyone and we thought he was going soft. Now we see he was right. It’s no small thing.” He took me by the shoulders; he was a very touchy Indian. “You ever need anything, you come to me. And don’t hang around my brother too much, he’s a bitter little fuck.” Then he walked away with his pretty wife.
“What a fat fuck,” said his brother, when the pair were out of earshot.
“Escuté has been hoping that Fat Wolf will send her his way, but Fat Wolf is not interested in sharing yet.”
“I get plenty of tai?i on my own. I don’t need a handout from the fat one.” He looked at Nuukaru: “You, on the other hand . . .”
“I get plenty.”
“From old women, maybe.”
“Like your mother.”
“I wouldn’t put it past you,” said Escuté.
It was quiet. I’d invented a number of stories about the various girls I’d been with, but Nuukaru and Escuté knew better than to ask.
AFTER LUNCH I went to the stream to clean my trophy. I scraped the inner skin to remove all the meat and fat, rinsing it in the water, rubbing it with a coarse stone and rinsing it again, teasing off the silverskin with my fingers, repeating until the inner scalp was white and full and soft. Then I took a wooden basin, filled it with water and yucca soap, and carefully washed the hair, separating the strands, trying not to pull too hard, as if the Delaware might still feel what I was doing, teasing out each burr and grass seed, the dandruff and dried blood. I rewove his braids, replacing all the beads, which were turquoise and red glass, in the same places he had put them. I made a paste of brain and tallow and rubbed it into the inner skin, allowing it to dry and then rubbing in more of the paste. I stretched it on a willow hoop to dry, then carried it back to the tipi to hang in the shade.
THAT NIGHT WE stayed up late talking. I’d hung the scalp above my pallet and I watched it turn all night in the warm air from the fire. The embers went dark and we all drifted off and there was a rustling at the tipi flap and the sound of someone trying to come inside and I heard the other two wake up as well. By her hair I could tell the visitor was a woman, but otherwise it was too dark.
“If you are here for Escuté, I am over here.”
“And Nuukaru is straight ahead of you, on the other side of the fire.”
“You are both dreaming,” said the woman. “Forget I am here.”
“The wife of Fat Wolf. You are joking me.”
“Where is Tiehteti?”
“He is right here,” said Escuté. “You are talking to him right now.”
“Is he in here or not?”
“I don’t know. Tiehteti, are you here? Probably not. I saw him heading out to the pasture; Fucks a Mare was going to show him something.”
Hates Work said: “You are a serious asshole, Escuté.”
“But funny?”
“Sometimes.”
“Nuukaru, I have bad news. For the one-thousandth time, a woman has come to the tipi and she has no interest in you.”
“Fuck off,” said Nuukaru.
“As for Tiehteti,” he pronounced, “it is time for him to become a man. It is a process that requires physical contact, and so at some point, unless you would simply prefer to watch a master at work, you will have to tell this woman, who is among the most beautiful of all Comanches, though also the laziest, where you are located in the tipi.”
“I’m over here,” I said quietly.
“Nuukaru, you skinny pervert, don’t think you can lie there and masturbate; get up and give Tiehteti his privacy.”
“Noyoma nakuhkupa.”
“I would prefer not to,” said Escuté. “For I am wise, and a great leader, and one day I’ll be your chief.”
He and Nuukaru took their blankets and left.
“Tiehteti? Say something so I can find you.”
“Follow the wall to the right,” I said.
I felt her touch my pallet. It was too dark to see her, or to even know who she was except by her voice, but I could hear the rustling as she took off her dress. Then she slipped under the robe. Her skin was smooth against me. She began to kiss my neck and drift her fingers along my stomach, I tried to touch her, but she put my hand back and continued to rub my belly, then my thighs, it seemed I ought to be doing something, I tried to reach between her legs, touched hair, but she stopped that hand as well. I began to feel docious. Nothing was expected of me; she was a grown woman and she had the reins.
She was of this same opinion. She ran her fingernails up and down, across my chest and down my legs, while slowly kissing my neck. This went on much longer than I thought it properly ought to, but finally she climbed on top of me and then I was inside.
There was a noise. Escuté poked his head into the tipi.
“How long, wife of Fat Wolf? One minute? Or, let me guess, he is already pua.”
“Out,” she said. “Go masturbate yourself with Nuukaru.”
She kissed me on the nose. She was leaning over me, being very still. I wanted to start moving but she held me in place.
“How does that feel, brother-in-law?”
I made some noise.
She moved her hips. “Should I do this?”
“Yes.”
“Hmmm. Maybe not.”
I didn’t say anything.
“I think we will just stay like this,” she said.
I cleared my throat.
“It feels good to me also,” she said.
This seemed like an unbelievable coincidence. At some point she began to move slowly. She was leaning forward and our foreheads were touching and she was holding my hands. Her breath was sweet. “Hates Work is not my real name,” she said. “My name is Single Bird.”
BY THE TIME Nuukaru and Escuté came back, I had slept with Single Bird five times. I expected Escuté to have something to say but he didn’t; he and Nuukaru whispered something to each other and then Nuukaru went to his pallet but Escuté, instead of going to bed, slipped over to us very quietly. He felt Single Bird’s hair, and then he gently felt my face, and then he patted me on the chest and said something in Comanche I did not understand, and Single Bird murmured something in her sleep, and Escuté leaned forward and kissed her hair and patted me again and then kissed me on the forehead. Then he went back to his pallet.
I was awake. I woke up Single Bird and we did it again.
IN THE MORNING, when the faintest of gray light was coming through the smoke flap, I felt her get up. I pulled her back.
“No,” she whispered. “It’s already late.”
“Tell me why they call you Hates Work.”
“Because I only do the work of ten men. Instead of fifty.” She leaned over and kissed me. “Don’t look at me in public. This will probably never happen again. This is the first time my husband has sent me to anyone, and I don’t know what kind of mood he’s going to be in when I get back.”
A few hours later, Nuukaru and Escuté and I were sitting around the fire, eating dried elk and watching the bustle of the camp. Something was wrong with Escuté; normally he did his hair carefully into an a fan on the top of his head but that morning he had not even painted himself.
“Is Fat Wolf going to be angry at me?” I said.
“He’s going to cut your dick off. I hope it was worth it.”
“Don’t listen to him,” said Nuukaru. “Everyone wants to sleep with Hates Work and you’re the only one who has, ex
cept the guy who paid fifty horses for her.”
“My father paid fifty horses, not my fat brother. If it was my father getting her I wouldn’t care.”
“Escuté is especially pissed, as you can tell.”
“Why shouldn’t I be? Where are my fifty fucking horses if I wanted to marry? Meanwhile, Hates Work gets sent to Tiehteti.”
“Who do you want to marry?” I said.
“No one. That’s the point. Who the fuck can I marry now that the fat one has taken the best-looking girl anyone has ever heard of?”
“Her sister is not bad,” said Nuukaru.
“I am fucked, is the point. He is a fat coward but I still end up looking like the bad one. Eight of the horses that went to her bride-price were horses I gave to my father. When was the last time my brother even went on a raid?”
“You should stop,” said Nuukaru.
“I don’t care who hears me.”
“You will later.”
We sat for a while. I couldn’t see what Escuté had to worry about. He had six scalps and while he was shorter and slimmer than his father and brother, he was nicely built and had an easy way of moving and all the young Indians, men and women alike, looked up to him. Then I thought maybe he was right: Hates Work was his only real equal in the band.
“There is a very beautiful captive owned by Lazy Feet, the blond one? The German?”
“Yellow Hair,” I said.
“Yes, her. She is the equal of Hates Work.”
“I’m not marrying a fucking captive. No offense, Tiehteti.”
“We’re all from captives at some point,” said Nuukaru.
“Yes, but still I am not doing it.”
“You weren’t angry last night,” I said.
“No, I wasn’t. I’m not angry at you, Tiehteti; I’m glad you got a taste, you deserved it. It’s just my father, because the fat one is the oldest, he can do no wrong, and fifty fucking horses, he didn’t even try to negotiate.”