"we hold this ford," replied tawannears in the same dialect, speaking with arrogant emphasis. the two conducted their conversation after the remarkable fashion of the plains tribes, the basis of their speech being such comanche phrases as they had in common, pieced out with dakota, pawnee, arickara, cheyenne and siksika, and when they were at a loss for a common vocal ground of understanding reverting to the flexible sign-language, by which they never failed to convey the most complicated meanings.
occasionally one of the leading tonkawa warriors would intervene with a suggestion or a word if his chief seemed at a loss, but the debate was mainly a two-man affair.
"who are you?" returned the tonkawa haughtily, yet impressed by our swaggering manner.
"we are of no tribe," said tawannears. "we are outlaws and fugitives. we ravage all whom we meet."
"not the tonkawa," commented the chief, with what on a civilized face i would have termed a grin of mild amusement.
"yes, the tonkawa, if they attempt to cross us," rejoined tawannears.
"how many of the taivo have you in your band?" inquired the tonkawa, changing the subject.
"we have many," tawannears lied easily. "this one you see with me is an in-glees. he is an exile from his people, a murderer. we have franquis and espanyas, dakota and shawnee, men of every tribe, including some from beyond the sky mountains. we have just raided a comanche village and run off their herd."
this statement created the sensation tawannears intended it should—for two reasons: the comanches were enemies no tribe despised, and the suggestion of unusual wealth in horseflesh appealed to the special needs of the tonkawa.
"that is well," answered the chief, with an evil smirk. "we need horses. we will come over, and take yours."
tawannears laughed.
"come, tonkawas," he invited. "my young men are waiting for you behind the trees. they will shoot you down in the water, and those who reach the land will be fresh meat for the axes of our women."
"you lie," said the tonkawa. "you are not so many as we."
"there are thirty warriors behind those trees," asserted tawannears. "how many of you would die before you had their scalps—or before they fled?"
"we need horses," reiterated the chief. "we are not afraid to die. we are warriors. we are tonkawa."
a murmur of savage approval, like the growl of a wolf-pack, answered him from his men.
"that is good hearing," said tawannears lightly. "but the tonkawa do not think straight. there is a cloud over their eyes. they say their medicine is weak."
"why?"
"the comanche are pursuing my people. they will be here soon, following the tracks of our horses. if we are here they will fight us. if you drive us away and capture the comanches' horses, none the less will they attack you. how many of the tonkawa would be left, after fighting us, to meet the comanches?"
the tonkawa pondered.
"we need horses," he said for the third time. "give us what we require, and we will go away without harming you."
tawannears roared with laughter.
"they say the tonkawa are men of blood," he answered, wiping the tears from his eyes. "but they are really men who play with mirth."
a growl of muffled rage came from the tonkawa band.
"why should two wolf-packs attack each other when the deer are thick on every side?" tawannears continued. "it is as i say, the eyes of the tonkawa are filled with the blood from their wounds. they cannot see straight. they do not understand that my people do not fear them. do you think we should have ridden to meet you, giving warning of our presence, if we had been in fear of you? i tell you, tonkawas, you stand in more peril than we!"
this time there was no answering growl, and the tonkawa chief muttered briefly in council with several of his older warriors.
"why do you come here, then?" he asked bluffly.
"to trade," was tawannears' prompt response.
"what? we are not traders. you can see we carry only weapons. we have been on a mission of vengeance." his voice swelled boastfully. "the kansas slew a small hunting-party of our people many moons ago. three sleeps back we burned their village, and filled our bellies with their blood. their scalps hang on our lances."
it was true. the tonkawa lances were broidered from midway of their shafts to the head with wisps of human hair of all lengths.
tawannears nodded tranquilly.
"that is well," he said. "it is the fashion of my band to slay all who cross our trail. if we had not something else in view we should slay you."
the tonkawa leaned forward in his pad-saddle, jaw menacing.
"be careful or we test your boast!" he cried.
"you dare not," returned tawannears casually.
and by the very gentleness with which he said it he carried conviction. the tonkawa looked from him to the waving branches of the wood on the other side of the stream. it might conceal anything. there were horses grazing here and there, and at frequent intervals a figure showed between the trunks, never for long enough to supply opportunity for identification.
"you say you come to trade," objected the tonkawa. "i have told you we have nothing to trade—except scalps."
he grinned the insinuation that we were the kind of warriors who were careless how we added to our tale of trophies. tawannears ignored the gibe.
"yet you have that which we require," replied the seneca.
he pointed to the full quivers that hung at every warrior's back.
"ho!" laughed the tonkawa. "so you are weaponless!"
"it is true," answered tawannears as gently as he had spoken before, "that we have shot away most of our arrows, but we have sufficient to account for you. will you try us?"
"why should we believe you?" derided the chief. "do the tonkawa trade like the comanches?"
"what we seek is means to trade better with the comanches," retorted tawannears, a shaft which drew grim chuckles from his hearers.
the tonkawa, for all their debased habits and uncouth manners, possessed the marked sense of humor which all indians enjoy.
"how many horses will you trade?" asked the chief.
"how many do you need?" countered tawannears.
the chief surveyed the depleted ranks of his band, and held up his ten fingers and thumbs twice—twenty.
tawannears shook his head.
"that is too many. we do not require enough arrows to pay for them. you would have to empty every quiver."
"you can trade us so many or we will come and take them," threatened the chief.
tawannears started to knee his horse around to return across the river.
"wait!" called the tonkawa. "we will give other weapons."
this was more than tawannears really had expected—as he later admitted—to maneuver the other side into enlarging the scope of the trade. he went through the form of a consultation with me, and then asked:
"the tonkawa make fine weapons. that is said everywhere. what will you give for twenty horses?"
"six quivers of arrows, two bows and a leather cuirass for yourself."
"it is not enough." tawannears rejected the offer decidedly. "with six quivers you must give six bows—and we will take four cuirasses and ten knives and hatchets."
the tonkawa scowled furiously.
"would you leave us weaponless, too?" he howled. "we will first come and take what we require!"
i thought he was in earnest now, but when tawannears repeated his play of breaking off negotiations, it had the same effect as the first time; and the upshot of it all was that we agreed to accept six quivers, four bows, two cuirasses, and ten knives and eight hatchets. this was more than we needed, of course, but we had to ask for so much to carry out the pretense of our numbers.
after the terms of the trading had been arranged we came to the question of the means of putting the deal into effect. the tonkawa chief wanted us to drive the horses over to his side of the river—having first suggested that his band come across and receive their new mounts at the edge of the wood, in order to save us trouble!—and receive the weapons there. but tawannears finally engaged him to the stipulation that the trade was to be completed in midstream, betwixt four persons on a side, the others of both sides, as he put it, to retire out of arrow-shot from the banks.
this much accomplished we returned to our friends, rounded up twenty head and brought them to the margin of the bank, kachina and peter helping us to handle the herd. the tonkawa had observed the terms of the agreement, in so far as the retirement of the main body a long bow-shot from the bank; but the four waiting at the water's edge, with the complement of arms, all carried their own weapons, and there was some delay whilst tawannears rode forward and demanded that they throw down everything, except the goods intended for us.
this created a delay, and kachina drew my attention to the sudden darkening of the western sky. the day had been murkily close, with a sweating heat. now the sun was obscured by a haze, and in the west a rampart of leaden-black clouds was heaping above the horizon, lapping over like a series of gigantic waves that tumbled and struggled amongst themselves, lashing out convulsively in long, inky streamers. the air was soggy. not a breath was stirring.
"a storm is coming," she said. "we must be quick."
"yes," i agreed, "but we cannot take chances with these people. they are treacherous."
"the storm will be worse than the tonkawa," she affirmed, shrugging her shoulders.
i did not believe her, nor did i give a second thought to what she had said. my attention was confined to the four warriors with whom tawannears was arguing, and i attached far more importance to what they did than to the approaching storm. as a matter of fact, i was correct in my suspicions, for subsequent events proved that they were meditating a surprise assault upon us, planning to stampede the horses to their side of the stream, and relying upon flight to save them from the friends they still supposed us to have concealed in the wood.
tawannears spoke forcibly to the tonkawa chief, who was one of the four representatives of his side, and as peter and i began to drive the horses back toward the wood, he yielded. the four, accompanied by tawannears, rode into the current, the trade-weapons wrapped in three bundles, one carried by each of the chief's assistants. we turned the horses with some difficulty and met them half-way. the chief, i think, smelt a rat as soon as he realized kachina to be a woman.
"wah!" he grunted. "cannot you send warriors to meet warriors?"
"the women who go with our band fight with our band," returned tawannears coolly. "they sit with the warriors."
the tonkawa eyed the wood behind us, and it must have occurred to him that no other figures were in view. but if he considered taking the offensive at that juncture, he abandoned the idea when peter rode up beside him and clamped huge paws on two of the bundles of weapons. i took the third bundle and passed it to kachina, intending to keep my hands free for whatever might happen. but the tonkawa evidently decided to run no unnecessary risks. he and his men skilfully packed the twenty horses together and herded them toward the northern bank. we, on our part, headed south.
we had not reached the shore, when we heard the racket of hoofs and looked back to see the remainder of the tonkawa streaming down to the bank, the weariest of their mounts flogged to the gallop, lances brandished overhead. their chief, weaponless as he was, never stopped to retrieve his arms from the northern bank, but put himself at the head of his warriors as they stormed into the water. splashing, yelling, whooping, they shoved our herd before them, those with failing ponies dropping off in the shallows to mount bare-backed the first fresh horse they could catch.
"run, brothers!" said tawannears curtly.
with a blind thought for some such emergency, i had picked for our mounts sunkawakan-kedeshka and three of his mares. the stallion loved to run; his favorites, i knew, would exert every energy to keep up with him. the four fairly flew up the bank and out upon the prairie. we were a long mile in the lead when the first of the tonkawas straggled into sight. they would capture the rest of the herd in the wood, but we could not help that. our one purpose was to place as much distance as possible betwixt us and that demon throng.
it grew darker and darker. the afternoon was well advanced, but sunset came late these summer days. the gloom was unnatural. objects showed distinctly in the gray light, and behind us was formed a strangely vivid picture—a belt of open grass; then the low-lying figures of our pursuers, their ponies stretching to the furious pace; then the green bulwark of the trees; and over all the dense, smoky-black canopy of the storm-clouds, arching nearer and nearer. the sun was blanketed completely. the last patch of blue sky dwindled away in the east. a low moaning sound made me wonder if the shouts of the tonkawa could carry so far. kachina turned in her saddle and pointed.
"look!" she cried.
we obeyed her. the tonkawa had stayed their pursuit. they were yanking their horses to a halt. some of them already were heading back toward the wood. the moaning sound grew louder. the cloud-curtain in the west stretched now from the prairie's floor to the sky's zenith, sootily impenetrable.
"they fear the storm!" cried kachina.
"it will be very wet," assented tawannears. "we must wrap up our new bows."
"i tell you there is no need to think of bows," she exclaimed with passionate eagerness. "you have never seen one of these storms or you would know how grave is our peril. the wind blows the grass out of the ground. if it catches us in the open we shall be blown over—horses and all. i have seen them in the valley at homolobi, and out here it will be worse, much worse!"
"what are we to do?" i asked.
"we must have shelter."
tawannears and i both laughed.
"the only shelter is in the wood we left," i exclaimed.
"we are fortunate to be out of it," she declared. "trees blow over. no, we must find a hole, a depression in the ground, anything——"
"dis way," interrupted peter calmly.
he turned his horse clumsily to the left and led us down the steep bank of a miniature rivulet, a tributary of the river beside which we had been camping. under the bank we were out of sight of people on the prairie, and at least partially protected from the storm. at tawannears' suggestion, we wrapped our new weapons in our clothing—what the comanches had left us—and stowed them in a hole in the bank. then, having done all that we could, we sat close together on the ground, holding the horses' rawhide bridles.
the moaning had increased to a dull, vibrating roar, muffled and vague. jagged splashes of lightning streaked the sky. the air had become chilly cold, and we shivered for want of the clothes we had put aside. there was a peculiar tension in the atmosphere. the horses sensed it. they stamped nervously, jerked around at unexpected noises. the stallion whinnied at me, asking reassurance, and i stroked his muzzle.
"it is long coming," said tawannears.
"yes," answered kachina, "and when it is here we shall be fortunate if we can breathe."
suddenly, the moaning roar became a deafening scream; the blackness mantled the earth like a garment, and we, huddled close to the ground, felt the shock of a great arm sweeping just above our heads. it was the wind. there was no rain, but a shower of objects began to fall against the opposite wall of the gulch. shapes, indistinct in the mirk, crashed formless into the bed of the rivulet. the horses were frantic. the stallion snatched back as something sailed past him, and pulled me to my feet. i felt as though a giant's hand had clutched my neck. i began to lift into the air, and knew i was being sucked up. the stallion broke free from me, but i still continued to rise. then i was violently clutched by the ankles and hauled down to earth.
peter dragged me against the bank beside him.
"stay down!" he bellowed in my ear. "der windt plows you away."
"but the stallion!"
"all der horses are gone. idt cannot be helped."
