Paulette Jiles - News of the World

Yes sir. He was on the way to becoming a warrior. Learned the language. It’s a hard language.

He was with them how long?

Less than a year.

Britt! How can that be?

I don’t know. Britt smoked and turned to lean on the wagon tailgate and looked back into the dark spaces of the stable with the noise of horses and mules eating, eating, their teeth like grindstones moving one on another and the occasional snort as hay dust got up their noses, the shifting of their great cannonball feet. The good smell of oiled leather harness and grain. Britt said, I just don’t know. But he came back different.

In what way?

Roofs bother him. Inside places bother him. He can’t settle down and learn his letters. He’s afraid a lot and then he turns around arrogant. Britt threw down his smoke and stepped on it. So, gist of it is, the Kiowa won’t take her back.

Captain Kidd knew, besides the other reasons, that Britt trusted him to return her to her people because he was an old man.

Well, he said.

I knew you would, said Britt.

Yes, said the Captain. So.

Britt’s skin was saddle colored but now paler than it usually was because the rainy winter had kept the sun from his face for months. He reached into the pocket of his worn ducking coat and brought out the coin. It was a shining sulky color, a Spanish coin of eight escudos in twenty-two karat gold, and all the edge still milled, not shaved. A good deal of money; everyone in Texas was counting their nickels and dimes and glad to have them since the finances of the state had collapsed and both news and hard money were difficult to come by. Especially here in North Texas, near the banks of the Red River, on the edge of Indian Territory.

Britt said, That’s what the family sent up to the Agent. Her parents’ names were Jan and Greta. They were killed when the Kiowa captured her. Take it, he said. And be careful of her.

As they watched, the girl slid down between the freight boxes and bales as if fainting and pulled the thick blanket over her head. She was weary of being stared at.

Britt said, She’ll stay there the night. She’s got nowhere to go. She can’t get hold of any weapons that I can think of. He took up the lamp and stepped back. Be really careful.

THE WOMEN OF the town of Wichita Falls gave her a blue-and-yellow-striped dress and underthings, worsted stockings, a nightgown with a lace banding at the neck, and shoes that more or less fit, but they could do nothing with her. They were reluctant to use force on a small, thin girl with scars on her forearms and a stare like a china doll. They didn’t want to wrestle with the child, and in addition she had lice.

Finally the Captain took her to Lottie’s establishment. The women there were bold and somehow virile, and had tramped the roads as camp followers. Many had been in jail here and there. They were not in the least reluctant to use force. It cost them two hours to get her into a bathtub and washed and to dispose of her Kiowa dress. One of the women threw the glass beads and the deerskin dress with its valuable elk teeth out the window. They pulled the feathers from her hair, which was crawling with graybacks.

They held her head under a stream of hot water from a pitcher and scrubbed her scalp and her body with blue soap. She fought with them; for ten years old she was agile, thin, amazingly strong, and soapy. Water and suds ran down the walls. At the end, the tub lay on its side and the water drained between the cracks of the floorboards into the receiving parlor below and stained the red flocking on the wallpaper while the girl’s flat and glassy eyes regarded them all from the floor where she crouched. Her hair was plastered all over her head like wet strings. They wrestled her into the underthings and the dress and the stockings and the shoes.

They shoved her out the door and good riddance. The stockings were wet and twisted. The rain filled the street, making long thin lakes like stripes in the wheel tracks. The Captain held her stiff, wooden hand as they walked back to the livery stable. She did not pick up her skirt apparently because she did not know how, or did not know it was necessary. Or did not care. By the time they got to the stable the dress hems were carrying several pounds of red sludge, and she bent her head low and when she made a strangled noise he realized she was trying not to cry.

Captain Kidd bought a spring wagon from the livery stable. He bought it with the Spanish coin and was lucky to get it. It was in fact an excursion wagon painted a dark and glossy green and in gold letters on the sides it said Curative Waters East Mineral Springs Texas and he had no idea how the wagon had come all the way from near Houston to this little town on the Red River. The wagon surely had a story all to itself that would now remain forever unknown, untold. It was a jaunty little vehicle with two rows of seats running the length of the wagon bed so the people going to the curative mineral waters could sit and stare across at one another. There were poles to support a canopy and side curtains. This was but poor protection against hard weather but it was all he had.

He would sell the wagon in Castroville or San Antonio if he ever got there and in the meantime it would be a luxury to travel in a vehicle with a spring seat to take the ruts and the hammering. His roan mare packhorse could pull it and his bay saddle horse could come behind.

It would also allow him to keep the girl within sight. He wished he knew her name in Kiowa. He would call her Johanna, as if it mattered. She didn’t know the word “Johanna” from Deuteronomy.

Captain Kidd changed to his duck coat and trousers of jeans cloth, a double-breasted plains shirt. He put on his old traveling hat with the uneven brim. He laid his black reading suit in careful layers into his carpet bag and his good black hat for readings into a tin hatbox. A hat can, as the cowboys said. Young people could get away with rough clothing but unless the elderly dressed with care they looked like homeless vagabonds and at every reading he must present the appearance of authority and wisdom.

He packed up his newspapers and his cutthroat razor and its cake of soap, the brush, his shot box with powder and caps and wads and the spring-loaded powder charger. Into the bed of the Curative Waters wagon he threw his shotgun, purchases of tinned butter and dried beef, bacon, two sheepskins, a small box of medical supplies, a keg of flour, water bottles, a candle lantern and candles, a small stove. Then his portfolio with his newspapers and a map of the roads of Texas, which he rarely used. Finally his riding boots and his saddle and blankets. He lifted the girl into the wagon bed and made “stay” motions with his hands. Then he went looking for Britt.

THEY WERE PARKED in front of a general merchandise store. Dennis and Paint were trying to even out their loads in both wagons. Britt’s boy was there with them; he worked hard and quickly and seemed to look constantly and anxiously at his father. Dennis supervised the loading. They had to cross the upper Little Wichita and they did not want the wagons to go down by the head. Their teams were big strong bays. Admirable horses.

The Captain said, Britt, which roads are open?

Britt climbed up to the driver’s seat on one wagon with his boy at his side and Dennis was at the reins in the other. Paint sat beside Dennis smoking a cigar with great enjoyment. A light rain was still drifting down into the colorless late-spring world of North Texas and its low and restless sky.

Britt said, Take the road alongside the Red east to Spanish Fort, Captain. They say it’s not flooded yet, and then from Spanish Fort the southeast road to Weatherford and Dallas is good. Get to Spanish as quick as you can and away from the Red because it’s still coming up. From Weatherford and Dallas you can get directions for the Meridian Road heading south.