Philipp Meyer - The Son

As for myself, I have always known I will leave nothing behind me in this place, no sign I ever passed, but for the Garcias it was different, because they had hoped, and believed, that they would.

Two days after my brother died I was still in a fever. The Indians kept me tied to my horse. I was still in a fever and we were still on the Llano, and on the morning of the third day I saw something shining in the distance, which I took to be a city, and as we got closer I saw it was floating in the air, a shining city on a hill, and I knew my mother had been right, that the heat or my fever or some hilarious Indian had killed me and I would soon be joining the rest of my family. I knew I ought to be happy but I felt sadder than I’d ever been.

When we got closer I saw it wasn’t a city at all. It was a box canyon and it was still floating miles above us, as if a range of mountains had been carved out of the earth; there was a long shining river and drifting herds of deer and my mother had not been right at all. I was being taken by the Indians to their happy hunting ground, where I would remain their prisoner even in death.

I had a dauncy spell but no one heard me over the wind. Soon after, we reached the thing itself. It was a proper canyon cut into the earth but some mirage in the sky was reflecting it. It was even larger than the mirage made it look — a dozen miles across and a thousand feet deep, with fins and towers and hoodoos like observation posts, mesas and minor buttes, springs flowing brightly in the red rock. There were cottonwoods and hackberries, and the valley floor was thick with grass and wildflowers.

We took an hour dropping into it, then made an early camp next to a clear stream. There was a skull with an enormous tusk all turned to stone and sticking out of the bank. I wondered what my brother would have made of it. The Indians were relaxed. For my own protection I was kept tied to a tree, though the Germans were allowed to wander and by her yellow hair I could see one sitting on a far butte. The Indians were not worried; there were wolf and grizzly and panther tracks everywhere and it was no place to be playing a lone hand.

A few deer were killed and a yearling buffalo. Wild potatoes and turnips and sweet onions were dug up, braided, and roasted in the fire. The animals were carefully skinned, the meat filleted from the bones, coals raked out and the big roasts placed on them. The bones were put in the fire and when everything was ready they were cracked and the marrow spread on the potatoes. There were handfuls of chokecherries for dessert and a lemonade made from sumac. Everyone was full as a tick but finally the hump of the buffalo was dug out of the coals; it was dripping with fat and came apart in our fingers. It was the best I’d eaten since I’d left home and at the thought of that I got dauncy again and N uukaru came over and slapped me.

By sundown the walls of the canyon looked to be on fire and the clouds coming off the prairie were glowing like smoke in the light, as if this place were His forge and the Creator himself were still fashioning the earth.

“Urwat leaves tomorrow,” Toshaway said. When the others turned in I was tied down for sleep as I’d been since my brother died — my arms and legs roped to separate stakes in the ground. Toshaway put his buffalo robe over me. The stars were too bright to sleep, the Dipper, Pegasus, the serpent and dragon, Hercules; I watched them turn while meteors left smoking trails that stretched across the canyon.

A few of the Indians had their way with the Germans. This time I tried not to listen.

THE NEXT MORNING the spoils of the raid — weapons, tools, equipment, horses, anything valuable including the German girls and me — were set out and divided. The older girl went with Urwat’s group; the younger girl and I with Toshaway’s. The younger girl was crying as Urwat’s group rode away with her cousin, and there was a patch of long dark hair, my mother’s, tied to the saddle of a horse in Urwat’s band. N uukaru came over and slapped me. I knew he was doing me a favor.

After climbing back onto the Llano we didn’t see water all day. A few hours before sundown we camped at a small playa lake sunk beneath the level of the grass. It was invisible from more than a hundred yards distance and how the Indians had navigated to it, I had no idea, as the plain was so flat and empty you could see the curve of the earth.

Toshaway and N uukaru led the blond girl and me to the far end of the lake and after we washed ourselves we lay on our bellies while they lanced all the boils and blisters from riding and cleaned our other wounds as well. Our legs and backsides were rinsed with a bark tea and covered with a poultice made from pear pad innards and coneflower root. Despite the sunburn and saddle sores on her legs and rear end, now that she was cleaned up, the German girl was quite beautiful. I looked at her and hoped we might connubiate but she ignored me. I guessed she’d been a haughty one like my sister. Then I couldn’t look at her.

Mostly they treated her like an expensive horse, taking care with her feed and water but hitting or throwing sticks if she did anything that got their ire up. I was given plenty of lather myself but never without an explanation; Toshaway and N uukaru spoke to me constantly, pointing things out, and I was picking up the language already: paa, water; t uh uya, horse; tehcaró, eat. Tunets uka —keep going.

A few days later we came to a big river that I guessed was the Canadian. The country improved. By then, neither I nor the girl were tied up at all. We’d been riding at an easy pace, eating and drinking and nursing our wounds, and even the horses were putting on flesh.

Two buffalo calves were killed and for a change the liver was put on the coals along with all the heavy bones, the warm marrow spread on the liver like butter. Toshaway kept passing me more meat and there was more curdled calves’ milk, which got sweeter each time I tried it.

The next morning I woke up thinking about my father and how even with a group of willing men he never would have been able to catch us. Even a young Indian like N uukaru would have lost them. The Comanches left conflicting trails at every patch of soft ground, changed direction at every stretch of rock or hardpan, took note of the natural line of travel across a landscape and rode a different way. A detour that cost them a few minutes would confuse a pursuer for hours. I had never felt so alone in my life.

I got up to find the Indians. I could hear voices at the river and found all the warriors bathing themselves, scrubbing off the dirt and old war paint. Some were sitting naked in the sun, looking into tiny hand mirrors or small pieces of cracked glass, and, with steel tweezers they must have gotten from the whites, they were plucking all the hair from their faces. When that was done they took small pouches of vermilion and other dyes from their possibles, which they ground with spit to form a paste, then put on their paint, color by color. Each man parted his hair down the middle and rewove his braids and dyed the part red or yellow. Puha nabisar u, said Toshaway. He was working on his braids as well. Everyone was feeling grandacious, as if getting dressed for a night of beauing.

I was put to scrubbing down the horses with grass. Each warrior repainted his pony with stripes and handprints. Two of the younger Indians rode away over the hills and didn’t return.

The captured scalps were washed and brushed and attached to the tops of lances. I knew my mother’s was gone and I couldn’t see my sister’s, either. I decided it had been Urwat’s men who’d killed her.