Philipp Meyer - The Son

But she did not appear to notice. “I’ve actually thought about it quite a lot,” she said. “I mean raping them. It was what got me through the day sometimes.”

She was smiling.

“But now I don’t have to think about it anymore.”

I didn’t talk to her that night, or the next day, either.

THE LAST WEEK we spent on wagon roads, passing villages, settlements, the first white people I’d seen in three years who hadn’t shot at me. Yellow Hair waved at everyone. But the whites did not think it was a special occasion, seeing other white people. The land was settling up.

When we reached the Colorado, close to Austin, I could not believe the roads; they had doubled in width and the ruts were all filled. Yellow Hair was happy, unusually talkative, and she had kissed the traders on their cheeks and thanked them and cuddled very close to me during supper. I could see their looks of jealousy, but St. Nick kept them in line. He knew what we were worth. He offered me a spare cylinder for my pistol if I would let him wash and cut my hair, which had grown halfway down my back. I thought about it, then agreed.

When we went to bed that night, Yellow Hair allowed me to put myself partway into her but she was very dry, and after moving around for several minutes she got no better, and I was so ashamed I removed myself.

“Go ahead and finish,” she said.

“I can’t with you not wanting to.”

She shrugged. “I really don’t mind. You kept your word.”

I thought about it and then got out of the robe, stood up, looked at the sky, and finished myself off. The grass was not even covered with frost, it was so much warmer in the hill country than on the plains. I got back into the robe with her.

“You’re a good man,” she said. “I’ve never known anyone like you.”

THE NEXT DAY we rode into Austin. We were taken to the house of a merchant the traders knew and then to the state capitol. A bunch of white men came and asked our names. It took most of the day but eventually three hundred dollars each was raised for us; the traders were paid and rode off without a word to me, though they tried to kiss Yellow Hair good-bye. She turned away from them. Now that we were in public, she would not even allow them to touch her.

Her real name was Ingrid Goetz. The word spread and various wealthy women adopted her. When I saw her the next day she was wearing a blue silk dress, her hair washed and braided and pulled into a bun behind her head. Meanwhile I had refused to let them touch me — I was wearing buckskin leggings and a breechcloth, no shirt, and while they had insisted on holding on to my revolver, I would not let them take my knife, which I kept tucked into my belt.

And so I slept on a spare cot at the jail while Yellow Hair stayed at a plantation east of town, the home of the U.S. representative and his wife. After a few days there was a reception for us at a judge’s house, a Georgian-style mansion near the capitol with a nice view over the river. The judge was a big redheaded man who could have hoisted a barrel in each arm, though his hands were soft as a child’s. He’d been educated at Harvard in his youth, then became a senator in Kentucky, then swore off politics entirely and moved to Texas to increase his fortune. He read a lot of books and his words ran eight to the pound, but he had a good spirit and I took to him right away.

Yellow Hair and I made quite a pair. She looked like she’d lived in town all her life; I’d taken a bath and lost my long braids but otherwise I looked like a feral child. Several reporters gathered and they asked if we were husband and wife and looking at her, with her hair washed and her face clean, she struck me as even more beautiful than I had ever thought and I wanted her to say yes.

Everyone else wanted her to say yes as well, as it made a good story, but Yellow Hair was a selfish creature. No, we were not connected in any way, I had simply protected her honor from the Comanches, she was returning with her honor intact thanks to me, honor honor honor, she still had it, that was all.

I was speechless. No one except the Yankees believed a word of it. The Indian’s appetite for his female captives was well known to all Texans.

WE WERE FED big meals with fresh bread and beef and a roasted turkey, which I would not touch, as the Comanches thought that eating turkey made you a coward, and staring at the bird I was reminded of Escuté, who liked to tell the joke, if eating turkey makes you a coward, what does eating pussy make you? There was also roast pig, which I would not touch, as the Comanches knew it was a filthy animal. I ate about five pounds of beef and two rabbits and it was commented what a good appetite I had. Yellow Hair ate a small amount of bread and turkey and, looking at me directly, helped herself to several servings of pork.

That night, despite the breezes flowing through the house, it felt so hot and still, and the beds so soft and smothering, that I went outside and slept in the judge’s yard. Yellow Hair, meanwhile, was already telling people that she had come from an aristocratic German family, though, as they had all been killed, there was no way to verify it. I was certain she was lying, as I knew where her family had been living, and the others doubted her as well, but no one was going to say anything. They had never seen a female captive returned in such good condition. You did not look a gift horse in the mouth.

A few days later, the judge gathered several of the town’s influential people in his yard for a barbecue, along with a few reporters from the East. I was asked to dress in my garb and do some tricks. Of course most of what an Indian knows cannot be shown in a circus, like how to follow game, or read a man’s mood from his footprints, so I asked for a horse and galloped it up and down the yard bareback, while shooting arrows at a hay bale. The judge had first suggested I shoot a stump but that was out of the question, as it would ruin my arrows, and as both they and my bow had been made by Grandfather, I had no desire to damage them except on a living target. I sat there on the horse and people gave suggestions. The judge pointed out a squirrel that was high up in a live oak and I shot it off the branch and then shot a dove off a different branch. The onlookers applauded. Not far from them was a black eye in the grass that I knew belonged to a rabbit so I put an arrow through that as well. Several of the eastern reporters looked sick at the rabbit shrieking and flopping itself into the air but the judge laughed and said, He’s got quite an eye, doesn’t he? Then his wife gave him a look. He called an end to the demonstration. The Negroes stomped on the rabbit to quiet it and trampled the divots in the lawn as well.

We sat and drank tea and finally they got to quizzing me about Yellow Hair, or Ingrid Goetz, as they insisted on calling her. During my demonstration she’d claimed to have a spell and they’d taken her back to the plantation. Of course I knew better.

The judge, who was sitting in, said: “Did you know her well?”

“We were captured at the same time,” I said.

“So you did know her.”

“Somewhat.”

“And it’s true she wasn’t misused?” said the reporter. He was from the New York Daily Times .

I considered throwing her under the wagon, because she clearly wanted nothing to do with me, but I couldn’t. “For sure not,” I said. “They never touched her. She was a member of the tribe.”

“That is somewhat unlikely,” said the judge. He looked embarrassed but continued: “If that is true she would be the first case I have ever heard of, as most female captives are misused by the entire tribe. And often by any visitors to the tribe as well.” He coughed into his hand and looked at the ground.