Buckskin Line

1 Texas Gulf Coast, August 1840 He was Comanche, and he was known among the People as Buffalo Caller. Once in a time of hunger, when he was a fledgling on one of his first hunts, the older and more experienced men had ridden their horses to exhaustion without scaring up so much as one lone, lame bull. But Buffalo Caller, riding alone, had heard a faint and distant bellow. He had responded in the voice of a buffalo, and the buffalo had answered him. The calls led him to a small herd in a hidden canyon. It was not buffalo he hunted now. He scouted as a wolf for the largest assembly of raiders the Penateka band had ever put together, moving to strike the land-greedy, hair-faced American settlers of Texas. Beside him against the Texans rode Swift as the Antelope, so named for his fleetness of foot. Buffalo Caller tingled with excitement over the sights he was about to behold. He had never seen an ocean or even a boat, so it strained his imagination to visualize what old men had described around their campfires. If the veterans had not let fanciful dreams overcome the realities of memory, those wonders lay no more than half a day's horseback journey ahead of him. It was claimed that the great water stretched so far one could not see all the way across. None of the People had ever ventured out upon it to determine how far it extended, for they were of the land, not of the sea. It was said that white men's boats might travel for many days without touching shore and that fish larger than horses lived in the dark and frightening depths. Buffalo Caller doubted much of what he had heard. It sounded typical of the whiteteibos' lies. He had forded many rivers, and he had visited lakes wider than the rivers, but none were so wide that he could not see the opposite side. Where he rode now was far to the south and east of the short-grass prairie and the limestone hill hunting grounds he was accustomed to roaming. A journey of many days had brought the massive Comanche war column into a gently rolling land of sandy soil and tall, summer-cured grass much different from the higher, drier land the Penatekas claimed as home. The hot, humid wind carried a smell foreign to his experience and left a faint suggestion of salt upon his lips. Summer heat sent sweat rolling down from beneath his buffalo-horn headdress and into his paint-streaked face, burning his eyes. The foreignness of this land made him uneasy despite the persistent gnawing of curiosity. Though he wanted to see the great water for himself, he would be relieved when they finished what they came to do so they could return to country more suited to his experience. What they were about was vengeance, blood for blood. In the early spring many tribal leaders and warriors had met with white chiefs in San Antonio de Bejar's council house to discuss an earlier agreement by the Comanches to free all their captives. Some had reconsidered the promise and balked, holding out for stronger terms. Talk had led to quarrel, and quarrel to the loosing of arrows and an explosion of gunfire. When the smoke drifted away, more than thirty Indians lay dead and dying in the council house and in the foul dirt of San Antonio's narrow streets. In retaliation the People had killed most of the remaining white captives, but those had not bled enough to wash away the stain of the San Antonio disaster. The indignant Penatekas had undertaken this huge punitive expedition, carrying them far beyond their normal range, all the way eastward to the Gulf of Mexico. He did not know how many of the People were on this grand adventure. He had attempted to count them on his fingers and thumbs, but the task overwhelmed him. They were so many that they defied his understanding of numbers. Their horses left the grass beaten down and the ground scarred in their wake like thKelton, Elmer is the author of 'Buckskin Line' with ISBN 9780812540208 and ISBN 0812540204.