Bill Dugan_War Chiefs 04

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Authors: Quanah Parker
Tags: Fiction, Historical, Westerns
rawhide, then cut it, sliced a short piece from the remainder, and brought her hands in front of John. He tied her hands together with her arms around John’s tiny waist, taking care not to cut off her circulation. Then, without a word, he swung up onto his pony, nudged it close and leaned over to snag the lead rope attached to her pony’s rawhide bridle.
    Once more, he barked a command, flapped his knees against the pony’s sides, and the flight resumed.
    She saw now that they were heading out into the plains. As far as she could see, tall grasswaved in the hot sun. She glanced over her shoulder at the trees for a moment, as if trying to fix the place in her memory.
    From time to time, one or another of the warriors would ride close. Mostly they said nothing. But occasionally one of them would grunt something at her, then smile. One even reached out and took some of her long blond hair in his hand and draped it across his wrist, then made several rapid clucking sounds and backed away, shaking his head.
    By noon, her terror was giving way to thirst and hunger. She hadn’t had breakfast, and her stomach was grumbling. John snuffled from time to time, tilting his head to wipe his nose on the sleeve of his shirt, but he calmed down enough that Cynthia was able to concentrate more on their surroundings. The trees were long gone behind her, and the sun hammered relentlessly down.
    The sun was past its zenith before the crows of some cottonwoods appeared on the horizon. The whole band swung toward it as if they had known it would be there, and then she realized that of course they had. They were Indians, after all.
    It took nearly a half hour to reach the trees, and they were almost within a stone’s throw when she saw the gleam of water through the tangle of underbrush. A spring, she thought. Maybe now they’ll give us some food. The Indians dismounted, except for a handful whospread out in all directions to stand watch while the rest watered their animals.
    When they had dismounted, the chief and one of the warriors opened a buckskin bag and offered her some dried meat. It was chewy and a little too salty for her liking, but at least it was food. She thought they might let her and John get down, but so far there had been no indication they would.
    All she could do was watch. And wait.

Chapter 9
    W ARRIORS SPURTED AHEAD of the main body, driving horses stolen in their raids far to the east. Cynthia didn’t know it, but the raid on Fort Parker was just an afterthought. The fort was there, and the Comanche just happened to be passing by. A few miles to the north, and they wouldn’t have bothered. The pickings at the fort had been pitifully slim, and Peta Nocona was already wondering whether it had been worth the trouble. He thought about the people left bleeding on the ground, some dead before the Comanche had ridden away, some to be dead before the dust of the Comanche flight had settled. They were white, and that was reason enough to hate them, given how the whites had come into land that wasn’t theirs and started to act as if the Comanche were the interlopers.
    Looking at the two children, he wondered why he and Black Snake had taken them. They had captured the children of enemies before, but things were changing fast, and now he wonderedwhether it might mean trouble of a kind they had never seen before. It was common practice for the Comanche, as for most plains Indians, to take captives, almost always women and children, and as often as not, they were taken into a tipi and adopted by the tribe. There were such people even now in the main camp of the Noconi Comanche. Three Mexicans, all of them taken long ago, so long that it seemed to all but the very oldest, that they had always been part of the tribe. There were whites, too. Two men who were warriors now, more Comanche even than the real Comanche, and a woman who had been with them for fifteen winters. Maybe, Nocona thought, Black Feather can help. He knew the

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