News of the World: A Novel (5 page)

You, he said, and pointed at her.

She made a small, slight dodging motion to one side. Her loose biscuit-colored hair flew in a wave. Kiowa people never pointed with their fingers. Never. They pointed with gun barrels and with the shaman sticks that threw venomous demons into an enemy’s body. Otherwise not. He could not know that.

You, Jo-han-ah, he said. You, Johanna.

She was leaning slightly forward from the waist as if this would help her understand. She held on to the roan mare’s back band. The rich scent of the horse and its warm anatomy was the only thing familiar to her in this catastrophic change in her life.

Captain. He pointed to himself.

She walked sideways in order to look at him and after a minute or so she understood that this pointing might not do any harm. He could not be throwing the demons into himself. Surely not.

He tried again. He sat quietly with the reins in his right hand and with his left he pointed to her again. Johanna, he said, patiently. He made an encouraging gesture. He waited.

She let go of the back band and stood still and held up both hands in front of herself with the palms out. He pulled up the little roan mare. She called on her guardian spirit, the one who had told her she must wear two down puffs in her hair along with a golden eagle wing feather as a sign that he would always be with her. They had taken them away. They had thrown it all out a window. But her guardian spirit might still hear her. The old man wanted her to say some enchanted naming word. It might not be harmful.

She said, Chohenna. When she spoke her lower teeth showed white.

He pointed to himself. Captain, he said.

Kep-dun, she said.

He pointed to her again.

She stiffened a moment in fear but gathered her courage and said, Chohenna.

Then he pointed to himself again.

She said, Kep-dun.

Very well. Now, we’ll go on.

THEY CROSSED THE
upper Little Wichita only a mile from where it ran into the Red River and they crossed it at a run. The Captain lifted Johanna into the wagon bed, pulled Pasha’s lead rope loose and let him go. He found the camp knife, a butcher knife, and stuck it sheath and all into his belt in case he might have to cut Fancy out of her harness. They started a quarter-mile from the crossing at a fast trot and then hit the water at a gallop. Johanna clung to the long seats and waves of spray battered the
Curative Waters East Mineral Springs Texas
gold letters. They slowed as the current stopped them and then it took hold of the little mare and their wagon as well. Crows shot up out of the far bank screaming. Foam churned around them, drift and duff ran on top of the fast water in snaking lines. Briefly the wagon floated. The roan mare snorted, went under, came up and beat at the floodwaters with her hooves. Then she struck hard bottom and they pulled up on the far bank with water draining in streams. Pasha was a constitutionally brave horse and he plunged
in after them without hesitation and struck out and came out a few yards downstream with triumphant little tosses of his head. He shook himself in a flying halo of spray and came trotting to join them and was retied to the wagon. As they went on the Captain cocked his head and listened to a steady clicking sound. He got down and looked at the front wheel. There was a break in the iron tire. Nothing to do about it now; maybe there would be a blacksmith in Spanish Fort.

THAT NIGHT THE
Captain demonstrated to her the little sheetiron stove he had bought along with the wagon. It would make less smoke than a campfire. It was the size of a large ammunition box with a small chimney going up two feet or so, enough to keep smoke out of their faces. He let down the tailgate and patted the stove where it sat, square and black and forbidding.

She had no idea what it was for.

Stove, he said. Fire. He fitted the pipes.

She stood in front of it in her yellow-and-blue-striped dress, her bare feet, the bright taffy-colored hair streaming down her back, damp with the drizzle. In a swift motion she suddenly carried her right arm down in front of herself and then snapped her fingers upward in a blossom of hard nails and calluses.

Ah, said the Captain. Sign. The sign for fire. He knew a bit of the Plains Indians sign language and so he made the sign for Yes.

This was encouraging. They at least had some limited means of speech.

He showed her how the stove worked—the top lid the size of a hand, the draft wheel. He strung up one of the wagon’s side curtains between a short, warped post oak and the wagon
side to make a shelter against the drizzle. She watched his every move. Perhaps she was afraid, perhaps she knew she had to learn how these things worked.

The horses were happy with their morales, feed bags holding a hefty portion of shelled corn. The girl stood beside the little mare and ran her hand down the horse’s leg. She made a little pitying noise. The mare was young and strong but she had a slightly twisted right foreleg, the hoof turned inward several degrees and because of this the Captain had got her cheap. The girl had spotted it immediately and she patted the mare gently as she and Pasha stood side by side and ground up their corn with a noise like hand grinders.

The Captain found dry sticks in the clusters of tall bear grass and fished his match safe out of his inner coat pocket. He did everything slowly and deliberately. He started the fire. Johanna watched with a cautious expression, a mistrustful look. She bent toward the little stove to peer in the grate and saw the air sucked into it to make the sticks burn with more intensity. Cautiously she patted the top and then snatched her hand back.

Pi tso ha!

Yes, he said. Whatever that means. Hot, I suppose.

He made up coffee and a corn dodger and fried bacon. She sat under the canvas side curtain with her food in her hands for a long time. At last she sang over it, as if adoring it, as if the bacon were a live being and the smoking dodger a gift from the Corn Woman. There was no campfire to throw shadows but there was a half-moon waxing and it seemed to run in reverse between cascading clouds that flowed together and then pulled apart and then ran together again.

The Captain wiped his plate with the cornbread. She might run. She had nowhere to go, however. The Kiowa were across the river and the river was a loose and moving ocean of foaming rusty floodwater nearly half a mile wide that carried off entire trees. She might lay hands on the revolver or the shotgun, and he could wake up in the next world.

The Captain lay back on his old Spanish saddle that he had turned upside down, his head pillowed on the fleecing. He brought out the
Chicago Tribune
and flipped through it by the light of the candle in the candle lantern. She lay rolled in a thick serape called a
jorongo
in a red-and-black diamond pattern and stared at him with her open, flat blue eyes.

He rattled the pages and said, There’s a big new packing plant in Chicago. Astounding, isn’t it? They feed the cattle in at one end and at the other end they come out in cans.

She never took her eyes from him. He knew she was prepared for some kind of violence. Captain Kidd was a man old not only in years but in wars. He smiled at her at last and took out his pipe. More than ever knowing in his fragile bones that it was the duty of men who aspired to the condition of humanity to protect children and kill for them if necessary. It comes to a person most clearly when he has daughters. He had thought he was done raising daughters. As for protecting this feral child he was all for it in principle but wished he could find somebody else to do it.

You are an immense amount of trouble, he said. We will both be happy when you are with your relatives and you can make their lives a living hell.

Her face did not change. She wiped her nose slowly on her sleeve.

He turned the page. He said, This is writing. This is printing. This tells us of all the things we ought to know in the world. And also that we ought to want to know. He glanced over at her. He said, There are places in the world called England and Europe and In-di-a. He blew smoke from his nose. He probably should not be smoking. You could smell it for miles.

In-di-a, she whispered. She began to place her fingertips together one by one.

He lay back in his blankets and said his prayers for Britt, who was always in harm’s way in his travels. For the safety of his daughters and son-in-law and the grandsons, perhaps soon to travel, at his request, the long and perilous journey from Georgia. This would include crossing the Mississippi. For his own safety and that of Johanna, also in harm’s way.

So many people, so much harm.

He put his hat over his face and after a while he fell asleep.

FIVE

T
HE NEXT DAY
they went on toward Spanish Fort. The road wound along the south edge of the river in the great valley of the Red. More than a mile away south was the rise of land and the bluffs. At some distant time the river had been there, tearing away land; over the centuries it moved like a big red snake from one side of its valley to the other. The rain had stopped for now.

The Captain was unhappy about her walking but she would not ride nor would she put on her shoes. She watched the river. She well knew that on the other side was Indian Territory. Her mother was over there, her father, perhaps brothers and sisters and all her kin group, her clan within the tribe, perhaps a young man to whom she might have been promised. The black trunks of the live oak were twisted and wiry as chimney brushes. A good place for an ambush. He wished he had a dog. He should have got a dog from somebody.

She stopped and held up her hand. She was looking ahead.

He twitched the long reins and Fancy stopped. Behind them Pasha pointed his ears ahead and suddenly called out in a long, ringing cry.

Captain Kidd pulled out the revolver and once again checked his loads. All dry. He laid it beside him on the floorboards next to the wagon seat on the left side and covered it with a canvas-wrapped flitch of bacon. He reminded himself that the .38 cartridges were hidden in the flour keg.

After a few moments he heard the sound of about ten horses, and the jingling of bits and saddle gear. Their shod hooves clicked on the stones of the road. A company of U.S. Army mounted infantry rode into view a quarter of a mile down the road.

He jumped down and grabbed the girl by the upper arm. He made the sign for “good” in front of her face. They were on one of the few straight and level stretches between all the thick post oak and the soldiers came toward him and Johanna in a unit of blue and of flashing well-shined leather, appearing out of the trees like ghost soldiers. He turned her to him and made the sign for “friend.” She had turned the color of pastry. Her lips were trembling. He led her to the wagon wheel and lifted her so that she put one bare foot on a spoke and then sprang up into the wagon bed and sank down in a welter of skirts and loose hair. She pulled the thick wool
jorongo
over her head. He came up after her, sat down on the driver’s seat, unwrapped the reins from the driver’s post.

It’s all right, Johanna. Johanna?

He knew she thought he was going to hand her over to the Army. That this was probably an arranged meeting.

The man in front was a lieutenant; his shoulder insignia with the double bars winked in the dim light. Therefore it was a regular patrol trotting up and down the road on the south side of the Red looking for signs of raiders crossing over although with
the flooding it was unlikely. They all carried the squareback Navy Colt five-shot revolvers that looked as big as pork hams in their holsters and the .56 caliber Colt carbines, also standard issue for the wild country.

The lieutenant called for the column to halt and then rode alongside and said, Good day. The ten men behind him kicked their feet out of the stirrups to relieve their knees and some took the opportunity to drink from canteens. At the rear their pack mules brayed at his horses in long demented shrieks like train whistles.

Good day, said the Captain.

The lieutenant looked over the wagon and saw the girl on the floor of the wagon bed just behind the Captain, her expression of stiffened fright, or even terror. She was as close to the Captain’s revolver as she could get. She slid out her hand and grasped the butt where it lay hidden under the flitch of bacon, her hand and arm covered in the red wool serape.

The young lady seems very disturbed, said the lieutenant. There was surprise in his voice, suspicion.

She was a captive, said the Captain. I’m returning her to her people in Castroville, Bexar County. He handed over the Agent’s papers.

I’d like to have a look at her, said the lieutenant. He read through the papers. The Agent’s handwriting was very good, very clear. He read it easily, the girl’s description, her approximate height and complexion. Then he raised his head. His shoulder bars winked with drops. The river made an endless thunder to their left. They could see it through the trees.

Yes, I’ll try, said the Captain. He settled his hat more firmly
on his head and stepped over the back of the wagon seat and grasped the thick red wool and pulled it from her head.

Johanna, he said. Johanna. He patted her shoulder.

Well damn, said the lieutenant. He was taken aback by the flat, wild look on the girl’s face. You’d think she would be happy to be going home.

The Captain stood between Johanna and the lieutenant. He said, They took her at age six. As far as she knows she’s a Kiowa.

I see. Well, I hope you’ll apprise her of the facts. He leaned to one side to see around the Captain and stared at her appraisingly and then bent from his saddle to hand the papers back to the Captain. He said, You’re the man who reads the news.

Yes, I am.

I was there at Fort Belknap when you read.

Glad to hear it.

I don’t suppose you have your loyalty oath papers to show me.

No, I don’t.

Since you are on a sort of official business you will need them. If you voluntarily aided the Confederate Army in any way you will need a certified copy of your loyalty oath.