The Black Jacks

"You do not think we should make peace with the whites?"

Tall Horses was not shy about making his feelings known. All that Comanche etiquette required of him was to wait for Gray Wolf to ask his opinion. Every male who had returned from his first war party was entitled to have his say. Among Comanches, individual independence in thought and action was encouraged.

"The white man ca

Gray Wolf smiled grimly. "Many have tried to destroy the Comanches before. The Apaches have tried. The Spaniards and then the Mexicans. But all have failed. We survive. Go tell Maguara that Gray Wolf will be present at the council."

After Tall Horses had left the tepee, Gray Wolf stood and glanced at his wife. "You do not think we should go to Bexar, either," he said.

"It is not my place to say," replied Snow Dancer. But he had always encouraged her to speak frankly, and having paid lip service to tradition, she proceeded to voice her opinion. "I agree with Tall Horses, but for a different reason. The Texans will not make peace with us, so it does not matter that they ca

"If they do not want peace, then why have they asked us to come to Bexar?"

"It is a trap. They intend to kill us all. Besides, we asked for peace, for a boundary, and they said they would not talk until all the white captives held by the Comanches were brought in. The Quohadi have no white captives. We live too far away to raid the white settlements. For this reason we should not go to Bexar at all."

Gray Wolf stared at his infant son, snug in his papoose, nuzzling the milk-gorged breast of his wife, and felt a keen anxiety. "I will not let anything happen to you or our son," he said softly. "You know that I keep my promises."

Her smile was wan. Gray Wolf was a tall, broad-shouldered, exceedingly handsome man, and she loved him more than life itself, and wondered what she would do if she lost him. "I know you will try, my husband."

He kissed her on top of the head. Lately she had been so grave. What had happened to the carefree girl he had married only two summers ago? He remembered that night, after he had returned from his first war party and had distinguished himself by his valor against the Utes, when she had slipped into his tepee and introduced him to the pleasures of lovemaking. Among the Comanches, it was a quite common practice for the girl to make the advances. From that moment on Gray Wolf had eyes for no one else, though he was so good-looking and brave and full of promise that all the maidens in the Antelope Band had vied for his attention. His happiest day had come, nearly a year later, when he took a splendid stallion laden with buffalo robes to Snow Dancer's father, who had silently driven the animal in with his own ponies, in this way signifying his approval of the marriage of his daughter to this bold young warrior.

It was the responsibility of the son-in-law to provide his wife's parents with meat, but in Gray Wolf's case that was no burden, as he was as skilled at hunting as he was in war. And he was fortunate in that Snow Dancer's younger sister was already married, since otherwise he would have had to take her as his wife, also. That was just as well, because Gray Wolf realized he would never love another with the depth of feeling he had for Snow Dancer, and he knew she felt the same way about him. Gray Wolf's love for her was so strong that he refused to lend her to his brother, Ru

Leaving his tepee, Gray Wolf paused to take a slow look around. He carried his bow of seasoned Osage orange, a quiver of dogwood arrows, and a bison-hide shield. A warrior did not venture from his skin lodge unarmed when the enemy was so near. Gray Wolf's shield was decorated with bear's teeth, signifying his attributes as a hunter, with horse tails to herald his prowess as a raider, and, in addition, was adorned with several Ute and Apache scalps and a circle of feathers around the rim. A war club depended by a thong from his wrist. He wore beaded moccasins, fringed deerskin leggings, and a red breechcloth. His hair was parted in the middle and braided on the sides, the braids wrapped in fur. A yellow hawk's feather dangled from his scalplock.

The Quohadi had encamped on the upper Brazos, less than a hundred miles northwest of Torrey's Trading Post and the town of Bucksnort, beyond the Cross Timbers—that north-south band of ancient pine forest—from the major settlements of the Republic of Texas. The normal range of the Antelope Band was far to the west, and so they, of all the Comanche bands, had tangled least with the Texans. A dozen times Gray Wolf had fought the Utes, who feared the Quohadi and called them the komantcia—"enemy"—from which the white man had coined the name Comanche. But, unlike the warriors of the Penatekas, the Tanimas, and the Tanawas, Gray Wolf had yet to raise a hand in anger against the whites. He hoped he would never have to.

All along the river more than a hundred tepees had been erected beneath the bright green willows and dusty gray cottonwoods. The larger skin lodges of the old patriarchs stood nearby, and Gray Wolf bent his steps in that direction.

The council was about to get under way, and many of the Quohadis had congregated to listen to the leaders of the Antelope band, as was their right. The crowd parted respectfully to let Gray Wolf pass, and he took his place among the young war chiefs in the circle of council members in front of the tepee of Maguara, the principle chief of the Quohadis.

Maguara rose to speak first. He was obliged to explain why he had called the council. He reviewed what had gone before: how the Texans had met with chiefs of the Penateka band a year ago, and rejected the Penateka request for the establishment of a boundary between the settlers and the Comanches—a boundary initially proposed by the old chief of the whites, the one the Cherokees called The Raven, who was no longer in power. But the Texans had suggested another meeting, this one to be attended by representatives from all the Comanche bands. As a demonstration of good faith, the Comanches were to turn over all their white captives. Texas agents had circulated among all the bands, and the Comanches had listened to what they had to say. Any man, even a Texan, who came into a Comanche camp to talk peace was safe.

So the Quohadis had come to this place on the upper Brazos—not all of them, only the chiefs and sixty warriors, many with their families. Yet now that the meeting with the Texans was imminent, doubts had been raised about the wisdom of going through with it. Maguara had summoned this council in the hope that these differences could be worked out.

The old chiefs spoke first. Although they were known as the peace chiefs, not all of them were keen on making a peace treaty with the Texans. A couple believed that the best way for the Quohadis to keep the peace with the whites was to go back to the Llano Estacado and mind their own business. This would not do, argued others who took a broader view. What of the other bands who ranged much closer to the settlements of the Texans? Unless a boundary could be established and peace maintained, the Texans would continue to spread ever deeper into Comanche land, and soon they would reach even the Staked Plain, and then the Quohadis would no longer be able to ignore the problem. No, it was better to treat with the Texans now, before they began to invade the traditional range of the Quohadis.