Blood of My Blood Read online

  Some called him a traitor to his people. Some believed he was leading the Comanche on the only path to survival in the face of the white man’s relentless drive westward. He was Quanah Parker, a half-white Comanche outcast who became a warrior, then rose to lead his people in their most desperate time.

  The Comanche have become a people whose way of life is dying. Dependent on the buffalo for food, they face starvation in the wake of the white man’s wholesale slaughter of the once-magnificent herds. As a young brave, Quanah Parker joins a band of Cheyenne, Kiowa, and Arapaho who have sworn, under the leadership of the powerful medicine man Eeshati, to ride against the bluecoats and rid the land of the white scourge. But nothing can stop the tide of expansion, and Quanah confronts a bitter choice: to resist change and the white man to the very death, or to embrace a strange new way of life for his people...and hope that it is not the road to annihilation.

  Acclaimed for his novels of the American frontier, dramatically brings to life the story of a fascinating figure of a changing West.

  For my brothers and sisters Mary, Hap, Barbara and Tom … in order of appearance!

  Chapter One

  Death hung in the air.

  Leather creaked when John Teller shifted his weight in the saddle. His gray eyes lifted. Flat plains stretched before him to a featureless horizon, formed where yellowed autumn grass met a blue sky unhampered by so much as a hint of scud white.

  That his gaze revealed nothing did little to relieve the doubt that wormed beneath his skin and coldly crept upward from the base of his spine. A man could not trust his eyes and expect to stay alive long, not here, not on the Texas high plains.

  The monotony of the vast ocean of grass that fanned out in all directions around him created a deadly illusion. No matter what the eye and brain perceived, the dried vegetation concealed subtle shifts in the face of the land. Ahead, perhaps just beyond the breeze-rustled grasses, lay a shallow buffalo wallow. On the right, or maybe the left, hidden by the same grass, was a dry playa lake. No matter how slight the unseen depression, a Comanche could use it to watch every move of those foolish enough to intrude upon this last stronghold of Comancheria.

  Trusting his eyeballs had almost cost Teller his life two years ago, while scouting for an army patrol out of Fort Sill. Then, he rode a mile ahead of the troopers, certain the nearest Comanche brave was at least three days from his position. In the time it took him to glance up at a merciless summer sun, five mounted warriors, faces streaked with the red and black paints of war, sprang out of nothingness and charged with bloodcurdling cries tearing from their throats.

  Had his own mount not been fresh from a night’s rest, he would have fallen to the war lances brandished by the braves that day. Even his horse’s speed did not save him from the bite of a flint-headed arrow that buried itself in his right forearm.

  The fingers of Teller’s left hand eased to the once-injured arm and rubbed away remembered pain. Beneath the fabric of jacket and shirt, he imagined feeling the roughness of the white scar he carried as a souvenir of that ambush.

  He pursed his lips and sucked at his teeth. By the time he reached the safety of the soldiers who followed his trail, the five braves had once again vanished into the flatness. A buffalo wallow, sand marking where the braves had forced their ponies to lie on their sides while they watched the lone white man approach, did reveal how the Comanches had hidden themselves before the attack.

  No, a man needed more than eyes to keep his scalp intact here on the high plains. He had to employ all his senses and carry a healthy serving of luck with him, Teller thought, as he slowly drew a long breath into his nostrils.

  Caution again wiggled along his spine. The smell of death hung in the air beneath the crispness of the October morning. The odor of rotting flesh was something a man did not forget, and Teller had smelled death more than once during his forty years in Texas.

  A dead antelope, or buffalo, Teller tried to lie to himself and failed.

  The buffalo were gone from Texas, gone from the whole country, hunted to the point of extinction with the unofficial seal of approval of the U.S. Army and the government that supported it. Buffalo hides meant golden eagles to fill the pockets of the men who slaughtered the once endless herds of bison. More important was the simple fact that each of the shaggy giants that fell meant the loss of buffalo steaks a-sizzle over some Indian campfire.

  Newspapers carried stories each day of the army’s ceaseless actions against the tribes who claimed the plains as their own. Melees of blue-coated soldiers and painted savages made for good reading, but told little of the real reason the army slowly gained the upper hand over its red-skinned enemy. Comanche, Kiowa, Pawnee, Cheyenne, Sioux —every tribe that inhabited the American plains depended on the buffalo for food. Remove the meat from the stew pot and an army, even one as resourceful as one soldiered by Indian braves, would not stand long against a relentless foe.

  A gust of north wind filled Teller’s nostrils with the pungent smell of putrefying flesh once more. He glanced at the man astride a bay mare to his left. If Charles Dumaine smelled the death ahead of them, he gave no outward sign, not even a twitch of his nose. The New Orleans newspaper man appeared more concerned about the morning’s chill than his surroundings. The bay’s reins were wrapped about the saddlehorn, and Dumaine used both his hands to worry the top button of his coat into its eye.

  “Is there anything wrong, Mr. Teller?” The young reporter’s head turned to the older man.

  Teller nodded at the reins. “You’d be in a hell of a fix if a prairie dog up and popped out of the ground to spook that mare right about now.”

  Chagrin slid across Dumaine’s face, while his fingers finally managed to fumble the button through its eye to secure the coat snugly beneath his clean-shaven chin. “These Texas mornings are far colder than I anticipated. I fear I would have frozen to death by now had you not insisted I purchase this coat back in Fort Worth. I’m accustomed to the mild temperatures of a delta autumn.”

  Dumaine began to unwrap the reins from the horn. “I was under the impression that the Texas heat rivaled the flames of Hades itself.”

  “We’re atop the Llano Estacado, the Staked Plains, Mr. Dumaine. That’s about as far north as a man can ride and still be within Texas. Head northwest for about a week, and you’ll be seeing the Rocky Mountains on the horizon. Fall can bring snow to this country, or summer can linger on ’til Christmas has come and gone”

  Dumaine glanced in the direction Teller had indicated. “The Rocky Mountains, perhaps I’ll gaze upon their majesty one day—when this country has been made safe for a Christian gentleman who wishes to travel freely from coast to coast without being in constant fear for his life.”

  Teller hid an expression of disgust when the newspaper man took the reins in his right hand and held them there. A dozen times since leaving Fort Worth, the older man had warned the reporter to leave his gun hand free should the need to free revolver or rifle suddenly present itself. Either Dumaine was slow to learn, Teller decided, or he cared little about protecting his own skin.

  The Texan’s attempt to conceal his disapproval fell short of success. He felt Dumaine’s eyes on him and saw the younger man quickly shift the reins into his left hand. Teller’s own attention returned to the dried grass of the plains and the smell of death carried on the breeze.

  For the thousandth time since leaving Fort Worth a week ago, Teller wondered why he had agreed to bring this New Orleans greenhorn with his packhorse weighted down with a bulky wooden camera, tripod, photographic plates, and an assortment of trays and chemicals into the very heart of Comanche territory. Only a fool would accept such a job.

  Or a man without two thin dimes to rub together, Teller conside
red. For a man who had spent the past year drifting across Texas, the hundred dollars Charles Dumaine had paid to be guided across Texas to join Colonel Ranald Mackenzie and the troops he led to spearhead the fight against the Comanches seemed like a fortune. Quick money often made a man act the fool. Dumaine wanted to make a name for himself reporting and photographing the Indian wars, and Teller was broke. Who was the bigger fool was yet to be seen.

  “Is there something else troubling you this morning, Mr. Teller?” Dumaine asked. “You seem more reticent than my mistake of holding the reins in the wrong hand would warrant.”

  For an instant, Teller considered mentioning the smell of rotting flesh that assailed his nostrils with every breath he inhaled. He merely shook his head. There was no need to alarm the reporter. The stench might come from the stripped carcass of an antelope or a deer ahead. Unlike the buffalo, both were still abundant on the Staked Plains and hunted by Kwerhar-rehnuhands of the Comanches. After all, Kwerhar-rehnuh meant antelope-Eaters in Comanche, Teller tried to convince himself.

  “Are you certain there is nothing troubling you?” Dumaine pressed. “Perhaps we’ve strayed from Colonel Mackenzie’s trail?”

  “Not even a village idiot could lose this trail.” Teller barely kept the edge from his voice when he poked a finger at the ground. “Those are the same shod horses we’ve been following since we picked up their tracks at the edge of the Caprock two lays back. And those ruts were left by the wagons carrying Mackenzie’s nappy-headed buffalo soldiers. No, we ain’t lost the rail. The colonel and his darkie soldier boys are up there ahead of us.”

  Dumaine rode silently for a long moment. “How far ahead do you estimate the distance to be, Mr. Teller?”

  Far closer than the older man wanted to ponder at length. He could no longer ignore the fear that niggled at the back of his mind, fear of what really lay ahead of them. Mackenzie had brought his troops onto the Llano Estacado in search of Comanches. In all likelihood the colonel had discovered more than he had reckoned upon finding. Somewhere ahead in the grass lay the results of that encounter.

  Teller shivered in spite of his attempt to suppress the uneasiness that now coursed through his body. He had no desire to ride upon such a scene. His gut had churned and knotted itself when he had read the accounts of the massacre at Little Big Horn. The bloody battlefield left by the Sioux and their butchery of Custer and the 7th Cavalry would seem like a Sunday picnic compared to what the Comanche were capable of doing to Mackenzie and his black soldiers. The Sioux were merely Sioux; the Comanches had ridden as lords of the plains for nearly two hundred years. Their murderous marauding had stopped Spanish, French, English, and American from claiming the Great Plains as their own.

  “We made good time yesterday.” Teller leaned to the left side of the buckskin gelding he rode and eyed the soldiers’ trail. “Mackenzie’s about a day or two ahead of us—maybe three at the most. Those wagons slow him down. We can cover twice the ground in a day as the colonel can.”

  Abruptly, Teller eased back on the reins to halt the buckskin. The packhorse he led moved beside his mount before it stopped and lowered its head to graze. Dumaine managed to tug the bay mare to a standstill a half dozen strides ahead of the older man. He twisted around in the saddle and stared back at his companion in confusion.

  Teller edged the buckskin beside the reporter. “Mr. Dumaine, I want you to close your eyes, draw a deep breath through your nose, and tell me what you smell.”

  Dumaine’s eyes narrowed and a dubious frown shadowed his face. “Mr. Teller, this is not the time for levity. If we are to join ... ”

  Teller waved away his remarks. “This ain’t no joke. Close your eyes and breathe deep through your nose.”

  With another frown Dumaine relented. His nose wrinkled. An instant later his whole face puckered as though he unknowingly had bitten into a sour lemon.

  With a distasteful shake of his head, the newspaperman stared at Teller. “It smells like a cat that died in the alley outside my apartment back in New Orleans. When did you first notice it?”

  Teller tapped his heels to the buckskin’s sides and moved forward. “Got a couple whiffs of it last night, but didn’t pay it no never mind. This morning it’s gotten stronger with every step our horses have taken.”

  “There could be a dead animal ahead of us,” Dumaine replied, but his expression said that his mind raced to Teller’s conclusion.

  “A herd of slaughtered buffalo left to rot in the sun might raise such a stink,” the older man replied. “But the buffalo ain’t here no more.”

  Dumaine bit his lower lip and lifted his gaze to the northern horizon. “You believe there’s been a battle, don’t you? That the stench is coming from corpses?”

  Teller rubbed a hand over cheek and neck to relieve the itch of three-day-old stubble.

  “Don’t reckon how it could be anything else, not way out here in the middle of nowhere.”

  “Mackenzie and his men,” Dumaine asked, “or Comanches?”

  “Don’t reckon there’s a way to tell without seein’ what’s up yonder somewhere.” Teller’s gaze shifted to his companion. “I don’t guess there’s any way to convince you to turn around and head back to Fort Worth, is there?”

  “I came out here to cover the Comanche conflicts for the Picayune, Mr. Teller” the reporter answered with solid commitment to his assigned task. “Whether it’s red man or white ahead of us, it’s my job to find out what happened and photograph it.”

  “ ’Fraid you’d say that.” Teller had seen both white and red men killed in battle, had killed more than one of the latter himself, and did not relish seeing the body-strewn battlefield he knew lay somewhere between them and the distant horizon.

  “Don’t you think it would be wise if we increased our pace, Mr. Teller?”

  Dumaine’s expression was one of anticipation, perhaps even a bit of excitement. He had traveled to Texas to write articles about the Comanche fighting. Until this moment all he had done was ride westward, following a meandering branch of the Brazos River. Teller caught himself before his head gave an unconscious shake of disapproval. For the young man, it did not matter whether soldiers or braves lay dead ahead. Either way, he had a story to send back to New Orleans. If Mackenzie and his troopers had been hit, then Dumaine would write of a major military defeat. Were the bodies those of Comanches, then he would report a military victory to his readers.

  “No need to rush—the dead ain’t goin’ nowhere.” Teller’s concern for sparing their mounts motivated the words as much as his dread of finding what lay ahead. “My guess is that the fight happened in a canyon up north about a mile or two from here. The Comancheros call it Palo Duro Canyon. Comanches been making winter camp there since they first came to Texas. Can’t think of a more likely spot for a fight. Mackenzie and his darkies surprised a Comanche band there, or they were ambushed in the canyon.”

  “Palo Duro Canyon,” Dumaine repeated while he dug a pencil and slip of paper from a coat pocket and jotted down the name.

  The Llano Estacado stretched flat and featureless for as far as the eye could see. Then in the blink of that eye, a deep, red gash sliced into the earth. This ragged rent, an open wound carved over the centuries by the trickle and torrents of a small stream that ran along the canyon floor to eventually become part of the Brazos River, was the Palo Duro Canyon.

  “I don’t understand, Mr. Teller.” Dumaine stood beside the older man on the canyon rim, staring a thousand feet below. “It appears that fire swept through below, but I don’t see any bodies. If this is a battlefield, it lacks the appearance of those I’ve read about.”

  Teller silently agreed. Palo Duro appeared as though wildfire set off by a lightning strike had burned from mouth to head. Grass, mesquite trees, and cedars were all blackened by the course of searing flames. Nor could he see the bloated bodies he expected—

  “Sweet Jesus.”

  The words slipped from between the Texan’s lips as his gaze followed t
he circling descent of three buzzards into the canyon. For a moment their dark-feathered forms lost themselves amid the charcoal hues below, then Teller picked them out again when they settled to the ground beside a hundred or more of their winged cousins.

  “What is it?” Dumaine strained to see what his companion discerned.

  “There’s bodies below,” Teller answered in a shocked whisper. “But they ain’t men—white, red, or black. There’s hundreds of dead horses down there.”

  “Horses?” Dumaine’s neck craned to the left and right. “I don’t see—” His sentence ended in a gasp. “Lord almighty, they're everywhere. What in the name of decency happened here?”

  Teller’s head moved from side to side. “I don’t know, but Mackenzie and his troops were here. Over yonder’s the trail they took below.”

  “Army mounts?” Dumaine asked while he continued to scan the countless dead animals strewn over the canyon floor.

  That Comanches would butcher such a wealth of horseflesh was beyond all Teller knew of the red men. A brave built his status among the Nermernuh, the name the Comanche gave themselves, by counting the ponies he called his own. A pursued warrior might ride a horse until it dropped dead beneath him, but he would never wantonly kill a horse. Comanches were nomadic bands; the horse allowed them to freely move across the plains.

  “My guess is they're Indian mustangs,” Teller answered. “But there’s only one way to make certain—that’s to go down and take a look.”

  Dumaine tilted his head in the affirmative. “I want to get some plates of this.”

  Stepping to his saddlebags, Teller opened one and pulled out a brown bottle and a blue-and-white neck scarf. He pulled the cork from the neck of the bottle and doused the cloth with the light amber liquid that rolled from inside. “Tie this over your nose. The horse liniment’s got wintergreen and camphor in it. It’ll help cut the stench.”

  While the reporter followed his suggestion, the older man poured a healthy portion of the liniment on the red bandanna about his neck and hiked the cloth over his own nose like some desperado set on robbing a stagecoach. Despite the heady mélange of aromatic oils soaking the bandanna, the stink of rotting horseflesh found a way into his nostrils.