Bill Dugan_War Chiefs 04 Read Free Page B

moving.”
    “They are always anxious. Always they want to count coup and swagger around like no one has ever touched an enemy before.”
    “They are young. They will get used to it, and then it will not seem like such a big thing to them. You and I were like them once.”
    Nocona sighed. “I know. It wasn’t that long ago that I don’t remember.”
    “Then you should be more patient with them. Let them have their fun. It doesn’t last that long. One day they will be old and toothless, if they are lucky, and will wait at home while others go and bring back horses and buffalo.”
    “I am worried about the Osage.”
    “There hasn’t been any sign of them. Not since they attacked the Kiowa village and that is almost a year ago. What is there to worry about?”
    “It is not like they have dried up and blown away, like the husks of old corn. And they haven’t made peace with us. Why would I not worry?”
    “Because the Osage would not dare attack a Comanche village. They know what would happen if they did.”
    Nocona looked up at the sun rather than answering his friend. “You are right. It is time to go.”
    Holding his lance high overhead, Nocona let out an earsplitting wail, shook the lance, and prodded his pony into a gallop. The women and children and the few warriors left behind to defend the village all raced out of the camp and down to the river, where Nocona plunged in, barely slowing his pony. They were shouting and waving, the individual words lost in the din.
    As he came out of the river on the far side, Nocona turned to watch the others, most of them still well out in the current and some even on the far side yet. He scanned the crowd for White Heron, but knew that she would not be there. She never was. It was for others to scream and yell and rattle whatever came to hand. She preferred to stay in the tipi, her mind on her work. Nocona had always come home, and she was not about to do anything that might change that. Not now.
    Urging his pony up the ridge, he turned once more at the crest and watched the last few warriors straggle out of the river and spurt forward, streaming water like silver ribbons in the bright sun. It was time to turn his mind southward.

Chapter 3
    W HITE HERON WAS UP earlier than usual. When the sun came up, normally she would already be preparing the morning meal, or sitting quietly by the newly made fire, doing beadwork. She enjoyed the quiet time, when the camp was silent, and she could follow the trail of her own thought without interruption. But when Nocona was away on a hunt, which might not bring him back for two or three weeks, or a war party, which might not bring him back at all, sleep was hard to come by.
    At such times, as often as not, she would hear something in the dark, an owl or the yip of a coyote, even the snorting of a restless pony across the river, and she would awaken, knowing even as her eyes snapped open, that sleep was gone for the rest of the night. And this time, having sensed Nocona’s restless foreboding, sleep was more elusive than usual.
    Brushing aside the entrance flap, she stepped outside, then held the leather in her fingers asshe lowered it back in place. She stood there for a long moment, her back to the tipi. Painted by the light of a nearly full moon, the whole village seemed to have been made of Mexican silver. In its stillness, it looked to her almost like a collection of toys, as if the pale light somehow diminished everything, shrank it all down to a size more appropriate for children’s playthings.
    Moving toward the river, she watched the horses across the sluggish current, most of them quiet, some standing with bowed heads, others twitching tails and ears to catch the first hint of danger which could come at them at any moment, from any direction. Everything seemed so fragile to her, so precarious, as if the life she lived were balanced on the edge of some yawning abyss, one into which it could all vanish in the twinkling of an eye