Bill Dugan_War Chiefs 04 Read Online Free PDF Page A

started toward her tipi again, surrounded by figures darting in every direction. But all she cared about at that moment was her family.
    Some of the tipis were already knocked ontheir sides, the heavy buffalo skins pulling the poles to the ground and flattening them like cast-off toys. Her own lodge still stood, and as she raced toward it, she saw three Osage warriors slicing at its side, and she screamed. One turned and smiled as he charged toward her with a lance braced on his hip. She saw the point gleaming in the moonlight, then felt the dull blow as it glanced off her hip. The warrior kicked at her and she went down. He stood over her, the lance raised high, one foot pinning her to the ground. For a split second, she saw the lance poised high overhead, then looked away, past him, toward her tipi, as its side was torn away. She heard the whimper of a child, not sure whether it was her own.
    The lance stabbed through and into the ground beneath her, and she closed her hands around it gingerly, almost tenderly. The warrior grunted as he placed a foot on her stomach next to the lance and started to tug it free. The last thing she saw was his gritted teeth, shiny in the moonlight, as he started to pull.

Chapter 4
    T HE RAID HAD gone well. Peta Nocona rode at the head of the returning raiding party, his face impassive. The Comanche had taken nearly three hundred Mexican horses, and they hadn’t had to go that far over the border to get them. In the past, they had gone as far south as Durango, through rough country where food was scarce and water scarcer still. It had tested their determination and their endurance, and the pickings had been slim. Even the few horses they had managed to capture then had found the return trip too strenuous and almost half of them had been lost. But that had been a hard summer, when the water holes had shrunk, leaving thick layers of salt crystal in rings to mark the slow dwindling. More often than not, what water had been left was unfit to drink.
    But that was the past. Now, three hundred head of prime Mexican stock to the good, there was every reason for Nocona to smile, but itseemed too taxing for him. His face sat like a stone carving on his shoulders, and even Black Snake was reluctant to ask him what was wrong. But that was what friends were for, and the warrior eased his pony close to Nocona’s mount. He thought it best to start with idle chatter.
    “We have done well for ourselves, old friend,” he said.
    Nocona grunted. “So it seems.”
    “You get first pick. Is there one that catches your eye?”
    Nocona shook his head. “No. I think White Heron is right. I think I have enough horses. I don’t need any more.”
    “But it is your right to choose before anyone else. It is the way it has always been. You know that better than anyone. It was you who taught me everything I know about horses. How to geld them, how to choose a pony that would run all day and all night without breaking down, how to choose a good mare for breeding. You love horses as much for what they are as for the honor their ownership brings you. How can you say you don’t want any more?”
    Nocona shook his head. “You’re right. In the old days I knew a good deal about horses. I thought I knew everything.”
    “There are some who say you do.”
    “They are wrong. Besides, as you said yourself, that was the old days. That was the old way.
    I think maybe the old way will not be our way for too much longer.”
    “Why? Why should anything change? Why should not things go on as they always have? We can defeat anyone who comes against us. We go where we please, to follow the buffalo or to trade horses. We have everything we need. The
comancheros
come to us with anything we can’t make for ourselves. It is a good way. I don’t see why we should change.”
    “We should change because we will be forced to change. I think maybe it would be best if we decided for ourselves when and how.”
    “Maybe you are tired. I