Chapter 10

I got wind of the idea of a new bride for me through White Buck who happened to hear the women talking about the possibility. Well, I was quite happy with the number of brides that I already had, so I was not all that receptive to the idea. Nevertheless, I knew that I would eventually lose the argument with four women to nag me about it, so I finally bowed to the inevitable.

I did make it positively known that I would not accept any woman younger than 15, and that did cut down on the number of prospects. However, the woman that had been picked out for me was 16, so I could not argue about her age. Just to make it look like I did have a choice, two other women were presented as prospects: a widow with two children and a girl who had just turned 15.

The widow was 22, and that was too old to fit my idea of an ideal mate, so she was rejected without even a trial run. The 15-year-old girl was brought in for a trial fuck, and she was not bad looking, so I was not against giving her a try, though I already knew about the other prospect and the fact that she was the one favored by my current wives.

The younger prospect was brought in and we went through the usual routine of having her fix me supper, which, by the way, I thought was poorly cooked. After that, we stripped for the trial fuck, and that was a disaster. No matter what I did, I kept banging into her cervix and caused her enough pain that she cried through the entire ordeal. Her complaint was that I was the only one of all of her fuck partners who banged against her cervix and caused her so much pain. Well, I did know that I was longer in that department than the average Injun, so I thanked the girl for giving me a trial and bid her goodbye.

The last candidate, Fawn, was a great fuck partner, and she was a decent cook, so I did not have any trouble accepting her as my new wife. The standard bride price was two wolf pelts, and I already had those on hand, so I was a new husband the next day.

Apparently, the whole village had been expecting me to take a third wife for some time, and I swear that I felt a slight breeze from the sighs of relief when it finally happened. It turned out that Fawn and I got along very well, and she even did not argue with me when I insisted that she learn to use a gun. I had managed to acquire another Colt Navy revolver, and that was what she learned to use.

Fawn fit into our family very well, and she was very happy to join us. Of course, being my wife shot up her status to a couple of notches above what she could have ever expected to achieve in the normal course of events, and that just added to Fawn’s happiness. Frankly, I could not see what status had to do with anything, but all of the women seemed to set great store by it. I was not the kind of fool who was going to argue with them about that.

Strangely enough, I knocked up Fawn in the first few weeks of our marriage, and she claimed that it had to be the first time I fucked her. Again, I was not going to argue that point with anybody, and if that were what Fawn wanted to believe, I was certainly going along with her on it. Anyway, nine months later, she gave birth to a boy who fit all of the characteristics of a fine Mescalero warrior. What more could I ask of her?

Bright Sun received all of the love that he could stand, and probably more. Here we went again with the women nagging about how White Buck and I were spoiling him. I figured that was a reasonable complaint considering the fact that the women had to live with him all of the time, while White Buck and I could escape to a hunting trip when his demands became too much for us. After all, that was one of the advantages of being a man.

Speaking of hunting, I now went with White Buck on every one of his hunting trips. He was pushing 40 years old, and few active Injun hunters and warriors lived that long. He was feeling arthritic pains whenever the humidity got very high, and he could just not move as fast as he had in his earlier days.

Nevertheless, he was always the lead hunter when we went out together. I made sure of that so that I would not accidentally leave him behind when we were walking. He probably realized what I was doing, but nothing was ever said about it. I did make sure that we paused for rest breaks more often than we had in the past, but, again, nothing was ever said on the subject.

Nowadays, we always took a horse with us to pull a travois. Neither one of us felt that we had anything to prove by carrying back our prey on our backs. We wound up setting a precedent so that other hunters followed our example. That sure made it easier to bring back the whole animal after a successful hunt.

The war between the Union and the Confederacy presented more problems for us than we had expected. For one thing, there was less of a market for our robes and blankets in Bradyville. I had not realized how much of our stuff I sold at the general store was being sent back East, especially to the northeast where the winters got damned cold. That market no longer existed, so the women were reduced to making only enough cloth to fill our needs.

Another problem, felt most by the women, was that there were fewer canned goods, such as the highly favored green beans, available in the stores. Not only that, the prices had gone up to the point that we simply did not have the silver to pay for the cans. Thus, there was a return to the foraging that the women once had to do back before the days of convenient canned food. On top of everything else, the Comanches were much more active, and it was necessary to send out guards with the women when they made their foraging trips, usually several times a week.

As far as the men were concerned, it was necessary to protect ourselves from the raids by the Comanches. I was back to making at least one trip a week into Comancheria to make sure that the Comanches were not gearing up for another major attack on us. It was rare indeed when I did not have at least one skirmish with Comanches on these scouting missions.

I still made the scouting trips as solo excursions whenever possible, there was just too much demand on our manpower to “waste” an extra man on these trips. I took my Henry rifle, my shotgun, and my four Starr DA pistols, but I also took my war club and my Bowie knife as weapons. I never knew what kind of fight I could get into nor how many Comanches I would face at one time.

At this point, the Comanches had only bows and arrows as missile weapons, so my guns were entirely adequate for my personal protection. Of course, the Comanches preferred to fight from their horses, and that brought into play their lances and war clubs. The horse could make a fearsome weapon itself under the right circumstances. At least they were still not using saddles and stirrups, so they were not as formidable as they could have been.

Much to my surprise, Fawn started to agitate to go with me on a trip into Comancheria. I discussed the possibility with White Buck, and all he would say was, “Fawn is your wife, so it is your decision.”

The two matriarchs, the grandmothers, were horrified at the idea of a woman becoming a warrior. It was bad enough that my wives all carried guns, a woman acting as a warrior was just unheard of. The question actually wound up before the Women’s Council of Elders, and they absolutely forbid such an excursion.

Uh-oh, they should have kept quiet on the subject. I had reached my limit on taking orders from that bunch of senile old women and their passion for doing everything the old traditional way. Dammit, Fawn was my wife, so she and I were going to do things our way, and to Hell with tradition!

I put it to Fawn this way: she could go with me provided she learned to use a shotgun, a rifle, and a 0.44 caliber pistol. Furthermore, she had to learn to ride a horse while using a saddle like mine. She also had to wear trousers as I did whenever riding in the saddle to protect her legs from abrasion from the leather of the saddle. Whether or not she wore a shirt and a hat was up to her. Oh, she also had to wear boots with hard soles while in the saddle.

Oops, Fawn had not realized that she was going to have to do all of that. She also realized that she could not take Bright Sun with us into Comancheria; therefore, she could not leave until Bright Sun was weaned so that she could leave him with the other women to take care of him while she was gone with me.

Okay, Fawn agreed to all of my conditions, so I was stuck with my promise. Fawn was already qualified with the Colt Navy revolver, so it was not too much of a big deal to push her up to a Colt Army revolver in 0.44 caliber. She was already used to using two hands to steady her pistol during shooting, so she could do the same thing with the larger caliber pistol. I bought a Colt Army revolver, the last one he had in stock, from the Bradyville gunsmith, and he converted it to use the Henry metallic cartridges. I also bought two converted spare cylinders for Fawn’s pistol so that she could reload without having to fool with that damned loading gate.

I was amazed at how accurate Fawn became with the Colt Army revolver at up to 100 feet, so I had to admit that she had passed that requirement. While we were about it, I had her become familiar with shooting my Starr DA revolver.

She also learned to use the Henry rifle and was adequate in accuracy up to 150 yards, which was the usual limit for most people with those crude Henry sights. Naturally, the shotgun gave her the most trouble. I compromised on a 16-gauge shotgun because she just could not handle the recoil of the 12-gauge shotgun. She could do well with the shotgun up to about 60 yards, which was about the limit of what anybody could do with a shotgun of that size.

I managed to get a saddle and other stuff for Fawn to use. She compromised with me on the question of boots. She agreed to wear a special moccasin with a harder than normal sole and a raised heel about equivalent to what I wore. The women made a very loose version of trousers for her to wear that were adequate to protect her legs from leather abrasion.

Once we had the basics worked out, Fawn modeled her outfit for the family. White Buck pointed out that Fawn was going to have to wear a shirt to hide her tits and to get rid of her skirt. Otherwise, any Comanche who spotted us was going to ride away as fast as his horse could carry him. He would be sure that Fawn was a demon just trying to trick him into showing himself. Oh, there would be a few who would ride away in disgust because there was no glory in fighting against a woman.

There was one other problem with Fawn’s tits. They bounced around painfully whenever the horse moved at any advanced speed, and we were bound to have that happen to us. He solution to that problem was a band of cloth around her body that pulled her tits up tightly against her chest so that they could not bounce. That was uncomfortable, but it was not as bad as bouncing tits.