Chapter 2

The remaining days of summer and into fall were, as usual, filled with work to make sure we could get through the winter. I had always preserved plenty of food to get me through but I added to that this year since it looked like there would be two of us to feed instead of one.

As we gradually became better able to communicate with each other through a mixture of English words, Comanche phrases, and lots of sign language, I talked to her about her desire to go back to her tribe. I had no idea how we would go about finding them but she might.

However she had something else in mind. Every time I asked her about it, she acted like she did not understand. It was only after several attempts that I realized this was Moxie's way of saying that she had no intention of going back to her tribe. I had heard sometime back that some tribes believed that, if someone saved the life of a person, that person subsequently belonged to the one who saved him or her. I began to wonder if that was her thinking.

Although she was not used to farming, she was a quick study and when I showed her how to do something, she picked up on it the first time, usually. She did have a bit of a hard time trying to milk my two wet cows. They were still half-wild and required some manhandling to get them to cooperate. I think a couple of times she would have liked to pull out the long knife she carried in a belt sheath and cut their throats when they were being stubborn with her.

On the other hand, she watched me shucking corn and threshing wheat and immediately became proficient, if not an expert. When it came to drying and jerking venison for storing, she was much better at it than me. Of course that would have been something she did from her earliest days, so it was more natural to her than to me.

When it became obvious that I needed a new buckskin suit, I started work on it but Moxie took it away from me with one of her few grins and set to work. Three days later, I had a beautiful new set of buckskins that looked too good to work in — but I did anyway.

One of the natural benefits of being near the South Wichita River was the presence of two particularly intriguing trees: the first was a huge spreading walnut tree while the second, just a bit smaller, was a native pecan. When the nuts began to ripen in late September and early October, we gathered every one we could keep from the squirrel population and hoarded for treats in the coming months. When we occasionally splurged on a cake or bit of homemade candy, adding the nuts was almost as good as finding gold nuggets — maybe better.

After the first time that Moxie had slept with me, I wasn't sure what to expect from her. If I thought she was going to sleep with me every night, it didn't happen! She made a thin pallet beside my bed every night and slept on the floor. I got the message that my mattress gave her a backache.

However if I crooked my finger at her, she came willingly to bed and we screwed passionately. She was not a passive lover; rather she was active with her hands, with her legs, with her pussy, and with her mouth. I couldn't have asked for a better lover. And she was very expressive when she climaxed too.

Afterward she would let me snuggle with her and hold her for a while. She returned my kisses just as passionately as I gave them. But then she'd slide back down to her pallet and spend the rest of the night.

In early September the climate was just barely beginning to mitigate, becoming slightly cooler in the evenings. It was enough that, if you knew the high plains well, made you know that winter was on its way again. From there on until the snow flies, I'd have to be extra alert for roving bands of warriors, because it was the time of year when they began to migrate from the northern reaches of their territory to the more moderate winter area south of us.

That meant that at any time, a group of braves with their families could be coming through the area. While they now knew enough to be wary of me, they didn't avoid me completely. And if the could steal one of my horses or cows, that was just part of life, what they considered to be fair game. I didn't mind providing a meal for a group passing through but I didn't want to lose an entire animal.

In late September, I was well out away from the house pulling ears of late corn off the head high stalks and tossing them into the wagon for transporting back to the house when I spotted a little cloud of dust on the horizon to the north. At first I thought it might be just a little dust devil, miniature tornadoes that often came through stirring up the dirt but not doing any damage.

But as I watched, I realized it was not just dust — even a dust devil would be more compact and organized than this. It was a fairly broad cloud that just floated along in the direction of the house.

Unhitching one of the horses from the wagon, I climbed on his bare back and set off home. Long before I pulled up in front of the house, I could see that it was a band of Indians — Comanche from the markings on their headbands. There must have been 20, maybe two dozen, but it wasn't a war party. There were women and children and old people riding on travois pulled by horses.

I slowed my pace so as not to spook the visitors and walked the horse into the yard. Moxie was fronted by a trio of braves who were talking rapid fire in their own language, and getting back the same kind of responses from her. I had no clue what they were talking about but pulled my horse to a halt and sat watching the conversation.

While the four of them palavered, the squaws had set about taking fresh water to the older people who were too infirm to fend for themselves. The children had naturally begun to find things to play with, obviously glad to have the opportunity to get out of the dust and off their travel mode, whether they had been on horseback or on a travois.

I dismounted and walked closer to Moxie. She beckoned me closer and began to relay to me the Indians' request. They wanted to cut one of my cows from the herd and kill it for food. She had been adamant that they could not do that. I told her that we should give them a modest supply of our jerked meat to tide them over. She had also baked several loaves of bread that morning and suggested we give them three of the loaves. I agreed.

By the time Moxie went into the house to bring the food back, the squaws had a small fire going over which they were heating water for a kind of tea. The braves, never cracking a smile or even changing their solemn expressions, sat cross-legged around the fire and invited me to join them. Although I couldn't understand a word they said, they spoke at length with lots of hand motions; I think they were describing their migration to the southern hunting grounds.

When Moxie came back with the food in a hand-woven basket, the braves were suspicious of the bread although once she pulled it apart and chewed a bit of it, they joined her and made exclamations that they liked its taste. It was soon passed around to the elders, women and children, along with pieces of jerky and it was like some strange kind of picnic.

It seemed a little funny to me that Moxie settled on a spot a few feet behind me when things were quieted down and everyone was eating. Then I noticed that the squaws with the braves had mostly picked spots behind then and squatted down to eat, some with their children nearby.

I didn't think too much about it until the braves had leaned back, rubbed their full stomachs and burped. They began talking again among themselves but with frequent gestures toward Moxie. A couple of times she shot back a string of rapid-fire words at them and then was silent again. Abruptly the braves rose, spoke to the squaws and everyone began making preparations to leave. Less than ten minutes later, the whole group moved out as a unit in a sort of organized chaos.

I watched the group leave until they were well south of our place — funny how it had gone from my place to our place! They didn't try to take any of the animals but took the straightest, smoothest path to the south. When they were gone, I mounted up and returned to my work in the corn patch.

When I came in at sundown to find dinner on the table as usual, I washed up and sat down to eat. Moxie rather timidly sat across the table from me. I asked her what the braves had been talking about at the end of their visit. She finally made me understand that they were asking her to join them. However she told them that she was my woman!

I had a rather eclectic group of animals around the place. When I moved in, I had brought a team of two horses to pull my wagon and I sometimes used one or the other to ride around the area when I was checking on the cattle or looking for any new strays to add to my herd. I had a stubborn old mule that I used mostly for plowing and I had to keep a watch on him; the Indians liked nothing better than eating mule meat so he often was the first warning that there was a traveling party of redskins about. They didn't put up a concerted effort to kill him after our first major encounter when they carried their dead back but if they had caught him unawares, I have no doubt he would have been roasting over a spit that evening.

On a trip out to the Davis Mountains a few years earlier, I had trapped a couple of goats and took them back home with me. They were thriving in my neighborhood and I was thinking about the possibility of harvesting some mohair for weaving in the future and perhaps butchering one occasionally for the variety of cabrito, a very tasty treat when slow-cooked over an open fire. It made my mouth water just thinking about it but that was still somewhere down the road, after the herd had begun to grow a little better.