Chapter 8

Six months later, Fire Bringer had wandered down into West Texas. This was not from any particular plan, rather, it was simply the result of random movement as he practiced his skills and helped people he saw in trouble. One day, he was using his Far Seeing ability to scan the road ahead for trouble when he saw 4 wagons under attack by Comanches.

Closer examination showed that these wagons were hauling freight and were pulled by teams of oxen. The teamsters had enough time to form up into a defensive box, but they were in serious trouble. By now, the Comanches had killed all of the guards and only three of the teamsters were uninjured. These men had escaped injury because they were cowering under their wagons and waiting for the last charge of the Indians.

There was no way that Fire Bringer could get to the wagons to be of help if he traveled by horse, so he TPed himself to the vicinity of the Indians and called out for them to cease their attack. There were 17 Comanches still able to fight, and they all laughed at him for his foolish temerity. Fire Bringer had no trouble in speaking to the Comanches in their own language, and he asked, "Why are you attacking the wagons? They are doing you no harm."

One of the Comanches, probably the leader, said, "They have invaded our land, so they deserve to die."

"If you continue to attack, I will be forced to take sides against you. Please stop while you can."

"Ha! Flaming Arrow, you are the youngest, so you may count coup by killing this pest."

An Indian urged his horse toward Fire Bringer while brandishing his lance. Fire Bringer was wearing his invisible armor, so he just stood there and let the Comanche charge him. The Indian was surprised that Fire Bringer did not try to dodge, but stood still as if waiting for the thrust of the lance. The lance had a steel point, so Flaming Arrow was sure of making an easy kill. The Comanche aimed the point at Fire Bringer and rode full tilt at him. The lance point made contact with Fire Bringer's chest and stopped moving forward, though it did slip to the side. This caused the shaft to break near the point, and Flaming Arrow was left holding a useless piece of wood.

The momentum of the running horse carried the Indian past Fire Bringer, and the warrior was dumbfounded that Fire Bringer had not moved. Enraged, the Indian threw his broken shaft at Fire Bringer before drawing his war club. Fire Bringer waited until the horse had gained some speed before raising his hand and pointing at the Indian. The gesture was unnecessary, but he wanted to make a point with the rest of the Indians. He used his TK to make a bar from air even with the Indians chest and in his path, so that the Comanche rode into it and was swept off his moving horse. Flaming Arrow broke his neck when he landed on the ground, so he was no longer a part of the confrontation.

The remaining Comanches reacted to this by charging at Fire Bringer with their lances at the ready. Fire Bringer decided that this effort at sweet reason had gone on long enough, so he pulled a 6-inch lump of limestone from his storage pack and TPed it to over the Indians' heads. He heated it enough to make it explode, and it wiped out the Comanches and their horses in one big bang. Neither the shards of stone nor the shock wave had any effect on the armor clad boy as he watched blood and fragments of men and horses fly about the landscape. His Far Seeing told him that he could do nothing to help the men at the wagons, so he TPed back to his previous location.

A couple of weeks later, Fire Bringer was on the other side of the fence as he saw a gang of White men slipping up on a nomadic Kiowa village. The Kiowas were allies of the Comanches, but were not actively fighting the Whites in this area, so the raid was unjustified—it was just devilment brought on by too much alcohol. Fire Bringer was forced to use his exploding limestone rocks to stop this raid, too, resulting in the complete destruction of the White trouble makers. Fire Bringer met with the village chief and advised him to move the camp ahead of schedule to prevent further unwarranted attacks, as Fire Bringer could not guarantee to be in the neighborhood the next time some fools showed up.

Fire Bringer was a little amused, because he had no trouble convincing the Kiowa chief that he had special powers, so he should be believed. A similar try with whites would have produced laughter or scorn. Oh, well, sometimes it pays not to know too much!

The Indians had managed to obtain repeating rifles, either Spencers or Henrys, and were threatening to out gun the Whites. Fire Bringer knew that the future of the West depended on the Whites gaining control, but he wanted to see that the Indians were not abused while that was going on. Therefore, he was in a quandary about the gun situation. Actually, except for the Comanches, who seemed to want to shoot anyone who was not a Comanche and went looking for candidates, Fire Bringer thought that the Indians were justified in fighting for their land and their heritage. Some of the other tribes, such as the Sioux and Navajo, had a bad reputation among the other Indians, but a wide distribution of guns would probably bring them under control.

He knew that he was not going to be able to change generations of habit, but he hoped to help as much as he could. Storm Who Walks advised him to try to keep both sides from killing each other off, and let the situation develop as it would beyond that. He put more thought into the subject than most 14-year-old boys would have, and finally came to the conclusion that Storm Who Walks was right. Fire Bringer was only one person, so he could not be in all places all of the time; he would just have to do what he could.

It had been a while since he had been into Chiricahua Apache territory, so he thought that he would head down there to see how things were developing. The Chiricahuas seemed to take particular delight in attacking the Whites who had homesteaded in the region. The homesteaders were not doing any real harm to the Indians, it was just the principle of the thing: strangers were moving in and the Indians felt under pressure. Given the chance, the two peoples could have gotten along to their mutual advantage, but each side was frightened by the presence of the other. Fire Bringer wanted to do what he could to alleviate the conflict.

Fire Bringer could have jumped by TP to anyplace he wished, by now, but he feared falling out of touch with the people he was trying to help if he didn't travel the way they did. Ada had run afoul of a rattlesnake, so he no longer had that friend with him; he regretted that accident many times, but he had not been able to save her. Fire Bringer now "carried" all of his supplies in his secret hiding place that he didn't understand, but was quite happy to use.

He was riding south toward El Paso when he saw smoke in the distance. It wasn't much, but it was enough to look like something that needed his immediate attention. This was the perfect time for him to use his special powers. Fire Bringer used Far Seeing to examine the fire and its vicinity. The bodies of two white people were lying on the ground and there was one body in the wagon. The people had not been tortured before they died, so the perpetrators were probably not Comanches. Furthermore, the two mules were both shot and abandoned; Indians would have taken the mules for a feast, since they loved mule meat.

As soon as he saw all of this, Fire Bringer TPed himself and his horse to the wagon to see what he might learn from a personal examination. Both of the people on the ground had been shot execution style, something that was very odd. The same was true for the teen aged boy in the wagon; all three had been killed by a single bullet to the head. This simply was not the kind of thing that he expected to find.

Examination of the contents of the wagon showed that there should have been a girl around somewhere, too. The wagon had been ransacked, as if the attackers had been looking for gold or other valuables. Clothes and other items were lying strewn about as they had been cast aside during the search. Fire Bringer was attracted to a scarf of a particularly beautiful blue, something that a girl might wear around her neck. He picked it up, and Storm Who Walks suddenly said, "Hold that scarf in your hand and think about what might have happened to it. Wonder how it came to be here. Concentrate as if you were using your Far Seeing talent on something that happened in the past."