Chapter 10

We did manage to kill an antelope. Actually, Bear did the killing. I was so out of practice with my atlatl and darts that I was lucky to get close to the animal with my cast. Nevertheless, it was still great fun to get outside and push my body to do the best it could. The antelope was large enough that we were able to divide it into three parts and give a portion to Fox. The idea was to let him know that he was still our friend and we were thinking of him, even though he was not actually with us on the hunt. Bear got the hide because it had really been his kill.

Eventually Fox recovered and returned to hunting with us. Of course, I had returned to full strength by this time, too, so we spent a very pleasant summer hunting for our families and enjoying just being alive.

Toward the end of summer, Sunny had her daughter whom she named Mother of the People in honor of my earlier comment on why we needed women as much as we needed men. Of course, I could not pronounce her name, so I called our daughter Honey. That produced smiles all around when I explained what I meant by that name.

Amber and Silver were kind of disappointed because they were not yet pregnant, but I told them at every opportunity that I still loved them, and they should just be patient. I said that I was working as hard as I could on making them pregnant. They had to admit that I was doing that, so they did relax a little. Them getting pregnant was my responsibility, so they quit obviously worrying about it.

I was in hog heaven over the winter with two babies to love and spoil. All of my wives were a little surprised that I did spend as much time with Honey as I did with Son. That was not according to tradition, but it was one tradition that they did not mind me breaking.

My main occupation during the winter, after playing with the two kids, was hunting. After all, I now had five mouths to feed and two more indirectly, the babies who were both still nursing, so I was out every day that the weather would permit looking for fresh meat. We had plenty of jerky and pemmican, but that got tiresome pretty fast, so we wanted fresh meat whenever possible.

Fox, Bear, and I normally made up our hunting party, and it was just as well, because Fox was having some pain in his leg in the cold weather. Because of his children, Fox had as many mouths to feed as I did, and he needed help in procuring that much meat. Of course, he never mentioned it and neither did we, but Fox's family would have had some lean times if it were not for what Bear and I were able to contribute. He was our friend, and we were glad to help, but it would have been a terrible blow to Fox's ego if we had said anything.

Fortunately, there were no attacks during the winter. All of the other men were just as busy hunting for their families, so nobody had any time to waste on enemies. When spring came, the story would be entirely different!

Finally, the weather began to warm up, and some of our men started to talk about how they were bored. Their solution to this problem was to fight somebody, and the Comanches were an obvious target. I was all for letting peace last as long as it would, but I was a voice shouting against the tide. However, as it turned out, the Comanches hit us first. Okay, now I was ready to fight!

A hunting party from our village was attacked by approximately 20 Comanches and wiped out. The clamor for a reprisal was overwhelming. Literally everybody in the village was in favor of "teaching those damned Comanches a lesson." Our normal war chief was down with an illness he caught during the winter, and few people expected him to survive. The result was that I was elected to be the war chief for our punitive raid since my skill and luck were unblemished. Uh-oh, I knew that meant that I was in trouble. However, Dove pushed the hardest, and my other wives went along, so I had to accept the job of leading the raid.

The first thing I did was to send out scouts to try to find the likely offenders. One of the hunters who was killed had a streak of white hair running down the center of his scalp, so he was naturally teased with the name of "Skunk." A scout spotted Skunk's scalp on a coup stick carried by one of the Comanche warriors in a moderate sized village. That was our target, and we planned to wipe out the village if at all possible. To make our point, even the women and children were to be killed! That was not my idea, but I had no way of stopping it.

Such a raid would require every able bodied warrior, and the women and children were going to be left unguarded while we were on the raid. Oh, a few old men would be around to make a token defense, but they would not be able to stop a determined foe. I was highly concerned over that, but I was told that I worried too much!

Anyway, many of my warriors were now armed with atlatls as well as bows, so we were going to "play the nasty trick on the Comanches" by killing their horses if the opportunity arose. We all donned our war paint, and my wives had me decked out in that elaborate paint they had invented for me to wear against the Chiricahuas. By now, I was well enough indoctrinated into the Mescalero culture that I rather liked the show the paint made. My skin was tanned so thoroughly by this time that I looked like a Mescalero.

By the way, I now had a war name: Throwing Stick.

Counting myself, there were 27 men in my war party. As war chief, I was not expected to fight. Instead, I was to supervise and to suggest ways for my men to look their best as they attacked the enemy. Hell, I was not going to go along with that! I planned to do just as much fighting as the next man, and anybody who did not like that could go fuck himself!

The Comanche village was surrounded by tall grass, but there were few trees in the neighborhood. I decided on a bold stroke for our attack. The normal procedure would have been for us to charge the village on horseback making as much noise as possible and demonstrating our bravery by riding through without firing an arrow. Well, this might have impressed some people, but it was a sure way to get some of my men killed!

I had what I figured was a much better idea. We dismounted and hid our horses in a gully. Each man took both his bow and his atlatl to use in the coming battle. He had all of his ammunition with him as I sent the men out to form a circle around the village. The village was large enough that we were not likely to hit a man on the other side of the circle with a wayward arrow or atlatl dart.

The plan was to move through the grass stealthily enough so as not to attract attention from the village. Once the village was surrounded, we would fire a volley into the village from all sides. This should catch the Comanches by surprise and kill a large number of them with that first shot. Thereafter, each man would shoot an arrow or launch a dart as he saw a likely target. I warned the men not to waste ammunition and not to do anything to look brave. We all knew how brave they were just by trying to follow my unusual tactics.

Well, I did have some skeptical warriors as to fighting this way, but my reputation was such that I did carry the day. I was going to fire a flaming atlatl dart to signal the start of the attack, so I prepared for that action while the other men moved to their assigned firing positions. I hoped that this plan would work, or I would be quickly demoted or even thrown out of the village. Certainly, it would take me a hell of a long time to return to my present status. My wives would be heartbroken over that!

I had my flaming dart prepared, and every man should be in position by now, so I lit the flammable wrapping and launched the dart at a large tent that I could see near the middle of the village. I hoped that was the home of the leader of the village: certainly, it was the home of somebody important.