Comanche Dawn by Mike Blakely Read Free Book Online

the south and returning with horses. She had been told that men with iron shirts, pale skin, and faces covered with hair would trade horses for slaves.
    Now Black Horn waited for this good woman to bring water, for he was thirsty. He lay alone on a buffalo robe that felt sticky with his own blood, until Shadow came near him. He raised his chin to greet the boy, too weak to lift an arm.
    â€œ Ahpoo, ” the boy said. “They took your horse.”
    â€œYour father will follow them to get it back.”
    Shadow smiled. “I saw many things today that I will remember when I am a warrior like you. I saw you ride into battle.”
    Black Horn held back his smile. What had possessed him to fight astride his horse? The boy was right, strong medicine had moved him to greatness. “You were brave today, nephew. You did not run and scream like a child. But you must not seek our enemies until you have found your medicine in your vision.”
    â€œI know, Ahpoo. ”
    The wailing from the top of the red bluffs became frenzied. Black Horn looked up to see the warriors throwing the rawhide lines down into the crevice, on top of the body of Wounded Bear. Broken Bones began to shriek like her coyote ancestors. She held a knife with which she cut her hair off close to her scalp. She began to slash her old arms, and her shrieking made Black Horn’s ears hurt, even from this far away on the canyon floor.
    She slashed through the front of her old deerskin dress, drawing thin blood from her sagging breasts. She was on her knees, facing the crevice where Wounded Bear had been lowered. Her back was to the warriors who had lowered the old man, and she was trilling a song of death that had come from her old nation, the Wolf People, with whom she had lived before Wounded Bear captured her and made her good. Her song ended, her head bowed, and she tossed the knife aside for someone else to use. Her arms dangled motionless at her side.
    From the canyon floor, Black Horn watched as two warriors drew their bows. They looked odd in the evening light, colored by strange powers. Their arrows struck so close together that their points must have met in the old woman’s heart. She tumbled silently into the crevice with Wounded Bear, and the shadow of the faraway mountains chilled the canyon rim.
    Shadow looked at his uncle.
    â€œShe goes with him,” the dying warrior said.
    Shadow nodded. Never again would he speak his grandparents’ names: Wounded Bear. Broken Bones. Even the thought of them upon his tongue filled him with a dread of unknown ghost things. There had once been a band of True Humans called the Snake Lodge People. They had changed this name to Crawling-on-the-Ground-Lodge People after one of their warriors, called Snake Man, had died. Shadow had been made to understand things like this, for to speak the names of the dead was to call upon terrible magic from other strange worlds.
    â€œThey were a burden to your father,” Black Horn added. He saw Looks Away coming with a buffalo bladder used to hold water. She also had a piece of fur and a feather. “Go now, Shadow. Go wait for your father to return. He will hear the songs of mourning from the camp, and he will want to know right away that you and your mother are well.” Black Horn managed to smile at his nephew before the boy turned away from him for the last time.
    Looks Away knelt beside Black Horn and carefully poured the water into his mouth. He could not drink much.
    â€œI brought this eagle feather to protect you from evil,” Looks Away said, weaving the feather into the thin braided scalp lock falling from the top of his head. “And the fur of a weasel, also.”
    Black Horn sighed with relief, confident now that his step into the Shadow Land would take away the pain of the Fire Stick. He would hunt and eat in the Shadow Land. Hunt and eat.
    â€œLooks Away, hear me. Is my brother near?”
    â€œShaggy Hump is coming. A