The Beat of the Drum

by Kim Roberts

Standard disclaimer

© 2000

Epilogue

The beat of the drum is the heartbeat of the Earth . . . calling to her children . . . calling her children home.

The lieutenant had turned a deaf ear to the alcohol induced ramblings of his men.  They boasted about killing some Indians in a camp on the Washita River.  He didn’t catch which tribe it was.  Not that he cared.  They were all the same anyway.  He didn’t much care what his men did either and he really couldn’t blame them for looking for a bit of recreation.  There certainly wasn’t much else to do in this godforsaken land.  There wasn’t even a fort within two days’ ride.  Only mile after mile of dry, flat land.  Their only duties were to provide security for a wagon train of California bound settlers that never materialized and a group of buffalo hunters commissioned to supply meat for the U.S. Army. 

 This assignment wasn’t exactly what he had hoped for and he didn’t waste much thought or effort on it.  Sure he commanded with a loose rein, but what did it really matter?  If the men could keep themselves occupied outside the camp and out of his hair then all the better.  He could concentrate his time and efforts petitioning his superiors for a more suitable assignment – perhaps with Chivington or Custer.  He was meant for greater things than this.

 The lieutenant shook his head in amazement and wiped the sweat from his brow with the sleeve of his uniform.  “Those red bastards are crazier than I thought,” he muttered to his second in command. 

 The lesser officer smirked and gave a nod of agreement.  “Ignorant savages.  Got no more sense than God gave a turnip!”

 It did seem a bit fantastic that the war party gathered on the rim of the ravine above the cavalry encampment - a party of fifty to sixty warriors at best - intended to attack a cavalry force of two hundred troopers.  Yet there they were - a single line of warriors in full battle regalia.

 Their own ranks depleted by sickness, starvation and war, the Sindiyuis band of the Kiowa had enlisted the aid of their Comanche allies to avenge the atrocity.  Even with reinforcements they were outnumbered.  But it didn’t matter.  They were Kiowa and regardless of the odds, Kiowa were born to wage war.  Too proud to live on a reservation, too few to hold back the never ending flow of white. 

 It was an assemblage of gaunt and weathered men, large in dignity if not in number.  Sensing the tension in the air, their ponies danced and side-stepped nervously, but the warriors sat their mounts so assuredly they took no notice of the animals’ anxious movements. 

 The principal Kiowa war chief sat astride a striking bay stallion in the middle of the warriors.  Bold flashes of lightning and sun symbols painted in yellow stood out on the horse’s dark red coat.  Eagle feathers and tufts of otter fur hung from the simple halter and blew in the hot arid breeze.  Dressed in only a traditional breechcloth and beaded moccasins, the chief cut an impressive figure.  He wore the red cloth sash of a Koitsenko warrior around his waist and a bear claw pendant around his neck.  Sacred designs, painted in black, yellow and red, covered his face and a full length war bonnet of eagle feathers flowed down his back, spreading across the bay’s rump.  Streaks of gray dotting his coal black hair and lines of age creasing his face gave the chief the appearance of a much older man, but Red Bear was only forty-four years old.  He felt older than that.  Much older.  Every cry of a hungry child, every death song offered for another Kiowa life taken by a white man’s disease had aged him.  Sometimes he barely recognized himself.  Following the vanishing herds of buffalo, he had led his people to this scorched land far from their home of prairie grass and soft winds.  This forgotten place wasn’t their home.  But the people were hungry.  What else could he do?

 Red Bear was flanked on his right by a handsome brave of about thirty-one years.  Although his mixed blood prohibited him from rising to the level of Koitsenko, Running Buck’s close proximity to the principal war chief spoke of his position in the Sindiyuis band.  His respected position hadn’t come easily or quickly, but his determination to succeed was stronger than that of the ones who wished to oppress him.  He carried the blue and yellow painted shield symbolic of the Owl Doctor Society.  Running Buck was a visionary – a prophet.  Swirls of blue paint, partially hidden by a small cloth medicine bundle and a worn leather and beaded bag, covered his chest and flowed onto his face, sweeping across his chiseled features like a vengeful river.  But behind the angry paint lay sad eyes.  Sad, haunted eyes that had seen too much.  He was not entitled to wear a war bonnet, but his waist length brown hair was adorned with many eagle feathers.  The feathers were notched in some way or specifically placed to indicate past deeds of bravery ranging from stealing an opponent’s horse to performing admirably in battle.

 There had been good years after he returned to his people – years of peace and plenty while the white man busied himself with his own destruction.  But when their war was over, the white man’s insatiable hunger for ‘more’ returned and they flowed back across the plains like spilled milk.

 Running Buck had killed.  He had killed the murderous trespassers who had no respect for the earth.  They came from all directions, stringing wire fences to divide and claim land that didn’t belong to them.  They wounded the earth with heavy metal stakes and laid tracks across her face for their monster machines.  They defiled the earth.  The white man had no right to their land.  He had not been invited.

 The white government lied.  The benevolent white fathers in Washington promised their treaties would protect the Kiowa.  “There is room for all,” they said.  But their pretty pieces of paper - lavishly endorsed and presented with pomp and circumstance - lay torn, littered across the plains alongside the rotting carcasses of buffalo that had been slaughtered for sport.  Bleached into nothingness under the prairie sun, the promises disappeared from the white man’s memory.

 And he had loved.  Running Buck had intended to trade horses and leave the Comanche village with a tidy profit.  But he gave away his heart instead to the Comanche beauty who would hold his dreams and share his bed.   Theirs was a sweet love of passion filled nights and shy sunlit glances.  He thought of the tenderness of her touch and the warmth of her body wrapped in his arms.  He wanted to remember her that way and not the cold, death stiffened remains found in a pile of human debris. 

 The drunken white soldiers tried to hide their crime.  The murderers tried to dig a hole to bury the bodies, but the Earth Mother refused to cover their sin and made herself hard and impenetrable.  Instead, she cradled the women and children in her wide arms until their husbands and fathers returned.  Even as Red Bear carried Wind Dancer’s cold body from the pile of corpses he began planning their revenge.  White Horse had guarded his mother and older sisters as best a twelve year old boy could, but Red Bear’s young son died a warrior’s death protecting his family.  His father cried.

 Red Bear plunged his lance deep into the earth and left it on the ridge like a flag.  In unison the painted horses began the descent from the ridge in a prancing walk, then a trot and finally a full gallop as the warriors dropped the reins and raised their flintlock rifles.  War cries pierced the air as their first shots rang out.

 They were still too far away for their shots to do damage, but they had announced their intent and a still baffled Army unit fell into formation at the edge of their camp.  The Kiowa/Comanche war party was about one hundred yards away when the military issue Springfield rifles fired their first volley.  The Indian ponies were moving at full speed making actual aim impossible, but a few lucky shots brought down a Comanche warrior and two Kiowa braves at the left edge of the advancing line.  The second volley landed with greater success.  Standing Tree, the husband of Red Bear’s oldest daughter, flipped backward off his horse and didn’t move again.  The blood of nine, perhaps ten, more warriors flowed from mortal wounds, puddling on the ground - ground too hard to even soak up the spilled blood.

 The paint pony beneath the Comanche chief to the left and about twenty yards ahead of Red Bear somersaulted, tumbling over her rider, a bullet lodged in the mare’s chest. Crippled and bloody, the horse lay thrashing on the ground.  Black Shirt jumped to his feet and ran toward the line of fire, raising his rifle and shouting victoriously as his shot hit its mark and a blue coated soldier toppled backward.  Red Bear offered a silent prayer for safe journey as moments later a bullet to the forehead split his friend’s skull open.  The Comanche chief was dead before his body hit the ground.  Dead in a battle that wasn’t even his.

 “Now this is more like it,” the lieutenant thought excitedly, watching the melee from the back of his bay gelding.  This was what he was meant for – something glorious, something bloody.  The young officer was a devout believer in the adage that “The only good Indian is a dead Indian,” and was anxious to do his part in ridding the west of these savages.  “Reload and fire at will!” he shouted enthusiastically as shots from the advancing war party felled a half dozen more of his men.

 Running Buck leaned over the mane of his appaloosa mare, his heels eagerly working the horse’s side.  Not that the little horse needed to be coaxed - she was a war pony.  The spotted horse knew her job and had quickly become his favored mount when his red mare grew too old to fight.  The mare swerved around a fallen comrade and ran into a bullet.  She jerked, screamed and staggered sideways.  Infuriated by the loss of his favorite horse, Running Buck fired as they fell, dropping another blue coat.  He felt the rifle recoil violently against his upper chest and gasped as he hit the ground.  He rolled away from the dying horse and tried to regain his footing, only then noticing the pain in his chest wasn’t from the rifle’s recoil.

 Red Bear lost sight of his brother.  Running Buck had been beside him just a moment before.  A warrior never looked back in battle – eyes were always to the front - but the chief turned, his eyes frantically searching the bloody field.  Red Bear’s body arched sharply, then pitched forward and slid off the bay stallion’s rump as a bullet lodged deep in his spine.

 “Hold your fire!” the lieutenant barked as the handful of still mounted Comanches gave up the battle and made a hasty retreat.  He dismounted and handed the reins of the gelding to his corporal.  “Sergeant, front and center!”

 The sergeant, who had been kneeling over the quivering body of a mortally wounded young private, rose and moved quickly to his commanding officer with a casualty report.

 “Well, Sergeant?” the lieutenant asked as he adjusted the coat of his uniform and smoothed down the yellow, fringed sash around his waist.

 “Ten dead, eight more wounded, sir.  A couple of ‘em pretty bad.  Doubt they’ll make it.”

 The lieutenant made his way to the front of the rank and surveyed the bloody battlefield with satisfaction.  “Acceptable losses, Sergeant.  Collect the bodies and prepare the men to move out.”  He kicked at the dried earth under his polished boots.  “This damned ground is too hard to even dig a grave.”

 “What about them, sir?” the sergeant asked, motioning to the field of dead and wounded Indians with a nod of his head.

 “Leave ‘em,” the lieutenant replied.  He took the reins of the bay gelding from the corporal and placed his boot in the stirrup.  “The buzzards will take care of them quick enough.”

The line of cavalrymen disappeared into the dancing heat waves and a cemetery silence fell over the battlefield.  Blood pulsing from the hole in his chest, Running Buck gathered his strength and pushed himself off the ground only to collapse back into the dust.  He gasped for air, the pain stealing his breath.  “No . . . not yet,” he ordered himself.  He couldn’t die yet.

 The strains of a Koitsenko warrior’s death song floated over the field and Running Buck pulled himself through the dirt in the direction of his brother’s voice.

 Even if I survive, I will not live forever.

Only the Earth remains forever.

Even if I survive, I will not live forever.

Only the Sun remains forever.**

“Come to me, little brother,” Red Bear answered.

Running Buck pulled himself the last few feet to the chief’s body leaving a bloody trail behind him.  Red Bear’s war bonnet lay a few feet away - the blood-spattered tails of the elaborate headdress spread out across the ground like the wings of a mighty bird fallen from the sky.  Running Buck sighed heavily in relief and rested his head on Red Bear’s chest, wrapping his arms around his brother’s unmoving body.

“It is strange, Running Buck,” Red Bear said in an oddly detached voice.  “I know I am dying, yet I feel no pain.”  He wanted to touch his brother, to hold Running Buck also, but his arms wouldn’t do as he asked.  “Do you have regrets, brother?”

Running Buck drew a ragged breath.  “We killed many soldiers.  The murder of our families has been avenged.”

Red Bear smiled.  “You know that is not what I mean.”

“No, Red Bear,” his brother answered.  Running Buck coughed, his body tensing in pain.  “My time in the white world was only a fork in the path that led me home.  I have no regrets.”

The chief closed his eyes.  “I will meet you on the hanging road between the stars, Running Buck.  We will travel to the spirit land together.”

Running Buck found a bit of comfort listening to the beat of his brother’s heart.  It would be alright now . . . it was alright now.   He lay quietly, holding Red Bear’s body, listening, holding his brother tighter when the next heart beat didn’t come.  He felt a tear slip from his eye and puddle against the bridge of his nose before sliding down his face.  His family was gone.  Who would cry for him?

He didn’t wish for death but he didn’t fear it either.  All life passes away.  He drew a stabbing breath and choked back a cry of pain.  His lungs grew heavy and he coughed again, tasting blood, thick and unnatural in his mouth.  Running Buck closed his eyes, but rather than darkness he saw the shining light in his wife’s eyes as she held their newborn son to her breast.   He shivered.  If he tried very hard, maybe he could replace the chill with the warmth of his son’s small hand in his.  He would be with his family soon.

It would be good to see the old prophet again - the one who helped him find his way home.  Two Rains.  Yes, it would be good to see Two Rains.  And there were others.  Another family in a different time – a different life.  He hurried his weary mind to remember their faces, remember their names in a long forgotten language.  The special one, Ike, had been gone a long time now and somehow he knew the old man no longer walked this earth.  He didn’t know how he knew, he just did.  Perhaps he would see them again.  He hoped so.  Perhaps the dead all gather together in a place that knows no color . . . a place that knows no hate.  Perhaps some day, the land of the living might be such a place.

**A Koitsenko Warrior’s Death Song was taken from “The Kiowa” written by John R. Wunder

The End