CHAPTER 74
Walpi sighs and rests his fury chin on his fluffy paws. "I understand the seasons. Winter is bitter and sends frost to put out all the flames. I understand Kida's heart. Are your tears for someone other than your mother? Your father? Your tribe? Kiowa? The children you will not have? Hopi are poor warriors, but we see much and we are rich in love."
Walpi sits up and stares deep into her red eyes.
"The way Kiowa feels for Anoki…" He gulps away his fear and forces out, "Is the way I have come to feel for you."
He bristles, shuts his eyes, flattens his ears, and waits for the she-wolf to attack him.
Instead, Kida's tail wags softly between gentle whispers.
When she doesn't hurt him, he feels a surge of courage and goes on. "The desire of my heart is as the dry earth desires the Sun God's tears. I have wanted to tell you for some time, Kida, but I was too scared to say the words. My heart is not warrior, but I become warrior-hearted when I see sweet…no, brave Kida in danger or pain."
"That is all I ever wanted. To be loved by a great warrior."
"That is not me."
"You have just shown more courage than any man I have ever known. They all know to fear me and use their sweet words on other ladies."
"There are no other ladies."
"And that is why you are brave."
Kida scoots over to Walpi and presses herself against him. They turn their faces to each other and stare into each other's eyes. Their tails intertwine.
"I am scared."
"I am more scared."
Before dawn the pack assembles. Anoki stays behind in the cave while the pack forms in a single line. They masterfully use the terrain to their advantage by staying behind the ridgeline and scurrying along in thick patches of sagebrush. When they patrol down to the lower lands, they move along the streams until they enter the Shadow Valley.
The same way they used to hunt the buffalo, Kiowa and the pack quickly sift the yearlings away from the herd and slaughter them with such ease that every wolf has his own kill before the sun fully rises.
Horrified mothers stampede, abandoning their lifeless calves, and race toward their protector, Ol' Bruce.
A three-thousand-pound longhorn bull causes the ground to thump as he stomps his hoof to uproot grass.
"Ol' Bruce, Ona," Lucy, a new milk cow frantically cries out, "wolves slaughtered my babies!"
"I thought this was the land of milk and honey. We were told when we made the long trip from Texas that there were no wolves, bears, or cougars. Are you certain you saw wolves?" Ona wails.
"We was told a lie, Ona. Sure there's green grass and cool streams, but there's also ferocious wolves hiding in hills," Betty informs him in frantic, heaving breaths.
Bruce spits out a mouthful of grass. The veins in his eyes flush and crackle like red lightning. "Where did you see 'em?"
"Down by the stream. Oh, please hurry, before they kill all of us."
Ol' Bruce courageously trots across the grasslands. His horns cast a long shadow. Soon he sees for himself that Betty is telling no fable. Several spotted bloodstains stand out in stark contrast to the green grass. Entrails are already neatly piled next to severed heads. The calves have all been butchered, broken up into portions, and dragged off.
"We gotta get as far away from here as possible, Ona. Let's huddle up and make for the ranch. Master Geoffrey will put hot lead through these wolves."
"Circle up, y'all. We're gonna go let Rancher Geoffrey know what's happened here"
Back at the cave, the wolves return with mouths full of dripping red meat.
"That was too easy. They must be someone's pets," Paw says, dropping a severed hindquarter.
"Pale-face must raise them, as they do the little fluffy buffalo," Walpi suggests.
"You mean they raise them for food?" Anoki asks.
Walpi nods.
Anoki leans down and sniffs the meat. She turns away at the potent acrylic odor.
"I wouldn't trade all the little white fluffy buffalo in the world for the tame buffalo," she says, reluctantly taking a bite.
"Paw, if the buffalo have all been led to a cave by the Great White Buffalo, then certainly we can survive off the tame buffalo until they return," Kiowa confidently concludes with an air of logic that resonates with his pack.
"Nothing is as it once was, Nephew. These whites and Mexicans are setting up permanent homes. They chop trees and make homes that cannot be easily moved like our tepees. They kill buffalo till the Great White Buffalo is forced to lead her herd away. I do not know if they will ever return."
"No one could know that." Makes Trouble sighs.
"We have seen their iron horse blow steam along firm tracks that do not fade in snow or rain. I am greatly concerned for our tribe."
"Why?" Kiowa boldly questions.
"If we are governed by barbed fences and forced to feed off the invader's tame beasts, what are our people to do? They do not have four legs to outrun thunder sticks." Paw thinks on these changes.
"Our people will do what they have always done. Raid. Roam. Steal horses where they can find them," Kida says, offering her best thoughts.
"Yes, those are our laws. But what laws will govern us now? What will we lose?" Paw's deep questions make his heart sink. "You have sisters and nieces and nephews. Do you not think of them?"
"Of course I do. When the harvest moon comes again, we will seek Onendah's counsel. Until then, we should take only what we need and no more."
"I think we should start killing hunters!" Makes Trouble snickers.
"I see that your owl thoughts have fled from you," Kiowa rebuts.
"What do you mean?" Makes Trouble asks as though he's offended.
"Who killed first? The Cheyenne or the Kiowa?"
"The Cheyenne, of course!" Kida belts out.
"So our fathers say. Now that we are parents, can you not see that you would say anything to protect your loved ones. Right now wolves kill to eat. If we kill a man of any color, man is certain to strike back."
"And there are more of them than us," Makes Trouble consents.
"An ocean more," Kiowa answers.
Kiowa and Anoki nod in agreement.
The wolves stick to their new code, but news of their kills meet the press on the regular. Folks organize town meetings. Wiremen tap headlines. Publishers produce books with terrifying pictures of wolves eating people. Word spreads through the territories and the old states. The decision of what to do is discussed in taverns and decided over beer.
"My herd has been whittled down by half!"
"I ain't lost half, but our loss is eroding our profit. Won't be able to raise as many cattle next year, which means I won't make enough to send my boy off to university."
"I can't afford to pay my mortgage this year, on account I lost all my sheep."
The list of complaints accumulates quickly in deafening shouts.
Although the wolves get credit for crimes they didn't commit, the blame is rightly placed for many of the things they did do.
On Sunday talk spills over into church. Some preachers preach sermons mingled with Scripture.
"And behold, it says in 1 Timothy, 3:5, 'For if a man knows not how to rule his own house, how shall he take care of the Church of God?' If we can't take care of our livestock, how can we take care of our homes? If we can't take care of our homes, how can we take care of our churches?"
Others preach nearly the same sermon, but with much more infatuation.
"The devil is in our midst! We must purge this Satanic Werewolf. Man beast. What have you? Sift this tare out from our wheat, by the power God has given us with these Colt forty-four, six-shootin' pistols. If the wolf seeketh to destroy our flocks, he will not stop until he devours all our animals! Our livelihoods! Our children! Our wives! Our young men! Our old! Our homes! We shall all perish with great famine, as the Egyptians did, unless we fight the righteous cause!"
"Here! Here!" were the cries of the congregation for both sermons, which put the seal needed to take strong action against Kiowa's pack.
Where preachers weren't, sermons were. Only they were mingled with more plain words and topped off with foaming beer-filled mugs in pubs and bars.
"We gotta get that wolf!"
"If I get that wolf, I'm gonna skin him and wear his pelt 'round town, see if I can't impress the ladies."
"Ain't no way a wolf coulda done this; it's a werewolf, and it's gotta die!"
"We gotta kill it!"
"Needs killin', and we're just the ones to do it."
Words, as they say, are hardly the equivalent to damages inflicted by sticks and stones. But words mixed with alcohol get folks riled up in such a way that sticks and stones actually do start to break bones. And one stick, the thunder stick as the Indians call it, was new to the prairie. In fact, Colt's brand-new invention, the rapid-fire rifle, was on its way to Cimarron. Carried by a trapper, who planned to replace printed words and whispers with thunderous echoes everywhere he saw fit.