Chapter 4
Joe panicked as Kiowa backed him away from Peterson and his men into the sun-warmed meadow, and from there into the trees. He could have struggled, Kiowa would not have slit his throat, but Joe knew that going back with them was the only way he could save Kiowa and his men.
In the evening of that eventful day, another camp was chosen further down the river, well out of range of the Peterson ranch. Joe was unusually quiet, not feeling up to much interaction. He leaned on a tree and toyed with a pine needle. He'd been so close, so close to going home. It was time to eat, but he refused to near the fire.
If Kiowa had not threatened him, the Petersons might have let him go, along with his men, even allowing them to keep the birds they had already shot. His pa would have let them go, he knew.
Now that the camp was safe, his thoughts turned to escape, even if it meant entering an area where he'd never been before. Looking up, he saw Kiowa coming towards him. He slipped his arm back into its sling and stood out from the tree to face him. It was all he could do. Kiowa had not spoken to him since the new camp was set up, and Joe didn't know what to say, in any language.
Kiowa motioned him to come. Shrugging, he obliged. He had nothing to gain by being stubborn. He had to cooperate, or it might be even worse for him than just Kiowa's silence.
At the camp, Kiowa's braves had set up a target, an old farm board with a dark circle painted in the center and six outer rings, and nailed it to a tree. Taking turns with their bows, the men sent arrow after arrow into the six rings, but then Kiowa stepped up and put an arrow right at the edge of the center spot.
Joe was handed Kiowa's bow. A good pistol shot, with a true eye, Joe removed his tattered shirt, took the bow and stepped up to a line drawn in the sand. He aimed, centering on the circle, and let fly.
The arrow flew so true, it hit the exact center of the black spot on the target. His hosts, all good shots, whooped and hollered at his achievement, especially with an injured arm.
But he didn't feel much better to have made such a perfect shot. If Kiowa thought he was going to turn him Indian just by handing him a bow, well then just give him a pistol and he'd show what he could really do.
Without a word, he handed the bow back and turned away, walking to the river where he climbed a tall, overhanging rock and stood looking down at the water. How he wished he could just jump in and be taken by the current again. Where he ended up, he didn't care.
Kiowa struggled up the rock and stood beside him. He took stock of Joe's fallen eyes and knew he needed to find a way to cheer him up, so he gestured for Joe to jump in. It was at least twenty, twenty-five feet to the water!
Joe looked edgily at him. "Kiowa, what—?" he asked in English.
Kiowa pointed again at the river, and then made a swimming gesture with his arms. His meaning was clear. He wanted Joe to jump in.
"Nothin' doin'," he replied, shaking his head.
A fierce look came in Kiowa's eyes. He was bent on Joe's jumping off the rock. Or he'd pitch him off. Joe had a feeling he was going to learn to swim, or else. He bent down, took off his boots, and stuffed his socks in them. Then he stood, steeled up his nerves, and faced the river.
Once before, in a panic, he had jumped in the stream, at one of the old camps. Now he was clear-headed, for he was sure he was going to break his neck.
A half-dozen men and boys were looking on, some of them diving off themselves, plus a few girls who had been splashing in the shallows at the shore.
With a slight, ever so slight push from Kiowa, he jumped. Cold water surged up past his ears, and he soon found there was no sand below him, no bottom. Joe started some kind of swimming, but the current was moving him downstream. Kiowa jumped in, swam over, and took him by his pants' belt. With that grip, he dragged him out of the water.
Wet to the skin and sputtering, knocking water out of his ear, Joe was a sight. His hair, long and uncut, hung in his eyes. He slapped it away and turned to his audience. Only the admiring girls clapped and rooted for him.
Not wanting to disappoint these buckskinned ladies, he climbed the rock again. Setting his feet at the edge, he dove. Again, trapped in a bottle of dizzy blue liquor, he drank enough water to drown in. In his mad efforts to find the shore, he kicked, curse, windmilled and sank, then bobbed up again, gasping.
Kiowa hauled him out again. Joe shook water off his arms and headed up the beach, hating Kiowa now, through and through, and hating Kiowa's ancestors as far back as Moses. He couldn't remember any one farther back, not right then.
Kiowa ran up and swung him around. He nodded back at the rock again. Joe shook his head. No, he would not. Ever again.
"Be a man," Kiowa said. "Go, jump."
Joe jerked a look his way, not believing what he was hearing. Kiowa must have learned English at the trading posts, where the blankets, the speckled blue coffee pot, and the store-bought knives had come from.
"Why didn't you tell me you could talk English?" he asked, rather put-out over not knowing about Kiowa's secret skill.
"Not necessary for you to know," Kiowa said. "Now, go jump."
Joe turned to the rock again. His rah-rah section was exhilarated, waving his arms to get him to do it. Too far away to even hear what he and Kiowa were saying, they knew what they wanted.
Joe gave in. He walked back to the rock and climbed it once more. He placed his feet just so, and dove in again, hitting the water with a stinging splash. He tried to dog-paddle, but the current caught him again.
Spitting water and flailing, he had almost succumbed to whatever ancient spirits lived in the water, when a man's strong arms hauled him out again. Kiowa, of course.
Twice more he jumped in, the current trying to wash him downstream, but only once did Kiowa have to intercede to rescue him from it.
The second time, Joe got out of the stream on his own, proud of himself for doing it. He found that he didn't hate Kiowa so much then, not through and through, and at least not all the way back to Moses.
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Arnie Peterson said his goodbyes to Molly and 'Melia, leaving them to mind things at home. He and Reggie were going downriver with Ben Cartwright and his huge son Hoss to find Joe.
To get a fraction of the work done he knew was piling up, Ben set two men back to the ranch. A third went with them. One of the cowhands' horses stumbled in a boulder pile and threw his rider off, so with a thumped head and a bandage, the drover too returned to the Ponderosa.
"I'm mighty sorry, Mr. Cartwright. I'm tired to the bone, as ye all are, but I wanna stay on," said Jim M'Kell, in a wide Scottish brogue. "But I've had a wee bit of bad luck. At least Star is okay." That was his horse, closer to him than his own saddle.
"Go with my thanks, Jim," said Ben, helping him to mount Star. Looking up at him, he grasped Jim M'Kell's hand firmly. "You did all you could. Don't worry, we'll find Joe."
"I hope so, sar. I remember when he put warm tar in me boots 'nd then yelled fire. I stepped in them with my wool socks on. It was sech a mess."
Ben struggled not to laugh, but knowing his son, that's about what he would do for a lark. M'Kell rode off with a big wave of his hand. He hoped, no prayed, that they got the little scamp back alright.
Arnie Peterson made up for the lack of men by bringing two of his own cowhands along, with extra horses, tack, and well-rested heads and bodies.
From the endless horse miles up and down hills, in and out of canyons, Ben's back hurt. He longed for a hot bath in the big iron tub at the house, to soak for hours and hours. One bright ray of light was Molly Peterson's breakfast that day, of eggs, bacon and toast slathered with her wild plum preserves.
The lovely 'Melia, short for Amelia, had been of some help to her ma at the table. Dropping the plates in front of the starved men, she was more afraid of their forks than their hands. Others sat outside on the porch, joshing and back-slapping until Molly—wisely by herself—served them.
"You know, Miss 'Melia," said Hoss, knife and fork all ready to 'dig' in. "I could give up on ol' Joe for a spread like this," he said, referring to the breakfast. He addressed Ben across the table. "Any chance, pa, we could stay over another night?"
Ben knew he was kidding, but some of the other men at the table didn't. A couple of them raised angry eyes at Hoss, but when they saw him break out into a big belly laugh, they broke into guffaws, too.
His eyes, big and round, Hoss looked up and down the table. "Did I say something funny?"
Ben only shook his head and wondered, for about the eightieth time in his short sixty years, why, oh why, he hadn't had girls.
Breakfast over, they mounted and waved and rode out. In about an hour, Ben and his party rode into the last Indian camp, forsaken in some haste, with broken bits here and there and swiftly dowsed fires. Nobody was there, and no Joe.
Lying on a rock, however, was a cornhusk doll. It had been left behind in the rush to depart. Ben picked it up, and his eyes grew soft for a moment.
"I'll make sure she gets this back, Joe," he said, squeezing the doll slightly and looking at it, and talking to his absent son.
Hoss turned his head and heard him. He put out a consoling hand. "C'mon, pa. Joe's waiting for us."
After that, Ben and Hoss gathered up their men and, even with the brush they faced, the now seven men kept as close to the river as they could.
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That same day as Ben and his men set out, Joe was basking in the glow of his latest high-dive, from a rock much taller than the first, when he saw Kiowa walking up on the beach. His eyes unsure, he remained quiet. Kiowa had been stern with everyone all day, though usually he was soft-spoken, and playful with the children.
"Come," he said and turned, beckoning Joe.
In some fear of being tossed into even deeper water, Joe left the rock at his back, but not his bewilderment. He wondered what he had done.
On a green hill, with trees scattered thinly across its brow, Kiowa tapped himself twice on the chest and then swept his arm out before him. Joe nodded. Even on his first try, he grasped what Kiowa was trying to tell him.
A shiver rippled through him as in sank in. Kiowa's people had once dwelled in the land below the hill, fishing and hunting on its miles of lakes and rivers. Joe looked up at the blue, hazy group of mountains, and though he could not know it, that's where the Great Spirit lived.
Kiowa, a grand man, and a very proud one, was showing him his old home, the home of his kind, on whose river they had hunted and fished and trapped. Kiowa had a love for it that he had only shown Joe, and no one else, not even Ashi.
Joe was singularly touched that Kiowa would confide in him this way, but it would take a while for him to fully grasp what the land and river, hills and mountains, meant to a man whose kind would never 'own' them again, in the way his people once had.
That day the camp spent fishing, playing, and mending boats. Joe's boots never seemed to get on his feet anymore. He liked the feel of his soft hide shoes better, especially on soft sand.
And he was forgetting home a bit, too.
He could not tell anymore where he left off, and the Indians began. He was in their camp, a part of it. The sky mirrored in the river, the kingfishers diving beneath its waves, the sweet sleep against a warm rock—it all made him a mite sad at the prospect of going back.