Woman of the People

8. The Wide Mouth Raid to Mexico

8. THE WIDE MOUTH RAID TO MEXICO SHE FOUND it both easier and harder after her deed during the Lipan attack. Every member of the band now accepted her in the way that the members of the Lance Returner lodge had accepted her before. They spoke freely to her. If, at her work, she started to lift something heavy, any of the women might come forward to help. Sometimes the women alluded to her deed in an easy, joking manner. They would say, "I hope you never lose your temper with me, Tehanita," or, "It's all right. Tehanita is going with us; we'll be safe." Sometimes the young unmarried men would speak to her, trying to engage her in conversation , but she would answer quickly and pass on. Their attitude said to her: You belong with us, and we like you; if you are different in some way, it doesn't matter. But all that could change nothing. They did not know the depth of her long determination. She had gained some of the things which through the years had seemed necessary for escape: strength, the ability to find food, the ability to travel a long distance on horse or foot, a considerable knowledge of the land, without the knowledge of the definite direction to go to find white people. She still had the puzzle of the white people, of what they had done to them137 A WOMAN OF THE PEOPLE 138 selves with the war they had fought; though the rumors that passed among the Kiowa and Comanche bands were beginning to suggest that the whites had changed little in numbers or otherwise as a result of the war they had fought. Then she had the puzzle of Sunflower, for her duty to escape included the duty to take her sister, and she found it difficult to think of it in any other way. Also she had the puzzle of the baby girl, as yet unnamed, who was half white even though she did not appear to be. Early in that autumn when the baby was growing out of her cradleboard and could stand alone and was learning to toddle around, a raid to Mexico was planned. It was Wide Mouth's idea. He had been one of the leaders of a summer raid against white settlements. The raiders had split into three groups, and the other groups had been successful, but his group had brought back no loot at all. He was dissatisfied, and so a few days before the beginning of the Mexican Moon, he carried the pipe to certain other braves of the Mutsani. Nineteen of them accepted his plan and agreed to follow him. One of these was Little Wild Horse. Most of the other young men his age, including Burning Hand, had gone to deliver to the New Mexico traders some cattle they had taken during the summer. Ute Killer became interested in the raid plan after his son had joined it, but since its leadership was already settled, he declined to be a member of the party. Gossip had it that his son was hoping to prove his mettle out from under the domination of his father. It would be a long raid. Some of the raiders wanted to take their women. Wide Mouth thought about it and discussed it and decided that any wife might go if she were young and strong and a first-class rider. As a result, four women became members of the party. One of these was Sunflower. She was as eager and excited about the prospects of the trip as was her young husband. It came as a shock to Tehanita. Her first thought was to talk her sister out of it or to prevent her in some way. It was 139 THE WIDE MOUTH RAID TO MEXICO not like a closer raid, on which a woman might go and wait in a raid camp for the men to return; the trail into Mexico was deep into enemy territory, and a woman who traveled it was a part of the raid itself. The trail went through that sand-hill country in the south, over Horsehead Crossing, past the Springs of the People; but in those familiar places the war trail to Mexico was only beginning, and beyond them all of it was held by various enemies who hated Comanches and permitted them to...