The Daughter by C.B. Cooper (robert munsch read aloud .TXT) 📕

Believe me, it wasn’t like that at all. We never did fight, but we did have us a talk.”
“Wall, hurry up an git to the good part.”
“I will, but first things first. After I left their camp that night, I hightailed it as far as I could before daybreak. I didn’t want to be anywhere near that camp when they discovered the dead, for one thing, I knew that their trackers would be hot on my trail. And they’d be out for my blood.”
“Come morning I ran into a creek. I lead my horse down for some water, and after he got his fill, I was planning on taking a bath and changing my clothes. I hadn’t realized until I was standing there, that I was covered from head to foot in dried Indian blood.
As my horse got through drinking I picked up the reins, and when I stood up I seen fifty guns pointed at my head from the other side of the creek. I about fainted at the sight.”
“There I was, staring at a line of Texas Rangers. I whooped for joy and jumped in the creek, wading the waters trying to run as fast as I could to get to them, so it took me a minute to realize that they were screaming at me to stop. So, I did. But that was confusing, I thought they were there to help. The Texas Rangers were hero’s and legends, defenders of the common man, they were supposed to be helping me, but instead, they were threatening to shoot me. I wanted to warn them that the Comanche were on their way, but they just kept screaming at me.”
“One officer stepped forward and said a bunch of jibberish, that sounded somewhat familiar, but at the same time, it didn’t make any sense that the words were coming from a Texas Ranger. But he kept yelling the same sentence, over and over.
Finally, one of the other men told him, “Maybe he’s stupid or something.”
That caught my attention real fast. I was starting to get really mad, there I was, standing in freezing cold water up past my knees, I was tired and hungry, and I knew there was some mad Indians on my trail. I didn’t have time to stand around and chew the fat, so I spouted off, “Who are you calling stupid, you dumb-ass.”
Then, I heard the man say, “He speaks good English, for a little heathen.”
“I was such a mess that they thought I was an Indian, and was speaking to me in Comanche! After we got that little matter cleared up, I told them that the real Indians were on their way, so they’d best get ready.”
“That turned out to be the Battle of Plum Creek at Good’s crossing. Two hundred Texas Rangers against almost a thousand Comanche Indians. But, more importantly, that was the day I learned not to put to much stock into so called hero’s and legends, cause in the end, their only human. My hero’s crumbled in front of my young eyes and fell from grace that day. I figured out right quick, that they were nothing more than regular men, that sometimes do extraordinary things.”
“The Comanche came and the battle begun. Within minutes the rangers had them on the run. The Indians were slowed down by the mules that they had loaded down, so they cut them loose to move faster. That’s when the silver bullion that the mules had been carrying was discovered, and the chase was abandoned. They could have had them on that day, but they just… gave up. Decided the silver was more important than going after the murderous theives. They had been roaming the countryside, murdering, pillaging, and burning as they went, and the Rangers just let them go. I screamed and cussed, trying to get them to keep going after them, but they wouldn’t. All they cared about was splitting up the silver. They weren’t even planning on taking it back Linnville where it belonged, they claimed that the town was destroyed, that there was no where to take it back to, so the money was up for grabs. I stood there, calling them every horrible name I could think of, until I got a gun shoved in my face and was told to‘leave it alone’.” Sam shrugged, “And that was the end of it.”
Now Zeb understood why Sam had taken such an offense to being called a legend. In his eyes, there were no legends, or hero’s, for that matter. Just ordinary men who could be just as fallable as the next. Zeb understood all of that. What he didn’t understand, was what had caused Sam Sharp to have such a low opinion of himself. As far as he knew, he’d never heard a bad word against the man, but maybe in time Sam would come to trust him with the secret.
“So what ‘bout ol’ Buffalo Hump?”
“After I left the Rangers fighting over the silver, I followed the Comanche’s trail. I wasn’t real sure at the time what my plan was, but that seemed good enough for the time. It was that night as I sat in my make-shift camp, that I had a visit from Buffalo Hump. He walked in silent as a ghost, waving a white piece of cloth, that showed he came in peace.
“White warrior, I come to your fire in peace, and with much sorrow in my heart. I hear you still track me, you are silent as a shadow, but I still feel your presence. What is it you seek, White Warrior? Was not enough blood spilled last night to end your grieving?”
A fury had been building inside of me since the first second I laid eyes on him. I screamed and rushed him at the same time. Weapons be damned, I wanted to rip him apart with my bare hands, and leave him in a bloody pile, like what had been done to my mother, but he stood as solid as a rock. I hit him and kicked him with everything I had, but he didn’t even flinch, not even when I hit him in the face. Never even grunted when I punched at his stomach. I felt like as helpless as a two year old throwing a trantrum and flailing uselessly at my parent’s legs.
I screamed, “Why wont you fight back!”
And he said. “I am taking your pain as my own. I will not fight you today, White Warrior, I have only come to talk.”
“I was so mad, the only thing I could do was cry. I stumbled back to the fire, sat down, and bawled like a baby.
After I was quiet, he spoke again, “I am sorry for the loss of your family, White Warrior, it was my fault. We were joined by one of our brother tribes from the north, the Kiowa Apache, and as we gathered to leave our village to fight for our fathers who were slaughtered by the white men, I failed to tell them of your family. They did not know you were friends to the Penateka.”
Sam smiled at zeb, “Then he offered to let me come and live with his tribe, as one of his sons. He told me he would be proud to have such a fierce warrior as one of his own. When I declined the offer, he asked me how many dead Comanche warriors it would take to make up for the loss of my family. I came back and asked him how many white men would it take to make up for the loss of his land and his people. We both knew the answer, it would never be enough, there was no amount that would ever bring back what we had lost.”
“Then he offered up the offending Apache warriors that actually killed my mother and sister. He told me that out of the twenty eight men I had killed in his camp, not one of them had been an Apache.” Shaking his head at Zeb, he said, “I had no idea at the time, but when Buffalo Hump told me that, I felt sick at the thought. I knew in my mind that the men I had killed were probably guilty of other crimes, hell they were taking Texas by storm, and a lot of innocent people were killed in those raids, but that didn’t make me feel any better. I had set out to kill those that had wronged me, not anyone else.”
“I declined his offer of the Apache lives, I told him I had had enough killing for a while.” Sam smiled, bitterly, “I was thirteen years old, and I was tired. I mean, bone tired. All I wanted was to go home, crawl in my bed, and sleep for a year. Only, I didn’t really have a home to go back to. I’m sure the cabin still stood in the same spot, my bed was still there beside my sister’s, but it was no longer my home. My home was destroyed, my family was destroyed, I was all alone, and I had nothing but my horse and my guns.”
“Me and Buffalo Hump came to an understanding that night and he left as quietly as he had come. In the morning I woke up to find a large finely beaded deer skin bag lying by my head, and when I opened it, I found it was full of silver bullion. It was more money than I had ever seen in my life. And not ten feet away, a Comanche war staff was sticking in the ground, decorated with what appeared to be twenty Apache scalps. Presents from Buffalo Hump.”
“Holy shiiit.” Zeb drawled.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought.” Sam smiled.
“So, what did you do after that?”
“Sam shrugged, “Well, after I rested up a bit, I did the only thing there was to do. I raised hell. I’m ashamed to say, that I was still so full of hate for what happened to my family, I went on a warpath of my own. I hired myself out to the army as an Indian scout and we tracked down the renegade Indians that were attacking the white settlements all over Texas. As you already know, I earned a reputation being a pretty fierce Indian fighter, all at the whopping age of fourteen. I had units all over texas vying for my allegiance, everyone wanted me to fight with them, and my sevices didn’t come cheap. I learned real quick how much money there was to be made in war- if your good enough. And I was good.
“There were other men working at the time who were commissioned to find the main villages so the government could offer up some bullshit peace treaties or talk them into giving up and moving to the death lands- reservations, they called them. I didn’t hold with them then, and I don’t hold with them now.” Sam winked at Zeb, “Even I had standards. I knew that what they were doing to the Indians was wrong. They’d go into the villages and tell the people they were giving them an area to stay on, an area that already belonged to them, and then six months later, they would take it back, tell them they had to move or be killed. No wonder the Indians were pissed off. I would have been too. That’s why I only went after the renegade hostiles. We would get word of a settlement or farm being attacked, and we would high-tail it to the place and I would start tracking them. And once we caught up to them, we’d either capture them or kill them, didn’t make no matter to me which, especially when I had seen their distruction first hand. Those