Savage Courage

Everyone now felt how sharp was the edge of fate that could come on a village so quickly, taking away all hope. Ho, yes, too often the white man brought death and destruction to a village of the people instead of talk of peace and honor!

This was a day no warrior could save, no matter how hard he tried, or how many pony soldiers could be killed by arrows before the enemy swept through the village with their deadly firearms.

Shouting, “Tiras, do not fire! Tiras, do not fire!”, the Silent Stream Band of Apache ran in many directions, sometimes colliding with each other and falling clumsily to the ground, then getting up and running again in a desperate attempt to find one last moment of life.

It was a dizzying scene; no one seemed to have any sense of direction or plan of where to go, or what to do to save their beloved families.

The horses carrying the soldiers were already galloping into the outskirts of the village.

The soldiers ignored the pleading. They ignored the looks of terror on the Apache people’s faces.

Gunfire began exploding from the pindah-lickoyee’s firearms, followed by screams of terror, and then pain.

A soldier began giving orders to those under his command. “Spare no one!” he shouted. “Kill small and big, women and children! Let no warrior come out of this alive!”

A little boy ran from a tepee, crying. A soldier saw him and stopped and took aim. He sent a bullet flying from his rifle, but missed the child.

Another soldier who saw this drew a tight rein and dismounted. He fell to a knee, set his rifle on his other knee, aimed, and knocked the boy over with one lethal shot.

Five-year-old Shoshana was with her mother, Fawn, fleeing the soldiers, as gunfire spattered all around them. She screamed as she saw her people’s tepees being set afire with flaming torches.

She clung desperately to her mother’s hand as they ran onward toward the nearby ravine where they might be able to hide in the bushes that stood at the edge of the water.

Shoshana’s heart raced as she heard a horse approaching from behind her and her mother. She looked wild-eyed over her shoulder as a soldier on a black steed took aim and fired.

She screamed when her mother’s body lurched, then released Shoshana’s hand and fell to the ground, quiet.

“Todah, no! Ina, mother! Ina!” Shoshana cried in her Apache tongue when she saw blood on the back of her mother’s doeskin dress, turning what was only moments ago a beautiful white color to red.

Shoshana fell to her knees beside her mother.

“Ina! Please awaken!” Shoshana sobbed as she began shaking her mother’s lifeless body. “Mother, I am so afraid. Do . . . not . . . leave me!”

But no matter what she said or did, her mother continued to lie there, her body quiet, her eyes closed.

Terror ate away at Shoshana’s heart, for what she saw today on her mother’s face was the same look she had seen on the day of her father’s death, when an enemy renegade burst out of bushes and killed her father, only to be killed himself moments later by her father’s best friend.

Now Shoshana had no one! Both her parents were dead.

Filled with despair, and a deep, gnawing need to survive this terrible day, Shoshana scurried to her feet.

Her eyes filled with the pain of loss, yet with sudden determination, she defied the whites who had brought death to her beloved Silent Stream Band of Apache as she ran onward toward the ravine. She still hoped to find shelter there.

But when she heard a horse quickly approaching from behind her and then felt an arm grabbing her up from the ground, she knew just how wrong it had been to hope for what would never be.

She gazed frantically over her shoulder and saw that the one who had grabbed her was a soldier with long hair the color of fire, and eyes the color of the sky.

She strugged to fight him off, kicking and biting him, but no matter how hard she tried, the pony soldier held her on his lap, an arm like steel around her tiny waist holding her in place against him. There was a sudden strange sort of kindness in his sky-blue eyes.

She realized that no matter how hard she tried, the soldier was taking her as his hostage as he rode away with her, leaving the fighting behind them, as well as the screams of terror and the leaping fires that were consuming the lodges.

And then Shoshana became aware of something else: the total silence behind her at the village. She feared the pindah-lickoyee pony soldiers had done as they had been ordered to do. Except for herself, the pony soldiers had spared none of her people!

“To-dah, no,” she sobbed. “To-dah!”

She then hung her head in abject sorrow as she whispered to herself, “I . . . alone . . . am . . . alive.”

Yet inside her heart, she felt dead.