Now the council was considering Buffalo Caller’s proposal for an invasion on a scale not seen since the great raid that had carried him and so many others all the way to the big water, chasing terrified whites out into the surf. He was ready to do it again. It was high time that the land-hungry Texans felt once more the full fury of The People, that the blood cry of Comanche warriors rang in their ears at the moment of their deaths.

He had sensed from the first that the council did not share his enthusiasm for a massive strike. He could not understand the reluctance. He argued that the timing was perfect. Many reports from south of the Eckhoft Pahehona, the Red River, indicated that the white men had become so hopelessly embroiled in their war against one another that their defenses at home had almost fallen apart. They had sent most of their fighting men away to some distant country to kill their own kind in awesome numbers.

The white man’s foolish ways would forever be a mystery. But it seemed equally foolish for The People not to take advantage of them.

Buffalo Caller voiced a strong opinion that the Texans were vulnerable enough now to be pushed back from all the lands The People claimed for their own. He was convinced that the spirits were moving to bring this about. How else could one account for the white men’s destructive war against each other unless it had been willed by the spirits? How else could one explain the fact that the western line of Texan settlements was guarded only by a small and tattered group of men on horseback who had to range over long distances because they were so few and the land so large? Such a line should be easy to breach. With help of benevolent spirits, the destruction should be well under way and irreversible by the time Texan patrols discovered the signs of invasion.

Black Wing countered that several attempted penetrations of late had been discovered early and pushed back, some with painful loss of life. He felt that Buffalo Caller was much too optimistic. “You and I have both seen the Texans’ settlements. Even with their war, the hair-faces have become thicker to the east of us than winter hair on the back of a horse.”

Buffalo Caller argued, “There was a time we could have stopped them easily, but we waited. We thought the Mexicans would turn them back, or the land itself. But they continued to come. If we wait much longer, the white men’s war will end and there will be twice as many of them. This is the time to be bold.”

He used a pointed stick to draw a crude map in the sand. He indicated the course of the Colorado River, far south of the Red. “This is the Talking Water River. As a young man I hunted there. Many times since the Texans built their houses, I have gone and taken horses from them.”