He had been told that the whites saw all red men as being of one people, though reason proved that it was not true. Comanches had little in common with the Cherokees or the others who had migrated from some distant eastern land and tried to make themselves white. To suggest that Comanches had anything in common with the accursed Apaches was an insult. To Steals the Ponies, each tribal group was a race apart. The Comanches were The People, the chosen ones, a superior race. All others were allowed to live or willed to die at the discretion of the True Human Beings.

Steals the Ponies had heard old men say the world was large, that it would take many seasons to ride all the way across it on even the fastest horse. His father had told him of visiting a great water, so wide he could not see the far side. The elders said there were many more races of men than he had ever heard about, and each race had its own manner of speaking. One would reason that they must have a common sign language like the plains people so they could make themselves understood to strangers. He had noted, however, that most white men did not seem to have the same signals as The People. They moved their hands a lot as they talked, but the meanings were lost to him.

Nor could he distinguish much difference between white men, though the elders claimed they were of many races. They all looked more or less alike except that some were hairier than others. Their talk was gibberish, as empty as the chatter of the gray cranes that wintered around the many playa lakes shimmering on the plains after a season of rain. How they understood one another was beyond his imagining. It stood to reason that one had to be born white to talk that way, and one had to be born Comanche to know The People’s language.

Yet, Steals the Ponies had a foster brother who was white. His father had captured him on a raid and brought him home as a small boy. At first Badger Boy had babbled in the white man’s undecipherable tongue. Now nine or ten summers old, he spoke Comanche almost as if he had been born to it.

Steals the Ponies wondered if he would ever understand life’s puzzling contradictions.

After lengthy consideration, he told Wolf Eyes, “The white men have fought each other a long time. It is not reasonable that they would stop now while so many on both sides still live. We shall go and see for ourselves.”

Wolf Eyes was more than willing, for the ranger warrior society had thwarted the last two raids in which he had participated. “How many of us will go? Do you think we will bring back many horses?”

“There will be only the two of us. We go to look, not to fight.”