William, her husband, had been away, driving some stock to Victoria, when the four Comanches burst into her cabin and took her. The babe at her breast, little Sal, they had killed immediately by dashing her head against a log. Eddie, her oldest boy, hurt his leg in the first scuffle --the pain was such that he couldn't stop whimpering at night. Maudy would hear him crying even as she endured her torments. On the sixth day the Comanches lost patience with his crying and smashed his head in with a gun butt. Eddie was still breathing when they rode on--Maudy prayed someone would find Eddie and save him, but she knew it was an empty prayer. Eddie's head had been broken; no one could save him even if they found him, and who would find a small dying boy in such emptiness?

But Bessie and Dan, three and five, were still alive. They were hungry and cold, but they had not been hurt, apart from scratches received as the horses crashed through the south Texas brush.

Several times, during periods of outrage, Maudy had thought of grabbing a knife and slashing her own throat, but she could not surrender her life while her children needed her. Bessie and Dan had stopped watching what the men did to their mother. They sat with their eyes down, silent, trying to get a little warmth from the campfire. When the men let her tend them, Maudy fed them a few scraps of the deer meat she was allowed. She meant to keep them alive, if she could, until rescue came.

"Pa will be coming--he'll take us home," she told them, over and over.

Maudy knew that part was a lie. William wouldn't be the one to find them, if they were found and saved. William barely had the competence to raise a small crop and gather a few livestock; he would never be able to follow their trail from the brush country to the empty plains.

Besides, he had left home to be gone two weeks or more; he might not yet even realize that his cabin was burned, his baby dead, his pigs scattered, and his family stolen. Once he did discover it, there would be little he could do.

Yet Maudy held on to hope, for Bessie and Dan if not herself. She didn't know why the young Comanche Tana hated her so, but in his eyes she saw her death. She had seen children brought back from Comanche captivity before, and most recovered.

Bessie and Dan were sturdy children; they would recover too. But for herself she had no hope.

She and William had discussed the prospect of capture many times; everyone who farmed on the frontier knew women who had been taken. In those discussions William had always firmly instructed Maudy to kill herself rather than submit to savage outrage. There was always a loaded pistol in the cabin, just for that purpose.

William hated Indians. His parents and both his brothers had been killed in Indian raids on the Sabine River. More important to William even than the lives of his children was the knowledge that his wife, Maudy, would not be sullied by the embraces of red Comanches.

Maudy knew William was not alone in that feeling. Many men on the frontier made clear to their wives that they would not be accepted back, if they were taken and allowed themselves to survive. Of course, some men wavered and took their wives back anyway; but William Clark had nothing but scorn for such men. A woman who had lain with a Comanche, or any Indian, could not again hope to be a respectable wife.

So Maudy knew she was lost--she had been nursing little Sal when the braves burst in. It was a moment of deep peace, her last. She was caught before she could reach the pistol. That night, when Tana began his outraging, Maudy knew that her life with William Clark was lost and gone.

William would not think her worth recovery.

Even the children, if they were not brought back quickly, he might disown. But Maudy couldn't think about that; she had to concentrate on keeping her children alive.

She had to see that they got warmth, and food, and that they did not provoke their captors by lagging or crying.

At first, as they rose onto the plains and the weather grew sharp, clothes were the first worry. Their farm was in the south; the three of them were lightly clad. All that remained of the cotton dress she had been wearing was a few scraps tied around her loins. When the cold deepened, the Indians let her cover the children with a bit of old blanket at night. She herself had nothing. She had not yet recovered from the birth of little Sal, a fact lost on her captors. She awoke in the morning from her few minutes of restless sleep with blood frozen on her legs. She feared, for a time, that she might bleed to death, but she didn't, though at times she was so weak that her vision swam.

Fortunately an older man, whose name was Quick Antelope, was not so cruel as Tana. He joined in her torment, but without enthusiasm, and was kindly toward the children. When she could not interest them in taking food, Quick Antelope made a soup which tempted them. Once when Tana began to beat her with a heavy stick, murder in his eyes, Quick Antelope took the stick from him and made him calm down.

It was not until later that she learned the older warrior's name. At first the only name she knew was Tana, the young man with the deep burn of hatred in his eyes, the man who beat her hardest and devised the most intricate torments for her. It was Tana who hit her with hot sticks from the fire, who outraged her longest, and spat on her if she tried to resist.

The night after they left Eddie, Maudy began to sob and could not stop. She thought of her boy, lying in the thin grass with his broken head, dying alone, and the wall around her feelings broke.

She began to sob so loudly that all the warriors grew angry. Bessie and Dan were fearful; they tried to shush her, but Maudy could not be shushed.

Eddie was dead, little Sal was dead; tears flooded out and she could not stop them, even though Tana dragged her through the fire by one ankle and hit her so hard he knocked out one of her front teeth. But, in her bereavement, Maudy scarcely felt the beating or the burns. She cried until she had no strength left to cry. The Comanches, disgusted and fearful, finally left her alone. Snow began to fall, drifting out of the cold sky onto the dark plains.

Finally Maudy got up and pulled the scrap of blanket over Bessie and Dan; they watched the big snowflakes flutter into the campfire, causing it to make a spitting sound.

Across the campfire Tana was still looking at her, but Maudy sat close to her children and avoided his eyes.

Tana wanted Quick Antelope, Satay, and Big Neck to go on to the main camp with the captive white children and the fourteen horses they had stolen. The horses were not the skinny horses Kicking Wolf was always stealing from the poor farmers along the Brazos. These horses were used to eating good grass. They were strong fat horses, of the sort Buffalo Hump liked. Tana thought Buffalo Hump would be impressed with the horses --he wanted the other warriors to hurry and take the horses and the two children to Buffalo Hump's camp. The two children were sturdy; they had borne the trip well and could be traded, or else put to work in the camp.