The thing that impressed me about his narrative is its the middle to late 1870’s and the 17 year old Herman has killed an Apache and is on the run. Months later sheer loneliness compels his to walk up to a Comanche camp up on the Panhandle out of the dark.
By that time those Comanches were hunted, refugees in their own land. No reason at all to take pity on some lone, wandering White youth. He’s lucky he didn’t get killed in the first moments when the Comanches scattered from the fire in the dark.
Instead, their initial alarm gave way to curiosity
, ending with, as even T.R. Fehrenbach put it, the Comanche band leader saying simply ”You’d better come with us.” Almost certainly saving the young man’s life.
One of the cooler vignettes in our frontier history.
