-
Josie Wales: You be Ten Bears?
Ten Bears: I AM Ten Bears.
Josie Wales: I'm Josey Wales.
Ten Bears: I have heard. You are the Grey Rider. You would not make peace with the Bluecoats. You may go in peace.
Josie Wales: I reckon not. I got no place else to go.
Ten Bears: Then you will die.
Josie Wales: I came here to die with you. Or to live with you. Dying ain't so hard for men like you and me. It's living that's hard when all you've ever cared about has been butchered or raped. Governments don't live together - people live together. With governments, you don't always get a fair word or a fair fight. Well, I've come here to give you either one or get either one from you. I came here like this so you'll know my word of death is true, and my word of life is then true. The bear lives here, the wolf, the antelope, the Comanche. And so will we. Now we'll only hunt what we need to live on, same as the Comanche does. And every spring, when the grass turns green, and the Comanche moves north, you can rest here in peace, butcher some of our cattle, and jerk beef for the journey. The sign of the Comanche, that will be on our lodge. That's my word of life.
Ten Bears: And your word of death?
Josie Wales: It's here in my pistols and there in your rifles. I'm here for either one.
Ten Bears: These things you say we will have, we already have.
Josie Wales: That's true. I ain't promising you nothing extra. I'm just giving you life and you're giving me life. And I'm saying that men can live together without butchering one another.
Ten Bears: It's sad that governments are chiefed by the double tongues. There is iron in your words of death for all Comanche to see, and so there is iron in your words of life. No signed paper can hold the iron. It must come from men. The words of Ten Bears carries the same iron of life and death. It is good that warriors such as we meet in the struggle of life... or death. It shall be life.
[draws his knife, and cuts his hand and Josie's. The two shake hands, their blood mingling in brotherhood]
Ten Bears: So will it be.
Josie Wales: I reckon so.
-
Lone Watie: Get ready, little lady.
Grandma Sarah: What?
Lone Watie: Hell is coming to breakfast.
Sondra Locke
Extended Reading
